Sunday 26 January: Keir Starmer should learn from Donald Trump’s can-do attitude

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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639 thoughts on “Sunday 26 January: Keir Starmer should learn from Donald Trump’s can-do attitude”

  5. Good morning, chums. And thank you, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe site. I wasn't first, but this was one of my better Wordle results!

    Wordle 1,317 2/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie and all
      Clearly you have a more optimistic outlook on life than I do!
      PS Well done!
      Wordle 1,317 4/6

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    2. Good morning Elsie and all
      Clearly you have a more optimistic outlook on life than I do!
      PS Well done!
      Wordle 1,317 4/6

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  6. How I became a Labour school-fee exile in Dubai. 26 January 2025.

    In more ways than one, it was a strange time to leave. After years of tireless campaigning, my partner Richard Tice had just become an MP – a thrilling opportunity to help change Britain for the better. All things being equal, I’d have loved nothing more than to be with him in the political trenches. Unfortunately, the election result delivered something very less welcome: a Labour government. That meant five long years of left-wing lunacy – and VAT on school fees.

    Isabel Oakeshott of Telegraph political articles fame and her move to Dubai.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/25/how-i-became-a-labour-school-fee-exile-in-dubai/

    1. And yet the fiction that the UK is at the peak of the wealthiest nations of the world continues!

      1. That’s a shame. I haven’t read the comments but our daughter and family moved to Dubai some 13/14 years ago and have a fantastic lifestyle there. Schooling was excellent with none of this left wing rubbish or wokeism and children are expected to work hard. All lessons in English (except Arabic, obvs) and business also. If laws are broken punishment is severe so no rape gangs there, lucky people. Everybody makes friends quickly as there’s a lot of transient coming and going.

        The difference between the U.K. and UAE is theirs is a forward looking busy country and we are the exact opposite. They introduced VAT a couple of years ago now but there is no vicious, money grabbing government eager to help themselves to your money. Plenty of shopping malls and food and goods are expensive but the whole ethos is we welcome you if you are willing to work, I would say, eager to work, and it is well worth going there if given the opportunity to work.

  7. Good morning one and all.
    I’ve not posted for a while as I've been preoccupied.
I'm still around not too sure for how much longer. I was making quite a good recovery and was sent home from nursing and started to get more mobile. unfortunately after a bit of overenthusiastic unsupervised self inflicted physiotherapy I fell over and fractured my tib and fib which put me back in a hip to ankle cast in hospital another six weeks, such fun. I got home again and restarted physio which was going well until I was sideswiped two months later by Pneumonia, another three weeks in hospital surrounded by iv and o2 tubes and a bubbling nebuliser. In that time my eight year old grandson was diagnosed with lymphoma. Very aggressive chemo and procedures to treat but the prognosis is fairly good though. My brother-in-law who has for some reason of his own has decided he's been locked in a willy wagging contest with me for most of his adult life has now developed untreatable heart and kidney failure, I'm not sure what counts as a win with this one and just to add to the feeling that I'm living in a second rate daytime soap my son in law has just suffered a mini stroke but he's 46 and strong and will recover.
    I had an absolute corker of a Christmas, I was able to sit at the table as an adult with my family. Sometime between Christmas and New Year I contracted some species of Flu, not pneumonia this time, which as you may guess left me very weak. I had an oncology consultation earlier this month. The malignant beastliness in my man giblets is no longer controllable and has recommenced its malign activities and they can do no more for me. I'm strangely at ease with this as this is the situation I was in two years ago and I made my peace with the world then and we've had two years to get ready to deal with the inevitable. I’m not afraid or full of regrets.

    The NHS is utterly FUBARed
    St Peter’s Hospice and MacMillan help me believe there’s still a deep well of human love and kindness

    Datz

    1. Morning Datz,

      Well penned ,what can one say only that prayers will be offered for a slow but sure recovery.

      1. We heard this morning in church that one of the ancients had finally succumbed yesterday. When told that everyone was praying for her, she retorted, "I hope they're praying that I'll die peacefully!"

    2. Good morning Datz
      I was wondering how you are recently. Thank you for the update, but oh my goodness, how much horrible news. I wish you and your family all the best.

    3. I admire your fortitude in a sea of troubles.
      KBO, I'm sure you will make the most of the time left and hope your family recover from the traumas.
      Good luck.

    4. I'm sorry to hear that Datz and though It's probably of no comfort. It comes to us all.

    6. Fingers crossed for your Grandson, Datz. I hope the chemo isn't as bad as one hears. And, we'll miss you, but as you wrote about your latest diagnosis, you've been away a while, so we've been practising missing you, too. I regret that you will not be posting, and, if Father's experience is anything to go by, the MacMillan folk are really good, and kind.
      I hope you get plenty of opportunity to sit outside and feel the sun warm on your skin – maybe with a pint of something good in your hand.
      Son't be a stranger!

      1. Thanks, I’ll endeavour to interject , I’m modestly medicated at the moment but as things progress and the meds get stronger I’ll. probably start proclaiming Starmer to be the best PM ever, if I do forgive me 😁

    7. Fingers crossed for your Grandson, Datz. I hope the chemo isn't as bad as one hears. And, we'll miss you, but as you wrote about your latest diagnosis, you've been away a while, so we've been practising missing you, too. I regret that you will not be posting, and, if Father's experience is anything to go by, the MacMillan folk are really good, and kind.
      I hope you get plenty of opportunity to sit outside and feel the sun warm on your skin – maybe with a pint of something good in your hand.
      Son't be a stranger!

    8. Datz, I am so sorry.
      Your bravery is awe-inspiring.
      The hospice movement is the one very good health development in this country.
      When you feel up to posting, we would love to hear from you.
      Please just rest and get what pleasure you can from life.

    9. My goodness Datz ,

      You are carrying a heavy burden , and I hope that by sharing your thoughts with us , they might make your grimmer news a bit more of a coping mechanism for you .. you have been dealt a bad hand , but my goodness it is good to hear from you .

      Are you one of the Somerset chaps, with Scottie dogs?

      Do keep on scribbling on here , we all wondered where you had got to .

      Keep steady and safe xx

      1. Somerset Scotty peeps aye. I forgot to mention that in that litany of woe little Mary has heart failure also, she is the younger of the two and is the constant companion of the older Connie who will probably not last too long when she goes. I hope I’m still around when that happens so I can give Leila such support as I can. This all sounds dreadfully depressing but we have 52 years of marriage with enough happy memories to smooth out some of the more trying times.

        1. Everything is inevitable .. all of us are in this thing together .

          I expect your wuffles have had great times with you , I love little short legged dogs , Scotties , terriers and corgies , and of course , my spaniels , my older spannel was PTS in 2023 he was nearly 16 yrs , younger one will be 12 yrs this year ..

          Dogs understand and know .. they are our memory bank as well . They read us like a book .

          I expect your weather is terrible at the moment , there is a clearance here in South Dorset thank goodness , hope the sunshine spreads across the counties .. we need some bright weather, don’t we .

    10. What a terrible situation for you to be in, along with all the other good wishes I can only join in and wish you well and hope you and especially your young grandson recover very soon.
      Best wishes to you all.

    13. Datz I salute your fortitude! (Not to mention your fiftytude!)

      Hope you grandson makes a full recovery.

      S

    14. Oh bloody Hell.
      I've heard of pulling the short straw, but you've pulled a full handful of short straws.
      I pray that your moral strength holds up .

    16. A couple of days ago someone said that there’s a lot of bad news in nottl land. I’m sorry to hear your news which has added to it. MacMillan and Marie Curie along with the local NHS were a good help to us too.

      1. I would guess the demographic of NOTTL almost guarantees assorted significant health issues, at 75 I consider myself fortunate that this is the first time in my life that I’ve encountered illness other than the usual childhood stuff. To be fair to the NHS the local team are dedicated but very understaffed and terribly overworked, reliance on bank staff leads to lack of continuity of care.

    17. Good to see you're still around, Datz.

      Sorry to hear of your troubles but take care and keep hope.😊

    18. Oh my goodness, you and your family have had a run of bad luck, so sorry to hear.

      MacMillan do wonderful work and I’m glad you have been looked after. There are indeed many kind people around. And our nearest and dearest are a great comfort. xxx

    19. Wow, what can I say that others have not written already.

      Your courage is beyond anything that I could ever hope to possess, I accept that I will probably be a screaming gibbering wreck if I ever have more than a toothache.

      You will be forgiven for kind words about Starmer but if I ever say a kind word about Trudeau, just shoot me.

    20. Dear Datz, I have only just read your post. I have upvoted all those posting messages of encouragement to you, then realised that I hadn't personally replied to you. Life is full of ups and downs, although it seems that you have had more than your fair share of the downs. Just be aware that all NoTTLers on here are thinking of you in your time of troubles. My thoughts are with you, my friend.

      1. I’ve been considerably delighted and bucked by the support it means a lot to me. I did wonder long and hard if i should post as it did seem a little bit on the maudlin poor me pity train side, whatever the motive I’m so pleased i did.

  9. 400562+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    These past forty years have been a polling station test bed, filled with a successive line of failure upon failure.

    This in my book has brought about serious loss of life
    plus life long injuries, and placed our children in life changing evil jeopardy via rampant publically concealed ( your own kind) paedophilia.

    Trust is an EARNED COMMODITY certainly in the political sphere NOT a commodity to be given out automatically under the party names,names that, as we have learnt to our cost, to have very dubious title content.

    Learn MORE, blindly trust LESS.

    "Cometh the moment, cometh the man" https://x.com/CrazyHorse7673/status/1883187594592423990

  10. maneco64 from Saturday

    tl;dr they think that Trump's tariffs, if applied to silver and gold on 1st February will break the rigged silver and gold markets and spark off the financial everything.
    Alasdair Macleod has been saying recently that he thinks the credit bubble is beginning to burst too.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA0W3bFU3T4

    1. I have often asked, but never had an answer, why would the gold and silver markets be rigged? Are we still on the bi-metallic standard? Have I misunderstood the meaning "fiat currency"?

      1. There has been a lot of discussion of that… I think gold is rigged because it’s priced in dollars and if the market determined the gold price, the dollar would have lost credibility years ago, because it would be clear that it retains almost zero value against actual legal money which is gold (see many, many lessons from Alasdair Macleod).

        As far as I can see, silver is rigged because it is an ingredient in many industrial products, eg military batteries and connections, solar panels. It’s been in both China’s and the US’s interest to keep the silver price low as long as China is making money manufacturing solar panels . JP Morgan seems to be the bank that mainly does the dirty work.
        But now China and Russia have amassed huge silver and gold stashes in preparation for a price correction.

  11. Good morning, all. Clear sky, light frost and barely a puff of breeze.

    https://x.com/MikeHon77414700/status/1883301348453855732
    Incoming???

    https://x.com/liz_churchill10/status/1883217485312528624
    Steve Bannon, War Room, used the following rallying call as the opening to many of his broadcasts. Now, it is working out as Trump cuts a swathe through the dead wood of that former regime.

    “This is the primal scream of a dying regime, pray for our enemies…"

    We need a similar rallying call for the besieged and good people of the UK.

  14. Keir Starmer should learn from Donald Trump’s can-do attitude

    Hasn't Starmer done enough already?

