Tuesday 16 September: The folly of banning Israelis from the Royal College of Defence Studies

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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621 thoughts on “Tuesday 16 September: The folly of banning Israelis from the Royal College of Defence Studies”

      1. It's very unusual that I see it first, and as the first person generally says good morning I merely followed the trend.
        6 minutes in front of Elsie Bloodaxe was a surprise though.
        It was just before 8 am my time.

  2. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe page. I only just made Wordle today in 6 – a double bogey. But without having to get any clues.

    Wordle 1,550 6/6

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    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Today's headline

      Labour's first 'one-in, one-out' migrant deportation to France 'is abandoned after last-minute legal challenge'

    2. Why does there need to be a puberty blocker trial (it's planned to run until 2031)? The disgraced Tavistock Centre had 9,000 trialists passing through their doors over a 35 year span. Surely, the records from those 9,000 unfortunate patients should provide any answers to the knock-on effect of puberty blockers? Or, perhaps they do and the results show a negative impact on the lives (and deaths?) of those 9,000 souls.

    1. Good morning. Not as late as me.

      Been picking the last of the crops and preparing and preserving.
      Chillis all on strings hanging up to dry.
      Capsicums and onions turned into sweet and sour sauce.
      Tomatoes roasted, boiled and pureed.
      Apples off the tree but haven't processed them yet.
      Yet to harvest and dry the herbs but they can wait a bit.

  12. Hello again, chums. It's good to see Sue Edison "up and running" again on this site and upvoting all the early posts. Good to "see" you here, Sue. Do let us know once you are able to go home and gradually face a return to work.

    1. I’m wide awake at 7am, Elsie. Little point in trying to go back to sleep once my bowels stir. I no longer need medication to kickstart that process but nor is it entirely back to normal. Strong painkillers are very disruptive. I can take a nap after lunch though, so that compensates. There’s an NHS presentation to attend online via Teams this afternoon on what to expect post-operatively. One might say that I’m finding that out already.

  14. Laurie Wastell
    Labour is gunning for GB News
    15 September 2025, 12:37pm

    GB News has had a good summer. Buoyed by a summer of small boat crossings and immigration protests and arrests for free speech, the People’s Channel has been nosing ahead of rivals BBC, ITV and Sky News. In August, its average views between 6 a.m. and 2 a.m. rose to 85,000, with the BBC News Channel falling to 69,000 and Sky News falling to 67,000. For a second month in a row, its daily viewers were ahead of both rivals.

    GB News also boasts big political names, with Nigel Farage and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg both presenting prime-time shows, as well young talent breaking through such as investigative reporter Charlie Peters and winsome late-night presenter Patrick Christys. It covers stories where legacy broadcasters have often feared to tread – legal and illegal migration, wokery, threats to free speech – and is often forthrightly critical of a Labour government that many see as failing on all three.

    It always seemed a matter of when, not if, the government would move to clip the broadcaster’s wings. This week, such agenda was let slip by culture secretary Lisa Nandy. Nandy wants GB News reined in, it seems, with her sympathies lying firmly with the ‘independent’ BBC over the ‘People’s Channel’.

    Speaking to the Culture, Media and Sport committee on Wednesday, Nandy railed against what she called ‘Nigel Farage presenting news programmes on GB News’, which she says parliamentarians have raised concerns with her about. This was a revealing comment, not least because it is entirely untrue.

    In fact, Neither Farage, nor any other politician, has ever presented a ‘news programme’ on GB News – doing so is against existing Ofcom rules. Politicians can present current affairs programmes, which in Ofcom guidelines are distinct from news programmes, and indeed this has long been a commonplace on the airwaves. Nandy’s conflation of the two suggests that her concern here is not the rules, but simply the fact that the Reform leader has a show at all. Notably, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and Labour’s David Lammy have presented call-in shows on LBC without Nandy – or Ofcom – crying foul.

    The government ‘strongly support’ an existing move by Ofcom to tighten rules on politicians presenting news, Nandy said. Earlier this year, Ofcom had been slapped down by the High Court after it pursued GB News for alleged breaches of broadcasting rules over the simple matter of presenter Jacob Rees-Mogg reading out some breaking news during his panel show. Not to be deterred, Ofcom opted to make the rules even stricter, a change which is currently out for consultation. Worse, Nandy’s backing could well be a step towards politicians being prevented from presenting such shows altogether, which two former Ofcom executives already called for this earlier this year. Even if there isn’t an outright ban, any change which further muddies the distinction between news and current affairs will make it considerably more risky for broadcasters ever to use politicians as presenters – a especially GB News, given how tightly it is policed by Ofcom.

    Nandy’s purported rationale for this crusade reveals a deeply patronising view of the British public, who she apparently thinks are too dim and suggestible to be able to distinguish news from opinion for themselves. The government must ensure there is a ‘proper framework’, so viewers can be ‘empowered to understand if what they are seeing is news or political polemic presented as news’, Nandy says. It’s worth remembering how the left tend to imagine that the only reason voters might be departing from liberal orthodoxies is that they have somehow been illicitly led astray. Many Remainers, for instance, unable to accept that Brexit voters simply had a different opinion from them, preferred to conclude that they must have been ‘misinformed’ or misled.

    Many would view the rise of a new channel to compete with legacy institutions as a boon for political debate and a sign healthy media competition in the UK. Not culture commissar Nandy, for whom media plurality itself is nothing short of a threat to democracy. ‘People are reading different accounts’, she laments. This means that ‘shared spaces and [the] shared understanding that is the basis of democracy is fracturing. I think that is very, very dangerous.’ Surely the real danger to democracy here is a government minister using the state to muzzle political opponents.

    As much as Nandy disdains the populist GB News, it is clear she venerates the BBC. Despite having to be grilled at length over major BBC impartiality failings in recent months, especially in its Israel-Palestine coverage, she nevertheless went to bat for the state broadcaster. Though it had ‘fallen short’ in recent months, she insisted the BBC is ‘held to the highest of standards’, whereas ‘there are different standards being observed in other places’. It was with this comment that she was pivoted from a question about the BBC’s commercial operations into her extended rant about GB News.

    Extraordinarily, rather than having any problems with the state broadcaster itself, Nandy believes it’s GB News’s fault that fewer people trust the BBC these days. ‘The public have a right to know if what they’re seeing is news and is impartial, or is not’, she said. ‘And one of the challenges that then creates for public service broadcasters is that people lose trust in the news altogether.’ The logic is bizarre, not least given Ofcom’s own figures show that regular views of GB News trust the channel more than the BBC, ITV or Sky News. What is clear is that Nandy feels that GB News is making the BBC and the government sweat by disrupting the cosy liberal-establishment bias of the legacy broadcasters. In reality, broadcasters will earn the public’s trust as far as people feel they are taking seriously the issues that matter to them.

    Labour, as so often, seems to think it can censor its way out of its problems. In response to unrest over migrant hotels, the Home Office launched a plan to surveil online speech; now Reform is way in front in the polls, the government wants to neuter GB News. For all the talk of ‘trust’, it doesn’t take a genius to see why Labour has GB News in its sights: this deeply unpopular government wants ban opposition politicians from the airwaves because it doesn’t like being criticised.

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

    Biba
    18 hours ago
    ‘People are reading different accounts’, she laments. This means that ‘shared spaces and [the] shared understanding that is the basis of democracy is fracturing. I think that is very, very dangerous.’

    This is a truly shocking remark from a politician. A plurality of opinions and outlets is a sine qua non of democracy. The intelligent approach is to seek a range of opinions and weigh them – people then generally plump for the opinion that most accords with any experience they might have of the issue. Any close reader can recognise the tendentious presentation of the BBC over the last few years and will want to consult a different perspective – and many are now aware that the BBC fails to report matters that don't conform to its preferred 'progressive' outlook. Nandy's attitude is the danger.

    Mark F. Nowland Biba
    16 hours ago
    It's the moronic utterance of a totalitarian.

    The Observer Mark F. Nowland
    14 hours ago
    It's the Fabian way.

    PompeyDave
    19 hours ago edited
    This is deeply worrying, and shows how close we are to becoming a police state if we're not already there, with plod now regularly knocking on the doors of people that the left disagree with.

    Don't like your neighbours Union flags or his support for all things 'Team GB'? Make an official police complaint and watch him being neutered within hours by the local constabulary. Scary stuff.

    1. The BTL comments nail Nandy's censorious dreams, but i was puzzled with her line 'there are different standards being observed in other places'. Surely, as the government minister with responsibility for 'culture', Nandy will be aware that whilst the Ofcom quango rule the roost over most tv/radio broadcasters, they DO NOT involve themselves with the bBC as the bBC has it's own in-house complaints department. It therefore follows that there are different standards, built-in by Westminster/Whitehall, between their quango and their state broadcaster.

  15. Is Covid a thing again? I have a terrible cold – and it is a typical terrible cold of the kind j suffer from (chesty cough, blocked nose) yet work wants me to take a Covid test before i return to work “because if recent events”.

    Anyone aware of “recent events”???

    1. There is certain to be a new strain somewhere on the planet.

      It mutates faster than Muslim cousin marriages.

      1. As I've heard nothing about a surge in Covid hospitalisations, it's either that the virus has mutated into a milder form or that the most vulnerable have already been taken with the more resilient able to fight off mutations with their own bodily defences.

    3. Yes – you mingled with a big crowd on Saturday. That's a good way to pick up a bug. Take a test – if it's clear you're ok to go in – if it says you have covid – take the rest of the week off.

      1. Aha!!
        So the PTB are spreading a new convid strain amongst all the faaaar right racists.
        That'll kill off the elderly ones.

    4. Down at my local last night, there were a few red-nosed, runny-eyed, sniffling types sent to quarantine at the far end of the bar. Coincidentally, the latest batch of flu jabs are being administered to the willing, of which those in 'quarantine' had partaken.

    5. There are dozens of cold and flu viruses around at any time. We're in trouble if the public regard any such RTI as Covid.

    6. There are dozens of cold and flu viruses around at any time. We're in trouble if the public regard any such RTI as Covid.

  16. Good morning all.
    A dull and wet start with light rain after heavier through the night. At least yesterday's wind has ceased. 12½°C on the thermometer.

  17. Andrew Hogg
    The long history of Peter Mandelson’s scandals
    16 September 2025, 6:30am

    The politician now known as Lord Mandelson is an unmitigated stranger to the truth who has been prepared to use the power of office to bully and obfuscate. This is not the verdict of some political obsessive merely drawing conclusions from the clouded career of the man who, until last week, was the United Kingdom’s man in Washington. It’s my view as a journalist – former news editor of two national newspapers, head of the Sunday Times Insight investigative team and reporter for the Daily Mail – having once had occasion to question Mandelson about his financial dealings.

    His response to my questions revealed a side to the man at considerable variance with what might reasonably be expected from a person holding elected office. Alone in Fleet Street, in early 1997, the Daily Mail – which before the online rot set in was as finely tuned as a champion racehorse – wondered how Mandelson, then an MP and key adviser to Tony Blair, could afford two homes.

    The first was a £180,000 white stucco, two-bedroom ground-floor flat in Bloomsbury. This was still up for sale when he purchased a £475,000 Victorian terrace house in Notting Hill, then rapidly gaining popularity as the preferred enclave for politicians wanting to appear voguish.

    My enquiries drew a blank. Neighbours in Bloomsbury had no knowledge of the so-called Prince of Darkness hitherto dwelling in their midst. In Notting Hill, those living close by, while hungry for gossip about their new neighbour, knew nothing. Estate agents, invoking codes of conduct that had a hollow ring to them, gave nothing away.

    In the end, the only option was to direct the question to Mandelson himself, which meant going through his man of business at the time, Benji Wegg-Prosser. I made the call.

    An hour later, my phone rang. It was Mandelson. He didn’t sound in the mood for an amicable chat. ‘What’s your interest?’ he demanded.

    ‘How can you afford two properties on an MP’s salary? Where has the money come from?’ I asked. ‘Through the normal channels.’ ‘Such as…?’ ‘Building societies and the like.’ ‘Can you be more specific? Which ones and how much?’ ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he angrily responded. ‘Put me through to the editor of the day.’

    I transferred him back to the switchboard and heard nothing more about any conversation he may or may not have had with the paper’s editor. With no leads left to pursue, the story was dropped.

    Nearly two years later, in December 1998, it surfaced again when it was revealed that Mandelson had made the purchase thanks to a private, interest-free loan of £373,000 from fellow Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson, a businessman with a wide range of interests who at the time was reputedly worth £30 million.

    Tony Blair’s landslide victory in May 1997 meant that by then Robinson was Paymaster-General and Mandelson, who had indeed topped Robinson’s money up with a building society loan, was trade and industry secretary.

    The fact that Mandelson’s department was at the time investigating Robinson’s business dealings added to the smell of sleaze and both were forced to resign. Mandelson, who had failed to declare the loan in the Register of Members’ Interests, protested that he had deliberately avoided taking part in any departmental decisions related to Robinson.

    In a memoir Robinson later published, he revealed how the loan came about. At a dinner in his penthouse flat in May 1996, Mandelson had expressed a desire to find better London accommodation:

    He said he would like to buy somewhere, he mentioned Notting Hill, it was clear that was what he was most interested in, but he didn’t have anybody who would help him… I replied that I was financially well placed and might be able to help if that was what he wanted.

