Friday 14 March: The Prime Minister’s radical talk is at odds with his track record

Posted on by Geoff Graham

commenting facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

722 thoughts on “Friday 14 March: The Prime Minister’s radical talk is at odds with his track record”

  3. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,364 4/6

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

  7. Drifts in on a rather chilly 1oc breeze .
    Good morning.

    1. How fascinating and a very nice treat for the elephants

    2. Speak Out Against Elephant Abuse at Ayutthaya in Thailand

      Thailand’s Ayutthaya—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—is an archeological and historical wonder that attracts millions of tourists every year. PETA’s new video footage shows elephants being beaten, chained, and forced to give rides to visitors at the cultural landmark, which causes these intelligent, sensitive animals severe physical and psychological suffering.

      https://secure.petaasia.com/page/113781/action/1?locale=en-US

  11. The Prime Minister’s radical talk is at odds with his track record

    Maybe they are getting rid of NHS England because they cannot afford the employers national insurance when the big rises come in.

  12. Good morning all. A pleasant start to the day, if a bit chilly at a tad under 3°C, but bright sunshine lighting up the trees and former pub over the road.

    I believe the people of Ireland may have cause to be thankful for DOGE:-

    The far-left NGO 'Concern Worldwide' states that due to USAID cuts, they will be prevented from helping migrants from Third World countries settle in Ireland.
    https://x.com/UpdateNews724/status/1900285410913509599

    2. Frost and ice here, but the solar is charging the batteries and melting the morning frosts.

  13. Starmer is shifting dramatically to the Right – and we have Trump to thank

    Abolishing NHS England is the latest in a string of radical moves away from the PM’s comfort zone

    13 March 2025 7:23pm GMT
    Sherelle Jacobs
    Sir Keir Starmer has, until now, struggled to cut through as a leader. His vow, upon entering office, to oversee a “return of politics to public service” was soon derailed by a catastrophic Budget, broken public services, overflowing prisons and his inability to grip immigration. His war on private schools and his tax rises infuriated Middle England. His attacks on farmers and his inflexibility on net zero sent his poll ratings tanking and those of Reform surging. His staunchly human rights-based view of the world and the Chagos fiasco threatened to define what appeared to be an increasingly failed premiership. Relaunch after relaunch achieved little.

    But all of this appears to be changing. Fate is moulding Starmer into the kind of leader he never really wanted to be: a conservative who in reality if not in spirit is now to the Right of the Tories on a whole range of issues. This is an astonishing development.

    Worse still, for those who hoped the Starmer who served under Corbyn would one day return, it is Donald Trump who is driving his metamorphosis. Having upended assumptions about US foreign policy, Trump has compelled Starmer – who marched against the Iraq War – to rise to the occasion. He performed well with Trump and his plan for a coalition of the willing on Ukraine shifted the narrative. Expectations were low, but he defied them when making his debut on the world stage. For the first time since the election, he has been on the front foot in recent weeks, thanks to foreign policy.

    But that was just the start of Trump’s impact. In a remarkable upending of political orthodoxy, he is slashing the foreign aid target, one of David Cameron’s flagship policies, and increasing defence spending, partly undoing the Tories’ shameful depletion of the country’s military and industrial capacity. Behind the scenes, Whitehall is shocked. Insiders working on the defence review admit that, after “plodding along” with their report, suddenly they’re being pushed over a “cliff edge”.

    Starmer’s blueprint for reforming the state, which includes a bonfire of the quangos and the slashing of Civil Service jobs, while ramping up the use of efficiency-driving tech, is clearly influenced by Musk’s Doge. At home, he is steeling himself for battle with his own party, as he draws up plans to cut the deficit by slashing welfare (even castigating the “broken welfare system”) and promising to finally contain the annual increase in NHS spending. It is quite something to watch Keir Starmer undo so many Lefty Tory policies.

    But perhaps the one move by Starmer that is the most humiliating for the Tories is his abolition of their most egregious creation, NHS England. Accurately described by Wes Streeting as “the world’s biggest quango”, it repeatedly missed targets, only to then pressure the government of the day for higher funding. Even medics who worry about “distracting” top-down Labour reforms concede that NHSE lost its grip some time ago. Would Labour really be abolishing it had the climate of opinion not been drastically shifted by Trump and Musk’s war on bureaucrats?

    More importantly, Starmer is reversing one of the Tories’ most naive errors in government, which was to try and reform the NHS whilst at the very same time decentralising it. Labour knows that it must shift resources from hospitals to preventative healthcare programmes that will tackle the root causes of illness and encourage people to take more responsibility for their health. Achieving this sort of shift is impossible as long as the levers of power remain beyond the grasp of No 10.

    Of course, the Tory party is keen to impress that Labour hardly has an encouraging track record on managing healthcare systems, having “run NHS Wales to the ground”. Time will tell, but right now the Opposition’s protestations are falling on deaf ears.

    If Trump is the storm that has driven Labour to veer-rightwards, then Starmer’s closest aides, Cabinet Secretary Pat McFadden and Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney are the captains steering the ship. According to a No 10 insider, the duo’s brains have effectively merged into a single “McWorldview”. Their politics is inflected with galvanising terror, stemming from McFadden’s “brush with death” when he almost lost his rock solid Labour seat in the 2019 election – and has been heightened by the normalised chaos of the Trump era.

    Their approach boils down to the political “will to live”, and to retain power at all costs. All of Labour’s major policies – from ramping up defence, slashing aid, overhauling the NHS and benefits and ignoring environmentalists and “Nimbys” as it presses on with a third runway – are, I’m told, part of a coherent strategy. The Starmer-McSweeney-McFadden triumvirate has two aims: shore up the Red Wall, and convince the Office for Budget Responsibility (and the markets) that the Government is serious about growth and fiscal prudence.

    They also agree with the Blairite tenet that idealists must modernise or die; that Left-liberals must adapt to the reality of circumstance or fade away. Blairism is often mistaken as a dogma that favoured the embrace of globalisation. In fact, what Blair did was force his party to reconcile itself with the nature of the times.

    This masterplan is not without risk. Progressive voters may get fed up and drift to the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP or independents campaigning on a Gaza platform. Starmer, McFadden and McSweeney are now believed to be united in their detestation of the hard-Left.

    Nevertheless, the centrists in Labour are worried that an authentically Left-wing rival party could emerge. Some also fear that having been instrumental in helping Starmer win back much of the Red Wall in the last election, the Blue Labour faction under Maurice Glasman is taking things too far in its bid to neutralise Reform. And that’s before you get to the dangers to British prosperity of Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, educational vandalism and the many other nefarious policies still being implemented or proposed by the Government.

    Yet it is a fact that Starmer is moving Labour to the Right. That has seismic implications for the country – and it won’t be good news for Reform or the beleaguered Tory party.

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

    Friars Balsam
    11 hrs ago
    I doubt that he’s moving to the right. He’s a shameless socialist chancer and I wouldn’t trust a single word that comes out of his mouth.

    Todays Opinion
    11 hrs ago
    Reply to Friars Balsam
    I don't believe he'll cut immigration much or welfare costs. He's looking at votes.

    1. But how many will be redeployed into other parts of the NHS. Most i would suggest.

      1. NHS England on the Chopping Block
        Nope Johnny, there has been a hiring moratorium in NHS England for most of the last two years. In 2022-3 there was also a 15-20% headcount cut that used up most of the vacancies.
        In 1993, when I was 52, my own job in the Agrochemicals industry (and those of my 15 direct reports), was made redundant. To be pedantic, it's not PEOPLE but JOBS that are redundant, but it's the JOBHOLDERS who suffer.
        I got another job straight away, this time as a General Practice Fundholding Manager in the NHS under Thatcher. Tony Blair came in in 1997, figured that GP Fundholding had created a two-tier health system and soon abandoned it, again making my job and those of my 6 direct reports redundant. That's when I finally decided to retire at 58 and, with a good company pension from my previous job, never looked back.
        Among those who are now under threat of redundancy in NHS England, it is said that the good ones will have kept their CVs and networks polished and be ready to jump to good jobs elsewhere before the rush. But it won't be a rush. The Unions will be gearing up to oppose the whole process, which will likely take at least two years.
        Many NHS England mid-range staff are qualified accountants on north of £70,000 a year who have been in the NHS for over 10 years, so a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that the redundancy bill for those who don't simply jump ship will be well over half a billion pounds. Another unintended consequence.

        1. Of course there will be unintended consequences; Labour never thinks things through.

    2. Sherelle Jacobs is simply just another professional opinionist who gets paid handsomely for gobbing off … whatever.

        1. 😊 Not in the least. Sometimes Jacobs writes sense: sometimes she writes crap. They all do.

    3. The quango might be demolished but it was renamed before. It's if the staff have been made reundant that matters.

    4. Sherelle Jacobs wrote a silly and muddled article on the ECHR and the Tories last week and she's at it again.

      Shifting dramatically to the Right? As if. He's sucked up to Trump a bit only to buy some favour rather than to be kicked. His increase in defence spending is trivial and won't be effective until 2027 and it's to be funded by cutting foreign aid which had effectively been doubled anyway with Climate Aid For Africa. The abolition of NHS England (in effect a merger of two smaller quangos created by Blair) certainly looks good but don't think that its staff won't pop up elsewhere. The civil service has seen off enough 'reforming' governments in the past 20 years. It'll brush Max aside with contempt.

      He didn't visit Czechoslovakia in the 80s to learn how to be a champion of conscience and the nation state. As long as his idiot sidekicks continue their war on the economy and industry, farmers and the countryside, education, free speech, gas and electricity users and anyone with a car; as long as he allows the invasion to continue and crawls on his knees before the Islamic vote, supports DIE and leaves human rights legislation untouched, anyone who claims that he has moved rightward should be made to stand under a very cold shower.

    5. Appears is all it is. Spin and an attempt at damage limitation. Destruction will continue unabated.

    1. When they do, throw the gimmigrant out with it. If there's not a long enough drop, build a gallows.

      In fact, make them eat their waste, then hang them.

      Why are these scum even here? We kill vermin. Why we do we tolerate them just because they're black and brown? Get out of the ECHR, repeal the HRA, tow them back to damned France and hole the boat. They'll get the message. If they don't, use live rounds.

  16. SIR – Alun Ebenezer, “Britain’s strictest headmaster” (Features, March 12), highlights the mistake of teaching children to “do whatever makes you happy” and “be whatever you want to be happy”. This, he argues, has not made them happy; it has made them the complete opposite.

    As Mr Ebenezer says, we ought to be teaching them resilience – and, I would add, the value of discipline.

    Christopher Robson
    Bedale, North Yorkshire

    Before we start to teach (and instil) discipline on schoolchildren, we need to teach (and instil) discipline on those who are directly responsible for that indiscipline: their parents and their teachers.

    1. A TA chum told me the other day that a kid had been tearing up new books. The parents were told. They said 'Not our problem, he was in your care at the time.'

      Which has me thinking the parents should be put against a wall and shot. That's the result of multi generational welfare. End it. Stop paying scum to breed.

      2. The parents should have been billed for the cost of the books and if they refused to pay taken to the small claims court. It would have sent a message.

      1. I had grown a full set for my trip to the Arctic Circle at Christmas 2018. I'm happy that I did but the itching was unbearable in the end. Before I shaved it all off I trimmed it thus as a jape towards a friend who routinely wears a Zapata as his trade mark.

    4. We have got to start somewhere, Grizz. The parents are a lost cause. Teachers should be appointed on merit.

        1. Indeed. This was in response to the comment about installing discipline into the parents. In many cases I suspect it is parent in the singular.

    1. No one wants them here, this was forced on us. Why can we not get rid of them? No one wanted 30 million black and brown people poured like poo on this country. Now they're everywhere, infesting everything.