  16. It's just a Cultural Thang.. get over it, bigot.
    Outrage as police say asylum seekers hanging outside primary school is 'cultural issue'

    Perma-residents at The Ramada hotel at Newport Pagnell.. been there three years.. buffet is paid up by you.. spend their free time exploring the local primary schools taking pictures of little white girls.

    After all the PM of UK welcomes you to tuck in for your jollies.. however, please form a queue.. this is Britain.

    1. Well, Iraq has reduced the age of consent to 9 years old.
      Those poor chaps are lonely and looking for a bride.

      3. Islam and Western Civilisation.

        The two completely incompatible cultures.

        Why do Starmer and his government want the former to win?

    2. Given the recent slaughter of those little girls and all the other shit we are expected not to notice over many years i am beginning to wonder what will it take for people like Sergeant Lorna to wake up.

      Mind how you go.

        1. Guns should not have been banned in this country. The banning at the time was more forward planning to destroy the future and existence of the ‘common people’.

    4. Oh I don't know, hanging a few of the bastards outside primary schools during the holidays might discourage the others.

  17. Phew, it's ok..
    DEI hire Sergeant Lorna Clarke confirmed "there is no evidence to support that any offences had taken place" and urged people not to take the matter into their own hands.

      1. Apophasis is a device often used by Chaucer and also called occupatio.

        It means drawing attention to something by saying one will not draw attention to it!

  19. Good Moaning.
    Bright thing in the sky again. Milipede is rite; we are all doooooomed.
    A catching sentence from ex-Mrs. Gove writing in the Mail on the the Welsh choirboy.

    Is it perhaps time to accept that the post-war liberal baby boomer Coca-Cola-teach-the-world-to-sing world view has failed, if not completely, then at least in these sorts of areas?

      1. Didn’t the perp actually shout Alan’s Snackbar as he did the deed? There are none so blind as those who will not see.

        1. I think his fixation on cannabis has clouded his judgement.

          I think his argument goes along the lines of:
          The Hamas leadership are as bad as the Nazi's and if given the opportunity would be worse.
          Anyone who stabbed their children and shouted "Heil Hitler" would not be considered a terrorist.

        1. I never had the slightest inclination, booze was, and still is, my vice.

          Part of Hitchens' argument is that the younger one tries it, the less developed is the brain and thus the more adverse the effects.

          I'm sure there may be some truth in that, but in the case of the Southport monster I do not believe it was the prime cause.
          If it comes out that he was and remains a regular user I might change my view a little, but he will always be a purely evil individual in my view.

          1. MB and I noticed that teenage cannabis smoking was a factor in many adult schizophrenics.
            I suspect that it triggers the disease in those already harbouring the gene.
            Many might have escaped the illness if they'd steered clear of the drug. Obviously not all would, but a sizeable number could have avoided blighting their lives.

      4. I wonder if the killer might have family links to a secretive cult which could possibly still exist (once known in Kenya).
        In which case, HM Prison Service had better watch out because every single Central & East African prisoner would be obliged to obey the fiend's commands. And then deny all knowledge.

        2. My niece’s army boyfriend is off to Kenya shortly on a two month active counter-terrorsism tour of duty.

      5. Hitchens blames everything on drugs. He does have a point. Westminster is full of coke heads.

  20. Wet and very windy here.
    From zero to five in three:
    Wordle 1,317 3/6

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  21. Good morning all.
    A dull, dreary drizzly start so the day.
    A chilly feeling 2.5°C outside, slightly up from the -0.5°C overnight minimum. Maximum in the yard for yesterday was, despite bright sunshine all day, was 5.9°C.

  22. Oh dear.. no overthrow of Starmer, then.

    Speaking to the BBC on Air Force One, Trump said "I get along with him well. I like him a lot.
    "He's liberal, which is a bit different from me, but I think he's a very good person and I think he's done a very good job thus far.

    3. Trump puts America first. Starmer's doing a great job of driving industry and millionaires out of the UK, and many of them are going to the States.

    4. I don't know how Trump defines 'liberal, but it seems as warped as his morality (and who says an American president gets things done by being moral?). Starmer must be one of the most authoritarian, least liberal, lawyer politician in recent times.

    5. It's just talk. Trump was amenable to the WEF Davos set as well, but with him it's always a negotiation.

  23. Morning all 🙂😊
    Not as bright as yesterday and frosty.
    I guess the difference between Trump and Starmer is as obvious as day compared to night.
    Let there be light. But not in our islands.

  24. Red sky earlier on ..

    Woke up at 05.30 . Couldn't get back to sleep..

    Came down stairs, now resident cat yowling for food after a night hunting in the garden , dead mouse on kitchen door outside mat.

    No 1 son was also awake and chirpy… he will be 56 yrs next month . He was wearing his running kit .. dayglo top and running shorts etc .. "Mum , I have emailed a map to you" … okay .. " where are you running to son?"

    "Poole "… then I gulped I am now checking on Strava.. He set off at 7am .. he took the back lanes , then along the cycle paths on b roads then across to Poole harbour, 27kms , then onto the station .. whereupon I will pick him up at our station .

    The loneliness of the long distance runner .. and this running thing is something I cannot get my head around .. but I am glad I am witnessing the will and determination he is showing .

  25. Reeves declares war on Labour ‘blockers’ standing in the way of growth
    Chancellor warns MPs not to ‘put their own interests above those of the country’ as she aims to kick-start the economy
    From https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/26/rachel-reeves-labour-blockers-new-homes-growth-ed-miliband/
    But the cause of the "negative growth" is precisely her! Her idiot budget is a prime example! The cockup over VAT on schoolfees was on a podcast just now – many serving in the military used fee-paying schools so, despite their being moved around a lot, the child gets a stable schooling. So, that was a bad idea, made worse by recently exempting US military personnel from paying the VAT!
    Stupid or malign, or what?

      1. No, public infrastructure is crumbling as much as small business, due to her "difficult decisions". What is growing are the financial prospects for the Davos set, who have the means to hold whole nations and their gormless public to ransom.

    2. But in other headlines, Starmer is saying we should align ourselves withthe EU, not Trump's USA. They are playing a game Oberst.

      1. Why does the UK have to pla a digital game – either/or? Why cannot the government make up it’s own mind (yes, I know!) and do what’s right for the UK, rather than what the EU or the USA says? So, one one topic, the UK could support the EU, on another, the USA. Be it’s own master, in fact.

          2. I still can't believe we're stuck in the middle with this lousy government. And I think it's going to get worse.

      2. 'Morning, Tom…every move he makes, every step he takes – all to revert to EU. Wait for the mealy mouth to spout 'Brexit not working yadda yadda…'

          1. I hope so Tom…but I suspect we won’t get a vote another time, it’ll be done slowly but surely, ‘review’ by ‘review’….

          2. We'd better start praying. Re-entry by the back door is Starmer's method. By the time some people wake up (if they ever do) it'll be too late.

    3. Why do socialists have the view that they can tax the country into prosperity?
      I know they’re driven by ideology rather than common sense and very basic economics.

      1. Indeed.
        We'll all be more prosperous if everyone is out of work!
        Tax business until the pips squeak, and we'll all be more prosperous!
        Adding VAT will not affect people's spending.
        I'd like whatever they are on. It's much more fun and positive than reality.

  26. Morning, all Y'all.
    Clear, sunny weather. Chilly, so yesterday's slush has stiffened.

    2. If you stand looking out to sea around the centre part of the beach that is where in 1967 two old friends lives changed for ever.
      I'll explain later.

  28. Can someone please display, the letter mentioned below, I can't copy and paste from one section to another.
    Rosie Duffield's MP aged only 53, resignation letter to Starmer, her letter is scathing.

    1. Here you go RE.

      "Dear Sir Keir,

      Usually letters like this begin, "It is with a heavy heart…" Mine has been increasingly heavy and conflicted and has longed for a degree of relief. I can no longer stay a Labour MP under your management of the party, and this letter is my notice that I wish to resign the Labour Party whip with immediate effect.

      Although many "last straws" have led to my decision, my reason for leaving now is the programme of policies you seem determined to stick to, however unpopular they are with the electorate and your own MPs.

      You repeat often that you will make the "tough decisions" and that the country is "all in this together". But those decisions do not directly affect any one of us in Parliament. They are cruel and unnecessary, and affect hundreds of thousands of our poorest, most vulnerable constituents.

      This is not what I was elected to do. It is not even wise politics, and it certainly is not "the politics of service".

      I did not vote for you to lead our party for reasons I won't describe in detail here. But, as someone elevated immediately to a shadow cabinet position without following the usual path of honing your political skills on the backbenches, you had very little previous political footprint. It was therefore unclear what your political passions, drive or direction might be as the leader of the Labour Party, a large movement of people united by a desire for social justice and support for those most in need.

      You also made the choice not to speak up once about the Labour Party's problems with antisemitism during your time in the shadow cabinet, leaving that to backbenchers, including new MPs such as me.

      Since you took office as Leader of the Opposition you have used various heavy-handed management tactics but have never shown what most experienced backbenchers would recognise as true or inspiring leadership.

      You have never regularly engaged with your own backbench MPs, many of whom have been in Parliament far longer than you, and some of whom served in the previous Labour government.

      You have chosen neither to seek our individual political opinions, nor learn about our constituency experiences, nor our specific or collective areas of political knowledge. We

      clearly have nothing you deem to be of value.

      Your promotion of those with no proven political skills and no previous parliamentary experience but who happen to be related to those close to you, or even each other, is frankly embarrassing.

      In particular, the recent treatment of Diane Abbott, now Mother of the House, was deeply shameful and led to comments from voters across the political spectrum. A woman of her political stature and place in history is deserving of respect and support, regardless of political differences.

      As Prime Minister, your managerial and technocratic approach, and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long fourteen years to be mandated by the British public to return to power.

      Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.

      How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate's sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?! The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.

      Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives' two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of those people can grasp – this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour Prime Minister. Forcing a vote to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for – why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment or remorse?

      I now have no confidence in your commitment to deliver the so-called "change" you promised during the General Election campaign and the changes we have been striving for as a political party for over a decade.

      My values are those of a democratic socialist Labour Party and I have been elected three times to act on those values on behalf of my constituents. Canterbury made history when its voters elected their first woman, and only non-Conservative, MP since the seat was created in the thirteenth century.

      My constituents elected an independent-minded MP who vowed to put constituency before party, and to keep tackling the issues that most affect us here – Brexit fallout, funding for our universities, our desperately struggling East Kent NHS, dire housing situation, repeated sewage pollution and protecting our vital green spaces.

      I am confident that I can continue to do so as an independent MP guided by my core Labour values.

      Sadly, the Labour Party has never shown any interest in my wonderful constituency in the seven years that I have been in Parliament. But I am proud of my community and will continue to serve them to the best of my ability.

      My constituents care deeply about social issues such as child poverty and helping those who cannot help themselves. I will continue to uphold those values as I pledged to do when I first stood before them for election in 2017.

      As someone who joined a trade union in my first job, at seventeen, Labour has always been my natural political home. I was elected as a single mum, a former teaching assistant in receipt of tax credits. The Labour Party was formed to speak for those of us without a voice, and I stood for election partly because I saw decisions about the lives of those like me being made in Westminster by only the most privileged few. Right now, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed. I hope to be able to return to the party in the future, when it again resembles the party I love, putting the needs of the many before the greed of the few.