    At that point nothing further was said. I imagine he was mulling the situation over in his own mind. But the next morning at 9.a.m, the phone rang and it was Peter saying quite openly, ‘Would you really help me buy a house’, to which I replied, ‘Yes, if that’s what you want.’

    Quite how the story broke is still a matter of conjecture. Mandelson, it’s believed, had heard rumours that Daily Mirror reporter Paul Routledge found out about the loan while researching a ‘hostile’ biography of him. Then chancellor Gordon Brown’s press secretary Charlie Whelan, a known enemy of Mandelson and a friend of both Routledge and Robinson had also apparently boasted over drinks with journalists that he had ‘got the story out’.

    In the event, the story broke in both the Guardian and Routledge’s paper and the biography was published.Whelan strongly denied being the source, leaving the Brown camp wondering whether Mandelson had launched a pre-emptive strike by leaking the story during parliament’s Christmas recess in a bid to pull its sting.

    The Mandelson camp dismissed the idea as ‘too ludicrous for words’. The words carried some weight. This was, after all, the first scandal to engulf him. Several scandals later, we are all older and wiser, with little reason now to accept any assurances from the former Hartlepool MP.

    1. Shame is although all this is now out in the open. The contents of the 'D' notices issued during B liars Downing Street residency will not be available for decades.

    3. Glib and Oily Mandy's lies and mortgage I could not excuse –
      Twice I sacked the sleay bugger though his spittle shone my shoes.

  18. Morning all 🙂😊🤗
    A glimpse of sunshine much less wind and 12c but more rain later.
    Yes the folly of banning Israelis from defence studies. I think that they have already shown the rest of the world how it's done. Never give up. And we should learn from them.

  19. Good Morning!

    Former soldier and policeman John Surtees gives us the dirt on the Metropolitan police's dirty squad in The Territorial Support Group – The Antithesis of Policing With Consent . This mob was seen in action on Saturday, and reportedly causing the little violence that the overwhelmingly peaceful march saw.

    Paul Sutton's view from the street report on the mammoth, peaceful and good natured Unite The Kingdom Free Speech rally in London on Saturday is worth reading if you missed it: The Unite The Kingdom Rally – The View From The Street gives the true flavour of what many of us think was a game-changing event.

    Energy Watch: Over the last 24 hours: Britain's average power requirement was 31.4 GW, sourced from Gas, 10%; Solar, 6.2%: Wind 60.4%; Imports, 8.3%; Biomass, 3%; Nuclear 8.3% and Miscellaneous, 3.4%.

  20. The police are asking the public to help identify several members of the public from Saturday's troubles.
    Each photograph is numbered and the numbers suggest there must be a lot of people held on facial recognition records.
    These numbers allocated are all in the 147,900 range.

    2. They probably only want to be able to recognise the Palestinian supporters so they can offer them a job.

  21. 412945+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Things are as usual, looking foul, one in ALL in, they start as they mean to go on, this lab led lab/lib/con anti Brit coalition is angling strongly for major public uncivil unrest.

    It has been building in ignorant earnest since the sad demise of Mrs Thatcher (RIP) via the tribals polling station repeated actions, and boosted in alien numbers through the DAILY invaders coming ashore.

    IMHO it is becoming clearer to me that the tory (INO) party has every chance of morphing into the Reform
    party that in turn leaves to much to chance at the next GE.

    The proven fact is we have NOT got the brightest electorate in this semi free world and the next GE is,
    in my mind, in the last chance hotel.

    I am saying that for Reform under its present leadership to go it alone is an act of criminal negligence if done without a fall back, safety net party.

    https://x.com/TrudiDa56809600/status/1967824751197585503

      1. 412945+ up ticks,

        Morning N,

        They got it together for the referendum momentary, before returning to putting party before country.

      2. There's only one right wing party currently in the picture. The Unite the Kingdom march was a gathering to protest, welcome to all.

      3. Conservatives are weakened under Badenoch, I'm looking to more following in Kruger's footsteps (possibly Philp, Jenrick, for two)..

    2. The home secretary is on record as saying that her Muslim faith is the most important thing in her life.

      Surely the whole point of having a home secretary is to have somebody who puts the interests of the country and its citizens above all else?

      Cannot Shaban Mahmood see that her religious convictions are incompatible with the interests of a western democracy with a head of state who is also the head of The Church of England?

      Roman Catholics – who are Christians – are not allowed to succeed to the British throne so how can a Muslim – or a committed member of any other religious faith – be allowed to become home secretary?

      2. 412945+up ticks,

        Morning R,

        Because certain elements of the indigenous take great delight in cuttings their indigenous
        counterparts throats figuratively speaking…at this moment in time.

      3. The object of Islam is to convert the entire population of the world. There is only one law permissible – Sharia. Man-made law is null and void, and it is the duty of every Muslim to spread the faith by whatever means are necessary (including violence) and impose Sharia law everywhere. It should be blindingly obvious that Islam is totally incompatible with Democracy.

    3. The home secretary is on record as saying that her Muslim faith is the most important thing in her life.

      Surely the whole point of having a home secretary is to have somebody who puts the interests of the country and its citizens above all else?

      Cannot Shaban Mahmood see that her religious convictions are incompatible with the interests of a western democracy with a head of state who is also the head of The Church of England?

      Roman Catholics – who are Christians – are not allowed to succeed to the British throne so how can a Muslim – or a committed member of any other religious faith – be allowed to become home secretary?

    4. Apparently some on the Left have claimed that the top right picture is AI generated and shows the Arc de Triomphe and not Marble Arch!!

        1. And of course hundreds of thousands wave the Union Flag in Paris. Every weekend in fact. Because they love us so much.

    1. The earlier light rain here got worse, then stopped and it's cleared up. Light overcast with blue patches and a bit of a breeze now.

    2. It had better stay dry, at least until mid-afternoon, as I have 2 wash loads out on the line. Extra pegs on everything to reduce the chance of the wind ripping them from the line.

    1. My two sleep on duck feather pillows. After i have had some use out of them of course.

      Good morning.

      1. We've 9 blankets. 3 in the crates/floor/sofa depending on who has taken their blanket where, then 3 in the wash as invariably they'll be drool soaked and 3 drying.

        Probably going to need another 3. I don't know why we have one each. It's not as if the dogs differentiate.

    5. It's funny when folk ask 'How do you tell them apart' I imagine their differences are pretty clear in attitude and character.

    7. Lovely pic…today there's a b&w video doing the rounds of a cat similarly marked…fetching a baby owl into owners bed….

        1. Nah. Just a plain ol’ marmalade moggy (a former ‘Tom’😳).

          The last one, “Fritzie” (passed away a decade ago) was a ginger NFC.

  24. The day the British lion roared.
    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-day-the-british-lion-roared/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2025-09-16&utm_campaign=TCW+Daily+Email

    BTL

    Even the news report on GB News gave the 'official' statistic of 150,000 at the rally when it is clear that there were at least a million people there.

    GB News was obviously obliged to give the 'official' figure in its news bulletin even though the official figure was a lie and was fake news.

    But how can this government blame everyone else for fake news, conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation when it is Starmer and his minions' Mendacity Unit which is the principal source of lies?

      1. When folk did object they were disappeared to silence future ones. Sound familiar?

        Leftists never change.

          1. Out of curiosity I used AI, which came up with this:

            In literature, "they were disappeared" signifies that individuals were abducted and likely killed by an authority (like a government), rather than simply vanishing on their own, implying state responsibility for the individuals' forced absence and often suggesting the public doesn't know what happened to them. This usage, which can also be expressed as "the disappeared," highlights the active, deliberate act of making someone vanish to eliminate inconvenient people, transforming their disappearance into a specific accusation against an oppressive power.

            Historical and Political Context
            La Desaparición in Latin America: The phrase gained prominence in the context of the military dictatorships in Latin America, particularly in Argentina, where tens of thousands were forcibly taken and made to disappear by the government.

            Transitive Verb "To Disappear": The specific construction "to disappear someone" (making someone disappear) became widely used after World War II, distinguishing it from the intransitive "someone disappeared" (which could mean they simply vanished or died accidentally).

            Literary Implications and Themes
            Accusation of State-Sanctioned Violence: When a literary work uses "they were disappeared," it moves beyond mere reporting of a missing person to a direct accusation of state-sponsored violence or oppression.
            Highlighting State Responsibility: The term acknowledges and places responsibility on an active agent, transforming a passive absence ("they are missing") into an implied active act ("someone disappeared them").
            Challenging Official Narratives: By using this terminology, authors refuse the "linguistic sleight-of-hand" that governments might use to obscure accountability, refusing to treat each case as isolated or accidental.
            Emotional and Collective Recognition: The phrase provides recognition and linguistic solidarity for communities who have experienced such practices, linking current events to historical patterns of state-sponsored disappearances.

            Examples in Literature
            Argentine Literature: The use of "disappeared" is common in literature dealing with the Argentine military dictatorship, where characters might desperately search for loved ones who were "disappeared".

            Dystopian Fiction: Yoko Ogawa's novel The Memory Police explores themes of cultural memory and loss through the concept of items being "disappeared" from the world, creating a parallel to forced collective amnesia and oppression, as noted in Cannonball Read. (Note: This example describes objects disappearing in the novel but illustrates the broader concept of forced disappearance in a symbolic way.)

          3. The war memorial in our twin town has a list of names under the heading “disparus” (disappeared).

          4. It is a very common inscription on memorials around here.
            Bergerac was occupied at the end of November 1942 and was very close to the Vichy controlled areas.
            Lots and lots of roadside memorials to people who were just shot on the spot for resistance.

    2. Morning Rastus.
      It must be possible to use the drone video to measure the area covered by the crowd. Then multiply by the average density of people per square yard to get the total size of the crowd. I'm sure some geek somewhere has done it.

      1. I would publish those pictures claiming it is only 150,000 and make the comment that there are at least 180,000 channel boat gimmegrants, so that people can see just how many we've had foisted upon us.

      3. It is simple enough to do. Like counting spores on a petrie dish. Lay a grid over it. Count from one square and extrapolate.

    4. Good Morning Rastus. Even the morons of 'Stand up to Racism' admit that it was more than a million. Many people say at least a million and a half and others two million.

      At 7:30 minutes he discusses in this video that the Met police used old footage from 2020 to pretend that the rally was violent. A disgusting move on their part. But entirely in keeping with Starmer's hypocritical little speech about not surrendering the flag to the mythical Far Right.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlAbFUi3g4&t=67s

        1. It's the main difference between left and normal. Leftists rely upon labels. Labels dehumanise. You can do anything to a label.

          I look at one black fellow as completely different to another. One was sat talking to a chap about his spinal surgery, the other probably caused it in a car he stole to sell drugs.

      2. How did you get there? It was never a fight. You think you're relevant and you're not. This is the majority. The Left are a pathetic bunch of nasty, intolerant wasters.

      1. Good morning, Richard…didn't someone say 'thick as mince' or perhaps 'dumb as soup'…Rod Liddle I think. Is Meghan washing his sheets, somehow doubt it…

      2. His in particular or grubby, soiled, unwashed sheets in general? The scent of Lenor can be a little overwhelming.

    2. That look on his face is so much like Charles…….he's definitely his father's son. Not anyone else's.

        1. The older Harry gets, the more he looks like Charles – especially the bridge of his nose, and the close together eyes. The eyebrows too. You can't see his mouth much now behind the beard. He doesn't smile much.
          I know Diana was foolish and fell for other men as she was unhappy – but she wasn't that stupid. Both her children are Charles' sons.

          1. A headteacher I worked for in the 1970s once advised me to not trust a particular 5 year old child. She said, "her eyes are too close together." She may have had a point.
            She was very 'old school', born late 1920s'early 1930s, and had qualified as a teacher in the days when all women teachers were unmarried. A tyrant to work with!

        2. The older Harry gets, the more he looks like Charles – especially the bridge of his nose, and the close together eyes. The eyebrows too. You can't see his mouth much now behind the beard. He doesn't smile much.
          I know Diana was foolish and fell for other men as she was unhappy – but she wasn't that stupid. Both her children are Charles' sons.

        3. Has the Idiot King ever requested DNA tests on his sons.

          In previous times there had to be a witness in the bedchamber at the birth – but this might confirm the maternity of a royal baby but not the paternity!

          2. When Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his deceased brother, Arthur, Henry claimed that her marriage to his brother had never been consummated and so had never happened – I remember learning this at school but I cannot remember if my History master told us whether Catherine was still virgo intacta on her wedding night with Henry.

            Hamlet is consumed with hatred and jealousy of his stepfather, whom he describes as "that incestuous, that adulterate beast." Hamlet would argue thatClaudius is incestuous if the Church's rules on marrying your brother's widow are accepted; he is adulterous if he started his sexual relationship with Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, while Hamlet's father was still alive and before Claudius committed fratricide.

    3. Wouldn't mind the financial resources, but I'd otherwise hate to be Royal. In the spotlight 24/7/365. Horrible!

    2. As vile as the drug trade is, this might be the safest approach. Obviously it would be better to solve the fundamental problem but the SNP don't understand they are the problem.