  18. Reynolds Appoints Labour Donor, Anti-Brexit Campaigner, and Woke Warriors to Trade Board

    Back in October Labour let it be known that DBT’s ten-strong Board of Trade – which has advised at a senior level on trade policy and promoted trade with the UK since 2017 – would have its membership axed. Reynolds was “planning to appoint a new group of members during the autumn.” Five months later a new board has finally been appointed…

    Jonathan Reynolds’ new board has some interesting characters.

    Paul Lindley: The children’s welfare campaigner has donated £30,000 to Labour with £10,000 in 2023 and £20,000 in 2022. He’s also anti-Brexit, having campaigned to remain and described it as the “greatest threat to world economy.” Perfect Labour material there…
    Mike Hawes: The CEO of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and one of the “most vocal critics” of Brexit said it “is the clear and present danger” before changing his mind once Johnson agreed a Brexit deal and saying it provided “stability.” Facts change…
    Vivian Hunt: Hunt is a staple of Labour luvvie advisory boards having served on Sadiq Khan’s business advisory panel since 2016. She also sits alongside David Lammy on the board of trustees of the Black Equity Organisation which “aims to dismantle systemic racism” in the UK. Hunt recently served on the CBI’s panel when the government cut ties with it over allegations of sexual misconduct…
    Allison Kirkby: The BT Group CEO has been railing recently against the anti-woke turn in corporate culture. She said in February it was “hard lately to see companies and governments stepping back from their commitment to inclusion, equity and diversity.” She has set stringent diversity targets for 25% of staff to be from an ethnic minority background by 2030 and 17 per cent would be “from a background of disability.” That won’t help at mixers with Trumpians…
    A trade panel for another age. Is this the quality Labour could convince to join on after five full months…

    March 13 2025 @ 17:07

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

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d47b4242a4a291bec5c829b93ff5cd569bfd3a67b1e93a5511dc186bdbd4379a.png

    3. Is Reynolds the one who claimed to be a solicitor when in fact he isn't qualified? The one who tried to suggest that it was a slip of the tongue, once, in Parliament when in fact it is/was on Linked In, election material etc!

    4. This country is polluted beyond reason. Foreigners are everywhere and simply shouldn't be here.

      Socialists lie habitually. They have to, especially to themselves. Tell a lie, make it big and keep telling it is their mantra. Through that they force their view of the world on others.

      Remember, the most important rule of the party was to deny the evidence of your eyes and ears.

    2. I find their recent behaviour absurd. They don't seem to know what they're doing and are showing themselves just another bunch of rats in a sack.

      1. Very unprofessional. If they want to be voted into office they need to be better than that.

    1. All I see there is waste. If government has money to spaff on repainting a car rather than buying another one then it simply needs to go.

      But that's the problem all round, isn't it? The state is awash with cash and wastes it on what it wants rather than services, then demands more.

    5. This Stephen Ireland:

      The co-founder of a Surrey LGBTQ+ group has been found guilty of raping a 12-year-old boy he met on Grindr.
      Stephen Ireland, 41, was convicted of raping the child in the Addlestone flat he shared with David Sutton, 27, on 19 April 2024.
      Ireland, who co-founded Pride in Surrey in 2018, was also found guilty of three counts of causing a child under the age of 13 to engage in sexual activity, one count of sexual assault of a child under 13 and six counts of making indecent images of children.
      Sutton, who also volunteered with the organisation, was found guilty of three counts of making indecent photographs of children and one count of possession of an extreme pornographic image.

      Not this Stephen Ireland:
      Irish former professional footballer (age 38)

      In September 2007, immediately after the Slovakia game, Ireland requested compassionate leave to miss the following qualifier against the nearby Czech Republic, claiming that he had to attend his grandmother's funeral.
      Ireland returned to his country via a private jet chartered by the Football Association of Ireland. When the FAI discovered that his maternal grandmother in Cork was still alive, he claimed that it was actually his paternal grandmother in London who had died. She too was discovered to be alive. He told a third lie by saying that one of his grandfathers was divorced and had a partner who had died. On 14 September, he apologised and said that the false claims were started by his girlfriend, who had miscarried. He said that she told Staunton the false claims on the telephone, so that Ireland would be allowed to go home.

      Ireland is married and has three children. He owned a £3.75 million home in Prestbury, Cheshire and a number of custom built vehicles. Ireland has a number of tattoos including a large pair of angel wings on his back.

      Difficult to tell them apart.

  23. Up early because of nuisance call.
    Good work on Wordle:
    Wordle 1,364 3/6

    🟨🟩⬜🟨⬜
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  24. The farrago over Reform had me look at their policies again. Clearly they don't understand the reason energy is expensive. They must not give a referendum on net zero as the green lobby will simply buy it with EU cash.

    Hiking the income tax allowances is nice, but it'd be better to scrap the upper and higher rates. 20% of a million you get is better than 40% of a million you don't.

    Cut corporation taxes, employer NI, the hefty business rates, council tax, fuel duty, insurance taxes, road taxes – scrap all of Brown's stealth taxes. The taxes to abolish first are those that hit the lowest earner and companies hardest most. The middle will understand as the economy starts to recover and making everyone better off is a good thing.

    While doing this put the state in a blender and just get rid of people. One quango of 1200 is nothing – scrap the sentencing council for a start. Close the OBR. It is consistently wrong. Scrap the 'climate change committee' as it's a bunch of troughers.

    Yet I don't see this from Reform. I think they're going for headlines over substance. The infighting is just tiresome. Stop mudslinging, talk to one another.

    1. I think that was behind Rupert’s complaint that the party needed policies for government.

  26. Morning all 🙂😊
    Brighter but still chilly and cloudy. Sunshine later and tomorrow apparently.
    Just Who is writing starmer's script I wonder? Surely not himself, as he can't seem to keep anything on track. And noticeably always has everything on a sheet of paper.

      1. Perhaps he had been watching Cheltenham. They had St Patrick’s Thursday yesterday.

  27. Morning all 🙂😊
    Brighter but still chilly and cloudy. Sunshine later and tomorrow apparently.
    Just Who is writing starmer's script I wonder? Surely not himself, as he can't seem to keep anything on track. And noticeably always has everything on a sheet of paper.

  28. Morning, all Y'all.
    Sunny. Brilliant moon, followed by a partial eclipse!
    It's all happening here…!

      1. Couldn't see anything for clouds up here, by the time they'd gone so had the moon

  29. Morning, all Y'all.
    Sunny. Brilliant moon, followed by a partial eclipse!
    It's all happening here…!

    1. They tried island isolation solution in Oz and put the boat people who had travelled all the way from Somalia via several muslim country's, for fuel top ups and extra rations on the way. After the invaders realised that they were not going to be allowed to settle. They set the islands and all the buildings alight.

      1. Don't build anything there. Don't give them shelter at all. Remove all combustibles. Heck, don't even give them food and water. Search them before they go and remove all coats, devices, watches, lighters, cigarettes.

        They'll have nothing. Make it a cold rock, not a nice one.

        Better yet, a plastic raft. Why allow the vermin to ruin our country?

    2. If Farage remains as leader of the Reform Party the level of support will diminish to such an extent that it will become an electoral irrelevance.

      True, Farage was a brilliant rabble rouser and has built up tremendous support for the party but the party now needs a leader with conviction rather than froth and a leader who does not have a crisis of self-confidence as soon as he feels threatened by a colleague's success. Lowe was sacked for being too effective and becoming too popular – not for being incompetent as most MPs are.

      And there is something very seedily sinister about Reform Chairman, Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf.

      1. Yusif getting in almost feels like an infiltration. A way for muslim to keep tabs on and sabotage an enemy.

  31. 403157+ up ticks,

    Now the dust is settling in regards to the farage Lowe
    dispute after for many some very revealing facts concerning "nige" and deportation issues, is it not time to construct a NEW HOMELAND PARTY alongside reform keep both in the running as the lab/lib/con coalition cannot ever, in all honesty, be trusted again.

    Time is surely of premium importance Lowe is coming across with fixing the main issues, we the indigenous are losing out EVERY DAY with every boat that reaches the Dover beach, the contents water down ALL our,
    already in bad shape, infrastructure so now it is only a matter of time…..

  32. Lengthy read.

    A type of hip replacement is under investigation by the regulator after The Telegraph revealed it was putting thousands of patients at risk of poisoning.

    Dozens of people have come forward to describe the physical and mental pain caused by part-cobalt hip implants.

    Cobalt poisoning – when nanoparticles of the metal are released into the body from the wear and tear of the implants’ joints – can be deadly. It can lead to problems including heart failure, memory loss, depression, nerve damage, sight loss and deafness.

    About 5,000 patients in Britain are thought to have been given “modular neck” hips made with a cobalt part. The hips are proven to have higher failure rates, putting anyone with them at risk of cobalt poisoning.

    The implants are still available on the NHS, despite not having been recommended since 2017 amid fears about “noxious effects”, with surgeons able to pick implants for individual patients. Concerns about cobalt first emerged in 2004.

    One patient said she had endured “four years of misery” after getting a part-cobalt false hip, and had suffered memory loss and chronic pain.

    Blood tests on Christina Daniels, 49, revealed that she had elevated cobalt levels, and doctors withdrew vials of orange fluid from her joint where metal ions were leaking. She is awaiting an operation to change the replacement.

    Of the approximately 100,000 hip replacements carried out in the UK each year, as many as 40 per cent have a cobalt-chromium element. However, various models have been phased out over the past 15 years because of fears over the toxic metal.

    Guidelines over the use of cobalt hips could be overhauled after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) launched an investigation in the wake of The Telegraph’s findings.

    MPs have also raised concerns with the Department of Health about cobalt in hip implants. In a letter seen by The Telegraph, Karin Smyth, the health minister, said that the MHRA was “aware of concerns regarding dual taper modular neck hip prostheses and the risk of cobalt poisoning” and that it was “being investigated”.

    She said: “Appropriate action will be taken if any risks are identified and, where necessary, safety information will be communicated to the public.”

    The work, which has involved experts from the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA) among others, is expected to be concluded in the next two months.

    Mrs Daniels, a mother of two from Peterborough, had her left hip replaced about four years ago because of osteoarthritis. She had surgery at the Fitzwilliam Hospital, a private hospital carrying out NHS work, in Peterborough. She said she had been left in agony ever since and was in “as much pain now as before the hip replacement”.

    After seeing a pain clinic manager and having steroid injections and scans, she was eventually referred back to her original surgeon, who told her nothing was wrong. But a second medic found fluid in the joint and raised cobalt levels in the blood at more than three times the maximum acceptable limit, increasing with every test.

    Mrs Daniels, who faces a 12-month wait to have it changed because of the NHS backlog, said: “They should be making people aware of what they are putting in their bodies. You trust the surgeon, and if I had known I was having cobalt put in my body and there could be such devastating side effects, I wouldn’t have had it.

    “I’ve had four years of misery, people thinking that I’m going mad and it’s all in the head, back and forth to the hospital, and the amount of painkillers that that I’m on. I’ve had to go to physiotherapy for my shoulder because I’ve slept on the same side now for four years and it’s caused trapped nerves.”

    Christina Daniels, a hip-replacement patient who has had blood tests that revealed she had elevated cobalt levels
    Blood tests on Christina Daniels revealed that she had elevated cobalt levels, and doctors withdrew vials of orange fluid from her joint Credit: David Rose for the Telegraph
    The extent of the damage done has yet to be determined. Doctors will take a biopsy and assess damage to the tissue and surrounding area, including her bones.

    Working in customer service, Mrs Daniels spends the majority of the day on her feet and is having to take regular time off because of pain, steroid injections and hospital appointments.

    “I’d be that person walking around the house at night because it’s pouring down outside, trying to get the steps in,” she said. “Now I’m putting on weight because I’m not getting the exercise.”

    The Telegraph also revealed the story of a 56-year-old woman who had two hip implants, made partly from cobalt, given to her about 10 years ago. She has suffered memory loss and heart problems.

    Tracey O’Neill had not been told about the implants she was being given, nor what they were made from. She was also not monitored for elevated cobalt levels in her blood as she should have been.

