Saturday 28 June: Why is Britain considering another migrant deal that relies on France?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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548 thoughts on “Saturday 28 June: Why is Britain considering another migrant deal that relies on France?”

        1. Hi Harry. I have been waking at 4.30 am. I forced myself to stay up last night to put a stop to that.

          1. Urgh. Might be easier to practice getting back to sleep.
            04:30 is bladder alarm time for me, and after a wander down the corridor and back, I have taught myself to resume slumber. Seems to work.

  5. Good morning all.
    Yawning my head off after the unexpected early morning alarm!
    A dull but dry start to the morning but still with just a tad under 20½°C outside.

  6. 406452+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Saturday 28 June: Why is Britain considering another migrant deal that relies on France?

    As a way forward for the WEF / NWO it is a long standing success, plus being a lucrative, ALL involved, SCAM.

    Fully supported via the polling stations since " miranda" lifted the latch, lab/lib/con
    would NOT have been successful in the Country conversion department without the tribal voters input.

    Every GE since the Mrs Thatcher (RIP) era has added weight to the rod beating the indigenous peoples back, and the result of every GE cried out for more.

    Future expectations seemingly as we misplace trust BIG TIME regarding the frogs and future GEs, with no fall back precautions being in place the rod WILL sadly gain more weight.

    1. War, the failing politicians' favourite misdirection technique. Sadly, for the politicos, many people are up to speed on the former's worn out idea thanks to social media. Little wonder that those same politicos are desperate to control that arm of the media as they do the legacy MSM.

    2. Well, yes. Since Brexit the state has made every effort it can to destroy this country by any means necessary. High taxes, massive debt, unemployment, socialism, taxation, energy prices – anything to do the nation in.

      The entirety of hated EU nations is on the same path to decline. This is what happens when communists set about controlling nations. The Left never stopped fighting WW2. They just changed weapons.

  9. Morning, all Y'all.
    Jumper weather again, cool and drizzly. Not energising at all. Maybe take a day off from doing stuff.

      1. LOts and even more to do on Smahholding, I’m afraid.
        Fencing, painting the barn (!), orchard work, grass cutting… but Saturdays are usually given over to food shopping in the morning, so there’s a low-energy start to the day.
        Even if it’s raining, there’s parts of the barn under the roof that need preparation & paint. Sigh…

  10. Good morning, all. Clear sky at 06:00 but cloud building now.

    Apparently the Glastonbury crowd do not see irony even when it surrounds them or is preached to them by an old and rejected left-wing politician.

    https://x.com/DVATW/status/1938643444613984616
    https://x.com/ChrisMid/status/1938654691430424653
    The UK situation in a nutshell.

    Is it because if you let everyone in, you would ruin it for the people who paid to be
    live there?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/51a4f9cc005827514b00aaa9dc1f713835749c4f47c81b898ecbb07f8045d453.png

    2. Didn't that happen one year? With a concert getting broken in to and the hard left protestor crowd started fighting those invading. It was a staggering hypocrisy – but that's normal for the Left.

    3. Yes that's precisely why walls and fences are erected.
      But that never stops the infestation of rats and other vermin..

  11. Not to mention keeping out undocumented jihadists who would love to blow up a few hundred concert goers.

    1. I doubt the security is any better at Glasto than at the Manchester Arena given the amount of drugs freely consumed.
      Just smuggle a bomb in a nitrous oxide container.

      1. Ah but…
        Glasto is for the self-important liberal-left, so laws don’t apply to them.

          5. Not cholera, just something horrid that’s not bad enough to trouble the NHS.

  12. ‘Send them to Mars’: Led By Donkeys Glastonbury exhibit takes aim at Musk.. Starmer, JK Rowling & Jordan Peterson.

    Our installation captures the moment when we wave off our least favourite public figures to a far and distant red planet. Goodbye for ever, Elon.” explains creator Gideon.

    Corbynistas are unhappy with Starmer.. Island of Strangers was the final straw. He's being transported.
    .
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1257ded648da7f0efe9e0267eb41168135925b056a8d6439e5ce0681d6f5594e.jpg

    1. Spoiler Alert: Sir Keir Starmer successfully overturned his deportation order on human rights grounds.

    2. None of them [except Starmer] are on my list for a trip to Mars [and who cares if they get there!] – the trouble is that my list would need a huge spaceship!

    3. None of them [except Starmer] are on my list for a trip to Mars [and who cares if they get there!] – the trouble is that my list would need a huge spaceship!

    4. Glastonbury, would I be being bad if I were to wish floods of biblical proportions to descend upon it?

    4. Whoever the arms are for, they've no right to touch them a they're not theirs.

      Round them wasters up, collar and chain them and flog them.

    5. What is a 'defense vehicle distributor'? I'm not worried about the American spelling, just don't know what it means.

    6. Police in attendance who then bugger off down the road and leave them to it?
      Why?

    7. It is said that it was fake news that the Jewish Mr Soros has said he was happy when, as an adolescent, he worked with the Nazis.

      It is amazing how successful those with power can be when they rewrite and whitewash history. There were stories about Mrs May's father, Hubert Brasier, who was an Anglican priest who was associated with paedophiles. When she was home secretary she did all she could to eradicate the evidence. The car accident in which Brasier died, aroused suspicions.

  14. Good morning, all. A grey and windy morning – and outside is very similar. I had a good night and no further medical bulletins will be issued. I have bored you enough.

    They do say it will be "dangerously hot" – to me it is agreeable summer weather.

    4. Knowing how folk are is not boring. Weather wise it is overcast and humid. Worst of both worlds.

    5. Good Bill. Nice to have had a good night. May you have many more of them!

    6. Thank goodness. The internal disturbance went on for a disturbing amount of time.

  15. 408452+ up ticks,

    Dt,

    WHO: Lab leak cannot be ruled out as Covid source
    New report warns critical data on Wuhan’s virus research still being withheld

    I believe this is on par with saying that blair created a border leak when he lifted the entry latch.

    The WHO are in receipt of the FULL skeletal layout for the future, regarding the English indigenous peoples in collusion with ALL potential / governing bodies active within the HOC, and tis also my belief it ain't good.

  16. ✨ In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?”The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
    “Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”
    The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”
    The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”
    The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”
    The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover, if there is life, then why has no one ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery, there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”
    “Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”
    The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”
    The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her, this world would not and could not exist.”
    Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”
    To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”
    Maybe this was one of the best explanations of the concept of GOD.
    – This beautiful parable is from "Your Sacred Self ", by Dr. Wayne Dyer. Credit goes to respective owner

    1. I remember being impressed by a book Your Erroneous Zones by Dr Wayne W Dyer in the 1970s.
      One of the first paragraphs was of a seminar on alcohol and the presenter had a glass of Vodka and one of water on the stand. He picked up worms and dropped them into both glasses.
      One worms quickly shriveled and died the other in water just kept wriggling.
      He asked the audience what thoughts they had. One guy said, "I see that if you drink Vodka you won't get worms". Two ways of looking at everything.

  17. Good Morning!

    Psychologist Xandra H treats us to another of her highly informative articles to complete the hat trick of articles on the mind games our evil establishment is playing on us. In her new piece, You have to be in it to win it! , she uses the Lottery as an analogy to show how they try to control how you think, and scary stuff it is too.

    Mrs M Ducks' The Infantilisation of the Modern Mind , continues the theme of the psychological war we are being subjected to as does The Weapons of Mass Persuasion , the fourth part in our series No War With Russia!

    Energy Watch: Over the last 24 hours: Britain's electric power was sourced from Gas, 13.2%; Solar, 9%: Wind 45.2%; Imports, 8.8%; Biomass, 4.8%; Nuclear 16% and Miscellaneous, 2.9%.

    freespeechbacklash.com

  18. Morning all 🙂😊
    Back again over three hours later.
    All grey out there but obviously warm.
    Why is our stupid useless government talking to France about a migrant (invasion) deal with France wtf has it to do with that slime bag Macron ? Our country has been absolutely wrecked by our useless collection of all of our political idiots.
    My word how I wished now that we had stayed in Australia in 1980.
    I seriously fear for the future of our grandchildren.

    1. I never expected things to turn out anything like as bad as they have, Eddy, but I'm glad we left in 1998 for Norway.

  19. 408452+ up ticks,

    A year after gambling on Starmer, Britain is gripped by buyer’s remorse
    Public confidence in the Prime Minister has plummeted amid scandals and policy

    failures, with Labour’s future looking increasingly uncertain.
    Should read,

    A year after Spite laden,nose in shite rubbing, teach a lesson tactical voting the general election result bequeathed via will of the peoples, Starmer the seat of power,

    Britain is now gripped by voters remorse
    Public confidence in the Prime Minister
    has plummeted amid scandals and policy failures, with England's future looking increasingly uncertain

    1. The article has a lot of polling info and data but fundamentally the real numbers are the economic ones: the Left have plunged the nation even further into debt, raised unemployment and borrowing. Nothing Labour have done – nothing that useless party ever does – is for this country.

    2. Labour didn't win the General election – the Conservatives lost it (or rather, threw it away). I doubt that Labour voters are experiencing remorse – it's probably Conservative voters who voted for other parties, especially Reform, who are more likely to be regretting their decision.

  20. I've just seen a clip on FB of obviously a migrant dumping a bed and other things on a street corner in Dagenham. He was confronted by a local guy who told him that it was illegal to dump unwanted household items on the street. Unfortunately I doubt if the local authorities will have taken the action required because it would have been against his human rights to fine him and of course blatant racism.
    In fairness there was already a large amount of scrap dumped on the same spot and someone else dumped an unwanted bag while he was telling the guy and his arm waving agressive wife off.

  21. 408452+up ticks,

    Could this be a, future, activated immediately, BILL of RIGHTS in regards to the English folk ?

    May one ask will it find agreement as many issues have via the polling stations, if so may one also ask is clothing necessary below the waist for the English species, seen by some as an impediment to rogering,
    https://x.com/wolsned/status/1938653641138938069

    1. Why is there a parliamentary group for muslim? They shouldn't even be here. 70% welfare dependence, all terrorism has been perpetrated by muslim: bombings, stabbings, rape.

      They are nothing but a plague and should be removed, not lauded, not considered, not protected.

      1. Why are there Muslim mayors in our cities , why was Sadiq Khan lauded and knighted , why?

        Colonial guilt by a left liberal generation who have had no connection with the creating building and educating and healing those in our old colonies .

        Where would India and Africa be without us during those days when we weren't involved( nor any other Northern European country)

        If you think I am being dismissive and arrogant , so be it .

