Sunday 26 May: The decline of NHS care will be on every voter’s mind during this election

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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897 thoughts on “Sunday 26 May: The decline of NHS care will be on every voter’s mind during this election”

  2. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled)List
    MOTIVATION

    A popular motivational speaker was entertaining his audience. He said, ‘The best years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman who wasn’t my wife!’ The audience was in silence and shock. The speaker added, ‘… And that woman was my mother!’ Laughter and applause.

    A week later, a top manager trained by the motivational speaker tried to crack this very effective joke at home. He was a bit tipsy after a drink, and he said loudly, ‘The greatest years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman who was not my wife!’

    His wife went red with shock and rage.

    …And I can’t remember who she was!’

    Moral of the story: Don’t copy if you can’t paste properly!

  5. 387717+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    I told yer I bloody told yer, South America
    no doubt, the Odessa line Mk2 has been triggered.

    Dt,
    Boris Johnson will be abroad for most of election campaign
    Former prime minister to actively support Tories remotely but won’t stand as MP

    1. Slippery bugger probably wants to be out of the country when the war starts.

  6. Rishi Sunak: I will bring back National Service. 26 May 2024.

    Rishi Sunak has vowed to bring back National Service for 18-year-olds to create a “renewed sense of pride in our country” in his first major policy announcement of the election campaign.

    Under the mandatory scheme, school leavers will have to either enrol on a 12-month military placement or spend one weekend each month volunteering in their community.

    This is electioneering on the hoof. Think up any daft idea and get it out there. What next? Free Beer?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/25/rishi-sunak-bring-back-national-service-policy/

    1. As compared with a denial in RT that the Russians intend to do the same.

      Kremlin refutes mobilization rumor.
      Not sure I believe them, but the gist is that they have recruited enough for now.
      They seem to have prepared for war while we are talking about thinking about it.

    2. Back of cigarette planning , don’t you think ?

      A little bit like overloading chemist shops with patients diverted from GP practises ?

    4. Do you think his dear little global daughters will be forced to sign up? Does anyone think the migrants will be forced to sign up? More likely our tax payer funded legal aid will ensure that they won’t have to. Sunak wants to bring back pride in our country. Ha Ha. We once had pride before mass immigration. He wants to stop division in society. By sending our kids off to wars which he and his ilk create. Will be a wet dream for Lammy to send all the white kids off to a meat grinding war. I hate them. I hate them all. Let’s see if they send their horrible kids first.

    5. Where are these inductees going to train? Who is going to train them? What will they be trained to do? The British Army stopped doing this over 60 years ago but was in a position to do this back then. Today, as an anorexic force, it does not have the capacity to perform this task. Then there is the reality regarding health and safety and then there is the role of Ofsted which will doubtlessly be monitoring and controlling aspects. Total delusion from a delusional PM leading a delusional party in the process of falling off a cliff edge which they have been dancing on for many years.

      1. The majority of youngsters will be incapable of even tying their own shoe laces , will be stupefied by drugs of all sorts , addicted to their smart phones and edgy as hell .

    6. Maybe we need to look at the reason they abolished National Service in 1960?

      As a recall, the military commanders hated it, since they were tasked with training up a generation of the unfit who did not want to be there, whereas they aspired to a level of military professionalism that relied on the eager and the fit.

      The main question though, is how much is it all going to cost, when adult education is one of the first things to be hit when cutting taxes on corporate bonuses, in order to encourage Vennells style of market bonus management to shake industry up a bit and improve the figures?

      One thing I know about Starmer, is that he is eager for “more of the same” has has systematically reversed change in his party and in the nation that was actually the baby of the now-expelled Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer calls this “CHANGE” and has red posters everywhere, because he knows the public is stupid and will swallow any spin if put in capital letters and repeated enough in the media. Of course, he would not support National Service, since these days this might involve real change. Sunak seems not so afraid, but I still don’t know how he is going to pay for it.

      When Attlee introduced peacetime conscription, it was during a background of very high direct taxation and a spirit of national sacrifice that does not exist today.

    7. Free beer from the government?

      Knowing how the latter foul up everything they come into contact with that idea will be the death knell of real English ale.

    8. Morning, Minty. It’s a statement made from ignorance. He has no idea of the time needed to train an individual in the modern technical military. I commenced my aircrew training in 1955. It took 18 months before I joined my first operational squadron. The kit I operated in the aircraft was nowhere near as sophisticated as that in use today.
      Furthermore, it places an intolerable burden on our dwindling armed forces.

    9. Good morning Araminta and everyone.

      Minty, aside from electioneering gibberish the objective is to soften up, and then harden, British youth for a tour in the Ukraine.

  7. Good morning all

    Rained over night , mixed weather this morning , 14c.

    2 Letters about breakfast

    Recognise anyone?

    A purist’s breakfast
    SIR – If the stated aim of the English Breakfast Society is to “restore the tradition of the English breakfast to its former glory” (Letters, May 19), then it should consider abolishing baked beans and hash browns.

    These two recent usurpers from America do not belong on a traditional plate of bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, fried bread, mushrooms and – in days of yore – kidneys.

    Alan G Barstow
    Onslunda, Skåne County, Sweden

    SIR – In the 1970s my late father’s good friend managed the Royal Station Hotel in Hull. He referred to breakfast as a “Best”: bacon, egg, sausage and tomato. Since then I’ve considered the Best the definitive English breakfast – improved by adding fried bread.

    Jayne Bugg
    Coggeshall, Essex

    1. No English breakfast can call itself that without its crowning glory Belle – a couple of large slices of black pudding.

      1. Yes I agree, and a few years ago I always used to love grilled bacon, black pudding and tomato , finding decent black pud is a mighty exercise .

          2. Witton Gilbert? (pronounced, I’m reliably informed, as “Witton Jillbert”).

          3. That’s it. It’s also the only place I know that sells pig cheek, or hog’s face as it’s known around here. Best bit of the pig.

          5. I can easily source delicious black pudding, here in Sweden, but they never put big chunks of pork back fat in it (in fact they don’t put any fat in it at all!)

          6. never tried Swedish black pud Grizz. The only other country that I have found anything like it is Argentina!

          7. Inspired by this thread, I am just about to go and hunt down an empanada filled with morcilla and pear from San Telmo market. 🙂🙂

        2. Plenty of black pudding available in Spain, where it is known as ‘morcilla’. The French have ‘boudin noir’, je crois.

          1. All delicious. And I am now minded to sally forth and snaffle the most delicious empanada in Buenos Aires, filled with morcilla and pear, as a Sunday treat. 🙂

      3. Mea culpa! I forgot to include black pudding until after I’d sent the damn email! ☹️

  10. Good morning, chums, and a big Thank You to Geoff for today’s NoTTLe site. I hope you all slept well. I had some strange and frightening dreams, but am now awake and looking forward to delicious roast lamb supper this evening. I hope you also enjoy your day.

    Wordle 1,072 5/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie ,

      I was pretty busy yesterday , and yesterday evening Moh and I watched our no1 son compete in a 10k race, pretty good result for a 55 year old , 40mts !

      We walked to various points on the course to photograph the runners , and then the rain started .

      I slept badly last night , we ate rather too late for us when we arrived home at 20.30 am. We normally eat at around 6pm ish .

      Not a good idea to eat late in the evening .

  12. 387717+up ticks,

    Bringing back national service will help to restore pride in Britain
    Rishi Sunak’s new proposal deserves the country’s support

    Lest we forget excessive deaths and life long injuries are strongly alledged to be prime items on the WEF / NWO menu.

    Forty years ago,YES, now, as things are progressing we could very well be streamlining
    cannon fodder to satisfy the political top rankers, fulfilling the WEF / NWO culling agenda.

    This General Election will have the shite
    judges AKA the best of the worst brigade of the electorate sorely pressed but I have a sneaky feeling our majority voter will not let us down when returning the best shite
    to oversee the concluding downfall of a once decent nation.

    For what we are about to receive keep in mind that via in the polling stations for decades we have, as a country been hanging over, by our fingertips, a deep bog of lethal diarrhea, we are about to put the
    final stamp on democracy and freedom , as was.

    1. What’s left of Britain after they’ve destroyed it is nothing to be proud of.

      1. 387717+up ticks,

        Evening C,

        I did notice that the voting pattern never changed these past near forty years,talk about loyalty to a party (ino) name.
        The only future post GE after GE was more of the same, again & again.

  13. The million pound London properties owned by Putin’s regime. 26 May 2024.

    The revelation of Putin’s property empire in the heart of the capital comes as demand has soared for Russian assets to be seized and sold off to support Ukraine’s war effort.

    It’s not a revelation and they are not Putin’s. They belong to the Russian state. This is not really about some financially irrelevant properties in London but about softening public opinion towards seizing Russia’s financial assets. This of course would be theft but worse than that it would be in Talleyrand’s observation about one of Napoleons escapades “…Worse than a Crime. It is a Blunder.” It would destroy at a stroke the reputation the Financial Markets of the West have carefully fostered for two hundred years, that, no matter what, your money is safe with us. It would actually aid Putin in his ambition to bring down the American Hegemony.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/25/russia-putin-regime-london-property-portfolio-millions/

      1. The British Embassy, possibly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if any politician since 1997 hasn’t flogged it off to an oligarch chum and then leased it back.

  14. SIR – It has never been more important for us all to leave our cars at home and take to our bicycles, so why are we vilifying cyclists (Letters, May 20)?

    Peter Baynes
    London W1

    Smug and deluded.

    SIR – Responsible cyclists who complain about the need to register and have insurance “because of the behaviour of a minority” are looking at the problem from the wrong direction. They should be all in favour of these, as a way to prevent the irresponsible people from giving them a bad name.

    John Snook
    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    They just want a free ride, Mr Snook.

    1. Freedom is something that has fallen out of favour and has never been liked by authoritarians, be they controllers on the Left or on the Right.

      As a Liberal, and in sympathy with libertarians here, including Conservatives here, the less regulation of our daily lives, the better. I lament the introduction of new rules and regulations, and rejoice when those that are no longer required are discarded. This comes at a price though.

      The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, so we are told, and requires a degree of self-responsibility in equal measure. Unless we respect our freedoms and treat them with honour, we will lose them. Cyclists, especially the lycra-clad, must be made to realise that they do their sport no good if they fail to respect the rights and freedoms of pedestrians and motorists, and should endeavour never to give the latter cause for complaint.

      Then hopefully in return we can put to bed any proposals to impose yet more expensive bureaucracy on a new section of society.

      1. For the record, Jeremy, I don’t think a registration scheme will make any difference. The kind of people who are a danger to pedestrians will carry on regardless, two fingers to the law, and, perhaps, some of those who sign up will take the view that they have even greater freedom to do as they please.

        1. You are right for as long as the police (who have other things to do) let them get away with it. They might not be able to prosecute (and the villains know this), but a few stern words and a promise that they would be done for common assault if they so much as touch a pedestrian whilst mounted on a footpath, might bring them to order.

    2. W1. Plenty of public transport, unlike life outside that magic post code, Mr. Baynes.

  15. SIR – It has never been more important for us all to leave our cars at home and take to our bicycles, so why are we vilifying cyclists (Letters, May 20)?

    Peter Baynes
    London W1

    Smug and deluded.

    SIR – Responsible cyclists who complain about the need to register and have insurance “because of the behaviour of a minority” are looking at the problem from the wrong direction. They should be all in favour of these, as a way to prevent the irresponsible people from giving them a bad name.

    John Snook
    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    They just want a free ride, Mr Snook.

  16. Bonjour.
    Grizz in t’letters again, and I agree with what you say Grizz. I like baked beans, but not on a breakfast. Hash browns however are the food of the devil.

    2. Baked beans (with reduced sugar&salt) provide some dietary fibre.

      IMHO, i.e. near total ignorance, both fat and fibre slow down the digestive process and therefore help to avoid blood sugar ‘spikes’. Incidentally, I know a mother who used to use liquidised baked beans as a base for tomato pasta sauce for her young children. Not a clinical reply, anyone is welcome to improve or reject it!

    3. Goddag, D-Cup.

      Those “hash browns” sold in the UK are, indeed, an abomination. Proper hash browns are, in effect, a version of the delicious Swiss Rösti, and are invariably made from scratch (not out of a box in the freezer).

      1. I tried the frozen ones. You end up with bits of raw potato in the middle. Rösti but not with breakfast.

      2. Our NATO dining facility (as it was known) in Maastricht served freshly shredded parboiled potato as hash browns, cooked on a griddle. They were fine done that way.

  18. Morning, all Y’all.
    Sunny. Masses pollen in the air, and after a brief shower last night, everything is yellow.

    1. MB and I have been sneezing a lot.
      Possibly the wet spring means trees are going gangbusters and churning out the pollen.

  19. 387717+ up ticks,

    A vote winner, if ever,

    The money mills must keep turning, cast a thought for those receiving a regular rake off of there being in useless existence.

    They are in point of fact taking up prime farming land that could be used to house “illegals” or even, in some cases, indigenous peoples.

    https://x.com/RogerHelmerMEP/status/1794624641857663037

    1. https://davidturver.substack.com/p/disband-the-climate-change-committee

      The state simply has too much money. It takes and takes and takes and most is wasted damaging this country, going into the pockets of sewage.

      Folk blither on about ‘green’ but it’s just a tax scam. Climate change is a hoax. The public are just being scammed. Unreliables are expensive, inefficient, unreliable, inadequate. If they were forced into a market on their own then they would within months bankrupt their owners. The survive because endless amounts of public money is shovelled in to them.

    2. https://davidturver.substack.com/p/disband-the-climate-change-committee

      The state simply has too much money. It takes and takes and takes and most is wasted damaging this country, going into the pockets of sewage.

      Folk blither on about ‘green’ but it’s just a tax scam. Climate change is a hoax. The public are just being scammed. Unreliables are expensive, inefficient, unreliable, inadequate. If they were forced into a market on their own then they would within months bankrupt their owners. The survive because endless amounts of public money is shovelled in to them.

    1. It’s very sad but inevitable. The state is so huge and awash with money (it cries out because the money it has is mostly wasted) that such corruption is inevitable, especially when it is poured on to this nonsense.

      Instead of pandering to these creatures the right thing to do is implement a far harsher criminal code that punishes rather than ponces around the problem. Stop pretending. There’s a problem with black kids. That problem is systemic, created by welfare and Left wing policies.

      It’s solution is painful but obvious – beat it out of them.

      1. I was watching Charlie Chaplin’s film “The Great Dictator” yesterday, where he played on his physical resemblance to Adolf Hitler.

        I think he answered very well the flaw in your argument about beating the inferiority out of the Untermensch. However, this still leaves the Entitlement culture among the descendants of black settlers today, along with those flooding in “for a better life” that threatens the nation and so much of what Chaplin held dear.

        1. If you beat a child all you teach it is that violence solves problems. If you beat a violent thug you force it down and tell it you have the bigger stick. That’s the only way to deal with them. They don’t understand anything else. Then, of course, you have to point it at the enemy and deal with it permanently.

          Of course, none of this would be necessary if they simply weren’t here at all.

          1. Here is the final speech from the film, in character as the Jewish Barber, who has been dressed in the Dictator’s uniform to address a rally. The film was released in 1940, and was used to rally the allies during WW2.

            History over the following five years shows how the stick was not spared, and was sadly necessary, despite the admirable high-mindedness of the Quakers and conscientious objectors. I argue though that its sentiments were what led the allies to eventual victory, and the 1000 Year Reich barely lasted a decade.

            “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone – if possible – Jew, Gentile – black man – white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness – not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

            Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…

            The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men – cries out for universal brotherhood – for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world – millions of despairing men, women, and little children – victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

            To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…
            Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes – men who despise you – enslave you – who regiment your lives – tell you what to do – what to think and what to feel! Who drill you – diet you – treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men – machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate – the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

            In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” – not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power – the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

            Then – in the name of democracy – let us use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world – a decent world that will give men a chance to work – that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

            Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world – to do away with national barriers – to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!”

            Final speech from The Great Dictator Copyright © Roy Export S.A.S. All rights reserved

    3. Seems like a protection racket. Can happen anywhere proper policing breaks down.

      It is some time since I have bought the ‘Big Issue’. These days, it’s mostly about celebrity and lifestyle, and these things do not interest me. I would be more willing to buy the rag if it was written by those on the streets who had something interesting to say. Nottling with a dog on a string.

      The actual work of the unregistered charity has been done very well by the present King, who set up the Prince’s Trust for the purpose. There is no doubt he makes a fair amount of money out of his birthright, but the great thing about a monarchy is that there is only one, and actually I quite like a lot of what he is passionate about.

  22. Genuine question: woman on R4 said that National Service was for 18 months, and ended in 1960. I thought it was two years and 1963.

    1. You listen to R4 AND believe it?? As a proven supplier of Bridge Investments, we need to meet to discuss your ongoing financial requirements.

      1. You’re a bit slow of the mark. I’ve spent all my money on a very distinctive building in Paris.

        1. About ten days ago I switched on BBC R4 for the headlines, and there was talk of (or by) an Australian commercial cricketer who believed that the heat and humidity in Delhi, during April, was due to ‘climate change’.

