Saturday 27 July: Labour’s energy proposals are riddled with contradictions

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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569 thoughts on “Saturday 27 July: Labour’s energy proposals are riddled with contradictions”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolk, today’s (recycled) story.

    Children

    A husband and wife have four sons.
    The oldest three are tall with red hair and light skin while the youngest son is short with black hair and dark eyes.
    The father was on his deathbed when he turned to his wife and said,
    “Darling, before I die, please be totally honest with me: Is our youngest son my child?”
    The wife replied, “I swear on everything that’s holy that he is your son.”
    With that, the husband passed away.
    The wife muttered, “Thank God he didn’t ask about the other three"

  3. 390241+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Fact not fiction,

    X,

    See new posts
    Conversation
    Australian Voice
    @NotTheNewz
    ·
    18h
    4) A few other problems: people in the West do not want to believe THEY DON'T LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY. They "believe in" elections. They don't want to realize "their" government does not answer to them, but to evil forces who possess enormous wealth & now own practically everything.
    Australian Voice
    @NotTheNewz
    ·
    18h
    5) They don't want to know any of this because it means our society is rotten to the core & unfixable. It must be destroyed and replaced by something better BEFORE the evil forces manage to kill us, totally destroy our society and/or bring in a cashless economy with a digital ID.
    Australian Voice
    @NotTheNewz
    ·
    18h
    6) Personally I realized this a long time ago. Now at the age of 79 I am deeply worried about our situation. Not only have the institutions been taken over, but people no longer understand how society works. For what it is worth I will finish with my hint on fixing things.
    Australian Voice
    @NotTheNewz
    ·
    18h
    7) I am not totally opposed to capitalism, but if you want democracy with capitalism you must realize one simple truth. The more money a person or corporation accumulates, the more power they will have to legally/illegally shape laws and policies in a way to benefit themselves.
    Australian Voice
    @NotTheNewz
    8) If democratic governments cannot manage/control the accumulation of money, then those accumulating money will manage/control the government. As some American said: The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Once this is forgotten, someone will build a cage for you.

    1. 390241+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Cap the amount of monies any individual / org. can have and use on a daily basis, otherwise
      questions must be asked for credible reasons for using other funds.

        1. 390241+ up ticks,

          Morning ATG,
          I am truly against CBDC my meaning was to cap in the main the elites so as nobody has the funds on hand to make anti peoples change without credible
          reason, same for companies.

          Could more referendums be the answer ?
          As for being like you in say in looks, you have my sympathy, my formative years were spent sitting on a street organ.

  4. Wow that was quick, Geoff. Many thanks.

    Wordle 1,134 4/6

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    🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. #Metoo

      Wordle 1,134 4/6

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

  5. Good Morning, all

    Sunny and warming up to boiling point

    Olympic flag raised upside down in opening ceremony blunder

    An unapologetically French ceremony suffered one notable gaffe which was spotted by viewers

    Tom Morgan, SPORTS NEWS CORRESPONDENT
    26 July 2024 • 10:54pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/olympics/2024/07/26/TELEMMGLPICT000386931689_17220296992940_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqbcNLLcCtEp8W8ZY9Nicfb9HWvjQDIRowau35pXtTc98.jpeg?imwidth=680

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

    Robert Young
    8 HRS AGO
    The whole thing was embarrassing; didn't represent 99.999% of French people or culture; just woke trans nonsense.

    Stuart Tranter
    7 HRS AGO
    That was not the main issue; officials still trying to find out why the Albanian team barge appears to be on its way to Dover.

      2. I did. It was a shambles and barely a frog in sight in the famous faces on parade.

      3. I was watching a French horse win the King George instead. The horse has stringhalt (a neurological complaint which makes him lift one hind leg high in the air when he walks), but it didn't stop him cruising to victory.

  6. Battalions Overruled Their Commander—And Fought Their Way To Safety.

    Rather than waiting for rescue, the encircled Ukrainians fought their way out on Thursday. The rest of the 31st Mechanized Brigade, along with the nearby 47th Mechanized Brigade, apparently assisted the break-out.

    “With the help of coordinated actions of artillery, air reconnaissance and related forces, as well as under the control of officers on the ground, the guys from the 1st and 3rd Battalions were able to break out of the encirclement in full force,” Ukrainian analysis group Deep State reported.

    Still glossed over (they legged it) but a rare detailed report from the front.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/07/25/a-day-after-getting-surrounded-near-prohres-two-ukrainian-battalions-overruled-their-commander-and-fought-their-way-to-safety/

    1. What caused the encirclement of whole battalions? Was it a lack of battlefield information leading to a loss of control; incompetence of the higher command or Hitlerian style orders to stand and fight to the last man for no appreciable gain?

      An organised breakout to fight another day has military merit but if it was a rout ("legged it") then that is more bad news for the NATO warmongers. Perhaps Borisov will be recalled to pour more fuel on to the fire?

      Expect more pressure for mandatory conscription. A move in that direction could spell the end of Smarmer & Co.

  7. The mob thinks it rules Britain – and can impose its will on the rest of us

    However ‘just’ the cause, the UK must apply the law equally, making no excuses for wanton criminality

    CAMILLA TOMINEY ASSOCIATE EDITOR
    26 July 2024 • 4:21pm

    incident at Manchester airport this week and agree that it merits further investigation. The footage is disturbing. It shows a man, lying prone on the floor, having his head kicked and then seemingly stamped on by an armed police officer. The man’s mother looks on in distress as his brother is also forcibly restrained by police.

    What triggered this incident remains unclear. It has been claimed that the mother was struck in the face; that a female police officer had her nose broken; and that one of three officers needed hospital treatment following the encounter, having been “punched to the ground”.

    What is clear is that we need to know the full context. That is why we have processes in place to ensure justice is served – on all sides. The police officer has been removed from operational duties by Greater Manchester Police and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is now conducting a full independent investigation.

    Yet our tried and tested rules-based system is seemingly inadequate for the protesters (some wearing balaclavas) who subsequently gathered outside Rochdale Police Station seeking retribution. Addressing the 200-strong crowd with a megaphone, one man declared: “We can cause havoc, we can cause riots…. tomorrow, if we don’t get justice, these motherf—ers are going to get it.”

    Another local figure has called for all the police officers to be arrested – or threatened mass protests until they get their way.

    This is obviously problematic, for a number of reasons. As a democratic nation, we follow the rule of law, not mob rule. We don’t threaten civil unrest until our demands are met. Moreover, in this case, any threats of thuggery appear completely contrary to the family’s wishes.

    Although their lawyer, Akhmed Yakoob, has been unhelpfully stoking the situation by suggesting it was an “attempted assassination” and accusing police officers of “going around trying to kill people”, local MP Paul Waugh said they are “acutely aware” that there are “extremists of all sides who are keen to hijack this event and use it for their own ends. The family are not interested in that at all.”

    Sadly, though, we have seen this kind of “if-we-don’t-get–what-we-want-we’re-going-to-cause-trouble” response time and again in recent months. In February, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, broke with precedent to allow Labour to lodge a Gaza ceasefire amendment, largely because MPs had been on the receiving end of abusive and threatening behaviour.

    Earlier that month, Mike Freer, the former Tory MP for Finchley and Golders Green, announced he was stepping down after facing death threats and an arson attack on his constituency office. And a pro-Palestinian mob surrounded the family home of Tobias Ellwood, the former Tory MP for Bournemouth East, and branding him a “war criminal”.

    Numerous Labour MPs faced criticism after they voted for their party’s Gaza amendment in November, which stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. Since October 7 we have witnessed a growing trend of people thinking that established rules and procedures can be broken simply under threat of intimidation, harassment and worse.

    But it isn’t just anti-Israel protesters, who casually chant “from the river to the sea” on the streets of London, acting as though they are above the law. Climate activists have also been at it for years. Like the anti-police or pro-Palestinian protesters, they believe their cause is a “just” one. Thus, they operate under the false impression that they can cross the Rubicon from peaceful protest to criminality and get away with it.

    Fortunately, however, the law now appears to have caught up with the eco-extremists. Earlier this month, Roger Hallam, 58, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, was jailed for five years, and four others were sentenced to four years, after disrupting the M25 in November 2022, causing more than 50,000 hours of traffic delays, affecting the journeys of over 700,000 vehicles and costing the police £1 million.

    They were prosecuted under a new law of conspiracy intentionally to cause a public nuisance introduced by the last Tory government. Naturally, their supporters have been up in arms at what they perceive to be “disproportionate” terms, but it is only right that the law has been changed to stop righteous people thinking they can impose their will on everyone else through “direct action”.

    Lefties may complain; more than 1,000 people signed an open letter describing the jail terms handed to the activists as “one of the greatest injustices in a British court in modern history”. We’ve even had the mother of Cressida Gethin, a 22-year-old jailed for four years, moan that she can’t go to her brother’s wedding (play me the world’s smallest biodegradable violin), but the law has rightly reasserted its authority over the mob. Judge Christopher Hehir, who presided over that case, was perfectly clear: “I acknowledge that at least some of the concerns are shared by many, but the plain fact is that each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.”

    The definition of fanatic is “a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause”. While I wholeheartedly welcome considered campaigning on the streets of the UK – there is no place whatsoever for the kind of behaviour which seeks to wreak the maximum amount of disruption on the public, wantonly causes criminal damage to property, incites violence and advocates mob rule.

    Sadly, the tough justice that has been applied to Hallam and Co has not been meted out to others – which is neither fair nor acceptable. Why, for instance, was more not done to stop the scenes we witnessed during the election when, for instance, former Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth was bullied, harassed and intimidated as he campaigned in Leicester? At one point, the politician was chased down the street and forced to seek refuge in a vicarage by members of The Muslim Vote campaign, which last month warned: “This is just the beginning.” Beginning of what, exactly?

    Various exposés have revealed that the group supported unsuccessful candidates who spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, was accused of supporting intimidatory tactics online against candidates it opposed and denounced Muslims who canvassed for Labour as “parasites”. Sorry, but that is simply not the way we do democracy in this country.

    The marches, the eco-extremism, the election incidents, and now these anti-police protesters are threatening to cause “havoc” if they don’t get their way. We cannot let them. If the mob thinks it can win, it will continue. Then there is no law at all.

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

    Ma Wa
    14 HRS AGO
    A white policeman roughs up an ethnic minority person during arrest. Result: thousands of ethnic minorities on the streets protesting and rioting.
    An ethnic minority person stabs and nearly kills a white soldier. Result: zero protests.
    We can see who respects the rule of law and who believes in mob rule.

    John macleod
    6 HRS AGO
    Reply to Ma Wa
    The BBC has propagated and fueled anti-white, anti-British, pro-Muslim, and pro-left propaganda. Some would say it has even incited anarchy and violence. There should be a government inquiry to determine if the BBC is biased and fit for purpose, using these two cases among many others as evidence.

    Trying To Be Careful
    14 HRS AGO
    For several months Camilla, readers have filled these comments sections with their feedback on the Hamas marches, the riot in Harehills and many other ‘protests’ that have basically ambushed the Police with mob rule. The election had no debate about it, the whole problem brushed under the carpet. Nigel Farage doesn’t hold back when he states the huge offence caused to law abiding people who witness all of this.
    Farage goes further and correctly identifies a particular Middle Eastern group and their beliefs as the foundations for much of it.
    He has also warned us quite rightly, that sectarian politics is just one session of parliament away (5 years).

    1. Tominey, even when faced with the reality of Muslim intimidation, resorts to a euphemism and calls it the mob.

        1. Perish the thought that she might be visited by a baying mob accusing her of Islamophobia (= any criticism of any actions of any followers of the RoP). People are feeding the crocodile, in the belief that the ultimate conclusion of that parable won't apply to them.

      2. I am afraid she is another overpromoted journalist who has deceived herself into thinking that her career advancement is well merited.