    2. Bizarre. Touchy or what?
      It'll be Labour's downfall.. or should be.

      stereotypical allegations
      What they?
      actively & openly subscribe to a death cult?
      They refrain from liking; bacon, dogs, women, gays, music, Christians, Israel, museums, artefacts, common law, western culture, alcohol.. esp criticism.
      It's never enough for them.. they demand everyone to refrain from liking; bacon, dogs, women, gays, music, Christians, Israel, museums, artefacts, common law, western culture, alcohol.. esp criticism.

    3. That last paragraph is exactly what muslims are guilty of where Jews are concerned.

    4. The trap is being set. When a new government reverses all Labour's wickedness and destruction, accepting the digital id will seem like a small price to pay.

    5. There are several things in that statement that are factually untrue and anyone with a knowledge of Islam can easily refute them. I don't think that the majority in Parliament would go for it and it would be voted down. Besides that, I do not think that in a court of law this would survive. And last but not least. I would expect any government that replaces Labour would abolish it if by some minor miracle it passed into law.

      1. Voting against such a proposed law may be extremely unwise. All those brave enough to vote against, I suggest, would have to be very careful of consequences.

    6. "…claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword or subjugating minority groups under their rule…"

      To describe verifiable history is Islamophobic…

  22. Morning all.Cloudy and cool at the moment but set to get into the mid 70sf this afternoon.

    Here is an example of why I think Trumps decision to stop the Israelis is appalling. He is, essentially, aiding and abetting a regime that differs very little from the Germans in WWII or more contemporarily, North Korea. As I said. I believe that Trump is doing this for purely selfish reasons. Anti-war does not mean you stop Israel from destroying the regime in Iran which would be a good for all of us. In that respect Trumps ambitions (Nobel Peace Prize?) is a deeply foolish and preventable evil.

    Iran moves female prisoners to ‘hellhole’ cattle farm jail
    ‘They’ve brought us to a place where humans don’t live’ says captive in smuggled out recording

    Afshin Madadi
    28 June 2025 6:00am BST
    Iran moved female inmates to a “hellhole” detention centre in the wake of an Israeli air strike on Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

    Missiles struck the site, where dissidents are jailed to silence them, on Monday morning, the day before Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire ending their 12-day war.

    The Telegraph has learnt that guards moved prisoners from the facility after the strike, with women being taken to Qarchak prison, a former livestock facility that has been converted into a detention centre 40 miles south of the Iranian capital.

    Humanitarian groups have issued frequent alerts about the centre, which is sanctioned by the US on the basis of extrajudicial killings, torture and other violations of human rights.

    Iranian authorities have launched a wave of arrests across the country since the fragile truce was struck, detaining more than 700 people on espionage charges.

    The Islamic Republic has used international tensions as a cover while it cracks down on dissent at home and steps up retributions.

    The regime has been significantly weakened, and clerics are said to have become paranoid and wary of a challenge to their grip on power.

    However, since Israel’s war with Iran started, the Tehran regime has stopped arresting women for not wearing headscarves, with analysts saying it wanted public support as it was put under pressure by the bombing campaign by Israel and the US.

    But women protesters still suffer in prison. Many women arrested during the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests were moved to Qarchak prison, where some remain.

    In an audio recording, a woman named Sayeh Seydal described being moved from Evin prison to Qarchak in the wake of Monday’s air strike.

    “The American and Israeli bombing didn’t kill us, but the Islamic Republic has brought us to a place where it’s practically killing us,” Ms Seydal said in the recording smuggled out of the country.

    “They’ve brought us to a place where humans don’t live. It’s a gradual death.”

    Ms Seydal is serving three years for social media posts deemed unacceptable to the Iranian regime, and had been imprisoned at Evin since October 2024.

    After the explosion, special guards reportedly attacked prisoners and began to move them.

    Men were transferred to Fashafoyeh prison outside Tehran, while women were handcuffed and transported to Qarchak.

    According to Ms Seydal’s recording, the conditions defy basic human dignity. “They’ve crammed everyone into a quarantine ward – a real hellhole,” she said.

    “The toilets are like outdoor latrines. The showers? Like outdoor showers. The stench of filth has taken over everywhere. Even the water – the water you splash on your face – is salty. The food? It absolutely cannot be eaten. A terrible situation.

    “The Islamic Republic has brought us to a place where it seems they want to get revenge for Israel and America and just kill us off easily.”

    Qarchak lacks prison standards that even the livestock once enjoyed. There is no proper sewage system or access to clean water, according to human rights groups

    There are no windows, and when the iron gates to outdoor areas close at 5pm, inmates stare at walls with only two small holes, “the size of lentils,” for glimpses of the sky.

    Between 1,500 and 2,000 women are held at Qarchak throughout most of the year. Each hall was designed for fewer than 100 people, but they typically house over 150. At times, the number has reached 600, leaving prisoners without space to sleep, even on the floor.

    The detention centre is infested with cockroaches, rats, salamanders, lizards, water bugs and venomous tarantulas, according to human rights activists and former prisoners.

    Medical care is severely limited, with only five prisoners per ward allowed daily medical visits, and while prison authorities claim budget constraints prevent the provision of essential medications, they freely distribute sleeping pills and tranquillisers to keep prisoners sedated.

    Most of Qarchak’s inmates are women from marginalised and impoverished backgrounds, among the most vulnerable sectors of Iranian society.

    Qarchak also holds children up to the age of four with their imprisoned mothers.

    The children endure the same harsh conditions, and having seen no men during their imprisonment, often become frightened when encountering men after leaving prison

    “Qarchak prison is a symbol of the blatant denial of humanity and human dignity,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Norway-based Iran human rights organisation.

    “The continued operation of such facilities is a stain on the conscience of the world.”

    Iran’s judiciary said the transfers were conducted to “respect prisoners’ rights” and “provide better services”.

    The conditions in Evin prison were already dire.

    Established in 1972, it has become notorious for its use by the Tehran regime to detain political prisoners, including British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was released from Iran in 2022.

    After the Israeli strike, family members of other foreign detainees expressed concerns about their loved ones’ safety, with relatives saying they had no information about their status.

    While Iran’s judiciary confirmed the strike, Iran has not released official casualty figures or disclosed the current status of transferred prisoners.

    One prisoner who was able to call his family was Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish academic who has been on death row since 2017.

    But his wife Vida Mehrannia said she has not spoken with her husband since after the strikes on Monday, when he called to say he had survived. She is increasingly worried.

    “He called and said he was OK, but parts of Evin had been destroyed and they were being moved somewhere,” she said. “I’ve had no news from him since.”

    Mr Djalali was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to death the following year on charges of espionage for Israel’s Mossad.

    Six people, including alleged Mossad spies, have been executed over the past week.

    Asked how worried she is about the latest developments, Ms Mehrannia asked The Telegraph: “Are they going to execute him? He was very worried and said that two of his cellmates have so far been executed.”

    She added: “The situation in Iran is not good, but ours is worse than anyone else’s. They’ve taken our lives away for the past nine years. I just hope they leave us alone.”

    “Why do they insist someone is a Mossad spy when he isn’t,” she asked. “He is not a Mossad spy, but they keep insisting he is – and it’s punishing.”

      1. I think we’ve been taken back to the mid seventies whether we like it now or not. Strikes , power cuts , inflation, unemployment, the brain drain…

    2. 'Ms Seydal is serving three years for social media posts deemed unacceptable to the Iranian regime, and had been imprisoned at Evin since October 2024'.

      You can draw a direct parallel with Lucy Connelly.

      It appears Keir Starmer wants our judicial system on a par with Iran.

      Good morning, JR.

      1. Wants a judicial system on a par? It already is. Arguably Lucy Connolly was badly advised. There's an irony that government lawyers can't seem to argue against a paedophile rapist being deported because he will have to shave and yet ensure an innocent woman defying the state is locked away for as long as possible.

        It's almost as if there's malice at work.

  23. I said the other day. I refuse to use Centigrade it is puerile. 100F sounds hot, 37C sounds French, limp wristed!

  25. Good morning Pip! And, yes. I'm sure that Starmer would love a regime like the Mullahs, with him dolling out nuggets of Communist "wisdom" on his Sunday talk to the loyal masses,

  27. Pakistani Rape Grooming Gang Issue Resolved.

    The Office for National Statistics (ONS) a subsidary of the Muslim Network says data collection by UK public bodies will no longer reference nationality, race or religion.
    This data is used by government, businesses, and individuals to make informed decisions. LOL

    1. Hang on.. is this a conspiracy about Muslim entryism in politics?

      If so, the APPG Report on Islamophobia must include the following addendums and prohibit:
      sarcasm. irony. mockery. conveying contempt. merryment. in a built up No Go area after dark.

  28. Pakistani Rape Grooming Gang Issue Resolved.

    The Office for National Statistics (ONS) a subsidary of the Muslim Network says data collection by UK public bodies will no longer reference nationality, race or religion.
    This data is used by government, businesses, and individuals to make informed decisions. LOL

    1. Far-right, dribbling, foam-flecked etc etc

      And did it make the slightest difference?

      Thought not.

    2. I sang that in a club in South Wales at the end of an evening of quizzing and entertainment. The compere allowed me to sing because I was English and he was hoping it would clear the room . . . but they all joined in. Ha Ha!

  30. Glastonbury, so how many Labour luvvies including MPs attending , and who can afford tickets at the price they are ?

    Entertainment eh?

  31. £14,000 for a return helio flight.