    2. I just missed it. I was born in 1946 and left school in 1964.

      However for four years I had to do ‘corps’ – the CCF. In this you played at being soldiers on Thursday afternoons, marched up and down on the parade ground, crawled on your belly in the mud and spent hours cleaning your belt, buckles and boots. You also had exams to take: Cert A Part 1 after three terms and Cert A Part 2 after 5. You could not defect to the naval or RAF sections until you passed Part 2. Some ‘corps shags’ (as they were called) never got beyond Part 1 and so you had cynical old Sixth Formers in the same platoon as the new 13 year old ‘recruits!

      I moved into the naval section, took another exam and had two bright red stripes sewn onto my blue uniform but I was not cut out to be a leader so I never got a third one. Field days then became more fun and we used to go to BRNC in Dartmouth to mess about in whalers and on other normal corps days we made shearlegs to swing ourselves across the Tiverton Canal and used collapsible canvas boats where, sadly, they got holed and sank. Corps ‘swots’, who took it all too seriously, were regarded with suspicion.

      1. The local grammar school, later the alma mater of Sir Keir, had a CCF, but my bog-standard comprehensive had no such fripperies.

        1. What do you think of this American habit of “Thank you for your service”, I think it is nonsense, we should be thankful for years of food, shelter, fun, frolics, sport, comradeship and a bit of active service. But would I do it all again for the present lot?
          Not on your life.

          1. I agree, I enjoyed my 16 years when we had such a variety of aircraft to work on and so many places to be stationed but I too would not consider it nowadays

          2. Good morning, Spikey

            Where di you acquire your remarkable keyboard skills?

            Did you ever think of music as a full time career?

          3. Got a guitar when I was 14, taught myself to play it, played with John Lennon before he formed The Quarrymen. Had numerous rock groups for the next 15 years. In ’73 I bought a Hammond organ (sold to me by a fast talking salesman) and taught myself to play it, bought a better organ and played in a club in Warrington in the 80s. After moving to Scotland in ’93 I bought an arranger keyboard and since then have bought better keyboards as the technology progressed. So it’s just playing in care homes and special events now. As a guitarist I thought of turning pro but didn’t as it was too insecure (by this time I had a family). My only regret is I never learned to read music – everything is played by ear from memory.

          4. A bit OTT for me.
            I was a peacetime soldier apart from a single NI tour in ’79.

    3. I would not fight for this country. I would make sure Junior didn’t. The Left have polluted it with sewage. They have destroyed evertything that made it great.

      The state is pushing a hard Left socialist agenda that is making everyone poorer and unhappier. It must be stopped. There is nothing to fight for in that arrogant, opportunist, wasteful thoroughly corrupt and stupid system of government or officialdom.

      Our entire system of government, administrative body and political class is utterly dysfunctional. Fight for it? No. Fight against it? Yes.

      1. Totally agree, fight for family and friends, certainly not the state.

    5. It was two years and ended in 1959. I missed it by 16 days – being born in 16 January 1941.

      1. 1959 was when they announced that it would end – this over-literate ten-year-old remembers celebrating the occasion.

    6. In October 1950, in response to the British involvement in the Korean War, the service period was extended to two years.
      In November 1960 the last conscripted men entered service, as call-ups formally ended on 31 December 1960, and the last conscripted servicemen left the armed forces in May 1963.
      I joined in 1961 and we held a farewell ‘parade’ for the last conscript leaving our unit about 1963.

      1. Many of the training sergeants at Chepstow in the late ’60s/early ’70s began as National Servicemen with a fair spattering of those who’d served in WW2.

    7. My father’s older brother was killed aged 20 doing his national service. He would have been 89 in February.

  23. The decline of NHS care will be on every voter’s mind during this election

    I don’t think that I have ever voted in an election while being swayed by the state of the NHS.
    Who would be so daft as to do that?

    1. Ah, the fascist speaks. Forcing people to be vaccinated against their will. Perhaps a ‘final solution’?

      The only misinformation came from the state, as we clearly saw. I hate these people, viscerally. They’re utterly moronic and very dangerous.

      1. 387717+ up ticks,

        Morning W,

        The stoning episode of the Jew lad yesterday is surely, even to the thickest voter,a sign of what we are about to receive, ongoing.

        1. For those not in the know: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67342868

          And yet again, sodding muslim. Whereever they go, they cause trouble and make everyone miserable.

          What’s notable about the BBC article is they manage to desperate avoid that the man didn’t fall. He was hit by a rock thrown by a bunch of muslims. That’s why the BBC should be subscription only. With that deliberately evasive attempt to avoid the truth they expose how partisan and ugly they are.

      2. Read Mr Hitchens in today’s Daily Fail. Sums up the situation very well.

      3. Read Mr Hitchens in today’s Daily Fail. Sums up the situation very well.

    2. What a dickhead he is. Is he not aware of how many people died because of the so misnamed ‘vaccine’. It probably killed more people than small pox.

      1. 387717+ up ticks,

        Morning RE,

        I would say they are ALL well aware, hence the pre election scattering and mutterings of
        “we were only taking orders”.

    3. God I despise that gormless twerp Starmer. I remember the prat Boris Johnson photographed multiple times supposedly receiving the jabs, more times than the boosters available . It was saline solution and pure theatrics.

      The jabs are all dangerous and harms have not been adequately quantified. Instead the pushers claim that they saved millions of lives. Poppycock, we all know the truth. The entire Covid episode was an organised scam involving WEF, WHO, government and big Pharma and its billionaire investors.

      1. 387717+ up ticks,

        Afternoon C,
        One finally has to break and what that one reveals will have a domino effect and calls worldwide for justice to be served.
        Corporate manslaughter at least
        with murder being an option for the peoples to decide.

        Also a fall back charge so none slip through the net of TREASON, as in
        impersonating politico’s in a time of war.

  25. Good morning all.
    After the lovely walk home last night, it’s changed to a rather nasty wet morning.
    Light rain at the moment, but with heavier showers forecast, but a reasonable 8½°C on the Yard Thermometer.

    Feeling more than a bit knackered still so might pop back to bed later.

    1. Morning Bob, rain overnight but a bright start this morning, forecast good

  26. I think military national service would be an utter waste of time and money.

    Unpaid community service, litter picking, minor road repair work, painting over graffiti, tending public spaces etc. etc, every weekend for two years from age 18 to 20 might potentially be a good idea. But with a significant caveat, no benefits will ever be paid to anyone who hasn’t completed 100 8 hour days.

    2. Of course Sos everything those idiots do is either useless or pointless.
      Or both of the above.

    3. Slammers simply wouldn’t do community service etc. They would no doubt find a way of wriggling out of any national service too, claiming Islamophobia: as taking up arms (except to further Islam) is no doubt against their principles wishes.

        1. If only – but it is no doubt their human rights to be fed, accommodated and generally paid for by us. At least that is what would be argued by one of the increasing number of slammer lawyers.

    4. Slammers simply wouldn’t do community service etc. They would no doubt find a way of wriggling out of any national service too, claiming Islamophobia: as taking up arms (except to further Islam) is no doubt against their principles wishes.

  27. A purist’s breakfast

    SIR – If the stated aim of the English Breakfast Society is to “restore the tradition of the English breakfast to its former glory” (Letters, May 19), then it should consider abolishing baked beans and hash browns.

    These two recent usurpers from America do not belong on a traditional plate of bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, fried bread, mushrooms and – in days of yore – kidneys.

    Alan G Barstow
    Onslunda, Skåne County, Sweden

    Well done, Grizz.

      2. I don’t think I could ever again eat that amount of food in one go.
        Scramled eggs on toast for me today.

      3. Agree about beans and hash browns, but we always added fried potatoes to our breakfasts when we were children and I prefer them to fried bread. If you fry the bread beforehand, how can it absorb the grease from the other food on the plate? It can’t!

          1. In a Pennsylvania diner I once ordered a breakfast and was given a choice (on the large menu hanging on the wall) between “French Fries” (chips) at $2 a portion or “Home Fries” at $1.

            Puzzled, I asked the waitress what the hell are “home fries”. She gave an upward glance before telling me that they are previously boiled spuds cut into slices and then fried (“just like y’all do at home!”).

            Home fries it was, then, and I still call them that to this day.

          2. Too much fat on the plate for me…I prefer the bread to soak up the bacon fat from the bacon and eggs. I keep the bacon fat in the pan for cooking something else later.

          3. That fat is the healthiest bit on the plate. The unhealthiest bit is the bread.

          4. Very likely, but I still prefer the bread with the juices from all the food on the plate, not saturated with bacon fat!

        2. Home-cured bacon (like I make) produces a good amount of delicious, nutritious rendered fat when fried. I first fry my eggs in that fat then fry the bread in it. I place the eggs atop the bread on the plate and let the soft yolks spread all over the top. Each mouthful of this ambrosial wonder along with a bit of bacon is simply heaven-on-a-plate. The sausages, tomatoes, black pudding and mushrooms are just a side show to be demolished first , leaving the aforementioned stars to shine later.

      4. Ah, I was just about to say that. Fortunately scrolled down. Black pudding has disappeared from the cooked breakfast fare at work but to be fair to the canteen management, hash browns sell very well therefore they’re just responding to demand.

      5. My Uncle Basil, a surgeon/doctor, used to have a bloater for breakfast every day. He lived to the age of 92.

        He used to serve as the doctor at Norwich prison so I wonder if any of the chaps you caught in the line of duty came across him!

        1. I quite enjoy kippers (they are filleted), but I find unfilleted bloaters quite disgustingly inedible.

          As for your Uncle Basil, I never served in the Norfolk Constabulary, I performed all my service in Derbyshire.

        2. I quite enjoy kippers (they are filleted), but I find unfilleted bloaters quite disgustingly inedible.

          As for your Uncle Basil, I never served in the Norfolk Constabulary, I performed all my service in Derbyshire.

      6. My Uncle Basil, a surgeon/doctor, used to have a bloater for breakfast every day. He lived to the age of 92.

        He used to serve as the doctor at Norwich prison so I wonder if any of the chaps you caught in the line of duty came across him!

  28. Two damp squib opening salvo election pledges today.
    National Service for 18 year olds.
    Votes for 16 year olds.
    My first thoughts when a policy is floated is
    Is it their idea in our national interest?
    Or is it just following an agenda and coming into line with other Western countries as part of our transitioning towards our global great reset.
    Domestic politicians have a way of presenting policies as a national debate as if it is not happening or happened elsewhere in the world.
    Rishis smoking ban and all the positive spin towards euthanasia comes to mind, New Zealand tried the smoking ban policy and then abandoned it, so then why decide to try it here?
    They have euthanasia laws in Canada now where the remit appears to be spreading into dodgy territory, our politicians know this yet they are still trying to bring it in here.
    All we have nowadays is facilitators for supranational organisations and why national politics has become so devoid of choice, all we have is people that appear to keep failing upwards, because none of what they are doing is beneficial to us.

  31. SIR – Professor Lawrence Goldman (Comment, May 21) rightly condemns the hypocritical demand by Rev Dr Michael Banner, Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, that British taxpayers who have never owned a slave should be compelled to pay £200 billion in reparations to people who have never been enslaved.

    There is a further, closely related case that curiously is never raised. Between 1944 and 1947 the British government turned over nearly a million Russians to Stalin, a proportion of whom were murdered at the points of delivery, while the remainder were despatched in cattle trucks to toil and die in Gulag camps north of the Arctic Circle. This manifestly evil policy was conducted with the full knowledge of the British governments of the day. As one of the ministers responsible for implementing the policy, future prime minister Harold Macmillan noted in his diary: “To hand them over to the Russians is condemning them to slavery, torture and probably death.”

    To date, not one of the vociferous demanders that “compensation” should be paid by British taxpayers to the descendants (real or supposed) of victims of the iniquitous transatlantic slave trade has urged payment to these victims of the Yalta Agreement. Yet some of them are still alive.

    The reason for this distinction has never been declared. The only explanation for this double standard that occurs to me is that the Russian victims were white. Should there be another explanation, I would be interested to hear it. Perhaps Rev Dr Banner can enlighten us.

    Nikolai Tolstoy
    Southmoor, Berkshire

    Stalin. The man who seized more European land than Hitler. Yalta was one of this country’s most humiliating moments.

    1. Only Mohammedans challenge communists in the murder stakes. Hitler was an amateur by comparison and the Spanish Inquisition killed a mere ten thousand people.
      Leo Tolstoy was concerned with the welfare of the peasants on his estate, wasn’t he?

    3. A proportion of the people returned to the USSR had assisted the German regime.

      1. As did Stalin himself, who entered into an alliance with it in order to carve up Poland.

  32. Erudite NoTTLers (including all Johnny- and Jenny-Come-Latelys) Please tell me if this is a fact or an urban myth.

    I think I can recall being informed that the term ‘Hunting Pink’ used for the dazzling vermilion jackets traditionally worn by the Unspeakable (in full pursuit of the Uneatable) has nothing to do with colour-blindness nor affectation.

    I was told that it is because they were first manufactured by the bespoke shirt-maker, Thomas Pink of Jermyn Street.

    2. Hey, Beatnik! No mention, Dude that this breakfast in all its glory needs to be eaten from some gurglin’ cracklin’ cauldron in some train yard, hombre.

      1. Way to go, Dean. I do like my mornin’ chow not to be scraped from the charred sides of that gurglin’ cracklin’ cauldron, lest some starvin’ yardlet beats me to it, Dude; (footplate pancakes, straight off the shovel, are another story, though, Bro.)

        1. Hey Beatnik, those yard rats come super-sized, Dude. You might need to crack some heads with that gurglin’ cauldron before parktakin’ your scoff, Man. Hobo Central, ain’t what it sued to be, Bro.

    3. Problems with the Tailor Pink story.

      If there was a tailor Pink (or Pinke or Pinque), what was the street address of his place of business? When was he born, when did he die, where is he buried?
      Why is there almost a century’s gap between the first use of the word “pink” for the colour of a red hunting coat and the first appearance of the tailor Pink story? Why did the tailor Pink story appear in America decades before it appeared in England? And why does the word “pink” appear in lower case (at least in the 19th century) when eponymous words such as “Wellington,” “Blücher,” “Stetson,” “Levi’s” and so on are usually capitalized in English?

    1. Lying has become the septic tank for human beings. But once your in its almost impossible to get out. And everyone is watching.

  34. SIR – Neville Chamberlain discovered to his cost that appeasement favoured only the aggressor. In a Commons debate last Monday, Sir Edward Leigh expressed the view that it’s extremely unlikely that Ukraine will win the war unless it is provided with weapons, not simply to defend itself, but to defeat Russia. You can’t expect to win a war by sticking to Marquess of Queensberry rules.

    If Ukraine is to win, then at some point Nato must come off the fence. Sir Edward stated unequivocally that he would put British troops alongside the Ukrainians. There is little point in providing Western support unless, when push comes to shove, it helps President Zelensky’s overburdened troops to advance and keep advancing, pushing the invaders back whence they came.

    The news that Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, supports US missiles being fired into Russia (report, telegraph.co.uk, May 23) is a major step in the right direction.

    Doug Morrison
    Tenterden, Kent

    Mr Morrison is little better than those people who witness a street brawl and shout “Go on! Hit him!”

  35. Morning all 🙂😊
    Another shade of grey surrounding us.
    More rain to ruin any plans for the family bank holiday later.
    The dismantling of the NHS seems to have been a politically required target for years. It can no longer exist with millions more people using it, as is the case now, it who have never contributed a single penny. But of course take every advantage of its existence.
    I wonder how long it’s been since an mp a lord or a senior civil serpent queued at A&E or had to wait three weeks for a GP appointment.
    A long long time ago. Private care all paid for by their masses of ‘expenses’.
    Dinosuars 🦕 still rule the earth.

      1. https://onevsp.com/watch/XtvCCyxbLr1OetQ

        Annoyingly they hide the back and forward controls so I can’t give you an exact time to get to the relevant content. There’s also a pointless full screen blob that you can’t ignore. Others may have more luck than I.

        Fundamentally the discussion is one we’re all familiar with: the extent to which the Left wing state went to protect the pakistani muslim paedophile rapists from justice and how the entire machine put vast amounts of effort into endorsing, encouraging the rape of children.

    2. The state closes ranks. Plod couldn’t have their incompetence getting out. Every state system from OFCOM to local councils instantly brought every punishment possible, every interference, every lever to ruin her life. Why? Because she exposed how evil they are and the lengths they went to to protect the pakistani muslim paedophile rapists.

      1. 387717+ up ticks,

        Morning B3,
        WHY, the answer to that is
        “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”
        Currently the electorate are, regarding politico’s / parties, no more than shite graders.

    4. I cannot find any online evidence that Sarah Wilson was sent to prison.

  41. I bet they’ll do the national service one, because they can’t wait to recruit our children and grandchildren into the meat grinder for the next bankers’ war.

  42. Yes, Captain Soggy will be off to the United States, where patriotic soundbites are the norm, and members of the US military can travel safely in uniform. (I am aware that he has a safe seat.)

  44. Doug, why are you writing from Tenterden and not the Ukrainian front line?

    Let me guess, it’s fine for young men to be sent to the meat grinder as long it excludes you and yours.