      Yours sincerely,

      Rosie Duffield MP

      2. "Forcing a vote to make many older people iller and colder...." doesn't sound like the level of English that an MP would have. Are you sure she wrote it?

          1. Rosie would have got a louder cheer if she had signed off 'fuck you' rather than 'yours sincerely'.

          2. I think so, too. Similarly when she complained about Lloyd Russel Moyle sitting too close behind her in the House. She went to the media – I think I may have dealt with that differently…kick in the…Anyhow, he now seems to appear on I think Dewberry GBN prog.

          3. Russel Moyle is a very odious man. GB News certainly employs the drossest of the dross to mindlessly support Labour no matter how indefensible its actions are.

          4. As I said, I’d have dealt with him differently. He’s a bit grim, imo. Presumably his constituents think he’s worth it.

        2. Your estimatation of the quality of Labour MPs is endeariong Alec, but perhaps not in accordance with reality?

          Copied directly from the Labour party website.

          3. I noticed earlier in the letter with "A woman of her political stature", when she obviously meant her physical stature.

      4. Poor Rosie Duffield, she's too naive and honest to make it in Parliament.
        We will never return to the kind of unrealistic idealism that led to the foundation of the welfare state for the simple reason that we can't afford it. We never could. It was always, from the start, paid for by devaluing the currency and we've got to the end of that particular road.
        She should read Alan Greenspan's 1967 essay on gold and money which mentions the welfare state.
        Some terrific truths about Robokeir in there though!

      5. Putting aside some her more knee jerk Leftyism, she is certainly sticking it to Stoma.
        And she is quite right about Labour abandoning the very people it was founded to help.
        It is now the party of the technocrat and the comfortable public employee.

        1. While I generally agre, I would say that the labour Party was never designed to held the workers but instead to use thewm to get power, and has betrayed the working class at every opportunity.

      6. What "Brexit fallout"? The fact we haven't had Brexit? The two child cap is a good thing. I don't believe that 20% of those who bothered to vote gives much of a mandate, frankly.

  29. SUNDAY, JAN 26, 2025 – 01:25 AM
    Recently pardoned Hunter Biden has once again found himself at the center of controversy, as newly surfaced bank records and corporate documents indicate that a shared bank account linked to the future first son was used in a fraudulent bond transaction tied to Burnham Asset Management. The firm was involved in a million-dollar securities fraud that saw two of Biden’s business partners arrested and convicted – while Hunter escaped accountability….

    Watch this space….

  30. Today FSB returns to one of our major national problems, the NHS, as senior clinician Xandra H, in her More News From The NHS , gives us inside info on just how daft, degenerate and dangerously decadent working practices are in that wiltingly woke wilderness of common sense. Time to scrap it? Let us know.

    FSB believes that the more we know about it the better we are at defending our British culture, so if you missed it, please read Scot Iain Hunter’s entertaining essay, Immortal Memories , about Robert Burns. The Grumpy Old Git Graham Bedford griping about modern cars and driving on modern roads in his Cars and Driving Annoyances i s still there, if it’s one of those mornings.

    Energy watch 08.30. Demand: 32.09GW. Supply: Hydrocarbons 8.4%; Wind 52.9%; Imports 15.3%; Biomass 7.9% and Nuclear 13.5%. Solar: 0%.

    We are importing – very expensively – 15% of our demand for electric power from the continent – about half of which comes from gas but is classed as ‘other’ for carbon emission purposes here, while much cheaper UK gas powered stations are being paid not to produce power to give us the highest electricity prices in the world, just so mad Miliband can pretend to be ‘cutting emissions'. Of the nominal demand of 32GW, Britain is only producing 25W. This not an energy policy, it is utter mendacious lunacy.

    And please remember that FSB is a reader’s magazine, and relies on contributions from readers, so if you have something you want to say, please do write an article. It does not have to be a long one and no topic is taboo. Please think about it.

    freespeechbacklash.com

    1. Morning, Tom.
      The articles you publish – do you have any themes that you encourage, or themes that you don't want? I ask, because I'm nNot sure I can write anything entertaining (I'm too dull), but I can write technical stuff that is informative, but likely have a limited audience.

        1. "How to design process plant for predictive maintenance"
          Does that grip you?
          I wrote that I'm dull…
          😉

          1. Well, predictive maintenance is a sexy subject, but is now redundnant in many industries.

          4. Yes, but projecting into the future. Like, my car tells me it needs a major or minor service in 3 thousand km – means it's possible to book the service when it's least convenient, for example. All based on running time, delta-P across filters, and so on.
            I'm leading the development of that for the project I'm working on now, fom CONTRACTORs side. What to measure, where, how, why, how to deal with the signals, analysis and predict a fault and whatever other maintenance might be required.

          7. I would de-emphasise running time, especially running time recommended by manufacturers, and make it a subsidiary factor. Oil analasys, thermal imaging and vibration monitoring are far more reliable inputs.

  31. Not to worry, the government will take on more public sector workers and fund more NGOs to ensure that more gets done…

    1. Of course, but the last very expensive mob of know it all's also had the opportunity to stop it all.

  34. Learning to serve

    SIR – Recent letters (January 12) have supported the concept of some form of National Service for those aged 18.

    However, as others have pointed out, one year from scratch is barely sufficient to develop maturity, self-discipline and leadership ability, where little or none exists already, let alone any necessary professional knowledge and skills.

    The time to start the process is at a much earlier age. The United Kingdom is blessed with a significant range of youth organisations that nurture both personal and professional attributes, such as the Sea Cadets, Army Cadets and Air Training Corps, as well as Scouts, Guides, Cubs and Brownies.

    Britain also has other youth programmes, such as the highly praised Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (ages 14-24). Such activities can only encourage successful development, and deserve much support from both the public and the Government.

    Christopher Hall
    Edinburgh

    A nice idea but for the young people that really need it there are obstacles.

    I tried to join the choir at the village Church. The Choirmaster gave me 'Onward Christian Soldiers' to sing in front of the rest of the choir. I had never come across it before.

    I also had previously joined the local Cubs. That lasted three weeks as my mother couldn't afford the thruppence a week.

    Duke of Edinburgh award scheme??? I only heard about that after i had left school.

    I still turned out okay though…Well…mostly. They haven't found the choirmasters body yet.

        2. Look you !

          They had rather splendid canapes. Croustardes filled with finger limes, smoked salmon mousse and caviar.

          I also made savoury profiteroles filled with chicken jalfrezi. Gluten free i'll have you know !

          VW found a small piece of gristle in hers so i banned her for life.

          I also made a big pot of Chilli gone barmy for those with big appetites. Thank you choirmaster.

          2. He serves banquets to Nottlers?

            I always though he gave them leftovers.

            Oh, of course. Main course.

    2. It was when I went for a singing test to join the choir at school that my vocal incompetencies were laid painfully bare, and commented on. I wasn't invited back. Don't sing any more, either, except when I was 19 and diving a tractor that could be heard all over Hampshire.

    3. I can speak from personal knowledge that the RAF Air Cadet scheme (renamed from Air Training Corps) is a superb organisation for young people and the cadets from the RAFAC units in my area are a credit to their generation. I am sure that other organisations such as the ones that. Christopher Hall mentioned are equally beneficial to the country. However, they would benefit from some of the cash that is splashed out to the West Hartlepools LGBTQ Street Dancing Syndicate and plenty of others of dubious credit.

      1. My neighbour is regional commander Sea Cadets. I often get invited to Mess dinners because of her involvement with the Royal Navy.

        I am most impressed with the young folks that i meet.

  35. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2025/01/25/sabalenka-keys-live-australian-open-womens-final-latest/#keys

    World No 1 Aryna Sabalenka angrily smashed her racket after losing her Australian Open crown to an unexpected challenger, 19th seed Madison Keys, and then explained that she had needed to clear her head before making the traditional runner-up speech.

    While Keys’s belated capture of a maiden major title made for a heart-warming story, much of the post-match debate surrounded Sabalenka and her furious response.

    When asked about her immediate reaction, which also found her leaving the court briefly, Sabalenka said that she had needed a mental reset after a dramatic finale in which Keys slammed three spectacular forehand winners in the space of the last eight points.

    “There definitely was a bit of frustration because I was so close to achieve something crazy,” said Sabalenka, who was playing for her third successive Australian Open title after 20 straight wins at Melbourne Park.

    “I just needed to throw those negative emotions at the end just so I could give a speech, not stand there being disrespectful. I was just trying to let it go and be a good person, be respectful.”

    S L Smith
    1 hr ago
    The headline should have reflected Keys brilliant victory, not only in the final but the S/F and Q/F. It was a fantastic match of very high quality. DT really do need to invest in some good tennis correspondents and also cover the sport more.

    Comment by Jimmy Christian.

    JC

    Jimmy Christian
    3 hrs ago
    Madison Keys played brilliantly, and it’s easy to see why she’s one of the most popular figures on the tour among fellow players (as reported on Channel 9 in Oz). Delightful and magnanimous. Well done.

    As for Aryna Sabalenka, in previous appearances and interviews she has come across as being a very nice young lady, and after she let off steam this time (although why take it out on a poor innocent racket….?) she was gracious and charming as always.

    Either way, an exciting end to a fine matchup. See you next year.

    Comment by Rick Lawrence.

    RL

    Rick Lawrence
    8 hrs ago
    So typical of “Bruno” Sabalenka

    Comment by Anthony Mayer.

    AM

    Anthony Mayer
    8 hrs ago
    Behaves with white-trash attitude in the Slavic version.

    Comment by Achilles Edgebaston.

    AE

    Achilles Edgebaston
    12 hrs ago
    Her nationality isn't an 'embarrassment'. It's just where she was born. What a lame remark and unsuitable and irrelevant in an article about sport.

    Comment by Daian Tully.

    DT

    Daian Tully
    12 hrs ago
    Aryna Sabalenka has a lovely Adam's apple!

    1. Never heard of either of them. I've long since lost touch with the world of tennis.

  36. SIR – My favourite source of coffee is a butcher’s shop.
    It also offers good-quality meat and other produce, including vegetarian options, along with an opportunity to chat to the staff and locals.

    Mike Powell
    Quorn, Leicestershire

    Really? Is that so, Mick?

    A butcher's shop … selling meat … in Quorn?

  37. From the beach at Benidorm all those years ago. 7 friends decided to take their first trip abroad. Flying from Gatwick we had booked a small hotel just a stones throw from the centre of town. Since then flattened and completely gone.
    It was my 21st birthday and the celebration carried on for over three days and nights.
    As we sat enjoying the sunshine and the waves. My friend John who I'd met at Willesden technical college a year before, said this is the life let's go to Australia. It's too far mate I replied. He said well what about Canada? No I replied, too cold in winter. I have an uncle living there. I then said what about South Africa? Yep he replied that'll do. Within 12 months we were boarding the RMS Pendennis Castle in Southampton for our 12 day 30 pounds each. I stayed two years, he stayed 35 years. And been married twice.
    I met his eldest son at John's funeral 4 years ago. He was the image of him and he said, you do realise that if it hadn't been for you, none of us would be here at all. Yes, what a wonderful thing to have happened. Benidorm seems to have changed a lot now.

    1. Lovely story, Eddy – uplifting! I was afraid of another downbeat story, and one a day (Datz) is more than enough to handle.
      So, you were the SA equivalent of a £30 Pom?

