Friday 21 April: The Government must answer for record-breaking food inflation

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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554 thoughts on “Friday 21 April: The Government must answer for record-breaking food inflation”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Chicken Farming
    The farmer bought a young rooster from his cousin Billy-Bob to replace his old rooster.

    The young rooster went up to the old rooster and said, “Ok old man, you’re out of it! I’m here to replace you.”

    The old rooster said to the young rooster, “I tell you what, we’ll have a race around the farmer’s house and whoever gets back here first can stay and rule the roost.”

    The young rooster said, “You’re on! And since you’re so old, I’ll even give you a 15 second head start.”

    The little chicken clucked GO! Off they went, running around the barnyard. However, when they passed the front of the house, the farmer was on the front porch. He saw the young rooster chasing the old rooster, grabbed his rifle and shot the young rooster’s head off.

    “God damn it!” yelled the farmer, “that fuckin’ Billy-Bob done sold me ANOTHER Homo rooster!”

  4. Good morning all.
    A dull and damp start this morning with a light drizzle after overnight rain. A tad over 4°C on the thermometer.

    Rather annoyingly forecast damp for the whole morning which might kick the planned stone splitting into touch.

    1. All very well, but until any information is presented on what the complaints were attacking Rabb is silly

      I imagine he simply told civil servants they weren’t good enough and not doing their jobs. They don’t like that, so squealed. If they can get one, they’ll go for all of them. It is simply another civil service delaying tactic.

      1. ‘Morning, Wibb. It must be incredibly frustrating trying to get things done when your ‘impartial’ snivel serpents are pushing their own agenda and where so many are still shirking from home. Add to that the fact that their long covid absenteeism is double the national average…

        I don’t envy Raab’s understandable irritation, but I fear that the blob will get him in the end, if not today.

  7. America’s cities have descended into anarchy – and Britain’s could be next. Douglas Murray. 21 April 2023.

    It is always interesting to see how far things can run if the authorities let them. If you tour around American cities these days – especially Democrat-run cities – you can see the results everywhere.

    Legalise or effectively legalise drugs – as in New York and other places – and you will soon see and smell them everywhere. In the middle of the day, you will witness people lighting or shooting up. All other judgments aside, it can be said with a fair degree of certainty that the person before you is not going to contribute to the economy that day. Nor perhaps for the remainder of their life.

    It is the same with homelessness. Even before the pandemic, cities from Austin and Los Angeles to Portland, Seattle and Washington DC permitted homelessness to develop as a way of life. The main luxury-shopping street in San Francisco was, even then, one vast homeless encampment.

    When the pandemic came along, it made things worse. Today, it is accepted from West to East coast that people are allowed to pitch tents on any available green space, from public parks to formerly grassy roadsides and roundabouts. Try to move someone along – as one frustrated San Francisco gallery owner did recently – and the cops will come and take you away, never the people chasing off any potential business.

    On issue after issue, America has provided a colossal petri dish to show us what happens if you tolerate illegal behaviour. Left-wing District Attorneys in New York and other major cities have downgraded a whole pile of violent crimes to mere “misdemeanours” and, as a result, there are people who are on the streets who have committed hundreds of offences and who the police no longer bother to pick up. For what is the point of arresting someone and taking them to the station if the charge in question does not warrant detention?

    So off the criminals go. It is why shoplifting is allowed in stores across New York and other cities. The police can’t be bothered to pick up shoplifters. Shops can’t be bothered to hire security who actually detain thieves, and so they are effectively a free buffet. It might seem amazing. It once would have seemed amazing to New Yorkers, too. But today it is accepted. That’s what happens when you just allow crime to slide along.

    There are lessons here for our own country, and nowhere should the lessons be clearer than in the case of how Britain now treats eco-nuisances like Just Stop Oil. Personally, I see these end-time cultists as a sort of opportunistic infection on our body politic. The sort of thing that – like a terrible rash – comes along when the body is sick.

    When inflation is stuck at over 10 per cent and the cost of basic goods is at an all-time high, it seems almost inevitable that a group of flagellants would come along, tearing through our cities to tell us that they – and we – are all doomed unless we change our ways immediately, get off all reliable forms of energy and stop wearing anything new or nice.

    But what is worst about these end-time cultists is that they, too, very often get away with their crimes. From the country’s roads and motorways to its art galleries and snooker tables, their manner of disruptive and destructive protest seems to have been made effectively legal.

    I have pointed here before to what I think was the too-little-noted watershed moment. In 2019, green extremists vandalised and caused significant destruction to the headquarters of Shell in London. If London is going to get back to being a thriving city, we need multinational companies like Shell to have headquarters there. But in 2021, when the case came to trial, a jury found the group of six self-confessed law-breakers “not guilty”. It seemed to be the jury’s view that there is good vandalism and bad vandalism, and this was good, just, crime.

    Last year, protesters from the extremist group Insulate Britain held up 18,000 vehicles, causing great damage to the British economy as it was struggling to get back on its feet after Covid. On that occasion, the trial judge actually praised the protesters. Judge Stephen Leake told them that they had “inspired me and personally I intend to do what I can to reduce my own impact on the planet”. He gave them small fines and let them go.

    When I read verdicts like that, I must admit that I despair of this country. Because we have seen in America the sort of chaos to which such approval and indeed praise of lawlessness lead. You either have a system of law or you don’t. And if you decide not to enforce it then everything and anything can follow.
    Just look at the cities in the US still reeling from the permitted looting and burning of Black Lives Matter protests over the last decade. They haven’t come back. In the UK, we have likewise given over the law to mobs when it is decided that they are somehow in the “good” league of legal transgression.