  8. Steerpike
    Reform beat Tories among younger voters
    25 July 2024, 1:59pm

    These days when it rains for the Tories, it pours. Now it transpires that more voters under the age of 30 backed Nigel Farage’s Reform UK than the Conservatives this election – with experts convinced that recent years of economic instability is pushing younger voters away from the two largest parties. How curious…

    Over 35,000 voters were surveyed by YouGov – with the pollster finding that of those aged between 18 and 30 years old, 9.5 per cent backed the Farage-founded group with just 8 per cent turning to the Tories. While it’s more bad news for Rishi Sunak’s boys in blue, Reform can’t quite claim victory among Gen-Zers yet. During the election campaign, Farage claimed that there was a notable ‘awakening in a younger generation who have had enough of being dictated to’. But while Reform outperformed the Tories in this age group, it seems the, er, Green party actually beat both groups – with 18 per cent of the under-30s supporting the eco-zealots. Good heavens…

    Reform’s leader certainly saw rather striking social media success amongst Generation Z. Over the election campaign Farage received over 39 billion views on Twitter – with his Eminem-inspired videos a rather popular highlight. Meanwhile Sunak amassed just five billion views with the Tory party itself racking up a mere three billion video views – despite, as Mr S revealed in June, members trying to engage voters with some rather odd anti-Reform attack ads…

    Pre-election, ex-PM Sunak was warned that his party faced a ‘ticking time bomb’ with its support projected to plummet amongst younger voters. Now that has come to pass, potential leadership candidates will have to consider how to address their dwindling youth base – particularly after analysis this week found that one in six Tory voters are likely to die before the next election. Will a rightward shift woo first-time Reform supporters back, or should the Conservatives be looking towards the centre-ground to win over younger voters? That’s one for the next Tory leader to decide…

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

    Mark F. Nowland
    2 days ago
    The school my 14 year old daughter attends held a mock election just prior to the real one. Reform seemed significantly more popular than any other party. Interesting to note that there was none of the apparent 'shame' of being perceived as a Tory voter. Until the school banned Reform from standing, it seemed on course to cruise to victory.

    Sir Eldred Godson GCMG Mark F. Nowland
    2 days ago
    The school banned 'Reform' from standing! How on earth did they justify that? Count Binface might be offended?

    Mark F. Nowland Sir Eldred Godson GCMG
    a day ago edited
    Apparently it didn’t align with their values. But I’m not surprised – teachers are either vocally Socialist or silent.

    1. They held a mock general election amongst the pupils at Gresham's in 2010 when Cameron failed to defeat Brown outright and had to sell the soul of the Conservative Party to Cleggover's Lib Dems.

      Our Christo stood as the UKIP candidate and was soundly beaten but he generated a certain level of interest amongst the pupils in the question of whether the UK should stay in or leave the tyrannical EU.

      Six years later there was a referendum with the result that we should leave the EU – the result that the government, the opposition, the civil service and the MSM have done their very best to destroy.

      It would be encouraging if young people were waking up to the fact that the Conservatives are a spent force and the real right is not nearly as nasty as the left.

  9. Good morning all,

    Sunny start at Castle McPhee, wind in the West-Sou'-West, 15℃ with 20-21℃ forecast.

    I'll leave the Olympic woke-fest to others.

    While the policeman who played football with an assailant's head is under criminal investigation, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/26/manchester-airport-stamp-investigation/ ,
    Gorgeous George does the victim's dance,
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/26/george-galloway-family-men-involved-manchester-airport/ ,
    their lawyer is touched by Allah, or just plain touched,
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/26/akhmed-yakoob-lawyer-manchester-airport-police/
    And Lee Anderson thinks he should be decorated,
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/26/lee-anderson-id-give-medal-to-police-officer-filmed/
    We'll go again to Tim Davies to give his assessment.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUvX-AotpGw

    1. Yet an equestrian, trying to teach a horse how to behave, is brutally censored by the MSM. What's the difference?

        2. Only imams in madrasses can, with the approval of their deity (see Ogga's post above)). What our politicians (not we) are letting in, will destroy us, if we let it.

    2. And our politicians wish to import millions more people like this.

      Indigenous Britons do not want it. They were never asked if they wanted it.

      The new arrivals will, inevitably turn on their benefactors and take over as they have done in Lebanon and all the other places they have invaded.

      Why are the MSM and the PTB happy with this? Do they have a suicidal death wish? It is beyond my understanding.

      1. 390241+ up ticks,

        Morning R

        The odious politico / parties still find favour as the polling stations show us, once again.

      2. They believe their relativist fantasy, which rests of course on profound ignorance. They must trash their own culture to make it appear no better than the savages. They invent the “far right” to manufacture a false equivalence. It also acquits them of their own immorality. Because “we’re all the same”.
        The Marxist collectivist mindset is no mystery. It’s just a lust for power. I suppose once you’ve destroyed moral probity, power is more easily exercised.

        1. Does evil still exist?
          It's too large a subject for nttl, but there is a trend for violent crime to be attributed to mental illness. As any philosopher will explain, nothing on Earth is 100% evil nor 100% good, but I worry that the concept of evil is being erased by the left.

          1. When I trained at the local mental hospital, the subject of patients that we would describe as evil would crop up as we were chatting during coffee breaks.
            Even then, the hospital contained c. 1000 patients, so that's a lot of mental patients.
            It was noticeable that the same patients' names cropped up; possibly half a dozen or so. They were not even the most rabidly psychotic or violent, but most nurses picked up on an X factor that made these patients evil, rather than just disturbed.

          3. Evil can neither be explained away nor erased – but the PTB are making a jolly good attempt at obliterating awareness of it.

      3. I explained why they are doing this in a reply to your very same question yesterday, Rastus.

        2. However many times the question is answered it needs to be raised time and time again to draw attention to the sheer barbarity, stupidity, greed, and power lust.

      4. Of COURSE indigenous Brits were not asked. The PTB must obey orders, after all, and asking would just get in the way.

  11. Good morning, all. Patchy sky. Not raining. Builders on roof!

    Good to see the French raised an upside down Olympic flag…. Surrender?

          2. Mahomet was supposed to have ridden a winged horse? I wondered if that was the intended reference.

  12. 390241+ up ticks,

    Good question,

    Gerard Batten,

    The Climate Change Doomsday Cult is not a new phenomenon, its an old one playing out again.

    In the late 1490s Fra Girolamo Savonarola came to dominate the city of Florence. He preached the end of the world was nigh, & frightened the life out of many.

    He heaped up ‘bonfires of the vanities’, works of art, rare books, all that was beautiful was thrown on the fires. Even Botticelli was taken in & threw his own beautiful drawings into the inferno.

    Eventually the Pope had enough. Savonarolo was convicted of heresy & burnt at the stake in 1498. The world didn’t end in 1500.

    These Cults are anti human to the core & rely on the gullible & brainwashed.

    Eventually the Climate Change Cult will collapse too – but how much human damage will be done first?

    1. The 'Climate' nutters, whether it be a new ice age on the horizon or a boiling World followed by a biblical flood, have been at it for decades. With their predictions having been amended and and escalated in intensity with no appreciable signs of the World ending they have taken to stirring up WWIII. There is no one person who is capable of stopping those who would do humanity irreparable harm, only the people, en masse, can do that.

      1. Trump will ensure a negotiated peace over Ukraine. Zelensky know this, so is currently trying to open negotiations with Russia.

  13. Good morning all.
    8°C on the Yard Thermometer with a dry but overcast start with blue patches and not a lot of wind.

    Not a comfortable night, the rather nasty backache that caused me to cut short my trip last week has returned.

      1. The same skills and dedication still exist. Witness the restoration of Windsor Castle after the fire and Notre Dame in Paris. Plus we now have technologies that enable us to build even more wonderous things. You may not like the aesthetic but that is beside the point.

        1. Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Destroyed by Stalin, rebuilt from just 1995 to 2000. All this, including the interior took that short a time to recreate, thanks to modern machinery and especially computers. It would not have been possible by traditional technology.
          Destruction by Stalin
          https://cdni.rbth.com/rbthmedia/images/2019.12/original/5de7abd485600a4f8833538a.jpg
          Full Restoration
          https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/cathedral-christ-saviour-moscow-russia-cathedral-christ-saviour-moscow-russia-131373189.jpg
          Interior
          https://image.shutterstock.com/shutterstock/photos/73792591/display_1500/stock-photo-carpet-strip-to-altar-inside-cathedral-of-christ-the-saviour-in-moscow-russia-73792591.jpg

          3. What is built into the future depends on those pulling the strings. Unless we can stop them, that will be the globalists under the Big Bankers and corporations. Look across the Atlantic…

          4. Well that is precisely why we need to support people like Trump, Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage etc.

      1. Yes, they laboured for the greater glory. The dome of St Peter’s was Michelangelo’s final commission, before he died aged 89. As bizarre as it might seem, he was introspective and worrying that he’d not lived well. Wasn’t Parsifal Wagner’s final work, for much the same reason though perhaps justified in his case?

        1. It is telling that almost all are great achievements are not to man but to spirituality. I use that term deliberately because it is a universal phenomena and not all religions build to 'The Glory of God' but all the same they all build to something greater than them. Whether it is the great Borobudur Temple, Temple of Abu Simbel, the Hagia Sophia, or St Peters. And it is not just the buildings, it is all the arts, all the most magnificent and beautiful objects are dedicated to something higher than man.
          I believe that in order to save our selves, our country, we have to return to our past, not in nostalgia but to understand what we have lost and what we need to revive. For me that is coded, for want of a term, in the song Jerusalem, and all it invokes about our past, our lost faith, Jesus Christ and, most of all our courage as the people of this land. This is our land and I for one, feel firmly rooted in it. No matter where I have been, what I have experienced. All I have learnt by living abroad is how lucky we are, how privileged, that we are the inheritors of the greatest civilization on earth. And we all need to stand up and be counted for it. Simply put, no matter what, I have always and ever will be English and loyal to my country and the King.

          1. Hear, hear Johnathan. Except for the King, who is a buffoon in thrall to the WEF and all its evil works.

          2. No. You have to accept the King because if you don’t, constitutionally you reject the people. That is how it works. This is a movie from the war but go to 20 min. in to 23 min. It explains succinctly the role of the King, the kings role has not changed since this film was made.
            I would say this is one of the things that we need to revive, An understanding of our Constitution because, even amongst most adults our understanding of it is absolutely woeful and it is, as a result, corrosive to our well being. Our Constitution grew up with our country, it is organic, it is tied to our evolution as a people, it was born with us over 1000 years ago and grew up with us. It is not something artificial like the American Constitution but part and parcel of who we are. That we lack understanding of it is like amnesia, we can function but we don’t understand why we function. Our present situation is because we have strayed and lost the Constitution which provides meaning to who we are as the English People.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SOvr9fLHUM&t=1280s

          3. The king is just the number one amongst the whole population. Check out the Constitution.

          5. True but as 1st citizen he his certainly not up to his Mother’s exacting standards and he doesn’t seem to have inherited anything of great note from his Father. Shades of Edward VIII it seems – consorts with the enemy.

  15. I have already seen twice this morning the phrase "truly sorry" – when some outfit, caught out in negligent behaviour, makes a phony "apology".

    Truly, a cliché for our time.

      1. One was the Envy of the World – "truly sorry" for allowing a person waiting in A&E to die without any medical care.

    4. Good morning Mr T and everyone.
      Absolutely! In the film version of 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', there was a character called Truly Scrumptious. IIRC.

  16. Morning, all Y'all.
    Sun's shining, but it's raining. Oh, well.
    Edit: But a magnificent rainbow has appeared! Wonderful!

  18. Hello everyone. Quote of the day from Fraser Myers at Sp!ked:

    "Propagandists who self-identify as journalists have been busy disappearing Harris’s record".

      1. No, they can lie and spin as much as they like. There's always been a record of everything somewhere. Even before the days of t'Internet.

        1. ‘When their mouths are moving” “if it doesn’t make sense it’s not true”…. couple of Judge Judy moments :-DD We seem to have had t’interweb around forever…

    1. 🙄

      Somewhat chimes with the quote in my comment below.

      We are all journalists now!

    2. Thanks, Grizzly. Big reduction in numbers here this year. I believe eggs require just the correct amount of moisture to hatch, was quite dry early Spring. Not even any peacocks. Nor Orange Tips. No moths (except clothes one, caught yesterday). Interesting how moths only take in pollen and evacuate through their chests! Is that true? What d'you reckon the reason/s could be for greatly reduced numbers?

        1. A certain person/gardener would pay a price for using pesticides, Ndovu 😀 Yes I think weather, been a notably dry Spring.

          2. It was cold, but we often have a drizzle here, absent this year. Everything has been very green for a few years, that’s CO2 for you, greater crop yields many places.

  20. Apropos shorter days, here in The Borders:

    Sunset on Saturday 21:39
    Sunrise on Sunday 05:11

    3. Days are still 24 hours long

      The only variation will be on New Years Eve of a centennial, when the first two digits are divisible by 4.