    Her hip surgeries and the products used were not recorded on the National Joint Registry, despite this being mandatory to track the performance of implants, surgeons and hospitals.

    Speaking six months after first sharing her story, she said the implants had “taken the prime years of my life from me” and that she was “unable to bear weight without severe pain and suffering”. She added: “My life has been changed forever, with every day a struggle.”

    Since telling her story, she and John Knights, her partner, have founded a support group for people affected by cobalt toxicity as a result of a hip implant, which has more than 150 members.

    “We signpost people to get the right information if they’ve got concerns. We don’t want to scare anybody. This is about guiding them to request the right information, such as how to get hold of their implant information,” Mrs O’Neill said.

    The pair are calling on the MHRA to update its “woefully out of date” guidelines for metal-on-metal hips, which were last updated in 2017, and to introduce “mandatory monitoring” guidance across all NHS hospital trusts.

    Mr Knights said: “Everything is being referred back to that document, and it’s not appropriate for other types of cobalt-containing hip. They really need to now revise that and come up with something that’s tailored for other types of [metal] hips.”

    Current guidance from the regulator is focused on monitoring patients with metal-on-metal hips rather than the more modern multi-part implants used today.

    The innovative designs of the last 15 years, designed to be more flexible while maintaining durability, have often been made with cobalt-chromium parts. They have been a popular choice for younger and more active patients, and it is thought thousands of previously active, working-age people could be at risk of cobalt poisoning.

    The investigation has raised concerns about whether patients with such false hips are being monitored appropriately to check for elevated levels of cobalt in their blood.

    Cobalt hips divide opinion among orthopaedic surgeons, with some refusing to use the metal and claiming it should be banned because of the risk, while others have said it remains the best option because of its strength and durability.

    The MHRA and BOA were contacted for comment.

    Recommended

    'My NHS hip replacement poisoned me – now thousands of others are at risk too'
    Read more
    Join the conversation

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/13/hip-replacements-putting-thousands-of-patients-at-risk/

    1. I read that last night. I'm thankful I still have my own natural hips in reasonable working order.
      One of my old school friends had both hers replaced some years ago and was not walking well when we met last week. I don't know what sort she had but she was left with one leg shorter than the other so she's quite unbalanced.

        1. Yes – and of course it puts a strain on other parts to compensate. She sort of lurches along.

      2. I know quite a lot of people who are unbalanced – but have legs the same length!

    2. Belle, I was lucky. In January 1978 I came off my motorbike on an icy driveway and snapped the top off my left femur. The surgeon decided to nail the broken pieces back together instead of installing a Charnley metal ball-joint. After 14 weeks of not using that leg the muscles had shrunk considerably and it took weeks to learn to walk again properly. But finally the three titanium pins were removed and 47 years late it is still doing sterling service. I still have the Newman's pins.

    3. I've got a Chromium Cobalt hip, right side. 17 years old now. Because of the problems with these joints and following blood disorders in the US and so many legal cases. In the UK people as I have, who have these hip joints have had checkups including blood tests every year since. But not anymore.
      I'm not sure if it's an age thing as in FOAD, or just been deferred after 17 years for good.
      Everyone is different health wise and has seperate and different issues, perhaps there are endless other problems caused by the metal joints they don't want us to know about.

    4. I had a long titanium hip replacement on the right side in 2015.

      I have a check up every two years.

      It's still in good shape and our charming surgeon is extremely proud of his work!

    2. I have been trying to educate people but they are in denial. It isn’t just a river in Egypt.

  36. Just moved 20 sacks of dry firewood from the gate to the woodstore. Must be about 20x20kg, so now I'm knackered. Unlike Bob, I'm not used to lifting anything more than a pen…

    1. From someone who can just about do a 16kg bicep curl, you've my sympathies. That's a lot to shift this early in the day!

      1. Delivery was yesterday, whilst I was at work. Day off today, to a)shift firewood, b)tidy the junk by the front door into the toolshed (there's a yard broom & snow shoveller to put away) and other bits of accumulated junk.
        Plus, work has been so concentrated these days that I get home & fall asleep, with a sharp pain across both shoulderblades. Time off required!

        1. I have as day off today too. Not planning on doing anything apart from going to a lunchtime concert at the Wigmore. London Handel Players. Need to reduce the fluid retention on my feet so have them propped up at the moment.

          2. I am enjoying dress down Friday, too. Had a leisurely breakfast and am now relaxing with Nttl before I tackle the day’s chores and walk the dogs. Still cold and miserable here.

        2. That’s stress, Paul. Take it easy. I’ve been there and done that. It isn’t good.

          1. Yes. Interestingly, the biggest effect on my morning blood sugar measurements wasn’t diet, drink, alchohol, but the calendar… lowest measurement of the week on a Saturday morning!
            Stress…

          2. I used to have my BP measured regularly. On one occasion the nurse remarked it had gone down significantly. I told her I was on holiday. QED.

      1. Indeed!
        Thank God I was smart enough not to order a half-tonne sack of loose logs!

      1. Ahead of you! Excellent plan, though. Made one for SWMBO as well, who's working from home.

        1. When I was shifting concrete blocks up the "garden" for the walls I built, I would have a pallet of 60 delivered and would carry them up one at a time over 3 or 4 days, moving perhaps 6 to 10 at a time, then having a rest.
          The trick was not to wear myself out doing too many per session.

          4. It’s like the old bull and the youngster. The young one says, “cor! Look at those cows! Let’s run over and have a few.”
            The old bull replies, “let’s walk over and have them all.” 😀

  38. Good Morning!

    That Nigel Farage, he just can’t keep out of the headlines! But these days, the headlines are not always to his liking, and it’s doubtful that he’ll like Iain Hunter’s ‘ A Reform Too Far. A Tale of One Man’s Fragility ’ , written after a week’s reflection on the unseemly spat between Rupert Lowe and dear old Nigel, who many now think has lost the plot – or worse.

    Look Out The Window: It's A Crazy World Out There , according to Sudo Nonym, in his first article for FSB. Please welcome him by reading and commenting.

    Energy watch 08.30: Demand: 37.5 GW. Total UK Production: 34.32 GW from: Hydrocarbons 53%; Wind 9%; Imports 11.9%; Biomass 8%; Nuclear 9.5%. Solar: 3.5%.

    freespeechbacklash.com

  39. Reform Takes Lead in First Runcorn By-Election Poll

    The first poll for the Runcorn and Helsby by-election since Mike Amesbury threw in the towel will make happy reading for Reform. When weighting respondents by likelihood to vote, Reform are ahead with 40% to Labour’s 35%. Among those certain to vote, the gap widens – Reform leads with 45% to Labour’s 33%, according to Lord Ashcroft Polls. In the General Election Reform came second in the seat with 18% of the vote…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc00f607b8d250ffd58f9d2fb0de167bff97afb05e60a0595886df8f8b154c11.png

    The poll surveyed 702 people between March 3-12 – in the midst of Reform’s big bust-up with Rupert Lowe. Helpful for Farage’s much-needed ‘momentum’ narrative in the wake of the fallout…

    14 March 2025 @ 09:11

    2. Sadly they will be voting for a fraud unless Farage resigns and Rupert Lowe is invited back. Farage intends to do nothing about illegal immigrants or deporting them. He's just more of the "all talk no do" conservative party masquerading as an alternative.

      I hope the Rupert does decide to start another party. He really represents what the people of Reform want, not Farage.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5lEpqNfkss

  40. I can't full straighten my right knee which gives me a slight list to one side.

    1. Cultural norm. What right has evil colonialist whitey to apply a smidgeon of criticism?

    2. Highly prejudicial. Who released this and when will they be banged up alongside Tommy?

    3. Colin Fisher
      16h
      Of course you have to search quite hard to find this in the MSMs for some reason. The BBC have it under the Oxfordshire local news. I am sure if it were a Reform member / supporter this would have a tad more prominence, but maybe that's just me being cynical again

          1. I was a bad girl on Tuesday. Much effort was put into securing an MRI slot for me and after more than an hour in the machine (officially 55 minutes, as there were pauses) I said no more, stopping now. I realised afterwards, with regret, that it should have been booked as a 90 minute not a 45 minute session and I should have been warned that after 60 minutes it becomes uncomfortable. At one point, the young technician came in to complain that, “I’m having difficulty getting good pictures because your heart rate is irregular”. I had to bite my tongue.

          3. You are one tough lady, Sue. I'd never be able to be in the machine for that length of time.

    2. Vernon Kaye was talking about that yesterday on his Radio 2 show – some of the suggestions couldn't be read out!!

      We wondered about Enema Alley?

  44. Firstborn was signed off yesterday with tendonitis of the feet. He spends all day standing, spannering with cars, and can't get his feet relaxed so the inflammation goes down. Very painful – so you take care of your trotters, Sue. Propped up sounds good!

      1. Neuschwanstein, near Füssen; The Great Escape was filmed nearby – if you look very closely you can see the castle in the background during the celebrated scene with Steve McQueen on his motorbike

  47. Economy Shrinks by 0.1% in Blow to Reeves

    *****************************
    Mr Blue Sky
    58m
    Breakfast news quoting this as a "surprise drop". It was no surprise to me and most people.
    Reeves is like a dog that is startled by its own farts.

    1. I don't think a machine that is frozen in lifelessness with a flat voice and little indication of unprogrammed activity is capable of farting.

          1. So do dogs; Winston can fart for England (and Wales if necessary). His are SBDs – Silent, But Deadly.

        1. I fear it's just the beginning.
          Much as I want the government to fall in total ignominity, the effect on friends and family in the UK will not be pleasant. So, I'm in mixed opinions.

    3. Everything they come into contact with they eff it up and big time.
      Useless people the political classes.

  48. Morning all. Sun but not very warm. The letter to the Telegraph actually made sense today. But it strikes me that this government riddled with socialist ideology will have none of it. They will continue on their destructive way come hell or highwater, determined to destroy the UK.

  49. Morning all. Up early because Winston wanted his breakfast. I did get a little longer in bed and he had gone to his bed when I told him so I thought I would quit while I was ahead and get up on my terms.
    Has the headline letter writer only just noticed that Starmer says one thing but does another?

      1. Are they out yet ? I should have one camped out in my insulated straw filled winter hideaway.
        I'll have a check later.

  51. Very discombobulated this morning. Normally the paper arrives about 6.30. No sign – rang newsagents. Lorry crashed – everything late – hope to have deliveries by lunchtime or mid-afternoon.

    Now I read the paper first, then do the crossword then the number puzzles. All very muddling to my pore brane to have to reverse the normal pattern…!

  52. Right – gotta go as I'm meeting friends for coffee. Then do the shopping. Back later.

    1. I'd imagine some are illegal businesses, others are probably stuffed full of gimmigrants so they fly tip because they won't pay the fees to go to the tip and the bin men won't pick it up.

      1. A friend of mine noticed a big pile of rubbish a couple of weeks ago.
        Dumped in the countryside just north of St Albans. He opened one of the many bags and paper work suggested the rubbish seemed to originate in south London.

  54. Nothing tastes as good as a glass of red wine at lunchtime – in the week.
    Bliss! I'll have another!

  55. Nothing tastes as good as a glass of red wine at lunchtime – in the week.
    Bliss! I'll have another!

        2. Only in cans here, but we used to have cider on tap… and I have real beer engine, too.
          😉

      2. So when is dinner? I am fascinated by the times different cultures tend to eat. Over here, the restaurants are generally pretty empty until around ten.

        1. When visiting the Italian lakes, they appear to eat at 9pm in the summer .

        2. Traditional dinner straight after work, so around 18:00.
          Things happen early in Norway.

          1. All fine here, thanks, apart from aching feet, but that is from dancing too much. Trying not to pay attention to the negative that I can not affect, whilst supporting friends in need, so there are days when I just skim Nottl…

        4. Dinner, Katy, for me is 1:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Supper is at 6:00 p.m. on Saturdays.

          No other meals or meal times are necessary.😉

    1. They have lauded the Severn beavers as the answer to flooding. No, dredging the river and not cutting down trees at the headwaters will do that.