  45. Another two records broken: – Sunday Worship – City Church Cardiff and A Point of View.

    The worst Trinity Service since Hannibal’s elephants cr*pped in the Sistine Chapel. Thirty eight minutes of wailing, grinding and off-key screeching followed by a full ten minutes of some female whinger, a travel writer, complaining about the purposelessness of taking a holiday or visiting somewhere different – because you can’t get away from yourself. If she is married her husband will be nodding his head like a starving chicken with a spilled bag of corn.

    On the bright side – The day can only get better. Good Morning all!

    1. I get criticised for listening to R4. Not entirely without justification.

      1. You should be careful. Folk who listen to Radio 4 are in danger of severe brain damage. The cause of which is entirely due to the desperate need to bang one’s head against a brick wall!

    2. To “Always look on the bright side of life”
      Sometimes we have to switch the lights on 😄😆

    3. We had no organist this morning (the previous one died and the volunteer replacement wasn’t available) so the choir and congregation sang a capella. We managed.

    4. Well done Mrs Bob3.
      Enjoy your day and may you both have many more years together.

    5. Many happy returns may be appropriate considering the menu and the day.. poot poot..

    6. Ruby Murray….When Irish Eyes are Smiling.
      Have a good one.
      We’re 10 years ahead in August.

  47. English Common Law works by following precedents. Over time, it evolves and progresses as each case law adapts to modern circumstances and discards that which is obsolete.

    Maybe civilisation had hoped that the defeat of Hitler set a precedent that was far more benign than that which was getting itself established in the 1930s?

    However, what can be done can also be undone with equal measure. I understood this when I first voted fifty years ago, faced with the ‘Buggins Turn’ when Labour and Conservative each alternated, undoing one another’s policies in turn. Churchill also remarked once that history repeats itself.

    Now, I was not alive in 1938, but my mother was a teenager then and remembers it well, even though she was too young to do much about it. I ask today’s people – how they would nip fascism in the bud before it devastated Europe and blighted civilisation? Is there a better method than that adopted by Churchill?

    We may look back at the old bogeys of history – Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and the Japanese demigod, and think such people could not exist in this enlightened century. Yet, I could also speak of Putin, of Netanyahu or of Xi, and wonder are they, their methods and their attitudes, very much different? We could speak of the uselessness of Pétain, yet is he so much less useless than Joe Biden? When we think of the stormtroopers that upheld the purity of the Reich, how different are they to the self-appointed “martyrs” of Islamic State?

    Putin, Netanyahu, Xi, like criminals through time, do what they do because they can. Without setting off another world war, is there a better way to make sure they can’t?

    Aesop’s fable about the North Wind and the Sun suggests that behind every man is a noble spirit eager to shed its armour and bask in the warmth. A change of heart cannot be ruled out, but it clearly didn’t work with Hitler.

  48. Hard work:
    Wordle 1,072 5/6

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

    1. Four here

      Wordle 1,072 4/6

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

      1. Wordle 1,072 4/6

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

  49. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    Sunak is right, Britain needs national service
    Comments Share 25 May 2024, 10:33pm
    The Tories have announced that, if re-elected, they will introduce national service. And it won’t be the miserable existence imposed on all young men in conscription years past. Instead, the Tories will invite 18-year-olds to compete for selective 12-month spots in areas including cyber security, logistics and civil response. That’s the model Norway has successfully been operating for over three decades. In addition, young people will be asked to volunteer on a monthly basis with the NHS, the fire service or charities looking after elderly and lonely people. Such service is a win-win: it’s beneficial for the young people involved in it, and even more importantly it helps make our country safer and more resilient.

    It’s illusory to assume that our current armed forces, overstretched and plagued by recruitment shortfalls, can do even more.
    Most popular
    Alexander Larman
    The sad decline of Oxford

    In 2019, I wrote a report arguing that the UK could learn from Norway’s competitive national service (which has in recent years been adapted by Sweden, and is also used in a somewhat different form in Denmark). This way, the UK could make military service a desirable proposition by making it highly selective. In Norway, where the armed forces test all 18-year-olds but select only some 17 per cent of them, being chosen for military service is like getting into Oxbridge.

    This kind of hyper-competitive national service doesn’t just ensure that the armed forces get the best possible soldiers (and about one quarter of Norwegian conscripts opt to become professional soldiers). Unlike university admissions, it also allows youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds to shine in the admissions tests, because what matters is exclusively skill and aptitude. Princess Ingrid Alexandra, second in line to the Norwegian throne, is currently doing military service in an engineering battalion in the country’s north. She was assessed like every other candidate, and now shares sleeping quarters with young people from all sorts of backgrounds. The UK, I argued, could adapt the Norwegian model by expanding the national service beyond the armed forces to also include other essential services like cyber defence, fire and rescue, and the NHS. The Tories have adopted this idea (virtually) lock, stock and barrel.

    The fact that the Tories have concluded that so-called ‘ordinary’ people would make a transformative contribution to the country’s security and resilience is, of course, hugely positive. Farewell to the tired binary debate pitting all-professional armed forces against conscription for all able-bodied men. There are different ways of involving the country’s teenagers in a way that benefits both them and the country, and by learning from allies the UK can save great amounts of time and effort.

    Indeed, if the Tories win, the defence secretary and the chief of the defence staff would do well to quickly travel to Norway for a meeting with Defence Minister Bjørn Arild Gram and Chief of Defence General Eirik Kristoffersen. As commander of Norway’s special forces, Kristoffersen launched a pioneering all-female special forces unit – composed entirely of conscripts. Norway made its military service gender-neutral in 2016, thus dropping the odds of being selected from about one third to one sixth. (And yes, men and women compete against one another in the assessment trials.)

    Perhaps regrettably for the Tories, Labour has been working on innovative national defence and resilience concepts for a long time. Shadow defence secretary John Healey, who has been making the most of his time in the post by scrutinising every aspect of our country’s defence, is likely to present equally innovative ideas. Indeed, one might ask why the Tories didn’t present their excellent national service proposal at some point during their 14 years (and counting) in power.

    Either way, what matters is that the UK debate around defence and security is changing fundamentally. With threats of a military and non-military kind growing rapidly, it’s illusory to assume that our current armed forces, overstretched and plagued by recruitment shortfalls, can do even more. We have a whole generation of young people whose minds and skills might be just what we need in – and before – crises. It took Covid and Ukraine for the UK to realise it needed to think differently about crises. But now it’s happening.

    1. Sunak’s great ideas are nails for the Tory coffin. Thinks he’ll get a vote from ‘Disgusted’ of Tunbridge Wells.

    2. Our grandson (who has dual nationality) is applying to do national service in Denmark.
      The basic is 4 months, but if – IF – he is chosen for the Royal guard, it is 9 months.

      1. I knew a French guy who was doing it in Spain and a Jewish boy who had plans to do it in Israel. Both to consolidate their citizenship of those countries.

    1. That’s a bit cruel, Sos.

      Wouldn’t it be better to just cut the twat’s nuts off and make him/it properly ‘transgender’ (I mean trans-sex)?

      1. He appears to have declined that option.
        And I’m sure the nurses would get considerable pleasure from my option.

        1. No transgender ‘woman’ who still possesses a penis and testicles should be allowed in women’s sport or in woman’s spaces such as lavatories, showers and changing rooms..

          Ironically it takes a transwoman with balls to have the necessary metaphorical balls to get rid of his literal ones!

          1. I’m against ANY man making use of women’s facilities, whether castrated or not.

    1. Heartbreaking. My great granddad never returned from the Somme. In the Second World War, his widow lost her youngest son. Shortly afterwards she folded her clothes neatly and drowned herself in the river Irwell. I have to wonder what it was all for.

      1. I remember a book by Margaret Power about her life in domestic service. A young woman in post World War I she mentioned how difficult it was to find a boyfriend because of the shortage of men. Heartbreaking comment.

        1. The same thing happened to my wife’s great aunt Emily….

          Whenever I visit a new town or village along a canal I always find their war memorials to read the names of the fallen. In Abingdon seven Carters and seven Kings are listed. So sad. I mentioned this in an email recently to a Radio 3 presenter, who replied:
          “I try and say names on memorials aloud … good for their names still to be spoken.”

          1. I had to read the list of dead Great War Old Boys at Gresham’s one year. I had great difficulty with the fourth (and last) brother Bryant….

          2. I visited Ely Cathedral recently. There is a services’ chapel. On the walls therein are large boards, that are hinged, and can be read like the pages of a book. On the boards are the names of 55,000 local men who died fighting in the local regiments…..

          3. I visited Ely Cathedral recently. There is a services’ chapel. On the walls therein are large boards, that are hinged, and can be read like the pages of a book. On the boards are the names of 55,000 local men who died fighting in the local regiments…..

        2. When I was at school in the1950s, many mature female teachers were ‘Miss’.
          I didn’t think abut it at the time, but I suspect many were of the generation when there were not enough young men to go round.

        3. I used to drive elderly Quakers to tea at other Quakers’ houses when I was a student. One of the women I drove was in that situation; her fiance had been killed and she was never able to marry.

  52. From the Telegraph

    Nigel Farage slams Tory plans for National Service as ‘a joke’
    Nigel Farage described the Conservative Party’s plans to re-introduce mandatory national service for 18-year-olds as “a joke” and “totally impractical”.

    Asked by Trevor Phillips if he supported the policy on Sky News, Mr Farage, Reform UK’s honorary president, said: “They (the Conservatives) don’t support it either – it’s a joke, isn’t it

    “You get a focus group of half a dozen Reform voters in a room, the chairman says ‘Now, what about national service?’

    “When you’re a weak leader – and Sunak is not a leader in any way at all – you’re a follower, so you follow what the focus groups say, and you say ‘by doing this I can attack the Reform vote’. That’s what it’s all about.

    “Look, it’s totally impractical – the Army has shrunk from 100,000 to 75,000 in 14 years of conservatism and, most interestingly, we have a growing number of young people in this country who do not subscribe to British values, in fact loathe much of what we stand for.”

    Asked by Sir Trevor if he was referring to Muslims, Mr Farage said: “We are.”

    1. The” excretia will hit the rotating cooling device”, when the Snivel Serpents have to commandeer the ex service barracks, that were upgraded to take Doveristas, who will need rehoming

    2. I attended a UKIP AGM many years ago, where one of the proposals was the re-introduction of National Service. The grown-ups in the room, as they say these days, pointed out that the military hated the idea, and the motion was defeated.

      1. It’s good for young people in peacetime, I would have thought. This has nothing to do with being good for people though, it’s all about preparing to send our children to their deaths in the next manufactured war!

        1. ‘It’s good for young people in peacetime‘

          I don’t think so. So many young guys had to go through the ‘Mili’ here in Spain (where I’ve lived most of my life). That’s where amongst other things most guys were introduced to drugs.
          Most parents were relieved when it was finally abolished by the Conservative PP at the insistence of the Catalan right wing president with whom they had formed an alliance.
          It was regarded by so many men who passed through the ranks as a great waste of time.

  53. From the Guardian

    Sunak was accused of hypocrisy over his scheme. In January, the prime minister rebuked the chief of the general staff, Sir Patrick Sanders, following his suggestion the UK might need a citizen army to fight Putin. The prime minister’s spokesman said at the time that Sunak did not agree with his comments and insisted there would be no return to national service, which was abolished in 1960.

    Labour figures also privately accused the Tories of making 18-year-olds fix the problems the government had created, by boosting numbers in the military, helping the NHS and repairing infrastructure.

    1. It would mean we would be stuck with a Labour party in perpetuity.
      If anything the voting age should go back to 21.

    2. The Labour Party has become the political party of; Everything they are I am not, everything I am they are not.

      1. Yep, they’re going to not increase income tax for everyone but going to add more VAT to everything, windfall tax the nasty evil corporates for committing so much sin and increase business taxes all round. Meanwhile this will “grow the economy” apparently.

        Labour never could do hard sums and neither have they ever understood how human beings work.

        1. The more I consider intellectual Socialism the more I see the gnostic religion. It plants seeds of resentment and ingratitude which flowers into unexamined cultish conformity. Expressions such as “Tory Scum” and “I still hate Thatcher”, with the latest being “Free Palestine”. There is nothing left of the practically making things a bit better for economically poorer people. I have been led to believe the recently departed Frank Field was one of the last of that type of Labour politician? If true I don’t know how he stomached it for so long.

          1. Very true. All the Labour people I’ve ever known, some nice, some not so nice, have all been conformists. Ironic bearing in mind they proclaim their Progressivism at every opportunity.

        2. They are also going to pilfer our personal property, our savings and our pensions

          1. Oh yes, they always do. Trouble for them is they aren’t Bliar and Broon who only had to string out the vast reserves they’d inherited. People are going to notice this time.

    3. The Labour Party have become the political party of; Everything they are I am not, everything I am they are not.

    4. You can write the Telegraph’s election article yourself quite accurately I find. It’s after all much the same as all the others that went before.

    5. I wonder what Ogga thinks of Henry Bolton – the former army corporal who used to be the UKIP leader?

      Bolton shared Boris Johnson’s enthusiasm for younger women and he lost his party leadership when he deserted his wife for
      a flashy young woman 30 years his junior.

  55. I’ve just dropped a line to a Life Insurer (which pays me a small annuity) notifying them of my ‘recent’ change of address. I took the opportunity of telling them I was still above ground and breathing.
    I suspect the recipients will say ‘Hear, hear!” when they read the verse on the Christmas Postage Stamp:

    “O hear the angel voices…”

      1. The World
        BY HENRY VAUGHAN
        I saw Eternity the other night,
        Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
        All calm, as it was bright;
        And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
        Driv’n by the spheres
        Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
        And all her train were hurl’d.
        The doting lover in his quaintest strain
        Did there complain;
        Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,
        Wit’s sour delights,
        With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure,
        Yet his dear treasure
        All scatter’d lay, while he his eyes did pour
        Upon a flow’r.

        The darksome statesman hung with weights and woe,
        Like a thick midnight-fog mov’d there so slow,
        He did not stay, nor go;
        Condemning thoughts (like sad eclipses) scowl
        Upon his soul,
        And clouds of crying witnesses without
        Pursued him with one shout.
        Yet digg’d the mole, and lest his ways be found,
        Work’d under ground,
        Where he did clutch his prey; but one did see
        That policy;
        Churches and altars fed him; perjuries
        Were gnats and flies;
        It rain’d about him blood and tears, but he
        Drank them as free.

        The fearful miser on a heap of rust
        Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust
        His own hands with the dust,
        Yet would not place one piece above, but lives
        In fear of thieves;
        Thousands there were as frantic as himself,
        And hugg’d each one his pelf;
        The downright epicure plac’d heav’n in sense,
        And scorn’d pretence,
        While others, slipp’d into a wide excess,
        Said little less;
        The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave,
        Who think them brave;
        And poor despised Truth sate counting by
        Their victory.

        Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
        And sing, and weep, soar’d up into the ring;
        But most would use no wing.
        O fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night
        Before true light,
        To live in grots and caves, and hate the day
        Because it shews the way,
        The way, which from this dead and dark abode
        Leads up to God,
        A way where you might tread the sun, and be
        More bright than he.
        But as I did their madness so discuss
        One whisper’d thus,
        “This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide,
        But for his bride.”

      2. Does consciousness arise from the material world, or is it the other way round? (Asking for a friend.)

  57. We have a family member who is not well; hasn’t been for a few months now.
    On attending the GP’s for the first time he was told that he had “A virus”. So effectively, “Go away and take some paracetamol”.
    Over the following months he has had blood and stool tests; though what the GP asked for the blood test wasn’t carried out in full by the testers.
    The latest is that he has had “An infection”.
    The only actual treatment he has been offered is anti-acid tablets.
    He’s so fed up and worried he has paid £400 for his own tests.
    The NHS is in a mess. Their initial reaction at the GP’s is not to offer treatment, but to defer it, hoping that the patient gets better on their own.
    The deification of this service does my head in.
    It is not a national treasure, it is a bloody shambles.

    1. Morning Sossidge. Everything we have known is disintegrating around us.

      1. Hi Araminta! I think it is more accurate to say ‘dismantled’ because it is obviously done with malicious intent.

          1. Sorry Sossidge, I thought I was addressing Araminta. Some of her phraseology is odd.

    2. The MR and I have made a policy decision to have as little to do with the GP as possible and let nature takeits course.

      1. Same. You’re in a world of confusion the minute you enter the system.

      2. The trouble is when the pain hits and over-the-counter painkillers are not enough.

    3. I suspect it has a lot to do with where you live. I get excellent service from my GP and the surgery and the same applies if I go to St Richards Hospital. Both are in West Sussex. However, because St. Richards is a small hospital it isn’t equipped for the treatment of advanced cancer or 4th stage emphysema. The result is for those ailments I have to go to The Royal Surrey. Inevitably the service along with everything else there is chaotic, confusing and unsatisfactory. But I have to say that the staff at both hospitals are absolutely magnificent. In particular those at the Royal Surrey who are working under the most adverse conditions. Its a wonder they don’t lose it completely.