      You are all on about 'daylight hours, something completely different

    4. Thanks SirJasper. I tend to go with the natural light if I can, similarly to my dog. As with the blackbird (biggest eye) we go with him. As humans, we're affected by daylight in similar fashion to other living creatures. I believe some people living more Northerly have those natural daylight lamps to help them get through winter, don't know if they work or not. Apparently red lamps are best to aid sleep, just looked that up:-)

      1. Hi, Kate, please explain a bit more about the Blackbird (biggest eye)) or a link if it’s too much to write.

        1. Sorry no link…however, I seem to remember reading the blackbird has the biggest eye of all birds relative to it’s body size. Therefore, it is the first to wake and start singing, which can give it an edge over other birds. The amount of available light affects all living species and their well-being, Nordic countries seemingly having more depression/alcholism in winter but apparently not as much in summer. Alcohol (too much, but what is too much) can also affect sleep, although many swear by a nightcap – my grandmother would have a tot of brandy with her night-time milk:-) Apparently different coloured bulbs in lamps can be beneficial for getting babies to sleep, but I’d have thought a night-time feed and burping might be the trick:-D

          1. Thank you Kate. I would hear the blackbird singing in the Dawn Chorus,. as early as 03:50, earlier in the year. Yes, I like my night-time snifter of Tamnavulin and water (in Gaelic a wee diorch and doris).

          2. I remember you mentioning that…going to disappear for a while catch up on Sumo…Navona very hot this year 😒 see you later 🐊

      2. We have sun-lights, and they do seem to make one more cheerful in the winter gloom. You need to position them so you can see the lamp, you don't have to stare into it – so it can be part of the room's illumination.

        1. Sound a good idea to me…going to look them up, not in Scotland at the moment but can be a bit ‘dreek’ (I think that’s the term?) thanks for tip:-)

  21. This is today. Wish I could go. But good luck to all, Hope it is peaceful and not ruined by the left. No doubt you can find live feeds on You Tube. I read that vile Jeremy Corbin and his leftist thugs are going to demonstrate against it. Jordan Peterson said he would turn up if his schedule allowed it. That would be pretty cool.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XojsMc1YJHQ

    1. Go for it, the far left scum are already in power.
      They get there by robbing people who Work and pass it on to the Woke.

    2. Think it's mid-day start? I have other commitments so possibly won't catch it. Will be looking out for nottler comments this evening….

  22. Morning all 🙂😊
    Quite a bright start oop naarth rain overnight.
    The 'government' are suggesting that people should keep their curtains closed for two days during the coming 'Glow ball warming' attack.
    An early display of their joint idiotic behaviour.
    That means people will have to keep their lights on (Elf 'n' safety) incase they trip over and endup in hostpital.
    Another riddle of political contradiction.

    1. Like enforcing a reduction in the sugar content of jam.
      Which now, once opened, has to be kept in the fridge; which means we need bigger fridges; which use up more electricity ….

    1. Delighted to have not seen any of this bollox. Pity they weren't struck by lightning.

      2. I watched it, with an eye on the DT's commentary.
        My favourite comment – "It's all gone a bit Dunkirk" 😄

      1. This month’s message, after consistently warning of prevalent evil, is surprisingly upbeat.
        Medjugorje Message, July 25, 2024
        “My dear children, with joy I have chosen you and am leading you, because in you, little children, I see people of faith, hope and prayer. May you, little children, be led by the pride that you are mine, and I am leading you to Him, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. And I am with you so that peace may win in you and around you, because it is with this intention God has sent me to you. Thank you for having responded to my call. ”

          4. 🤣 Hertslass mentioned that I’d somehow come up in conversation. Luckily, I’ve spent many years sticking to a strict policy of not reading my reviews, so no harm done…

          5. It was nothing bad, just mentioning you would have attended the rally if you’d been in the country and how well you sang.

  24. By the way, the other "truly sorry" was Sainsbury's – apologising for using the truly devastating, hateful and aggressive words "knee grow" to describe shorts which could be lengthened. I was so overwhelmed that I had to lie down for several hours. In fact, I would have gone to see a GP – if it wasn't Saturday and there aren't any, anyway…

    1. They weren't shorts, they were trousers with reinforced knee and grow hem. The advert should have put a comma in between 'knee' and 'grow'.

          3. They bring to mind the graphics on the signs when crossing the Dutch polders.

          8. I detest 'reaching out'. Up there along with 'convinced' instead of 'persuaded'. You never hear 'persuaded' used by anyone under sixty. Oh, there's 'could I get' instead of 'may I have'. There are many others.

      4. They would still have found fault with knee, grow.
        It would probably be seen as whitey celebrating the way that slave families were separated.

    2. How in heck can you have shorts 'which could be lengthened'…are these the full length trousers with a zip used to convert to shorts? I'll get me coat………..

        1. You didn’t..:-D and even if you had…I’ve been there done that, and more than once :-DDD

  26. Good Moaning.
    I will just remark that MB, telly viewer extraordinaire, switched it off and started READING!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/has-the-opening-ceremony-finished-yet/#comments-container

    Has the opening ceremony finished yet?

    27 July 2024, 8:33am

    "The 2012 British opening ceremony has sadly become a shorthand for nostalgic Remainy twee. But la grande débâcle in Paris last night brought back with a jolt how magnificent it was.

    The creators of Paris’s opening ceremony were faced with a challenge: how to convey, in capsule form, the history and culture of France, a comparatively small nation that has provided such riches over the centuries – transcendent beauty, epoch-defining philosophy, a motor of artistic innovation and sophistication. They decided to go for something else entirely.

    A peculiar introduction to the BBC coverage from actor Tom Hiddleston was an early warning sign that something was askew. Hiddleston breathlessly told us, in that very specific sick-in-the-mouth reflux register of 21st century sentimentality, that the Olympics were: ‘Watching someone’s dreams come true. Seeing them light up the world and feeling proud of them, together. So prepare for moments that will light up your eyes, and fill up your heart.’ Who writes this sub-Edwardian yoghurt-pot-blurb drivel? How do they live with themselves?

    We learnt that, unlike previous ceremonies, the host city itself would be the stage. We soon realised why every previous opening ceremony had been conducted inside the arena. Because it rained – mon Dieu, did it pleuvait.

    The sheer variety, pace and brevity of each section of the 2012 event contrasted with what began, very slowly, to unfold. This was bloated, each separate thin section swiftly outstaying its welcome. It went on, and on, and on. You were a different person with different hopes, beliefs, when it started. You could wander off, get married, get divorced, spend eleven years in prison, and emerge to find it still going on.

    The scattergun array of the offering was bewildering. For some reason we were served forgotten noughties American pop star Lady Gaga – shocking if you’re 14 in 2008, but that makes you 30 now. There was a headless Marie Antoinette, a piano inexplicably set alight, and – inevitably – a bevy of slaying and sashaying drag queens and ‘non-binaries’, performing a sassy vogue parody of The Last Supper. This is the kind of phoney rebellion that was already embarrassing on stage at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in 1994, but at least was confined safely to bad gay pubs.

    This maybe makes it sound quite exciting. But it’s important to get across the sheer slowness and dullness of it all. And there was so much dancing, another aspect of corporate-sanctioned 21st century culture. There must be endless choreography. Everyone must dance, at all times, everywhere.

    The most tedious part of the ceremony is the arrival of the athletes – the ‘ooh look is that Tom Daley’ section. So naturally that part became grotesquely extended, with the competitors processing endlessly down the Seine in small boats. Endless boats, endless floats. A feeling of despair. How can there be this many countries?

    This was followed by the singing of our secular hymn, John Lennon’s horrible ‘Imagine’. ‘Imagine there’s no countries’ is a bold lyric when you’ve just bored the world to death by enumerating every single one with excruciating tediousness.

    Spectacle is best kept short and sharp. I’m sure the mechanical silver horse riding up the Seine was a marvel but by that time my spectacle-appreciating neurons were wiped out. I think I heard a pleasantly sung version of ‘La Marseillaise’ at one point too, drowned in a tide of goo. The thing climaxed with Celine Dion and an impressive hot air balloon, but by that point they could’ve wheeled on genuine extraterrestrials or de Gaulle back from the dead and I’d have been begging it to just stop.

    It was all very decadent, yes, but not in the way it thinks it was. Because this wasn’t French at all, but a display of American cultural imperialism, the goading and the power display of wokeness, establishing the new sacred – transgenderism, multiculturalism – and repudiating and mocking the old. Daring you to object. Director Thomas Jolly apparently said beforehand of his opus, ‘I wanted everyone to feel represented’. This is a telling remark. Because ‘everyone’ doesn’t actually mean everyone, it means only the narcissistic elements of newly sacralised minorities. Nobody else exists.

    Like all of this culture, it was contemptuous, shambolic (the Olympic flag was flown upside down) and pompous. ‘This is France!’ Macron tweeted during it, handing Marine le Pen material for years."

          4. Good grief, anne. Sweater looks huge, perhaps it’s one of those sweater dresses – remember those?

          5. I wore sweater dresses.
            When the boys were small, I had two; wash one and wear one.
            Without thing to sound pathetic, that was all we could afford when only MB was working.
            There were not convenient part time jobs for young mothers in those days.

          6. Very similar, anne – sloppy joe/s, jeans. Also had a couple of sweater dresses, they were a cotton mix and quite baggy :-D. Same position workwise..and no nurseries or playgroups.

    2. That is a brilliantly-written article by Gareth Roberts. Even Julie Raven (aka Burchill) gives a compliment BTL.

    3. The glorious canadian broadcasting company obviously watched a very different ceremony, they were overwhelmed by the splendour and historical significance of the event.
      The evening news featured wall to wall repeats of the Quebecwarrbler screeching away plus as a bonus, screaming followers saying how wonderful she was.

      Never was there a better time to slip away into the spare room and listen to real music.

      mummy, mummy is it over yet?

    4. At least it will be memorable – but for the wrong reaasons.
      Glad I watched YouTube instead.


  29. Dame Kelly Holmes: ‘I don’t like ageing. I’m someone who used to have a six pack’
    The Olympic runner opens up about her identity post-retirement and how dinners have gone from chicken breasts to curries with gin and tonic
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/fitness/running/kelly-holmes-interview/

    Why did she decide to deface her body with those horrible ink drawings etched into her skin? Some call these daubs tattoos – I call them body graffiti and like much graffiti it is sometimes displayed in very insalubrious places.

    (Many of the BTL comments make the same point)

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8eacfbada3b3c5dfe1a395db981d3a50e3f3421ab7a7b5474a6d5b9d9e3778c2.png

    If she doesn't like aging then what will she make of the daubs as her skin becomes flabbier and flabbier and more and more wrinkled?

      1. I know a few people with at least one tattoo, they all seem to fade somewhat with time (tattoos that is..)

          1. They do that, too. Tattoos seemed to be 'the fashion' several years ago – saw a girl with bare legs almost all tattoo'ed. Then seemed to go out of favour (perhaps parlours closed during lockdowns), now made their return.

        1. My niece is onto that; she has the laser machine and a little 'surgery'.
          Her clients mostly treat their skin like parchment. Scrape (laser) off the tattoo and replace it with another one.

  30. Christianity was mocked and profaned in the Olympics opening ceremony in Paris last night.

    It says much of the current state of France – and indeed the whole of Western culture – that they did not dare mock Mohammed.

    We have already capitulated to Islam – when we surrender unconditionally we shall not be offered any terms.

    1. Surely you don't expect much from the French. Secularist/atheistic regime. French ideas are the source of much of the Wests problems.

        2. I'm thinking more of their dreadful philosophical tradition. Pernicious, poisonous malicious clap trap. The source of Woke and most human misery inflicting us today.

          2. Yes Sue. Had to read them along with Sartre. Merleau-Ponty and others. Foucault is the worst of the bunch.

    2. Everything will be lost, everything. Our freedoms, property rights, everything.

  31. In the bad old days, when we were so cruel and judgemental, this chap would have been placed in an institution years before, for both his own safety and that of the public.

    "A paedophile who raped a girl then tried to murder a boy he feared would expose his crimes by throwing him off a 100ft clifftop in Brighton has been jailed for life.

    Anthony Stocks was told he would spend at least 19 years in jail for trying to kill the 10-year-old boy at Ovingdean, Sussex, and launching attacks on the girl over a three-year period……..

    ……. "Judge Daly said if an adult assaulted a young girl and then pushed a boy off a cliff, the resulting danger assessment would “be obvious”.

    However, he said “he must be satisfied he poses a risk of serious harm to the public”.

    He said: “You have reached the age of 54 without committing other offences of a similar nature, you have significant disabilities of your own.

    “However, your total failure to accept responsibility for what you’ve done together with your ongoing obsession with a child gives me grave concerns.