        1. Where malicious lefties target right wingers with false allegations and a SWAT team is sent to deal with it. Finding nothing.

  61. Waltzes in at midday, the sun is still out how everything Is more beautiful when baithed in sunlight.

    1. What is annoying is that those of us who have known this all along have been shouted down and condemned. What is tragic about it is that Russia could easily been our friend and so much that has happened instead, leading to death and destruction in Syria and the middle East in general, would not have happened. We would now be a united front against the real enemy, China which would be contained. Instead it threatens the whole of Asia and Africa and threatens the democracies of the West.

      1. Indeed.
        Russia, being Christian, would also be a good bulwark against the darkness that is Islam.

        1. When the USSR was atheist the West were against it; now that Russia is a Christian country Russia is villainised by the West.

          4. The USSR claimed to be communist but was a dictatorship.

            The Russian Federation started with Democracy and has reverted to dictatorship.

            Hasn't really changed its spots much. Putin has very publicly stated that he wants to rebuild "greater Russia", hence the Ukraine adventure. Exvcept they were supposed to wave flags and welcome Russian dominance, but they didn't. I would not want to be living in any of the other ex-SSR's if the west gives Putin a "pass" on Ukraine, because they will be next.

        2. I think that if people saw the power of Christianity in Russia, a real Christian country, it might create a revival in the West. It is another lost opportunity now the fools in NATO and the EU have soured the people against Russia.

      2. Before the war started in Ukraine Farage agreed with this line of argument – but when he saw that the whipped up public opinion was against it he quickly changed his tune.

    3. Just listened to the next interview with John Meersheimer, and the prospects for a ceasefire. He's right I think that the USA and Ukraine have lost the war and will have to accept that Putin has won. Putin will want assurances but Ukraine is rearming and that does not sound as though the ceasefire will lead to peace. And obviously Putin wants to finish the job in Kursk before the ceasefire takes effect.

    1. We used to sing the Stanford arrangement of the Jubilate on Old Blundellian (OB) day in chapel: very appropriate as the first words are O Be!

      Looking for it I found that this was one of the very best versions as the others took it too slowly. This was put together during Covid restrictions which was quite an achievement.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OtfdOo_178

  65. Found some chocolate pastry swirl things, which the Warqueen likes, so bought them (I could make them but I am tired nd just want an easy win)

    However, I have eaten them so she can have some cheesecake.

    1. Your story reminds me of a dog that eyes the pastries on the kitchen counter, waits and then suddenly snarks them for himself and satisfied goes elsewhere to have a good and satisfying rest. Your confession of sweet guilt made me laugh. 😁

  66. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/61978d9546f409ab5d19234ea975ef487db0f61b3c6601972884b62d9bd4a94b.png Killer wife hid husband’s body in lawn clippings

    Victim had broken ribs and ‘looked like he had been 10 rounds in boxing ring after regular abuse’

    AN ABUSIVE wife murdered her husband, buried him in the garden, then told their daughter he had died in Saudi Arabia.
    Maureen Rickards, 50, stabbed Jeremy Rickards, 65, five times in the chest before moving his body to the garden behind their house in Canterbury. She proceeded to spin a “web of lies” to cover up her crime, including using her late husband’s bank card and messaging their daughter using his phone to pretend he was still alive. She pretended to their daughter, Chima, that her father was on a business trip to Saudi Arabia and had taken his own life while there. A police search began and officers arrested Rickards for fraud after they discovered CCTV of her using her late husband’s bank card in shops between June 20 and 30.

    She was then arrested on suspicion of murder after police carried out a search of the property and found the man’s body in the garden.
    Yesterday at Canterbury Crown Court, Rickards was found guilty of murder. Det Insp Colin Mckeen, senior investigating officer at Kent Police, said: “This was a horrific murder of a man who we believe had been a supportive husband to his wife, despite her violence towards him.
    “Sadly, our investigation suggests that, rather than being a one-off incident, Maureen Rickards had attacked her husband on a number of occasions before this fatal assault.” He added: “She has never expressed any remorse for what she did and has repeatedly sought to frustrate the investigation and push blame onto others, including the victim himself.”

    While carrying out their investigation, police found a catalogue of evidence of Rickards’ abuse towards her husband. Police said they discovered Mr Rickards had been seen with bruising on his face in a Canterbury pub on May 17 and told staff he had been in a car accident. Video clips on Rickards’ phone between the end of May and the beginning of June “showed her shouting at her husband and recorded the sounds of her beating him”, according to the force. Witnesses spoke of seeing Mr Rickards looking as though he had been “10 rounds” in a boxing ring and saying he was “scared” of his wife.

    His body had non-fatal injuries sustained about 10 days before he died and others believed to be from at least five weeks earlier, the force added.
    His body is thought to have been stored in a cupboard in the flat and moved to the garden. Gardeners had visited the property on June 26 and Rickards asked them to “leave the grass they had cut under some bushes”, police said. Mr Rickards’ body was later found in that location.
    After the verdict, James Fisher, a senior crown prosecutor for CPS South East, said Rickards had subjected her husband to “unimaginable pain and suffering”.

    His statement said: “As we built the case against Maureen Rickards, we were able to unpick her web of lies, using forensic evidence and her actions ‘She set about trying to hide the evidence, even lying to their family that he had killed himself in Saudi Arabia’
    before and after the murder, to paint the picture of a callous abuser, who subjected Jeremy to unimaginable pain and suffering.
    “She subjected her partner to a campaign of sustained abuse, before viciously murdering him. The attacks on Jeremy became more severe in the run-up to his murder, leaving him frail, battered and bruised, with everyone who came into contact with him concerned for his wellbeing.
    “Maureen lied about the cruelty and violence she inflicted on Jeremy and was quick to dismiss any concerns, even claiming the injuries had come from a car accident.

    “Maureen has never taken responsibility for her actions nor shown any remorse for murdering Jeremy. He was subjected to an appalling attack, after which Maureen set about trying to hide the evidence … while all the time his body lay hidden in their garden.”
    Jurors deliberated for just more than six hours and Rickards will be sentenced on April 9.

    A woman like that who'd kill your brother
    Forget that woman and find another
    One of your own kind
    Stick to your own kind!

    A woman like that will bring you sorrow
    You'll meet another woman tomorrow
    One of your own kind
    Stick to your own kind!

    A woman who kills cannot love
    A woman who kills has no heart
    And she's the woman who gets your love
    And gets your heart!
    Very smart, Jeremy, very smart!

    A woman like that wants one thing only
    And when she's done she'll leave you lonely
    She'll murder your love; she murdered mine
    Just wait and see
    Just wait, jeremy
    Just wait and see!

    [with apologies to Stephen Sondheim]

    1. "How Would Reform Fare Without Farage?"
      Who cares? It's all about him, screw the rest of us.
      Well, screw him.

  69. Couple of bath-sized glasses of wine, and I found the Youtube playlist I made for SWMBO & my 40th wedding anniverstary… except we never celebrated anything, as Mother needed organised into a care home and her house cleared and sold, so there was never time.
    Bugger.
    The tracks each have a meaning and history, so I'm playing them now as practice for our 43rd this summer, if we are spared.
    Here's one off the list for all Y'all:
    https://youtu.be/LIPc1cfS-oQ?si=5zHg7GDn8Y9YoEwh

    1. Didn't understand a word of it but it still brought tears to my eyes.

      Don't overdo the booze ! It's twirley.

        2. One of our favourites also.

          I used to write satirical songs but I have never been happy with the love songs I tried to write.

    1. SWMBO has just explained 'socialism' to me.

      You tell your child to do the washing-up, then give him One Pound

      You then take 70 pence off him and give it to your nextdoor neighbours child (who did not do the washing up)

      QED

      1. Child: "When I grow up I am going to be a socialist."

        Mother: "Make your mind up; you can't do both!"

  73. I’ve had one of those infuriating letters (seconded to the Health Centre) from the NHS accusing me of failing to turn up for an appointment at the eye hospital. Needless to say I know nothing of this. I do have an appointment next week which was changed only this Monday from the Thursday to the Friday by a different consultant. Aghhhh! Are they completely useless?

    2. I had similar although I rang up and cancelled the appointment because I couldn’t make it and I rearranged a new one.

  74. The garden calls (or rather the MR does) despite the drizzle and cold north wid. Back later (or sooner!)

      1. 5 years apiece for everyone who heard it and the key thrown away for the person who said it.

      2. Of course but we wouldn’t do that publicly. Individuals, on the other hand… Only God knows what’s in their prayers.

      3. Jesus exhorted us to love one another, including our enemies. Islam tells it followers to hate and kill non-Muslims (especially Jews).

        1. Well, if Jesus was the son of God, Mohammed was the son of Satan, so what do you expect?

    1. He is such a pratt.
      Once again he missed the opportunity to visit the middle east where they thrive totally on oil and of course supplied the fuel for his flight.

  78. Back in. I have wimped out. Got the propagators out and on the greenhouse bench. Took bottles to the bottle bank. It is just cold and I am frozen. The old girl is sticking at it – well, she is young and fit.

    1. Even though I wore extra layers and a thicker coat with gloves I was still not very warm. No point in even thinking about gardening. It took a while to thaw out after the walk.

      1. The ground here hasn't thawed, it's like concrete. No point in messing with it unless you have a shaped charge the Army use to loosen the ground before digging a foxhole…

      1. Au contraire – I have urged her to come in out of the cold. She insists on weeding a long flowerbed.

        1. Warm some scented oil. Put on your Marigolds. Give her a hot oil massage. See what comes up.

    3. Oh, my! And that little look at the end.

      Unfortunately what I was really thinking was what if I had a large blood transfusion from her, would I gain a bit of her suppleness.

    4. I bet that took some practice.

      I hope you're feeling better RR. Have a good weekend and….. rest.

    5. Has anyone got her mobile number she would be a great hit at the Archery Club we can even offer a supply of rubber balloons!?

      1. Definitely. Feel worse in hospital, the noise, the ward boiling hot or freezing cold, waiting for consultant, x ray result. Staff are like the curate's egg…good in parts…

          2. I was thinking about falls. A lot of people I know had a fall, went into hospital and never came out alive.

          3. Yes – they can be very dangerous. He did have a fall, prior to admission, while playing table tennis. That was the first sign something was wrong.

    8. I've had a few post-vaccine, knocked myself out one time. No fun. Take care of yourself Rik, hope someone watching over you x

      1. Oh dear – not good. Fortunately I had no reactions to the AZ jabs I had. But I'm not having any more.

        1. I have days where I’m physically very tired, arm at jab site is sore…today has been one such, don’t have them as often now. I possibly overdid it yesterday, prob be OK tmrw 🤞 x! And definitely no more for me, of any stripe.

          1. The last jab I had was 2021, when we both had the shingles one – I had shingles in 2019, and it was very painful – apparently you can have it more than once. So I decided to have that one. All my travel jabs are now past their 10 year or 5 year dates but I didn't renew them before going to Brazil last September.

          2. And despite all the 'flu jabs that people have, the annual death rate from 'flu stubbornly and determinedly refuses to go down. You would think after all the jabs people have had over the years cases and deaths would have decreased, a little dent would have been made…. but no.

          3. They clearly do not work. I never bothered with the flu jab but the propaganda must have got to me in 2020 when I had one, and also the pneumonia one. I won't be bothering again.
            As far as I know, I've had flu (or a flu-like illness) twice in my life – at Christmas 1972 and March 1984. I recovered but not something I'd want again.

          4. I only had 'flu after the jab. Never felt so bad. Never again… now, Vit D3 keeps this all at bay. When they offered vaccine for Covid, they said it was like 'flu, so I didn't accept it. Another bullet dodged.

          5. I’ve had nothing to speak of since I started taking Vit D3 in 2020. Flu in 1972 and 1984 was memorably awful, so I don’t want it again. Though I did have something in August ’22, which gave me a Very sore throat for about three days but no other development.