    4. So sorry to read this, Sossidge. We found similar some years ago, joined a group for Private care, it’s called General Medical – not cheap but have used it quite a few times – hip replacement, prostate cancer….my mum had an aneurysm many years ago, emergency NHS service was excellent at that time, not sure I could say similar today. Good wishes to you and your family member.

    5. Just been looking at Sir Kneelalot’s election promises. Looks like your friend is safe, since he’ll be waving a magic wand. He’s going to open a magic box containing 7,000 new doctors, just like that.

      None of them saying anything remotely useful regrettably.

    6. That is bad. They really don’t care at all.
      I hope test results your family member has paid for don’t show anything untoward.
      You say, “Their initial reaction at the GP’s is not to offer treatment, but to defer it, hoping that the patient gets better on their own.”
      Their seemingly negligent, unprofessional attitude suggests they may also hope many will simply die, thus saving any more effort and costs.

    7. SAme happened with my kidney stones. The infection’s stopped, so no longer bothering the sainted NHS. That it causes me pain is irrelevant.

  58. If Labour brought back national service they would let 18 years olds opt to serve a year with a post code street gang or a northern city grooming gang.
    They would get all the combat rape and pillage training they would every need for a lifetime in progressive Britain

    1. That’s somewhat unfair on Mr Farage and leaves out the ball rollers of the Blair/Brown administrations.

      1. 387717+ up ticks,
        Afternoon AAL

        The farage chap breaking out true colours,also no one is left out of what I consider to be a coalition party, as in, ALL political top rankers inclusive.

        1. Fair enough. I do like him because they do hate him so. He has that going for him.

          1. 387717 + up ticks,

            Evening AAL,
            He betrayed the very peoples that worked to give him a platform, in my book he damaged the decent folk going forward, BIG time.

  61. Mary had a little lamb
    She also had a bear
    I often saw her little lamb
    I never saw her bear.

    1. Mary had a little lamb
      Her father shot it dead.
      Now it goes to school with her,
      between two chunks of bread.

      2. Mary had a little pig
        She couldn’t stop it gruntin’,
        She tied it to the garden fence
        And kicked its little head in.

        1. And my delicate contribution

          Mary had a little sheep
          And with it she would always sleep
          The sheep turned out to be a ram
          Now Mary has a little lamb.

    2. Mary had a little lamb
      She kept it in a bag
      She sold it to a Paki man
      Who wanted it to marry.

      1. Hi Pip. Before I came on I did my Sainsbury order and on Tuesday hope to be enjoying the key lime pie cheesecake😁

        1. Not sure how the Peruvian limes compare with the taste of what you are used to. Let me know.

  63. A brief glimpse of sunshine – but, fear not: there will be heavy rain in an hour…

    The only – ONLY- good thing about all this damned rain: everything is wondrously green.

    Lunch.

  64. It appears yesterdays Spitfire crash was a result of engine failure on take-off and during the forced landing the aircraft flipped. Looking on Googlemap the crash site is more or less in line with the runway. Condolences to the RAF pilots family

      1. Couldn’t rule that out, unlikely to be ignition related as they have twin magnetos, fuel starvation or broken control possibly, I’m sure the AIB will find the cause.
        I doubt if he’d have the height or speed to turn round and get back to the airfield for a smoother and more survivable landing. I’m sure Fiscal will have a better idea

        1. Advice was always to land ahead. Don’t try to turn back to the runway.

    2. Tried an emergency landing with the undercarriage still lowered?
      Not a good idea if he did.

  66. 🎵.. when you’re chewing on life’s gristle.. 🎵

    Silicon Goldman Exxon CIA lining up for a war..
    A Sir Smarmy clean sweep with Lammy in control of the nation’s keys..
    Farage copping out..
    Islamists smelling blood..
    Cultural Marxists moist at the very thought of absolute power..

    https://youtu.be/SJUhlRoBL8M?t=10

    1. I think Nigel has called it right. 2029 is likely to be far more important.

      Since ALOTBSOL is now popular at funerals, I merely use the version which omits the word “shit”.

  68. Just look on the bright side of Kneejerk Fishi. The millions of new National Service men and women WON’T be allowed to smoke.

    1. Compulsory / non compulsory National Service. Throwaway policy in a soundbite. Don’t you just love a GE?

      1. At this point the public are so utterly disgusted with politicians on both sides that there’s no point having one. Those working will just see everything get worse, those not working don’t care.

        If folk just want the idiots to change sides that is far easier to do – the policies won’t change: big state, high tax, Left wingery will continue. The country will continue to decline as the state has mandated.

        I’d genuinely – honestly! love some actual policies that would reverse the direction of travel, that would recover this country from the downward course but neither party is interested in that.

        Yet I think that’s the problem. Politicians think to the end of the week at best end of the month. They’re interested only in getting re-elected to continue their agenda. The problem is, such a short term cannot get anything really done. Recovering this country would take 15-20 years but if government is continually interrupted ever 2 years with a popularity contest it can’t ge anything of long term use finished to see the results. When people can vote to enrich themselves at others’ expense that puts the kibosh on sensible, rational low tax, small state right wing policies. Everyone is chasing the welfare voter.

        1. The the Monster Raving Loonies have some policies worth following.
          My favourite is to combat rising sea levels by throwing sponges into the ocean.

          1. Oooh I misread and thought you had written to throw “spongers” into the ocean. Immigration (and some other) problems solved at a stroke…

          2. Oooh I misread and thought you had written to throw “spongers” into the ocean. Immigration (and some other) problems solved at a stroke…

    2. But Starmer will allow 16-year-olds to vote, even though they can’t smoke.

    3. Free ration of heroine and coke with enough KY Jelly to sustain them through the weekends though.

    4. When I was little it used to irritate me that the hang-em and flog-em people were so opposed to swearing. I get it now but it seemed then that it was fine to kill people as long as you didn’t swear at them.

  69. I should have known better. I turned on the radio for the 1pm headlines on R4 and got what I would have expected in the intro, a few election soundbites – Ratface Reeves and a Tory tosser (possibly Hunt). Nothing unexpected so far … but then … “We have an ageing Victorian infrastructure that cannot cope with flash flooding in urban areas” … “Heat exposure costs £300 million a year and that could rise to £900 million by 2050”. Presenter: “How should the next government cope with EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS? We talk to “. I turned off…

    1. Have you tried banging your head against a wall. It helps relieve the stress from listening, albeit briefly as you blackout…..

      1. The intro ended with “The Met Office has issued a yellow warning for thunderstorms”, FFS.

        Never before glowball warming was ‘eard in England a crack’o’thunder on a summer’s day.

      2. My Dad used to love that advice. Try banging your head against the wall, Susie, it’s ever so good when you leave off.

    2. Probably the same programme:- 2023 the hottest year since volcanos were invented, hotter than a gay boy in the BBC canteen running around without his knickers on, hotter than a mooslim watching the girl’s school first form doing PT – it was that hot.

    1. You mean the Vain Vague Vulgar Viral Vicious Vile Venal Vomit Virago Venomous Vulva Viper Vicar Vennells?

  71. Mass parachute drop over Normandy to mark 80th anniversary of D-Day SAVED after Mail on Sunday exposed how the RAF was being given just ONE PLANE for the event

    Grant Shapps said Airbus A400M transport planes will now take part on June 5.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13459903/normandy-anniversary-d-day-airbus-grant-shapps.html

    The 80th anniversary of the D Day landings and a civil servant decides to cut costs and allow on one plane for the Paras. Grant Schitts thanked the Daily Mail campaign for bringing it to his attention.

    IT’S HIS DEPARTMENT !

    I bet the civil servant that signed it off is a muzzie.

    1. Government ministers are nothing but talking figureheads with little power. The unpatriotic, traitorous, socialist snivel serpents are in charge.

  73. This election’s slogans come down to : “vote for me, the other lot are awful!”, “vote for me because the last lot were awful!”

    They write these manifestos but they’re worthless. None of them offer anything that would right the ship of state. Why? Because campaigning on what needs to be done would make them unelectable.

    That’s the heart of the problem. Too many people have a say for their own personal profit at other people’s expense. Folk could argue that the same applies to wage earners – yes, but it’s *their money*. They deserve to keep it. They’ve earned it in the first place.

    Reeves says she won’t raise income or NI taxes. Notably she doesn’t say she will unfreeze the tax allowances, so that’s simply a tax hike. It’s typical Brownism – we didn’t raise taxes! He wailed… yes, but he kept every other tax high. Duties soared, allowances were kept down. Rates increased. He argued these were ‘not taxes’. It’s just scummy that they trot out these lies. Just admit it, Lefties: you’ll hike every tax going, protect your trougher chums, pay the welfare classes ever more and make working less worthwhile. Labour would do the same, just even more.

    1. When wondering what to say about Sunak was the shadow chancellor inspired by her grandfather, Jim, who said: “He’ll have to Go!”

    2. …”pay the welfare classes ever more and make working less worthwhile.”

      Don’t forget, Liebour will increase the rate at which the parasite class grows by importing even more economic migrants (both legal and illegal) than the Tories.

  74. I reckon Sunak will wait until after the election to resign, claim the leaving job MPs cash grab and pootle off to yankeeland with the relocation allowance.

    1. Will he resign after the election as quickly as Cameron did after the referendum?

      And will he be recalled and put in the House of Lords in 8 years time so he can become foreign secretary?

      1. He has not, and has never had, any interest in this country except for what he can get out of it. He is one of the opportunistic foreigners (he is NOT English, only British) who will be here as long as it suits them, take what they can, and then skedaddle. He is skedaddling now, with his green card and his home in California all sorted.

  76. Afternoon all

    It seems that the good Lord has only just seen fit to turn the tap off

  77. I found this incident yesterday, captured by the ever decent Mr Tousi, a particularly stark example of anti-Semitism. There’s something different about the usual suspects marching, it gives the whole effort a slightly removed and abstract quality, the virtue signalling is not so concrete. What’s new here is that they are stood still gathered at the other side of the road shouting at Jews. Did any of them have a moment of insight into what they have become?

    On a point of sinister detail notice the agent provocateurs stood on the Israeli supporting side with a couple of self appointed “legal observers” whose faces are covered with covid masks. This is an attempt at creating an incident for the activist “observers” to capture and use as propaganda. Mad-Left activist lawfare. The Met just surround and protect them. They are not citizens going about ther business, they are there intimidating looking for trouble. Separately I also noticed a grey haired lady, presumably Jewish, gets pushed back by the police but the provocateur Pro-Palestine young men don’t get a finger laid on them.
    https://www.youtube.com/live/2-MD_T-ynK4?si=yN3GQB1DLeRs077y

    1. I’ve no answers, but it seems indicative of the problem this country has. Why in the name of trousers is muslim so protected? They’re responsible for all terrorism, nigh all rape and paedophlila in the last two decades. Most are entirely welfare dependent and parasitic.

  78. I’m with the pilot. There are some BTL comments on Press Reader along the lines of “surely people can not eat peanuts for a few hours”. But it’s not about that, is it? It’s the control over others that this family is trying to exert over everyone else. If my daughter was so allergic to peanuts that she could die just breathing, I certainly wouldn’t be getting on a plane and demanding everyone else does what I want.

    “A 12-YEAR-OLD girl was thrown off a flight at Gatwick after the captain refused to ask passengers not to eat nuts for her safety, her family claim.
    Nick Sollom, 48, said his family was ejected from a SunExpress flight to Turkey on Tuesday after asking the crew to take his daughter Rosie’s peanut allergy into consideration.
    He said the family is now out of pocket by almost £5,000 from having to make last-minute bookings with another airline and rearranging their accommodation. He added: “It’s unbelievable that in 2024 this can happen.”
    Mr Sollom said problems began when he booked the flight, and could not find any way of notifying the airline about the allergy, which is potentially fatal.
    And at the airport, he said, the crew “didn’t really care” when he requested an announcement was made to ask other passengers not to eat nuts.
    “They just said the captain has refused to do this. And he will not make any sort of announcement,” Mr Sollom said.
    He added that when they tried to inform other passengers themselves, the captain ordered them from the plane, and refused to come out from the cockpit to discuss the situation.
    A SunExpress spokesman said: “We refrain from making these kinds of announcements as, like many other airlines, we cannot guarantee an allergen-free environment on our flights, nor prevent other passengers from bringing food items containing allergens on board.
    “Due to the insistent behaviour of the passenger to others on board that they should not consume nuts, the captain decided it would be safest if the family did not travel on our flight.””

    2. I’m with the pilot too. I was once given a packet of peanuts with my drink on a flight and a few minutes later the stewardess came to take it away because there was someone on the flight with a nut allergy. I asked where they were sitting and it was many rows away, so I asked what difference it would make. I was told that “nut dust” could spread through the plane!! If that is the case, then nuts on flights should be banned altogether but it is clearly nonsense.

      1. I am allergic to some seafood so ban seafood from meals.
        While they are at it, a recovering alcoholic might be overwhelmed by proximity to booze so ban alcohol on flights as well.

        1. I am allergic to people. So I always travel in an empty aircraft. Flying it myself.

        2. I’m allergic to oysters, not lethally so but pretty unpleasant nonetheless. I simply avoid any mixed sea-food dishes when I am out. It isn’t rocket science.

    3. I’m not sure I believe that other people eating nuts would kill her. It smacks of the Covid nonsense where people believed that there were asymptomatic folk who could kill by breathing on them. The toxin would have to be in her body, not someone else’s. They’re claiming that the smell could kill? I don’t buy it. Nuts don’t emit fumes till they’ve been digested and farts don’t kill either.

      1. We had a girl with a nut allergy on one of our courses. She had to carry an epi-pen with her always but she did not request that any restrictions should be imposed on anyone else eating nuts if they wanted to do so.

        1. Years ago, we took our youngest granddaughter and a chum to a Chinese restaurant.
          Because friend had a peanut allergy, we did make some inquiries and were assured that peanut oil was not used.
          However, the friend was a sensible lass who took non-dramatic precautions and always carried an Epi-pen.

      2. I searched for the likelihood of flatulence causing a fatality and in an enclosed space like an aircraft the fart level could be. unsurvivable. It would therefore be sensible for all passenger jet captains to restrict the number of tins of baked beans carried on their UK outgoing flights. 💨

        https://www.quora.com/How-many-farts-can-kill-a-man

      3. If you touched something with particles of peanut on your fingers, and the allergic person then touched it after you, could they pick up enough to trigger an allergy?

        It isn’t reasonable to demand that everyone else gives up eating nuts – but that’s been the case in schools for years now, so I guess they take this entitled attitude out into the world with them.

        2. According to the family of the child above (in reply to Sue), another person merely having peanut in the digestive tract could be enough to trigger a severe reaction, with no need for peanut residue to even be on the fingers.

          1. I would be interested to know how many times they have had to use the EpiPen or emergency services.
            We have friends whose child was severely allergic to peanuts and many other things. When they stayed with us they travelled in their own car never planes. Their first trip was to do a dry run to the local A&E. I believe they carried several EpiPens when travelling and had had to use them regularly over the years.
            The child has been undertaking some treatments to allow them to eat peanuts and whilst it has taken a long time it appears to be working.

            The child can now self administer and still carries a pen all the time.

          2. Interesting thought. I have no idea about how many emergencies have happened.

          3. Helicopter parenting…ooh my child has been diagnosed with a nut allergy therefore let there be no nuts. They are killing their own children by not allowing minimum exposure to gain immunity.

          4. There is little doubt that early exposure to things decreases the risks, but I have a sneaking and racist suspicion that a lot of it is down to the huge increase in mixed race marriages. Genetic difference can combine in many ways not always for the best.

          6. And to even discuss such a thing is considered to be racist. Marrying first cousins and uncles is fine. Yeah right.

          7. It’s a great pity that genuine research can’t be undertaken because the researchers would be branded eugenicists or Mengele’s.

          8. But they are like Mengele. No amount of money is too much for conjoined or even worse spider children.

          9. And that is what responsible parents do, whose children have genuine life-threatening allergies.

          10. Then the allergy family shouldn’t be flying at all. There are many people who eat curry which contains nuts. Are all of those people not to eat anything that may contain nuts for three days before flying to accommodate one person? What about the baggage handlers !

          11. I quite agree. Just like lockdown to protect granny during 2020. Only the very vulnerable should hide away.

          12. Well that is crazy because are they going to ban people from eating peanuts for three days before they board a plane? If you’re that ill, perhaps best not fly. We should be looking into why peanut allergies suddenly became so common.

          13. If those people had their way, yes! And they’d demand proof. Entitled much.

          14. I was told the root of the problem was peanut oil used in cheap baby oils.
            I have no idea if this is correct, but all these allergies and intolerances were not part of life – at school or elsewhere – in my youth.
            And neither do I remember contemporaries keeling over for no good reason.

      4. Many years ago, a 4 year old child with a severe nut allergy was due to start at a local school. The allergy was allegedly so severe that she would go into anaphylactic shock if she merely held hands with another child who had recently eaten something containing peanuts. All nuts were then banned in school, but I wonder how many children in her class had, for example, peanut butter at breakfast, something out of the school’s control.
        Did that family avoid all pubs, restaurants and other places where peanuts could be present, or with customers who may have eaten nuts?