    A very green and eco conscious decision as it saves driving…

  32. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/703eeeaf0569916ebde71517ee2fdc060b077bb5/0_0_6551_4367/master/6551.jpg?width=880&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=2e03b4e28f4752671b0be32723c48c6f Farne Islands, Northumberland

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0949abb28ac6c14b35c9c3e60efc0b123566ddd3/0_0_3200_2114/master/3200.jpg?width=880&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=4772a30c4c35288201520d56e6bb8e66 Red kite, Peterborough

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1b11bdea93733cd853294d199c5381a71fabbe84/0_0_5215_3477/master/5215.jpg?width=880&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=a1a23d61935b123e1443b813540d7c49 Bushy Park, London

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/92d3d4a8c1ed7ac491b2f64a4434c05909fd27d5/0_0_4000_3000/master/4000.jpg?width=880&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=5aa090875ba9efb4b5c7e11ac79a83f3 A heath fritillary butterfly. One of the UK’s rarest butterflies is seeing a significant rise in numbers and range on Exmoor. More than 1,000 heath fritillaries have been recorded so far this year on the National Trust’s Holnicote estate in Somerset. This is a significant rise from about 600 at the same time last year

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8daea27b57aa373c407ff00e9401ae93e68ed3f6/0_0_3500_2255/master/3500.jpg?width=880&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=8e303c454b0944af78522104dab2686e Donkeys are a lot smarter than local councillors
    Donkeys are caught breaking into the food recycling bins in Brockenhurst, Hampshire, UK. The council’s move to introduce food waste bins has provoked a backlash, as some of the New Forest’s 200 free-roaming donkeys have quickly learned to knock over the bins and feast on their contents. “This is exactly what we thought would happen and I think it is only going to get worse,” said a resident

    Full gallery https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2025/jun/27/week-in-wildlife-an-orphaned-sloth-bear-swimming-hippos-and-cheeky-new-forest-donkeys

    1. Is the top bird in the first picture about to mount the other one for a bit of puffin' and gruntin'?

  33. Top comment on Glastonbury.

    Bane of the Left, Triggering the left, United Kingdom, 12 hours ago

    Glastonbury – A bunch of privileged Middle-Class lefties who preach about capitalism after spending hundreds of pounds on a ticket. Promote veganism while partying at a working dairy farm. Cry about the environment while using helicopters and a convoy of diesel vehicles to get there, and then leave the site covered in rubbish. And champion the cause of illegal immigrants while surrounded by a high wall and security to ensure nobody crosses the border who hasn't paid for the privilege. The hypocrisy is staggering.

      2. Archimedes found that getting reliable WiFi at the right speed in his house could be achieved by getting screwed.

          1. I think he was using his PC in the bath and his WIFi failed after he dropped his keyboard in the water.

        2. Chihuhua, home of tall Mexicans. Except for all those who crossed the Rio Grande, of course.

    3. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I just turn it on and it does its magic!

      1. I don’t go into the details of all the evolving standards of modern technology, I just study the behaviour of systems as they are supposed to be used and try to avoid the scenarios where they suddenly stop working and I can’t start them again.

        I do miss the starting handles on my old petrol motor cars.

    4. Optically connected? connected via fibre optics with no copper involved? infrared connection?

  35. Michael Deacon
    Stop panicking about asylum hotels, Sir Keir. I’ve got the perfect solution

    The PM will never meet his pledge to end their use by 2029. Unless, that is, he follows this simple suggestion

    28 June 2025 6:00am BST

    Three years ago, Ron DeSantis – the Republican governor of Florida – decided that he was sick of his state being deluged by asylum seekers. And he was even more sick of being lectured by rich liberals who were always loudly supportive of mass immigration, while living in neighbourhoods that were largely untouched by its downsides. So he came up with a little idea.

    He assembled a group of asylum seekers who’d arrived in Florida, and kindly arranged for them all to receive one-way flights to Martha’s Vineyard: a fashionable part of New England that is home to lots of rich liberal celebrities.

    You may be astonished to learn that, in liberal circles, Mr DeSantis’s plan was met with horrified fury. Not, of course, because these liberals don’t like asylum seekers, and were appalled by the prospect of having to share their beautiful neighbourhoods with them. It was merely because they felt it was callous and inhumane of Mr DeSantis to use vulnerable people as pawns in a cynical political game. That was all. Important to make that clear.

    Anyway, there’s a reason I bring this story up. Here in Britain, our Labour Government has got itself into a bit of bother. Earlier this month, it pledged to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029. But now David Bolt, the chief inspector of borders and immigration, has said: “I don’t think it will be achieved, frankly.”

    Luckily for Labour, I’m here to save the day. As we know, asylum hotels are, for some mysterious reason, almost always found in areas that are home to people who are not very well-off, and unhappy about mass immigration. Yet strangely few are found in areas that are home to people who are well-off, and love mass immigration.

    So why not take a leaf from Mr DeSantis’s book? Remove all the asylum seekers from their hotels – and instead put them up in places that are full of rich liberals. Branches of Soho House, say, or BBC headquarters.

    Admittedly this might take some time to arrange. So, for this weekend at least, the Government could just bus them all into the Glastonbury festival.

    A perfect solution that will please everyone. It’s just a wonder that Labour didn’t think of it sooner.

    Nigel versus the Nats
    I don’t know how many Telegraph readers also take The National, the newspaper that, in the proud words of its masthead, “supports an independent Scotland”. But for those who weren’t lucky enough to get hold of yesterday’s extraordinary edition, here’s what you missed. On its front page were two stories. And both were about Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

    The main story was headlined: “BBC Called Out Over Question Time Slot for Reform Man.” And its opening sentence was: “The BBC’s decision to platform Reform UK in Scotland when the Right-wing party has no elected members has been branded ‘bizarre’.”

    The other story, however, was headed: “Poll Suggests Farage’s Party Would Gain First Scottish MPs.” This was followed by the alarmed subhead: “Our analysis finds Reform would also take second place in 16 constituencies and third in a staggering 37.”

    So, to summarise: Reform is an overhyped electoral irrelevance that doesn’t deserve any airtime in Scotland, because it’s so pathetically unpopular there. Yet it’s also an existential threat to everything Scotland holds dear, because it’s so terrifyingly popular there.

    This presents us with a profound philosophical conundrum. Because it would seem that Mr Farage has created the political equivalent of Schrödinger’s cat. A party that’s simultaneously both dead and alive.

    He’s achieved some remarkable things in his career, but this surely trumps the lot.

  36. Cold-ish and grey here. Recent hailstorm elsewhere in france – hail size of tennis balls. Growballs Warning!
    https://scontent-cdg4-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/514093278_10229703254581641_276469846409830101_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_p526x296_tt6&_nc_cat=109&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=a2zvdm0fDgYQ7kNvwGE6q50&_nc_oc=AdkhTJqys72Jgc9xtYwNAEy-KpCPiQ3KrM8T5wZbI77Uyncmlf7MCUW5-JflBWJ1CSEoaaWVhS5YlRCQHWWhDr3X&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-cdg4-2.xx&_nc_gid=49xtrxaqF60GgyywUZBSlg&oh=00_AfOHXf-FN9jCKlC9-11J63YOjnnM2D7wYuWFfy6tixid0A&oe=6865975E

  37. From the Telegraph
    JK Rowling has exposed how desperate the gender extremists have become
    A bookshop in San Francisco has said it will no longer stock her books. Its reasoning highlights the misogyny of trans extremists
    Julie Bindel 27 June 2025 8:51pm BST
    Long used to riding roughshod over anyone who dared to challenge them, gender extremists are now beginning to lose the battle. Could that be the reason their arguments seem to be becoming even more ridiculous?

    Consider the latest example. A bookstore in San Francisco – a city known for its adherence to transgender ideology and extreme wokeism – has declared that it will no longer sell any of JK Rowling’s books because of, wait for it, her role in supposedly “removing transgender rights”.

    Announcing this brave and stunning move on Instagram, Booksmith explained that the final straw was a legal fund recently established by Rowling for the purpose of defending and protecting women’s “sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.”

    Yes, that’s right – protecting women’s rights apparently now amounts to bigotry and prejudice towards the transgender community. The fact that this fund is necessary only because women on both sides of the Atlantic have been bullied and hounded out of their jobs and off college courses, and prevented from applying for promotions if they are deemed “anti-trans”, seems irrelevant to these people.

    The bookstore is a commercial enterprise that seems quite happy to forego certain profit by refusing to stock such hugely popular titles as the Harry Potter series and Robert Galbraith Strike novels; virtue-signalling is clearly considered much more important. But when it comes to identity politics and gender nonsense, publishing is one of the worst-affected institutions. During a tour in the US to promote my book on feminism, one bookstore cancelled my event at the last minute because a trans activist customer had complained. This was despite the fact that it had sold out.

    The revenue from JK Rowling’s books probably funds a good chunk of the publishing industry worldwide, yet these for-profit enterprises would rather have huge display tables groaning under the weight of books by trans activists that barely sell at all.

    A new report on this kamikaze phenomenon was launched just this week in the UK by Sex Matters. Written by Matilda Gosling, it highlights the fact that several female authors have had contracts broken, manuscripts rejected, and even been pushed out of the industry, because of accusations of transphobia. Rowling herself, with her stratospheric success and wealth, need not worry about pointless gestures such as the one by Booksmith – but the careers of other authors have been left in tatters. This is exactly why Rowling’s women’s legal fund is so necessary.

    The fund is the first of its kind: many women, and some men, have found themselves in a terrible situation for merely stating scientifically correct facts on sex and gender, and expressing a view with which the vast majority of people agree.

    It would be interesting to know whether this particular bookstore will be ploughing through its thousands of titles to check that all of its staff agree politically with the premise of each and every author and the contents of each and every book.

    It looks very much as though this so-called civil rights movement is actually a witch hunt against women – for the crime of daring to assert our rights rather than rolling over and capitulating to misogynistic bullies.

    As it dawns on the extremists that they are going down with a sinking ship because they overreached on their demands and bullied and cajoled refuseniks, their rising desperation only makes them look more ludicrous. Some time ago, when yet another trans activist announced on X that he was burning Rowling’s books, she had the perfect riposte: “I get the same royalties whether you read them or burn them. Enjoy your marshmallows!”

    1. It just goes to show that, without MSM aiding and abetting these minority crazy people, they would all wither and die'

  38. Not bad:
    Wordle 1,470 4/6

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

  39. We cannot trust the French to solve our migration woes
    However cordial the new entente may be, the security of our borders will be at the mercy of whoever is in charge in Paris
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2025/06/26/a-deal-with-france-is-unlikely-to-solve-our-migration-woes/

    Comments closed after just 28 posts!

    Most of us can see that Starmer is spineless – but we do not expect a supposedly right of centre newspaper like the DT to chicken out of hearing what their readers think quite so quickly.

    The vast majority of people in Britain want the flood of immigration to stop. The French people don't want the migrants either so of course they are happy for them to get out of France and won't stop their going.

    1. We cannot trust the French at all.

      They ignore EU treaty, don't bother with NATO funding, are fervent EU members – when theycan do their enemies in – the Frogs are deceitful and vile. The thought we threw billions at them to do what international law already demands they do is appalling.

      1. I remember being on holiday at least 25 years ago with our sons, we use to go to lots of different places all over France. And seeing products made illegal by EU standards openly on sale on market stall in various towns.
        Especially undersized fish. Where our fishing fraternity were being fined or having to dump the catches.