          6. Ah but but but, ‘mum…the ‘flu vaccine has to change with the current version of the ‘flu dontcha know….we’d believe that one time, true or false, all of us pretty much wary of any jabs now..

    11. Another fall? Oh bugger.
      I do hope it is not becoming a regular occurrence or causes damage.

    12. Take care, man. Falls and stairs aren't a good combo… I get asked at work why I never take the (concrete) stairs and always the lift. Fall in the lift – bugger. Fall on the stairs – call the undertaker, not the ambulance.

  80. I asked a week or so ago when it all started to appear, what are all these recent 'content unavailable' postings. Why ? And what was it about originally ?
    And who made the comment ?
    Is there censorship happening now ?

    1. If you log out and then look at the post that says content unavailable you can see who it is.

        2. It could mean that he has blocked you, mola (could be accidental as I mention above).

        3. 'Lewis Duckworth' has (apparently) blocked me.

          I'v asked the Mods (on more than one occasion) to enquire why, but they have serially failed to do so.

    2. It tends to happen when somebody blocks you for whatever reason (sometimes it can be done accidentally).

      Log out of Disqus and revisit the offending post – it will say who has posted.

      Edit: Sorry, basically repeating what Phizzee says below…..

    4. I didn't see any, Eddy, far as I remember (bit flaky tho)….could it have been your internet provider?

  81. Profile and settings. However there is one person blocked here who doesn't appear in my blocked list. It must be a disqus fault.

    The only person i have actually blocked is Polly and all those prostitute sites that the Nudge Unit infested us with…

          3. Disqus? now, just two, Ndovu…KJ200 at Spectator, and KateJ1 at nttl/FSB/TCW…..why do you ask plse?

          5. Pretty sure I already replied, Ndovu…did you receive it, I said I have this one here KJ200, and another KateJ1 which I use on nttl, Freespeech Backlash, and Conservative Woman (didn't seem able to use that one on Spectator, hence KJ200). I said ..why did you ask?…

          6. Just that it was one with no moth avatar – so I looked and you’d had a much lower comment count than the usual one.

          7. I have no idea how I did that, Ndovu :-D…I started to look for the painting…I have folders/drawers full of the things, perhaps time for avatar change…then started to think about painting ideas, natural world full of those 🙂 This is how my scatter brain works all day long…

          8. Just found it…Grizzled Skipper, quite a small painting, had disappeared in the pile…

          3. Strangely, exactly what I and my Better Half say about/to each other…as usual, I’m in the right and he’s in the wrong….

      1. Good lord, is Polly still around? I thought he/she/it went up on smoke years ago.

        2. She even pops up here occasionally.

          I never had a particular problem with Polly, yes, very repetitious but often made interesting points and provided interesting links.

    3. I remember the very dim and distant pass when the first (unmanned) rocket was sent to the Moon. Its signal – a sort of bleep – was broadcast on the wireless as the landing neared. Then it hit and the noise stopped. A tiny part of me expected the Moon to disintegrate…

  90. I use Disqus on three sites, Ndovu (nttl, Freespeech Backlash and Spectator). Spectator often seems to jumble them up – if I check my messages there by clicking on Disqus it often brings up other sites where I've left messages… (especially in evening, presumably Jack and Digital Team having gone home)…sometimes it helps to log out of everything, reboot laptop, mobile etc. Or try throwing it on the floor, that should do it…just kidding….

    1. For ages when I tried to read my notifications all I got was advertisements and a log in request which wanted me to set up disqus on a website. It’s working okay now.

      1. It’s bizarre…your message has come to the Spectator Disqus, but I don’t think you’ll have posted it there? (I was on the naughty step there today because I posted about Mark Steyn’s latest, big fan of his..)

        1. Not guilty of visiting the Spectator. Disqus having a hissy fit. I typed a post and it refused to upload it saying posts could not be empty! The words were clearly visible in the box.

          1. I did have a problem when I first got this laptop at Christmas 2023. For a whole year I couldn't post a photo on here. But no problem now – it might have righted itself when Firefox did an update some time ago.

          2. I think it’s one of those ‘off the shelf, in a box’ pieces of s/w, Conway? Can be adapted in various ways…is it nttl you’re experiencing probs with?

          3. It seems to have cleared itself now. Just a glitch, probably. I’m on the laptop now.

          4. Good news, hope it stays that way 🙂 btw…vet did blood tests on dog, found ‘liver levels elevated’, wanted to do a scan which entailed him spending a day there and having his torso shaved, didn’t find anything of import prescribed some of those Yu-Move sachets for liver health, not much change, except I’m around £500 lighter. They see me a mile off. Four receptionists, one vet, one dog/owner (us). Dog left a dirty protest as I was paying the bill, which cheered me up a bit although I probably shouldn’t say so.

    2. I also use those three plus one or two more……… but I haven't had any problems. I haven't logged out of anything for ages and I just shut the lid of the laptop and everything is how I left it when I come back. I can't be doing with all the captcha rubbish.

      2. Must try that…wondering if anything to do with internet provider, a rural area here – think it’s B4RN…

          1. It’s the fibre optic broadband provider (get me, I have no idea what I’m talking about!)

          2. Ah – we're still with BT here. Though Gigaclear did the fibre installation hardware a couple of years ago.

    2. I've done a lot of work at Barrow Gas Terminals over the years, but calling the area "Southern Lakeland" is stretching it a bit.

  92. The woman is such a useless dork…

    Number 10 Slaps Down Reeves For Blaming UK Economic Woes on Trump

    Today’s ONS data revealing UK GDP shrank by 0.1% in January was another blow to Reeves as she tries to sell herself as the ‘growth’ Chancellor. Up in Scotland this morning, she struggled through answering questions from broadcasters over the figures. Her tax-hiking, business-bashing budget would be a good place to start…

    Instead, Reeves seemed to shift the blame across the Atlantic, pointing the finger at President Trump. Asked whether uncertainty around Trump’s tariff threats was “coming through in these figures,” she responded:

    “I believe, this Government believes, in free and open trade, and will continue to make that point. We are in negotiations at the moment for an economic agreement with the United States to try and ensure that British exporters are supported to export all around the world, including to the United States, and to ensure that they don’t push up prices for UK consumers with more tariffs.”

    Now Starmer’s spokesman has come out against Reeves’ comments, telling reporters that Trump is not to blame for the economy shrinking. A swift slap-down…

    March 14 2025 @ 14:54

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

    Richard
    1h
    Reeves must be on borrowed time. Her attempt at blaming Trump for the January figures is risible, since Trump was not inaugurated as POTUS until 21st January.

    Editor of Readers Tractors
    1h
    She's spent years claiming to have done things that she hasn't.
    Not surprising that she should now deny responsibility for something that she did do.

    Hugh Culp
    1h
    All rather touching. Keith thought he'd secured exemption from 25%'s worth of tariffs, gets slapped with them anyway, and tells his party not to offend Trump. Trump = Result.

    Send in the Clones
    1h
    Well, at least she and her mates got their heating bills sorted.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a3fe67561b7359d4e384601ec78f37589a3c90465a735bae652b6f37767b7d47.png

  94. Wordle No. 1,364 3/6

    ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩
    🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 14 Mar 2025

    A slice for Birdie Three!

    1. A truly wretched word, I normally do wordle with my first cup of tea in bed –
      Yesterday I got it in two . Today I didn't complete it until midday and it took 5 tries .Well done for getting it in three .

          2. Hello, yes I had my name long before those famous cards 🙂

    2. Five today.

      Wordle 1,364 5/6

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

      1. Wordle 1,364 4/6

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

    4. Nice one! Just a par here…

      Wordle 1,364 4/6

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

    5. There you all are. Wordled this morning but now back from the pub.

      A par, I think, here.

      Wordle 1,364 4/6

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

  95. Good early evening – it's almost 5 o'clock and still light.

        1. Must be the equinox very soon. Still light just now when I fetched the washing in. Nearly dark now though.

        1. Yes. I had a different elephant on the phone but lost it somehow and the sunrise pic was handy.

    1. Not the name of my birth certificate. The Christian name of my main Saxon Queen's account of which I barely use these days, if ever. It still works but mainly dormant,

        1. That is someone else, I think a picture of a lady on the phone called Æthelflæd.

          2. No she's not me . Mine is the Lady of the Mercians who fought Vikings ( not Peddy ) .

        2. I don’t post at TCW. I used to post at Archbishop Cranmer, I sometimes post at the Spectator but I’ve posted at this small reasonably friendly site for the longest time of 6 years on and off. I don’t use my main account very often as I had issues with leftie loons following me around. I just hope they don’t read these pages. There is no reason to question me and all sites are in the public domain I need to protect myself. Thank you

          1. Leftie loons have left us alone here for a long time time now. We’re all fairly normal here.

          2. I do know that, I’ve been here on and off for 6 years. its a problem someone has with me personally who looks at sites to see if I’m around, found me initially at the Spectator a couple of years back and spends time snooping on sites so I’d like not to to be under spotlight and questioned, especially now it’s less busy now that the Spexciles have left Sorry. I don’t post at TCW and never have its a authoritarian conspiracy site from what I gather from friends at the Spectator.

          3. Many of the articles at TCW are well worth reading – and the comments are mostly from quite sane people.

  98. B4RN have been good, signals were very weak previously. Will be sticking with it, unless service changes. We have no landline, only mbles.

    1. We still have the landline – I dislike using my phone for speaking – only internet. But when they change to VOIP I'm not sure what we'll do then.

      1. Tommy Docherty!
        Ooh, and Harold Wilson! He had a dirty ring round his shirt collar!

      2. Snap on Princess Anne.
        My brother met most of the royal family.
        He was "Guardian" at Gordonstoun.

    2. Politically, Ted Heath. Also at the same event (The Round the Island Race circa 1970), Buddy Ebsen of Beverley Hillbillies fame. Heath was very much "why am I talking to these plebs" in attitude, Ebsen was the complete opposite – very open and friendly and thanked us (me plus colleague) for our help.

      Still got my silver (plated) RTI tankard I was given on the day.

      1. In 1965 I sailed with my parents aboard their old boat Atahualpa which had been built in 1910 in the Island Sailing Club's Round The Island Race.

        Here is a picture of Atahualpa and my tankard made of pewter rather than silver-plated and the lettering on it not too clear.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2edec9dd8b9d1cb3352ea97c8298e34691cd9bd2925960f35c7e888041ccce62.jpg

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9fa78c7bb0c9b3c2405b7a6a2c04f780eb164b3e94955bb44033dedbef59e515.jpg

        1. Is that antique pewter, which contains lead?

          Or is the modern lead-free equivalent of tin with small amounts of antimony, copper, bismuth, and (occasionally) trace amounts of silver?

        1. Senior or Junior? Jnr had a 100/1 winner at Cheltenham today! Irish horse, trained by W Mullins, though.

          1. Senior I expect! It was in 1975/6! He was a lovely, funny man especially after a drink!

    4. Princess Anne, Gordon Banks, Kenneth Baker, Teddy Taylor, Timothy West, Prunella Scales, Ian Lavender & held a door open for Judy Dench….

    8. I once booked Michael Portillo for a customer event – he cost about £6,000 around 20 years ago! That said, he was excellent value and spent all night (after a very good speech) talking to our customers.

      1. Laurel & Hardy, at Amien's Street station, Dublin 1953, I( had them to myself for 15 mins!)
        Jack Lynch Taoiseach 1963
        Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson (Dublin 1965)
        Madam Dhiba (wife of the Shah of Persia) on the Hunting field in Co. Wexford; I was her 'minder')
        Ted Heath, St Andrews 1975
        Margaret Thatcher, Keith Joseph, Dundee 1976
        Mikhail Gorbachev, Hotel York, Toronto, 1993 . . .

        et al

        1. Very impressive, Rene (particularly L&H, I visit the museum in Ulverston regularly!).

          What exactly did you do? Please tell… I’m all ears!!