    Pull down the “right kind of statue”, like Edward Colston in Bristol, and you will be lauded. So who is to say from now on which pieces of public statuary a mob high on the fever of self-righteousness might not decide to pull down next?

    In a similar vein, from Bristol to Glasgow, it seems to have been decided that if a group of women and their supporters are protesting in public to defend their own rights – peacefully and bringing nothing to a halt – they can be bullied, intimidated and attacked with impunity. That is what tends to happen when women’s rights campaigners hold a rally. The police pretend that the two sides are as bad as each other. What they have actually allowed is the hounding and terrorising of women by biological males and people with evident mental illnesses.

    When people wonder why our cities are repeatedly brought to a standstill, our artistic and sporting occasions desecrated by destructive imbeciles, the answer is, I am afraid, straightforward. As in America – it is because we let them. We made law-breaking legal. In special ideological circumstances. Good luck containing that. Even better luck living in it.

    It will be slightly different in the UK. It will be Islamic in nature!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/20/americas-cities-have-descended-into-anarchy/

    1. Last night, I watched DM on Spectator TV.
      The subject was Northern Ireland. Gone was his slightly aloof, weary schoolmasterly air; he was absolutely seething.

      1. Morning Anne. I’m afraid that Douglas like some of his friends at the Telegraph has turned into a Nottler!

    2. Who is this “we” that allows all the lawbreaking to happen with impunity? Certainly isn’t the ordinary person in the street.

    3. Aren’t chaos and anarchy, especially if the latter is being supported surreptitiously, or worse, in some cases being promoted blatantly by the supposed upholders of the law, the road down which those who want totalitarian control are taking the nation? Create the situation for the strong leader/leadership to rise and save the nation is an old and obvious strategy. Then, and only then, will the Great Reset be seen by many as acceptable. It’s a scam.
      Likewise the ‘financial problem’ is being manufactured so as to allow the imposition of CBDC.
      The elite’s opening gambit was the ‘Pandemic’ and everything else follows on from that scam’s success.

  8. Probate Swiftness

    As many of you know because I posted about it on NTTL, my dear wife died on December 16th last year.

    By secure signed-for mail I sent in an application for Grant of Probate on Friday February 24th, so they will have received it on Monday 27th February.

    On 13th March I received an acknowledgement email that “they had uploaded the documents to their system” and sat back for a long wait, with some letters to The Torygraff reporting delays of up to 2 years.

    The HM Courts & Tribunals Service on-line guidance says “Do not contact us for progress updates for 16 weeks”.

    I know it’s an easy process to grant Probate between Wife and Husband, but (gob-smacked) I received Grant of Probate forms (10 copies at £1.50 each) dated 3rd April, just 26 working days after they received it. Is this a record? Can any Nottler beat it?

    1. I applied for a new passport a week ago, the 13th, i thought there would be a long wait.
      The new passport came yesterday

    2. Morning, RC.
      It seems very random.
      We had to renew our passports (in case we nipped across the river into Suffolk). We sat back and waited for weeks, possibly months, of prevarication.
      Both done and dusted in less than a fortnight.

    3. Wow!
      By the law of averages, something must go right in that sorry situation. Glad it came through so quickly, RC.

    4. 18 months ago when my mother died, I was granted probate 6 weeks after her death. I cant remember the date of application exactly but you have to wait 4 weeks after submitting the assets form to HMRC and then make the probate application if you hear nothing more. She was under the tax threshold, no property to value and its now all online. So, about 2 weeks if I remember correctly when we were just coming out of the covid faff.

      1. I got my solicitor to do it all. I could check the paperwork but it took less than that – and that was during Covid

  10. Germany plans to ban installation of most oil and gas heating from 2024. 21 April 2023.

    Germany plans to ban the installation of most oil and gas heating systems from next year, with proposals approved on Wednesday triggering angry divisions in the cabinet.

    The radical plans are designed to transform Germany’s heating systems in an attempt to meet net zero emission targets that critics have called unworkable and discriminatory. About half of Germany’s 41m households currently use natural gas heating, and almost a quarter use heating oil.

    I suppose that there’s some consolation in knowing that we won’t be committing suicide on our own. In reality it will be worse for Germans. The American destruction of the Baltic Pipeline has cut them off from cheap Russian gas. They will now have to pay what the US thinks they should!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/germany-plans-to-ban-installation-of-most-oil-and-gas-heating-from-2024

      1. True, but if Germany goes, so does the EU. Greece, Spain and Italy rely upon massive transfers of German industrial wealth to stay afloat. Without that cash they’re done for. The EU then forces those nations to buy German products – at lower prices, obviously, can’t have protectionism fail, now, can we?

        If the German manufacturing economy collapses due to a lack of energy as i nearly did some years ago that’s the end of the grand communist experiment and hello gulags, starvation, poverty and purges.

    2. Germany doesn’t have enough electricity now, never mind if they don’t use oil & gas for heating.
      This will end badly. The Greens have a lot to answer for.

      1. 🙂 It’s his snuffle mat (thank you, Phizzy).
        He was shattered after rootling through it for treats – on this occasion, small shreds of roast chicken.

      1. Our little local prophetess of doom, was also forecasting snow today.

        Blue skies, a few fluffy white clouds and 5°C.

      2. Interesting forecasts at the mo. There are stories in the press setting the scene for record breaking 40c heatwaves, maybe, but cold weather actually on the way next week.