    1. My cousin had a very successful farm in Zimbabwe which gave livelihood, schooling nursing care and housing for over 2000 people. He also organised a scheme with other farmers to send their brightest workers to university or agricultural college so that they could take on the farm in due course.

      Mugabe stole the farm and gave it to his friends who knew nothing about farming. My cousin was kicked out of his home, all his workers were sacked and made homeless and the ones who were studying to be farmers were murdered.

      Within five years the farm produced nothing; within ten years it resembled the arid waste land it had been before my cousin and his father built it up from nothing.

      Islam is progressing further and further south in Africa causing devastation wherever it goes.

      If there is a lesson to be learnt from this the PTB in Europe are determined not to learn it.

          1. Their technology vastly outstrips their intelligence. We have to simply stop giving them first world kit. Imagine the power a telephone provides you these days of C&C.

            These creatures should be banging rocks together, not getting modern firearms.

      2. My unreserved sympathies for your cousin, Rastus. Evil people do evil things and, it seems, they are everywhere corrupting anything they can get their hands on that is good. My friend Celeste, a Boer, keeps me up to date about what is going on in South Africa, which is going the same was as Zimbabwe, as you know. There seems to be little good news from Southern Africa in general. But
        I saw, recently, a video of the government of Zimbabwe paying to get the white farmers back.

      3. The saddest thing about Leftists is they never learn their own history. They far and away prefer to re-write it, erase or destroy it. It can't be nice o look back on nothing but failure.

        1. Terrorists exploit Starlink to spur Africa’s rise to jihadist central
          The satellite internet, operated by Musk’s SpaceX, is giving militants the means to direct attacks in regions long cut off from reliable connectivity

          During a recent raid on remote jihadist hideouts, Nigerian troops seized Starlink kits from Elon Musk’s satellite network among a cache of weapons. The discovery was stark evidence of how militants are harnessing modern technology to drive their terror campaigns, counter-terrorism experts said.

          Pushed back from the Middle East, affiliates of Islamic State and al-Qaeda have entrenched themselves in Africa, where killings have surged. They killed a record 22,300 people in Africa in the last year. The total is more than half the global deaths caused by terrorism and has cemented the continent as the centre of terror.

          Starlink, operated by Musk’s SpaceX and marketed as “available almost anywhere on Earth”, together with AI and social media platforms, is giving militants the means to direct attacks and push propaganda in regions long cut off from reliable connectivity. “The growing availability of Starlink is reshaping conflict and crime in the Sahel,” the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) said in a new report.

          ISIS West Africa Province fighters pledging allegiance to Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.
          Fighters from Islamic State’s West Africa Province affiliate
          Musk’s 7,000-plus satellites give militants in deserts and forests the same broadband connectivity as governments in cities, making their communications far harder to intercept.

          The number of fighters are estimated at 50,000, spread across Nigeria, Somalia and the Sahel. The worsening insurgency has deepened a humanitarian crisis and driven more people onto dangerous migration routes through the Sahara and across the Mediterranean towards Europe and Britain.

          The military authorities in Niger, which has suffered a 94 per cent jump in extremist attacks since its 2023 coup, legalised Starlink in March. Neighbouring Chad did as well and required all devices to be registered in an attempt at regulation. But the small kits — a dish, router and cables — are easy to hide for smuggling across porous borders, and they have become both a source of profit, with militants charging civilians inflated fees, and a link to the organised crime networks that help fund the groups’ wars from the Sahel to Lake Chad.

          As one trafficker in Maradi, in southern Niger, told GI-TOC researchers: “It’s easy to move the kits. You just pay the drivers and the police a little money and they let you pass without any problems. Everyone knows how it works.”

          The surge of attacks in recent months has marked one of the deadliest periods in the Sahel in years. A string of coups has brought military rulers to power who have spurned western partners — mostly France — in favour of Russia and its mercenaries. The Wagner Group, now rebranded as Russia’s Africa Corps, has a growing presence in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, even as jihadist violence there has intensified.

          Powered by Starlink’s broadband, extremists are using TikTok to lure recruits with short videos and WhatsApp chats to direct operations. Previously reliant on clumsy and costly satellite phones, they now have cheap, high-speed internet — a shift that sources highlighted in the GI-TOC report, “The Shadow Constellation: how Starlink devices are shaping crime and conflict in the Sahel”

          A separatist leader in Mali detailed how Starlink was used to keep units connected, share intelligence and push updates on social media during a three-day battle against Malian forces and Russian mercenaries in July 2024.

          Starlink is legally active in almost half of Africa’s 54 states. However, is also in use in countries where it has no formal licence, including repressive regimes and in war-torn Sudan and Yemen, raising questions about the accountability of SpaceX.

          The Times has asked SpaceX to comment on the report by GI-TOC. Starlink said in a post on X: “If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorised party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed.”

          M Durrani
          15 hours ago

          None of these Islamists groups ever invent anything good for humanity. They preach hatred, backwardness, violence, and chaos and then show up their hypocrisy by using technology created by the countries and people they spread hatred against. I hope that Starlink does the right thing and helps security services to find these terrorists so they can be taken out wherever they pop up to spread their violence.

          https://www.thetimes.com/world/africa/article/africa-terrorists-isis-starlink-c7kd5v8cb

          1. 22,000 people killed by muslim and the Leftists blither on about Gaza. They really are anti-Semitic.

          2. Had a look – £19.95 and delivery anytime up to six months……….other options starting at £40…………

      5. And the Afrikaaners in South Africa are being attacked daily by thugs from Malema's party. Especially farmers being killed in horrific ways.

        1. Rowland Hilder's advice to aspiring artists was: "Paint a sky a day." He said that practising the painting of clouds was something you could not do enough of.

          He also advised on mixing lamp black with lemon yellow to achieve the naturalistic greens of nature that had been coined "Constable Green" in honour of John Constable's magnificent landscapes.

          2. There is a collection of Constable’s cloud sketches in the V & A. I have postcards from the seventies when I worked in South Kensington.

            The skies here in North Essex on the Suffolk border near Clare are a daily reminder of Constable. We are also blessed with the memories of Gainsborough and the Stour.

    5. The George Hotel is probably more upmarket these days, and I imagine that the elm trees will have disappeared.

  30. Unusual word today:
    Wordle 1,550 4/6

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

    1. He was the anaesthetist and not the surgeon. I suppose that makes some difference to the risk level but even at the BBC having sex on the premises is an offence warranting dismissal.

      1. I cannot think why he avoided any sanction. Does anybody here have an idea?

        (/sarc)

        1. The patient wasn't left alone. He called over his assistant to stand in for a few minutes while he took a 'comfort break'.

        1. When I first started working there in 1991 I was told that there were only two offences that carried instant dismissal. Being drunk on the premises and having sex on the premises. That isn’t quite true since clearly actual law breaking would also qualify. But those were the legal no-nos and the standard joke was that if you want to be thrown out, just get drunk and screw a colleague.

          1. I think that may have been even more widespread than we know, Sue. Today, I understand it’s white powder residue in the loos, various gov’t departments. Less sex please, we’re civil serpents…

    4. It takes two to tango.

      Why are there no reports on the nurse who seems to have been equally complicit in this idiotically unprofessional act?

      2. More questions than answers, George… eg was it consensual? Doubt they're the only ones btw…those long night shifts where nothing much happens………

        1. Indeed, Kate. I would think it must have been consensual (emphasis on the ‘sensual’ 😈) or should would have reported him for rape.

    1. Let's be good little people and not fall for this fake news and misinformation: the government and the MSM tell us there were just 150,000 at the rally and we know that Starmer and the MSM never lie.

          1. Are you the Bellman's spokesman?

            "Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
            As he landed his crew with care;
            Supporting each man on the top of the tide
            By a finger entwined in his hair.

            "Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
            That alone should encourage the crew.
            Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
            What i tell you three times is true."

        2. Exactly, Sue. Orwell lives and breathes. There were also a number of smaller marches, other areas of the country. Our local one was cancelled at the last minute due to road flooding.

    2. POLL: Do you believe fewer than 150,000 people were at Tommy Robinson's London rally?

      The Metropolitan Police have dismissed suggestions made by far-right activist Tommy Robinson that three million people attended his London rally.

      By Conor Wilson, News Reporter
      21:09, Mon, Sep 15, 2025 Updated: 21:32, Mon, Sep 15, 2025

      The Metropolitan Police say that between 110,000 and 150,000 people attended Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Country’ in London on Saturday. That is despite claims from Robinson and his supporters that the rally was attended by as many as three million people.

      Professor Milad Haghani, chairman and founder of the Crowd Safety Summit, has provided his professional view, claiming it is common for figures to be both deflated and inflated when a protest is of a political nature. Prof Haghani told the Express: “For a rally with a political cause like this, there’s every incentive to inflate and deflate the crowd size.

      He added: “I’ve already seen figures thrown around from three million to one million to 100,000 That’s not unusual for events with such a distinct political and controversial nature. The truth almost always sits somewhere in between.

      “My own initial (mis)perception gave me a very different impression – closer to 200,000 – and I even checked with one of our postdoctoral fellows, who thought I was underestimating.

      “But once we resorted to the map and did some approximate calculations, it became clear we had both fallen for the same visual trap of thinking the crowd was bigger than it really was.”

      Prof Haghani, from the University of Melbourne, believes fewer than 100,000 people attended the march on Saturday, and explained how he got to that conclusion.

      He said that the stretch of road occupied by the crowd was about 700 metres long and around 20 metres wide, at a density of four people per square metre.

      “That gives about 56,000,” he said. “Including an additional 10,000 at each end for the two squares, we only reach roughly 76,000. However I run the numbers, it’s very difficult to make it to 100,000.”

      https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2108908/tommy-robinson-protest-claim

      1. He said that the stretch of road occupied by the crowd was about 700 metres long and around 20 metres wide, at a density of four people per square metre.

        He's fallen into the trap of assuming that everyone who attended was on that relatively small strip.

        However, if they are correct it means the number of illegal boatees collected together is twice that size.
        Can you imagine the reaction if the general public saw them together in a single mob.

          1. And I suspect that that summarises the underlying problem here.

            Too many people commenting, having actually seen very little of the march and trusting what the media and the police tell them.

        1. I mistrust all sources. Most parties have incentives to be dishonest. As for the estimate above of 76,000, I have no idea if it's any more accurate than the others – although 3 million strikes me as preposterous – but the person making the claim doesn't seem to have an axe to grind. If he's wrong, I doubt that he's dishonestly so. As I'm hopeless at estimating crowd numbers, have no expertise in doing so and have made little effort to observe any of the images of the march, whether still or moving, my best guess is that the true number is somewhere between 50,000 and 1,000,000.

  34. For those who have have to go through airport security, and liable to have their trousers falling down when they hand over their belt, you should try

    LXMY Work Belts for Men, Adjustable Nylon Fabric Belt,No Metal Buckle, Fast Pass Through the Airport Security,

    From Amazon

    2. Irish men are not taking any part in the Islamic influence of their country.
      They are afraid of becoming a knee Mick. Anemic…..

    1. Someone has written a spiel on X about how “trans” people have differently configured brains. It reminded me that I once asked an Oxford professor of psychology whether the human brain is hardwired. She said no, it isn’t. It can learn new behaviours. (We met at a Friends of the Wigmore Hall dinner.)

      2. Someone has written a spiel on X about how “trans” people have differently configured brains.

        Yes, that's true, they're scrambled.

  37. Former Conservative Minister Maria Caulfield has joined Reform..

    “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

      1. But, but …. it’s my ‘culture’. These creatures should never be allowed to settle in civilised countries.

        1. It may be her culture but it isn’t ours or the Canadians’. If it’s so important to her, she needs to go where it’s the norm.

    2. Break the news gently that Canada Post are moving away from home delivery so no more letter boxes are needed.

      1. Crikey, I hadn’t realised that. So, when my young grandchildren are expecting mail from us, they wouldn’t be able to excitedly check their mailbox in the post room of their block when they get home from school.
        With apartment/condo blocks, it’s not as though the postie has take time to trudge up to every floor; don’t most of these blocks have a mail room with individual boxes for each apartment?
        Madness.

  40. Struggling here to reconcile the notion that Reform are becoming more electable because of the influx of experience in government from the Tory party with the idea that the Tories are unelectable because of their history of failure in government.

  41. 412945+ up ticks,

    Eleven quid a week rise will create how many new tax payers ?

    First lower the basic, then grant the rise hey bloody presto a black financial pothole filler.

    Dt,
    State pension poised to jump by £560
    Triple lock on track to rise by 4.7pc, making it harder for Rachel Reeves to balance the books

    1. 412945+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Dt,
      Starmer refuses to rule out freeze on tax thresholds

      BBC
      https://www.bbc.co.uk › news › articles
      9 Jul 2025 — The freeze on National Insurance (NI) and income tax thresholds, introduced under the Conservatives, is currently due to end in April 2028.

  45. The Guardian.
    Police seek man who called for Keir Starmer to be ‘assassinated’ at far-right rally

    2. They can’t help making schoolboy person mistakes, can they?

      No one heard about it until they decided to shout it from the rooftops.