      1. A few years (1976) later my wife and I boarded the SS Australis at Southampton and had six weeks at sea for 50 quid each.
        I wish we'd stayed. And it's Australia Day today.

  38. More truth and hence more woes for the shower in No 10. Her call for growth is straight from clown-land and as desperately unfunny.

    I'm fearful that with her 'plan' clearly failing, as predicted by many, she will come for the slightly better off. Those who worked hard, lived within their means and built up equity in their properties and a reasonable bank balance.

    With their across-the-board failures they have, in seven months, backed themselves into a corner and cornered creatures are known to pose an increased threat.

    Comments on X stating that Sainsbury's are closing their cafes. Can anyone confirm?
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/205b358f0cfb1c6014bc6ea6c7b1b28826b92893f7864c9fef2aa8b8a5359e09.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/adfd8a0fd09bdb77336ac25445230c4ae02266d32a5021ea9b88c7a765d396c2.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f8425345baa75658e2f73b8b457fe5d62a01b8082ca4fd3e0ff52f211f8dca6b.png

      1. When Sainsbury's opened its new and much larger store in Redhill, it included a cafe. Didn't last lomg.

        1. Yet in our local shopping centres there are cafes right outside the supermarkets – but coffee shop companies, not supermarket-run. Maybe that's the clue?
          One of the things I always liked about Norway – outside of Italy, the best coffee in the world!

        2. We had a pleasant one in RTW, but watching the number of staff required to run it and looking at the clientele, it clearly wasn't going to add much to profits. Mainly elderly people keeping warm, reading newspapers and nursing one coffee and perhaps a cake. Tunbridge Wells may not be typical, but it was indicative, I suspect.

          2. Wetherspoons used to have free refills of coffee. Don't know if they still do (we don't have one nearer than 16 miles away).

      2. Our local out of town Sainsbury’s at Brookwood has, within the last year, developed the upper floor, to incorporate a Costa, Specsavers and a learning centre. That whole area was the original cafe.
        The Specsavers is a branch of the Woking franchise.

      3. The cafe in our giant Sainsbury's has always been a mugger's buddle.
        Possibly a decision brought forward by a few months.

    2. They b*stards will just dismiss these findings as "Tory bias" or "wrong question", and continue to drive the UK over the cliff.

    4. History Lesson:

      A Labour currency statement:

      "From now the pound abroad is worth 14% or so less in terms of other currencies. It does not mean, of course, that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued.”

    1. Much obliged. I wish they'd present the bulletin in an easier format but hey ho.

      Pushing to scrap inheritance tax is a god campaign. Then all other stealth and wealth taxes.

  40. https://order-order.com/2025/01/26/reeves-tech-companies-have-responsibility-to-remove-access-to-hateful-content/

    No, they don't. It's like blaming a radio for being too loud when it is the person playing it at that volume who's to blame.

    Then we have the 'what is "hateful content"'? The truth about muslim? If you want to censor – and the Left do so love to control people – then they have to set out the law. Not hand it off to a convenient third part.

  41. Musk tells Germans at AfD rally to ‘look past their guilt’. 26 January 2025.

    Elon Musk told supporters of the anti-immigrant far-Right AfD party to not feel “guilty” about the country’s Nazi past as he made a surprise video appearance at a rally in Germany.

    Addressing a hall of 4,500 people alongside party leader Alice Weidel, Mr Musk spoke live via video link about preserving German culture and protecting the German people.

    “It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” Mr Musk said.

    This is true of course. The Holocaust is beyond the living memory of all but a very few. The Germans need to shake it off.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/01/26/musk-tells-germans-at-afd-rally-to-look-past-their-guilt/

    1. By all means feel guilt about something you could have prevented, or, of course, did yourself. But, since almost everyone alive from German stock wasn't alive back in the 20s, 30s and 40s, they should not feel guilt.

      1. My wife's family still remember the war and there is a visceral dislike of Germans; something I don't understand, every German I've met has been pleasant and engaging. Not that I know all that many.

        1. Mother is the only one left who "remembers" the war. In-Laws are 10 years younger and have inherited a dislike of Germans and Germany from their parents. Personally, I like Germans, food, cars, equipment, and have worked for a German company.

          1. My dad loathed German/Germans, but then as he aged that was how he mostly felt about mostly everything….

          2. M-i-L lost family from more than one generation including her brother and several uncles.
            Her father never recovered from his experiences at Gallipoli and other theatres in Western Europe, PTSD drove him mad, ruining everyone’s family life.
            Similar on F-i-L’s side.

          1. I often think about those foreign POWs who stayed here after the war. I know there were a lot of Italians who stayed and think there are many who live in Wales and Scotland. I was born and brought up in Clerkenwell, London, and there wears an Italian called Little Italy.
            Our local barber was Lu Lusardi and his son live on the first floor of the flats I lived in.
            I’m not aware of any British POWs who stayed on in Germany.

          2. Germany was in ruins.

            Italy wasn't much better with the poverty.

            Many Italians after the war came here for the work. They settled and they integrated while at the same time keeping their cultural identity.

            Those are the migrants we want.

          5. Yes. I think it was the brickworks that drew them.

            An Italian restaurant in Bedford (not my favourite place) The chef/owner let me buy several cases of red wine at trade prices. He is still on my Christmas card list !

          6. Used to frequent Santaniello (spelling?) in Bedford when we lived in Newport Pagnell. My introduction to proper pizza. Cheap wine, it was good.

          7. I am always going on about the posh stuff but it all stems from the poverty kitchen.

            The best pizza in the world is the simplest pizza made from local ingredients grown in intense sunshine.

          8. That’s why I love Italian cuisine. Simple, few, good ingredients. Plenty flavour and goodness.

          9. My aunt and uncle had a farm, and 3 German POWs were billeted on them as farm labourers.
            Apparently you were not supposed to fraternise with them i.e. allow them the house or treat them in anyway as human beings.
            All my aunt and uncle saw were three young farm boys and treated them as they would any young lad working for them.
            When the POWs were finally repatriated to Germany, my cousins were upset to see them go as they had become part of the household.
            The only foreign journey Aunt and Uncle ever made was to attend the wedding of the daughter of one of those boys.

          10. We had two ex-PoWs locally who married English women and settled down. One of my classmates was the child of a German PoW and another had an Italian ex-PoW as a father.

    2. And this is why no-one in Britain should be at all concerned about the Slave Trade and Colonialism. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

    3. There was an interesting book review in the Terriblegraph supplement on Hitler. I’ll try and dig it out.

    4. The trouble is that the Germans' guilt was foisted onto the rest of us – when Merkel unilaterally opened the gates to the third world. Which then somehow became something for the rest of the EU to have to "take your fair share" of. We didn't round up and kill Jewish and others. If the German wanted to atone for that, they shouldn't have (edit: been allowed to foist) foisted their guilt onto the rest of us.

  42. Cleaning and tidying over, relaxing for lunch with a (very naughty) glass of red.
    It's been a good weeknd, from an unusual burst of positive energy Friday and starting planning for a weekend away with SWMBO, Mother's 96th birthday (sorry about the video, closed FB group) where she looked so happy and was bright enough to not only recognisee me, but by my voice in the phone, also some silly anecdote about her birthday from 56 years ago, an excellent curry out with Second Son (new style at the restaurant, and very good too!), and sleeping like the dead for hours both nights.
    Monday tomorrow… 🙁

    1. A good time, with good memories. Especially good to read about Mother – 96 a grand old age, whatever she's on (if anything) sounds just the job. Thanks for leaving such a positive post, Paul – we need more of those in these crappy times x

    2. How lovely to hear – thank you!

      it must actually be quite reassuring to know that no-one can share videos of your mother. I'm sure we're all happy to imagine her wonderful day.

      Cheers!!

    1. Especially as Britain spent so much in both money and human lives to stop the Atlantic trade!

  44. Revealed: Foreign rapist who was jailed for six years after attacking drunken woman in her flat wins 'substantial' compensation for unlawful detention. Ebou Jasseh, 41, has mounted at least six challenges to Home Office attempts to deport him and was awarded compensation after being held in an immigration removal centre

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

    Miranda: Oh brave new world to have such people in it!

    Prospero: 'Tis new to thee.

    1. 400562+up ticks,

      A
      Afternoon R,
      In a country of honesty, integrity, & realism, he would already have been deported, and informed inclusive of an apology that his dick is arriving at a later date.

    2. Ffs. What a country we live in, with our idiotic politicians and stupid people voting for more of the same.

      The latest Jerm Warfare (“What was Trump’s role in the COVID era”) with Debbie Lermon has been an inter listen this morning.

    3. Ffs. What a country we live in, with our idiotic politicians and stupid people voting for more of the same.

      The latest Jerm Warfare (“What was Trump’s role in the COVID era”) with Debbie Lermon has been an inter listen this morning.

    4. Ffs. What a country we live in, with our idiotic politicians and stupid people voting for more of the same.

      The latest Jerm Warfare (“What was Trump’s role in the COVID era”) with Debbie Lermon has been an inter listen this morning.

    1. Yvette Cooper.. 2nd rate mind. Tries to be mousey & school mistress at same time.
      She deliberately lies. Clumsy & transparent.
      'unburdened by doctrine' LOL
      Will lead to utter to contempt & distrust.
      That sense we're being lied to.. lied to. Every statement..
      You have to be a criminologist to decypher it.
      So much contempt for the electorate.
      A politician, your duty, should be to get people to think. It is to give them information. It is encourage them to debate. And arrive at good conclusion to themselves.
      A good politician does this. Churchill did it. Thatcher did it. Blair did it.
      What we're seeing now is mere shallow nasty & profoundly dangerous authoritarianism in a very bad cause.

      David Starkey

      2. "Yvette Cooper … 2nd rate mind."

        How dare you! That vacuum-headed bitch doesn't possess sufficient neurons for it to be labelled a 'mind'.

    1. Interesting that Diane Abbot talks about 2TKFHStarmer’s big fat DPP pension whereas I believe it’s a Private Pension that 2TK has protected from some form of tax by his personal Act of Parliament. Typical left wing wrong thinking politician.

    2. Cold, hard self-interest will force even Keir Starmer to embrace the opportunities of Brexit
      Labour’s economic policies are pushing Britain to the brink – but it will be Labour too which will start on the repairs

      Daniel Hannan 25 January 2025 2:20pm GMT

      Can the promise of Brexit be salvaged? After five wasted years, have we completely abandoned the idea of using our new liberties to make this country wealthier?

      We have so far shown a stunning lack of ambition. Free to craft our own energy policy, we decarbonised so hurriedly that our electricity is pricier now than when we were members. Free to reduce our VAT, we instead extended it to school fees, becoming the only country in the developed world (with the partial exception of New Zealand) not to treat education as a public good. Free to sign trade deals, we cowered from chlorinated chicken.

      Perhaps we are no longer the people we were. Perhaps our more adventurous ancestors emigrated, leaving behind those who preferred security to enterprise, comfort to risk. Perhaps the genes of Drake, Cook and Scott are these days more thickly clustered in Australia and North America. It would certainly explain why those places are surging ahead of us in terms of GDP per head.

      But I think there is a more prosaic explanation. The early setbacks for Brexit, whose fifth anniversary falls this week, were due to unforeseeable but not irreversible accidents. We might yet become a more prosperous, agile and competitive nation. And the first steps could be taken, believe it or not, by this Labour government.