          1. But the rain falls on the just and on the unjust feller – tho’ chiefly on the just because the unjust stole the just’s umbrella 🙂

      5. ‘Morning Sue. Don’t be in too much of a rush; there’s the hosepipe ban to work through first…

  13. The Government must answer for record-breaking food inflation

    All part of the global great reset isn’t it? so not the governments fault.

  15. Sensible girl that Svetlana/Ekaterina/Olga …….. she wimped of getting the cat to swallow the stuff.

    “A Russian woman has been arrested after disguising her cat as a baby in a failed attempt to smuggle drugs around an industrial town.

    Video released by Russian police showed an officer unzipping a pink baby snowsuit, only to discover a confused-looking grey cat peeking out.

    The animal was wearing matching baby shoes, a baby grow and a grey woollen hat.”

    1. Some people treat their pets like babies. There are videos on YouTube of cats in sweaters – they go all rigid, and topple over. I’d not like to try that with our two bruisers – I’d end up with several new arseholes, no head, and a neck filled with catshit.

    2. ‘Moaning, Annie. Surprisingly the Russian police officer didn’t go the whole hog and unzip the cat.

    3. Dressing pets up may seem “cute” to their Silly Sausage owners, but I personally consider it to be cruelty.

  16. Vladimir Putin is preparing to attack the UK. 21 April 2023.

    Russia is probing for European vulnerabilities. Apart from food, the daily critical requirements of modern society are energy and communications. The underwater arteries of modern civilisation are surprisingly few. For example, just three pipelines deliver 43 per cent of our baseline gas supply. Five interconnectors deliver electricity to and from the UK and Europe (and one more between Britain and Ireland). There are more communications cables, about 70 in all, but a relatively small number of deep-sea sabotage operations could bring our world to a halt without a shot being fired. We were assured that wind farms would bolster our energy security, but few considered their military exposure.

    Well if he were planning such a move I’m sure that will be very helpful. This is of course the problem with this story. Why would the Russians be reconnoitring for information that is freely available and why, when they are struggling in Ukraine, attack the UK? What is possible, and much more likely, is that these fake stories about mapping Wind Farms and Cables are just preparation for a False Flag attack on them that would justify the direct involvement of NATO.

    These are Scary Times. Hang tough Nottlers.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/20/vladimir-putin-is-preparing-to-attack-the-uk/

    1. It is the flip side of centralisation and monoculture and single markets. Superficially, they seem more efficient until something hits them. Then it is catastrophic.

      Whilst less efficient on the quarterly balance sheet, building in the redundancy of many local markets and different and competing ways of doing things, and if one goes down, there are many others to take their place and life goes on much as it should.

    2. Yes, it does rather look like preparation for an attack on the electricity or mobile networks, doesn’t it.

    3. ‘Morning, Minty. I have searched in vain for this information. Can you post a link, as I am genuinely interested in what may well turn out to be a complete disaster for this country in particular, given our island nation status and our woeful lack of defence. The severing of just a couple of our undersea connections would certainly be catastrophic with very little effort on the part of an enemy.

        1. Thanks ‘Minty, but these positions are very approximate. For geological reasons they are rarely laid in straight lines, hence the need to survey exact locations. The satellite capacity (for internet of course) would never provide adequate backup capacity as things stand. Besides, satellite destruction would be near the top of a list of targets – including of course the various navigation systems – American GPS, the EU’s Galileo and the Russian GLONASS. All are vulnerable. The technology already exists for real Star Wars!

          1. If WWIII is imminent Hugh we need not concern ourselves with the minutiae of cable laying. If Vlad has any serious intentions toward them, which I doubt, the obvious target would be where they come ashore.

        2. Thanks ‘Minty, but these positions are very approximate. For geological reasons they are rarely laid in straight lines, hence the need to survey exact locations. The satellite capacity (for internet of course) would never provide adequate backup capacity as things stand. Besides, satellite destruction would be near the top of a list of targets – including of course the various navigation systems – American GPS, the EU’s Galileo and the Russian GLONASS. All are vulnerable. The technology already exists for real Star Wars!

      2. Don’t worry Hugh.

        At the first threat of severing underwater connections our civil service will immediately surrender.

        Their example will be followed by a surprising number of MPs who wish to keep their jobs.

  17. Here’s one for you: We were discussing this morning how is it people’s faces slowly but surely resemble their personalities? Examples you won’t be familiar with:
    Leader of the Conservatives in Norway: A fat, jolly lady, with a pleasant, open, happy face. Seems like a thoroughly pleasant person, feet on the ground.
    Leader of the TUC in Norway: Bitter, twisted, bitch. Sharp, disapproving face, pursed mouth, slogan “We’re out to get the rich” – yet has a pay level that puts her well into the category of “rich”. Doesn’t understand the concept of hypocrisy.
    Previous leader of TUC: a nasty, mean, bitter twisted person, with nasty, mean, twisted pursed face.
    Mayor in Kongsberg: Another bitter, twisted personality, with nasty pursed expression

    1. Apart from the Conservative leader* – sounds very like their equivalents in the UK.

      *There is NO Conservative leader in the UK.

  18. 373726+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    priorities, priorities,priorities,

    Friday 21 April: The Government must answer for record-breaking food inflation

    The answer to that is the wholesalers / supermarkets are playing on the fact that they are getting fat, on the fat, they have NO conscience that obesity is a major concern.

    Friday 21 April: The Government must answer for record-breaking
    treachery,lies & deceit taking advantage of dangerously foolish trusting souls to the extent of killing and seriously maiming in the pursuit of power / monies.