        1. Did the child actually have severe anxiety attacks. The mind is deadlier than the peanut.

          1. She was only 4, it was the parents driving the demands to the school. She would be in her 20s now.

      3. Old and corny feeble joke:

        As the brassiere said to the Topper: “You go on ahead; I’ll give these two a lift.”

        1. There was a large House of Fraser department store in Newcastle called Binns! (You can see this rushing towards you!) A large bosomed young lady was bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t find a decent bra, and her friend said “Have ye tried Binns, pet?” “Aye aa have, but they rattle!”

          1. That’s like the man who went into Timothy White’s (remember them?) and asked for a bedpan.
            ‘We dont sell them anymore’ replied the shop assistant ‘Have you tried Boots?’
            ‘Yes I have but it keeps coming out of the lace-holes!’

          3. Big-chested ladies should get their bust bodices from Mothercare!

            Makes me think of Mrs Tiverton, Joyce Grenfell’s dancing partner.

            So gay the band, so giddy the sight, full evening dress is a must.
            But the zest goes out of a beautiful waltz
            When you dance it bust to bust.

            What an incredibly lovely and talented woman Joyce Grenfell was. This song is absolutely marvellous.

            https://www.google.com/search?q=Joyce+Grenfell+Old+Time+Dancing+lyrics&oq=Joyce+Grenfell+Old+Time+Dancing+lyrics&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTE4MzUwajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:cca829af,vid:clOdyzP9fcw,st:0

          7. Ditto Carlisle, Sue. Sadly, HoF, Debenhams and Bulloughs department stores are no more. Still, one can buy Chinese crap from Amazon instead, so that’s alright then…

    2. Why are thecivil servants who handed out the money given a free ride? Why is no one saying ‘why didn’t you check?’

  80. Yet again one of my BTL posts has been removed by the DT under an article about the punishment of private schools. (Was slags the trigger word?)

    Everyone slags off Diane Abbott but at least she had the courage to place her own child’s education and welfare ahead of her political party’s dogma. She knew full well that she would be abused and held in contempt by politicians of all parties.

    Compare this with Blair who said that as a Christian he disapproved of abortion but would vote according to the Labour Party’s line.

    Abbott put her child ahead of political dogma; Blair did not put his faith ahead of his party’s dogma. Ergo in my opinion Dianne Abbott is a far better person that Tony Blair and less of a hypocrite.

    1. It didn’t do him any good though did it…Drugs, mental issues, chasing her around the house with scissors.

      1. He is certainly a most unpleasant young man but however unpleasant your children are you try to do what you hope will be the best for them.

        A friend of ours whom we met on our sailing adventures around the Med was a marriage counsellor. She said that a parent’s love of his or her child is the most unselfish of loves.

        1. ‘a parent’s love of his or her child is the most unselfish of loves’.

          It was only much later that i found my mother had lied to me about my college grant. I went to catering college at 17 and she told me i didn’t qualify for a grant as she and my father had earned too much money the year before. (Him erecting fences and her working in a factory).
          It turned out that i had been awarded a grant and she pocketed it.
          They continued to give me what was essentially pocket money. Bus fare and lunch money.
          I also found that two of my employers that followed on from this course took money out of my wages for NI and other shit and didn’t pay it. One of those employers was a family member…so forgive me if i am somewhat dubious about the love of family ties.
          BTW… When in my first job i cycled 8 miles to wait tables i stayed at my sisters Navy accom. Then cyclyed 3 miles more for the job. She charged me rent.

          1. Parental betrayal must be one of the cruellest betrayals to have to bear.

          2. My mother lied to me about having the family dog put down (I looked after him) – the vet’s just keeping him in for a few days. She also stole coins from my drawer and threw away items I had put on one side to keep safe while I was away at university. No wonder I didn’t want to go back.

          5. Families can be dreadful – at least we can choose our friends. My father and his last wife were abominable to both me and my brother (I didn’t realise how much my bro. had been hurt until our more recent conversations). My father was ruled by his c*ck and a narcissist to boot. Mother had no idea of what having children entailed and, having adopted us, fitted us in among her social engagements.

            I am only glad that more families actually have some actual bonds…

          6. Phil: that is appalling.
            I just cannot imagine treating my sons like that.
            And I’m not exactly the maternal type.

          7. There is worse but i am over it now. I am the youngest of six. My two elder sisters basically saw to my needs when i was a child. At least my mother went out to work. When my elder sister left home i thought my mother had left. When my next sister went to secondary school i had to fend for myself. An image that won’t go away was an elder brother glugging the last of the milk and me asking what was i going to have with my cereal?. He smirked at me.
            Besides mental and sometimes physical abuse i can be happy about i am the only one of the children who hasn’t been divorced. Them in some cases more than once. Plus a spattering of prison time !
            I think the reason it has come bubbling up is one of my sisters is coming to the August party.

    2. Both cases are hypocrisy – Abbott telling people not to privately educate their children (official Labour party line) while doing the opposite. Do as I say, not as I do.

      Blair not following his conscience (I doubt if he has one) and ignoring Christian teaching for political expediency.

      1. Of course hypocrisy by both of them. But not all those in politics would put their child ahead of their career particularly when they knew that it would ruin their chance of future advancement and expose them to contempt, scorn and mockery.

        I found that Cameron taking his children out of private schools was far worse. If the Conservative Party cannot believe in private education and small enterprises like private schools then what can it believe in?

        1. The proper thing for both to have done would have been to resign from their posts and retire from politics.

          1. All three – Abbott, Blair and Cameron

            In terms of damage done to the country Blair is well out in front, Cameron is second and Abbott is third.

      2. I remember Blair just being very proud. What of, I can’t imagine.

        I met a gentleman once, who had been invited to No. 10 while the Blairs were in residence. Apparently Mrs. Blair would point to pieces of furniture, declaring how much they had cost (or were worth). “She was rather odd” was his comment.

        1. Did you ever see the Film The Ghost Writer?
          Worth a watch it doesn’t actually admit it was about him, but two and two often adds up to Four.
          Around twelve years ago we arrived at our holiday destination in Tuscany.
          HPB Stigliano, the receptionist told us the day before the Blair’s had arrived and demanded to be accommodated.
          But were turned away as it’s a private members only organisation. Not happy they had to leave.
          It was assumed they had been staying with Burlusconi and had walked out for a unknown reason.
          Not difficult to make an assumption.

          1. Ghost Writer – I preferred the book, but either way the ending was very satisfactory!

  82. I just received an email from Experian telling me that, “your email address is being sold online, your identity is being stolen, log in to your account now and we’ll tell you what to do”! So I logged in and was told, “you’re at low risk of fraud, there isn’t anything you need to do now”. My heart rate has slowed down again. I guess they found a mailing list. Are they trying to wind me up?

      1. It does appear to actually be Experian. The BBC signed us up when its payroll services were hacked. If I cancelled the account, they still have my name, address and phone number. I entered the correct password for my account so it would have to be Experian themselves who’ve been hacked.

        1. Did you click on a link in the email to enter the ‘Experian’ site, or did you access it independently?

          2. It could have been a phishing email. If so, the scammers now have your password. Safest thing to do is change it.

        2. I would run a virus scan at a minimum.

          If it was a scam you could have put in any password you wished and it would have been accepted.

    2. “I guess they found a mailing list. Are they trying to wind me up?”

      Send me £500 and I’ll tell you.

  84. Done. I just logged in via the address Yahoo found and changed my password with the email code that generated.

    1. SUE !!! Don’t click on links in emails even internal business ones without checking.

    2. It probably was a genuine email, but the safest thing to do is to err on the side of caution.

      1. Download and run the free version of Malware Bytes, Sue, just to be on the safe side

      2. I think it was. When I logged in to their page via Safari/Yahoo with the new password, the alert was there. It’s just that the email used hysterical language and when I looked at my account, they’d just seen my email address being shared online and played down the risk.

  85. Wandering back through San Telmo market on a grey and wintry day in Buenos Aires, belly full of the most delicious empanada in the world (morcilla, the local equivalent of black pudding, and pear, in deep-fried pastry dusted with paprika). My treat to myself for now helping a rather ineffective https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0783ab42de482ff4baff5d080a8a593f7c46220f6ad222fb317136ac857cb279.jpg friend. (I *shall not* get irritated!)

    Sending good vibes to you all!

    1. Is the RNLI still largely staffed by volunteers? Bet the volunteers aren’t slammers – but their community and their friends should tell them what they think of them when they taxi in gimmigrants. I wonder if that happens?

  87. I hate to mention this but the bbc are televising a London road cycling race for the elite ladies and enthusiastic amateurs. And it’s rather hediously light skinned.
    Perhaps all other cycling ladies of diversity are out in the English countryside today.
    Just a thought.
    And all wearing shorts.

  88. Placement with the savages’ taxi service RNLI is one of the options suggested by Fishy in his National Service plan. Given how brainwashed the youngsters are, they would probably think ‘helping these unfortunates fleeing war’ would be a great idea.

    1. It would be. More of his, er, ilk in…

      Edit: not that he cares – he has milked this country for what he can and is moving to California anyway.

  89. Allowing men who pretend to be women access to women’s spaces is utter madness, and poses real dangers to women patients.
    Maybe nurses having to share changing rooms with wannabe women will open their eyes to the dangers female patients experience in having to share wards with these degenerates..
    There should be separate facilities attached to mens’ wards for these things.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13459927/NHS-chiefs-legal-action-female-nurses-changing-room-transgender.html

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12398761/Row-patients-temporarily-identify-female-share-single-sex-NHS-spaces-Health-Secretary-pressure-change-shocking-guidance-allows-presenting-transwomen-womens-wards-without-questions.html

    1. Women, you have to stand up for yourselves. Only then will this absolute nonsense be defeated. Enough of this ‘be kind to each other’ rubbish. Time to get tough.

        1. Yes, witness poor Posie Parker (Kellie- Jay Keane) and what she has been through, especially in Oz, NZ, the US and Canada. Incredible.

  90. It’s cold out there! I thought I’d go outside and get busy with something but it’s really quite unpleasant. It rained earlier on and it feels much colder now. We were lucky to have a good day yesterday.

  91. And, after grumbling away in the distance, the thunder has finally arrived here with a MASSIVE downpour of rain and hail!

    1. Short and sharp here. Lots of thunder and lightning, some heavy rain, all over withing a very short time. But the air smells fresher.

  92. If they were in genuine danger back where they belong, they would be grateful for what they get here for nothing. Did they have a large home where they came from? Surely overcrowded accommodation is better than the supposed dangers of having stayed in their own country.
    They have been in the UK since 2022. Chances are that at least one other child was conceived here as well. Another baby is due – if they were already so overcrowded, why didn’t they stop breeding?
    With so many children, I dread to think how much of our taxes are given to this very large, ungrateful family – a free home, free interpreters, free education for the children, free healthcare, free everything.
    As for the mould, that is likely caused by their way of living. With so many inhabitants, windows should be permanently open for ventilation, even when not washing.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13455179/Were-stuck-mouldy-flat-11-children-one-toilet-council-help-us.html

    1. Many Pakistani have families with large houses in their home not at war country. They come here to feed off us. Once the parasite reaches critical condition the UK will die and they will migrate like locusts somewhere else….with their begging hands out.

      1. This particular family is Afghan I think – but 11 children and another imminent!!

        2. Still all muslim. The ones that helped British forces there have trouble getting in. Same with the Gurkas.

          The UK seems to have a deathwish.

          1. He’s been here a few years apparently. The family not so long. He works as a delivery driver. She could spend some time cleaning off the mould.

          2. This is the thing. Get legal right to stay. Work in an industry that no indigenous want to do. Then bring over the extended family. Most qualifying for benefits.

            I don’t even qualify for any benefits and i have lived here all my life.
            Also. If you are a Christian in a war zone like Syria you don’t stand a chance.

            You worked in an industry where you knew they were chancers but could do nothing. It is worse now with those same people running those offices.

          3. I think you’ll find that is the landlord’s responsibility i.e. yours and mine, as tax and council tax payers. Perish the thought that tenants should open a window.

          4. He’s been here a few years apparently. The family not so long. He works as a delivery driver. She could spend some time cleaning off the mould.

          5. Not the UK – just the thieves and chancers that have infiltrated all our institutions

          7. They have encouraged it. They are richly rewarded on a personal level for so doing. If anyone still thinks that this is a Democracy in anything but name they are in a hypnotic trance. Sunak & co are deliberately throwing this election in plain sight, having wrecked our country possibly forever. There is no longer any pretence at all

    2. To these people, ‘The streets of London are paved with gold’. They have been led to believe that they will be given a house and benefits and never have to work again. And they are right.

      1. If all the freebies, and the almost guaranteed right to remain (along with every fake sob story being believed), were ended, the flood would vanish.

    3. His other two wives are on the way over as well, bringing another gaggle of kids in tow.

  93. A dreaded Double Bogey Six!

    Wordle 1,072 6/6
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
    🟨⬜⬜🟩🟩
    ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Only a little bit better

      Wordle 1,072 5/6

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

    2. Close call. I had a good 2nd guess.

      Wordle 1,072 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
      🟨🟩🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. Another five for me.

      Wordle 1,072 5/6

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

  94. Just had several flashes of lightning and big rumbles of thunder to accompany the latest heavy downpour. It smells much fresher already.
    I shall shut down now – never sure how safe it is to be on the laptop during a thunderstorm. Until recent years, I always pulled the TV arial out of its socket too.
    As the youngsters say, ‘laters.’

    1. While I fear the Muslim menace as much as anyone, I’m not at all comfortable about the call to ban Islam or anything else. We either support freedom or we don’t.
      What we do need to do is to jail or deport those calling for Jihad (aka terrorism), stop funding Muslim schools and assert the primacy of Christianity and our own culture.

      1. Cults should be banned or heavily restricted. We do not want citizens who are being told that it’s Ok to hate Jews, not to be friends with Christians and that they’re allowed to kill anyone who leaves their cult.

        1. The laws already exist to deal with that, but the real problem, the woke globalist establishment, refuses to apply them to Muslims.

          2. It’s central text, the Koran, certainly would be, given the large amount o incitement to murder it contains.

          1. Even if he wasn’t under the control of the NWO/Soros/Gates etc, he’s too stupid to work out what a load of nonsense the climate scam is.

          2. Thank you. I thought it might refer to him just couldn’t work out what the JW stood for.

        1. Not overly bothered to be honest, though I do think all halal food should be labelled as such, and folk educated to understand what this means.

        2. The Danes have banned both Halal and Kosher slaughter.
          BOTH are totally unnecessary in a world with refrigeration and freezing facilities.
          (Though Nut Zero will stop that decadent western practice.)
          The Jarls Vikings have the right idea.

      4. Trouble is, our democratic system will be used by Muslims to gain power until they become the majority. Then they will use the system to abolish democracy cf. Germany 1933 et al.

      5. I am not in favour of banning things, either, but there are some things which ought to be eradicated.

        1. Just done some investigation. It appears that he stood as an Independent in the the local government election in May 2024. Is he standing as an Independent in the General Election?

          1. All his fellow muzzies will be instructed by their mosques to vote for him. The men will, of course, fill in the postal voting form for their wives.

    1. Why does enunciating an obvious truth “spark fury” these days? What is the matter with the press and its army of Trilbys?

      1. When anyone ‘sparks fury’, you can be sure they are speaking up for Britain, the British people and British values.

    2. So they can whinge about Farage, but they can’t find a muslim to say they’re a fan of beer, bacon sandwiches and free european women not being molested?

    4. Many? Their book gives them values which are entirely inimical to Western culture.

    1. Our Legion contingent do better n Remembrance Day and that is always after warmth giving libations.

    3. The RSM must have been jumping up & down on his hat and chewing his pace stick at that effort.

  100. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    Young people are right to resent national service
    Comments Share 26 May 2024, 1:59pm
    With his rain-drenched election announcement and first campaign trip to the Titanic quarter of Belfast, it has almost seemed like Rishi Sunak is channelling the spirit of Dad’s Army with his election campaign so far.

    If we want young people to step up and take responsibility, we must also make sure that Britain is a country in which they can prosper and put down roots
    Now it seems the Prime Minister wants to take that literally. Last night, the Conservatives announced that if elected they will seek to reintroduce national service for 18-year-olds. Young people will either be able to apply for the armed forces or give up one weekend a month to work for the fire service, NHS or other public services.

    The words ‘national service’ may evoke nostalgia about the ‘good old days’ for some. When it was last in place, from 1947 until 1960, we are told it gave young people discipline, and helped to bring the country together by forcing people of different backgrounds to meet and mix.

    But in reality these new plans would only serve to build resentment amongst a generation of younger people who feel that they have been consistently let down by their government. Unlike the disciplined, regimented military obligation of the 1950s, this modern iteration of national service would look more like a glorified National Citizen Service, with conscripts deployed to support municipal busywork or plug gaps in our ailing social care system.

    In any case, young Britons like me have already done our fair share of national service. For two gruelling years, we sacrificed the best years of our lives to protect the elderly from Covid, dutifully abiding by each arbitrary restriction on our freedoms. Parties were cancelled, concerts were postponed, and evenings were spent alone, all in the name of national solidarity. Like most of my peers, my memories of university life will forever be tarnished by lockdowns, social distancing, and Zoom lectures.