      The culture war that followed the referendum made it hard to talk honestly about Brexit. When I write about missed opportunities, some Leavers think I am letting the side down, and some Remainers pounce as if I had said that the whole thing was a bad idea.

      The idea that Brexit could never have worked was vividly expressed in a 2018 tweet by the columnist Hugo Rifkind: “The best way to understand Theresa May’s predicament is to imagine that 52 per cent of Britain had voted that the Government should build a submarine out of cheese.”

      Hugo’s Cheese Submarine Thesis became global. “May und das U-Boot aus Käse” was a headline in Süddeutsche Zeitung, while Paris Match excitedly told its readers about the “sous-marin en fromage”.

      Cheese Submarinism is the official stance of Europhiles on both sides of the Channel. Those who claim that Brexit could have been done differently are, we are told, deluding themselves.

      This is nonsense. Most of the world’s non-EU countries are outgrowing the trade bloc. Britain is no exception, especially when measured against comparable Western European states. But that is hardly a high bar. Why have we not leapt ahead of them? Let’s start with Theresa May. This is awkward, because the former PM has just moved into the office opposite mine and, when we pass in the corridor, her eyes become as hard and sharp as two awls.

      I don’t blame her after what I wrote when I was trying to persuade Conservative MPs to dump her.

      I remain of the view that it would have been better for all concerned – for her especially – had she resigned after throwing away the Tory majority in 2017, a needless election which makes Rishi Sunak’s early poll look like a strategic masterstroke.

      May was dutiful and diligent, but the accident that made her prime minister led to a series of errors that no one could reasonably have seen coming. She triggered Article 50 with no plan in place, largely because she wanted something to say at her party conference. She threw away her strongest cards by agreeing to the Eurocrats’ sequencing, meaning that their concerns about money, British competitiveness and Ireland were settled before the trade talks began. She hung back from recognising the rights of settled EU nationals, perhaps feeling she had to prove her toughness after voting Remain.

      Worst of all, she lost the unlosable 2017 election. From that moment on, most MPs were anti-Brexit, and they made sure Brussels knew it. Exponents of cheese submarinism ignore the fact that MPs promised Eurocrats that Britain would not leave without the EU’s permission (“we will not allow a no-deal Brexit”). In 2019, the Commons made that position law. How could anyone then expect decent withdrawal terms?

      None of these things was predictable. Neither was the squandering of half a trillion pounds in a hysterical over-reaction to the pandemic. The day that Brexit took effect, January 31 2020, was the day that the first two cases of Covid were confirmed in Britain.

      Ever since, bad faith Euro-nostalgists have conflated the two phenomena, attributing the rises in taxes, prices and debt to changes in our trading patterns rather than to the fact that we consumed without producing for the better part of two years.

      The lockdown made people look to the state for every rise in life. Labour was elected as demand for spending was increasing and as the capacity to meet it was expiring.

      Which brings us to the mistakes of the current government – mistakes that not even the most fervent U-Boot theorists try to attribute to Brexit – notably the decision to expand public-sector jobs by taxing private-sector jobs.

      And yet, however far we have fallen behind the US, we have outperformed France, Germany and Italy. Which is beginning to prompt even some government officials to ask whether remaining tied to their economic model is sensible.

      I have noticed a new tone from ministers over the past month. They talk about the benefits of doing things differently in such areas as financial services. Sir Keir Starmer boasts of diverging from EU rules on artificial intelligence so that we can lead the world (which we won’t while we have such high commercial energy prices, but that’s another story).

      In Davos last week, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, talked up the benefits of a trade deal with the United States. I can’t imagine she enjoys cosying up to Donald Trump. But, if the alternative is facing the 10 or 20 per cent general tariff with which he is threatening the EU, she will have little choice.

      Inch by inch, Britain is being pulled by economic reality towards the parts of the world that are growing. Once trade deals with India and the US complement our membership of the Pacific trade nexus, the CPTPP, the idea of realigning with EU standards will look not just nostalgic but cultish.

      None of this is to argue against practical links with our neighbours. The culture war that has smouldered since 2016 burst into flame again last week when Maroš Šefčovič, the Commission Vice-President, suggested that Britain join the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention (PEM), a technical agreement that eases rules of origin for trade among countries in the EU, European Free Trade Association, eastern Europe and parts of north Africa and the Middle East.

      Immediately, Conservatives were denouncing “membership through the back door” while Lib Dems were exulting in Brussels being “receptive to the UK joining the Customs Union”. But the PEM is not a customs union (something which, for the avoidance of doubt, the UK, as a global trading nation, should not join). Are we really going to oppose, on principle and without looking at it, anything containing the word “Euro”?

      Consider the proposal to allow British and European under-30s to work in each other’s countries. It would bring some economic benefits, since EU nationals of that age are net tax contributors. We have similar schemes, not only with Australia and Canada, but with such countries as South Korea and Uruguay. Equally, we can live happily without it. But let’s not pretend that this is full-on free movement and that, if the EU were prepared to pay a high-enough price to get such a scheme – lifting checks on goods in Northern Ireland, for example – we would still not countenance it.

      It comes down to confidence. When we have diverged from the EU, on vaccine procurement for example, we have been vindicated. But the fretful and stubborn positions we assumed under May linger. We hang back from deregulation. We dismiss basic economics as “Singapore-on-Thames”.

      We will carry on in this vein until the money runs out. At which point, just as after the 1976 IMF bailout, it will be Labour ministers who are forced to begin the repair work. Now, as then, the crisis will jolt us from our torpor.

      1. Embracing the 'opportunities of Brexit' is the very last thing that Starner wants to do. Such action would get in the way of him imposing the Communist state he so ardently wishes Britain to become.

  47. A tiny bit done up the "garden". A bit more clearing up behind the sheds, then grabbed my jig saw and took the top off the 45gal oil drum I've been planning to use as an incinerator, followed by knocking some air holes into it with my hand-pick.
    Might get round to filling it with the heap of brambles and ivy I've been pulling over the past couple of weeks and getting a fire going.

    I've found that if you place a length of 4×2" timber in the middle of whatever you fill the drum with and then replace it with cardboard and paper to get the fire going, it makes lighting up much easier.

          1. The first few times I visited (well before I moved here) I seldom saw anyone out on the street. I nicknamed the place "Tumbleweed".

            It used to be a big, thriving village with many shops. All it has had for the past twenty-or-so years is a large brush factory that has an attached café. I need to travel five miles to the nearest small town (Tomelilla) to do any shopping; or 15 miles to the nearest large town (Simrishamn on the east coast or Ystad on the south coast) for a better choice of shops.

          4. All the Scandihooligans I’ve met, admittedly not many Swedes, have been verging on alcoholics. The Faroese possibly the worst.

          5. No. There are only two pub-type establishments (nothing like what you would recognise as a pub in the UK) in a 500 mile² area, the nearest being 20 miles away. The cities have a better selection but I am 60 miles from the nearest city (Malmö).

            Swedes, out in the sticks, don't seem to show any interest in pubs. Supper parties in the home are their favoured mode of entertainment. Boring, I know, but a trip to a good pub on my visits to the UK are appreciated all the more these days.

            Supermarkets sell a limited range of bottled beers, some from the UK, but they are limited by law to 3·5% alcohol content. To get a stronger version you need to visit a state-owned liquor establishment, the Systembolaget, in one of the towns. Even there the available selection of beers, wines and spirits is dispiritingly poor.

          6. Swedish supper parties may be boring but mine aren't !

            Singing. General divestment of clothing. Dancing on tables (Nods to Anne Allan) and such like.

          7. Mine are not boring either. I educate Swedes that there is more to life than lutfisk, pickled sill and plain boiled spuds!

          11. Our Vinmonopolet (Weegie Systembolaget) sells a whole range of excellent Norwegian and imported beers, at strengths up to 10% (From Denmark). Hansa do a really good tinned IPA at 8%, plus boutique ales and IPA that are excellent.
            Norwegian supermarkets can sell up to 5% alcohol.

          12. If I want a decent selection of booze I simply jump on the 15-minute ferry between Helsingborg and Helsingør and peruse the numerous Dansk booze outlets.

          14. In Norway, if you want to drink alcohol, forget the price.
            Easily over £10 a half-litre, especially if a bit speciality.

          15. I think there are at least three Bishop’s Arms in various parts of Sweden. I have visited a Stockholm one (back at Christmas 2019). I enjoyed the beer there.

            Shame there isn’t one anywhere near me.

          16. Oh dear. I’m sure some of the supper parties can be lively, or do they not enjoy getting a bit tipsy?

    2. Unasked for advice no.55: a step drill bit is useful for making air holes up to 30mm. Available at Lidl in a mixed pack for less than £5. Possibly use a centre punch first, or similar.

  48. Cleaning, washing and cooking all morning and now everyone’s returned home to unclean, unwash un uncook everything. 15 minutes to catch up, then off to finish the roast. Tax return this afternoon and getting ready for another week at work🙁.

      1. He is far too clever for that. People will think he is easy going. Right up until the moment the trap slams shut.

    3. I think, Rastus, what Trump is actually saying (LBJ style) is…'I got his pecker in my pocket'….

  51. And it's raining so plans for doing a bit more up the "garden" have been abandoned.
    Going to shove some oven chips on and do a couple of omelets for DT & self.

      1. What about red people?

        I've never seen a yellow person (not even a jaundiced one) and the only red-coloured people are those pale-skinned individuals who spend too much time in the sun,

        1. Actually, when I came back from a job in the Gulf many years ago, where we worked outdoors in hot but humid conditions, I came home with a very nice tan, which sadly faded to such a nasty shade of yellow that I did get tested for jaundice! Luckily a false alarm, and even better it soon eased off to normal!

          1. As a kid, I grew up in Northern Nigeria, and as a result I go a nasty shade of yellow in the sun, not brown. The kind of dirty yellow you used to see on the ceilings of old tube trains back in the days of smoking…

          5. I don't go yellow, I go deep brown.
            Not a good shade to be when in the southern US where they are collecting Mexicans for deportation.

            I have just sent some photos of Hilton Head covered in snow. Ha bloody ha, we are supposedly starting our winter break down there in a few days.

        2. I was pretty yellow when I had jaundice as a child, ill and in bed for weeks. Dr said 'unknown cause'. Anyhow…been rewatching Lillehammer, fab!

        3. The Leni Lenape, now known as the Delaware Nation, the people on whose land (with their consent) Willian Penn built Philadelphia, used to paint their bodies red. It was done using a fatty mixture that presumably also gave some protection against extreme weather.

        4. Hang on, there is a whole tribe of red ones just up the road in the local reserve.

          well not exactly red but it is winter and their tans have faded.

      2. What about red people?

        I've never seen a yellow person (not even a jaundiced one) and the only red-coloured people are those pale-skinned individuals who spend too much time in the sun,

        1. Funny isn't it that we were told all these low IQwogs from Africa were Doctors and professionals and the real ones are the 'yellow' people.

    2. Katherine Birbalsingh should be running the Department for Education. And she should be made a Dame.

    4. Universities have entire working groups dedicated to the 'awarding gap' to rig awards for blacks and the other diversity. It's a pointless nonsense.

  55. Just switch on Channel 5 and the end of Yorkshire , a year in the wild, showing young Peregrine falcons and their majestic gliding and hunting. Worth a watch from 2.35 on 5+1.