    The political overseers aided by their dangerously gullible followers these past 30 plus years have been laying the footings for the WEF / NWO RESET, tarmacking over old values & erasing history is in full swing.

    1. How else are they going to keep up with the market aspirations set by Premier League footballers, who are after all our role models?

      2. I wish! Bloody cold & wet down here.
        Plus side is that the cheques for my offerings from ERNIE this month have arrived, so I’m off to Matlock to pay them into the Nationwide!

    1. Considering they are inflicting the ULEZ extension on Londoners on the basis of one death being attributed air pollution some years ago then how can the justify not doing anything about this.

    2. Considering they are inflicting the ULEZ extension on Londoners on the basis of one death being attributed air pollution some years ago then how can the justify not doing anything about this.

      1. And the eye-wateringly vast proportion of deaths occurred within the first three two days of vaccination. The numbers we are given are the very finest tip of the iceberg. Such fraud and deceit.

        Good morning Sue, and everyone.

  23. Nurses told next two-day walkout is illegal

    NURSES have been told their next strike is illegal, casting doubt over the planned walkouts.

    Health officials have written to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) saying they have “clear legal advice” that the mandate for industrial action in England expires before the strikes end.

    The 48-hour strike, planned from April 30 to May 2, will target A&E units, cancer services and intensive care units at 130 NHS organisations.

    But NHS Employers, a key party to pay talks, has written to the RCN to say it believes the mandate to strike expires 20 hours before the end of the walkout.

    The nurses’ union hit back, saying it will “forcefully resist” any attempt by NHS bodies to seek an injunction against the action.

    The RCN closed its ballot on strike action on Nov 2, giving it six months to carry out industrial action.

    The union said last week it intended to carry out a fresh ballot. If successful, the walkouts could last to Christmas.

    And so it should be illegal. If police officers are precluded from taking strike action by law (Police Act, 1919) then exactly the same should apply to ALL emergency and health service workers.

    1. When you think of all the legal protection workers now have compared to 50 years ago. min wage. H&S, more longer holidays etc.

      Strikes should be ilegal.

  24. https://www.takimag.com/article/gone-mental/

    Thought provoking from Dalrymple.
    Where I would be cautious is that from my observations there is no doubt that people do have genuine mental health issues which if left untreated can harm the individual or the individual can harm others, but It is certainly becoming an industry.

  25. Neighbour shoots six-year-old girl after basketball rolls into his yard

    Suspected gunman Robert Louis Singletary, 24, is on the run from police after allegedly injuring Kinsley White and her parents

    Surprise, surprise

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/20/neighbour-shoots-girl-after-basketball-rolls-into-his-yard/

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2023/04/21/TELEMMGLPICT000332767082_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqMG9jYnib85FJIfCc-bQYcSXF5qJfRX82QwtVzSKzjL8.jpeg?imwidth=960

  26. Neighbour shoots six-year-old girl after basketball rolls into his yard

    Suspected gunman Robert Louis Singletary, 24, is on the run from police after allegedly injuring Kinsley White and her parents

    Surprise, surprise

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/20/neighbour-shoots-girl-after-basketball-rolls-into-his-yard/

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2023/04/21/TELEMMGLPICT000332767082_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqMG9jYnib85FJIfCc-bQYcSXF5qJfRX82QwtVzSKzjL8.jpeg?imwidth=960

    1. And its even more obvious from a recent British Dickens adaption to now this JM Barrie…….one, you or any one, really, really can’t fix completely ‘king stoopid.

    4. And the clock is deemed a racist white invention, so the croc swallows a bowl instead.

      1. I like the name of the author – Last line:

        A Blanket, a Bowl, and a Stick
        In the matter of racial comparisons
        The media shouts to the moon
        About all the historic achievements
        of the Redskin, Spic and the Coon

        Yet strangely when strolling museums
        The white mans creations stand thick
        but all we can find of those others
        is a blanket, a bowl and a stick

        No telephones, timeclocks or engines,
        No lights that go on with a flick.
        No airplanes or rockets or radios
        Just a blanket, a bowl and a stick

        Not one sioux indian submarine,
        No african ice cream to lick,
        not a single mexican x ray machine,
        it’s a blanket, a bowl and a stick

        So remember when historys the subject,
        and revisionists are up to their tricks,
        the evidence tells quite another tale
        of a blanket, a bowl and a stick

        A poem by A.Wyatt Mann

  28. Morning all 🙂😉
    Same old same old, cloudy and wet.
    Of the many things that the government must (and never does) answer for, the cost of food is only a small blemish on their reputation of being totally useless. I can’t remember or even think of any single thing a government has done for 25 years, that might have bought or might bring a sense of relief or trust to the people of this country.

  30. Good morning all

    Sunny morning for the golfer who was up and about at 0630, then the dogs wake up and then me , and I just stumble around .

    The DT letters are sharp and crisp this morning , as are the comments .

    Cost of living has hit vet bills .. I had to take my two to the vets yestererday , both dogs are on medication , the vet needed to examine the dogs before more medication was prescribed .. they were last examined in January, and all I have had to do in the past was ring up to request a new prescription .

    Vets are also in a difficult position sourcing drugs and I suppose their costs have also escalated . We used to get them online with a vet prescription untill well before Xmas .. again shortages so back to the vet , and we were on a weekly ration … because they were short of them also

    My bill yesterday was eye watering .. over £260.. however I can claim back £80 from Tesco pet insurance for the younger dog .

    Arrived home not daring to discuss the bill with Moh .. cup of tea time .. then he waved the Tesco pet insurance renewal which had arrived that morning .. from £450 … increased to £700 … shocked is not the word ..