          2. He stayed in England after France fell. He knew what he was talking about. There was a chap dressed up as le Grand Charles at the Armed Forces Day event.

          4. That was the excuse, but the reality was that there would be a united Europe, run by Germany, by economic means rather than weapons.

        2. British company dealing with 'Elf and Safety inspector, dutifully takes notes of everything and nakes changes.

          French company assure the inspector that all is well, shows some good examples and treats said inspector to an execellent lunch.

      2. To be fair to the French – if floods of Third Worlders in the UK decided to cross the Channel and go to France would we try to stop them? Indeed we would be happy for Border Force and the RNLI to offer them free trips to Calais.

    2. Someone who seems to be interested in the lives of those people in the public domain.
      Instead of their own political preferences.
      Good man.

    3. Seems to me that most, if not all, American politicians are perfectly fluent in speech delivery. Not like our wooden tops. Great speech, really impressive.

      1. American politicians have great speech writers is nearer the truth. Vance may be a bit of an exception as he is a published author.

        Also, American schools require that their students stand up and do presentations on their school work. Compared to much of British youth of the same age, they seem to be more self confidant and able to engage in logical discussion sanely.

  41. I don't know if anyone has mentioned it but, if you are British, you cannot stay in Gibraltar (a British Overseas Territory) for more than 90 days in 180.
    The ruling Gauleiters of the European Union and Herr Starmer, together with Kamp Kommandant Hermer, have decreed that you are second third class citizens and vill do as you are instructed. Jawohl !

    1. Starmer is determined to undo everything Brexit stood for. He fought to undo the referendum – the man wanted a multi stage second referendum to ensure people were guided to rescind the first – and hasn't stopped.

      We know he kowtows to the WEF and UN. Did he want to be PM solely to destroy this country?

  42. On Thursday my ear started to ache. On Friday the bones around my ear and eye ached.

    I've just called 111 (which has an absurd IVR now) and am going into hosp as the Warqueen reminded me of the vice like pain the last earache caused and why it'd be silly to wait for that again.

    1. Good luck. I used to get ear infections, had to be drained. Use ear drops time to time now, to keep the wax clear.

      1. I just remember leaving it and getting to a point of wanting to put a drill through my head. I'm not going through that again.

    2. I have to say, while clearly cherry picked examples I don't think it's necessary to swear. People use it like punctuation. It's a lack of ability to articulate what you mean in other ways.

      One thing sticks out though: the kid. Why would he call plod?

  44. The anti-colonial 'witch' behind Palestine Action recruitment drive

    Gamze Sanli urges recruits to hit 'everything you can find with a sledgehammer' during actions

    Will Bolton, Crime correspondent
    27 June 2025 6:08pm BST

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/903330eb6c15fd7a5cc891dbfbaabfb061de0355e850ef93b2df8796a2db453f.jpg
    An anti-colonial artist whose work is inspired by "folklore, witchcraft and mythology" can be unmasked as a ringleader behind Palestine Action's recruitment drive.

    Gamze Sanli was the speaker at a "direct action workshop" in which new members were instructed on how to attack targets across the country, including RAF bases. During the workshop, which was accessed by The Telegraph, Ms Sanli – who refers to herself as an "Anatolian-Mediterranean witch" on Instagram – told recruits they would be part of a new, sustained wave of attacks on military sites and discussed tactics such as attacking machinery with a "sledgehammer". Ms Sanli said that plans to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group were "draconian and dangerous" and the organisation would "continue to operate" even if designated as a terror group.

    It can now be disclosed that the Turkish-Cypriot activist is a graduate from King's College London and holds an MA in human rights from University College London. In a biography on her website, Ms Sanli, who describes herself as a multidisciplinary artist and performer, says that "her craft weaves folklore and mythology, abolition and political resistance, death and witchcraft".

    The biography adds: "Moving through different mediums, including experimental film and performance, documentary, illustration, embroidery, poetry and music, she reimagines and reframes the world with a queering, anti-colonial lens."

    Ms Sanli, who is thought to have lived in an expensive central London neighbourhood near Hyde Park, also says she is the founder of "Scattered Seeds", a collective of diasporans, migrants and internationalists focusing on anti-colonial, abolitionist, feminist resistance with radical pedagogy, archiving, and art.

    She works on projects within the intersection of migration and queerness in Belgium as part of a project called "Queers on the Move". During the meeting for new recruits, Ms Sanli discussed tactics for breaking into factories and urged people to hit "everything you can find with a sledgehammer". She advised them on how to set up autonomous cells able to target military bases without detection.

    A slide in the call identified three RAF bases most suitable for attack: RAF Cranwell and RAF Barkston Heath, both in Lincolnshire; and RAF Valley, in Anglesey, North Wales. The Telegraph has passed details to police.

    In 2022, Ms Sanli was one of two Palestine Action protesters who squirted tomato ketchup onto a statue of Arthur Balfour in the members' lobby of the House of Commons. The protest was timed to coincide with the 105th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration – the controversial declaration by the British government in 1917 that became a core component of the British mandate for Palestine.

    As the protesters sprayed the ketchup, which the group described as fake blood, one said: "Palestinians have suffered for 105 years because of this man, Lord Balfour – he gave away their homeland and it wasn't his to give."

    The two protesters glued themselves to the statue after squirting the ketchup, before revealing a miniature Palestinian flag and shouting "free Palestine". Ms Sanli was charged with criminal damage but, following a week-long trial at Southwark Crown Court, she was found not guilty in a unanimous verdict on Dec 18 2023.

    Speaking at the time, Ms Sanli said: "We wanted to show that this is not a faraway geopolitical conflict. We're talking about apartheid and settler colonialism, violations of the human rights of a whole people, and we need to see that through the lens of British complicity."

    During the workshop, Ms Sanli also gave legal advice to new recruits on what they themselves should do if they were arrested. Recruits were warned that if they were arrested, Palestine Action would not pay their legal fees but would offer "support".

    An "arrest support group" would be on hand to help those detained and recruits were told that if they did not have enough money to pay legal costs, they could rely on legal aid. Ms Sanli also advised them on what potential sentences they would likely get for a range of offences, including criminal damage, trespass and burglary. She did not mention the fact that if Palestine Action is proscribed, anyone who is a member of the group or expresses support for it would face sentences of up to 14 years in prison.

    Outlining the various strategies for attacking targets, Ms Sanli said that the plan for new recruits was to carry out sustained, serious disruption. In the past, the group had focused on carrying out "accountable" attacks with the aim of getting caught and raising publicity. The focus for the new cohort was on carrying out covert actions and escaping undetected. They were told not to take phones on raids and to hand over their belongings to neighbours in case their homes were searched if they were arrested.

    On Friday, four people were arrested by counter-terror police in connection with a break-in at RAF Brize Norton last week. A woman, 29, of no fixed abode and two men, aged 36 and 24 from London, were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, contrary to Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Another woman, 41, of no fixed abode, was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.

    Footage posted online by Palestine Action following the incident showed two people inside the RAF base in Oxfordshire. The clip showed one person riding an electric scooter to an Airbus Voyager air-to-air refuelling tanker and spraying paint into one of its jet engines. Two planes were damaged.

    The Metropolitan Police has been contacted and asked to confirm if it is investigating the direct action workshops and whether those delivering them may have committed any criminal offences.

    Ms Sanli and Palestine Action have been approached for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/27/anti-colonial-witch-palestine-action-recruitment

    1. Why doesn't she go there to protest? Why, rather than dossing here and whinging about the things she hates, isn't she in the actual conflict zone?

      Oh! Because it's nice and safe here, isn't it? No real danger here. She can whinge and shout and scream and annoy people without having to actually put herself at risk.

      Just another Lefty coward bleating and whining to cause trouble, safe in a nice, safe, decent country. Another wretched, tedious Lefty hypocrite.

      1. Another silly little middle-class girl with nothing better to do than lecture the world. I was immediately reminded of Indigo Rumbelow, the JSO protestor who asked Mark Austin on ITV: "Do you love your children more than you love fossil fuels?"

        1. The obvious answer to that is 'No, because fossil fuels are what makes their lives better, will treat them when they're ill and clean their water, process their waste, dig the materials for their jobs, grow the crops for them to eat. Why don't you do without fossil fuels – or their proceeds for a month?'

          She'd be dead in 4 days from thirst!

    2. Make a comment on social media and end up in prison.
      Do what she does and get a standing ovation from somewhere.
      What is happening to our country?

    4. I wonder how she would feel if a gang took sledge hammers to her property and demolished it.

    1. It has the unfortunate effect of showing old people to be foul-mouthed, ignorant peasants.

      1. It shows Britons as rude generally. The kid shouldn't be 'expected' or excused for his language either.

        1. This is precisely the same attitude not from the same, but close to the certain type of Europeans from way back.

  48. Well yes, it is an example of lip syncing, But it is amusing non-the-less.

      1. They all read the same book and there is no honest excuse for kneeling in public areas blocking the roads and foot paths.

  51. Lord Farquard
    12h
    Something doesn't quite up here, does it. Can you spot what it is?
    "Jurors heard the couple met and married in Bangladesh, and came to the UK in 2022 after he obtained a student visa and enrolled on a Masters course to study marketing.

    The defendant, who gave evidence through a Bengali interpreter, told the trial …."

    2. It's not impossible he enrolled for a masters as a mature student to study Bengali languages marketing.

      yeah, yeah, I know….

      edit for marketing

    3. It's not impossible he enrolled for a masters as a mature student to study Bengali languages marketing.

      yeah, yeah, I know….

      edit for marketing

    4. The Daily Mail found some of these colleges. Strangely there were no students in evidence.

    1. I see TTK is now claiming that all the changes he made [for which read running away and surrendering to his own even lefter whingers] to the Benefits bill, have resulted in a more balanced and fairer draft. One might ask why, in that case, it wasn't drafted that way at first, if the result is so good? Gaslighting bar steward.

  54. Easy win for the Lions 54-7 against Western Force in Perth (used to be Western Australia…) – good start!

    1. Members of the above mentioned Men's shed would not have appreciated that. ……..the pommie b*st*rds

    1. Anything to try to make one of their blunt worn out points.
      It's summer cold drink feet up and sit in the shade.

  57. Latest from the "Prime Minister".

    The usual, he's doing his best for the Country bullshit, that is devoid of evidence or real intent from the scribblers who concoct this rubbish.