  101. GB News sacked Dan Wootton; GBNews sacked Mark Steyn; GB News sacked Laurence Fox, GB News sacked Calvin Robinson, GB News sacked Mark Dolan.

    Maybe it's time for GB News to sack Nigel Farage.

    1. I have thought for quite some time now, that Farage is, to put it somewhat coarsely, and as we would say round our way, all fur coat and no knickers.

    2. That's a matter of imbuggeration to me since I never watch political channels, television programmes (Question Time), nor political newspapers or websites. I simply do not do politics.

      By the same token nor do I do religion. Life is too short and precious to let those 'twin impostors' get in the way of my far more interesting and stimulating hobbies and pastimes.

  102. Boycott Waitrose!

    Waitrose wine expert claims he was suspended for sharing Telegraph cartoon

    Reform supporter Ben Woods says supermarket targeted him after a social media post was promoted by Elon Musk

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/business/2025/03/14/TELEMMGLPICT000328533089_17419664259210_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq_Yc98rkRE0zMijRd9wXErtkM9MM8VM3G1BxlGUO4L8Q.jpeg?imwidth=680

    https://twitter.com/benonwine/status/1900020603983212576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1900020603983212576%7Ctwgr%5Eb62bba7ff70cf593cc647a68ca9505798fd19061%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fbusiness%2F2025%2F03%2F14%2Fwaitrose-worker-claims-suspended-sharing-telegraph-cartoon%2F
    https://twitter.com/benonwine/status/1863865741927170364?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1863865741927170364%7Ctwgr%5Eb62bba7ff70cf593cc647a68ca9505798fd19061%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fbusiness%2F2025%2F03%2F14%2Fwaitrose-worker-claims-suspended-sharing-telegraph-cartoon%2F https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/14/waitrose-worker-claims-suspended-sharing-telegraph-cartoon/

    1. Any attempt on my part to boycott Waitrose would be utterly ineffective. There is no Waitrose near me and opportunities to shop at its stores elsewhere are few and far between. I may just as well boycott Macy's or Target.

      1. We dont have Waitrose oop t'North (at least I dont think so) but we do have Booths – which is generally labelled 'The Northern Waitrose' – it is hideously expensive but my wife assures me the quality of the goods warrants it….hmmm…..

  103. It is impossible to fail to notice the huge amount of dissatisfaction with the NHS in the UK, especially since a good number of fellow NoTTLers report they have suffered from the now commonplace amateurism and inefficacy of that 'service'.

    This morning, out of the blue, I received a package from the Swedish Health Service containing a request for a stool sample to be sent back to them for analysis.

    Apparently this is a common occurrence with people attaining my age (74) in this country. The analysis is to determine whether or not I may be showing symptoms of colonic cancer.

    A few years ago I was invited to attend a clinic at a local hospital to check on the health of my prostate gland. I have to say that their attention to patient care here — especially in preventive medicine — is second-to-none.

    1. We've had the postal bowel cancer testing kits for some years here – but I think they stop sending them once you reach a certain age – which I probably have.

    2. We've had the postal bowel cancer testing kits for some years here – but I think they stop sending them once you reach a certain age – which I probably have.

    3. We've had the request/offer in France almost since we arrived.

      Phizzee suggests it's possibly because I'm full of shit!

        1. Oddly enough, no.

          It originated from a time when I was auditing one of our investment management subsidiaries, where the management was dire and most of the staff were incompetent and rude to clients.
          You name the function , it was useless.
          I coined the name as a shorthand, and several of my team adopted it as a quick way to describe any business or department that was similar. Call them sosraboc and one knew exactly what they were dealing with.

          Hence shower of shits running abunch of cunts

          1. If I had a tenner for every time I have encountered ineffective or completely useless work colleagues, bosses, departments, organisations or companies throughout my working life, I would have been able to retire a very rich man.

          2. The point of the sosraboc adjective to a business/department was it was that the whole business area was awful, far beyond a few colleagues or bosses.

          3. If I had a tenner for every time I have encountered ineffective or completely useless work colleagues, bosses, departments, organisations or companies throughout my working life, I would have been able to retire a very rich man.

    4. I get regular requests to send off a stool sample to the bowel cancer screening people. I'm 76.

      1. Here in Spain I have been receiving these since I was in my early sixties. I'm now 70.

      2. Yes, I'm 67 and have received a few.

        The idea of shitting into a random receptacle and sending it in the post (!) to some complete stranger to analyse fills me with horror – I mean, what do they write back? The very best it could be would be something like – 'We've looked at (and sniffed) your shite and it seems OK for the moment – we'll request more shite next year' Aint life grand?

  104. That's me for today. Yet another cold and damp day. More follows….

    I was thinking about the report that Denmark is stopping all mail deliveries and removing letter boxes. Presumably that will knock the greetings card industry on the head. I always thought that Hamlet bloke was odd…

    Have a jolly evening keeping warm.

    A demain. One hopes.

    2. What is weird about that is that the Danish postal service is run by PostNord, a Norwegian-based company that also runs the postal service in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Yet they are only curtailing the postal service in Denmark.

      1. My old school friend who lives in Denmark complained last Christmas about the cost of sending cards etc – she sent hers by email, having always sent a card and letter through the post before. I didn't know they were stopping postal services altogether though.

      2. Bought a new power supply for my pc, to be delivered by post in Norway.
        After 2 weeks screwing around, they delivered to an all-night store close to the shop I would have gone to to buy the thing from in the first place!
        Argh! Useless effers.

  106. Latest Breaking News,

    Trump has a cunning plan to defeat Putin if he doesn't sign a peace deal, to destroy Russia's economy.
    He has done a deal with Starmer to put Rachel Reeves in charge of Russia's economy.

    1. It's over a bloody hour, O! I'm far too important to waste that much of my time (is it something to do with the bloke with the bad head?) – cant you just tell us?

      1. I just was suddenly startled by the visuals, 4G. No-one white. It gave me a weird, threatened moment, even though Nana and the Sikh guy are on our side.

        1. Right, that's it! I always harboured suspicions that you were an unmitigated 'far-right' raayyyycissst and you have proved that. A spell in the re-education camp (aka the BBC) should put you right!

          1. No No not the BBC – that's the ICC's definition of Cruel and Unusual Punishment!….

  108. Old Speccie friend the Squire hasn't been on these pages for a very long time,
    I assume he's busy with the Speccie. He like myself loves classical music, I recall he put up very interesting posts about music and other subjects. A good egg .

    1. I was wondering what had happened to him, but I assumed he'd got tired of us and gone off to play elsewhere.

      1. He must still be at the Spectator, he is one for various articles on whatever subject and liked the Spectator journalists. Apart from speaking about music and his dog I don’t feel he was ever one for chatting unless there is a article on whatever subject.

  109. Musk appears to endorse Rupert Lowe amid Reform civil war

    Billionaire fuels falling out with Farage by signalling support for now-independent MP for Great Yarmouth in social media post

    Dominic Penna Political Correspondent.
    Jacob Freedland
    14 March 2025 4:53pm GMT

    Elon Musk has appeared to endorse Rupert Lowe in the wake of his extraordinary falling out with Nigel Farage that prompted civil war in Reform UK.

    The tech billionaire, who now has a major role in the White House under Donald Trump, used his social media platform X – formerly Twitter – to signal his support for Mr Lowe by posting two Union flag emojis alongside a montage of the MP’s speeches.

    It came as the now-independent MP for Great Yarmouth and the Reform leader sat about 400 metres apart at Cheltenham Racecourse as they separately attended the Gold Cup meeting on Friday.

    Reform suspended Mr Lowe last week amid accusations of bullying and the party reporting him to the police over threats he is alleged to have made against Zia Yusuf, its chairman.

    Mr Lowe denies all allegations and claims they are nothing more than a “witch hunt” after he broke ranks days before his suspension to criticise Mr Farage’s leadership.

    The war of words between Mr Lowe and Mr Farage escalated significantly in the following days.

    'I love gambling' said Nigel Farage on his day at the Cheltenham Gold Cup

    The Reform leader said on Wednesday there was “no way back” for his former business spokesman following his claim that the party silenced him over the rape gangs scandal.

    In his first intervention since the row broke out, Mr Musk replied to a tweet which included a video montage of Mr Lowe that was first posted to TikTok.

    The compilation had been uploaded to X with the caption: “Can we please get this man as prime minister?”

    Mr Musk indicated his agreement by posting two Union flag emojis as a reply.

    The montage he responded to was uploaded to TikTok earlier in the week by an account called “REAL BRIT REAL TALK” and has had more than 79,000 likes on the platform.

    Accompanied on TikTok with the words “can he be the one?”, it shows parts of a speech given by Mr Lowe at a Reform event in Essex prior to his suspension.

    He can be heard saying: “Watching Trump and the Americans, it has made me even more determined to restore our great country through a Great Repeal Act when Labour falls at the next election.”

    In the second part of the montage, Mr Lowe continued: “I don’t particularly care if we’re liked by the rest of the world. I care if we’re respected, because right now Britain is a joke and has been for some time.”

    He said in his third section of his speech: “I want the British Government to put the British people at the top of the agenda.

    “We should make no apologies for that, learn from Trump, let’s be unapologetically patriotic, slash tax across the board, enforce the border, deport those with no right to be here, accept biological reality, fight back against wokery, bulldoze nonsensical foreign aid, eradicate DEI, deliver sensible infrastructure, carpet bomb public sector waste, brutally crack down on crime and plenty more.”

    In a reference to Mr Trump’s “make America great again” slogan, Mr Lowe said in the fourth and final clip: “Let’s make Great Britain great again. Thank you.”

    It is not the first time the Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur has signalled his support for Mr Lowe at the apparent expense of Mr Farage.

    In January, Mr Musk sent shockwaves through Westminster by withdrawing his support from Mr Farage, whom he had met at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort just weeks before.

    In an abrupt change of heart, he posted on Jan 5: “The Reform party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes.” He went on to tentatively suggest Mr Lowe could replace him.

    The row is thought to have damaged relations between Mr Farage and Mr Lowe, who are understood to have been drifting apart since they became MPs at last year’s election.

    Following Mr Musk’s endorsement, the official Reform X account stopped sharing posts by Mr Lowe, whose opinions have been endorsed by Mr Musk on many occasions since.

    At Cheltenham on Friday, Mr Farage was pictured on a balcony outside a hospitality box alongside Nick Candy, the billionaire property tycoon turned treasurer of the party.

    The Clacton MP told reporters of his love for the festival when he arrived that morning. “The atmosphere, the people, I’ve been coming over 40 years,” he said.

    “It’s just the most adorable day,” he added. Asked what he thought of gambling, he replied: “I love it.”

    Mr Lowe was pictured standing outside the Royal Box – where the Princess Royal was due to be watching the day’s action.

    Tickets to watch Friday’s coveted Gold Cup race sold out, with 70,000 spectators expected to be in attendance.

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

    1. The "people" are mostly Irish from the Republic. So are the horses these days. I bet he doesn't go to Wolverhampton on a wet Monday.

      1. Incidentally, "The smallest Cheltenham Festival crowd this century was recorded on Wednesday this week, with 41,949 in attendance for Queen Mother Champion Chase day. The drop of just under 5,000 from last year, when 46,771 attended on the Wednesday, echoes the fall in Tuesday's crowd, which decreased from 60,181 to 55,498, the smallest for that day since 2012. As recently as 2022 the crowd on the Wednesday of the festival was 64,431. Wednesday's attendance beats the record low since 2000 of 45,649, recorded on the second day of the festival in 2009."

        1. GBN have been running a story today claiming that many people have been watching the Cheltenham meeting on big screens in bars in Benidorm. Cheaper and warmer.

          1. Yes, that is definitely true. It started last year or the year before and now it's quite organised.

          1. So I understand. When Desert Orchid beat Yahoo, the race was delayed because of snow and there was some discussion as to whether it should have been abandoned.