    My 15 year old’s insurance was cancelled a few years ago because the high premiums became eye watering ..

    Insurance for everything has rocketed ..

    How on earth are people coping , especially those with horses etc ..

    1. Morning TB.
      As you may be aware, we recently had to say goodbye to our lovely old girl Lottie dog.
      Our usual veterinary practice prices for putting her to sleep were astronomical. My family kept saying oh well, it is what it is.
      But I found another local veterinary practice that did exactly the same job very caringly for 200 pounds. Instead of 380 plus. Although we weren’t really interested in ashes. We also received a clay front paw print as part of the deal.
      As she aged the insurance became too costly to keep up. And it reached the stage where it seemed we were being charged around 60 pounds just to cross the practice threshold for each visit.

      1. Hello RE

        Poor Lottie , not an easy decision is it , I hope you are all bearing up, you will miss her dreadfully, but you did the best for her .

        Jack is still having good days and some times difficult days, the insurance for him was unbelievable .. as he aged . Escalated when he was 10 years old .. so we stopped paying the premium . He is 15 now .

        Pip will be 10 in June .. I suspect that is why they have hiked his premium .

        Insurance companies are hiking everything , aren’t they.

        1. And making it increasingly difficult to claim! We used to have insurance for the cats, and Hector but gave it all up as they aged. Now it’s easier to put a sum away a month to cover any eventualities. Of course it helps to have a vet in the family!

        2. It was a very difficult decision to make, but the tumour was growing rapidly, it was inoperable and she had started to drip blood. It was all over in a few seconds.
          And she is sadly missed. They become part of the family. We have a lovely photo of her and a small bunch of flowers in a vase beside it.
          I’d post a photograph, but I can’t get them off my phone.

          2. But I don’t have any email addresses to forward the photos to Anne.
            Only Herts Lass and Rastus and they have already helped out several times.

          3. I take the photos off my phone by putting the charging lead in the phone and the USB connector on the other end into my computer. It then comes up like an external drive. As long as I enable sharing on my phone I can transfer photos across with no problem.

          4. I use to be able to do that Conners and we already have thousands stored on a separate hard drive. But something has gone wrong with our pc and plugging the phone in no longer works. So we are stuck. I also have my old phone that suddenly stopped working with hundreds of photos on it. One day I’ll try and find someone who can download the memory.

          5. Is it the USB port that has gone wrong? Have you tried the phone in another port? Do you have a laptop you could plug it into?

    2. Feeding Mongo and Oscar has nearly gone up by 50%. Bills are excruciating. Both have their own bank accounts. I used to put £500 in them each month and we would always have a surplus. Now we’re having to put more in by the third week.

      It doesn’t help that the scum Brown hiked insurance tax to 11%. Then added VAT to it.

    3. Our insurance for the Springer is over £90 per month. I have started a savings account for the dog and we will not renew the insurance in June.
      Edit: She is eight years old.

      2. I, too, have a dedicated savings account for vet’s bills. Oscar’s last renewal was over £800. I don’t think I’ve quite reached that despite his recent bills. At least my vet pointed out that the eye drops he’s on are not on prescription and I can get them on the Internet. In fact, I could get one of them from the local optician, but it was cheaper on the Internet, even with the postage.

    2. At this point I don’t believe them. That said ‘preparing’ is fine. And an attack can take many forms.

    3. Why would he bother?
      Our government and its apparatchiks are doing a perfectly good job without his help.

      1. 373715+ up ticks,

        Morning Anne,

        The lab/lib/con current coalition supporters / voters must surely be congratulated in the country destruction department.

    4. We all know that the best thing politicians and the media are exceptionally good at is lying.
      Perhaps this is linked to the Sunday phone alarm as a bit of tongue in cheek.

    1. And plod would be attacking the Christians. The horror Blair and Neather did to this country can never be forgiven or forgotten.

    2. That would be the ruins of the one bombed in WW2. It’s time to take offence at this sort of stuff.

  34. G’morning all,

    A bit late on parade due to recovery from a day in the Great Wen.

    A dull start at McPhee Towers, 6℃ with wind still in the N, rain expected. The chilly spring continues. This time in April in 1980, which I remember because my daughter had just been born, we were sweltering in the mid -20s.

    An extraordinary article in the Gatesograph by an MP by the name of Bob Seely who’s supposed to be some sort of expert in Russian military strategy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/20/vladimir-putin-is-preparing-to-attack-the-uk/

    Well, Bob, this is nothing new. It’s good old cold war stuff which was going on when I was a lad. We were (and are, no doubt) doing the same.
    Some of us would welcome the bird-munching eco-crucifixes being blown up. Oh, and we do know who blew up Nord-stream 2 – it was the Americans.

    1. In my youth I was expected to get het up about milk that made your teeth glow in the dark.
      Maybe that’s why I’m still a bright spark.

        1. It is worth (this cold wet morning) scrolling through, old dear!! 5.20 pm yesterday….. You’ll love it…

          1. You’re cruel, you are! You’ll be sorry when she fetches you one with her knitting needles.

    2. I liked Madeline Grant in the DT describing Yousless as the ‘human bagpipe, droning on’!

      1. Neil Oliver was Farage’s guest for a pint yesterday in Aberdeen and there was a wonderful piper who played at the end. Love the sound of the pipes.

          1. Out on the terrace of the stately pile, as Queen Vic liked it, though possibly not at dawn.

            I was handed a set of pipes once and the method explained but by the time I’d blown enough air in to the bag, I was too knackered to do anything else.