      1. A black hole could be the UK’s saviour if there’s either coal or oil in it.
        Labour won’t rest until the cows come home and they stop farting.

        1. Can i ask you what part of the UK you are in? I only ask because if the distance is manageable i would like to invite you to my Summer party.

          I find your humour most amusing.

          Wear a pinny though because you will be serving the drinks. :@)

    1. But, but – that nice Sir Khan says London is now much safer than when he took over. /sarc

  58. The Nazi Mind by Laurence Lee – book review

    “Towards the end of 1931, the American journalist Dorothy Thompson had the opportunity to interview Adolf Hitler in his suite at the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin, where that rising star of German politics was living at the time. She went there expecting to meet the future dictator of Germany; but she soon changed her mind, after finding him to be “formless, almost faceless” and the embodiment of the “Little Man”. She tried to argue with him rationally, but Hitler just set all the world’s ills upon the shoulders of the Jews. This, she concluded, made little sense. “She thought that since she, as a worldly-wise journalist,” writes the historian Laurence Rees, “could see through the bluster and spot the mindless prejudice that lay beneath, then others would do the same.” Thompson concluded that Mr Hitler posed little threat.

    How wrong she was. A little over a year later, Hitler had become chancellor of Germany, and would soon lead the world into a catastrophic war of untold cruelty, which involved the slaughter of tens of millions of people and the dislocation of many millions more. Europe, then the world, found itself in the midst of a global calamity.

    A decade ago, it seemed unimaginable that another Hitler, or such a grotesque regime, could rise again in the West. But now, suddenly, we’re living in different times. What becomes clear in The Nazi Mind, Laurence Rees’s thought-provoking and chilling new history of the Third Reich, is that democracy is a mightily fragile entity. There should be no room for complacency as we contemplate the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

    And while the story of the rise and fall of Nazism is hardly unfamiliar, Rees is uniquely placed to look at this cautionary tale through a fresh lens: not only has he spent more than 30 years studying the subject, he’s also a Bafta-winning filmmaker, and has interviewed, in depth, many of the last surviving participants in that regime. In other words, he knows what he’s writing about.

    Rees’s approach is to look at the history of the Third Reich both chronologically and thematically. Although no modern comparisons are explicitly made, anyone familiar with the political turmoil in the West, and particularly over in America, will see much that’s depressingly familiar. Hitler understood early on that it was important, for example, to create a sense of “Them and Us” – the idea that ordinary, everyday people were being victimised by dark, external forces. Only by creating a sense of togetherness, the theory went, could such forces be combated. In post-First World War Germany, those dark forces were the Jews and the global threat of Bolshevism.

    Conspiracy theories were also vital. Lying was a systematic, dogged pursuit for the Nazis; most people were – and still are – gullible enough that if a given thing were repeated often enough, they would become willing to believe it. By the late 1920s, the Nazis weren’t making sufficient headway, but they were resuscitated by the Wall Street Crash, which plunged Germany into economic depression and prompted voters to look for alternatives to the status quo. Hitler and his leading acolytes had already begun the process of recruiting and brainwashing German youth, and now they had a growing army of disenfranchised young ready to take to the streets.

    Nonetheless, what brought the Nazis to power was the connivance of the elites: men who believed they were superior to this firebrand and could control him, or who were willing to turn the other cheek because of greed and self-interest. Rees points out that Hitler was voted into power twice in 1933 without overwhelming support, and that political ennui was every bit as important as rabid ideology. Most Germans weren’t too bothered about democracy per se, but rather who was most likely to ensure jobs and prosperity. Jews amounted to less than 1 per cent of the German population, and were easy to oppress; or it was easy for people to sweep under the carpet any concerns about their treatment, for reasons of expediency. Clever use of controlled media through repeated lies only strengthened the message.

    The first half of The Nazi Mind makes for deeply unsettling reading. The Nazis’ plotting and manipulation, and the patterns of human behaviour spawned as a result, will strike us as horribly recognisable; what follows, however, no matter how familiar the story, can only be read with mounting horror. Reading of the truly awful cruelties inflicted on the Poles from 1939 onwards, or what happened once Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and the descent into the Holocaust, suddenly accrues an even greater resonance than before. And it was all achieved, Rees shows, through the convenient distance created by euphemism, and the collaboration of the political and apolitical, of intellectuals, ordinary men, opportunists – people, on the face of it, like you and me.

    This is a brilliant piece of work: learned, compelling and frankly terrifying. We have been warned.”

    1. It's getting easy to see what's happening all over the West – as described above. Climate scare, Covid scare, now increasing unemployment… just the same.

    2. Folk are comparing muslim to how the Jews were treated in Germany. The Jews didn't go around knifing, stabbing, murdering, raping children.

      The situation is very, very different. muslim must be scrutinised and it must be eradicated from this country. They've been made well. The hard Left media has protected and defended them. The muslim continues to commit atrocity. They have to go.

  61. Rudakabana has been got to in straingways Manchester by 2 Brothers, messy apparently.
    x Dave Atherton.

        1. I doubt any of the current Nottlers will be around then unless some are fibbing about their age.

    3. I expect his guards had to take a very important call and certainly didnt notice a murderous posse close by…

      2. Remember, you can remove everything after (and including) the ?

        Was he beaten up or s he uninjured? As if he did get attacked I hope they didn't kill him.

        I'd want him to suffer like this every day of his life.

        1. I think it was wishful thinking. The report was that he was attacked in Strangeways Prison, Manchester. In fact, he is still in Belmarsh Prison, London. That alone shows that the story is wrong.

          I hope he does suffer in prison. But fake news is fake news.

    6. Peter Hitchens has an interesting take..

      He reckons the kid flipped like many others in UK possibly by design.. when he started taking/being fed Marijuana.

      A significant number of British people are killed each year by mentally ill persons, though accurate figures are increasingly hard to find.
      This fact especially does not suit the Government, which cannot afford to rebuild the badly needed mental hospitals it stupidly sold off 40 years ago.
      Marijuana harms all who take it, not least because its victims are told falsely that it is 'soft'. In fact it is as soft as a nailed club.
      Their young brains are half-formed and gravely vulnerable.

      Not that anyone will tell you so, because he will not have been arrested for his illegal drug use, and so there will be no record of it.
      All psychiatrists know that some crazy people like to dignify their craziness by adopting political or religious causes they don't know anything about.

      That is why there will be another Rudakubana along pretty soon.
      Every time they take place, some minister or police chief will at some point say grandly that 'this must never happen again'.

    7. Peter Hitchens has an interesting take..

      He reckons the kid flipped like many others in UK possibly by design.. when he started taking/being fed Marijuana.

      A significant number of British people are killed each year by mentally ill persons, though accurate figures are increasingly hard to find.
      This fact especially does not suit the Government, which cannot afford to rebuild the badly needed mental hospitals it stupidly sold off 40 years ago.
      Marijuana harms all who take it, not least because its victims are told falsely that it is 'soft'. In fact it is as soft as a nailed club.
      Their young brains are half-formed and gravely vulnerable.

      Not that anyone will tell you so, because he will not have been arrested for his illegal drug use, and so there will be no record of it.
      All psychiatrists know that some crazy people like to dignify their craziness by adopting political or religious causes they don't know anything about.

      That is why there will be another Rudakubana along pretty soon.
      Every time they take place, some minister or police chief will at some point say grandly that 'this must never happen again'.

  62. Signing off – the new medication makes me dizzy and nauseous. Wonderful. One step forward, three steps back.

    A demain – if I get through the night.

        1. Of course.

          (me teaching granny to suck eggs again).

          The other thing is not to focus on it. Force your mind elsewhere.

          (that egg thing again) :@(

    2. Oh, that’s a shame. I’m on an ever expanding cocktail of meds but thus far my blood tests show my body tolerating it well. The tooth socket hurt like hell outside when moving around in the cold and rain but sitting here doing nowt, in the warm, having eaten a sloppy egg mixture and done a saline rinse, the pain has gone away without paracetamol.

    1. Yes. My flat is draughty due to the nice 1930s metal window frames. The heating is the same but it was 25 degrees indoors yesterday (with help from that yellow thing in the sky) and is back to 22 degrees today. 22 is comfortable. Not complaining.

      1. There are ways of dealing with that type of window frame. You don't even need permission from the landlord.

        AI Overview

        DIY secondary glazing – does it really work? – Sheerwater Glass
        Secondary glazing with film is a simple and inexpensive way to insulate windows. It involves applying a transparent film to the inside of a window frame using double-sided tape, then using heat to shrink the film and remove wrinkles.
        How it works

        The film creates an insulating air layer and moisture barrier
        It reduces heat loss and condensation
        It can prevent drafts around windows

        How to install

        Clean and dry the inside of the window
        Apply double-sided tape around the window frame
        Cut the film to size, allowing extra for each edge
        Attach the film to the tape, making sure it's smooth
        Use a hair dryer to shrink the film and remove wrinkles
        Trim any excess film

        1. Even net curtains make an insulating difference. They are not my curtaining (can't think of any other way of putting it after a substantial G&T – generous home measure – and half a bottle of sauvignon blanc) of choice, but when we sauntered off to France yonks ago I got net curtains all round because you simply can't tell if anyone is in or not behind them. When we returned we discovered that the net curtains had insulating properties – they kept the heat out in the summer, and they kept in the warmth generated within during the winter. On a bleak day they hid the bleakness without – I made them so that they could be drawn aside as needs be. Net curtains are not to be sniffed at!

    2. I should have gone for a walk today, as part of my 1,000 mile challenge. Yesterday's walk was excellent – cool but with blue skies and sunshine but that’s spoiled me for today – gloom, cloud and no heavy rain! I'll give it a miss and make up the distance when the weather is more pleasant!!

  64. This is the Jerm Warfare podcast i referred to earlier with Debbie Lermon

    https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/jerm-warfare/id1475255493?i=1000685491117

    ”Was he hoodwinked by central intelligence or did he know what was going on? Why did he sign Operation Warp Speed and promote the jab?

    Debbie Lermon is a Brownstone Institue fellow and has a really good Substack. More specifically, her article, THE CATASTROPHIC COVID CONVERGENCE – revisited, is the foundation of our conversation.”

    “The gist of her article is that the fake pandemic caused a catastrophic convergence of chronic disease, opioid addiction and fear-driven policies like lockdowns and school closures worsened everybody's health, especially those with pre-existing conditions.

    Something I've often wondered is Donald Trump's involvement. Was he playing noughts and crosses while the deep state was playing chess? In other words, how much did he actually know and who, exactly, was making the decisions?
    Debbie's research dovetails with that of Sasha Latypova who argues that COVID-19 was not a biological event but a military operation.”

    1. Unscientific little me got a lot of flak on Facebook early on for suggesting that it was a political campaign, not a medical emergency. My grasp of science is certainly limited but I know enough about how the One World commie mindset works.

  65. Four power cuts in twenty minutes. More rain and wind on its way. Lights back on now but for how long. Will house still be here when I get back from the bar? Hope the roads are clear.

  66. Well , old son ran over 27 kms to Poole .. he left the house at 0700hrs , the battery on his head band failed so he ran down country lanes in the dark ( wearing dayglo top etc) until he reached Wareham and then ran on lit pathways until he reached Lytchett then Upton then skirted Poole harbour on cycle track, ending up in Poole after 9am … stopped for coffee and bun .. he was soaking wet when Moh collected him at our station after he caught the train back home from Poole .