    “Your inability to recognise what you’ve done leads me to believe that you are even more dangerous.

    “There is a significant risk to members of the public, particularly to young girls. I am quite sure if you had not been prevented your abuse of [the girl] would have continued.

    “The criteria is made and made a finding that you are dangerous.”

    Turning to mitigation, Judge Daly took into account that Stocks had a low IQ and learning difficulties as well as a diagnosis of depressive disorder.

    “You had a depraved background,” the judge said. “You suffered emotional abuse. You are assessed as being extremely vulnerable to exploitation in prison.

    “You are regarded as being a vulnerable adult and have had suicidal thoughts.” "

      1. Yup.
        There was a muddled overlap between mental illness (mental hospital) and mental handicap (basically put 'em away for their own safety).
        At Severalls, we had patients who should have been in Turner Village or Essex Hall; and vice versa.
        I suspect it depended on where space was available at the time.

    2. Hope it is at least 19 years, anne. Life doesn't actually mean life any more, or so I've read.

        1. There’s always a chance of that, or someone else acting on it, witness Epstein. More to come on that story I reckon.

    1. I likely won't catch the start, or possibly any other part due to other (fambly) commitments, so I hope supporting nottlers will be giving their take on things. Thanks in advance to those, Kate :-))))

          1. Ashesthandust. The lady who sings, and has a cat avatar. She went on some of the anti lockdown marches and reported back. She’s currently in Argentina, but pops in here from time to time. Ask Phizzee to show you a photo. She’s magnificent!

          4. I took that pic. We had a great night. Can't remember what we ate but i do remember walking Katie to her hotel serenading me all the way with a rendition of O mio caro babbino. Magical.

            Another night we had finished with the steak restaurant and were drinking cocktails when again she broke into song. People came up and congratulated her on her wonderful voice.

            I think she likes showing off !

          8. I know her, have exchanged msgs – thanks Ndovu…had wondered why she wasn’t on here (she may have mentioned it and I forgot). Will try to remember to ask Phizee for photo. She’s a lovely person in her nature 🙂

          9. Annie posted the pic of when i took Katie out to dinner at my favourite restaurant. Now sadly closed.

          10. Thanks. Sorry to read…a number closed during/following lockdown :-(( hope you found an alternative.

          11. They were doing well. Quite a loyal following but they wanted to retire. Shame really as it was the best place to eat by far.
            I bought up most of the artwork they had in the restaurant. Doubled in value now as they let me have it cheap.

          12. Brilliant. I follow a number of Instagram a/c (Japanese woodblock prints), had many other suggestions of which prices rocketed during lockdowns. Think more down to earth now. I’m a fool for art and anything connected with it 😀

      2. Unfortunately i have to be in Southampton. Can i just say this – people are vile. I cannot tell you how vile some people are.

        1. I’ve known a few, then again too few to mention…however, things seem worse now and I think it’s the internet. Anyone with offspring should keep a close eye on their online activity.

      3. Depends what you mean by achieve, Rastus. It will be extensively filmed and individuals identified, for one. It will have a lot of support from the silent majority, who are possibly unlikely to go on any march or comment online. Good luck to Tommy Robinson, say I. His recent reports on schools very depressing indeed.

        1. Hopefully it will embolden people who hold normal views that they aren't, in fact, alone!

    3. Trafalgar Sq. today: what is it about?

      After six minutes of Cockney exposition, I am none the wiser!

      A dance routine by the Kray Twins, perhaps?

    1. Four, no less, counter demonstrations.. namely; Commies, Lefties, Socialists and Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar Left National Socialists.

      If any those fcukers seize power off Starmer then kiss goodbye to free speech.
      Already, Bridget Phillipson has revealed Labour has pulled the plug on the law designed to protect academics from being no-platformed or forced out over their views.

  34. Toothpaste to warn of cancer symptoms in new NHS drive. 27 July 2024.

    Toothpaste tubes will carry symptoms of cancer, in a bid to get more people to seek help earlier.

    A partnership between the NHS and Asda will provide advice which warns of the signs of mouth cancer, and encourages people to contact their GP or dentist.

    More Doom and Gloom. The NHS should focus its attention on treating patients.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/27/toothpaste-to-warn-of-cancer-symptoms-in-new-nhs-drive/

    1. Dentists are trained to spot mouth cancer. If you visit regularly they would spot it. The NHS management are just trying to look busy.

  35. The ascent of K Harris to nominee of the Democrat cabal is attracting a lot of incoming and on-target fire.

    Wayne Dunlap has a few on his X timeline.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4f696a5379714134a62347364721b2637e12634c43e509d686f81d48b3c90ddb.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ba3255ad6cd7c5e407c6b7dc41cb8acc57b107e1fa88558d9cdfad0219bf68ff.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d7351bac555041becfc827578569e980ff294ed8d4589c35e9625a459659ecb7.png

    The USA Education apparatus appears to be on a par with the UK's. And now, Smarmer and his coterie want to begin dismantling one of the UK's education successes, the private schools. Following that success will be the eradication of the Grammars and Highs. Basic mis-education is the aim of the NWO/Globalist cabal.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/edd5b8e094088c3ef9a2ba4a5b0024d46e1b12e3fac8576bc60ba06d7a86c24b.png

    1. I seem to recall we have a Department FOR Education. I rather think they are actually against it.

  36. Tethered bottle caps

    SIR – “Tethered” bottle caps, discussed by Isabel Oakeshott (Comment, July 26), make the proper closure of large bottles impossible. With fizzy drinks, this results in the contents quickly going flat.

    Consequently, in our house, such caps are forcibly removed – not too difficult, and kitchen scissors are always available – as one thing I refuse to tolerate under any circumstances is flat tonic in my evening G&T.

    Sally Gibbons
    London SW19

    Oh dear. Poor Sally. Modern life getting a bit too much for you? Why not buy your tonic in 150ml cans?

    1. As i buy both my ginger ale and tonic. Cans crushed as they go into the recycling.

    2. That's what we do. More expensive than buying a large bottle, but cheaper in the long run as half of the tonic in the bottle gets thrown away as it goes flat.

      1. Same here. It's different if you are catering a party. Then the larger bottles are more likely to get used.

      2. Rather sadly, I actually go to Sainsbury to buy smaller bottles of lemonade.
        Those 2 litre (?) tanks just go flat.
        It is difficult to find any other size.

    3. Tethered bottle caps – another EU directive still on the books and which UK companies are adopting, whether they trade abroad or not.

  37. Afternoon All
    Last night I was dragged with some reluctance to an "Elvis*" night at a local indian restaurant by my hareem (three lady friends)
    £35 for a 5 course meal and the show + drinkies of course, excellent value
    My trepidations were misplaced it was an absolutely cracking night out!!
    From reading the comments the bonus of avoiding the Olympic fiasco adds to my pleasure!!
    * Yes he was an Indian Elvis and bloody good he was too many sighs from the ladies in part two with the tight leathers!!

  38. Labour has just surrendered to the enemies of free speech

    Our Freedom of Speech Act defended heterodox academics and students – but the Education Secretary is abandoning this law

    CLAIRE COUTINHO • 26 July 2024 • 6:17pm

    We are three weeks into a Labour Government, and yet another dire decision has been slipped out without scrutiny. In this case, the defence of free speech. The new Education Secretary has decided to stop the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act dead in its tracks in order to consider its repeal.

    Unless you're an avid campaigner in this area, you would barely have noticed. It was announced at the end of a written statement tucked away on the Parliament website. There was no debate in the chamber, no opportunity for scrutiny from MPs, no press release. I suppose that's quite fitting considering the matter in hand.

    I was the minister who delivered this legislation, which protects the free speech of academics and students in our universities. Labour fought us every step of the way. They were more concerned about the workload of university administrators than the needs of students and academics whose free speech had been curtailed – speaking events had been cancelled, placements at universities had been withdrawn, and in the very worst cases, careers had been ruined.

    For what reason? Because they had shared views which were not hateful, nor illegal, but merely controversial. [Controversial? Normal not so long ago.]

    This shouldn't surprise us. The kind of world the radical Left want is one where no debate is allowed. Let's look at recent history. If you questioned whether vulnerable women's spaces should be protected, they called you a bigot. If you questioned whether it was fair to impose the Ulez tax on those with the lowest incomes, they called you a flat-earther. If you questioned whether excessive lockdowns harmed the mental health of our children, you were a granny killer.

    Labour cannot hide from who they are – a party of people so wrapped up in the politics of student unions that rather than debate an issue, their instinct is to shut down the other side.

    Our Freedom of Speech Act held universities accountable for the state of free speech on campus and gave academics, students and speakers the right to go to court if their rights were wrongly infringed. It created a new free speech director with a legal duty to protect free speech and investigate cases of no-platforming at universities.

    During the passage of the Act, I was horrified to hear the stories of those who had fallen foul of cancel culture and self-censorship on campus. One group of mathematicians were being pressured into "decolonising" their curriculum by suppressing the work of "white mathematicians" and elevating that of "non-white mathematicians". The message I heard from them was one I heard countless times: "We are fearful of speaking out because of the potential for a backlash that could put our jobs at risk."

    The truth is that Labour politicians are in denial about the scale of this issue, and they don't think free speech is worth protecting. This week the Education Secretary told the BBC that the culture wars on campus "end here". But the culture wars are not being waged by those who want a free debate on divisive ideology. They are being waged by radical groups of activists on the Left who believe their own sense of self-righteousness trumps the right of other people to disagree. It takes an eye-watering amount of delusion to accuse people of starting culture wars, when it is those people who are holding the line of mainstream opinion.

    This is the greatest risk that Labour poses. They want to push an incredibly radical agenda, but they also want to do that without debate. One of the fundamental reasons I'm a Conservative is that I believe in our right to ask difficult questions and to say difficult things.

    The Left's instincts are what led to vulnerable children being put at risk because of the demands of activist groups like Stonewall. It will lead to the rewriting of our rich history, and if not stopped it will lead to an ideological approach to net zero that will leave our nation poorer. If we do not stand up for our right to ask questions, I shudder to think where Labour will take us next.

    Claire Coutinho is the shadow energy secretary and Conservative MP for East Surrey

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/26/labour-has-just-surrendered-to-the-enemies-of-free-speech/

    1. Nice to see our flags in prominence for a change.

      I can't get there but i did send Tommy some money.

    1. Met Police: Officers will ‘intervene decisively’ if people break protest rules. 27 July 2024

      Chief Superintendent Colin Wingrove, who is in charge of policing the protests, warned that officers will “intervene decisively” to deal with protesters who break the strict conditions about when and where they are allowed to demonstrate.

      He said: “Our first priority is to keep the peace to ensure that those exercising their right to lawful protest can do so safely.

      “We have proactively used our powers under the Public Order Act to manage the timings and routes of marches and assemblies, ensuring that the groups are kept apart.

      That would be the white protesters then?

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/27/tommy-robinson-latest-protest-london-uniting-the-kingdom/

      2. Yes and Only the the white English speaking people protesting in their own country against the deliberate decimation of its culture, traditions social structure and ancient established rights being eroded by the Dopey Wokies including those who believe they are correct in their domination of other people's rights to express their feelings and opinions.

      3. Are they still running the Hamas demos every Saturday as well?

        It looks like a good turnout for Tommy – ordinary people, peaceful protesters.

      4. "Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said the protest would be “the biggest patriotic rally the UK has ever seen”. "

        Same report………." Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, opened his address to the supporters by asking them to “put your hands in the air” "

        "A sea of Union Jack flags greeted the pair and Mr Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, claimed on Twitter that there were “100,000 patriots” present."

        Why do they feel they have to keep emphasising his real name?

        1. Double-barrelled, so he appears to be a middle-class man faking working-class credentials?

      5. 390241+ up ticks,

        Afternoon AS,

        It is a fact that if an indigenous person has a period of thought prayer outside an abortion clinic they will be lifted, but if you block one of whatshisnames highways with rhetorical speak, in a bike rack stance it is carry on regardless, definitely NOT pick up your mat and walk.

      7. Thn get on with kettling and diverting the Lefty fascists. They're only there to cause trouble.

      8. Bring a fascist “Palestinian” flag and you will be OK! You know it, I know it, zplod knows it, Slammers know it.

    2. Met Police: Officers will ‘intervene decisively’ if people break protest rules. 27 July 2024

      Chief Superintendent Colin Wingrove, who is in charge of policing the protests, warned that officers will “intervene decisively” to deal with protesters who break the strict conditions about when and where they are allowed to demonstrate.