      2. I shouldn’t worry too much, Mrs Macfarlane, aboot the bagpipes. They will soon be banished when Yousless the Muezzin make the Adhan (muzzie call to prayer) compulsory for all in Jockistan.

        1. Thanks Grizz, but I think someone, or something may declare a fatwah on him very soon! The natives (and me!) are getting restless! Claymores at the ready!

      1. No, not the species, just we white people and our associated culture – unless you think we’re in reality a different species to the black/brown/yellow strains.

        1. Not at all. Once they’ve rendered Whitey brain-dead and compliant; you can bet your last shekel (or groat) that Blacky, Browny, Yellowy and Reddy will be next in the WEF queue.

  38. Dominic Raab latest news: Deputy PM resigns in wake of bullying report

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/21/dominic-raab-news-rishi-sunak-nicola-sturgeon-snp-latest/

    Dominic Raab has resigned as Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary in the wake of a report into allegations of bullying made against him.

    In a resignation statement posted on Twitter, Mr Raab said: “Whilst I feel duty bound to accept the outcome of the inquiry, it dismissed all but two of the claims levelled against me.

    “I also believe that its two adverse findings are flawed and set a dangerous precedent for the conduct of good government.”

    Mr Raab added: “In setting the threshold for bullying so low, this inquiry has set a dangerous precedent. It will encourage spurious complaints against ministers, and have a chilling effect on those driving change on behalf of your government – and ultimately the British people.”

    I do not despise Raab any less than I despise most of the members of Sunak’s pathetic government but this is another woke victory.

    Who’s next?

    1. Oh how sad – regarding Draab. The man is a shite.

      He has a point, however, about the green light it gives civil servants to affect government appointments they don’t like.

      1. My thoughts too. We’ve gone from impartial civil service to getting rid of elected representatives that they don’t like.

        2. And stymying voters decisions, too – such as Brexit.
          The time is fast approaching when tehre’s going to have to be some kind of massive uprising to re-establish voter rule – and that’s going to be painful.

      2. Refer the article posted earlier today about not enforcing the law. Once it’s clear they can get away with it, the floodgates open.
        I forsee all lefty snivel serpents will now defenestrate any and every Tory minister. Any semblance of government with anything other than a Civil Service flavour is now dead.
        Poor decision by the useless politicians. Raab, the shite, is right. Dismissal of almost all claims means he should have stayed and stared down the accusers, but I expect he had no support from Sunak, so… no alternative.

    2. One the one hand, the underlings should not be allowed to thcweam and thcweam until they get rid of the nasty ministers. On the other hand Raab has been a member of a fascism-enabling government so good riddance. Doesn’t mean he won’t be back, though.

    3. One the one hand, the underlings should not be allowed to thcweam and thcweam until they get rid of the nasty ministers. On the other hand Raab has been a member of a fascism-enabling government so good riddance. Doesn’t mean he won’t be back, though.

  39. ‘Morning All

    Today’s medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c62edde981fbf3edaeeaf718bc87cdce00f9d0de02c0e5ce7f2315c8c5d6050b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/68b008d34b2bb292ebb009ff9afd7e2ccde62c29fefe48a30046e18d6038eb1b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a516ea7e980301ee5afe80da35085171e1288277ffbea82f58a43de3fc13a0e8.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/155534a0a39e509c3e8acae519225303804647369a1b1b5d83aedd77bc59ba6a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6b7ae34e822769d99f92e36ba1e994b3bc794f91c2daa09e0a00095b11a4fc8b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e0d12772aa721c2ff18467e340bac2af191c7d97e3f5e0e67112a3651408754.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/abfc0af83126901f2cc701e84e1e0f3f7745073dac3b09fcb32cc81b8fc5cd8c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c33e41e545a248609f6d8e4778568cba5d2551c2e696880f5658dc11449fc55e.jpg

    1. Maybe it was because the allegations against Bercow were coming from all directions?

  40. Welcome reform to an over-mighty court

    The Government is preparing to allow the Home Secretary to ignore rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. It is right to do so

    TELEGRAPH VIEW • 20th April 2023 • 10:00pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a297dfaef575316cf5f0260713e9ec1dd5a1466e75e69f35646cb789bf0d72dc.jpg
    There is a well-established principle in international law known as non-refoulement. This holds that no one should be deported to a country where they would face torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, and other irreparable harm. It is incorporated in the 1951 Refugee Convention to which the UK is a signatory. If an attempt is made by the state to contravene this principle, the courts can rightly intercede to stop it happening.

    But when a government seeks to remove someone to a safe country where he or she would not face harm, should it then accede to a court demand to stop it? This is the key point behind the current argument over the powers in the Illegal Migration Bill designed to stop the small boats crossing the Channel.

    The Government is prepared to beef them up so that the Home Secretary can ignore rulings of the European Court of Human Rights if it tries to stop what under international law would be a justifiable deportation. Last summer, a flight to Rwanda carrying migrants who had entered the country illegally was halted at the dead of night by a single judge in Strasbourg on grounds that are not entirely clear. The Bill will be tightened to let the Home Secretary, in certain circumstances, ignore interim injunctions, known as Rule 39 orders, that halt deportation flights.

    Downing Street had been reluctant to engineer a confrontation with the Strasbourg court, fearing that this would affect the UK’s membership of the Council of Europe or undermine its commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights. But Rule 39 orders are not part of the Convention. They are essentially procedural matters that have been elevated since 2005 into a form of legally binding case law that is being deployed in circumstances never envisaged by the authors of the Convention.