    I don't know how he does it !!

    Weather has been horrible , clearing now . Shopped at Sainsbury in Weymouth .. white horses , waves were strong , and a windsurfer was braving the waves and a couple were in their swimming costumes , and people were walking their dogs at the Pavilion end of the beach ( near the harbour)

    Pork joint roasting in the oven , nice smell , greens and parsnips and roast potatoes will be a nice addition.
    Apple and blackberry pie and custard for pud , should be eating after 1700hrs..

    Damn the New year diet .

    We have had a lot of rain .. We don't need any more for a while .

    1. Well done that lad!
      Attempt to do something up the "garden" abandoned due to weather, so I did omelettes for DT & self with some oven chips.

      1. Thanks Bob .

        We don’t always have a roast . Moh wanted one .

        He has just sloshed too much water into the Paxo stuffing mixture .. my fault apparently , he is just too quick !

        He checked on the progress of the pork , and didn’t slide the rack back fully into the oven .. hot air coming out of a nearly open oven .. too quick again.

        1. OH leaves dinner cooking to me…… he makes the tea and coffee though. Sometimes he'll make a pudding.

          1. I do breakfast 6 days a week, snack lunch on Sunday. Proper culinary work I leave to SWMBO and Firstborn, who are both very accomplished cooks. Second Son cooks proper food, too.

          3. I do all the cooking , all of it , but he likes his Paxo stuffing and he likes to stir and prepare it , reminds him of his mum’s terrible cooking(meow)

          4. We had a nice bit of pork last weekend (actually not till Monday) with the best crackling for years. I don’t bother with stuffing, except at Christmas, and then I buy one – sausagemeat & cranberry or other bits.
            Tonight we had a small lamb half shoulder, with roasties, leek, cauli and broccoli, and he made the gravy. Starter was the usual, smoked salmon and prawns, with salad garnish. A glass of Merlot to wash it down, and no pudding tonight. I’ve just washed up the meat tins and put the rest in the dishwasher.

            Now he’s just put Winterwatch on, from Arne.

          5. I had a lamb leg steak with roasties, parsnips and broccoli. No wine with, but sherry before and a brandy with the coffee.

    2. We've not ventured outside today – so well done the runner!
      OH is watching sport on telly – I'm on the laptop, cats are curled up – Ziggy on a lap, Jessie beside me.
      We've got lamb for dinner tonight, but not till later on.

    3. We went to see new grand-daughter today, her mum still in hospital with her lovely supporting husband (our son). The weather was ferocious! Poppiesdad lost his cap several times, my umbrella was blown inside out, I lost my balance because of my wonky knees twice and I thought poppiesdad was going to get blown into the road on a couple of occasions trying to wrestle with my umbrella ('give that to me') and keep his tweed Andy Capp headgear on his bonce. My artfully coiffured hair-do (a quick blow-dry and a good spray) was blown to smithereens. I looked like a drowned rat pulled through a hedge several times back and forth when I arrived at the 200 yds-further-up-the-road-from-the-car-park Rosie Maternity Hospital. But new grand-daughter is adorable, and the first grandchild not to howl its head off when I held her. She was like a little puppy…! Both Mum and baby have had a few complications, hopefully they will be home tomorrow, and our son will get his first night's sleep in four days that is not on a slippery plastic, reclining chair.

      Your evening meal sounded delicious, by the way, and I love the descriptions of your local area. Yes, to hell and onwards with the diet. January is bad enough without making it worse for the soul. Dry January…? Pah!

          1. I don't dislike vegetables (once I left home I found that they were actually edible); I just like them to accompany my meat.

  67. An interesting article in the Mail on Sunday.
    I have extracted the actual information; paragraphs about the possible measure of a cubit are rather yawn making.
    In short, they reckon Goliath was about 7 foot tall; given the primitive medicine of the time, if he'd been any taller, his heart would have given up.

    "Professor Morrison says that the biblical account is full of signs that Goliath very likely had this condition as well (acromegalic giantism caused by the hereditary AIP gene).

    In a paper published in 2014, Professor Morrison points out that the books of Samuel and Chronicles suggest that Goliath's brother and his three sons were all gigantic in stature.

    'When we looked into it, we found that there is a whole family here,' says Professor Morrison.

    This suggests that Goliath's giantism was passed on genetically; just as we find today in families carrying the AIP gene.

    If he did have acromegalic giantism, Professor Morrison says that Goliath was probably around seven feet tall.

    If he was much taller than that, Goliath would likely have died of heart failure long before he got to the battlefield.

    Did Goliath's height hold him back?

    Additionally, if Goliath really did have a pituitary gland tumour caused by the AIP gene, this would explain why he proved so easy for David to kill.

    'The disadvantage with a lot of these pituitary giants is that the pituitary gland is right in the base of your brain, pretty much between your two eyes,' says Professor Morrison.

    'If that gets bigger it compresses the nerves for your eyesight, so your side vision goes. Often the first time patients notice this is when they twang a cyclist while driving because they don't see them on the side of the road.'

    If Goliath was in his late 20s, this tumour could have been very advanced, leaving him with very little peripheral vision at all.

    In the Bible, Goliath is described as being led out to battle by a shield bearer who may have been required to point him in the direction of the enemy.

    Pituitary gland giants also frequently suffer from serious health conditions and struggle to hold up the weight of their massive limbs.

    The sheer volume of blood needed to keep their muscles working means blood vessels burst under the pressure leading to varicose ulcers which are extremely prone to infection.

    That extra blood volume also places a huge strain on the heart, meaning most acromegalic giants are killed by heart failure.

    Even in the 1960s, with far more advanced medical care than Goliath would have received, one 2010 study estimates that 50 per cent of giants died before the age of 50 and 89 per cent before turning 60.

    Professor Morrison points out that many giants struggle to lift their arms above their heads, let alone wield a massive spear.

    To make matters worse, the tumour would also have caused weakening of the skull, making the impact of a well-placed stone all the more deadly.

    So, while Goliath might have looked like a formidable enemy, in reality, he would have been pretty frail.

    'We suspect what David did with his sling is that he went around to where Goliath couldn't see him and got him in the side of the head.

    'Then while he was scrambling about trying to see what happened David probably just lopped off his head – so it really is a matter of brains vs brawn.'

        1. When I was at University students were always demonstrating outside shops that sold South African goods and produce.

          A lefty girl of my acquaintance (!) related her experience when she stopped an old lady coming out of a shop with some Outspan oranges.
          'You shouldnt be buying those oranges – they're from South Africa!'
          Old lady: 'Oh I know what you mean, love, all those horrible black hands!!'

          3. She was rather sweet and very attractive, if truth be told, and she was happy to tell the story against herself…. ahhh memories….

  68. Just had a 40-minute pedalling session on the exercise bike, which is situated in my art studio. I have an old 42" telly mounted on the wall onto which I stream (from my attached old iMac) a film, to watch while exercising.

    Todays' choice of film was an old monochrome effort from 1956. A dreadful film version of Nevil Shute's excellent novel A Town Like Alice (starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch).

    I know now why my mother used to tell me that, during the 1940s and 1950s, everyone's spirits dropped when the weekly revue at the local flea-pit picture house was a British film. I struggled to keep watching this dire movie since the only characters in the dismal cast who didn't stand around like starched clothes-pegs were the children. It was like watching the cast of The Woodentops playing in a production of Acorn Antiques. Truly, truly dreadful acting.

      1. Much of the content of the book, which is written in first-person narrative, was excluded from the film.

    2. Ah, the loneliness of a long distance stationary cyclist.

      That is why I just do cardio classes at our gym, lots of company to gasp and try to talk to.

      1. Only in the depths of winter. When the sun is over the yardarmequator I use a proper bike outside and go places (usually down the back roads to do a spot of birdwatching at the local pond or lake)

    3. Okay. The Doctor is in the house !

      Don't watch that bollocks where you stop pedaling in despair !

      Watch Rami Malik doing Freddie Mercury at Wembley for 20 minutes and sing as loud as you can.

      Good for your respiratory and lungs !

      Happy to take cheques…

        1. Love the picture. I do that too. I have Ashes holding Dolly, Tine and David cuddling, some friends with their beautiful children and Mr J L Seagull.

    4. This film is a travesty of the Nevil Shute book because it completely cuts out the second part of the story, which, to my mind, was the one interesting part.

    5. This film is a travesty of the Nevil Shute book because it completely cuts out the second part of the story, which, to my mind, was the one interesting point.

  72. Blood Boiling time!!!!!

    A foreign rapist who was jailed for six years has won compensation for being unlawfully held in a migrant detention centre.
    In 2015, Ebou Jasseh, from Gambia, attacked a drunk woman who had been asked to leave a nightclub, after telling her he was hosting a party at his flat in Watford.

    Jasseh, 41, who arrived in the UK in 2004 on a six-month visa, was jailed for six years for the attack, the Mail on Sunday reported.
    He had also been arrested in 2010 for allegedly sexually assaulting another woman in Watford. He denied the accusation and no charges were brought.
    Jasseh was set to be returned to Gambia when his prison sentence came to an end in 2019.
    But he breached the terms of his licence, and returned to jail before being held in Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre near Heathrow Airport as the Home Office prepared to send him back.

    Jasseh has since mounted at least six legal challenges to the Home Office in an attempt to remain in the UK – using pleas over his mental health and the harm he would face in his home country.

    He has had his application for asylum refused but has remained in the UK despite saying he would return to Gambia voluntarily.
    ‘Substantial’ damages awarded
    Now it has emerged that a High Court judge ruled he should not have been placed in the centre because at that time it was unlikely the Home Office would be able to return him to Gambia.

    He has been awarded “substantial” compensatory damages after the judge found that the Home Office had acted in an “oppressive” manner. The amount is undisclosed.
    Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, told the Mail on Sunday: “This is a disgrace. It’s a scandal.
    “How on earth has this man won compensation? It’s a horrific case. It shows how utterly out of touch our system is.”

    A Home Office spokesman said: “We make no apology for wanting to remove foreign national offenders at the earliest opportunity.
    “We work with law enforcement to ensure there is no barrier to deport foreign criminals, as it is in the public interest for these people to be removed swiftly.”

      2. Probably why the issue will never be resolved, you are naturally paying for lawyers on both sides of the argument and they don't want to ruin a good thing.

      4. And why do ordinary English taxpayers (those indicted over the Southport protests) not get any access to Legal aid?

        2. Because Starmer made sure that illegal immigrants get it, some years ago. The man is a complete evil menace.

          1. I read it somewhere but it makes sense. There are a lot of conditions around getting legal aid, which mean only the very rich or illegals get it probably

        1. It's not an overnight takeover, Grizzly, it's been decades in its planning.

          Edited for a capital offence.

  73. Wordle No.1,317 3/6

    🟨⬜⬜🟩⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 26 Jan 2025

    Well-tanned Birdie Three?

    1. Nope a snowy par but with some blue skies!

      Wordle 1,317 4/6

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

      1. Me too. Guess 4 didn't initially cross my consciousness, given the conditions…

        Wordle 1,317 4/6

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

    2. Good work Rene – bog standard par here!

      Wordle 1,317 4/6

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

      1. The solitaire challenge is tri peaks and pyramid.
        The tri peaks has some trickery.
        I should have hit second in the group but messed up the tri peaks, the pyramids are easy. Came 4th 1.10
        There is one of the hard ones where the first two boards are identical but doable, I foolishly thought my first run had scored enough to be able to move on because it looked impossible. Keep an ace in play top right.