    BTL is brutal. This shower have no idea of how to read the room, if they could they would pack up their crayons and go and try to find a job worthwhile of their talents: litter picking along the A12/A120 is desperately required, it's disgusting to behold the mess.

    https://x.com/10DowningStreet/status/1938863469920727412
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ec334ccfac098124a79319a509d98bf6d64b8fd74382d1111ba1f159248e596f.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/30e66797683dfa5d7b1d90f331e1ad0c5209091f885f7aa876e9f063acd72ccf.png

    2. Perhaps he thinks that bunging them a few more quid will make them more amenable when the trouble really starts and he asks them to turn the guns on us.

    3. He doens't say 'dragging them to court to destroy them for opposing terrorism'.

      I do not understand the Left wing mind. It must be an absolute mess where logic, reason and reality just don't exist.

  58. Latest from the "Prime Minister".

    The usual, he's doing his best for the Country bullshit, that is devoid of evidence or real intent from the scribblers who concoct this rubbish.

    BTL is brutal. This shower have no idea of how to read the room, if they could they would pack up their crayons and go and try to find a job worthwhile of their talents: litter picking along the A12/A120 is desperately required, it's disgusting to behold the mess.

    https://x.com/10DowningStreet/status/1938863469920727412
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ec334ccfac098124a79319a509d98bf6d64b8fd74382d1111ba1f159248e596f.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/30e66797683dfa5d7b1d90f331e1ad0c5209091f885f7aa876e9f063acd72ccf.png

    2. Fred Wedlock wrote a song about The Widow and the Fairy.

      This poor old woman was sitting in her wretched hovel when one night, in a flash of light, a fairy came and offered her three wishes.

      Her first wish was to have a comfortable home and enough money to live lavishly – there was a flash and suddenly she was in a smart new beautiful house full of the evidence of much affluence.

      Her second wish was that she could be young, beautiful and desirable again. Another flash and she was as lovely as Helen of Troy.

      She then saw saw her beloved old cat – her only real friend – and asked the fairy for her third wish – that the old cat could be transformed into a beautiful young lover. Another flash and the old cat disappeared to be replaced by a young Adonis.

      The Adonis then sung to the beautiful young woman:

      The night is young but you'll regret
      The day you took me to the vet!"

      1. An asylum seeker landed at Dover and a fairy granted him 3 wishes
        He asked for a nice house with a garden and poof it appeared.
        He next asked for lots of money and poof bags of cash appeared
        His third wish was to be British and Poof – everything disappeared.
        He asked the fairy why – fairy replied “You’re British now – you get sod all”

  60. Afternoon all. Just back from an armed forces day at Ellesmere. Very smart band (although one of the bandswomen wanted to make a fuss of Winston and he was having none of it. Whether it was the gold braid or the viola in a case that was the problem I am not sure) and WW1 songs from the primary school choir.

    Any sane person would think “this isn’t doing the job, let’s try something different.” Alas. Nobody in Westminster seems to be remotely sane.

  62. A different dream:
    A Civil Servant in Downing Street told Keir Starmer she had a fantastic dream last night. There was a huge procession through central London celebrating the Prime Minister. Tens of thousands lined the streets and byways cheering wildly as Starmer went past. Bands were playing, women were throwing confetti in the air, men blowing whistles. There were balloons and firework everywhere. It was the biggest celebration London had seen sine the end of World War II. Starmer was greatly impressed and said, "That's really great. By the way, how did I look in your dream"? "Was I in my suit or was I in uniform"? "I don't know she replied, the coffin was closed and covered with his favourite Hamas flag".

      2. I think that the Prince of Wales has been influenced by his close friend David Beckham and has decided to have a bright tattoo permanently etched into the skin of his bald pate.

        He needs help deciding what this tattoo should portray – has anyone any suggestions?

    2. Wait for plod to turn up with riot gear desperate to do anything to shut free speech down.

      In the Red corner a bunch of rentamob Lefties – reduced as most are at Glastonbury – will be donning balaclavas eager to use violence and force to ensure others cannot speak their minds – all while their placards bleat about opposing fascism.

    1. If it could be proved that having the death penalty stopped 100 murders a year but that five innocent people were executed would this mean that the death penalty should be reintroduced because it would save 95 lives out of a hundred?

  65. Beebsplaining
    3h
    We have had some tenuous excuses out of the 2tier sausagemeister in the last 12 months that makes the "present but not involved" and " the file wasn't given to me" for Saville and the Harrods boss look almost reasonable 🤔
    Not least being against a nonce ring inquiry and getting his party ( but not himself) to vote against it while supposedly hecwas for it🤔

    But trying to vend that the "island of strangers" comment he said on national tv was an error in a speach he had not read because a house he did not live in was damaged is stretching even his avoidance of responsibility to tissue paper thin limits🤔

    Can the next time he robotically blurts anything be asked if he really means it or is it something Morgan Mc weeney wrote for him he did not read before 🤔
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0ef8cf6746ce3499e98daf3c451f3fe3b64a198694ac514f5c970c2b518f5866.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c320892649d34b8157262f66de0378741812d703c24c2566f4ca512d709a4824.png

    3. Oh, that's a nice presentation….

      And Starmer isn't bright enough to take a ladder with him. The man's a fool.

    1. I forget the full phrase, but it's soemthing like

      Right minded people see the world as it is, and seek to improve it.

      Lefties see the world as they want it to be, and force it to match that.

      This is why Left wingers are so dangerous.

  71. Inside the 20-year MI6 operation to find Russian spy in its ranks
    The Secret Intelligence Service’s Operation Wedlock failed to find the double agent, leading to suspicions there may ‘still be a mole to find’

    British intelligence chiefs spent 20 years hunting for a suspected Russian mole inside MI6 but failed to track down a traitor, it has been revealed.

    An elaborate investigation, called Operation Wedlock, is said to have spanned several continents and lasted until around 2015 before finally being labelled “inconclusive”.

    The investigation was led by MI6’s sister agency, MI5, in what sources described as an extraordinary case of one UK intelligence agency effectively spying on another.

    MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, is the UK spy agency responsible for overseas intelligence, while MI5, the Security Service, is the domestic intelligence agency that handles national security threats.

    After being tipped off by the CIA about an alleged double agent in the 1990s, MI5 is said to have deployed a team of up to 35 surveillance, planning and desk officers, who travelled across the world in pursuit of the mole.

    Their hunt for the traitor has been documented in a recently published book, The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB, by the former BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera. The book says the CIA was concerned that an unknown MI6 officer had been “turned by Moscow” and was relaying secrets to Russia.

    Sources with close knowledge of the operation have since disclosed to The Guardian that the UK identified a suspect within the agency and tasked MI5 with surveilling him.

    • How an oddball smuggled out the KGB’s biggest secrets

    “[We were told] the target was a Russian spy … The US believed he was leaking information to the Russians. He was suspect 1A. The job was taken more seriously than any other [MI5] was involved in. Wedlock eclipsed them all,” one source said.

    The Wedlock team did not operate from MI5 headquarters at Thames House in Westminster and was instead based in a building in Wandsworth, south London, close to MI6’s riverside building in Vauxhall.

    The team went to great lengths to monitor their man. MI5’s technical operations team, known then as A1, is reported to have bugged the MI6 officer’s home, covertly breaking in to plant listening and video devices. A live feed then beamed images back to an operations room.

    One source said they also parked a car outside his house, which was fitted with a camera inside a tissue box on the ledge behind the back seats.

    Over the years surveillance teams are said to have tracked the suspect’s movements abroad, following him to cities across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Doing so is considered very high-risk move as operating overseas is outside MI5’s jurisdiction.

    When the team was sent into a country with real passports under false names, or somewhere without the knowledge of the local government, the agents were reportedly warned that they were “on their own” if detained.

    The operation is understood to have continued, in one form or another, until at least 2015, by which time the suspect had left MI6.

    However, he was not thought to be working alone, a source said, with two other people, also based in London, believed to be helping him.

    Wedlock was described as a “highly unusual operation … the longest in recent memory and probably the most expensive”.

    Despite their efforts, the MI5 team was ultimately unable to establish whether there was a mole — raising the possibility that an agent may have got away with spying for Russia.

    “MI5 never got the conclusive proof it was looking for,” the source said, adding that if it was not him, then it was possible that MI6 “still has a mole to find”.

    E Olivier
    17 hours ago

    Or maybe there was no spy and the KGB just planted the idea that there was to get the UK agencies not trusting each other, chasing their tails and wasting time

    Reply

    Recommend (12)

    Share
    LGreening
    4 hours ago

    Where’s George when you need him?

    Reply

    Recommend (9)

    Share
    Roger Salwey
    5 minutes ago

    Or Colleen Rooney!

    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/mi6-russian-spy-double-agent-operation-8vrsrbft3

    1. Perhaps the CIA had an agent inside British unintelligence and the Russian was a red squirrel?

    2. It took them 20 years to realise it was Keir Starmer? Heck, it could have been any one of the Lib Dems. Anna Soubry? Corbyn? They all hate the UK.

          1. The blackbird caused me absolute angst. I learnt that more is less. Initially I put in too much details and it looked cluttered.
            Making one of these pieces is like drawing a cartoon. It's deciding what to leave out. You have to think what people see and interpret, not go in for photographic accuracy.
            I'm currently drooling over adverts for special bungee clips to keep the sides of the canvas taut. (Yes, I really do need to get a life.)

          2. I have a dear friend who tells me all about her latest embroidery ‘toys’!

        2. To quote Monty Python, I was making it up as I went along.
          Inevitably, I now have loads of spare materials, so will have to do something else.
          This one was based on our planting a morello cherry tree.
          I am brooding over grandson passing his lekkietricity exams and getting his first job. Rather like individual panels in the Bayeaux Tapestry; each will be a family episode.

      1. I channelled my inner Norman nun.
        I now realise that it wasn't only Hail Marys that echoed round the convent.

  73. Captain Sensible
    40m
    How do you calculate degrees of wokeness? Use triggernometry!

  74. Lord Farquard
    5m
    A Liverpool motor vehicle repair company has been fined after a vehicle fell from a two-post lift onto a worker during his prayer break, causing life-changing injuries.

    5. Rheir defence should have been thatthis was an act of God and since God is Christian, he clearly did not approve of prayers to Allah.

  75. 'Our sister died of cancer because of our mum's conspiracy theories'
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crenzwyvpn1o

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/afadfd4a30326485d7a760ee1b2b6b951ed5a8db9867b8eefc97b208eeabbddd.png
    On a personal level, this is one of the sadder cases any of us will read about. However, if you get past the personal tragedy, you might find your hackles rising. I doubt many have argued that some real nutcases attached themselves to the anti-pandemic movement and harmed the genuine sceptical cause but the willingness of the writer to couple that cause with Kate Shemirani's paranoia is bordering on the offensive. "This is what they were like, nutters the lot of them, killing their daughters through ignorance," says Marianna, the guardian of truth and knowledge in her world of right-wing conspiracy theorists.