  46. “The language from the speakers and the reception from the crowd were for positions that we might have regarded as being on the ‘extreme’ of the far right in the past, but it’s worrying now that it’s becoming almost normalised,” Mulhall added.
    Hope Not Hate described it as Britain’s largest-ever far-right protest. Joe Mulhall

    1. Back to front as usual. Until the indoctrination of woke the views expressed were normal and bang in the centre. It’s their warped, skewed far left ideology that is extreme.

    2. I wonder how old he is? He probably has very limited knowledge and no experience of normal society.

      1. I have replied in a comment to a commenter called Peter Miller who described the majority of the people on the march as normal people but organised by a "far -right thug".

    4. Those people on the march were the worried normal people who have seen what has been happening to our country – not far-right at all, just normal people.

      1. Exactly – normal people. On my IG, a reel from Susan Hall to Sadiq Khan (he pretending not to understand her, as per)…reels follow on – a retired detective speaking about grooming gangs in London, horrific…hopefully a big scandal in the offing, think it might be covered in the Express Online.

  48. Afternoon all. Just preparing the motorhome for my travels. If I disappear for a few days it will be because I don’t have internet access.
    I am pretty sure Shawbury is training muslims at their inter services school. If anyone should be prevented from acquiring military knowledge I would say it should be the followers of submission.

  50. Had to stop and catch up to do the minutes of a meeting………… will read the new comments now and then go and do something outside. It's nice and sunny out there today.

  51. What happens when every man and his dog are screaming..
    Bitcoin could be worth over $1 million per coin in the next few years, says every man and his dog..
    Gold price breaks historical maximum amid expectations of Fed rate cut

    Federal Funds Rate tomorrow.

    Clue: Bitcoin goes down to $74,000 by end of the year IMHO. LOL

      1. Well done!
        I think it will go to nothing in the end but it'll be an exciting ride. They are doing some scam with US Treasuries – stablecoins – bitcoin and that is inflating it but it can't last forever.

    1. And we're paying their bills!
      A good friend of mine is reluctantly selling her second home – she inherited the house when her mother died, so it was her childhood home, and she's kept it on all these years and used it for frequent visits.

      1. It is sad that folk give up such simply because of state meddling.

        The really disgusting bit is Bell, that desperado for high taxes just slaps someone else with his.

        1. Well she's now in her seventies, and the house needs some TLC……..so she's reluctant but thinks the time has come. She's spent the last many months sorting through all the memories and stuff she has had to get rid of. She now has a buyer.

          1. When we cleared and sold Mother's house nearly 3 years ago, she wasn't there to sort and store her memories, as she was in a care home, and still is. So, we took care of it – sold her car, cleared the house, preserving very little as there's nowhere to put it, and sold the place. She now lives in her care home off the proceeds, and the new owners have spent a lot of money doing the place up – it looks much happier as a result. But it's sad how little could be retained by Mother, or passed down to her grand-children.
            It's a really sad time, end of an era. Being Cancer, home is very important to me, so I feel (from experience) for your friend, Jules.

          2. I'm Cancer, too. But my Mum didn't own her house and her final illness was short……. I have a lot of her stuff here. My ex was very good on that score and cleared her maisonette out, and brought everything home for me to sort.

          3. I remember when you packed up and put the things you wanted to keep in a packing case for transport to Norway……….and thought it was never going to arrive. Didn't it take more than a year to get to you?

          7. Astronomy is also a load of cobblers. Astronomers keep telling us that Betelgeuse [pron: "Bet-el-gurze"] may erupt as a supernova "any day soon".

            What they don't say is that if such an event is witnessed, it will have already taken place way back in 1385 during the reign of Richard II. Such is the vast distance that star is from earth, 640 light years away.

          8. That’s just jaw-dropping isnt it! The vastness of the Universe is just mind-blowing – I’m with Einstein, by the way, he really couldnt see how the Universe could exist without some ‘wider’ influence…..

            PS I cant ever see Betelgeuse without thinking of the very funny Michael Keaton film ‘Beetlejuice’ .

          9. Astronomy is also a load of cobblers. Astronomers keep telling us that Betelgeuse [pron: "Bet-el-gurze"] may erupt as a supernova "any day soon".

            What they don't say is that if such an event is witnessed, it will have already taken place way back in 1385 during the reign of Richard II. Such is the vast distance that star is from earth, 640 light years away.

          2. Oh, you mean the Swedish-British dual national politician, whose real name is Torsten Henricson-Bell.
            Must be a cold fish to have dropped his mother’s surname, but I expect he is still Henricson – Bell on his passport(s).

  53. Here in Valencia in a seaside village. Had lunch with my wife yesterday in a small restaurant. At some point a conversation began with a couple on a nearby table. The guy had lived in our city in the interior.
    They left having finished their lunch long before us. The guy shook my hand and disappeared quipping The only nice Englishman I've ever met.
    Left me completely nonplussed.
    66 years old he said. How old do you have to be to learn some manners

      1. I imagine the bit about 'only nice Englishman'. Maybe the Spaniard hadn't met many English people and those he had were not especially pleasant?

          1. With 'the only nice' I wouldn't think so.

            Everywhere I've been I've tried to be a decent sort to all. I make an effort to learn the language and yes, when folk see me muddling through a phrase book, mangling every word thy often laugh, but I want to try because that is right.

          2. I don’t know what language was being used, but I know that the French place words in an order that if taken as if in English order would give a different meaning.

    3. One of our School Masters refered to the Spanish as " quick with the knife" So no love lost there.

    4. And he'll have thought I was a compliment… 🤪

      Certain of our compatriots have not made themselves particularly beloved by the Spanish. The ones who refuse to learn a word of the language, or try the local.cuisine, or get utterly ratarsed, wreak havoc, then vomit in the streets.

      They do not reflect well upon the rest of us.

        1. I have walked along behind Katie. Hypnotic, mesmerising……………………………………………………….what was i saying?

          1. I’m very surprised that she would knowingly walk in front of you…

            Far too risky for getting a whisky frisky Phizzee whizzee

          2. A long time ago in a city far far away i was once known as ‘Whisky Phliss’.

            Did you have a nickname from when you served?

            Was it ‘Piss off you ugly bastard?

            :@)

      2. Interesting post not about not learning the language. I’ve come across very few English in this neck of the woods, maybe 5 or 6 since May. But surprisingly in a few restaurants and when getting my haircut several guys have identified themselves as English although their accents and use of vocabulary immediately gave them away. On realising that they couldn’t pass for the real thing, they confessed to being German or Dutch. According to Chatgt it’s not so unusual this cultural appropriation. So many pretending to be monolingual on English, not speaking Spanish, and giving the impression of lost English souls. Why do they do it? Tje reason is not clear.

        1. Crumbs! Never come across that. I could understand it in Cyprus, where the occasional person still gets a bit sniffy about Germans, mind.

          I tend to think anyone’s fine as long as they’re *trying*. Lots of Murcans where I lived in Germany barely even learned please and thank you, which I found just rude.

          Plenty of English do the same in certain enclaves in Spain; 8’d be even more irritated if I were a local.

          I tend to have the opposite problem here. 🤣 Once they realise I’m English (neither my appearance nor my accent makes it obvious), I get rhapsodies on how polite and cultured my people are.

          It feels like treading deliberately on puppies’ tails to enlighten them as to the current situation, so I mostly don’t.

  54. Yesterday, upon airport stair,
    I met a man who wasn't there!
    He wasn't there again today,
    I wish, I wish he'd go away!

    As I boarded last night at three,
    The man was waiting there for me
    But when I looked around departure hall
    I couldn't see him there at all!
    Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
    Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door… (slam!)

    Last night as I flew up in the air
    A little man who wasn't there
    He wasn't there again today
    Oh, how I wish he'd go away….

        1. Taken from a famous film.
          Paul Newman and Robert Redford starred as two outlaws; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance KId.
          Katharine Ross was the love interest

    3. Aged 89. That’s sad. Mind, a telly season of his best films would be nice. “Barefoot in the Park” first.

    2. Oh , same old Tory party , why didn't these people pull their fingers out when they were in power .. and now they are insuring they keep their jobs .

      Defectors , bahhhhhh.

    1. Unusually for her, dog wanted to go for a walk just after her midday meal…so off we go, far too hot, far too tired, too many ticks..tall glass of water later, much better. Hope you're as good following fresh air 🙂

      1. I ventured out into the care home garden today and felt quite nervous. A little tabby cat came and rubbed itself round my legs. They sense these things?

        1. I found it very difficult to start again after all the nonsensical (literally) lockdowns. Perhaps if you go out every day (weather permitting) or as and when you can/feel able…might help build up your strength, but take it a step at a time, and do as you’re told…? Cat sounds a lovely companion, hope you see her/him again. I think both cats and dogs sense our weakness/love when it comes to them:-D….lovely to hear from you, stay well Sue x

        2. Our last cat Princess came from a care home. My wife had been doing “entertainments” there.

          When new Asian owners decided to get rid of the animals, which included several cats and a parrot, we adopted one of the cats. My wife thought the decision to remove the cats and parrot a retrograde step and not in the best interests of the old people. The cats especially were both a comfort and amusement to everyone.

          Princess passed away several years ago.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/649f4f28a259902b6031d1b9be100d6701c42b6968aa982f60233e0970b3e37d.jpg

      2. Not really – I potted up the indoor hyacinths and put them in the downstairs loo, then started attacking brambles and got brambled to death trying to pick up the very prickly branches.

        1. I have some on order, hope I remember to look after them…..brambles are absolutely awful, make the best hedge if you can tame ’em….

  63. Michael Deacon
    The Left invented cancel culture. Now it’s devouring them alive

    Following the murder of Charlie Kirk, it’s now Left-wingers who are getting fired for social media posts. Will this finally wake them up?
    16 September 2025 6:00am BST
    Michael Deacon

    How the tables have turned. In 2023, Rolling Stone – an American magazine devoted to pop culture and progressive politics – ran an article headlined, “Why Cancel Culture is Good for Democracy.” And, in support of this improbable-sounding claim, its author made the following arguments.

    Cancel culture, he explained, had been “misconstrued” as a threat to free speech. Right-wingers might tell us that nowadays “we can’t say or do anything without an angry mob… preparing to end our careers”. But they were wrong, because actually cancel culture was a perfectly healthy way to deal with “bigots” who use “disgusting rhetoric”. Those who deplore cancel culture, he went on, “may claim they fear suppression of speech, but it’s accountability they want to avoid.”

    Two years on, however, at least one writer at Rolling Stone seems to have realised that cancel culture may have its downsides. After the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week, a staggering number of Left-wing social media users openly celebrated the news, or depicted the victim as an evil fascist who had it coming. In disgust, his admirers decided to complain to those Left-wingers’ employers – and, as a result, many have since been fired.

    In response, Rolling Stone ran an article accusing those who complained of double standards. Apparently, it’s an “irony” that Kirk’s admirers should behave in such a fashion, because of their “stated ideals of free expression and complaints about ‘cancel culture’… The hypocrisy is no less galling for being entirely predictable.”

    Curiously, the article had nothing to say about the entirely predictable hypocrisy of those who used to support cancel culture when its victims were people they didn’t like, yet oppose it now that the boot’s on the other foot. But in any case, Kirk’s admirers aren’t being hypocritical.

    This is because these Left-wing social media users are not getting fired for their views on government policy, or their ideological beliefs. They’re getting fired for cheering the cold-blooded murder of a fellow citizen. This, therefore, is not a question of politics. It’s a question of the most basic human decency.

    Anyway, they can hardly complain that they’ve been silenced, if they celebrated the rather more permanent silencing of someone else.

    Drowning in woke nonsense
    Over the past couple of decades we’ve read countless stories about organisations that have drawn up guides to “inclusive” language, in order to discourage the use of such hurtful and outdated terms as “black market”, “mankind”, “illegal immigrant” and “mother”. This latest story, however, is surely the most bewildering yet.

    The Royal Yachting Association has apparently decided that the phrase “man overboard” is offensive – because it fails to “value or represent” people who “identify as female or non-binary”. Instead, therefore, the phrase to use is “person in water”.

    What makes this injunction so mind-boggling is that the only time anyone ever uses the phrase “man overboard” is when someone is in danger of drowning. And, in that scenario, there are generally more important things to do than stand around arguing about language.

    But perhaps times are changing…

    Scene: aboard a yacht. Someone has just accidentally fallen into the sea.

    Fellow passenger: “Help! Crew! Come quickly! Man overboard!”

    Bosun: “Man overboard? How do you know?”

    Passenger: “I saw him fall in.”

    Bosun: “No, no. I mean: how do you know that this person is a man?”

    Passenger: “Well, he’s about 6’3”. He’s built like a brick outhouse. And he’s got a beard.”

    Bosun: “Sorry, but that is blatant biological essentialism. You can’t judge a person’s gender identity by their appearance. This person in the water could just as easily be a woman. Or non-binary. Or gender-fluid, gender-questioning, gender-queer, gender-neutral, bigender, trigender, demigender, omnigender, pangender or agender. Making assumptions about someone’s identity, like you’ve just done, can cause serious distress.”

    Man in water: “Arrrrrrrrgh!”

    Bosun: “See? He, she or they sounds very upset.”

    Man in water: “Help! Please save me! I can’t swim!”

    Passenger [to bosun]: “For crying out loud! Do something!”