      He said: “Our first priority is to keep the peace to ensure that those exercising their right to lawful protest can do so safely.

      “We have proactively used our powers under the Public Order Act to manage the timings and routes of marches and assemblies, ensuring that the groups are kept apart.

      That would be the white protesters then?

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/27/tommy-robinson-latest-protest-london-uniting-the-kingdom/

  43. Didn't take long. Millipede has already coughed to electricity bills going up in Autumn and not down. Since he was the only person in the world who maintained they would, that's hardly earth shattering news. Also £300 not coming off your electric bill anytime soon due to the wondrous free for all green revolution; it'll "take time" before that can happen. Presumably at least 5-years….

    Liebour lying like a cheap Japanese watch. I'm shocked, I tell yer. Shocked.

      1. Hooda indeed. Didn't see that coming. The refreshing thing is that no one ever believed it; at least the vast majority didn't. The honeymoon isn't so much over as it never even began.

    2. Talking of cheap Japanese watches I had a cheap Casio digital watch for many years – it was accurate enough to be used for navigastion in conjunction with my sextant as it gained just ½ second a day and I could pick up a Greenwich time signal on BBC World Service on Short Wave in the middle of the Atlantic. When I reached Barbados having sailed from Tenerife in 1984 my DR position from my sextant sights was within ¼ mile of my verified position.

      I now have a rather more expensive Seiko which is no more accurate than the old Casio was.

      2. Yes, good point Rastus. The alleged inaccuracy of Japanese technology is an old mistruth, although very funny.

    3. There's talk of electricity going up by around 8p.

      That's the level of subsidy his windmills will need to pay the appalling ROCs.

    4. I've got rid of my electric cooker and replaced it with Calor gas (for when the solid fuel cooker isn't lit) and my water will be heated by oil if it's too warm to run the Rayburn. I experienced the '70s and we're in a worse place this time. I've always had a good stock of candles, oil lamps with paraffin, wind up torches and lanterns. After all, I live in the country.

      1. h yes, the 70s. A lot of us were there. It is worse, because nowadays we’ve got mad zealots running the show.

        1. So many people don’t learn from experience, alas! There isn’t much one can do about people who don’t have the experience except, perhaps, hope they will listen to people who do.

          1. Too right. You have to have experienced something in order to get wise about it and up until then you should be looking at old heads for guidance. When I think 70s I think energy crisis. Seems we are heading back that way the way things are going.

          2. Petrol rationing – I was travelling up and down to Hull and getting fuel was a nightmare. Then there were the strikes, the power cuts, shops closed because the tills didn’t work (it would be even worse now as theft would be out of control and the assistants couldn’t add up and give change anyway).

      2. h yes, the 70s. A lot of us were there. It is worse, because nowadays we’ve got mad zealots running the show.

    1. The Left have just kicked off intentionally trying to cause trouble. It really is time the fascist Left were put down, permanently.

    3. Amazing. Wish I could have been there. Well done everyone who made it, and THANK YOU

  47. The Left now has no opposition to its culture war against Britain

    Woke warriors and control freaks appear emboldened to shut down debate and trash our history

    SIMON HEFFER • 27 July 2024 • 1:05pm

    London's Albert Memorial was raised in 1872, by public subscription. A century of neglect necessitated a full restoration in the late 1990s, including re-gilding the statue of Prince Albert. The stonework, with its many representations of arts, sciences and the rest of the world, was also restored. At last one could see what a fine tribute it was to a man who had valued learning and progress above all else; and what a statement of an age when Britain was the world's principal power.

    The memorial is now, like rather too much of our heritage, considered "offensive". Or so said a blog (now removed) on the website of the Royal Parks, in which a culture warrior observed that "representation of certain continents draws on racial stereotypes that are now considered offensive".

    Part of what aggrieved the blogger was a statue of a white woman reading a book to a black man – something happening all over Africa then, as missionaries did God's work by helping to bring Christianity to the continent. But, as the blogger added, "colonialism often relied on the oppression and exploitation of people, resources and cultures". The Anglican communion today has 43 million members in sub-Saharan Africa, 35 million more than in 1970. Is that evidence of oppression and exploitation?

    The great lie about the culture wars is that the Right started them. It didn't. It lacked the requisite intolerance to do so. The cult of virtue-signalling, whereby earnest liberals curry favour with their co-religionists by seeking people and things to denounce, is rooted in Orwellian bullying by the Left. Its great project has been to create a nation of self-hating Britons, the hatred fed by disapproval of almost anything done by this country before the Blair administration came to power in 1997 (and one senses, given the Left's detestation of Sir Tony himself, that that date is moveable).

    Thus Mr Gladstone, one of the greatest leaders in our history and a titular Liberal, is detested because his family owned slaves. Sir Winston Churchill is detested because he believed in the British Empire. Edward Colston, a slave trader, is obviously detested, his having given in today's money the best part of £15 million to philanthropic causes in Bristol rewarded in 2020 by his statue being chucked by militant Leftists into the city's harbour. There has been much re-naming of places and institutions founded in Colston's memory and with his money.

    The anger in the culture wars is not about present-day injustices, not least because most people in Britain know that they live in a genuinely tolerant and equal society [ really? ], and only a madman would today condone awful practices such as slavery. But those who support the Maoist or Leninist ideals of class war ruthlessly harness slights against various groups, even anachronistically, to their cause, and few complain.

    The unlamented Conservative-led administration of 2010-24 was pitiful at facing down the culture warriors, allowing their bigotry and control freakery to take root. It avoided confrontation in the Civil Service, the NHS, secondary and tertiary education and, above all, in the BBC. The Conservatives either did nothing or, when embarrassed that they had done nothing, over-reacted. Their Act protecting freedom of speech in universities, due to take effect next Thursday, has been suspended, to the delight of the no-platforming zealots of the National Union of Students.

    One trusts the existing laws enforcing freedom of expression on campus, which led some Conservatives to deem the Act unnecessary, will instead be used to stop the exclusion of those with legitimate opinions who have as much right to be heard as any Maoist. There can be no more shameful ostracising of people such as the distinguished Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar, whose crime was his entirely reasonable view that not everything about the British Empire was bad; or Kathleen Stock, driven out of Sussex University for voicing rational opinions about gender that offended the intolerant doctrine of the teenage identity politicians.

    How Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, reacts to any further attempts to close down speakers at universities who do not conform with the modern equivalent of the Little Red Book will be an interesting, and important, moment.

    However useless in defence of such freedoms the Conservative government was, at least it included some – notably the potential leadership candidate, Kemi Badenoch – who were unafraid to stand up to culture zealots and bullies. Will anyone in a Labour administration do that? Or will our institutions, and our ideas of what constitutes our values, be forced in an ever more prescriptive direction, aping the warped earnestness of some politicians, much of the media and most institutions in America?

    The signs are not good. Last week Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, refused to commit herself to the notion that women's sport should be played only by women; the deeply discredited militants of Stonewall still seem to dictate transgender policy to the Labour Party. Cambridge University made a heroic stand against intolerance in effectively forcing out its last vice-chancellor, who had demanded that members of the university respect opinions that many of them quite reasonably found preposterous. However, the Government has said nothing as Cambridge appears to have been bullied by pro-Gaza activists into reviewing its investments in arms companies. What if those companies are arming our beleaguered Ukrainian allies against the aggression of the tyrant Putin?

    Until we have a coherent opposition, the closing down of opinions other than those deemed fashionable on the Left will continue. Without that opposition, it is down to everyone who believes in free speech under the law to defend it – not just public figures when asked to speak on campuses, or newspaper columnists, but everyone who values liberty. Such a defence clearly repelled the Albert Hall blogger. Otherwise, a long, glorious era that began with the state's commitment to freedom of the press in 1695 will come ignominiously to its end.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/27/the-left-now-has-no-opposition-to-its-culture-war/

    1. "The Anglican communion today has 43 million members in sub-Saharan Africa, 35 million more than in 1970. Is that evidence of oppression and exploitation?"

      In various places round the world the local Anglican Church has been apologising for inflicting the colonial religion of Christianity on the native tribes. IIRC the Anglican Church of Canada has been in the forefront of this.

  48. A well-oiled Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,134 3/6
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
    ⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Well done, thought I'd never get there.

      Wordle 1,133 5/6

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

      1. Whoops, yesterdays.

        Wordle 1,134 5/6

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

    2. More tries for my money par 4
      Wordle 1,134 4/6

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

    3. Me too, amazingly.

      Wordle 1,134 3/6

      ⬜⬜🟩🟨🟨
      🟨⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  49. That's me gone. Watering completed. Roof work done. Time, shortly, for liquid refreshment.

    Have a jolly evening being glad you are not in Paris.

    A demain. On espère.

    2. Pictured: Athletes’ condoms tell users to ensure they have consent of partner

      Packaging urges consent and reminds competitors of dangers of STDs after eye-popping 300,000 contraceptives are distributed among athletes

      Simon Briggs, IN PARIS
      27 July 2024 • 3:21pm

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/olympics/2024/07/27/TELEMMGLPICT000387025451_17220961773880_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqH5Nkku5s2pueVt72xmqvQjXaG_3FkRG2WH2SGzlVXbs.jpeg?imwidth=680
      ********************************

      Roger Moore
      51 MIN AGO
      Makes a change from the usual “caution – may contain nuts.”

      1. I forget where I was reading it, but apparently large numbers of Olympic athletes go in for a good deal of horizontal jogging. I'd have thought they would be better off conserving their strength for the events.

      2. I thought that athletes were supposed to refrain from such energy sapping activities whilst competing

  51. Labour isn’t being forced to increase taxes. It’s choosing to
    The party of the working people isn’t being forced to increase taxes – it’s choosing to
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/07/27/labours-discovery-of-a-20bn-black-hole-is-shameless/

    And that deluded idiot, Traita May, who was probably the very worst Conservative prime minister in history, called her own party the nasty party. The Conservatives are certainly rudderless, mendacious and incompetent but for sheer nastiness Labour is way out in front.

    1. TBF to May (yes, nurse, I will take my pills) she was illustrating how the Conservatives were viewed.
      As ever, the media filleted out the words they needed: think of the selective quote "there is no such thing as society" or "crisis, what crisis?""

      1. Exactly Anne.
        As much as it grieves me to stick up for her, Richard needs to read Theresa May's speach to the Tory Party Conference in October 2002. Do a google, it's on the Grauniad website) Far from saying "We are the nasty party," she actually said: "You know what some people call us – the nasty party. I know that's unfair. You know that's unfair but it's the people out there we need to convince – and we can only do that by avoiding behaviour and attitudes that play into the hands of our opponents."

    2. We will soon find out Milliband E is the worst, Rastus. Start saving now to pay for electricity, stock up on candles.

        1. I’ve already got him going round in circles, cart’s ordered, once delivered gonna tie him to it….tee hee….

  52. I wasn't around much yesterday as I had a day out on the coast. Took a trip down to Felixstowe Ferry in Indian Country i.e. Suffolk. It must be around 30 years since I was last there and about 54 years since I first visited the place with the young lady who would become my wife. There have been changes, mainly in parking and a few new homes, the loss of one pub but the ramshackle quaintness remains. A couple of Martello Towers, one appears to be a home but I can't be certain on that and a newish walk above the beach with railings. Fresh caught fish on sale, a couple of cafes, one offering pensioners' specials and the remaining pub, The Ferry Boat Inn, also offering pensioners' portions.

    The Ferry Boat dates back centuries and is a large establishment considering the size of the village. We decided to have the OAPs' line caught haddock, chips and mushy peas followed by dessert and a tea/coffee. I had doubts about how large the meals would be, I do like my food, but I was pleasantly surprised and satisfied. The haddock was chunky, not the tail-end rubbish you get in your average chippy, the chips were well cooked and crispy and a good sized dollop of mushy peas was present on the plate.

    Now, I'm a real English ale fan and looking along the bar prior to having our meal I saw a pump with Timothy Taylor of the top of the label, Landlord immediately came to mind, it's a rarity in these parts but when I looked down, the label indicated Boltmaker. Never heard of this brew but as it had Timothy Taylor on its label I went for it. A beautiful brew, not quite full amber but at 4% it was delicious. The pub had three other real ales on offer, including the now ubiquitous, but still a good beer, Adnam's Ghost Ship, along with Southwold Bitter and I've forgotten the other beer.

    Bawdsey Manor, where British RADAR was developed is clearly visible just across the Deben estuary and a ferry regularly runs from the hard at Felixstowe Ferry to Bawdsey Quay across the river. On the next visit it'll be Bawdsey Quay and then a ferry across to the Ferry Boat Inn for lunch.