    It wouldn't be presumptuous to say there was something a bit wrong in that family and that it probably cost a young woman her life but there is conceit and cynicism in the way the BBC is using the story. It's an enormous leap from anti-lockdown sentiment to Shemirani's homeopathic fantasy world.

    And with my cynic's hat on to the keep out the heat, dare I suggest that if pretty Paloma were plain Jane that it wouldn't be quite such a powerful story?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002f2c4/panorama-cancer-conspiracy-theories-why-did-our-sister-die

    1. Alternative cancer treatments are not conspiracy theories and some people do very well with them. Others don’t. Exactly the same applies to those going the chemo route. It saves some. Not others. There isn’t a definitive answer. Kate Shemirani reminded the establishment bods that the Nuremberg trials went after the doctors. After the murder bills being passed in Parliament, they’re presumably rattled again.

    2. The BBC has an agenda. That agenda is big state, high tax, globalist.

      If it can twist any story to fit that agenda, it will.

      Remember:

      John O’Sullivan’s First Law, which appeared in the October 27, 1989, issue of National Review, which is archived here:

      That is explained by O’Sullivan’s First Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church. The reason is, of course, that people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don’t like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world. At which point Michels’s Iron Law of Oligarchy takes over — and the rest follows.

    3. Acquaintance of mine was a supporter of homeopathy some years ago. I said…let's try it on the (rheumatic) dog…00effall, whereas vet medication did show some improvement.

      1. Apparent KFC is an avid believer in homeopathy. I wonder if he is using it now?

  76. DT obits headline tells the truth.

    Courtenay Griffiths, outstanding criminal Silk who defended the Brighton bomber and a Liberian warlord

    2. I don't know where to stand on lawyers. On the one hand they're required to defend everyone equally, regardless of their own belief. Failure to do so has severe consequences if memory serves (such as the release of a murderer/rapist/muslim).

      Yet the same names keep popping up in these gimmigration trials, with the same outcomes where the government defence basically doesn't bother as the latest trite bollox is spewed.

      1. The taxi rank principle seems to coincide with the lawyers own political stance rather frequently.

        1. The taxi rank principle doesn't apply if you agree (or offer, as Starmer is alleged to have done in some VERY dubious cases) to act pro bono.

          1. Well, that's something I've learnt.
            Payment in kind? Suits, glasses, wifey's knickers, use of posh flats etc…..

      2. Time for a Public Defender approach like the US. Anyone can have a top lawyer, but they have to pay. Someone from the Public Defender's office is appointed by the court if the defendant can't afford to pay. Some of these law firms' whole business model seems to be to defend the indefensible, while billing the state (i.e. the taxpayer) for their activities. And of course, it is to their advantage to bill as many hours as possible, hence multiple apppeals, etc.

        1. We have jobbing lawyers like that. Some firms are notorious for taking the money and not doing the work.

  77. Wordle No. 1,470 3/6

    🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 28 Jun 2025

    A hulk for Birdie Three?

    2. Well that was fun – my two regular starter words delivered all 5 letters – easily rearranged for a straightforward birdie!

      Wordle 1,470 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. Well done, same here.

      Wordle 1,470 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟨⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Oh well done. I was surprised to even get a par.

        Wordle 1,470 4/6

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

    5. Following a well deserved nap after the gym, I started with a third starter word that I use.

      Wordle 1,470 2/6

      🟨⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  78. Glastonbury rapper leads ‘death to IDF’ chant
    Vocal support for Palestinian cause from festival crowd ahead of appearance by Kneecap
     https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/28/kneecap-fans-chant-death-to-the-idf-at-glastonbury/

    He does this because he has probably worked out that he will not be arrested or suffer any consequences.

    BTL

    If we didn't have a two-tier government with two- tier policing and a two-tier legal system this chap would be arrested for a hate crime and locked up for five times longer than Lucy Connolly was locked up for a tweet she removed soon after posting it.

    1. I wonder what will happen if thousands of people complain?

      No I don’t wonder, I know: absolutely nothing will be done.

      1. Now that's not true. Come on Sos, you know it isn't too. You know, as well as I, that plod will make sure to get the complainers details on file as troublemakers and set about checking their sochul medjua for unthink.

    2. Suggest that these three characters got o muslimland and see how far they get. Like other dosser Lefties, it's easy to complain when you're safe and secure in this country.

    3. The BBC are backing Glasto, they have dozens of their music reporters there ..

      I cruelly think ..

      The SAS , Airborne should do a military exercise , parachutes , reenact the terror that the Israelis felt when their October 7th 2023 massacre took place ..

      The airborne could demonstrate that nowhere is safe and scare the living daylights out of that gated political rue posing as a music festival , anti Jewish political rally .

      2. It is beyond time the BBC was moved to a subscription model only, and the tv licence scrapped.

    4. Remember, it was at this festival in 2017 that the crowds chanted 'Oh, Jeremy Corbyn'.

    6. Phillip Nicholls
      just now
      Sir Michael Eavis should be stripped of his knighthood for facilitating, and encouraging, these m0rons.

      The morons chanting .. the rapper chanting violence , yet poor Lucy is roughly treated bruised and battered as she languishes in prison .. The bastard Starmer had her imprisoned for so called inciting violence , what a nasty swine he is , that rapper and the others should be arrested for far worse words and crimes ,

      The chant was taken up by the crowd, many of whom were waving Palestinian flags, with around half of them chanting the words at one stage.

      The BBC broadcast the Bob Vylan set without edits or bleeps to cover any chants or lyrics that might be deemed offensive.

      The corporation later cut the live feed for Kneecap set on The Other Stage as it had pledged to do. It said an edited version would be made available on demand later.

    1. Milioaf is a terrifying character. A liar, a cheat, delusional, psychotic. That he either doesn't believe the tripe he spouts and is thus vindictive or he does and is insane.

      In either case, he should be in a padded cell.

    2. Bottom right window has at least half a dozen contenders, but agree he's probably the most eligible.

  80. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/28/labour-not-conservatives-facing-existential-crisis/

    It's simple: dossers vote Labour.

    Labour are the party of intergenerational wasters. Whole famliies who have never, will never work. It is the party of the gimmigrant, the chav, the waster. People who vote Labour are incomprehensible. Labour always, always ruin everything. Socialists squeal 'it wasn't true socialism' when they're eating bark, but it is. Every. Single. Time.

    1. It occurred to me that those who, during the referendum debate, damned the British for not working and thus making immigration necessary are the same sort who, thirty years earlier, would have been outraged at the suggestion that they get on their bikes and look for work…

      1. It's a vicious circle caused by the state:

        They hike welfare, creating unemployment. Companies then need workers so big fat state imports masses of immigrants. Those immigrants then need services so now we've two groups who are net costs. Thus big fat state says 'oh, we need more taxes to pay schools/roads/the welfare bill when we didn't at all. We need the white chav to work.

        1. But our GDP per capita is “up” and the bond markets are happy. For now.

    2. My friend subscribes to a website, since the anti-free speech legislation no longer publicly available. Some finance guru.

      Apparently the finance guru lives in Co Durham and the world’s expert on claiming PIP lives in the village. So everyone is one it, even this finance guru and his entire family, because it is non-means tested and non-taxable.

      You basically tee it up over a few years – grooming, if you will. Tell the doctor you are feeling suicidal. Then six months later say you need help because you are unable to cook on your own. Then a year later…there’s a whole process. But once you are on it, you don’t stop.

      Absolute madness.

  81. They're at it again on the ladies cricket commentary. India fielding with England being knocked over quickly. Ecclestone hits a ball high to the leg boundary and straight to an Indian fielder.
    Indian male commentating; "Straight down Jemimah's throat." a silence followed.

    1. My all-time favourite; 'The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey' – shows how juvenile I am…..

          2. Possibly so, but it had relevance with Botham’s off-field behaviour…..

            PS Thought Marcus looked good when he came on today! (only teasing)

        2. Thank you! I was living in Brum at the time and my friends had got me into cricket I would listen to TMS all day every day – every room in the house had a radio tuned to Radio 4 LW.

          Then came Al-Beeb and Brexit and Covid and knee-taking and i abandoned cricket until my daughter took me to the Rose Bowl earlier this month.

          I missed the World Cup test final and wished i hadn’t. I missed the Headingly teat and wished i hadn’t.

          I think it is time for me to take baby-steps back to cricket-listening. We were talking about it today. My friend tells me its on Radio 5 now (or something).

          1. Actually, I think TMS transcends cricket – they could talk about anything and I would tune in!

  82. From Coffee House the Spectator

    28 Jun 2025
    Coffee House
    Travis Aaroe
    Henry VIII turned England upside down
    28 June 2025, 7:38am

    Henry VIII, who was born on this day in 1509, is the only English monarch other than William the Conqueror who can claim to have destroyed a society and replaced it with a new one. Catholic apologists like Chesterton are right to see in the Henry VIII saga a sort of secular apocalypse; it was, in Chesterton’s words, the ‘dissolution of the whole of the old civilisation’. The new England that grew up in its place – by Henry’s unwitting patronage – was alien, denatured, dislocating, and altogether more worthwhile than the one that had gone before it.

    The story of Henry VIII’s is the story of an eccentric clique capturing society and recasting it in its own image. From 1529-47 nearly all of England’s historic institutions were destroyed. All the things that had given life its shape and meaning were junked: the monasteries torn down and their assets made off with; guilds suppressed; commons enclosed (a fitful attempt by Cardinal Wolsey to reverse this notwithstanding); old customary rights stamped out; the cosmopolitan link to Europe severed. The old mediaeval learning was torn up by its roots and the universities refounded in the study of the Classics. It was England’s version of Jacobinism.

    English society became a series of regulated games in which the prizes were glory and renown

    But unlike Jacobinism, Henry-ism had no popular backing to speak of. One man’s ego; a handful of religious extremists; a few dodgy Giulliani-esque attorneys. These were sufficient to turn the world upside down. Everything that happened in those years happened in the face of settled custom, settled opinion, so-called common sense. The forces that would dominate English life for the next 400 years – Hellenic revival and religious radicalism – were alien ones, the preserve of this small Henrician circle. The reign of Henry VIII was about the conquest of reality by dreams. The England that it gave rise to would recognise no limits but the limits of its own whimsy.