    Even now Covid is over we still face sky-high house prices, crippling student debt, and a historically high tax burden, which squeezes working-age people in order to fund the ever-increasing cost of social care and the state pension. For our troubles, we are rewarded with endless columns from ageing commentators about how we are all lazy, petulant snowflakes. Our institutions preach about the inherent sinfulness of Britain and its past, while our politicians fail to rescue us from our impending national decline.

    As a country, we have given young people little to be proud of. Is it any wonder that my generation isn’t racing down to the recruitment centre?

    The idea that our country’s decline in social cohesion can be fixed by forcing young people into a year of meaningless busywork is ludicrous. For decades, the British state has proven exceptionally ineffectual at building social cohesion, with a storied legacy of cringeworthy ‘hug a hoodie’ style initiatives. This policy is just the latest madcap idea from a political class which is increasingly out of touch.

    As Edmund Burke understood so well, society is predicated upon an intergenerational contract, which balances rights and responsibilities at different life stages. If we want young people to step up and take responsibility, we must also make sure that Britain is a country in which they can prosper and put down roots. Give working-age people homeownership, support to start a family, and a safe, clean public realm, and you’ll also be giving them something to fight for.

    It is these conditions, not Whitehall bureaucracy, which creates the kind of vibrant civil society that has social cohesion and intergenerational harmony. Working-age people are far less likely to be resentful of granny if they are able to properly enjoy the fruits of their labour. Instead of trying to instil patriotism through sharp-tongued sergeant majors, the Conservatives should be trying to turn Britain into a country that young people can genuinely be proud of.

    Of course, we shouldn’t ignore the cynical electoral politics in all of this. The idea of instating some form of national service is popular, particularly amongst the older, Reform-leaning voters that Sunak is desperately attempting to court. Still, as early polls show that the Conservative party is less popular amongst voters under-40 than the Greens, it’s high time that it showed some love to the younger voters who have abandoned the party in droves. Voters are for life, not just for the general election, and there’s no time like the present to start rebuilding the Conservative coalition around the kind of young, ambitious professionals who once propelled Thatcher into government.

    Instead of subjecting Britain’s young to state-sanctioned litter-picking and lectures on ‘British Values’ from moustachioed drill sergeants, Sunak should be working to address our unsustainable intergenerational imbalance. As long as the British state continues to punish young people in this country, young people will continue to be apathetic towards the British state – and deservedly so.

    1. My brother did National Service. I don’t think he saw anyone of a different culture (apart, perhaps, from a short operational visit to France) during the entire two years. Mind you, Camberley wasn’t terribly diverse.

      1. Clearly, you’ve not been to Camberley for a while. Admittedly, it isn’t Aldershot, though it’s nearby. While living in leafy Surrey, Aldershot is nearby, and offers rather more shopping options within walking distance of the rail station than Guildford does.

        Three days a week, there’s a bus service at the end of my road. It’s populated exclusively by geriatrics, and feels like a charabanc trip for the initiated. But the final journey is from Aldershot, around 1630 hrs. So I’ve worked out that I can shop at Morrisons, then call in to Wetherspoons at the Queen Hotel, then hop on to the final bus. What’s not to like?

        But – thanks to Joanna Lumley – Aldershot and the surrounding areas are increasingly populated by Nepalese. They’re lovely people, but they appear to be fish out of water. I honestly think that most of then would be happier at home.

        1. My brother would have been there in the ’60s. I doubt very much it was “enriched” as few parts of the country were at that time.

      2. Depending on how this comes to work and I’m sure that eventually it would be a mixture of older recruits in their twenties and teenagers together I see it as a great opportunity for religious and political radicalization

  101. I would say that is Irrelevant. He will do the Muslim thing without regard to whichever party ticket he uses to get elected.

    1. Interesting to hear such an evaluation. This is consistent with my recent knowledge of Hoey being the mad-Left disliking her intensely.

    1. The “boy” will “not be named for legal reasons”. No photograph will be published.

      It may be years before we know who it is….

  104. ‘Young people will either be able to apply for the armed forces or give up one weekend a month to work for the fire service, NHS or other public services.’
    that sounds remarkably like Wednesday afternoons at my brother’s school. Those who, for whatever reason, didn’t want to join the CCF activities volunteered at the local fire station or similar. What they actually did, I have no idea.
    Many teenagers already volunteer, either through the DoE Award or some ‘challenge’ that has been started in recent years. Not sure what the latter is called or any details, but it is something older teenagers at the local grammar school are encouraged to work on.

    1. School kids in Ontario need to do volunteer service before graduating, I don’t think that our big city kids are any better than yours.

      It would have been a good idea to bring this in a year or so before calling the election. If they had rounded up all of the feral youth and locked them away in a boot camp for a year, the Tories (ino to quote Bill) would have been able to stand of their record of reducing crime,

  105. Spectator comments thread

    M
    Mandevillej
    3 hours ago edited
    Who cares what the young resent? They have done nothing and contributed nothing but expect decades of education and health at the taxpayers’ expense – as long as this too isn’t too painful or demanding.

    There is no automatic right to cheap housing or a pleasant life: you have to earn it, and that means competing against everyone else, including the migrants the young are busy protesting in favour of.

    The message does need to go out that a comfortable life in a well-ordered society involves contribution as well as taking out. That message strongly made to migrants would probably frighten many off (as it used to in Europe).

    That said, I will not allow my son to be conscripted for a society which hates him for his sex, skin-colour and religion.
    −
    L
    Lord Snooty
    3 hours ago
    I enjoyed this article. It gave me a good chuckle on a rainy bank holiday afternoon.
    −
    A
    Arch Stanton
    3 hours ago
    Sam Bidwell, a former student who now “works” as a “Parliamentary Researcher” and who, otherwise, whines incessantly for a living, on behalf of a rather large group of graduates, whose whining entitlement embarrasses those of their generation who have had the wherewithal to work for a living and be grateful for the opportunities afforded them.
    −
    J
    Jonathan Girling
    3 hours ago
    The richest, safest and best connected generation ever seem consistently inclined to victimhood at each opportunity. Take initiative, show responsibility, debate, argue for better. Stand up like so many generations prior and show your worth. It’s a choice.
    −
    A
    Arch Stanton
    3 hours ago
    Yet another wordy exercise in whining self pity, self obsession and entitlement and supreme example of the lazy, petulant snowflakery, which do indeed characterise the “yoof of today”.

    My goodness, the sheer deprivation of “zoom lectures” must have been terribly hard to bear….
    −
    P
    Piper Arch Stanton
    3 hours ago
    For the university experience of the young (once in a lifetime, extortionately expensive) to be ruined by the Covidiots running the country is a great shame, and I feel for the young who had to endure this claptrap.
    −
    A
    Arch Stanton Piper
    2 hours ago
    Oh dear, the terrible tragedy of the loss of that “university experience”, when others were merely losing their jobs, their businesses, their livelihoods and their lives. One can only imagine the trauma suffered by those poor students.
    −
    E
    Engelbert Clangworthy Arch Stanton
    an hour ago
    You’re making it up now. Most salaried non-essential workers had the life of riley during furlough. Very few actually lost their shirts then. But they will now, when their fixed rate mortgages expire, with all the covid magic money driving up interest rates.
    −
    A
    Arch Stanton Engelbert Clangworthy
    22 minutes ago
    Here’s how it works; When businesses go bust, those employed and in receipt of salaries from such businesses are made redundant and no longer receive salaries. which is kind of the definition of a job loss.

    You’re not doing anything to allay the suspicion that many of your generation do not have the brains they were born with.
    −
    E
    Engelbert Clangworthy Arch Stanton
    7 minutes ago
    You’re not doing anything to delay the day of the pillow, when all the boomers are finally quietened down.
    −
    V
    Vatsmith
    3 hours ago
    Look at it this way Sam, those youngsters who do military training now as part of their national service are more likely to survive when the real shooting war starts.
    −
    R
    Robert Bidochon Vatsmith
    3 hours ago
    When they’re being picked off by drones?
    −
    P
    Patrick Robert Bidochon
    3 hours ago
    Not to worry – we shall send them to Brixon
    −
    M
    Mark Witt
    3 hours ago
    That article whines but says nothing about what to do instead… I will never get the two minutes back that I lost reading it…

    P.S Dear Ed…People have paid to read this…. publish stuff that gives solutions not just moaning drivel….
    −
    R
    Robert Bidochon Mark Witt
    3 hours ago
    And you are exactly the kind of old person he is complaining about.
    −
    M
    Mandevillej Robert Bidochon
    3 hours ago
    Who cares? Who is he, what has he done that anyone should listen to him?

    Now if he had served his country…
    −
    P
    Patrick Robert Bidochon
    3 hours ago
    He also complained about those doing down the country. Is that you, or not?

    1. Some good stuff in there. Mandevillej usually makes some thoughtful well made points. The rebuttals of Spexitiers JD, PetaJ, Gatehouse and oponanax now of this parish were priceless, I miss that.
      I see Bidochon is still at it, carrying on regardless. Rather like a sexual infection that can no longer be treated with antibiotics.

      1. Or the legendary unflushable bobber upper, AA. Thank you for your appreciated kind words!

        1. I am reminded of Captain Black’s quick capsule film and theatre like reviews, “Unflushable”!

      2. Nick Harman sorry, Robert Bidochon, was rather outed by none less than Lord Fraser of Nelson a few weeks ago, when the latter upvoted one of his facile comments. It gave credence to the theory that RB is paid for clickbait.

        After the “new, absolutely nothing to do with Disqus”comments system was introduced, I unsubscribed. That was 5th March. Yet I still have full access to the site. The only downside is that every time I visit the Speccie, I’m logged off from “Real Disqus”. WTF?

        I’m delighted that a significant number of “Spexiles” came here. Makes this place less of an echo-chamber.

        2. This is interesting regarding Harman and Nelson. What was the crack there good sir?

    1. You have to ask.

      Parades allowed but al prayers have to be non denominational.

  107. There is an obituary of a businessman called John Beale, aged 79. He was educated at Blundell’s. Was that where Rastus was interned?

    1. That sort will be exempt.
      “I get benefits for my mental ‘ealth, doing this National service will make me suffer even more.”
      ‘It’s my anxiety, innit.’
      ‘Too fat to fight.’

        1. Fat Fighters! Shame we’re not allowed to call them ‘fat’ because it might upset them …….. then they would go home and stuff their podgy faces even more.

      1. We definitely would have been told by now if it were possible to spin it that way

      2. Always good to his nan, and a model student at school.’ Fan of ‘Alan’s Snack Bar.’

  110. Unless a name leaks before he is charged. Also if the CPS delays the trial until after his 18th birthday, the great British public might learn his identity.

  111. On Saturday morning there was a shooting at a Jewish girls school in Toronto. No injuries just a few unknown yokels fired a few shots into the school building.

    I read about it in the Times of Israel, there was no mention in any of the Canadian press before the evening and the event has finally made it to most news sites. Glaringly absent from comments about this is anything from our blessed emporer. Trudeau was front and centre condemning violence against Muslims but now it’s nada, zilch.

    What a world.

    1. I was shocked to hear that my young grandchild has recently been on the receiving end of some antisemitism in her Toronto elementary school. (Thankfully, nothing so far in the sibling’s kindergarten class.) The school serves a very diverse catchment area, with many kids of visiting medics and academics from all over the world, so one might assume it would be fairly tolerant.

        1. I do, too, Obers, as do all well-informed and would-be decent people. Am Israel Chai.

        3. Son’s FiL seems to think it’s great that Canada welcomes so many muzzies, and even volunteers at something and donates money. Fool.

    3. You do have the short straw in Trudeau. I thought Canadians were rugged and intelligent – why on earth do they not get rid? Or are you in the same bind that we are?

      1. We are in a worse bind. Unless his MPs vote against a confidence vote in the house, there is no way that he can be legally removed. There is no equivalent to the 1922 Committee who can force a change.

        Quite a few MPs would not qualify for a cushy pension if there was an early election, we don’t see them standing up to be counted.

      2. He actions and language towards the truckers was unforgivable. The fact he still has anyone in his corner after that is disturbing.

  112. Now that we live in a Kingdom of Dunces, scandals and crises have become normal

    PETER HITCHENS

    Well, yes, it is good in a way to see the former Post Office chief Paula Vennells publicly exposed for failing to notice or reverse the miserable injustice her organisation visited on innocent sub-postmasters.

    It is good to see something done at last about the revolting risks taken with NHS patients, by the use of tainted blood which should never have been allowed into this country. But how much better off are we?

    I am sure there are plenty of other similar scandals, of injustice combined with incompetence made worse by complacency, rumbling along, some only just beginning. One very much in the making is the steady abolition of cash in our society.

    This is simply bound to lead to misery and catastrophe. I wish someone in authority would grasp this. So many businesses now announce that they will not take money any more. If you say this early enough in any transaction, you can get round the normal rules about legal tender. Sooner or later, cash will become unusable.

    If you have any, you will have to hand it in or lose it. All the money individuals possess will exist only in some digital limbo.

    The Post Office’s Horizon system made up terrifying lies about blameless individuals. Can you imagine the pit of doom into which the cashless society might drag you, or anyone? Can you imagine the decades which will pass before anyone in authority admits they were wrong, and the extra decades before they pay you much too little to compensate you?

    But this is just an example. The real problem is that our society is no longer run by intelligent or serious people. This is a dogma-driven Kingdom of Dunces, increasingly like the old Soviet Union which we claim to despise.

    Promotion comes to those who fulfil quotas or mouth the slogans of the Red-Green state. Or both. Since our schools were wrecked 60 years ago, there is no longer a hard core of first-class minds, properly trained in their skills, who can stand up to stupid or wrong decisions.

    Our warships conk out. We survive by importing electricity. Our Army is sent into combat with useless equipment. Our transport system is a national joke. Inquiry after inquiry reveals that our Heath Service, far from being the envy of the world, makes far too many promises that it cannot keep and, in many areas of medicine is actually going backwards.

    Every so often I argue on this page that some national policy or other is bound to fail. I am almost invariably right. But the elite world has no time for me or similar critics.

    It will go on congratulating itself and awarding itself honours until the awful day we all find that everything we have until now relied on has ceased to function, that we are not a great or powerful or rich country and we must start again from the beginning. That is what the blood scandal and Post Office disgrace really mean.

    How long till we can order death pills?

    Up and up go the abortion figures. There were 251,377 in England and Wales in 2022. It is perhaps a good thing that pro-abortionists now no longer pretend that they want this procedure to be ‘safe, legal and rare’, and have made it clear that they actually think abortion is an unmixed good thing – so why should it be rare?

    You can now get abortion pills by post, after a phone ‘consultation’. Back in the 1960s, when this was still controversial, it was only the crabby old stick-in-the-muds who suggested it might end like this.

    Just as they are the only ones warning against legalisation of ‘assisted dying’. And they are right. How long before that, too, is done by ordering pills by post? All slopes are slippery, if a lot of people slide down them.

    Our elite have it all – except some backbone

    There is an easy way to reduce crime, which all modern governments have discovered. You just stop bothering to enforce the law against it, or to record that it is happening at all. Abracadabra! No more shoplifting, burglaries or assaults, muggings or vandalism.

    The late Jose Harris, a fine historian, explained it beautifully in the Blair years: ‘If late 20th Century standards of policing and sentencing had been applied in Edwardian Britain, prisons would have been virtually empty; conversely, if Edwardian standards were applied in the 1990s, most of the youth of Britain would be in jail.’

    There are only two problems with this clever method. First, though figures hide it, non-elite people continue to be robbed, vandalised, mugged and burgled, and besieged in or near their homes or on public transport, by drugged youths – and shops continue to be pillaged.

    Second, even our limp, overwhelmed courts and absent police have to show signs of life from time to time. In exasperation, they pluck the occasional criminal from the streets. This is generally after 20 or so crimes that weren’t recorded and a catalogue of unpaid fines.

    So despite the pathetic softness of the system, prisons fill up, sumps of intractable evil, full of men who might once have been deterred by a serious justice system and an active, present police force.

    We did it again last week, ‘diverting’ yet more criminals from prison because cells are full. It will not work on any terms. Those ‘spared jail’ will end up there in years to come.

    It is astonishing how, as our justice system becomes ever more liberal, numbers in prison grow. But it is easy to put right, if anyone wanted to. They just don’t – lacking the nerve or moral force.

    Words matter and last year’s Coronation was the first since at least 1689 to omit the King’s pledge to guard his subjects from evil. At the presentation of the Sword of State to the monarch, he has previously promised to use it ‘for the terror and punishment of evildoers’. Now somebody has taken those words out of the ceremony.

    We have an elite which wants high office and big salaries but lacks the backbone to use its power to defend the people.

    You can’t cut crime by pretending it’s gone away.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13459285/PETER-HITCHENS-live-Kingdom-Dunces-scandals-crises-normal.html

      1. You are Terry Wogan (it’s the title of his autobiography) and I claim my £5.

    2. Just read this: There were 251,377 in England and Wales in 2022. So, two years ago, a quarter of a million tiny babies were deliberately killed, many only because they were inconvenient.
      What a statement. A quarter of a million dead babies.
      My God, it’s enough to make one weep – tears are falling, even now. What a way to treat the unborn. Dear God.