    A few miles up the river on the northern bank is Sutton Hoo: the site of an Anglo/Saxon, probably more Angle than Saxon, boat burial. The river Deben, although quite wide from Woodbridge to the sea, isn't a major waterway but up river from the estuary it has three very good pub restaurants on its banks, The Ferry Boat, The Ramsholt Arms – difficult to find the first time – and the Maybush at Waldringfield.

    Suffolk isn't that bad!😎

      1. Felixstowe Ferry is a a little more genteel, yachts etc sailing out to sea. Not these great hulks.

    3. Suffolk is lovely.
      We plan to visit the Cedric Morris exhibition at Gainsborough House next month with my cousins who live only a few yards from Benton End. They both love their garden and painting.
      Lunch at the Mill as well. A lovely day out.

    4. Brings back memories of my Aunt and Uncle – they lived in Ipswich when I was a child, later moving to Bradfield not far from Harwich. One year when we stayed with them they had a beach hut at Felixstowe. My Aunt would make chocolate eclairs and other goodies.

      Later, my Uncle bought a boat and sailed it up and down the Deben, which my cousin, in grumpy mood, called a "muddy little ditch". They kept the boat at Ramsholt. Waldringfield was also on the itinerary, including the pubs at both places.

      Sadly, Aunt and Uncle and both cousins are all long gone – my cousins barely made it past 60, though their parents reached their 80s.

      1. Talking of the Deben one of the most repulsive Conservative politicians of recent years was a little pimple called John Gummer who now goes about under the alias of Lorde Deben. He gave the worst Speech Day speech I have ever head at Gresham's in Christo's leaving year and I must say I have had to endure several Speech Day speeches in my time!

        He lectured the pupils on climate change and the advantages of being in the EU.

        1. I remember that little critter, eating a burger to prove beef was safe (and feeding it to his daughter) during 'Mad Cow' infections, large numbers cattle killed and buried. I believe 'Professor' Neil Ferguson calculated the number would die (they did but not of infection but because slaughtered). The very same chap who projected number of deaths by Covid – you'll remember him, visited his married lover during lockdown. One rule for us, another for others.

          1. Don't forget his equally evil contribution to Foot and Mouth in service of the Evil Emperor Blair. The slaughter of millions of healthy animals and the Silence of the Lambs that dreadful spring. Just to quell the voice of the countryside.

          2. Exactly, opopanax. Many roads lead to Blair. He intends to be influential a very long time through his Institute, funded by Soros.

          3. Fortunately my married lover is my wife so we did not have to break Covid Lockdown rules!

      2. Talking of the Deben one of the most repulsive Conservative politicians of recent years was a little pimple called John Gummer who now goes about under the alias of Lorde Deben. He gave the worst Speech Day speech I have ever head at Gresham's in Christo's leaving year and I must say I have had to endure several Speech Day speeches in my time!

      3. Finding the Ramsholt Arms is a bit of a feat, especially if coming from Orford. I missed the turning in Alderton and ended up at Bawdsey Quay. Even when on the correct lane one has to keep a sharp eye out for the sign and turning.
        I believe that there’s a memorial there to a USAAF pilot who lost his life while ensuring his bomber didn’t crash in the village during WWII.

    1. France Committed National ‘Suicide’ with Woke Olympic Opening Ceremonies, Says Ex-Cabinet Minister

      The opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics, which featured a transgender parody of the Last Supper while highlighting a controversial Muslim performer, have been branded as a national “suicide” by a former French government cabinet member.

      While the Olympics were supposedly set to mark a political truce in France, which remains in limbo following President Emmanuel Macron’s snap elections that left the country without an actual government, the deeply divided country saw rage and elation — depending on political affiliation — over the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris on Saturday evening.

      Dubbed the “gayest ever” games, the opening ceremony sparked condemnation for promoting paganism and openly mocking Christianity with a trans interpolation of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ.

      Former French Culture Secretary Philippe de Villiers said that the opening ceremonies were a “shame,” adding: “We are committing the suicide of our country in front of the whole world.

      “The Last Supper with drag queens and the beheading of Marie Antoinette add infamy to ugliness. The France of Macron and wokism is not France.”

      Populist right-wing French MEP and niece of Marine Le Pen Marion Marechal similarly said: “To all the Christians of the world who are watching the Paris 2024 ceremony and felt insulted by this drag queen parody of the Last Supper, know that it is not France that is speaking but a left-wing minority ready for any provocation. Not in my name.”

      The ceremonies, which have widely been described as anti-Christian, were also criticised by Christian leaders, including the Bishop of the Diocese of Winona–Rochester, Robert Barron.

      “France felt, evidently, that while trying to put its best cultural foot forward, the right thing to do is to mock this very central moment in Christianity, where Jesus at his Last Supper gave his body and blood in anticipation of the cross. Its presented as this gross, flippant mockery,” Bishop Barron said.

      “This deeply secularist, post-modern society knows who its enemy is; they are naming it, and we should believe them. But furthermore, we Christians, we Catholics, should not be sheepish; we should resist; we should make our voices heard.”

      The Catholic Bishop questioned: “Would they ever dared mock Islam in a similar way? Would they have ever dreamed of mocking, in this gross, public way, a scene from the Qur’an? We all know the answer.”

      Indeed, the Opening Ceremonies featured a performance from a Muslim singer, 28-year-old Franco-Malian Aya Nakamura, who is often compared to singers like Cardi B or Rihanna. Nakamura sang her song “Pookie” (Snitch) with the accompaniment of the French Republican Guard. This came despite a majority (63 per cent) of French people opposing her involvement in the Opening Ceremony.

      Many on the progressive left in France heaped praise on the opening ceremony, including Green lawmaker Sandrine Rousseau, who declared the “best response to the rise of fascism and the far-right is this ceremony.”

      “Let the world be woke. It will be so much more beautiful,” she added.

      Far-left MP Thomas Portes, who caused controversy by demanding that Jewish athletes from Israel be barred from the Olympics, said on Saturday that he was happy to see “an Olympic ceremony that goes against the racist and reactionary obsessions of the far right and its media relays… A ceremony where the Palestinian delegation was applauded.”

      1. The more I read and see of this "ceremony" the more glad I am that I didn't watch it.

        3. I saw a Daily Mail headline a while ago, apparently a man in shorts was showing a testicle? What?

          1. Tee hee! I remember a very funny episode of "Friends" where such a solecism took place, and they took the culprit aside and eventually, after various euphemisms, told him that he was "showing brain"

          2. Yes, brains in testicles, or some other part of his anatomy nearby. I think people found it particularly offensive he was standing behind the ‘Last Supper’ part of the ‘Show’.

          3. Haven't seen it, KJ, loved Gareth Robert's takedown and am absolutely gutted that Christianity is being treated as a joke by these absolute perverts.

          4. Just seen a headline, new MA footage shows man ‘punch two female officers’ before cop ‘kicked man in head’. (DM) We’re of a mind, see PetaJ is too (no surprise there :-)…if you’re reading PJ, looked for you earlier, hope you’re doing a little better.

          5. Hi KJ, I am reading but not doing better yet :((
            Did watch some of the Olympic opening ceremony though but decided that it was so depraved and ugly it was making me feel worse so I switched off and went to bed!

          6. Reading is good for you, I had a young relative ill in hospital, sent her books and staff said her breathing slowed down and became more regular. So, good choice I reckon. I didn’t watch any of it, I always think it’s a bit of a farce – sorry to say, and not especially into sport. BH turned it off, said ghastly. I really hope you are feeling a lot better soon, and getting good medical advice. There’s a lot of Covid here apparently people are testing – I suspect summer colds, they can be quite nasty and long lasting. I’ll continue to look out for you on nttl. Get some sleep if you can 🙂

          7. Off to bed now as it happens – having spent the better part of the last two days there! Night KJ 🙂

      2. The French have made it very clear to the world that Christians are not welcome. I cannot think of a single opening ceremony in my lifetime where a specific instance celebrated any religious trope. So why go out of your way to include a parody of the Last Supper? It wasn't to exalt some aspect of French culture. It was done in order to trash that aspect of it, I can only conclude. The French went out of their way to make it clear that they hold the Christian religion in derision.

          1. Sounds revolting. It’s of a piece though. We aren’t royalists anymore, say the French, but we aren’t religious either. They choose Christianity because it’s a soft target, that’s all.

            It’s the theatre of the grotesque. What a desperately empty society. Their little Gallic breasts must be swelling with pride while the rest of us look on regarding only a tawdry little sideshow.

          2. Sounds revolting. It’s of a piece though. We aren’t royalists anymore, say the French, but we aren’t religious either. They choose Christianity because it’s a soft target, that’s all.

            It’s the theatre of the grotesque. What a desperately empty society. Their little Gallic breasts must be swelling with pride while the rest of us look on regarding only a tawdry little sideshow.

      3. "Ms Rousseau, is Christianity fascistic?"
        "Oui!"
        "Is religion fascistic?"
        "Oui!"
        "Is Islam a religion?"
        <long pause> "Bâtard!!!"

      4. "Ms Rousseau, is Christianity fascistic?"
        "Oui!"
        "Is religion fascistic?"
        "Oui!"
        "Is Islam a religion?"
        <long pause> "Bâtard!!!"

      5. And on a somewhat lighter note, they can't even perform the Can-Can properly anymore! That was one of the least professional performances of it I have ever seen 🤣

      6. Sandrine is a Green, which makes her judgment suspect before she even opens her mouth to confirm it. Glad I missed it. I haven't even watched the dressage or eventing.

  55. Celebrating diversity is the biggest insult those in power can throw at the people who have to live with its consequences on a daily basis.
    It is the worst 'Fuck You' there is.

    1. I've never understood why 'diversity' should be praised. I juts don't care if someone is black, brown or pale green. It's utterly irrelevant to me.

      I care if they're capable, competent and interesting – because people are only a label to the Left. That gives them control, let's the Lefty nicely categorise people rather than permitting them to be what they are: individuals, with unique needs, wants, hopes and dreams.

      It is a phenomenal flaw in the Left wing mind to want to reduce people to a label. They've done this before. If they're allowed to, the Left will continue their demented progrom of extermination.

      1. The left needs victim groups otherwise the very reasons for its existence cease to be.

      4. lol. Sometimes I wonder if you are me. But you aren’t. I have the equivalent to your War Queen. He is amazing – need a nickname for him. Fantastic father, but doesn’t stack the dishwasher quite right (to my taste). Grounds for divorce?

      5. Spot on. Africans are many and various simply because the continent of Africa is so vast as to include Egypt where folk are not dark skinned to other tribal areas where folk are very dark skinned plus a load of folk in between these extremities.

        We in the UK have never been particularly interested in the colour of a person’s skin. We judge people by other measures such as from their behaviour, willingness to conform to certain of our traditions and to blend in with our established cultural and societal norms.

        No African would accept the US attribution of the term ‘African American’ to some dark skinned person with some very distant relation in Africa. Black Americans are just that viz. Americans with darker skin as if that is of any revance to their Anerican citizenship.

        As you rightly state the constant attempts at labelling everyone and categorising them according to skin tone or whether straight or fuzzy hair is repulsive. It all needs to stop and we have to return to more reasonable and sympathetic ways of reconciling differences as opposed to sitting by as others seek to promote division.

  56. Well, I went to Trafalgar Square this afternoon. I haven’t seen that many people since the lockdowns! The square and its surrounding area was packed. No violence. Safety in numbers. One touching little scene was a Jewish lady hugging a black guy who was carrying an Israeli flag. Tommy asked how many of us voted Labour and there were boos all round. Little response at all to being asked if we voted Conservative but of course when asked if we voted Reform, most hands went up. That was Tommy’s cue to criticise Nigel, who apparently was invited but declined. What d’you think? Should he have accepted?

      1. He's stuck in a rock and hard place. If he goes, the Left will pillory him. If he didn't go he's booted by those who went.

      2. Hear you, SirJ. I suspect there would have been a brawl if Farage had attended. Think the video might be a few years old btw, he talks about UKIP not Reform.

    3. Yes he should have!

      (if only to stop our good friend Ogga from going on and on about how terrible he thinks Farage is!)

        1. He does have a point, though, ogga. The practical measures needed to move the Overton Window definitely involve distancing Patriotism from the thuggish past of the BNP and so on. As Tommy has also, independently, realised. I am confident that there will be a future pax and the factions will eventually unite once the purge has taken place.