    Lord Thomas, a former Lord Chief Justice, said that amending the Bill to allow judicial orders to be ignored was a serious challenge to the rule of law. But it is not. It is a challenge to a court which has misconstrued the law. Lord Thomas might have a point if the Government were taking the power to ignore any interim ruling against it by any court. However, it should not be possible for a supra-national court to reinterpret international treaty-based law as it sees fit. Judges and others in the House of Lords who will doubtless try to block this measure should think carefully before doing so.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2023/04/20/welcome-reform-to-an-over-mighty-court/

    The government’s approach to this is all wrong. No foreign court should have any jurisdiction in this country. Having to bring a bill to the HoC for a matter that should already be covered by long-standing statutes and then having to make very specific references in that bill to parts of the ECHR simply says that Parliament is not supreme, despite the utterances of some Supreme Court judges in the Brexit saga. It’s a reflection of the rank cowardice of the entire political class that no one has proposed resigning from the ICR and the ECHR. These conventions were drawn up in a different age in a different world. It is not that they are inadequate for the current migration crisis but that they actively encourage it.

    And it’s appropriate that the ECHR building resembles a pair of dustbins…

      1. Looks as though it landed from outer space on a mission to conquer Earth. Oh, wait a moment…

  41. Welcome reform to an over-mighty court

    The Government is preparing to allow the Home Secretary to ignore rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. It is right to do so

    TELEGRAPH VIEW • 20th April 2023 • 10:00pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a297dfaef575316cf5f0260713e9ec1dd5a1466e75e69f35646cb789bf0d72dc.jpg
    There is a well-established principle in international law known as non-refoulement. This holds that no one should be deported to a country where they would face torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, and other irreparable harm. It is incorporated in the 1951 Refugee Convention to which the UK is a signatory. If an attempt is made by the state to contravene this principle, the courts can rightly intercede to stop it happening.

    But when a government seeks to remove someone to a safe country where he or she would not face harm, should it then accede to a court demand to stop it? This is the key point behind the current argument over the powers in the Illegal Migration Bill designed to stop the small boats crossing the Channel.

    The Government is prepared to beef them up so that the Home Secretary can ignore rulings of the European Court of Human Rights if it tries to stop what under international law would be a justifiable deportation. Last summer, a flight to Rwanda carrying migrants who had entered the country illegally was halted at the dead of night by a single judge in Strasbourg on grounds that are not entirely clear. The Bill will be tightened to let the Home Secretary, in certain circumstances, ignore interim injunctions, known as Rule 39 orders, that halt deportation flights.

    Downing Street had been reluctant to engineer a confrontation with the Strasbourg court, fearing that this would affect the UK’s membership of the Council of Europe or undermine its commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights. But Rule 39 orders are not part of the Convention. They are essentially procedural matters that have been elevated since 2005 into a form of legally binding case law that is being deployed in circumstances never envisaged by the authors of the Convention.

    Lord Thomas, a former Lord Chief Justice, said that amending the Bill to allow judicial orders to be ignored was a serious challenge to the rule of law. But it is not. It is a challenge to a court which has misconstrued the law. Lord Thomas might have a point if the Government were taking the power to ignore any interim ruling against it by any court. However, it should not be possible for a supra-national court to reinterpret international treaty-based law as it sees fit. Judges and others in the House of Lords who will doubtless try to block this measure should think carefully before doing so.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2023/04/20/welcome-reform-to-an-over-mighty-court/

    The government’s approach to this is all wrong. No foreign court should have any jurisdiction in this country. Having to bring a bill to the HoC for a matter that should already be covered by long-standing statutes and then having to make very specific references in that bill to parts of the ECHR simply says that Parliament is not supreme, despite the utterances of some Supreme Court judges in the Brexit saga. It’s a reflection of the rank cowardice of the entire political class that no one has proposed resigning from the ICR and the ECHR. These conventions were drawn up in a different age in a different world. It is not that they are inadequate for the current migration crisis but that they actively encourage it.

    And it’s appropriate that the ECHR building resembles a pair of dustbins…

  42. This is a bit long but you’ll soon get the gist of it.

    https://odysee.com/@AlexJonesChannel:c/19Apr23:c
    I remember Rima from decades ago warning us of this…they were after her then. She met Jesse Ventura in a hanger because it wasn’t safe for her to be out in the open.
    But don’t let it worry you you ga have no choice in the matter.
    We orff out to lunch near Woburn,………a bit of an irony eh. Woe Burn

  43. JAMIE BLACKETT: Jeremy Clarkson is the patron saint of farmers!

    Farmers like me have felt besieged for the past two decades, castigated by Nimby neighbours, trussed up in red tape by over-zealous civil servants and, worst of all, frequently targeted by animal rights fanatics and militant vegans, particularly on social media.

    The ‘culture wars’ have spilled out of university campuses onto our green and formerly pleasant farmland. Guardian journalist George Monbiot openly advocates the end of farming and its replacement with industrially produced laboratory food to achieve ‘Net Zero’. We can’t even turn on the television without being made to feel redundant and guilty by our publicly funded broadcaster.

    BBC One’s Countryfile seems to portray the traditional farming community as anti-nature, wholly responsible for the climate and biodiversity ‘crises’ and even racist.

    The Archers plotlines on Radio 4 become more woke every year and the BBC’s environmental presenter Chris Packham is brazenly spending this weekend promoting humourless, meat-free anarchy on the streets of London alongside Extinction Rebellion.