          2. I gave up on it sos, I’ve never played Pyramids before and I got fed up after about 6 levels!! What a shite game…..

          3. It’s like “FreeCell”, you can actually work it out because you can see all the cards.
            Initially I felt the same as you, but once one sees how it works it’s surprisingly straightforward. Much easier than Tri-Peaks.

          5. You can do the challenges in any order. You could do the tri peaks today, up until the official finish. Just click on “challenges” and do the ones you wish.

    5. Par for me.

      Wordle 1,317 4/6

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

  75. Well as expected the cease fire in Gaza has all ready gone wrong. It's moved north to Lebanon now. Some people can never be trusted.

    1. What was the saying about never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity?
      It's sad: I had hopes this time. What a fool, eh?

      1. The most obvious form of racism on the planet and the far left band wagoners don’t like to mention it.

  76. Afternoon, all. It's been foul weather here today; wet, windy and cold. I am trying to get in touch with my energy company to speak to someone. The nearest I got was when I threatened to leave, but I'm still waiting. I wish I didn't need electricity at all.

    Starmer is causing enough harm without a "can do" attitude! I'd rather he couldn't do anything (except resign and take the rest of the useless lot with him). Telford Labour councillors (the majority) voted down a motion to ask the govt to rethink the agricultural death tax. Like the hunting bill, they said nothing then lined up to vote.

  77. Third runway at LHR will expand the economy….really? Please explain miz Reeves from accounts.
    London already has Gatwick, London City, Stansted and Luton. Already four extra runways.

    2. LHR had six runways at one point – it was star-of-David shaped.
      The last runway closed was 05R/23L to build terminal on it.
      There's a lot of built-up all round LHR – where will they put the new runway? On a bridge over the M4?

      1. I remember it well. We were shown a map of it when I first visited London on a school trip back in 1962.

      2. Somewhere between the present site and the M4, just need to demolish a few homes. I imagine property prices in Sipson have slumped a little in the last week.

        1. Apparently the homes mentioned were set aside for being demolished a few years ago and left vacant. But rapidly filled with illegal immigrants during the
          Ca-moron era as he flew them into RAF base's and spread them out. But they'll be alright new dwellings for free as usual.

    3. Just a matter of time before a plane crashes over London.

      In the meantime, who cares that x hundred thousand people in west London don’t get any sleep at night?

      And, before anyone says “they knew what they were buying”…

      My second house in London was right under the flight path (which is how I know about the misery of night flights). There were old people in our road then (2002-2011) who had lived all their lives in that road.

  78. Doorstep deliveries of knives to be banned after Southport killer ordered on Amazon. 26 January 2025.

    Doorstep drop-offs of knives bought online are to be banned as the Government closes the loophole used by Axel Rudakubana, who killed three young girls in Southport.

    Tech companies such as Amazon will be barred from handing over a knife to anyone other than the person who bought it, enabling the firm to check ID and age for a third time on delivery.

    All to no avail of course. This is just knee jerk posturing. They really have no idea what to do.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/26/government-ban-doorstep-knife-deliveries-southport-murders/

    1. Beat me too it. What arrant idiocy this is. It is typical of the political class as they flail around looking for 'something to do' rather than acknowledging the fundamental problem of muslim.

    3. So let's get this straight. Cook's Knife is delivered to Adult. knife is placed in Kitchen drawer. Sonny boy thinks oh look a knife – I need to go out and play….

      1. Making the British beg to be part of the US too!
        But we don#t have any rare earth minerals, they won#t want us

        1. He’s teasing Starmer into giving the Falklands to the USA and paying them millions to drill for oil.

          1. See the post just now about the UK having some kind of veto over the US buying Greenland.
            Is Trump smarming?

    1. As long as the US sends us some of the armed US Coastguard vessels to police it I'd be happy with the name change.

  81. And the reasons not to deport criminals have potentially been increased exponentially.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14327129/Jamaican-drug-dealer-avoids-deportation-gender-questioning-child-speak-issue.html

    A Jamaican drug dealer who beat his partner has avoided deportation after a judge ruled he should stay because his gender questioning daughter only speaks to him.

    The child is said to not speak to their mother about their gender identity issues, but solely their father, an immigration tribunal was told.

    Judge Sarah Pinder, a former member of Goldsmith Chambers and columnist for Free Movement, an online open borders publication, but now an Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber, dismissed the Government's appeal over a previous ruling.
    She also found that the career criminal's mixed race children would have 'unmet emotional needs linked not just to the loss of a parent but to the loss of the parent who represents half of their cultural identity'.

    It was therefore judged 'unduly harsh' on them to deport him – even though they witnessed him beating their mother.

    She backed up the original judge in the case, saying they 'found this to be an element of the parental relationship, which the children's mother could not replicate because she is white British'.

    4. Who is more important – the perpetrator's family or the population of the UK? We need to be kept safe from such people – that should be the main concern of the law and judges who interpret it.

      2. Blair made sure that the new appointed judges had the concern of the population of the UK bottom of the list.

      4. Aeneas, it’s quite obvious who should be more important, you, me and the rest of us (true) Brits.

        However, it is not the case.

    5. Results of Blairs desecration of our judicial system. That man needs …. something I can't write online. So do his pathetic placemen/women.

    3. Or was their president just demanding civil treatment for Columbians?
      Handcuffs and leg irons are hardly needed – unless they are going to be thrown off a moving plane,

    6. A bit more notice and I could have nipped down to enjoy your performance.

      As I barely speak the lingo, the avant gardedednest wouldn't matter.

  85. Can I please ask Nottlers not to post images of our latest PM, they make me feel ill… Thank you.

      1. A phobia is an irrational fear. There is nothing irrational about fearing an automaton that can destroy your livelihood, savings and way of life.

    2. Lick up some dogshit, you'll probably feel better, and if not you'll know how disgusting I find him.

        1. A pair of binoculars? The economy is so far down the drain you can't see it with the naked eye.

  87. That's dinner over. Crispy duck, pancakes, vegetable strips, hoi-sin… lovely! Cats enjoyed it, too.

      1. I resent paying even more for no noticeable benefit, just to be a tourist. Everything else I will be paying for, so frankly, the council can fuck right off, get in a car and fuck off some more.

        1. In Ely car parks are free. Because one isn't fleeced on arrival one doesn't mind paying the visitor charge for Ely Cathedral.

          2. Visiting the Cathedral is a direct benefit – peace of mind, a bit of education, that kind of thing. I wouldn’t mind, either.

        2. I feel the same. It's like our councils. They charge for parking (used to be free) and make parking on the street difficult. Then they wonder why the High Streets are dying and people are going to out of town supermarkets where they can park easily for three hours for nothing.

          1. I guess people like me don't help…I blame my mother, she loved shopping especially markets, I had to go with her…I hate shopping, get everything online more or less, and delivered..I'll get me coat…..

          2. That certainly doesn't help the small independent traders on the High St. It isn't only you; shopping went online in a big way in the covidity era.

          3. Many have closed locally since shutdowns…now vape shops, Turkish barbers, charity shops. Then there’s parking fees, getting through traffic and road repairs…otherwise it’s a delight.

          4. I do the food shopping in person, at Morrisons mainly. I like to choose what we will eat rather than order online. But for other things online is fine.

          5. I’ve shopped there for years know the staff who are fab. Started home delivery during lockdown and carried on with it. Always good craque. And one less car on the road.

    2. Coming to the Highlands too – and with good reason…..the NC500 route which is plagued by boy racers and motorhomes who are tearing up the roads – the infrastructure (inc pot holes) needs upgrading to accommodate them and that's where the money will be spent

    3. It’s dry very sad. And IMO short sighted. I think this is doing the work of the WEF, UN etc. by restricting visiting. This is what they want, isn’t y it, nobody going anywhere, 15minute cities, all due to ‘the climate’. How very miserable life will be – it’s bad enough now.

    5. How Green was my Cheese is my next classic to reread. Just got a few library booos for my various book clubs to polish off first.

  92. Just watched the last 40 min of Lord of the Dance on Sky Arts – well the latest version I presume as it was a cross between the original and maybe West Side Story and Quatermas. Excellent dancing as always – the downside being that arrogant twat Flatley

  93. Southport Axel Rudakubana..
    If it wasn’t for modern medicine it would have been 15 deaths.. 5 yrs ago they'd have been dead.
    Starkey.

    1. If it wasn't for our insane asylum laws there would be many more Britons still alive today.

  94. Britain would have the right to buy Greenland before the US, the island’s last Danish minister has said.

    Tom Høyem was Copenhagen’s last permanent representative in the Arctic territory, which established its own parliament in 1979 and began a new era of self-rule 30 years later.
    Donald Trump has made clear to Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, that he wants to place Greenland under American control.

    But Mr Høyem said that Mr Trump would require approval from Sir Keir Starmer because of an undertaking signed in 1917, the first time the US was interested in acquiring the island.
    Tom Høyem has said Donald Trump ‘would have to ask London first’ before buying Greenland
    Mr Høyem added: “The United Kingdom demanded in 1917 that if Greenland were to be sold then the UK should have the first right to buy it.”

    The demand arose because Canada was a British dominion at the time and lies only a few miles from Greenland. The countries have shared a land border since 2022. [ Not sure about that unless its ice in Winter?]

    Mr Høyem said that Woodrow Wilson, the US president at the time, then agreed that Greenland was and would always be Danish.

    2. There is something of a precedent – the US Virgin Islands were bought from Denmark in 1917.

  100. Israel is considering sending Soviet and Russian-made weapons captured in Lebanon to Ukraine, with signs transfers may be under way.

    Israel reportedly met with Ukrainian diplomats on Tuesday to discuss a weapons transfer. Since then, US military cargo planes have been tracked flying from Israel to an airbase in eastern Poland.
    “There are signs that Israel has begun supplying Ukraine with Soviet and Russian-made weapons,” Two Majors, a pro-Russia military blog on the Telegram social messaging site, told its 1.2 million subscribers on Sunday.

    It posted photos of dozens of shoulder-mounted missiles laid out on hard-baked ground, as well as two screengrabs of a US military plane flying from Ramstein airbase in Germany to Hatzerim airbase in Israel and then to Rzeszów in Poland, near the border with Ukraine.
    Hezbollah weapons seized by IDF soldiers in localised raids in southern Lebanon last November
    Hezbollah weapons seized by IDF soldiers in localised raids in southern Lebanon last November Credit: IDF
    Around 60 per cent of the weapons captured by Israel during the fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2024 were made by the Soviet Union and Russia, according to reports.

    These include sniper rifles and modern Kornet anti-tank missiles given to Hezbollah by Syria, which had been a staunch ally of Russia under Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

    1. Not good. The Donald will doubtless get around to sorting out this situation. Israel still needs US backing.

    2. I suspect this small weapons cash is something of a "f*ck you right back" from Israel. "Here's your stuff". I doubt this will be turning the tide of the war. We're not talking tanks, planes and cruise missiles are we? We don't want the Israelis getting in on that US and European action.

      1. The mosque is usually preceded by an ‘Islamic cultural centre'. Sound innocuous but once established it will change its name to mosque.

  103. Well, that's me off to bed now. Good Night all, sleep well, and I hope to see you all tomorrow morning.

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