      1. Of those quarter of a million babies each year how many had the latent potential to advance humanity or compose great works in music and the arts?

        I feel very sorry for the women who need to undergo the TOP procedure and especially the theatre staff who have to witness it.

  114. That’s me for yet another miserable day. A lot of heavy rain. Sun out right now, but more rain later. Tomorrow will be, er, wet but possibly sunny.

    Have a jolly evening trying to decide when a murderer who stabs a woman to death stops being a “boy”….

    A demain. Prolly.

    1. Heavy rain was threatened today, but nothing so far .

      Quite strangely for the past four hours an aircraft high up in the sky has been doing strange manoeuvres, an abcd box type of navigation, don’t think it was a search, more like the sort of thing coastal command did years ago / anti submarine stuff perhaps , aircraft was very high , but we could hear the drone of the engine .

      2. Hissing down here. Over 200 lighning strikes in this part of the world. Swoosh!

  116. Bathroom reading … https://dermotturing.com/my-recent-books/x-y-z-the-real-story-of-how-enigma-was-broken/

    X, Y & Z describes how French, British and Polish secret services came together to unravel the Enigma machine. It tells of how, under the very noses of the Germans, Enigma code-breaking continued in Vichy France. And how code-breakers from Poland continued their work for Her Majesty’s Secret Service, watching the USSR’s first steps of the Cold War. Selected by Nature as one of the best books of 2018.

    Dermot Turing has written a great book filling out our picture of Second World War code-breaking. His prose crackles with energy and an appealing sense of humor, enhanced by dozens of photographs, many of which will be new even to devoted students of his subject.

    How on earth did they do it , a certain sort of brain , that goes beyond morse code and other methods of signalling .

    1. That “certain sort of brain” can come at some cost to the owner of it.

      1. Indeed, my Mother-in-law’s neighbour had been at Station X during the war. He was burned out physically and mentally.

    2. They chose people who were linguists and good at crosswords. Also, largely PLU (People Like Us in case you aren’t familiar with the term).

  117. OT – anyone know WTF this is supposed to mean?

    “You must authenticate the user or provide author_name and author_email”

    4. Quite a few sites screwed up today, opopanax, think restored now? Probably a huge server down somewhere or other, in the US perhaps.

    5. When I’m at work that means Zscaler has gone down, or my connection to it has dropped. It’s online data security software.

    6. I had that for a while on my notifications, so that I couldn’t answer a post replying to one of mine here without going back onto the actual page on NoTTL, rather than simply replying by pressing “reply” on the notification page. It then suddenly went OK again – I’m not sure how or why – if you do a virus check and close down after that, it might help.

    1. A shame. I was based at RAF Coningsby for a while during my brief time in the RAF.

      1. I worked for Birse Construction for a while. They had a contract to build “NUBs” on various RAF bases. New Uniter Buildings – basically communications centres, shielded from EMP in a nuclear conflict. Coningsby was one such. I’ve prolly just revealed more than I should. If there’s no new page tomorrow, you’ll know why…

        Also, Dianne-the-Ex’s eldest, Ben, was based there, flyingn Typhoons. I envy his carbon footprint…

    2. Agreed, Maggie. Dianne the Ex’s eldest, Ben, was in the RAF, culminating in him being the (Typhoon) display pilot in the Typhoon / Spitfire displays for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. He married Kirsty, also in the RAF, in the chapel at RAF Cranwell. I got to play one of two RAF organs. Betwixt the service and the reception, the BBMF did a flypast. Admittedly, it was on its way to another venue.

    3. They used to do a lot of the maintenance at Cranfield, when I was there. The sound of a Merlin coughing into life would awaken interest, and occasionally a pilot on test flight would beat up the airfield. I still have the mental image of a Spitfire moving at speed in plan view, flying between the poplars in front of the teaching hangar – a perfect plus, at I guess 300 mph! Superb! All the teaching blocks emptied to watch!

      1. Ob , I expect your friend who lives in Dorset has probably spotted the Spitfire that flies over here , probably flown from Compton Abbas , we heard and saw it over these parts the other day . Nice photo in the local paper , but I don’t think they will be using it for D Day .

        1. They cancelled the BBMF flypast this afternoon over the WW2 day at Ironbridge. The organisers held a commemoration and two minutes silence.

    1. The police – wet wimps. They should taze the lot of them – ungrateful savages.

    2. The female copper was in mount but lost her base. With her weight that was a reasonable idea. It can be a bind to escape someone who has got you in mount and they know what their doing. That big male copper shouldn’t have much problem controlling the bloke on a ground but his game is hopeless, he’s all over the shop. He should be in mount and she should be handcuffing. The other two on the left are a farce, no idea, best left unsaid. With so little grappling game they should be using their batons on leg muscles to get some compliance. Aren’t the allowed to do that anymore? Certainly that would be the case with the other woman interfering with the arrest. Let the lady copper sort her out. Get her onto the ground for arrest.

      Here’s the self defence twist, none of these coppers know if anyone is armed. All of what I have written here only works on the mat. There’s no time for street jujitsu. This could of looked really gruesome.

        1. Basically sitting on someone’s chest with your knees on the ground. You’ve got to try and get as much weight onto their body as possible and try and remain stable. Sitting up how she does you become unstable, hence in part what we see. Creating a strong “base” is a big thing in grappling technique.

      2. A baton, well used, would have sorted all those yobs out very quickly.

        The police are nowhere near violent enough in those circumstances.

      3. AA Locrian , that is so interesting , your knowledge must have come from practise somewhere , so where did you gain all this experience ?

        1. Yes, done a few years of Brazilian Ju-Jitsu. There used to be a good mixed martial arts gym just down the road from where I live, so striking, kicking and blocking was also covered. It’s all useful that stuff, but there came a point where I noticed the sport of it all. There’s no sporting aspect to rolling around on the street with strangers! I wish someone would tell that to these coppers.

    3. Ha! That male copper at the end who shows up has the right idea. F*ck about and find out. Some assembled rubber necking mug goes “No way”. Yes way.

    4. They should be armed for theirownprotection. With at least baseball bats.

    5. Agree, would only add if they weren’t here in the first place wouldn’t have to spend time and effort deporting them.

    6. What a farce, and that little brown cop is pathetic, even more than the ones rolling about on the ground. We need more George Floyd restraint training.

    8. This would not have got even close to happening in my day and age. Every one of those twats would have been knocked spark out.

  121. I just spotted this photo of a Christian worship taking place. I was initially rather touched by the group’s physical communal kinship display. Then looking across I see the flag. It is a Far-Left collectivist political flag, seeing various identity groups in oppressive opposition to one another. If I walked into that church, I would stay to have a look around, as they are usually interesting architecturally speaking, but would be leaving for any sermon. We are all equal before God is the Christian teaching I believe. But not on earth according to that church, and you must repent.
    A description from an advocate on Wikipedia “the “Progress” variation adds a chevron along the hoist that features black, brown, light blue, pink, and white stripes to bring those communities (marginalized people of color, trans people, and those living with HIV/AIDS and those who have been lost) to the forefront; “the arrow points to the right to show forward movement, while being along the left edge shows that progress still needs to be made.”” Didn’t God have something to say about fake idols? I would be interested to hear what Calvin Robinson would have to say on this matter.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/663cbaee809197a5901253aff147dd1d09b8b802ea2e4a2f840edb3868cbe5b1.jpg

    1. It’s that sinister little brown, sphinctre-like circle that has appeared of late that gives me the creeps (although the entire thing is horrid)

      1. It’s the sinister little (often) brown vociferous beings in this country who shout about Allah that give me the creeps.

      1. The small hands suggest a woman. It’s something that can’t be changed?

        1. I have seen men with small hands, and women with large hands and feet (apparently La Markle has very elongated fingers, which I have read can be a result of certain drug-taking in pregnancy by the mother. Her feet are rather large also).

          3. Ha..the clip is quite long was part of her speech, but she referred to La Meghan’ flaunting her nakedness all over the place and that’s not nice.’ Harry looks so fed up these days, I understand the US authorities are trying to keep his record under wraps, so possibly there’s something there after all about his very public pronouncement (bookie wook) of using I think cocaine. Possibly a journalist or similar will get hold of said records.

          12. Not yet – I’ve been pretty busy with stuff. What did he say? That she was a lying grifter and he did not believe her 43% Nigerian genes rubbish?

          13. Pres is female and yes something along those lines…’walking around half naked like her’ or similar, can’t remember the exact quote 🙂 Harry looks more fed up each photoshoot, perhaps because his visa seems to be held up for some reason (or other).

          14. Thanks ! MM has no idea about others – it’s all self, self, so she wouldn’t think of tuning into another country’s values and sensibilities. Perhaps Harry is getting fed up because she pushes him out of the way in order for her to get centre in the photographs – someone should remind her that she was nothing – and is nothing – without her husband’s Royal ties.

          16. I think Harry is possibly starting to realise he could possibly be irrelevant too. And has possibly burned his boats with his UK family – William more than the King. Certainly seems to have something on his mind.

        2. Yes, I look for those. Used to look for the adam’s apple, but apparently those can now be modified by operation.

          1. Shaved, I believe. Mind you, I have known some jockeys who have quite small hands (and some with big mitts).

          2. Sounds painful, Conway…oh dear…yes jockeys need to be small but with strong thighs n knees, and hands.

          3. I was fascinated when I visited Cheltenham racecourse; there is a wall where jump jockeys made hand prints in wet cement. You can put your hand inside the print (they are named so you know who’s who).

    3. Those banners were draped all around the central atrium in Television Centre for Gay Pride Month or whatever it’s now called. The way it’s done is very redolent of the Third Reich.

      1. There’s another bate and switch trick they have pulled, it’s not a Gay flag. Hence an organisation like LGB Alliance.

      2. One whole month for a sexual predilection.
        One day to commemorate millions who died prematurely in wars to protect a western, Christian based civilisation.

        1. #Me too. I was quite surprised the other day when I attended a different church – people came and shook my hand during the Peace! I thought we’d got over that.

          1. That was quietly dropped during the fauxdemic. And Communion remains by intinction. For the last year or so, our Ministry Team has been reduced to the Rector, plus… nobody. He’s now in Horse Spittle, with a chest infection. So our former associate priest came to us from an adjoining parish. I was never one of her greatest fans, but today felt like old times…

          2. We don’t do intinction (although the different church I visited did – a weird mixture). We have communion in two parts, although you can refuse the chalice if you wish.

          3. I went to such a service, once. I glared so hard at the nice lady who approached for a hug, that she turned away, and I went unmolested.

        2. BiL and his wife used to attend a very similar church, all hugging and such unnecessary behaviour. I always found it quite creepy.

          1. The beauty of being seated at the organ (especially now the choir has evaporated) is that no-one is close enough for all that nonsense…

          2. That’s one of the things I like about Barts. The very suggestion of that stuff raises howls of protest.

    5. Some one spoke to me about the proliferation of Barbers shops , is it believed they are exempt from business rates because they have religious areas for prayers ?

    7. That woman in white needs reminding that there are no flags of allegiance in Heaven.

  122. Noisy minorities are being allowed to bully the rest of us into silence
    The attempt to drown out the PM’s election speech outside No 10 reflected a sinister trend in our politics

    JANET DALEY
    25 May 2024 • 1:20pm https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/25/noisy-minorities-allowed-to-bully-the-us-into-silence/

    AJ Clemente
    JUST NOW
    People fear losing their livelihoods because they don’t have the right opinions. Thoughtcrime is real in the UK. It’s overwhelmingly the left who intimidate people into silence, and yet we appear to heading towards voting for the most left wing PM ever, who doesn’t even know what a woman is. I hope Reform voters know what they are doing.

    1. What Reform voters are doing is not letting the Tories in for another wrecking spree on us. If that lets labour in, too bad; that is not a reason to vote Tory.

      1. I would like to have seen the Conservative Party totally destroyed.

        Farage could have made that happen by joining the front line of Reform

        I am afraid that he is like an athlete who is well out in front and then throws in the towel on the last lap with the finishing line in sight.

        Remember Sir Francis Drake’s Prayer which I heard frequently in chapel at school:

        “There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.”

        Well begun – he got Brexit done but then he left the fray and the Brexit he got was watered down and it looks more and more as if the next prime minister will take us back into the EU on far worse terms than we had before so his work will heave come to nothing.

        1. Sorry, Richard, but I disagree. Nigel was planning to stand for a seat, but was blind sided by Rashid Sanook’s bizarre decision to call an election, apparently without consultation with the cabinet. NF has failed several times to win a seat in Parliament, but remains one of the most significant politicians in our lifetime. By not standing for a particular seat, he can still campaign for Reform UK, nationally. Watch this space…

          1. 387717+ up ticks,

            Evening GG,

            The reform party i,s in reality a tory (ino) satellite group.

            Once again the top rankers carrying excess odious baggage.

            For those that do not want to stray from the tory name even that being (ino) it will be found acceptable.

          2. To be blindsided by Sunak does not speak well for him!

            Unlike ogga at a personal level I like Farage. I like his sense of humour and it is undeniable that he a brilliant orator and an exceptionally good journalist. As BT pointed out he finds it difficult to work with other people.

            If Farage could destroy the Conservative Party without helping Labour I would be delighted but pigs might fly.

    2. Reform UK has basically the same common sense policies that Ukip had in the 2015 general election, with extra ones covering things like halting Net Zero etc. Tuesday morning I’m going to be one of the party to officially nominate Paul Wadley as Reform UK candidate for SE Cornwall.

      1. Reform Party will have a huge impact on the general election.

        Just like the Referendum Party, the United Kingdom Independence Party, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, and the Teddy Bear’s Picnic Tea Party have done at every general election since Oswald Mosley was a Trot.

          1. It has some good policies, including throwing sponges into the sea to prevent it from getting any bigger

        2. Reform won’t win. FPTP will take care of that. But I agree with their policies. So I’ll be voting for something I believe in, rather than against the worst of two equally poisonous options. Too many folk of voting age have never experienced a Labour government. They’ll learn.

          1. I have always said there is no point in voting for something you don’t really want in order to keep out something you really don’t want. You should vote for what you really DO want and if enough of you do it, you’ll get it.

        3. Farage’s goal is to be part of the opposition. If he can install as many as five MPs then that’s a victory. To get to No. 10 you’ve got to get into Parliament in order to one day… maybe… have a shot.

        4. Ukip’s performance in the 2015 GE got the government to allow a EU referendum (obviously it wasn’t delivered, but it fucked up the government enough to scare them). Who did you vote for in 2015?

          2. But you don’t think that Ukip’s voting numbers led to the 2016 referendum?

          3. That may well indeed be the case but I would only be guessing.

            I certainly have no intention in this upcoming election of contributing, directly or indirectly, to a Labour Party victory.

  123. Evening, all. Typical Bank Holiday weather here. If the decline of the NHS is on every voter’s mind, they’ll be stuck for which party to vote for; Labour started the decline, the Cons and Limp Dims didn’t do anything to halt it when in coalition and the Cons alone have, if anything, accelerated it. Since much of the problem is exacerbated by treating large numbers of people who’ve never paid a penny into the system, they are all guilty.

    1. 387717 + up ticks,

      Evening C,
      No worries, tis the party (ino)name that is the vote magnet

    1. The Bible
      You’re a sinner.
      Repent to be saved.

      The Lord of the Rings
      When your ring burns it’s over.

    3. The Labour party manifesto
      You’re going to be plucked

      The Conservative PM
      You’ve been plucked, come back for more

      The Green PM
      When you turn green you vomit

      The LibDem PM
      err, we’re not sure, are you?

      NOTA PM
      Great choice, shame you lose.

    9. That raised a wry laugh!

      I haven’t read “The Sun Also Rises” – any opinions on whether I should?

        1. I have !…. You are only allowed a tiny cup of the stuff when a petal falls in sight. What a long night that was !!!

  126. I wish we could return to normal. Though, in fairness, as organist, I’m first to recieve after the incumbent (and possibly assistants / servers / wardens / whatever. So I reckon whatever is in the chalice at that stage is fairly safe…

    Though I vividly recall (in another place) being offered a chalice, teeming with inebriated fruit flies… 😱

    1. In the churches where I worship, the church wardens are always the last to take communion.

      1. Same here. But I’m not a churchwarden, and by receiving first, I can get back to the organ and play something while everyone else queues up.. I’ve been a CW in another place, but apparently it’s not permitted as a paid employee of the parish. Bollocks – it was OK in Suffolk.. So at our APCM on Wednesday, one of our three CW’s stood down. We should have six in the parish: we have two. One of whom is desperate to retire.

        1. The choir and organist are first after the celebrant and chalice bearers. Then the rest of us rush up the aisle to take the sacrament. Well, perhaps “rush” is a bit of a misnomer 🙂

          1. (Or as Mahatma said, when he was asked: “What he thought of Western Civilisation?”

            “It would be a good idea…”

      1. I’m not on, so can’t read them.

        His family came to the UK aided by the British Army in 2022 after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, although Mr Safi has been a resident of the UK for seven years as he works as a delivery driver.