          2. So I understand. When Desert Orchid beat Yahoo, the race was delayed because of snow and there was some discussion as to whether it should have been abandoned.

    1. A BTL Comment on one of the Telegraph articles on that matter:-

      SHUSH, listen.
      You can't hear it can you?
      Where are the howling, hysteric screams?
      The wailing and gnashing of teeth?
      Where are the orchestrated and co-ordinated chants of "SAVE OUR NHS" and "THEY WANT TO DESTROY/PRIVATISE {delete as appropriate} OUR NHS coming from the REFMS in the upper NHS echelons as well as the NHS Unions?
      Those cries that, for decades, have traditionally greeted any hint of NHS Reform?
      Or is this simply a paper exercise that will be little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

      2. Biggest problem ahead is who actually owns all the NHS property. Not this 'king labour 'king government that's for sure.
        And will there be a refund for all the payments made by British taxpayers ?

        1. Refunds for taxpayers? You mad or sumfink? Telford gloats it's got a government grant to hand out to people on low incomes struggling to pay their heating bills. Hell-OH! Don't effing tax us with green taxes to make electricity so damned expensive in the first place then you won't need to hand out my money to (mainly, I suspect – it is Telford, after all) gimmigrants.

          1. I just thought I’d throw it out there, I know there’s no chance but it reminds us that we have been paying to support the National Health ‘Service’ for decades. And it’s slipping away. By the hands of our destructive moronic political idiots.

    2. A BTL Comment on one of the Telegraph articles on that matter:-

      SHUSH, listen.
      You can't hear it can you?
      Where are the howling, hysteric screams?
      The wailing and gnashing of teeth?
      Where are the orchestrated and co-ordinated chants of "SAVE OUR NHS" and "THEY WANT TO DESTROY/PRIVATISE {delete as appropriate} OUR NHS coming from the REFMS in the upper NHS echelons as well as the NHS Unions?
      Those cries that, for decades, have traditionally greeted any hint of NHS Reform?
      Or is this simply a paper exercise that will be little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

  112. Off topic

    We won a frozen haunch of venison at the local hunt feast's tombola last year; it's been sitting in the freezer and we decided it really needed eating.

    We defrosted it over a couple of days and, under instruction from HG, I stripped it down from the bones into cubes of meat for a stew.

    The meat was cooked very slowly in burgundy in accordance with a boeuf bourguignon recipe, and it has produced the most delicious rich gravy, the meat was melt in the mouth and there were no gristly, sinewy bits. The button onions, mushrooms and other vegetables and some beef stock blended superbly.

    We'll get ten servings from it in total, tonight's have put me in a sit back and rub the tummy mode.

  113. From Coffee House the Spectator

    15 Mar 2025
    Spectator Life
    Sean Thomas
    Good riddance to literary fiction
    It seems silly to have to say it but readers want stories
    14 March 2025, 5:01am
    From Spectator Life

    In case you hadn’t noticed, the London Book Fair has been gracing our nation’s capital this week, down in Earl’s Court. There, the publishers, agents and buyers of the literary globe (London is second only to Frankfurt in ‘book fair importance’) have been feverishly buying and selling the rights to hot new titles, hot new authors, maybe the odd lucky midlister, while identifying the trends, writers and genres that conceal the ultra-precious kernel of hotness to come.

    In today’s market it’s likely that buyers have been looking for visually rich comic books for children – enjoying a resurgence – and anything in a newish genre called ‘romantasy’ (think Fifty Shades of Grey meets Game of Thrones, with more vampires and less spanking). But what the buyers and agents won’t be looking for is literary fiction.

    This is, of course, not news. The decline of literary fiction – the highbrow novels published by imprints like Picador and Granta, the look-at-me books you were keen to be seen clutching in a café, or on the train – has long been noted. But now this esteemed literary niche has virtually disappeared.

    Once upon a time, literary novelists such as John Updike, Richard Ford, A.S. Byatt, Zadie Smith, J.M. Coetzee, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Ondaatje and many others were viewed as the pyramidion of literature. Nowadays such writers are published – if published at all – by little imprints, who offer advances that would barely cover Tom Wolfe’s dry cleaning bill: a typical pro writer in 2024 earns around £7,000, half the income of a decade before. Royalties have likewise plunged as sales have fallen off the bookshelf. What’s more, when these books do come out, they are given reviews no one reads, and then they disappear – unless they are fortunate enough to win a major prize, in which case they disappear.

    In other words, the literary novel has gone the way of poetry. There was a time when a new poem by Tennyson would garner a splash in the Times. I am old enough to remember when a new Ian McEwan novel actually made the TV news (back when people watched TV news). Such a thing seems laughable now.

    It’s at this point that the lament for literary fiction usually takes a judgmental edge, as the observer notes the increasing imbecility of the modern reader, dulled by smartphones, dazzled by TikTok and cursed with the attention span of a jittery teenage gnat on crack. But I am not of that ilk. I say good riddance to literary fiction – it was a silly, self-defeating genre in the first place, putting posh books in a posh ghetto, walling itself off from everyday readers.

    What makes this more poignant, for me, is that I once enjoyed this stuff. In my twenties and thirties I chortled over early Martin Amis, I admired Julian Barnes, I quite liked The World According to Garp, and I struggled manfully through Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

    Then, something happened, and that something was The Da Vinci Code. This book, which sold approximately 17 trillion copies, seemed to provoke an ire in literary folk out of all proportion to its possible merits. It made clever people weirdly angry. I particularly remember Stephen Fry saying it was ‘arse gravy’.

    Could it really be that bad? One day I picked up The Da Vinci Code to see for myself. After about an hour of reading I was 150 pages in – and hooked. Not because of the prose, style or dialogue – that was all quite workmanlike – but because the book had a deviously intricate plot that kept you fiercely engaged, almost against your will. It had, in short, a cracking story.

    And that’s when I decided I’d read pretty much my last work of literary fiction. Because when I read a novel what I really want is not beautiful sentences, but story. Indeed, we all want story. Why? Perhaps because human life is a story, with a definite beginning, middle and end. Perhaps because reality feels like a story.

    I am old enough to remember when a new Ian McEwan novel actually made the TV news (back when people watched TV news)

    Indeed, you could argue the entire universe is a brilliantly plotted thriller – it has the classic, violent inciting scene (the Big Bang), it has the turbulent, compelling and unpredictable middle – we’re in an especially riotous section right now – and the end is a mystery which we desperately wish to unravel. I hope it’s a wedding, not a funeral. Meanwhile, the author of the universe is more reclusive than J.D. Salinger.

    How did literary fiction come to forsake story, plot and narrative? You could blame the modernists. Just as early 20th-century classical composers decided to abandon melody (the narrative of music) and thereby commercially cratered their art form, so modernist 20th-century writers decided to forego plot – with, in the end, similarly calamitous results.

    Now, going plotless was OK if you were mid-season James Joyce writing Ulysses – because Joyce at his best wrote sentences better than God. The problem is 99.99997 per cent of writers are not James Joyce. There are some partial and noble exceptions – writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Donna Tartt, Cormac McCarthy, Douglas Stuart (Shuggie Bain) – who have managed to combine the joys of proper narrative with quite intellectual writing. But so many haven’t. Instead, they give us storyless literary fiction.

    Will it one day return, the literary novel? The other day I decided to see if things have improved – by reading some recent litfic. I chose Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, as it is one of the most lauded novels of recent times. And what I found was a book that has a fine opening, with great promise… and then it takes the inevitable plotless turn, and it becomes a pointless, repetitive polyphony of discordant dead people shouting at poor old Abe. Reading it was like being trapped inside a Sir Harrison Birtwistle opera. And I speak as someone who has been trapped inside a Sir Harrison Birtwistle opera (seat F, row 9, Royal Opera House).

    However, if this all sounds depressing, it shouldn’t. As the bustling London Book Fair shows, books are thriving – even if litfic is a dead star. People still crave stories, readers still open books with eager anticipation, there is still money, fun and fame to be made with your mind and mere words. Just make sure, if you’re a writer, that you don’t mistake prettiness for purpose, obscurity for profundity. And maybe insert a dead body around page 90.

    Written by
    Sean Thomas
    Sean Thomas is a bestselling author. He tweets from @thomasknox.

    1. Reading it was like being trapped inside a Sir Harrison Birtwistle opera.

      Good Lord!
      I can't think of anything worse than being trapped inside a Sir Harrison Birtwistle opera!

    2. All of the authors listed as once being the "pyramidion of literature" I'd never heard of – and I read a lot!

      1. I don't read as much as I used to. Novels which I might have read as a youngster appear tiresome and turgid. I watched The Count of Monte Cristo the other night. A long book condensed into a film of a mere three hours, they left most of the story out I told my wife. I read it when I was eleven. Couldn't face a task like that now. Nor Crime and Punishment. I'm ploughing through East of Eden, rereading forty years later. But the Da Vinci Code, unputdownable, as the writer states. Scruffy writing, factual errors abound but what a great story. That's what it's all about.

        1. I seldom read fiction, but when I do, I want to be entertained. Felix Francis is a good, quick read. His father's books were always well researched.

  114. In your case they could do it with a simple blood or spit test.

    Sorry, open goal, irresistible.

  116. From Coffee House the Spectator

    15 Mar 2025
    Coffee House
    Jim Lawley
    How Spain is trying to dodge spending more on defence
    14 March 2025, 4:39pm

    Spain’s defence spending, at a mere 1.28 per cent of its GDP, lags behind all other Nato members. While most European Union countries have already reached the target of 2 per cent that was agreed back in 2014, at the present rate of progress Spain won’t get there until 2029.

    Such a leisurely approach is no longer tenable. President Trump has proposed 5 per cent as the appropriate benchmark for defence expenditure, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, is demanding urgent rearmament in Europe and Nato is expected to raise the target to well above 3 per cent at its summit in June. Suddenly it looks as though Spain’s procrastination – what might be termed a ‘mañana’ approach to defence spending – risks exhausting the patience of Spain’s allies, especially since Spain currently has the EU’s best-performing economy. ‘Spain is very low,’ Trump said when discussing defence spending last month.

    So left-wing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is now facing mounting pressure to increase defence spending very significantly and extremely quickly. His problem is that his fragile minority coalition government depends on the support of hard left parties that are vociferously anti-American and anti-Nato. The leader of Podemos for example says that in proposing increased expenditure on defence Sánchez is simply ‘licking the boots’ of President Trump whom she likes to describe as ‘a dangerous fascist’.

    Nor is the idea of increased defence spending any more popular with some of Sánchez’s other allies. The regional and separatist parties of Catalonia and the Basque Country for example have other agendas and intensely local priorities. Over the last three decades Spanish governments have frequently depended on the support of these parties and the result has been an inward-looking political culture increasingly focused on national rather than international issues.

    Sánchez also has to contend with his country’s strong pacifist tradition; Spain has long prided itself on staying out of international conflicts, taking no part for example in either of the world wars. It’s true that in 2003 Spain briefly joined forces with the US and the UK to invade Iraq but that was hugely unpopular with the Spanish people – 90 per cent opposed the invasion. When the socialists regained power in March 2004 the troops were withdrawn immediately. While very popular at home, internationally that U-turn earned Spain a reputation as an unreliable ally.

    In an attempt to placate the hard left and separatist parties that prop up his government, Sánchez has promised that the increase in defence spending will not cause the budget for social spending to be reduced by ‘a single cent’. He is also making a bold (and self-serving) attempt to redefine ‘defence spending’ as ‘security spending’. In what he terms his ‘360 degree’ vision, he argues that money spent preventing cyber attacks, countering terrorism and preparing to meet ‘the climate emergency in the Mediterranean’ should also count as defence-related expenditure. It is only the eastern European, the Nordic and Baltic countries, he has suggested, that need to spend more on defence in the traditional military sense. After all, he pointed out with just a hint of a smile, nobody seriously imagines that Russia will be marching its troops over the Pyrenees.