          1. 390241+ up ticks,

            Evening O,

            The farage chap IMO highly untrustworthy, knifed to many good peoples that spent years giving him a platform.

          2. I have noticed that you dislike him, ogga, and you appear to have good reasons. I think they are probably all absolute bastards and one just has to work out which one is most likely to at least try to do what you want him/her to do once they have the power.

          3. Whatever dislike you hold for Farage he has at least resurfaced to lead a new party and to effectively take on the three party monopoly.

            Farage has also very sensibly forged a close relationship with President Trump which can only benefit our country especially so as Trump will likely be the next President of the USA.

            Forgiveness however has to be found in the heart. My name on here is cor-immobile because my family motto is ‘steadfast heart’. We all need to remain steadfast and follow our hearts in the pursuit of justice and Truth.

          4. 390292+ up ticks,

            Morning C,
            There are well founded reasons why a great many of us do not trust farage.

            My personal advice is
            “buyer beware”

          5. Whatever dislike you hold for Farage he has at least resurfaced to lead a new party and to effectively take on the three party monopoly.

            Farage has also very sensibly forged a close relationship with President Trump which can only benefit our country especially so as Trump will likely be the next President of the USA.

            Forgiveness however has to be found in the heart. My name on here is cor-immobile because my family motto is ‘steadfast heart’. We all need to remain steadfast and follow our hearts in the pursuit of justice and Truth.

      2. Hmm. Yes and no.

        There are certain sections of Lamestream media that delight in accusing Robby Tobbinson of fascism etc etc. and if not careful by association.

        I wish we had a situation where Nige could associate. But he has a game to play to.

        I however am with Tommy at this point,

        Also. Vote Reform.

    5. Well done, Sue and thank you. As previously noted I was in Soton and unable to attend – unfortunately

    6. Well done, Sue and thank you. As previously noted I was in Soton and unable to attend – unfortunately

    7. He was possibly afraid for his safety, he's easily recognisable. If someone took a pop at him, brawl likely ensue and more people hurt. First explanation I can think of, but he may have other reasons. Good for you in going, btw 🙂

    8. TR has a criminal record, so Nigel probably prefers to stay well away.
      Incidentally, every time the MSM informs us that Tommy's real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, I am reminded that King Charles's surname should have been Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg.

    9. It is early days and Nigel Farage and Reform have necessarily to tread carefully. We and they are up against some of the most evil entities and their globalist promoters since the Third Reich challenged our country.

      We must act judiciously and with total awareness of the mantraps and assorted pitfalls laid out before us by our corrupt political class, the boughten judiciary and the dysfunctional Police ‘Service’.

    10. It is early days and Nigel Farage and Reform have necessarily to tread carefully. We and they are up against some of the most evil entities and their globalist promoters since the Third Reich challenged our country.

      We must act judiciously and with total awareness of the mantraps and assorted pitfalls laid out before us by our corrupt political class, the boughten judiciary and the dysfunctional Police ‘Service’.

    11. It is early days and Nigel Farage and Reform have necessarily to tread carefully. We and they are up against some of the most evil entities and their globalist promoters since the Third Reich challenged our country.

      We must act judiciously and with total awareness of the mantraps and assorted pitfalls laid out before us by our corrupt political class, the boughten judiciary and the dysfunctional Police ‘Service’.

    12. It is early days and Nigel Farage and Reform have necessarily to tread carefully. We and they are up against some of the most evil entities and their globalist promoters since the Third Reich challenged our country.

      We must act judiciously and with total awareness of the mantraps and assorted pitfalls laid out before us by our corrupt political class, the boughten judiciary and the dysfunctional Police ‘Service’.

    1. nice uppercut followed by two blows to the eye sockets..
      such a gentle caring child.

    2. Reinstate? Flipping well give him a medal. The muslim should have been shot, not tasered.

      If the rest get uppity, shoot them as well. It's long past time this menace was dealt with.

    3. #context is nothing
      # it is never acceptable for a police officer to kick someone
      # says everyone who has never been in such a situation

    4. I would not mind a small bet that it turns out that that man is a trained boxer.

      1. RoPers not allowed to drink, KJ. Haraam, allegedly. Unthinkable that they might be hypocrites on top of everything else

    7. #that poor muslim. He aggressively attacked a member of Plod, and look at the consequences. He is some form of martyr, and the Woke world is bleating “ it’s never acceptable blah blah blah”

      For the avoidance of doubt. I don’t care about Muslim “sensibilities”. We are not Charlotte Brontë. We need to finally nail this. Else we are lost, as a nation.

    8. #that poor muslim. He aggressively attacked a member of Plod, and look at the consequences. He is some form of martyr, and the Woke world is bleating “ it’s never acceptable blah blah blah”

      For the avoidance of doubt. I don’t care about Muslim “sensibilities”. We are not Charlotte Brontë. We need to finally nail this. Else we are lost, as a nation.

    10. Let us all hope that the effing vicious Pakistani, Bangladeshi or whatever is not awarded George Floyd martyrdom status and gifted millions in compensation.

    11. Let us all hope that the effing vicious Pakistani, Bangladeshi or whatever is not awarded George Floyd martyrdom status and gifted millions in compensation.

    1. Lefties really, really struggle to understand that controlling what other people can say is censorship.

      They want, so desperately to say thye're good, just and righteous but really they're just nasty bitter little fascists.

      They just don't understand why they are wrong.

        1. There certainly is something terribly wrong with them. Their frenzied need to control everything and everyone so theirs is the only voice heard is truly appalling.

    2. Go Elon.

      I didn’t used to like you, because- ? Who knows.

      Now, I know you are the only one on my side.

      #GoElon

      1. I still dont like him (he's far too rich and I'm jealous) but he seems to be saying and doing an awful lot of 'good stuff' at the moment!

        1. I like him very much, and always have, he is a maverick with a mind of his own and he is fighting back against the ptb despite having enough money to join them

          1. Well, he nicked all his best ‘ideas’ from brighter people who came up with them – but he had the killer business sense to make them pay….

          3. No I’m not – I was in the IT industry (just!) when Gates bought DOS from IBM for a song and relabelled it MS-DOS – IBM in their wisdom decided all the money lay in the hardware…..
            Musk nicked Paypal and Tesla from other people……

          4. I don't think that is correct, 2HP. He's still pals with Thiel, with whom he started PayPal, for example. Don't know enough about the rest, but it is common knowledge that Gates stole the intellectual property that resulted in his huge wealth. Not so Musk, who has a megabrain.

          5. Musk bought into Paypal – which was founded by Max Levchin – he also bought into Tesla. I dont have a problem with that, he made them huge, but he did not create them.

            Gates did not steal the IP for DOS – he bought it legitimately from IBM for a song, like i said before, IBM thought the money lay in the hardware not the software.

            IBM thought he was taking a big headache off them, they really did!

        3. He wouldn't have got where he is now without powerful backing. How independent his opinions are is debatable.

          1. Well, he is extraordinarily good at spotting business opportunities and ruthless in executing his plans to maximise those opportunities.
            He has never really had powerful backing – he did it all by himself. I think he remains largely independent….

      2. Rumour has it that the real Elon Musk has been deposed. This is, er, a White Hat substitute…. I keep an open mind. I'm not saying it is, I'm not saying it isn't. But he does seem to have done a remarkable turnaround in his views. Anything and everything is possible in this Alice-in-Wonderland, upside-down white-is-black and black-is-white world we now inhabit. The old rules no longer apply.

    3. Why has the poor chap got such weedy facial hair? He looks emasculated to me.

  60. Bishop Robert Barron has gone online to lambast what he calls the “gross mockery” of the Christian Faith that occurred during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

    “would they ever have dared mocked Islam in a similar way?” or “would they ever have dreamed of mocking in this gross public way a scene from the Quran?”

    "Opening ceremonies tell a great deal about the preoccupations of a society.. and finally the anonymous hate letter has been signed by the European post modern elite. The persecution of Christianity isn't accidental. The new elites' hunger for perversity, for poison, for distress, for disgust, reveals a determination to remove freedom of speech for Christians. The law is against Christians when they hold to account other religions for their totalitarian ambitions. We have only few moment left before the freedom of speech to the truth is taken away from us."

    Now we know who they think their real enemy is."

    1. Well, well said, Sir. Imagine the ABC coming out with such nonsense.RO FLMAO etc etc

    2. Well, well said, Sir. Imagine the ABC coming out with such nonsense.RO FLMAO etc etc

    3. I didn't recognise the name, so looked him up on Wiki – of course it would have to be an RC bishop to speak out so clearly and forthrightly on this evil. Though I'm not RC, I say good for him. Of course the CofE bishops are far too conflict-averse to put their heads above the parapet, and anyway, at least two CofE churches have celebrated drag queens already:
      https://anglican.ink/2023/03/08/counting-their-chicks-before-they-hatch/
      https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/10-march/news/uk/drag-queens-find-welcome-at-london-church (paywall but 4 free articles a month)
      https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/drag-queen-shows-in-churches-are-desecrating-holy-places-this-blasphemy-must-stop/15071.article

    1. That's why he's the best player in the world – he gave up the 6 Nations this year to concentrate on the Sevens.

      Fiji had never lost a match in the Olympics before (OK Sevens has only featured in the last two).

      He seems to write all his own headlines, doesnt he?

      1. His ability to steal lost causes is extraordinary, his upper body strength is unbelievable.

      2. That first try this evening was freakishly good, even though it wasn't him who made the final touch-down.

        1. I just love watching him play, PJ – I must admit I was torn in the Final, I love the fact that Sevens is Fiji’s National Sport, but I just so wanted him to win it on his home turf – the stuff of legend, which is what the Olympics are all about…..

  63. The Tory ECHR row misses the point: the UK is choked by laws all of its own

    Threatening to leave the Convention while having little idea how it'd help shows the party's problem

    FRASER NELSON • 25 July 2024 • 7:38pm

    The Conservatives have become the natural party of feuding rather than government, which is perhaps why they decided to indulge themselves with a leadership battle that lasts all the way until November. With just 10 MPs needed to nominate, we can expect to be treated to several rival candidates finding touchpoints that expose the party is its most divided and discombobulated. Tom Tugendhat has kindly started the proceedings, by raising the subject of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

    Writing in these pages yesterday, Tugendhat, now shadow security minister, listed the ECHR as a topic where he said there is such a strong consensus that it is not even up for debate. But when asked to explain the consensus on the radio, Tugendhat struggled. Even he wasn't quite able to say that he would be prepared to pull Britain from the ECHR: he would hint at it, but not spell it out. This reminds us that there is no Tory consensus – and, in fact, still potential for a new Tory split.

    One of the reasons that Sunak called an early election was that he thought his party might founder on this rock. His flagship Rwanda deportation scheme looked likely to fall foul of the ECHR, which would lead to a crunch point. Most of his Cabinet would advocate sending the flights regardless, acting in defiance. James Cleverly, then home secretary, wanted to find a middle way. But he agreed with Alex Chalk, then justice secretary, that pulling out of the convention lands Britain in an ugly club of ECHR refuseniks, alongside Russia and Belarus.

    All this resulted in an election triggered by government collapse – and an even worse defeat. But there is still plenty of time for the Tories to split on the issue – and they may even do so this summer.

    The case for leaving the ECHR is quite easy to make: like the European Union, it's a good idea that became a bad one through mission creep and politicisation. It was intended as a legal backstop, a guarantor of basic rights. It has ended up challenging policies not only on border control but energy policy. In April, judges in Strasbourg ruled that Switzerland had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough on climate change. All this has led Jonathan Sumption, a former Supreme Court judge, to talk about pulling out.

    Britain has a long tradition of defending fundamental rights and holding governments to account, he says. There's no reason why our courts cannot be trusted to defend rights without usurping government functions as Strasbourg is now doing. We see, here, the foundations of a second Brexit: to complete the job, to take back control. Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, a former home secretary and a former immigration minister, both advocate pulling out – in a way that Tugendhat does not. So language on ECHR will be a touchstone issue.

    But on this, I'm with Cleverly. It's a bit easy, almost facile, to say that pulling out of the ECHR would be a remedy. The real problem is the network of laws that the Tories allowed to surround government, where their every move could be challenged by activists. It is perhaps the biggest single reason why they failed.

    An example struck me when I last saw Sunak in No 10. On my way in, I noticed two huge "security notices": one announcing that the building is protected (the armed police made that point) and another saying identification is needed (ditto). I wondered, as I waited, why it was necessary to deface a national landmark in this way. Once through the gates, I was asked to wait outside the security cabin until moisture from the newly-mopped floor had evaporated. Health and safety. Pleading that I had an appointment with the prime minister cut no ice.