    The most cherished of these whimsies was Hellenism. Henry VIII’s new grammar schools and his reformed universities created a governing elite that looked more to classical Greece and Rome than to the society around them. This is something that went well beyond ‘revival’ – what took place after 1509 amounted to the splicing of England with the classical world. Later figures like Byron, Charles James Fox, or Alan Clark are unexplainable unless we account for the shrewd paganism that’s prevailed in the national psyche since Henry’s reign. Grecian stone urns in the badlands of Northumberland, Temples to Venus in Stowe: these were the physical symbols of an alien civilisation being grafted onto the old one. British people were still exclaiming the name Jove at the end of the twentieth century. There are now all kinds of debates about what Britishness really means: ‘pretending to be Greek’ is probably the best answer.

    Another cadge from ancient Greece was the spirit of agon – competition. Mediaeval English society was a web of mutual obligations in which everyone had a place. Henricianism destroyed this and replaced it with a competitive free-for-all. Much like classical Greece, English society became a series of regulated games in which the prizes were glory and renown.

    The England that Henry VIII created was the first to adopt school entrance exams, stock exchanges, adversarial lawyering, markets. It would also invent the Queensberry Rules, along with most of the world’s sports. What all these have in common is that they’re made-up conflicts regulated by intricate sets of rules and codes of honour. Westminster became the most dazzling game of all. Henry VIII’s reign saw the beginning of the process by which parliament was transformed from a boring Diet of burghers into an arena for people’s ambitions. As Lewis Namier tells us, by the 18th century, people came to parliament not to represent interests but to cut a figure.

    Westminster, too, now accepted no limit on its powers of creative invention. The middle ages, viewed one way, was a series of interminable legal disputes between kings, barons and the Church over their rights and the proper scope of authority. The Statute in Restraint of Appeals (1532) called time on all this. In establishing parliamentary sovereignty, it declared that life would no longer turn on precedent-scraping and wrangling over fixed ‘rights’ that seemed to come from nowhere; that we might, instead, debate and decide things on their merits, revealed to us through reason. The Statute in its full meaning was a thunderclap from the heavens: one of the great triumphs of the human spirit.

    The social order Henry created had to make unprecedented concessions to talent. Jacob Burkhardt tells us that the tyrants of Renaissance Italy, being illegitimate, could not rely on the church or the aristocracy to help them and had to instead turn to talented individuals of humble origin. Henry faced a similar dilemma: his claim to the English throne was shaky and the break with Rome had made him an international outlaw. It was this isolation that gave rise to ‘new men’ like Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Audley, Richard Rich, William Paget, and – in the reign of Elizabeth – William Cecil.

    What began as a temporary expedient soon became a permanent part of the social system. For the next several centuries anyone who was good at their job in England was simply ennobled and made part of the Establishment. With this act, Henry VIII set off the primordial conflict between the ‘new men’ and the old aristocracy that would shape the country’s history for the next 300 years. After the fall of the Pittite regime – the last great flowering of the new men – the cabinet of the Earl Gray (the most blue-blooded in living memory) would pass the Reform Bill of 1832 as a means to finally flush out their old class enemy, birthing liberal democracy in Britain largely out of spite.

    Amid all this, Henry seems like a man out of time, eerily out of place in his own age. He appears to us as a Subjective Man of the 19th century – full of introspection, rumination, and self-reproach. In him we can see all the defining traits of a modern person. The capacity for romantic love. The prickly amour-propre. The consuming neediness. Henry is familiar to us in a way that the Sun King Louis XIV – who lived 150 years later – is not.

    When Henry VIII came to the throne, England was a normal European country. By 1700 it was a lunar landscape: its countryside a work of complete artifice, with shaped topiaries, carved hedges and artificial lakes; blasted heaths created by deforestation; farmers replaced with sheep by Act of Parliament; dotted everywhere with imitation Greco-Roman temples. Its neighbours thought its people were dangerous lunatics and had only recently ceased to treat it as a rogue state. By pure will, England had been made as remote and peripheral to the continent as Russia.

    Does the England that Henry VIII created still exist? The grammar schools have largely been abolished and the last of England’s pagan virtues were exorcised by New Labour. The country is once again ruled by dull landowners who believe in human rights.

    One part remains. Parliamentary sovereignty – the master-mechanism of Henry’s system – is still in operation. If the English people should ever tire of their ‘Rolls Royce’ institutions, their fixed international obligations, or what’s being demanded of them in the name of human rights, then they, uniquely in the western world, have the ready means to change them. It’ll be there to hand – should the English ever want to turn the world upside down again. The idea that we can examine the values and systems by which we’re ruled, find them wanting, and choose different ones; or, really, the idea that the world belongs to the living. That is Henry’s ultimate bequest.

    Written by
    Travis Aaroe

    1. Henry VIII wasn't born in 1509. He was born on 28th June 1491. 1509 is when he acceded to the throne.

    2. I take issue with: The country is once again ruled by dull landowners who believe in human rights.

      As that's not true. It's run by dull bureaucrats who do not believe in rights at all, but use law to oppress humans.

    3. Henry VIII was born on 28th June 1491and ascended to the throne on 22nd April 1509 aged 17 years and 10 months. He married his first wife, Katherine, the widow of his brother Arthur, on 11th June a couple of weeks before his 18th birthday. She was six years older than he.

    1. Warmish! Warmish!

      If Alec Guiness were let out of the metal box into this heat he'd get back in, pronto!

  84. Strange piece. Reads like a student showing off by writing something he thinks will catch the tutor's attention.

  85. We have some of Junior's chums around running about in the garden and some of their parenty people as well.

    I escaped on the pseudo pretence of putting my ear drops in (I did, but that was an hour ago).

    More importantly I have three dogs on absolute 'cold air' watch and a constantly topped up ice bucket and shaded paddling pool. I really, really don't like hot weather.

      1. Sounds like Junior had a big play date at theirs. It means dealing with parents, something neither my husband nor i were ever keen on.

  86. We have some of Junior's chums around running about in the garden and some of their parenty people as well.

    I escaped on the pseudo pretence of putting my ear drops in (I did, but that was an hour ago).

    More importantly I have three dogs on absolute 'cold air' watch and a constantly topped up ice bucket and shaded paddling pool. I really, really don't like hot weather.

    1. I don't think any immigrant should be able to claim welfare for ten years. They should also have to contribute toward NHS care.

      I'm genuinely tired of seeing the doctors surgery packed with foreigners gabbling away in their own language.

      1. Maybe that should apply to everybody. You have to pay in before you can take out. An incentive to seek employment.

        1. But you know that the principle will be diluted before it takes effect – children, pensioners, those on disability will be exempt from your nasty wicked tory attack on the working poor.

          1. Indeed. Children and disabled to the extent they can't work, I would exempt.
            Pensioners have likely worked and paid in their whole lives.
            The rest – get on yer bike.

          4. That was a government to be proud of – the UK's first female PM, backed up with the likes of Tebbit.
            Where are they now we need them again?

          5. Exactly, Paul. If I knew, I’d be calling on them. Every so often, someone strikes a chord – Jenrick, Stride, Philp…doesn’t last long. Somehow, can’t bring myself to support Farage & Tice, still figuring out why not.

          7. I would like to point out that pensioners have contributed (except for the spongers).

      2. Actually my friend (whose wife is the Welsh Reform candidate) and I agreed today it should be 25 years.

        We put off the Reform conversation till tonight so we will pick it up in a out half and hour. What i remember i’ll try to tell you tomorrow.

    2. If I remember correctly, it was several hundred festival-goers who were murdered on October 7th 2023 which brought about the current conflict. Have Glastonbury festival-goers no memory? Or are they just plain thick?

  90. Now the itv news is bending towards the preference shown by the bbc.
    Filming on a beach somewhere, there were only very few white people in shots in their report about the heat wave, mainly black families and even a Muslim women in a burka putting a lot of suntan lotion on her almost covered face.
    What are they trying to prove ?

      1. It wouldn't surprise me if the news people hadn't transported the people they wanted to film on the beach themselves.

  92. That's a lot better! Double helping of SWMBOs lasagna, and a couple glasses Chianti. Now digesting…

    1. To cap off a month of wierd, unattractive offerings, the Golf club caterer served up spaghetti bolognese with roast potatoes formers league dinner on Thursday night.

      Their worst crime was to run out of wine for ladies night –

      They were made the ex caterer on Friday morning.

      1. Spaghetti and potatoes? WTF? No knowledge about food, especially Italian. And wine… and ladies…

      2. Running out of wine is not good. Wedding at Cana vibe. No one there who can turn Highland Spring into Malbec? And as Paul says, pasta AND potatoes?

  94. ''Evening, all. In answer to a couple of posts which are now closed to replies, I attended the Eye Clinic on Wednesday. Saw a different eye doctor, associared with surgery rather than Retinopathy. They didn't take the photo to ascertain the quantity of blood remaining, to my surprise. Different ye Doc announced that there wasn't much blood, and my main problem was cataracts*.

    OK – I humoured him – what about the cataracts? "You;ve had diabetic issues and bleeding. Not a good idea to do the caaracts". "cvome back in two to three months".

    There is less blood, admittedly. My vision has improved in the last week or so. But as I wake in the morning, I can see the pool of blood, around which I can clearly read my smart watch, without specs. It fades once I'm upright. This has F-all to do with cataracts (I acknowledge that I have them). Go figure.

    Despite not having a photo to compare with previous appoinments, I agree that there's less blood. Vision remains crap, but I can see things more clearly than before. If I can avoid further bleeds, I should be in a better place in 2/3 months, at which time I'll be pestering them (hopefully not Wednesday's doctor) for cataract surgery…

    1. Lordy, Geoff – that looks a) very complicated, and b) scary.
      Hope that it goes well for you the next few months. Fongers croxxed.

    2. Sorry to read your post, Geoff…better half been there, some years ago. He finally had laser treatment, in Manchester. Might that be an option, or have you already been there and discounted that? We finally went privately due to length of waiting time, clinics packed. Manchester Eye Hospital. Good luck, my love x

      1. If Geoff wasn't so ugly, I'd send hugs, too.
        ;-))
        Poor old bear, that's something would really stress me, likely making the problem worse.

        2. Sometimes the ugliest men are the most attractive because …brains…:-)) and kindness…:-)) I feel so sorry, having been there done that with my husband, the hours in clinics, the appointments…there are many diabetic patients suffering similarly. I’m not looking forward to ageing, becoming ill.