    Sánchez also hopes that any defence spend above 2 per cent will be funded from EU sources – either in the form of additional debt issuance or perhaps via the repurposing of existing programmes. However, given the latest declarations from both the EU and Nato, it looks very much as if Spain itself is going to be asked to find most of the money required to more than double its defence spending.

    After a brief meeting with Sánchez, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of Spain’s main opposition party, the right-wing Partido Popular, declared that the prime minister doesn’t have any coherent plan and called for parliamentary debate on these proposed increases. Sánchez, however, may be hoping that what would certainly be an extremely rowdy and unpredictable confrontation can be avoided.

    Nato and European Economic Community membership in the 1980s marked Spain’s reintegration into the international community after decades of isolation during General Franco’s dictatorship. Now, Spain is facing the less palatable obligations that fully paid up membership of the western democratic ‘club’ entails.

    Written by
    Jim Lawley
    Jim Lawley is a former university lecturer who has lived and worked in Spain for 40 years.

    1. Don't you worry, Starmer and Lammy will give Gibraltar to Spain, together with billions in compensation for them to spend on defence.

      1. Every one of the apes will receive 500 thousand pounds each for slavery reimbursement.

      2. Tony Blair had plans to return Gibraltar to Spain and was thwarted. I don’t think Starmer will risk it and anyway I believe Spain secretly enjoys the economic benefits British occupation of the rock brings to the region.

    2. The rules for being a member of most clubs are simple. If you don't pay the dues, you are kicked out. Spain can always elect to take that position with NATO.

      1. Nato was foisted on the Spanish. It was a condition of EU membership and there was even a referendum. I remember my wife’s uncle saying ‘I’m voting yes but in my heart I’m voting no.’ Yes I thought it was a daft way to go about things too. My wife voted no.

          1. No it wasn’t. Spain already had a bilateral treaty with the US and didn’t need NATO. Not for that matter the EU. A self sufficient prosperous country, it was practically ruined by EU membership. Promises of German investment destroyed by the demands of German reunification and investment in eastern Europe.

          2. Rubbish.
            Forcing Spain into NATO because it was a condition of their joining the EU most certainly meant Spain was foisted upon NATO.
            I agree Spain didn't need to join the EU, but having decided so to do, NATO was stuck with Spain.

          3. What do you mean it was ‘stuck’ with Spain? The US needed Spain. The UK needed Spain. Spain is the entrance to the Mediterranean and has always been a key piece for European military activity. That’s why the British are in Gibraltar, American military bases all over Spain.

          4. Ha bloody ha.
            Spain is a has been; nowadays little more than a glorified holiday park.
            Britain has controlled the real key to the Med since the treaty of Utrecht 1713.

          6. This comment is virtually unanswerable.
            I’ve listened to this kind of rhetoric so many times about different countries from people who know very little about the world in which we live.
            A glorified holiday park! The treaty of Utrecht! Really?
            I think it was the New York Times which published the gem that the British spend their days eating boiled mutton. One wonders what goes through these people’s heads.

          7. Indeed.
            I was being deliberately provocative, because I get fed up with being told how wonderful everywhere else is, regarding defence and NATO, except Britain.
            Having US bases on your territory in Europe is generally because of being in NATO, as people will soon discover if the yanks pull back.

          8. As I previously indicated Spain already had a bilateral agreement with the US from the 1950s when Eisenhower first installed American bases in Spain.
            The Spanish government were anxious to enter the EU in 1986 believing it to be a bulwark protection of a fragile recently installed democracy and they were willing to make many sacrifices to satisfy their European neighbours.

          9. And, to be fair, they have done well apart from a bigger than average blip during the financial crisis.
            The US has many bilateral agreements, I doubt they would have worked in the same way as NATO, eg if France had decided to do a Putin over Catalonia I very much doubt the USA would have come in on Spain’s side, except possibly diplomatically.

  117. Oop t’North?? We have Waitrose in Scotland! Don’t use it, (clarty shop, and unpleasant staff) but we have one in Stirling!

    1. I wont make a joke about Jocks being tight-wads, as that would demean both me and you (!), but every time I go to Booths it costs £60 no matter what I buy!!

  118. Agreed.
    If I had been totally confident that the meat was worth it, we would have. We do when using beef.

    We used a standard AOC, which was fine, I enjoyed the last of the bottle with the meal.

  119. Just been chatting on WhatsApp with number one son, he's really enjoying North Island NZ He's back home next Tuesday via another stop over in Sydney. He's made some good friends and I suspect will be back over with his family.

    I'm washing up after dinner soon, a sneaky glass of red and as it rhymes, soon off to bed.
    Back tmz. 🤞

    1. Reform have shown themselves up as just another bunch of back stabbing wasters.

      They need policies.
      They need a plan.
      They need focus and direction people can get behind.
      They need the research to understand what the problems are and how to dismantle them.

      At the moment they don't have any of these things. Rupert Lowe was asking for them. Farage prefers bluster and grand vision.

    2. When we do 'hospitality' either taking clients out to dinner or more usually taking the cable guys to lunch when I keep the receipt I pay my bill from my salary. The rest we claim on expenses. In big fat state land they take the money, pocket it and spend a pittance.

      The Left really are putrid.

    1. Britain was broken the second the appalling 'communities' act, equality act, HRA and all the other horrific, appalling nonsense to excuse the abuses of muslim were forced on us.

      The Tories could have removed them. They chose not to.

    2. The root cause of the two tier system which prioritises minorities is the embodiment of universal human rights into English law.

      Thus some alien from darkest Africa has more rights than an indigenous white person in the UK.

  123. We get Reeves spouting tripe like this:

    Despite the US President not assuming office until January 20, the Chancellor played the “the world has changed” card during a visit to Scotland on Friday, adding: “Across the globe we are feeling the consequences”.

    From: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/14/if-britain-plunges-into-recession-reeves-must-resign/

    The simple reality is the problems this country is having and that will only become vastly worse in April are solely, completely and totally down to her utter incompetence, spite and stupidity.

    Her endless excuses are tiresome. The sad thing is the Left wing media trots them out with abandon, never saying 'you're lying, aren't you?'

    1. "….. down to Labour's desire to utterly destroy the United Kingdom and its economy."

      1. Reeves simply refuses to acknowledge, despite all the evidence that she is solely responsible (as Hunt was before her) for the enforced decline.

        It was avoidable. It wasn't inevitable. It was engineered by her stupid attitudes.

        1. My view is that she’s sufficiently financially illiterate (more than innumerate) and stupid to grasp the realities of her ridiculous, vindictive and idealogical game-plan. She should be removed from office and put on a GCSE economics (for beginners) course.

    2. Unfortunately some prat granted independence to the Bank of England which means that a small cabal of international bankers control the money supply and not politicians.

      Reeves is a stupid liar but without money printing she would be a dead woman walking. Remember Carney sang her praises and he was a disaster when leading the Bank of England.

      Carney, the man with the reverse Midas touch except where his own personal income is concerned.

      1. Step forward one Gordon Brown – mind you, if the government had had control of the money supply we'd be in no better state given who's been in office since then.

    3. He's the answer to the question…

      'What would you look like if your pubes grew out of your head?' ……

    4. Catch me on a bad day when I need a head shave and I look like a hedge. His competence is in what he does, not how he looks. That's most of today's problems: a carefully curated image has to be presented at all times rather than reality.

      2. His name is Omar Alghabra. He served under Justin Trudeau as Minister for Transport until July 26, 2023.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Alghabra

        Since then, he has not had a ministerial position and has not been appointed to Mark Carney's first cabinet.

        https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/full-list-prime-minister-mark-carneys-first-cabinet

        It seems rather unlikely to me that he'd be appointed Deputy Prime Minister.

        While he is an.odd looking chap, the photo chosen for the X tweet is particularly unflattering.

        https://canadianimmigrant.ca/wp-content/uploads/Minister-Omar-Alghabra-770×959.jpeg

  125. This is truly gut wrenching!

    "
    The splendid Tim Stanley writing in this paper just over a year ago described in glowing terms his NHS colonoscopy necessitated by an alarming episode of rectal bleeding. The inevitable discomfort and embarrassment he found much mitigated by it being handled with “the most remarkable tenderness”. The source having been identified as a benign polyp, he was more than relieved to learn “No cancer, Mr Stanley”. A felicitous outcome but while the skills involved in so expeditiously scrutinising the darkest recesses of his colon are certainly impressive, the value of the procedure for the vast majority of those who undergo it is questionable.

    Tim was just one of 900,000 people to have a colonoscopy last year, which seems a lot. As indeed it is, 20 times more than the 40,000 carried out back in 1990. There has been no major upswing in the intervening years in the prevalence of the gut disorders that might warrant this type of investigation so only rarely will it identify some treatable abnormality (such as a tumour) or, as in Tim’s case, reassuringly exclude it. Just how rarely has emerged from a recent study examining the ‘diagnostic yield’ that turns out to be astonishingly low at 1.5 per cent. It is precisely the same story with the yet more frequently performed gastroscopies for stomach related symptoms (2.5 million a year, again 20 times more than 30 years ago.)

    The adverse consequences of ‘high-volume, low-yield’ endoscopy, observes Dr David Beaton of Newcastle University, include their considerable cost (over £330 million is spent a year for those colonoscopies), lengthy waiting times for those in whom the procedure might be more certainly useful and “the inherent risk of serious complications”. There is not much that can be done about this but the individual advised of the need for an endoscopy might sensibly enquire what it might reveal that would otherwise go undetected."

    What a bummer!!!

    1. Why have the number of such procedures increased 20 fold in 30 years?

      Yes, the country is grossly overpopulated but that's an absurd rate of procedural growth.

      1. Growth in the numbers performed due to the lovely new toys coupled with on screen entertainment, and far better than trying to climb into the orifice to take a look!

        1. When I had ulcerous colitis I had said procedure. I wouldn't all it entertainment!

    2. 35 years ago I took my mother for an endoscopy – they found nothing more than a hiatus hernia, which she'd probably had for years. It certainly wasn't that which caused her such a lot of pain and illness. Having found nothing serious, her GP fobbed her off with Zantac and Gavescon. Sadly, she had cancer of the pancreas, and died a few weeks later.

    1. I spoke to a young couple this evening about how I wish I had overpaid on my flat and put monies into my pension and savings. They're getting married next year and have no idea of the costs, he's got no vision of buying his own home, partitioning income.

      Wisdom truly is wasted on the young.

      2. Funny, apart from having paid off my mortgage early, I wish I hadn't put monies into my pension and savings. I'd be better off sponging off the state rather than paying for those who couldn't be bothered, to live at my expense.,

    1. Wow! That’s an impressive place! My BiL, the ex-jockey, started with Cotterill in Newmarket, when he was 15!

    2. On the contrary PM, at least a lot of honest people aren't being fooled any more. Reform was never gong to deliver the goods.

      1. You are quite right. My feeling is that Reform only came into being to split the Tory vote to allow Labour a straight run through the GE. Reform became too successful and had to be demolished from within. Now the question is this – is Rupert Lowe the Good Guy or is he acting a part in the theatre of destruction?

        None of this turmoil will be settled peacefully. It will have to be done in the ancient, traditional manner; handbags and pitchforks at dawn, or else we will be trampled by islam and subsumed by its mud as if we had never been. Whether or not we will succeed is another matter.

    1. No need…description opens with ‘moth-like’ butterfly, darting flight difficult to follow. It is dark on the topside, and much paler underneath. When I look back, I realise how much of my memory I’ve lost, don’t remember even painting it, although notes on the back are in my handwriting. Used to be a number of Cinnabars, too, but Ragwort has been missing the last few years when weather has been mild, especially winters, that seems to be changing now.

        1. Thank you so much Ndovu 🥰 I keep being asked to do more portraits but hoping to finally have a try at landscape…there’s just such a lot of it…aaarghhh ..😆

  133. Well, chums, it's bedtime for me. So Good Night all, sleep well, and I hope to see you all early tomorrow.

Comments are closed.