        Rather suggests that all is not as it seems

        1. My feelings exactly. Also, he is 35 and she is 45 which in that culture is very odd. They have 11 children with a 12th on the way but he has been living in the UK for seven years?? Definitely not all it seems.

      2. Why should they? Why is there always a demand that someone else help them? You chose to have 11 children. You pay for them. Hell, if you have one child, you pay for them. It’s not my responsibility. You dug the hole, you lie in it. If parents were forced to properly plan for their children then most of the scum infesting primary schools simply wouldn’t exist and the remaining children would get a far better education because they’re not dealing with Eamon/Keenan/Keef’s lack of parents.

    2. Find the energy to open a window and scrub the sodding walls instead of screwing your blasted heads off.
      Make the bloody children earn their keep.

      1. They would be child labour, I doubt many, if any, are over 16.

        I wonder how much that family rakes in in a week in benefits.

      2. My new place (since 2020) has a wet room, which is happy to produce mould, given half a chance. Thankfully, someone invented bleach. Nuff said.

        1. It is so fucking daft. They come from societies that have no heating but plenty of ventilation in their homes. Then they get given substandard flats……They don’t open the windows because it is cold outside and then they all breathe in, in the small rooms they have. They don’t understand the need to clean in an enclosed enviroment.

          It is no surprise to me that the evening meal is cooked on the floor in the living room and the bathroom is used to store meat.

          I self identify as a racist.

          1. Dianne’s eldest has a flat in Woking. It was rented out to a bunch of Pak.. I mean a family from the Sub-continent. They destroyed the kitchen units (the cooker hood melted) and rendered the rest of the place uninhabitable.

            Cleaned up, at n small expense, all now seems OK.,.

          2. Such a shame they didn’t let through a London borough like the ones responsible for Grenfell. Dianne might have got thruppence happeneny back

      3. Language ! Your post could be construed as Extreme Right Wing !
        what are their menfolk doing while they leave their many wives and children in paid for accommodation paid for by you know who?

  135. That is fascinating too, Conway. I once met a group of stable girls at the races, a few years ago ..the language…blimey!

  136. He’s too canny to have dived in. As Geoff says he’s not got enough time to organise a constituency. It is actually the main reason I think Sunak ambushed everyone: to disarm Reform. Their party machine currently lacks presence, so in fact all their candidates have precisely the same problem as Farage. Sunak hopes Conservative supporters who deserted will be forced back to him.

    I still believe Sunak has made a mistake though. To begin with, Reform do have candidates in place and they have made inroads during the local elections. Secondly as a constituency candidate Farage would have been sidelined. Leaving him able to roam at will and simply criticise Con and Lab will I believe prove costly to both Starmer and Sunak.

    1. Reform simply don’t have the resources of the two main parties. I can’t bring myself to name them…

      As has been repeatedly said, Reform have a six-year plan. Currently, the Tories need to be defenestrated (and I say that as a lifelong Tory voter (except for a brief dalliance with UKIP). I even joined them, in order to vote for that utter disappointment, Johnson, as leader.

      Labour will win this elecion. No ifs or buts. They’ll be worse – if only marginally – than the Consocialists. They may not survive a full term. I fervently hope that, by then, a truly conservative party will have arisen from the ashes. Be it Reform, or (highly unlikely) the Conservative and Unionist Party, matters not. Nigel will have a part to play.

      1. Yes, spot on. This is about brand and purpose. When Farage got all those MEPs elected, thus pushing the domino that toppled the rest into getting us out of EU, it was the result of years creating the ideological space between his party and the rest. All Reform has so far is a suggestion that they are the real Conservatives and that the other two are both Socialists. Nothing changes on that basis until Con / Lab are allowed the space to demonstrate how out of touch they are. Not just to you, me and the converted. We are a minority. It’s when the rest sees it that the space has been created. We aren’t there yet and he knows it.

        2. After WSC and Mrs T, Nigel Farage is one of the most significant British politicians of the last 100 years.

          1. He’s head and shoulders above what we’ve got on offer that’s for sure.

    2. I think he was horrified at the outright betrayal of his offer to stand down candidates at the last election. It was a shocking display of pettiness by the NonCons and trust went out of the window.

      1. It was a stab in the back revealing the true position of Sunak, Gove, Cameron and all the cronies for all to see. I don’t think he’ll be too disappointed though. There’s time…

      2. Anne Widdecombe has made this point on GB News – Reform cannot and must not make any pact with the Conservatives after Johnson, Gove and Co kicked them in the teeth.

  138. Assume he leapt on her the instant she arrived, it still suggests he’s been impregnating her since his mid teens.
    34 – 6, 28
    11 other children makes him 16 or 17 when they “married”

    Unless there are lots of twins and triplets it doesn’t add up, does it?

        1. Indeed, but who and why? The wife and children seemed happy to stay in Afghanistan until the Taliban took over, and as the husband had been working London as a delivery driver for five years (he has apparently been here for seven) he clearly wasn’t working for the British Army so why did they need asylum?

  139. Maybe Daily Sceptic? I think it’s online tho if you search. Just re-watching Life on Mars, the old BBC prog…Glenister…fab!

      1. Aha! Mr James Gatehouse…good evening, sir 🙂 Good you have that…I no longer have a DVD player, watching it on Netflix. It’s every bit as good as I remember it.

  141. Bournemouth stabbing victim “leaves a wife” so a picture is beginning to emerge.

      1. They are, but we’ve not been given any info on the second one except that she is still critical.

  142. Bournemouth stabbing victim “leaves a wife” so a picture is beginning to emerge.

  143. Oh yes, it sure is. Good evening to you too. “Fire up the Quattro!”

    1. Can’t have a “wife” then. A lesbian lover, maybe. Let’s reclaim the narrative.

      2. Bravo Conway! I made the same comment in the DT the other day when someone called Varradkers bidey- in his ‘husband’!

  145. She is a product of her time. The influences and experiences are hers and hers alone. He should have been quicker…with sharper blades.
    Sorry. We were talking about Diane and i started thinking about my mother.

  149. Thanks. I was somewhat involved with UKIP a decade ago. I even stood as a ‘paper’ candidate in the borough council election. I didn’t expect to win, but I frightened the sitting Tory, and might have come second were it not for the bloody Guildford Greenbelt Group, who beat me by a few votes into third place. I still beat the Lib Dem, though, and Labour didn’t even bother.

    1. And we’ll see a lot more of that this time around I’d think.Sunak has of course handed Farage a deadly knife. I think I might buy myself a beer every time over the next six weeks he says something like, “Reform stood aside for these people last time around and what did they do with it? Gave us back five years of wasted time and Socialism, is what.”

      Hard luck on coming so close but missing out, by the way.

      1. That could be a lot of beer. Yum.

        The last thing I wanted was to win. I stood, purely to give the likes of us a box to tick. Hence ‘paper’ candidate. But it was interesting, to say the least. I was Verger at my local church – I’m still organist there – and found the place plastered with Guildford Greenbelt Group election material one Sunday afternoon. I tracked down the leader of this so-called party, and sent a stiffly worded ‘cease and desist’ email. They still came in second place.

        1. “Cease and desist”?

          I’d probably have added, “or fings could get broken” 😁

          Seriously though, if anything it does demonstrate the old adage that there are so many in politics who are simply chancers these days. Worse, it shows there are so many others prepared to vote for them.

  151. If she is, it might change the motivation and Nottlers may be jumping to the wrong conclusions.
    Either way, it’s an innocent victim.

      1. To be fair, if I am near a beach, I have been known to frequent it at that time. Mostly not even for nefarious purposes

          3. If you insist. I enjoy the company of women who can walk like Jessica Rabbit barefoot. :@)

          4. I am unfamiliar with Polari and need further explanation. But never mind! We are all good chums on here,

          1. Wouldn’t we all ! All we get to hear about is her Tangoing with men she doesn’t know and even younger men on the sidelines drooling.

          3. Ah, but I like to maintain at least a pretence of mystery… 😉🤣

      1. There’s a film on bbc2 TV now with him in. I’ve not heard of it before. Tenet.

  155. 387717+ up ticks,

    Be the perfect time for 150 proven through & through patriots
    to step up to the oche and throw a googly into the coalition close shop.

    As a proven factor though with this electorate majority, we would still end up with kneel starmer.

    Dt,
    Tories still need to find 150 candidates following MP exodus
    Selection underway with less than two weeks before nomination deadline

  160. Just that one of Nick’s usual snidey posts about “you people” garnered an upvote from His Fraserness. If I can find it, I’ll repost it here, but don’t hold your breath. Life’s too short…

    1. Ah! No myther finding it Geoff. What Nelson’s handle? It’s not Fraiser Nelson is it?!

      1. Just “Fraser Nelson” complete with Discurse “Mod” badge.

        Since the Speccie’s Not Quite Disqus system doesn’t have the usual functionality, I’ll never find that thread again. Sadly.

  161. Not going to happen. Especially as the PM is more than happy to pass the baton to Max Headroom.

    1. 387717+ up ticks,

      Evening Pip,

      I know, the same road to RESET will be followed and the politico’s
      continue to make the supporter / voters their playthings.

      1. Good evening. The huge exodus and the massive amounts spent on security tells us what ‘they’ think is going to happen soon.

        1. The exodus is the major clue – although I do have to laugh (mirthlessly) because i don’t think that California will be safe

    2. Are we into “his husband” “her wife” territory, rather than the usual?

  163. I read the link to Telegraph article. The Police said Blah blah blah. As usual.

  164. Must be a different stabbing in Bournemouth then. It used to be so dull there.

  166. She sat on the beach at midnight
    Picking blackheads from her crutch
    She said “I’ve never had it”
    I said “Not fuckin‘ much”

  168. Another occurrence of severe turbulence on a flight from Doha to Dublin. Very strange, cloud seeding ?
    Goodnight all.

    1. Goodnight to you too but don’t make me search. Please provide a link. Some of us are pissed !

    2. The soil at Sellafield I am informed has been tested for contaminants and aluminium is present where none should be.

      The skies are being seeded with Aluminium Oxide, we see the criss crossing chemtrails in the Suffolk skies above us. These stay visible whereas the aircraft contrails evapourate after a short time.

      Aluminium Oxide is associated with Dementia.

    3. The soil at Sellafield I am informed has been tested for contaminants and aluminium is present where none should be.

      The skies are being seeded with Aluminium Oxide, we see the criss crossing chemtrails in the Suffolk skies above us. These stay visible whereas the aircraft contrails evapourate after a short time.

      Aluminium Oxide is associated with Dementia.

    4. The soil at Sellafield I am informed has been tested for contaminants and aluminium is present where none should be.

      The skies are being seeded with Aluminium Oxide, we see the criss crossing chemtrails in the Suffolk skies above us. These stay visible whereas the aircraft contrails evapourate after a short time.

      Aluminium Oxide is associated with Dementia.

  169. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    Sunak’s national service may end up backfiring
    Comments Share 26 May 2024, 9:26am
    The idea of bringing back national service has been kicking around British politics for about five times longer than the policy itself lasted. Mandatory conscription was introduced by the Attlee government and dismantled gradually from 1957 to 1963. Those old enough to have experienced it will now be in their mid-80s. Following Rishi Sunak’s announcement last night, the Tories might introduce it to a new generation.

    When voters see you as the political wing of the OAPs, this is how national service will be viewed
    Though the PM’s main attack line on Starmer is his lack of plan, the Conservative party’s national service suggestion is itself quite vague. Sunak is suggesting that a Royal Commission will flesh out the policy, a classical political move to gloss over the details of a flashy announcement. A germ of an idea is there though. Mandatory service for all 18-year-olds is being proposed, with either a year in the military or 25 days volunteering in some sort of community service.

    The political thinking here is straightforward. The idea of national service has remained popular, especially with those who never had to do it themselves. Polling over the years suggests around 40 per cent of the country might support it. The support is usually strongest among the sort of retirees where the Tories find their base, and where they see this election as a battle with Reform. Announcing this now is a clear signal that this is the Tory strategy for the next six weeks.

    Individually popular policies, however, make a poor election campaign. When electing a government people tend to think in the round. Being stopped by a pollster and asked if something is a good idea is different from voting for it. An election focuses minds on the broader context, not just a grab-bag idea. Indeed, this was the great downfall of the Corbynites – individual policies had appeal, but presented together by a polarising politician they added up to a losing platform.

    This is partly because, like Brexit, even when something is popular, people have different ideas about the implementation. The unfurnished details of Sunak’s conscription plan could detract from its popularity. Quite rightly we might wonder how the forces would cope with an annual intake equivalent to about 10 per cent of its total strength. Part of the reason the first round of national service was dismantled was that the army didn’t want to spend time training fresh troops who’d disappear after a year. It’s hard to see how today’s smaller, more technically complex forces would deal with the same challenge.

    The same issue is true of the public services. Volunteering is a great thing which many charities and organisations relish. Finding jobs for a few enthusiasts is very different though from having to deal with those press-ganged into being there. In the NHS and other organisations, scarce resources would have to be used to manage bored and recalcitrant recruits. It opens the door for Labour attacks too on how the Tory government has already impacted the armed forces and public services.

    In a broader campaign, there are other pitfalls too. While national service might bring back some Reform voters to the Tory fold, elsewhere it will push them away. Part of the problem the Tories have is that they are now increasingly seen as the party of the old. Trapped in a symbiotic, perhaps even parasitic, relationship with voters over 60, the party pitches more policies at retirees while becoming more dependent on their votes. National service feels like something in this vein.

    Understandably, enthusiasm for the idea wanes the closer you are in age to the people who have to do it. The Tories are already in an existential struggle with these groups. In 1997, more than a quarter of under-24s voted Tory, even when the party faced a huge defeat. On the latest polling support from that age group is around 7 per cent. Indeed, the party is doing less well with 50- to 64-year-olds than it did in 1997. Taken alongside other policy areas – the triple lock, house prices, and Brexit – the Tory party looks like an organisation that has lost touch with the young. This will skew how the national service gambit is seen.

    Perceptions around policy matters. On the NHS, say, the public will think kindlier of a Labour reform package than a Tory one, even if it did the same thing. When voters see you as the political wing of the OAPs, this is how national service will be viewed. As much as you try to dress it as a way for young people to gain skills, or to bolster the armed forces in an uncertain world, for many it will just be seen as a cruel way of trying to appeal to retirees. This could further motivate the younger vote against the Tories, sending up turnout and worsening their defeat. It will also make it harder to win those voters back in future elections.

    For much of Sunak’s term as PM, we have seen this approach to policy. Things are thrown out in isolation – free chess boards, compulsory maths to the age of 18 – that perhaps might be popular, yet come together to form an unconvincing whole. A half-formed national service plan fits this mould, and while it might fire up a few older voters, it feels unlikely to greatly swing the political dial.

    The real issue this campaign has is that after 14 years, the Tory party feels tired and chaotic. In many quarters it was viewed as incompetent and tetchy. Policies that poll well without the Tories attached will look very different through this lens. National service is one of those policies – at best it might shore up the core vote, but it is far from election-winning. Instead, it looks like a desperate move from a party struggling to think of things to offer.

  170. From Coffee House. the Spectator

    James Cleverly: no one will go to jail over national service
    Comments Share 26 May 2024, 10:47am
    Well, Rishi Sunak’s new flagship policy of reintroducing national service has certainly gone off with a bang this morning. The policy, announced last night, would see 18-year-olds given the option of applying for a military post, or spending one weekend every month for a year working for the fire services, police, the NHS, or local charities. According to the Conservative party the scheme will be mandatory.

    What happens though if young people refuse to take part? It seemed initially at least the Tories were feeling bullish about cracking down on any absconding youths, with a leaked internal Q&A from the Conservatives suggesting that the party wasn’t ruling out arresting 18-year-olds dodging their civic duty.

    Home Secretary James Cleverly dampened down those suggestions though when he appeared on Sky News this morning. Asked what will happen to young people who refuse to take part, Cleverly confirmed that there would be ‘no criminal sanctions’, with ‘no one going to jail over this’. He went on to argue that in Scandinavia there had been widespread take-up for similar schemes, but ‘we are going to compel people to do it’.

    Mr S has to wonder though how young people will be compelled to do mandatory ‘voluntary’ service if there’s no legal requirement to do so. Perhaps the first job of this new batch of army recruits will be hunting down anyone who is AWOL?

          1. My older sister watched it before i did. She said about the hole in the boat and the head fell out.

  173. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) Stories

    ENGLISH – SOME ODDITIES

    Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

    English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

    We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

    And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?

    If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth?

    One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?

    Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

    If teachers taught, why don’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetable, what does a humanitarian eat?

    Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

    How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

    You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

    English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all.

    Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’?

    1. Thank you for that – copied to send to my advanced English student! 😈🤣

      Re the first – I was in a market in northern Italy when I first saw a small oval off-white aubergine and the penny dropped!

    2. I enjoyed that one, Sir Jasper. I have always been fascinated by words and wordplay.

    3. Morning, Tom!
      Some of those are Merkin, bears no relationship to English.
      The order went through last night(!), delivery forthwith.

    2. Morning, Geoff and thank you for all your efforts and care on our behalf.

Comments are closed.