    Bosun: “Certainly. Excuse me! You in the water! Can you please share your preferred pronouns?”

    Man in water: “Glub, glub!”

    Bosun: “Interesting. I’ve heard of xe/xem, fae/faer and ze/zir, but never glub/glub. I must update our inclusive language guide.”

    Passenger: “Right, that’s it. I’ll just have to rescue him myself.”

    Passenger dives into sea, saves man, and hauls him back on board.

    Bosun [to rescued man]: “Here, let me fetch you some brandy. You’ve had a deeply traumatic experience.”

    Rescued man: “Yes, I—”

    Bosun: “But don’t worry, because I can assure you that on this yacht we operate a strict no-tolerance policy on misgendering. This other passenger will be heavily fined and sent back to shore immediately.”

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

    Cats Whiskers
    7 hrs ago
    But why hasn`t Bob Vylan been arrested for hate speech and inciting violence and even murder?

    Mr DDC
    7 hrs ago
    Reply to Cats Whiskers
    Because we live in a country where it is acceptable for a Labour councillor to encourage people to slit the throats of people who disagree with him, but illegal for a Tory wife to not care about arson (rather than actually encouraging it).

  64. Patrick West
    Progressives can never be wrong
    15 September 2025, 6:51pm

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/GettyImages-2235214307.jpg

    The progressive and idealistic left will never admit that they are wrong. That’s because, possessed with a sense of mission and unshakable righteousness, they will always believe that they are right. No matter the murder in America last week of a family man by a reputed, self-styled anti-fascist, and no matter the mostly calm and dignified conduct of those at the Unite the Kingdom march in London on Saturday, they will always smear and demonise those of a conservative persuasion with hysterical, slanderous words.

    By all accounts, despite the 25 arrests made from a crowd of up to 150,000, it was a mostly civilised and peaceful affair. Perhaps the most eloquent testimony came from someone who has become one of the most honest observers and commentators on the state of multi-ethnic Britain today, Trevor Phillips. As he told viewers of Sky News on his Sunday morning show:

    The most alarming aspect of the event was just how normal the vast majority of the marchers were. I spent an hour or two amongst them and my own impression was that they were mostly the sort of people you’d meet in a country pub, or in half time queue for the loo at football or at a concert. There was a sprinkling of black and brown faces, and the event was brought to a close by a Gospel group singing Jerusalem.

    Yet no matter the reality of the rally, still the progressive and far left resort to demeaning cliches and preposterous slurs. ‘It’s very important to stand up to fascism’, pronounced Diane Abbott on Saturday. ‘These are racist demonstrations.’ John McDonnell added the next day: ‘Yesterday in London was a wake up call. Progressives in all our political parties… need urgently to start talking together about the campaign needed to tackle the rise of the far right’.

    For added theatricality and fearmongering, and with a dose of old-fashioned left-wing snobbery, the journalist Paul Mason opined from the ground: ‘The far right rally in London has attracted large numbers of football types, many already on their third can of lager. There is a heavy police presence, but with my long experience of fascist public order situations I am 100 per cent certain this will kick off.’ And of course there was the predictable presence of the sloganeering ‘anti-fascist’ protesters from Stand Up To Racism, reciting from their ‘stop the far right’ hymn book.

    You’d think seasoned politicians, in the immediate wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, an act that has had unexpected reverberations in this country – and indeed a rousing resonance among conservatives – would have refrained from employing such inflammatory, alarmist language. It’s this constant drip of demagogical, Manichean politics and absolutist rhetoric that has landed America in such a precipitous position today.

    But this is typical of the idealistic left. You seldom hear secular conservatives – as opposed to actual fascists, who are of the same idealistic, revolutionary and utopian cast as Marxists and other visionaries detached from the real world – denouncing their opponents as evil or even unworthy of life, as was a widespread, gleeful, ghoulish response among hyper-progressives after Kirk’s slaying. Conservatives accept that this world is imperfect and that man is imperfectible. Dividing all of fallen mankind into good and evil makes no sense to them.

    Conservatives don’t believe that the end justifies the means – a central tenet of idealists who don’t respect individuals and who are prone instead to view people as parts of a whole that can be shaped and moulded. This, combined with a sense of righteousness that can’t be gainsaid, is why they feel little compunction in resorting to violence and thuggery, as has been the norm among masked Antifa campaigners in the US for years, or to murder, such as in the case of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing an executive health boss in New York last year, a murder that garnered so much popular support among America’s youth who portrayed him as a modern-day Robin Hood.

    Many have been surprised by an ostensible paradox evident in recent years, of a belligerent, bullying and intolerant progressive left who simultaneously declare that they are merely being caring and want to ‘be kind’ (a paradox most glaring among the radical trans movement). But this behaviour is the logical outcome of a leftist mindset, one that grows ever-more extreme as it becomes further degraded by the dehumanising effects of social media, and a mindset that nurtures the belief any uncivilised behaviour or loose, unreasonable and bellicose insults can be justified as long as it’s for a good cause.

    This is why no matter how people behaved on Saturday, and no matter how similarly un-fascist they deport themselves in the future, they will always be dehumanised as ‘fascists’ by those with an unshakable belief that they have righteousness on their side.

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

    Arch Stanton
    20 hours ago
    The oh so “progressive” Sir Keir Starmer responded to the protest by insisting “we will not stand for people feeling intimidated on our streets because of their background or colour..”

    I’m not sure if he has noticed, but Jews across our country have been in a state of fear, alarm and distress for a number of years, with many forced to hide any and every sign of their “background” and to hire private security to protect their children in school and on their way to school, yet he seems to have considered this to be perfectly acceptable.

    One wonders how Two Tier Keir differentiates between those who he will not permit to feel intimidated and those he doesn’t appear to give a damn about?

    tubby Brewster Arch Stanton
    18 hours ago edited
    Speaking of people feeling intimidated because of their "background and colour". How about working class white girls broken by Pakistani r@pists? What they have suffered is much worse than feeling "intimidated" on our streets. Spoken by probably the most compromised enabler of the abuse.

    Edit: now there's a question for Kemi to ask, if she can get her act together for once.

    Enola Gay
    18 hours ago
    If you want to see what the progressive left think, just read the evil bile on the Guardian’s comments.

    I tried to comment on how the event was largely peaceful and the mainstream press are gaslighting readers and guess what. My comment was removed. I tried several times, then a message popped up saying I was personally being moderated.

    I thought for a moment I was in East Germany during the Cold War.

    Blindsideflanker Enola Gay
    18 hours ago
    They are like little children having a tantrum with their fingers in their ears and shouting, with the idea that if they don't see the comment they can pretend their insular little world view isn't being challenged.

    1. What I find most disconcerting about Leftists is their absolute surety that they are right when their ideology is so clearly wrong. They never question their beliefs, never ask 'why isn't this working'. There is never any doubt, despite all the evidence.

      1. Agreed. I remember reading that Milliband Senior was a "communist intellectual". A contradiction in terms if ever I saw one. Any study of communism would reveal that it only ever "worked" at the point of a gun.

        1. Yep. How someone could actively describe themselves as a communist when not only has the ideology been rubbished to the point of comedy, practised by some of the most appalling people ever and more than anything, responsible for the slaughter of tens of millions is beyond me. Leftists are just deranged.

    2. Re the Guardian. Same happened to me some years back when I pointed out the basic errors in one of George Moonbat's articles. Comment removed, with the ubiquitous "…does not align with our standards" or some such pretensions rubbish. In other words, their commentators, like Moonbat and Jones are above criticism. A long time later I followed a link to one of their stories and got the "your comments will be pre-moderated" line. Have not bothered with it since.

      1. It's hard to read anything on the Guardian these days as they keep on accosting you for money. Not just the usual sob story below the articles but a great banner going across to interrupt what you were trying to read. The Mail's bad enough with their stupid and intrusive ads but the Graun takes the biscuit now.

      1. Reminds me…

        Brian: Please, please, please listen! I've got one or two things to say.
        The Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them!
        Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY!
        You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals!
        The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
        Brian: You're all different!
        The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
        Man in crowd: I'm not…
        The Crowd: Sh!

  70. A list of sitting MPs sent to prison since 1945.

    https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04594/SN04594.xlsx

    Interesting the Northern Irish continent. Also, the last two (Fiona Someone from Peterborough, and everyone’s favourite MP thug Mike Amesbury) are listed as being “Independents”.

    Peter Baker. The Big Bad Boy. Doing it Proper – 7 years. Those were the days.

    Edit. Can you imagine being prosecuted now for “unlawful supply of toilet preparations (lipsticks)”???

      1. Yes. Discount them and it’s not too many sitting MPs that have been sent to prison. I should look up ex-MPs.

      1. I bet he wasn't sued like George Harrison was for allegedly plagiarising The Chiffons' He's So Fine with his My Sweet Lord.

        1. Regarding the Pachelbel's Canon in D, Grizzly, are you sure it's the music and not the pretty young lady who's turning you on?

    3. I thoroughly enjoyed that – what was she playing? (joke – I love Pachelbel, but did he do anything else of note?)

      1. Whether he did anything else of note is a moot point. The Canon is so exquisite he is forgiven if he was just a one-trick Tony.

  72. Missed this gem from ITV.. Good Morning Britain host Susanna Reid asked Ranvir Singh about the far-right rally led by Tommy Robinson on Saturday.

    "Yes, it was really interesting, actually. I had to change my plans, which made me sad, as I thought I should be able to go into London and feel safe. I live here, and this is my place. But I didn't take my son in, and that made me feel sad. I felt it wasn't safe for my little brown boy to be in London – it's a sad thing."
    Good Morning Britain presenter Ranvir Singh

    1. Stupid bitch.

      I wonder if she would feel safe taking her 'little brown boy' to the Nottinghill Stabfest carnival.

      4. Shame, I used to like Ranvir (quite fancied her tbh), it would appear she's spouting the standard BBC line here…..

      1. Khan really is a class A bag of sewage. he man is a vile, evil, bitter, twisted, bigoted, intolerant putrid cancer, isn't he?

      3. Text of her pinned post on her profile. Worth reading:-

        My Monday 2 pence just dropped

        Islam is clearly the new ideology of the powers that be. Whether it be the police, the prime minister, or our king, they have clearly decided that this is what they are backing in 2025. I, however, reject it. I reject it fundamentally in every aspect of my life. I will not submit to it. I refuse. It is no different from gender ideology. I do not accept it. I will not submit to it. I will speak out about it.

        In 2023, the UK’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary admitted that the police were “too afraid” to investigate crimes within Muslim communities for fear of being called racist. Schools suspended teachers for showing cartoons of Muhammad. Politicians avoid any meaningful critique of Islamic doctrine, while our monarch attends mosques during Eid and carefully avoids engagement with gender-critical feminists under siege. These aren’t gestures of inclusion—they are signs of institutional capture.

        Both Islam and gender ideology share a number of core characteristics that make them highly authoritarian and deeply misogynistic. Despite their different origins—one rooted in religious tradition, the other in postmodern secular thought—both are systems that demand submission and control, not only of the body but of thought itself. This is where the real danger lies.

        Islamic doctrine has long criminalized same-sex relationships, especially between men. In many majority-Muslim countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Mauritania, and parts of Nigeria, same-sex acts are punishable by imprisonment, corporal punishment, or even death. State-sanctioned executions for homosexuality still happen today. The stigma surrounding lesbianism, in particular, is severe, often leading to forced marriages, social ostracism, or even physical abuse in the name of "correcting" women’s sexual identity.
        In Iran, lesbians are sometimes forced into marriages with men or subjected to “corrective” therapy, all while the state pretends lesbianism doesn’t exist. This erasure is not unique to Islam.

        Gender ideology presents a more subtle form of homophobia, one that hides behind the language of inclusivity. Under the guise of promoting tolerance, it forces a redefinition of what it means to be a woman and, in doing so, erases the very concept of same-sex attraction. Lesbians are told they are bigoted if they do not accept men who pretend to be women as potential sexual partners. This new orthodoxy is disturbingly reminiscent of religious homophobic environments, where dissenting views are punished, and the notion of sexual boundaries is obliterated.
        Today, if a lesbian refuses to date a trans-identified male, she’s called a transphobe. Lesbianism is being redefined out of existence, just as it was denied under traditional religious rule. And if you dare to speak up, you’re branded a bigot—not for who you exclude, but for knowing who you are.

        Islamic law has long enforced a patriarchal system where women’s rights are restricted based on religious doctrine. A woman’s testimony in court is worth half that of a man. Her access to divorce is limited, and her inheritance rights are reduced. In countries like Iran or Afghanistan, women can be arrested or beaten for the simple act of not wearing a hijab, speaking out, or even traveling without permission from a male guardian. Education, employment, and freedom of movement are all contingent upon male approval.
        Meanwhile, women in Iran risk arrest just for removing their headscarves in public—something that has sparked mass protests by feminist dissidents who refuse to be silent.