          3. Way behind me in the ugly-bug queue.
            Even my passport photo gets rejected at e-gates.

          6. Yes so so cuddly , and a lovely photo of a brave man who despite everything , has continued to support this wonderful group of Nottlers and would be politicians ..

            Nottlers should be speech writers and advisors in government , we have the right recipe for mending politics and running the country .. Geoff's clever amusing band of followers!

            You see despite everything , dear Geoff can lead and be quite succinct sometimes.

    3. Oh dear Geoff I'm so sorry to hear that. I know so many people including myself who have had cataract surgery.
      The results are usually very good indeed. Although some people have to wear reading glasses including myself. Which is not a major problem.
      It's the feeling of new freedom you feel soon after the cataracts have been removed.
      I wish you well and more, you deserve all of that. Best wishes.

      1. Mother had cataracts removed many years ago, and was delighted with the result.

        1. My elder sister being far wealthier than I, had hers removed through the private sector and was given grade A replacements. Her eye sight is now so good she has no need for glasses at all.

        2. My elder sister being rather wealthy was able to have her cataracts treated privately. I believe she paid for high quality replacements. She no longer needs any type of spectacles.

    4. I don't know what to say Geoff.

      You are certainly going through so much trauma , I just hope you have some close ones who will listen to you and help you , and hug you .

    5. I am sorry. What a rough time you are having. Presumably you have to take the doctor/consultant you are given.

    6. Blimey Geoff! You’re in the wars a bit, pet! Remember we’re all rooting for you, and sending lots of love, hugs and good thoughts for a swift improvement in your health. Take great care! 💕

      2. He dropped a car on a Muslim, perhaps he believes in spreading the misery, just like all socialists.

  96. Have you missed me today? Please say yes…..

    I set off from Wolvey at 7 am to meet my friend in Llanymynech. We left a car there and drove to Chirk, and then hit the Offa’s Dyke path back to Llanymynech. We set off from Chirk at 9 am. We walked 16 miles to Llanymynech, finishing at 5:30. If that sounds like a long time to walk 16 miles, we went up 2600 ft and down the same amount but the hills were steep and coming down you just cannot go quickly.

    i am epsom-salt bathing but multi-tasking with beer and tinned g&t, moving on to wine later. Tomorrow we are going to attempt Llandegla to Chirk which is 15 miles and up 2800 ft down 2300. And hot hot hot! Wish me luck!

    Love Chirk – fabulous aqueducts and tomorrow we have Pontscyscllte Aquaduct. I know, i know. Contain yourselves please.

    1. Was wondering where you'd gone. Seema you had a grand day out! Hope the weather tomorrow is kind to you!

      1. I have noticed i can only upload photos directly (not ones i have taken; only those actually being taken and uploaded at the same time). Hence not able to today; will try harder tomorrow!

    3. Photos?? Enjoy being young(ish) while you still can – a couple of miles is enough for me now.

      1. Yes if the truth be known , and I am embarrassed to admit , me also , max 3 miles and I am finished , yet son is of out early tomorrow morning for an 18 mile run to Lulworth and back via other villages .

        I am currently in great discomfort , not eating , and so concerned why my tum is playing up, yet my Gastroscopy last Thursday and CT scan last Friday, and blood tests etc failed to show anything significant , thank goodness, but the pain continues , and I don't know what to do next .

        1. Oh no………. sorry you're still feeling so rotten. I suppose it's good they didn't find anything major, but doesn't help you to feel any better. Are there some things that set it off more than others? Does antibiotic do anything for the diverticulitis? Ulcer? Helicobacter?

          1. I am going to ask about that, and that is if I can get an appointment with my doctor .

            My arms and hands are covered in bruises from needle practise over 3 days , feel a real mess .

          2. Nurses used to be able to do that without making such a mess with bruises……… or maybe it’s just older skin being more easy to damage.

    4. There's a bed shop in Chirk called Seventh Heaven – at the bottom of the hill.

  97. 21:30 local. On the way to bed, due to being knackered. The sun is shining on SWMBOs pillow, really quite powerfully…

  99. Just back from another village function.
    Dinner dance.
    I loved dancing, no longer can, sadly.
    Steak, chips, bread and cheese, ice cream, coffee.
    14 euros.
    A bottle of local red 10 euros.
    The steak was cooked exactly as I like it, if anything far too big a lump of meat. In the local butchers a similar piece would have been more than 14 on its own.
    Everyone very friendly to the only Anglais that we could hear.
    Another do tomorrow night, but with fireworks.
    It's a hard life, I don't know how we cope.

      1. It's certainly hot, 38 here today.

        They put up the equivalent of a plastic greenhouse, but with dark covers, and with a breeze flowing through it didn't seem so hot.
        The committee put out lots of bottles of cold water for people to help themselves.
        I gave the organisers 20 euros towards the cost and the reaction was amazing; so appreciative.

        All the profits from the evening go back to the small local community so it was merely HG and I saying thanks for a great evening.

        I admire the way that the locals volunteer to work extremely hard at these functions.

  100. I'm just sitting down to a small bowl of raspbarries and strawberries with cream.
    We had sea bass for dinner – with lettuce, tomato, new potatoes, tenderstem broccoli, and half a bottle of Sauvignon blanc. I can still see the keybroad.

    1. A thousand anti-open borders people coming in and tearing down those fences might hammer home to them what they demand of others.

      Pour in, refuse to pay, take over the tents etc and occupy them, refusing to leave.

      Then patrol the grounds, abusing the women and robbing them of their phones.

      "That's what you want for the UK, how do you like it?"

  102. Palestine Action are not terrorists. The RAF is just grossly incompetent

    This devaluation of a word with a precise meaning is highly dangerous

    Simon Heffer
    28 June 2025 8:17pm BST

    One can see why the Government is proposing to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. That anyone could enter the RAF base at Brize Norton, one of the most significant we have, and smear red paint on planes was deeply humiliating. Once, the commanding officer of the base would have resigned immediately; the security officer would have been moved to the cookhouse, if he was lucky; and the Defence Secretary would have offered his resignation. But no-one resigns these days, so branding the intruders "terrorists", as if they were some ruthless group trained to outwit military professionals, with death and destruction their aim, makes them sound all the more formidable, and their victims all the more helpless.

    It is an unconvincing cover for the sort of grotesque incompetence that characterises our public sector and public services. That was the RAF; the next day it was the Metropolitan Police unable to prevent an epidemic of daylight robbery on the streets of the West End; the next NHS maternity services that humiliate and degrade women giving birth. What Palestine Action, however organised and bonkers and loathsome they are, did was not terrorism: it was vandalism. You might as well call football hooligans terrorists, or the groups of louts who on hot summer evenings riot because they are bored and the police upset them by seeking to restore order. Terrorism is a truly abhorrent, lethal, wicked and repulsive thing: chucking paint over planes and ridiculing the RAF and the Government in the process does not even begin to compare with it.

    This devaluation of a word with a precise meaning is highly dangerous. Lord (Toby) Young, in his excellent work for the Free Speech Union, has disclosed that Prevent – the increasingly preposterous, Left-leaning body that tries to stop terrorism at its roots – has done research that suggests "red flags" for spotting potential far-right terrorists are people who like, among other things, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, GK Chesterton's poems, The Bridge On the River Kwai, The Dam Busters and Yes, Minister. Where do I give myself up?

    Many of us remember real terrorism, perpetrated by real terrorists: the Birmingham and Guildford Bombings; the Hyde Park Bombings; murders in Manchester, both by the IRA in 1992 and 1996 and, a generation later, an Islamic extremist who killed 22 at the city's Arena in 2017; the massacre on 7/7, which killed 52 innocent people in 2005; and if that's not enough, Lockerbie. I could go on. Does all that utter horror compare with exposing the pitiful security at Brize Norton and slapping paint on planes? Of course not.

    This seemed to start in 2016, after the abominable murder of Jo Cox, the Labour MP, by Thomas Mair, a recluse and weirdo unknown to the authorities. He was rapidly branded a "terrorist" by politicians when it became clear he had a deeply unhealthy obsession with the far-right and its doctrines. He was a member of no terrorist organisation. What he did was appalling, but he was no more a terrorist than any politically-motivated psychopath acting alone. Ms Cox's murder came days before the Brexit vote. Those who branded Mair a "terrorist" (and the authorities rapidly followed suit) were surely not trying to associate him with the Brexit movement – were they?

    On Friday, four people were arrested over the Brize Norton incident. If convicted, they must suffer exemplary punishment. However, I hope the Government accepts its responsibilities for such pathetic security. And I also hope that in future it reserves the term "terrorist" for those who really merit it, rather than diluting it for idiotic troublemakers or lethal misfits.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/28/palestine-action-terrorists-brize-norton

    1. Well Mr Heffer, when Muslims are protected by blasphemy laws, will we be able to call them terrorists?

  103. Husband's just gone out in his pyjamas with our next door neighbour – who sounded quite excited! just going out to investigate………

      1. Well – she's got a pair of swifts roosting in the box they put up several years ago – it's been used by starlings but they've gone now ………. these two will be back next year to breed now. Starlings might have to go elsewhere! Susan saw one go into the box so she turned the camera on to look. They have a small telly in the kitchen to see what's happening.

        2. Lol… reads like the starlings have the telly…if so we can imagine what they’re saying. I have several boxes here, which all birds studiously ignore. I love the see and hear the swifts whirling around, make my day. btw are they watching EastEnders? thx Ndovu, miserable evening one reason or another, cheered me up xx

  105. Good night all Nottlers, most of you seem to have been enjoying 'heat wave' Saturday.
    Especially Sos.
    Sleep well. 😴

    2. 'Night N, sleep well…I'm off too shortly…still look around for my old dog one last turn…doh…

  114. Just watching Neil Young at Glasto – he's great (takes me back to my uni days) – he's 79 ffs!!

    4. Still have a few albums including Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

      Graham Nash was from The Hollies from memory and Stephen Stills profoundly deaf.

      1. They were great (CSNY as we pretentiously called them) – and David Crosby from the Byrds!

      1. Oh bugger, he's doing Harvest Moon – the memories are overpowering me…. such happy days….

    1. The hatred in the replies is alarming. Of course, no one asks how many people have been killed by Islam in the Middle East in the last 50 years or so…

    2. A bit late to organise now, but the main route out of Glastonbury should be plastered with images of the Nova Festival Site, post attack, as well as images of the victims and their names.

      We've got Ynot coming in a few weeks just up the road from here, I might buy some Israeli flags to put outside for that.

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