    I was told by officials not to worry about keeping him waiting: Team Sunak may work in the place, but don't actually run it. That struck me as a metaphor for the whole government. There is an illusion of power, the careful pretence of being in control. I've lost count of meetings with ministers where they said their hands had been tied by the threat of lawsuits and judicial reviews – on welfare, planning, even new NHS drugs. This apparatus is the new enemy of progress.

    Look at Katharine Birbalsingh, whose Michaela Free School will next month doubtless show stunning GCSE results for pupils from often-challenging backgrounds. She was forced into the High Court for much of this year, sued by a Muslim pupil who wanted to pray at lunchtime. This would have meant destroying the mixed-faith group lunches crucial to her school's culture. She was sued under Article 9 of the ECHR (freedom of religion) but also the homegrown Equality Act (religious discrimination). She won, but the process was the punishment.

    Her plight seems an eloquent bookend to the years of Tory rule. In 2010, laws were made allowing teachers like her to set up these miracle schools. But the Tories were, in the end, unable to protect them from the lawfare that led to so much harassment that few teachers would follow in Birbalsingh's footsteps. The Tories won the big-picture arguments but ended up choked in legal weeds which grew around their feet as they did nothing. This, not just the ECHR, is the problem. Talking about pulling out of the ECHR misses the point.

    To stand any chance of recovery, the Tories need not only to admit that they failed, but work out why they failed. It's pointless to promise bold action on the ECHR without being able to explain what that bold action would be or why this would be done. Starting a conversation without being able to finish it suggests the Tories still suffer from the old malady: making the right noises to attract certain sorts of voters, but not being able to follow through. The issue of competence, or lack thereof, loses voters in the end.

    The harder conversation to have is about the legal overgrowth, why it matters, how to change it – and how to do so without abolishing genuinely-needed safeguards (as happened in lockdown). This is a more nuanced, thoughtful and less punchy way of plotting a political comeback. It's far from clear if the Tories are in a fit state to do this – but losing their addiction to the tough-sounding and ultimately empty gestures would be a start.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/25/tory-echr-row-misses-point-uk-choked-by-laws-of-its-own/

    Stanley uses 1,000 words to say not very much that hasn't been said before. Given that his recent offerings in the DT have revealed him to be an occupier of the overcrowded centre-ground, it's not surprising that he criticises the Tories in this roundabout way. In respect of the ECHR he appears to be a Remainer pretending not to be.

    However, he makes an important point about judicial review. It was with us before the Supreme Court was formed but it has flourished since (e.g. the Surrey oil drilling case). He also mentions the Equality Act. You will be laughed at by some if you describe this as quasi-constitutional but it is. It's about 'values' and opinions, not actualities and definitives. A new administration could spend a whole parliamentary term just removing the legislative blanket smothering the country.

    Won't somebody let us breathe?

    1. Fraser has been complicit in all this bunkum. He has ruined a very decent publication in the same way as his coterie has ruined a very decent country. He needs to own it or FOAD,

      1. I'm surprised he didn't see fit to publish this in the Speccie, opopanax – surely I didn't miss it!

          1. I think that’s likely true, more subscribers, more advertising. He’s a hack alright…..

      1. I don't think he will be deposed. Nothing really changes. But he is relatively better than the alternatives.

        1. It was meant as a rhetorical question; but if the clerics don't like his approach there are more than sufficient other members of the Royal family for them to find a "suitable" alternative.

      2. On the positive side.

        In 2015 I wasn’t allowed a hair out of place and I was escorted daily from the hotel and back even though it was a mere 50 yards away. In a hotel with a “”Ladies only” floor staffed by women.

        Last year, I don’t bother with any garb, care less about my hair, wander about freely in the evening un chaperoned and my local staff, who still worry about the religious police, no longer fear them. And last year fo4 the first time one of my female colleagues wore a lilac burqa ensemble to the office (I stopped bothering in 2022).

    3. That won't stop Muslim men dictating what their women should wear, or Muslim women stopping wearing their bin liners for fear of upsetting the men.

    4. That won't stop Muslim men dictating what their women should wear, or Muslim women stopping wearing their bin liners for fear of upsetting the men.

          5. Euro-sceptic peer attacks BBC's 'raging Europhiles'

            By Sandra Barwick • 6 December 2000 • 12:00am

            BBC Radio Four's Today programme was accused yesterday of being "wretchedly biased" in its coverage of Europe by Lord Pearson of Rannoch.

            Lord Pearson, a leading Eurosceptic, had been invited by BBC researchers to comment on a story that a group of peers planned to use the Magna Carta to stop royal assent being given to any treaty signed in Nice.

            In fact Lord Pearson had merely booked the room in which the peers had talked. When he was invited to talk to the presenter James Naughtie on the issue, he took his chance to air his feelings about what he felt was the corporation's stance on the European issue. "The BBC – they're a bunch of raging Europhiles," he told The Daily Telegraph later.

            Breakfast listeners to BBC Radio Four had earlier been treated to an exchange of fire between the two which began, innocently enough, with Naughtie inviting Lord Pearson to comment. "I do have to say," said the peer, "that this really is the Europhile Today programme at its worst."

            A snort from Naughtie interrupted the sentence. But Lord Pearson persisted. "I, and others like me, never get asked on to this programme to discuss what is really happening at Nice and in the EU generally.

            "Instead, here you are picking up the fag end of this inaccurate story in – I gather – the diary column of the Evening Standard, which is after all, sort of, the Europhile local evening newspaper, and you ask me on, really, purely in order to ridicule this initiative – and Euro-sceptics generally."

            At this point Naughtie's 'r's began to roll. "Lord Pearrson," he said, "the allegation that this is a Europhile programme is frrankly absurd."

            Lord Pearson was undeterred. Where were all the Euro-sceptic voices appearing on Today, he wanted to know. "Where is the EU going, and does the UK want to be part of it?… It's useless telling me you have people like Francis Maude on. I mean, you'll never get a debate…"

            Naughtie replied: "I'm sorry, Lord Pearson, Frrancis Maude is the shadow foreign secretary." Lord Pearson: "I know, but listen, you won't get a debate on this subject going by talking to the leaders of any of the main political parties… because they are all guilty of leading us into this quagmire of EU membership… but there are, out there, opinion polls which show millions of British people who do want to talk about it, and not one of them ever gets on to this wretchedly biased programme."

            The exchange ended with Lord Pearson promising, at Naughtie's invitation, to send in a list of Euro-sceptics, which Today will return with a note of when they last appeared.

            Rod Liddle, the editor of the Today programme, said afterwards: "We have the BBC dealing with complaints from Alastair Campbell and Neil Kinnock saying we are sensationally Euro-sceptic – what are we to do? It is the most important issue in Britain, where is Europe going? It's crucial. I agree with Lord Pearson on that. I suggest he isn't listening closely enough."

            Meanwhile Lord Pearson was gathering forces for the next sortie last night. "I am going to send them a list," he said. "And it will be the whole Euro-sceptic crowd."

            https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1377214/Euro-sceptic-peer-attacks-BBCs-raging-Europhiles.html

            I could never understand why so many saw the BBC as Euro-sceptic.

          6. Moi non plus. I am intrigued as to who ennobled him and why, in view of his unpopular beliefs. Google is not my friend on this, btw.

          7. From the Wiki page referenced above:
            Pearson was created a life peer on 18 June 1990 as Baron Pearson of Rannoch, of Bridge of Gaur in the District of Perth and Kinross, sitting as a Conservative. He entered the House for services to the insurance industry, particularly his anti-corruption stance on the Savonita affair.

          9. No. He has long history of anti-Islamic campaigning, once inviting Tommy Robinson to Parliament. He had a famous ding-dong with Naughtie on the Today programme about the EU and was thrown out of the Conservative party. For a year he was the leader of UKIP.

    2. Thank you for posting.

      To all the people that have said “it’s never acceptable blah blah”

      I am no Plod fan. But, sometimes yoi have to cheer them on.

    3. Thank you for posting.

      To all the people that have said “it’s never acceptable blah blah”

      I am no Plod fan. But, sometimes yoi have to cheer them on.

    5. Ok, so in an intersectionality fight between women and muslims, who wins these days?

      1. I ‘ve just opened it, no problem but I would not have been surprised had it been removed. I t was Lord Pearson of Rannoch giving a speech about islam, terrorism, islamophobia; that it is not a phobia to fear the terrorism of islam and the q’ran….

        The other link, which I don’t recall posting, perhaps it came attached with the Lord Pearson one, shows the context of that kick.

  69. I've decided to have an early night, chums. So I'll wish you a Good Night, restful sleep, and I hope to see you all tomorrow morning.

    PS – Three days ago Rastus posted a clip of the The Harry Lime theme from The Third Man. I commented that it was an excellent film which I really enjoyed and which starred Orson Welles as Harry Lime, Joseph Cotton as Holly Martins, and Shirley Abicair as Anton Karas. Amazingly, no-one has commented on that post, not even Rastus. So I am posting here again in the hope that this time the joke will be spotted.

      1. Is there an invisible subtext running through nottl that only proper nottlers can see?

        1. There are definitely times when it feels like Mornington Crescent to me – and I've been infesting the place for years! 🤣🤣

    2. Joseph Cotten, with an 'e'. Shirley Abicair is in her nineties and she used to play the zither, but didn't appear in The Third Man.

    1. Vincent van Gogh produced around 900 paintings. At today's prices, their total value would be well in excess of $1,000,000,000, so he could potentially be a billionaire, just like the former president.

      1. I don’t think it says that. To me it says the thing they have in common in one ear.

  71. Bonsall Carneval today so went up for a couple of enjoyable hours.
    Now I'm off to bed. G'night all.

  72. Evening, all. I've had a lazy day catching up. I was going to go to a local fete (I like to support good causes), but the weather was dull, miserable and threatening rain, so I gave it a miss.

    Labour's whole proposals are riddled with contradictions because they haven't got a clue.

  73. Goodnight, Bob. I've just arrived saying I decided not to go to a local shindig!

    1. We had one very short shower of rain but the weather, for the most part was good.

  74. I didn’t know that about Fiji, but I did feel sorry for them at the end. They got annihilated. Remember that France lost to them in the pool matches.

  75. But it doesn't say who by. I suppose it must have been either Thatcher or Major. Thatcher?

    1. Not in her resignation honours. She was excommunicated in November 1990. Johnny Underpants was Chancellor at the time.

        1. Most nominations are made by the Prime Minister of the governing party. However, since 2001, anyone can make a nomination to the House of Lords Appointment Commission.

      1. Mrs Thatcher, then. Yet more evidence of sound judgment from that remarkable woman.

  80. I have just googled today's march on youtube and am reeling at what came up – "Far Right march on London" seemed to be the title. Over and over again.

    1. They looked to me like normal, peaceful, British people. Not far-right – just Right.

      1. Of course they were. The "far right" is only in the mind of the MSM and lefties.

  81. Caroline has just read a French article saying that Celine Dion was paid €2,000,000 to sing L'hymne à l'amour at the Olympic opening ceremony in Paris last night.

    Here you can hear it sung by a French woman for nothing rather than by a Canadian one.

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

      1. Perhaps that's what she is. I have always found it so sad, and so frustrating, that a beautiful voice can be so misused.

      1. I imagine Celine Dion has some French Canadian attributes such as drinking heavy. Then again she is skinny and has ‘sparrow’s ankles’.

        The sparrow is a reference to Edith Piaf. Piaf was known colloquially as ‘The Sparrow of Pigalle’ also the name of a film made of her life which I watched in a cinema in London in the mid seventies.

        1. There’s also a 2007 film called “La Vie en Rose” about her life and starring Marion Cotillard. It’s pretty good.

        2. There’s also a 2007 film called “La Vie en Rose” about her life and starring Marion Cotillard. It’s pretty good.

      2. I imagine Celine Dion has some French Canadian attributes such as drinking heavy. Then again she is skinny and has ‘sparrow’s ankles’.

        The sparrow is a reference to Edith Piaf. Piaf was known colloquially as ‘The Sparrow of Pigalle’ also the name of a film made of her life which I watched in a cinema in London in the mid seventies.

    1. 'Morning, Geoff and thank you for the fine job you do, all the work and effort you have put in to keep us all going. Well done! More power to your elbow (or keyboard).

  84. I only watched a short while longer. Not the biggest sports fan…BH is tho was incensed, but somehow not surprised…:-(

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