        Gender ideology also perpetuates misogyny, but in a way that’s more insidious and less overt. Instead of enforcing male dominance through religious authority, it achieves the same end through the redefinition of what it means to be a woman. In this view, a woman is no longer someone born with the biological reality of female sex; instead, anyone who claims to be a woman is considered a woman. Men who pretend to be women are allowed into women-only spaces, like changing rooms, sports teams, and prisons. In the UK, male rapists are housed in women’s prisons, and in Canada, women have been told they can’t request female carers for intimate care without being accused of discrimination. The very concept of the female body has been erased—now it’s about a "feeling," and anyone who objects is labeled as hateful.
        The same institutions that once ignored women’s rape reports now lecture us about “inclusion” while forcing us to share spaces with violent men. This isn’t progress. It’s a rebooted patriarchy with glitter on.

        Both Islam and gender ideology dictate femininity through the lens of others—whether that’s male clerics or male activists. Women are not allowed to define themselves; we are forced to accept what others impose upon us.
        In both ideologies, women are told what to be, how to dress, who to love, and how to think. Whether through fatwas or Twitter mobs, we’re punished if we step out of line.

        Islamic theology treats blasphemy as a punishable offense, with severe consequences for those who criticize God, the Prophet, or the Quran. In countries like Pakistan and Iran, individuals have been executed or imprisoned for posting something critical online, and many have been lynched for just a single comment deemed disrespectful. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the brutal attack he suffered in 2022 highlighted how Islamic regimes and extremists enforce ideological control beyond their borders.

        Gender ideology has created a secular version of this sacred speech code. Questioning whether a man can become a woman is considered hate speech in many academic and political spaces. Misgendering—using someone’s biological pronouns—can be legally punished in places like Canada, the UK, and parts of the US. People have been fired, harassed, or even arrested for expressing gender-critical views. Philosopher Kathleen Stock lost her university position due to backlash against her stance, and women’s rights activist Posie Parker has had to be protected by the police just to speak in public. This is not just a matter of discouraging dissent; it is about making it impossible to even think freely.
        Like apostates from Islam, gender apostates—detransitioners like Keira Bell—are shamed and discredited. They’re treated not as people with insight, but as threats to be erased. Just like blasphemers, they’re accused of doing harm simply for telling their truth.

        Both Islamic and gender ideology enforce strict limits on what can be said and thought. These ideologies demand that truth be suppressed in favor of a particular belief system, and they punish those who dare to question.

        Islamic states are characterized by strict control over their citizens, especially in the areas of political dissent, sexuality, and secular thought. Women’s dress, behavior, and education are constantly monitored. In Saudi Arabia and Iran, citizens live in fear of punishment for minor infractions, such as showing a bit of hair or speaking out against the regime. The morality police patrol the streets, ensuring that the Islamic code is adhered to.

        Similarly, gender ideology has been enforced through Western institutions, including universities, government departments, and NGOs. People are expected to publicly affirm the new orthodoxy of gender, or risk losing their jobs and professional standing. Gender training is mandatory in many workplaces, and children in schools can change their gender identity without parental consent, as seen in Scotland. Dissenters are deplatformed, blacklisted, and erased from public life. What began as an attempt to secure tolerance has evolved into a system of compelled belief.
        In international development, Western NGOs now require the adoption of gender identity frameworks to receive funding. In Uganda, India, and parts of the Caribbean, feminist organisers are forced to accept male “lesbians” into their projects—or lose resources. This is ideological colonialism: the new face of cultural imperialism.

        Both Islam and gender ideology make the dangerous claim that children—who are still developing physically, emotionally, and mentally—are somehow capable of making profound, life-altering decisions. In some interpretations of Islam, it is argued that girls who have reached puberty, often as young as nine, are mature enough to consent to marriage. The reasoning is that once they’ve menstruated, they are seen as capable of taking on the responsibilities of a lifelong commitment. This view ignores the reality that puberty is not an indicator of emotional maturity or the ability to understand the complexities of marriage, effectively putting children in a position they cannot fully comprehend.

        Similarly, gender ideology argues that children—some as young as toddlers—are capable of knowing their own gender identity and should be able to make decisions about transitioning, including receiving medical treatments such as hormone blockers or even surgery. Proponents of this view claim that children can consent to these interventions, asserting that they know their own minds better than anyone else. This perspective dangerously undermines the idea that children are not mentally or emotionally prepared to make decisions that can permanently alter their bodies and lives.

        In both cases, adults are asserting that children, who have limited life experience and whose minds are still developing, are ready for massive life changes. Whether it’s the expectation that a girl who has hit puberty is ready for marriage, or the push to administer medical treatments to children based on their perceived gender identity, both ideologies fail to recognize that children cannot give consent.
        Both ideologies project adult desires onto children—religious elders seeking “wives” and activists seeking affirmation. Neither system protects childhood. They both exploit it.

        This is where the danger lies. In both instances, adults are projecting their own desires or ideologies onto children, stripping them of the opportunity to grow, learn, and make informed decisions as they mature. Children cannot fully comprehend or consent to the long-term consequences of marriage or medical transition. By pushing these agendas, both Islam and gender ideology put children at risk—all while falsely claiming they have the capacity to consent.

        Both ideologies represent a dangerous approach to children's rights, positioning them as capable of making decisions they simply aren’t ready for.

        Islam spread historically through conquest, imposing religious laws upon the societies it conquered. Indigenous cultures, spiritual practices, and legal systems across North Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East were replaced by Sharia law, the Arabic language, and Islamic cultural norms. This was not just a matter of religion—it was a full-scale ideological takeover, one that erased diverse ways of living in favor of a single moral code.

        Gender ideology follows a similar pattern, but instead of military conquest, it spreads through cultural and institutional means. Western-funded NGOs and international aid organizations often require the adoption of gender identity frameworks as a condition of receiving support. Activists from the West impose these gender norms on communities in places like Uganda, India, and the Caribbean, often ignoring the voices of local feminists and same-sex attracted individuals. In effect, this is ideological colonialism—erasing indigenous beliefs about sex in favor of a Western, postmodern agenda.
        Whether by sword or slogan, mosque or NGO, both ideologies crush the cultures they enter. They are not about coexistence—they are about domination.

        Whether by sword or slogan, both ideologies replace and suppress what existed before.

        Finally, both Islam and gender ideology demand the erasure of the individual in favor of a collective identity. Under Islamic rule, the ummah—the global Muslim community—supersedes personal belief, sexuality, or freedom of conscience. Apostasy is treated as a form of treason, and the individual is not free to define their own truth.

        In the realm of gender ideology, the individual’s truth is also subsumed by the collective. A lesbian who refuses to accept men who pretend to be women as women is accused of being "transphobic." A woman who asserts that her biology is real is denounced and silenced. Both Islam and gender ideology demand conformity to a collective identity that does not allow for individual thought, choice, or freedom.

        The parallel between Islam and gender ideology is unmistakable. Both demand submission, suppress individual liberty, and aim to enforce a singular worldview—no matter the cost. They compel us to deny our reality, to silence our own voices, and to surrender our sense of self. They do not champion freedom or progress; they replace those values with rigid systems of control and coercion.

        As women—and as human beings—we must hold our ground. We must reject every attempt to erase us, to reshape us into someone else’s vision, and to force our compliance. We will not be silenced. We will speak our truth. We will protect our rights and fight to uphold the freedoms that allow us to live with dignity.

        Now is the time to take a stand—not just for ourselves, but for future generations. We must safeguard our right to define who we are, to love without shame, and to speak without fear. This is a fight for truth, for freedom, and for the integrity of women’s rights.

        I will not submit. I will not be silent. And I will never stop standing up for what is right.

  73. Wordle No. 1,550 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 16 Sep 2025

    Champagne Socialist Birdie Three?

    1. Blimey, well done – make sure you do the Lottery this weekend!

      I thought I was lucky (despite a bit of a gaffe on guess 3) to get a par!

      Wordle 1,550 4/6

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

      1. Well done, GGGG. How come I can upvote you – and Sue Edison and molamola and corimmobile – but not lacoste?!?!? Anyhow, well done lacoste.

        1. I dont know, Elsie, I can upvote him! Is this a recent thing?

          Maybe it’s because he moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform….

    2. Four for me.

      Wordle 1,550 4/6

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

    3. Well done, certainly something to avoid, par here.

      Wordle 1,550 4/6

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

    4. I had five possible solutions and was going through them alphabetically.

      Wordle 1,550 4/6

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

      1. Five? I can only think of one alternative from where you were – H – in fact you were unlucky not to get a birdie!

  74. Conservative MP Maria Caulfield was a staunch advocate for leaving the European Union.
    Thank gawd for that.

  75. This is encouraging from Farage.. I believe he has taken on board David Starkey's warning shot (see below).

    "Nigel or any incoming government of The Right will have to do more radical and more difficult things in the face of uniform opposition from The Blob, from The Lords, from the academic establishment, from the legal establishment.
    "That demands a team of weighty serious people. I see no sign of it.
    David Starkey

    Nigel Farage
    "Make no mistake: we know that this is a major task. Britain’s system of government needs radical change. And as I have said before, the one thing
    Reform UK lacks is experience of putting policy into motion through Westminster and Whitehall.
    We also appreciate the serious obstacles that we will face, whether from sections of the civil service and the House of Lords – or from the media and academia." Says Farage.

    Then calls out for whistleblowers.
    "There are many people working within the system – in the civil service, the military and the courts – who know what’s going wrong. We want their input and advice on how to fix the system to make it serve the public."

  76. This is encouraging from Farage.. I believe he has taken on board David Starkey's warning shot (see below).

    "Nigel or any incoming government of The Right will have to do more radical and more difficult things in the face of uniform opposition from The Blob, from The Lords, from the academic establishment, from the legal establishment.
    "That demands a team of weighty serious people. I see no sign of it.
    David Starkey

    Nigel Farage
    "Make no mistake: we know that this is a major task. Britain’s system of government needs radical change. And as I have said before, the one thing
    Reform UK lacks is experience of putting policy into motion through Westminster and Whitehall.
    We also appreciate the serious obstacles that we will face, whether from sections of the civil service and the House of Lords – or from the media and academia." Says Farage.

    Then calls out for whistleblowers.
    "There are many people working within the system – in the civil service, the military and the courts – who know what’s going wrong. We want their input and advice on how to fix the system to make it serve the public."

  77. Been attacking the brambles but have had enough and my hands are shredded. Now have my neighbour's partner's phone no for updates – she's still in hospital and had an MRI scan today.

  78. Jeeze after my ECG at 11 am my gp handed me a letter to take to A&E at Luton and Dunstable hospital……omg we are still here, had blood tests another ECG etc. Still waiting to see a doctor after more than 5 hours…..

      1. Hospital doctors now leave patients waiting in the waiting room. All night.

        And for me that was the waiting room for the Acute Ward.

    2. They’re probably waiting for the blood test results of course and that can take an age. Hope you’re seen soon and not headed for resus or admission. Bin there dun that :-)) Good luck.

    3. Sounds awful, been there done that with husband when initial nurse diagnosed him with stroke (he hadn't, was travelling and had caught covid on long flight), consultant soon diagnosed it correctly. Hope you are seen soon, get good results, and home asap. Good luck, Eddy x

    4. Red Flag. Similar happened to me. I walked when it got to 11pm. Harangue the nurses and everyone in any type of uniform. If that doesn't work start singing loudly and piss on the floor.

      1. Sorry to say I laughed at your reaction, Phizzee. Envy of the world and all that. O/T…many fighter type jets out today, four at a time…

      1. Good advice.

        Though people have died recently on the floor in the waiting rooms in A&E. Apparently an anorak also works as an invisibility cloak.

  80. As if..

    Egyptian illegal migrant Abdelrahmen Adnan Abouelela living in a Hilton hotel is jailed for raping a woman in Hyde Park and will now be deported.

    3. "….and will now be deported."

      Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – breathe – Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – breathe – Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – breathe – Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – breathe – Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – breathe – Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – breathe – Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – breathe – Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – breathe – Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – breathe et cetera

  81. Bob asked in response to a post of mine from yesterday, "what is PABS?"
    it's explained on the website that I linked to – it is the latest horror currently being agreed by the WHO to be inflicted on the world – "Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing"
    Hands up anyone who thinks the "benefits" will accrue to us?

    James Roguski is conducting a one man campaign to try and rouse people from their squirrel-watching and apathy to protest about this. He wants to identify who from the UK is 'negotiating' on our behalf
    https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/who-are-these-people

      1. One was on yours, Ndovu..started by the Capital, in the same blue colour of your name, and the box around Mod. Probably just a Disqus 'upgrade' or similar….

          1. Don’t know, possibly a loading glitch. Our Internet in and out for a sort while yesterday likely some maintenance or other. ‘Night Ndovu 😊 sleep well 😴

      1. 50 years of my old employer’s business. He sold the business and retired 14 years ago but it still goes on and clearly has a lot of good customers. It’s still a fish shop, delicatessen, wine shop, restaurant and in my day we did outside catering. William and Rae, the original owners are now in their 80s and looking well, and there were 10 of us ‘old girls’ amongst a lot of other guests. The shop was packed.

  84. While I understand Israel's defending itself and the appalling threat of muslim, do they really need to roll tanks into Gaza?

    2. Muslims celebrate death, they love it. Give the hostages back, most of whom are dead, and it would stop tomorrow. But then the fighters would not achieve their paradise. As for the population, Hamas dont care a stuff.

    3. If my son was an Israeli soldier, I would prefer him to go into Gaza by tank, be relatively well-protected and return home unscathed than go in by jeep or on foot and return home in a body bag.

  85. This is a good 'un…

    Labour Minister: If Mandelson Was Fit to Be on Times Radio He Was Fit to be Ambassador

    Labour’s latest ludicrous defence of appointing Peter Mandelson is that if he was fit to be on Times Radio and BBC Newsnight, he was fit to be to be ambassador. Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty said in the Commons:

    “I hardly think that Lord Mandelson would have been one of the leading candidates to become chancellor of Oxford University. Um, but he was. I highly doubt that he would have been offered a job as presenter on Times Radio, but he was. When he appeared on BBC Newsnight, a programme that’s done very important work investigating the crimes of uh…”

    Farcical…

    September 16 2025 @ 15:48

    2 hours ago(Edited)
    Times Radio is disgustingly left wing, especially when they have Cathy Newman or Kate McCann hosting.

    You can see their sneering on the live stream when anyone to the right of Lenin is on as a guest.

    This was highlighted this week when they spent the last 72 hours constantly referring back to a US guest for being 100% factually correct for pointing out people have been going to jail longer then pedos and rapists in the UK.

    They even dragged Andrew Neil on to shit on her.

    S
    1 hour ago(Edited)
    Times Radio would have had Jimmy Sav and Huw Edwards

    C
    7 minutes ago
    The BBC DID!

    1 hour ago
    Doughty an effortless contender for the 2025 Baldrick Stupidity Award.

    1. Be fair
      Jimmy Saville was fit to have his own show.

      What an over-used arsehole that s pokes-man is.

  87. And so it begins.
    50 concrete blocks, 2 x 25kg bags of cement and a bulk bag of sand delivered:- https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f4450253d8146647f73ce8532564d3c3d652c0b8cc3878d73d2203628d868755.jpg A couple of blocks put onto the adjacent wall and then onto the woodpile roof to stop the wriggly tin roof from puncturing the bags https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/11eb8786deb65c1b1d2d04d6844e31931946832d3e8111087dd5c63dd11c1278.jpg From the steps https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/81836e387ec059ce80a0e641ce6fd673f634f8ebda61482370489dfa75db2e10.jpg Initial worksite https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/07df83c3dc2d4dfaa4f5a9e74076c5de2bd5f15082543c57098023e05d84840a.jpg Needs the fallen soil cleared first https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/599dba36e3a8f8131c15a782a98a0a25f1e17aad4c8c8dc73d9e300456df4c1f.jpg Then finish off the lower wall that I've been ignoring for the past two years https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5aa7b06e49664eb37494e04686f004b61a79ce84efd545ee7710e07be86cbcdf.jpg This is what it looked like 2y ago https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ca6214c0d2fa0773b8897b3e6446a72022afcc006621cb1b0edd04a2b07d0906.jpg From the other direction https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ba462436a7d549d058bc537535efa51fda797bbb65f3c212ce8f1e381cc6de16.jpg

    1. That's one hell of an undertaking. Good luck. I think I'll start a NoTTLers' Sweepstake for the closest guess to the number of gallons of tea you consume before completing the top step.

      1. A little bit at a time!
        2 x bags of cement now up the steps and one in each shed.
        Felt my back beginning to complain so decided that will do for the night.
        Tomorrow, weather permitting, a dozen or so blocks shifted and an amount of sand shovelled into bags, 5 shovelfuls to each, then carried up ready for tipping into the mixer.
        Why 5 shovelfuls? Two reasons, it'll not be so heavy and for each bag I tip into the mixer I'll need one shovelful of cement.

    2. It seems not to have occurred to them that they had got hold of the wrong end of the stick, never mind the argument.

    3. The disparity in numbers reminds me of the Countryside marches. Hundreds of thousands of good natured people versus a handful of miserable pasty faced antis shouting abuse.

    4. They don't even mention the violence that was initiated by Unite the Kingdom demonstrators. What a pair of sad sacks. They'll be stripped of their membership badges.

    5. Yet they don't understand. They were already wrong.

      It's also not a numbers issue – one man in the right amongst thousands of those in the wrong is not wrong simply because the others want him to be.

      That they think they were the majority is laughable, though. Leftists live in an echo chamber, insulated from other views because when challenged they with run and hide or set out to destroy the message.

      This is why Leftists are so confused and wrong in everything they say, do and think.

  89. Andrew Neil.. "I think that British politics in which seminal roles are being played by; Tommy Robinson, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon.. I'm afraid that sends a shiver down my spine."

    Can't we just carry on as before?

    LOL of the week.. this comment was made from his home in Monaco.

      1. Holly Valance posed with the far-right activist at the Unite the Kingdom rally in London and called the left ‘immoral and weak’
        The Australian singer and actress praised Robinson’s “redemption”..

    2. Didn't Andrew Neil sell out to a cheap TV show where he had the disgraced Miguel Portaloo and that sexy minx Diane Abbot on a sofa ?
      Asking for a deaf blind friend.

        1. You really want to know?
          Secondly, why ask me?

          Ok…dumb question.

          It is a rather disgusting thing unless you are in to it but it involves two other people using their mouths cleaning the orifices of the one. In this case the fragrant Miss Diane.

          There is no suggestion that the racist MP for Newham actually partook in this scatological perversion.

    3. When Farage is elected the opposition he will face from the civil service – either directly or by their simply going on strike, refusing to do the work, the endless quangocracy, the Leftist 'human rights' lawyers, the judiciary – they'll all fight him, not to mention collude with the opposition.

      He'll face endless media leaks, his ministers will be exposed, every quip or comment, accusations of bullying: you name it, they'll throw it at him. Heck, our EU negotiation team was leaking to Labour over strategy and implementing their policies to the EU, ignoring the May government!

      1. I just hope he departs safely on Airforce 1 or whatever it's called without any more assassination theatrics.

      2. Lord Foster is not much of an architect if Stansted is any example. The general chaotic atmosphere is because arrivals and departures share the same corridor and at the same level.

        Queuing there under those acres of glass wall in a blazing sun is also intolerable.

  91. Just passing through. Met beloved GD – she coped with King's Cross and remembered to sit in the front four coaches (the train often – though not today – splits at Cambridge). She is excellent form. I know it means bugger all to us oldies – but she got 99% in her A-Levels.

    She came with us to the Arts Society lecture – on "Van Gogh in Ramsgate". Quite interesting – though a limited subject, as he was acting as a schoolmaster and hadn't painted anything.

    Tomorrow it will RAIN and we have an outing to Wolterton Hall. GD says, don't worry, we have waterproof clothing..

    She was, of course, vastly impressed with the trombetti – a vegetable she had never seen before.

    Have a spiffing evening – I'll look in de temps en temps tomorrow.

      1. They love cheese. We gave them a small piece of a classy one. They took one nibble and left it. Ungrateful beasts..!!

        They are puzzled by GD – she is nearly six foot tall. They sit and look up at her…!

        1. The way you have described your dear GD is fascinating .. does she take after her much missed late Daddy , was he tall ?

          How is her artistic work progressing . I remember you photographed an example for us enjoy .

          You are so lucky to have a talented family , as she is to have a talented grandfather like you .

          So pleased you are having an enjoyable few days .

    2. I managed 99% in the Mock A levels for maths. The teacher rather sarcastically wrote "could do better" on the report card.

      Unfortunately my mother did not appreciate his humour and was really upset about my failure.

    3. "She was, of course, vastly impressed with the trombetti – a vegetable she had never seen before."

      She could well be our future Prime Minister, Bill!

          2. Getting "your oats" is a slang expression for having sexual intercourse.
            or
            in Phizzee speak:

            getting your end away

          3. OK. Still stumped. Let's leave it at that. I don't get why my comment on a chord progression has led to this. But there we are!

          1. Norice? (just noticed.) – yes, I am irredeemably thick, 'tis true, But I am still very interested in the emotional impact of this particular chord progression,

        2. D'ye know, for years I thought the lyric was;

          You dont have to say you love me, just because you can….

          I actually think that's more profound than the real one…..

    1. Time for me to sign off now before i say something i might regret like Khan is one of the agents of destruction of our once beautiful country and in the words of Lucy Connolly i wouldn't give a shit if his house burned down with him in it.

      Other than that…

          2. I have noticed they seem to recruit people to perform different tasks based on not much really.

            Send a van with blacked out windows with a squad wearing masks at the exit to a London Park and then crowd around a young woman with a carrier bag during covid.

            That was the day i knew we were fucked.

          3. I knew we were well and truly done when a Covid Marshall appeared in the village , and when Moh and I were the only people on the road in the car coming down from Lulworth after exercising the dogs in a field used by dog walkers , we were stopped by the police and threatened with a fine and told never to leave our own village which is 4 miles down the road !

          4. We were in one of Peterborough's multi-storey car parks recently. I'd put money on it that it has been tarted up/ painted since convid, but every pillar had social distancing notices. Bonkers (though that is a polite word for P'boro City Council.)
            The only time we would go into the centre of that place now is when we have no alternative, on this occasion accessing a branch of Halifax. SO many 'suntanned' young men roaming around, that I wouldn't dream of going on my own these days. Very intimidating. Peterborough has a long established number of savages, but I never felt afraid/wary in the city centre.

          5. I remember your posts from that time. I also know what an argument batsard your husband is. Why didn't he confront them and protect you?

      2. Ah, you're safe, Phizz. Her Tweet said, "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”

        Her tweet was 'inciting' apparently. Yours is just not 'giving a shit'.

          1. There was no incitement at all. She should be suing her solicitor – and the disgusting judge, who was more interested in calling her a racist than in any crime committed (there was none).

          7. Dont be daft KJ – I regularly make mistakes like that, I mean I always liked Carter Jim in Downton Abbey! 😉x

          8. Thanks G 😁….I actually never watched that, although I like Maggie Smith acting (apparently she and the great Kenny Williams best buddies, can just picture them together, being waspish and laughing heads off) Kate x

          9. I’m a huge fan of both of them – there’s something peculiarly British about them that makes me smile and feel good! x

          10. Definitely…brings back memories of my dad, together watching various old British comedies, laughing heads off 🙂

          11. Just checked KJ – it was Carter Osborne, thought it didnt sound right – although they did sell her house at a knock-down price, apparently!

          12. Thanks for correction (Carter Jonas estate agents/property consultants, have experience of them), apologies for mis-information, Kate x

        2. Yes, but Phizz is not married to a Conservative Councillor, so he might be spared such a draconian sentence. But there again, he might not, considering all his nottling.

          3. Apart from the nottling, that would make him an ideal candidate for some prestigious political position.

          8. Did you see Lucy C. on Farage just now, opo…think she's going to help Reform with their recommendations for UK prisons. Good interview imo.

          10. Me2, make an exception for Farage, she does – her husband has stage 4 prostate cancer, he’s also a Conservative councillor or was. All a bit rum. And I do like some things on Netflix…

        4. The injustice of serving Lucy Connolly with a prison term will be the single most obvious reason for the demise of Starmer and the creepy justice system both he, Blair and Mandelson have brought to bear down on the British public.

          The bastards do not as yet appreciate the profundity of their actions but soon enough will do so.

    2. More than half of the US presidents salary (whether he takes it or not) although I suspect that the extras such as housing, travel and security are higher for Trump.

    5. Well Khan't.

      I could be paid nothing, apart from expenses (and I would be honest about those too), and I have no doubt whatsoever that I would do a better job than you are.

  94. 'Night All
    The battle of Okinawa is on PBS right now I challenge anyone to watch this slaughter and then tell me the use of Nukes was excessive
    Edit
    Terrible as this is this is the sanatised Doco I have seen a much more graphic and terrible version

    1. Excessive, yes. Necessary? Equally yes. The war had to end with such a clear sign of massive superiority that the Axis would be humbled at the sheer ferocity.

      We are reaching such a point here, with the constant oppression, suppression and abuse of office perpetuated by government.

  95. And, after a bath, that's me off to bed.
    Looking at the weather forecast, it could be rather damp tomorrow so how much of the planned work will get done is anyone's guess!

    Goodnight all.

    1. Good Night, BoB. If the weather keeps you indoors, then perhaps you could listen to some of the wonderful music you post on here most evenings. Or perhaps start a large jigsaw?

  96. Sir Keir's migrant policy is collapsing

    Legal arguments have proved a formidable obstacle to the Prime Minister's plans

    Telegraph View
    16th September 2025, 8:17pm BST

    On his first full day in office, Sir Keir Starmer declared the Conservative party's Rwanda scheme "dead and buried", insisting that he was "not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don't act as a deterrent".

    Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, seemed to turn these words back on Sir Keir this week as the Prime Minister's prized "one in, one out" migrant returns policy appeared to unravel before his eyes.

    The first departures – intended to be carried on commercial Air France flights yesterday and today – were cancelled after legal representations to the Home Office, with the Government appearing to back down and reconsider the cases as a result.

    Separately, the High Court granted a last-minute injunction yesterday on behalf of a third migrant, scheduled to leave Britain this morning, who had claimed he would be "destitute" if sent to France. At least seven other migrants issued with removal notices under the scheme are also now understood to have obtained legal representation to challenge their deportation.

    The result leaves Sir Keir's scheme in tatters. This first batch of flights was supposed to be a test run conducted with the most straightforward cases. Even here, however, legal arguments have proved a formidable obstacle. With lawyers currently eyeing further grounds for objections – and some highlighting possible claims under the European Convention on Human Rights – it seems plausible that the scheme could now founder.

    An endless series of legal challenges would snarl the mechanisms of the "one in, one out" scheme, preventing and delaying departures and greatly diminishing the intended disincentive for those planning to make the journey to Britain, reducing the programme to little more than a PR booster.

    It would be a challenge that Sir Keir is ill-suited to handling. The Prime Minister and his Attorney General, Sir Richard Hermer, have proved absolutely unwilling to compromise in their view of human rights and international law. In a clash between securing the UK's interests, and meeting what they see as Britain's obligations under the ECHR, it is entirely possible that they will choose the latter.

    Should they do so, however, they will pay a heavy price. Sir Keir is finding that ending the Channel crisis will take more than a pledge to "smash the gangs". The Prime Minister must either find a way to end the flow, or find himself on the wrong side of the electorate's fury.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2025/09/16/sir-keirs-migrant-policy-is-collapsing

    That which never stood cannot collapse.

  97. The whole world can see that the Chagos giveaway is 'nuts' and its architects are 'fools'

    The former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed the Prime Minister's National Security Adviser as a 'an absolute fool'

    Dia Chakravarty, Contributing Editor
    16th September 2025, 7:50pm BST

    "That's nuts, folks" is how Mike Pompeo – the former US Secretary of State – described the UK's decision to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

    The American diplomat who served as the Director of the CIA during Donald Trump's first administration had been speaking at a Policy Exchange event yesterday. The Telegraph had previously reported on Mr Pompeo's view on the deal, that UK control of one of the islands was essential to protect the US military base there.

    Speaking to Lord Kempsall this morning, President Trump's former spy chief went further than ever in his condemnation of Sir Keir Starmer's giveaway of the Chagos Islands: home to the Diego Garcia military base, which is a facility built in the 1970s that is used by UK and US forces.

    Slamming the Prime Minister's National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell as "strategically an absolute fool" for playing down the importance of the Islands to both London and Washington, Mr Pompeo delivered a chilling warning: "a lot of military power can and will move through there in the event that we need it and if we hand it over, we all know the storyline with Mauritius.

    "Mauritius is a close ally of the Chinese Communist Party and not only will we lose it, but you will have Chinese power projection from that place."

    Waste Watch readers will be well aware that not only does this deal expose the UK and our closest partner to security risks, if expert warnings are to be heeded; it will also leave our public finances with a gaping hole to the tune of £47 bn over the next century, according to the TaxPayers' Alliance.

    Embarrassing as it was, sitting through the remarks of a foreign diplomat as he questioned the sanity of our leaders, what struck me most was the clarity of Mr Pompeo's thoughts on the subject of global security and his willingness to express them in no uncertain terms. It occurred to me that it had been a while since I'd encountered a senior politician prepared for his arguments to be examined, challenged, even refuted.

    Would the architects of the Chagos giveaway take a leaf out of the veteran American's book? Will they have the courage of their convictions to provide us with an explanation for this spectacular act of self-harm they seek to impose on the country and its taxpayers?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/16/chagos-giveaway-nuts-architects-fools

    Would Trump dare lean on Max & Co? Could he take unilateral action? What a stir that would cause.

    1. But…but…but…government line was 'Americans fully onboard with our policy'…wasn't it? Surely not porkies..?

  99. Britain's decent majority are not racist, they're just terrified of losing the country they love

    From the huge turnout at the Unite the Kingdom march to the defiant flying of our beautiful flags, people are sending a very clear message

    ALLISON PEARSON
    16th September 2025 8:39pm BST

    A lot of Telegraph readers were at Saturday's Unite the Kingdom march. Farmers, yoga teachers, plumbers, retired soldiers, shy accountants (shy about being seen at the protest, not about the accountancy), firemen, retail workers, trade unionists, gardeners, people in wheelchairs, pensioners with dogs, babies in buggies, mums, dads, entire families having a grand day out.

    Many, like my friend Richard, said the last demo they'd been on was the Countryside Alliance's Liberty and Livelihood march back in 2002. Richard noted the similarities – friendliness, immense good humour despite the rain, respectful, well-behaved marchers from all walks of life who had come together to wave our country's beautiful flags because they feared something infinitely precious was going to be lost forever and time was running out.

    It took guts to be there because the marchers knew they'd be called names. "Fascists," according to Labour's Diane Abbott, who was part of a small, furious, Stand Up to Racism counter-protest. "People who genuinely care about our country are not racists," is how Richard described his fellow demonstrators.

    Nor did those men and women participate in the "vile thuggery" reported prominently by media outlets including the Telegraph. "We still love Britain and we are angry about what has been done to her, from the erosion of free speech to the threat posed by Islamist extremism and by men from backward cultures to women and children," he said.

    It was not part of their blood,
    It came to them very late
    With long arrears to make good,
    When the English began to hate.

    Kipling was right. About how slow we are as a people to anger (see the French), about how much rotten government and damaging nonsense we are prepared to put up with until, one day, we're not. The arrears now are very long. Years and years of people not being listened to. Their concerns about mass immigration not just ignored but stigmatised and silenced. Successive governments have expected us to stand meekly by and celebrate diversity and "inclusion" which appears to mean the exclusion of our culture, our traditions, looking on while towns and cities, handsome municipalities erected by the Victorians, are so transformed you'd think you were in fly-blown, downtown Islamabad. Oh, and pretend that we're happy about the disrespect to our values lest the police come round to check our views.

    That was the theme of one of Saturday's best speakers, 13-year-old Courtney Wright, who was sent home from school in disgrace for wearing a Union flag dress to Culture Day. "You feel like being British doesn't matter," said that plucky young lady, addressing the vast crowd with astonishing confidence and a Midlands accent so thick you could cut it like malt loaf.

    After paying generous tribute to the many creeds and colours that make up our society, she said: "British culture matters too. Even though I'm only 13 I already know how lucky we are to live in this country. Millions before us fought to protect it and it's our duty to love it, respect it and keep it strong."

    If he hasn't already, Nigel Farage should sign Courtney up. She's a shoo-in for home secretary with a simple, heartfelt patriotism that brought tears to my jaded eyes and a robust sense of the national interest which is conspicuously lacking in current Cabinet ministers.

    Honestly, a child like Courtney could devise a better way of controlling illegal migration than Labour's "one in, one out" returns deal with France which, on Monday, saw the first flight take off without any migrants on board. My God, the state of this country.

    In the week that we marked the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, and the astonishing defence of these islands by the Few who fought actual fascists (the average life expectancy of a Spitfire pilot was four heartbreakingly short weeks), such abject weakness felt a lot like treason. But at least all those legal challenges preventing deportation pay for the second homes of Starmer's human rights chums, eh Keir? For that morally superior, liberal-Left coterie the human rights of young, undocumented male Afghans and Eritreans take precedence over the safety of Courtney Wright and thousands of other British teenage girls. And then politicians and commentators express surprise that so many normal, decent people attended the Unite the Kingdom march.

    They waved their St George's and Union flags against a toweringly useless political class who get into office then ignore why they were elected in the first place. They railed against Keir Starmer ("Starmer is a w—er", some in the crowd chanted) who deliberately elevated rule by lawyers and courts above rule by people and Parliament. Yes, Labour are worse even than our worst nightmares, a collapsing deckchair of slapstick incompetence. But the Tories didn't do anything to save the country while they had the chance. On the contrary, between January 2021 and June 2024, the Conservative "take back control" government gave UK visas to 3.8 million people, most of them non-Europeans who were not even coming here to work and pay taxes. A betrayal for the ages.

    Think about that deafening number, think of what Battle of Britain pilots would make of the country their valour saved for future generations. And then ask yourself, given such provocation, why wouldn't the common-sense majority prefer the supposedly unsavoury patriots that the self-styled good people turn up their noses at? Why wouldn't they agree with Danny Kruger, the latest Tory to defect to Reform and the most substantial, that "centrism is not enough" and "the Conservative Party is over".

    All trust is gone. The billions spent on hotels for migrants who broke into our country, billions more squandered on benefits for dependents from the developing world when people born here are kept awake at night by exorbitant winter fuel bills and spiralling food costs. A two-tier justice system that is rigged in favour of "protected characteristics"; white people need not apply. It's not fair, and in this country if there's one thing we mind about its unfairness.

    Laurence Fox, the former actor and leader of the Reclaim Party, gave impassioned voice to that sentiment at the march, rousing the crowd as he did so: "This is our home, we have nowhere else to go, and we will defend it and we will not be quiet."

    Although Tommy Robinson undoubtedly has his acolytes, and the rough-diamond charisma to pull a large, enthusiastic crowd, many of the marchers were not there to support him at all. Quite a few said they had decided to attend at the last minute after the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk. A march organised by Farage and Reform would draw an even bigger throng, I suspect. On Saturday lunchtime, Richard texted me to say that Whitehall was "rammed" and the area where he was stuck, between Blackfriars and Westminster Bridge, absolutely heaving.

    Police had closed Westminster Bridge, forcing people to take the Tube to try to join the demonstration from the Trafalgar Square side. Police claims that there were only 110,000 marchers were ridiculous. (To be fair, that may have been the number in the designated protest area, in this case the bottom two-thirds of Whitehall.) Others, having looked at aerial footage, estimated the total to be over 300,000, far from the three million claimed by the organisers but still an amazing turnout.

    Our flailing state has no answers to this scale of popular discontent, save to characterise it as something it isn't. So Unite the Kingdom had to be portrayed as a violent, National Front-style rally when only a handful of marchers witnessed any violence at all and people of all races and religions mingled happily.

    Such scuffles as there were appear to have taken place in a side street after police unwisely kettled marchers next to far-Left protesters. There were 25 arrests. While any attacks on the police are totally unacceptable, 25 arrests in a crowd of 300,000 is a tiny percentage and no weapons were seized. Compare with the Notting Hill Carnival: 528 arrests, 50 of them for possession of an offensive weapon. (A huge success this year because no one got murdered!)

    Of course, no "unhelpful" comparisons will be drawn with the carnival, nor with the frequently frightening and grossly anti-Semitic pro-Palestine marches, because, in the official establishment version of the truth, only the despised white, working class are capable of racism and "violent thuggery".

    Richard was somewhat startled to read he was considered a "far-Right" Tommy Robinson thug. The retired chief executive of a merchant bank, of notably sweet temper, he wasn't the only reader to send me an angry email. "I know I'm an old saddo getting cross with reporting of the freedom of speech march yesterday." I totally understand that distress.

    The Overton Window is shifting so fast that people who would never have dreamt of joining such a march now feel compelled to do so. "With long arrears to make good", as Kipling foresaw. Had I been in the country I would have gone along to write about it.

    I hope you'll agree that the Telegraph gets these things right more often than not, because people count on us to do so (when so many others don't). I am sure we are on the right side of history or I wouldn't be sitting in this damn trench firing salvos every week.

    There is hope, dear reader. You can feel we are winning when Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood gives a statement praising flags in the Commons. "The St George's Cross and the Union Jack belong to us all," she said. "They are symbols of unity, a kingdom united, and they must never be used to divide us."

    Do you think that person is any relation to the Shabana Mahmood who, just a few years ago, told a meeting: "The people that you see holding the English flag most of the time down my neck of the woods will be EDL [the English Defence League] and they are white and they are male and they're bad people because they want to divide our communities."

    She wouldn't dare say that today. Every single person who marched in the rain to Unite the Kingdom, every decent person hanging our beautiful flags from lampposts and motorway bridges and on village greens, is making patriotism respectable again. Step by step, inch by inch, we are taking our country back from those who hate it.

    "Millions before us fought to protect it and it's our duty to love it, respect it and keep it strong." You said it, Courtney sweetheart.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/16/unite-the-kingdom-britains-decent-majority-are-not-racist/

  101. Well, chums, I'm also off to bed now. Good Night all, sleep well, and I hope to see you all early tomorrow morning.

  102. I’ll try and remember to post those tomorrow. The scandal of our religiously-slaughtered meat. From the podcast “Nick [Buckley] Talks”.

    …“You said this is the grooming gang scandal for animals. And once you said that, it all made sense.

    This is exactly what it is. This is the breaking of the law, the suffering of, in this case, animals, where everybody knows what's going on, but no one's got the balls or the backbone to do anything about it, in case they're called racist, in case they get attacked, and everybody, again, is looking out for their careers and their pensions, and nobody wants to do the job we're paying them to do. This is spot on.

    I think this is the grooming gang scandal for animals.

    Well, it's also the same thing. Immediately, you bring it up, you get all the lobbies. Oh, well, we've got this many exports, et cetera.

    And we're exporting, and it will affect all of this. And there were very, very few Halal videos possible. There's nothing really on YouTube.

    There is one which I have a link to. And I don't think that was even shot in this country. That was shot in Belgium.

    It's just horrifying. I mean, we, you started off by talking that we are a country of animal lovers[…]”

    From Nick Talks: Shocking Cruelty, Law Breaking, Special Rights & Even TB, 16 Sep 2025
    https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/nick-talks/id1643721749?i=1000727093422&r=1028
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