    Full article:
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11996885/JAMIE-BLACKETT-Jeremy-Clarkson-patron-saint-farmers-besieged-badger-huggers.html

    Spoil yourselves. Have not two but ten minutes of hate:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a20c675537ac829593cf907c480ea83811633ec3fcd921cd6d87f8270499ff96.jpg

    1. ‘Morning, WS. Thanks (thanks?!) for posting. I couldn’t agree more about the comment regarding Countryfile’s anti-agriculture stance. Given the choice it would not be on in Janus Towers but unfortunately I’m out-voted every week. It really is such a repetitive load of full-on green bollards, and pitched at or even below the intelligence of the average Blue Peter viewer. Truly awful, which is why I find something else to do when it’s on. And as for that smug campaigning beeboid Packham (for whom I have to pay) and the bonkers Moonbat (for whom I don’t) don’t get me started, or I’m banned from here if you do…

      1. Ah, it was Packham to whom I was referring in yesterday’s post about lauding the Stop Oil loonies.

  44. JAMIE BLACKETT: Jeremy Clarkson is the patron saint of farmers!

    Farmers like me have felt besieged for the past two decades, castigated by Nimby neighbours, trussed up in red tape by over-zealous civil servants and, worst of all, frequently targeted by animal rights fanatics and militant vegans, particularly on social media.

    The ‘culture wars’ have spilled out of university campuses onto our green and formerly pleasant farmland. Guardian journalist George Monbiot openly advocates the end of farming and its replacement with industrially produced laboratory food to achieve ‘Net Zero’. We can’t even turn on the television without being made to feel redundant and guilty by our publicly funded broadcaster.

    BBC One’s Countryfile seems to portray the traditional farming community as anti-nature, wholly responsible for the climate and biodiversity ‘crises’ and even racist.

    The Archers plotlines on Radio 4 become more woke every year and the BBC’s environmental presenter Chris Packham is brazenly spending this weekend promoting humourless, meat-free anarchy on the streets of London alongside Extinction Rebellion.

    Full article:
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11996885/JAMIE-BLACKETT-Jeremy-Clarkson-patron-saint-farmers-besieged-badger-huggers.html

    Spoil yourselves. Have not two but ten minutes of hate:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/92306bb52659fa4cb34b86a382e2b05bb31994d290b9e4bdc500724ac38d8ec5.jpg

  45. Another Brexiteer gone .. Poor old Raab?

    Jeremy Hunt: The low profile Remainer who became prime minister in all but name
    By definition, the newly appointed Chancellor has kept a low public profile throughout his political career.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/10/17/who-jeremy-hunt-chancellor-cabinet-roles/#:~:text=Adidas-,Jeremy%20Hunt%3A%20The%20low%20profile%20Remainer%20who%20became,minister%20in%20all%20but%20name&text=For%20a%20man%20who%20spent,impression%20on%20the%20public%20imagination.

  46. Another Brexiteer gone .. Poor old Raab?

    Jeremy Hunt: The low profile Remainer who became prime minister in all but name
    By definition, the newly appointed Chancellor has kept a low public profile throughout his political career.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/10/17/who-jeremy-hunt-chancellor-cabinet-roles/#:~:text=Adidas-,Jeremy%20Hunt%3A%20The%20low%20profile%20Remainer%20who%20became,minister%20in%20all%20but%20name&text=For%20a%20man%20who%20spent,impression%20on%20the%20public%20imagination.

    2. It is not just each generation that is getting rapidly more stupid; each individual in each successive generation is getting exponentially stupider by the second.

      I give it just one more generation before the entire species implodes.

    4. 373716+ up ticks,

      Morning Bob,

      What’s wrong with it, as far as I can see it is just an average toilet.

          1. I wouldn’t touch it with a 10ft barge pole! Speaking of barges, has anyone see Stephenroi recently?

          2. No, his last post here was on Friday 24 March and he doesn’t appear to comment elsewhere.

    8. Those hot air blasters are so powerful that they can blow off your private parts and inflate your other bits to another gender!

    9. Those hot air blasters are so powerful that they can blow off your private parts and inflate your other bits to another gender!

    1. What he has chucked out of the back of that van is the remains of the brain of the average politician.

      1. Did you ever watch 1980’s Heartbeat .. No idea where it was filmed .. but I have never viewed it before , because I didn’t watch soaps or much TV yeats ago , nor do I now , but I am quite happy watching that and Downton Abbey , another one I have never seen before ..

        TV has been so terrible recently , that the oldies seem the best .

        1. It must be a Nottl thing, Belle! My old man loves it and I caught him watching Downton Abbey! Ooh! And Miss Marple!

          1. Love Downton. I even made a pilgrimage to Highclere but it wasn’t open to visitors that day. Plus you can’t see it from the road. I should have worn a posties uniform and blagged it.

          2. I got fed up with it in US but kept watching for the costumes and Maggie Smith.

        2. Heartbeat was filmed at Goathland in the North York Moors (not far inland from Whitby).

          I tend not to watch too much of ITV’s output since most of it is not exactly a challenge to the mind.

          1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8be9109ef3949a6b29f402c5e513e4f50207bb6cbfa9a0bddd3d755a5f580698.png https://www.google.com/maps/place/Goathland,+Whitby,+UK/@54.4001635,-0.7205557,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipN801-W0_EahyiD6Ky3W3sKS7Sf5wkswPe_GJGC!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipN801-W0_EahyiD6Ky3W3sKS7Sf5wkswPe_GJGC%3Dw203-h270-k-no!7i3024!8i4032!4m7!3m6!1s0x487f222346428cab:0x884a004b0672dd57!8m2!3d54.4001635!4d-0.7205557!10e5!16zL20vMDltcXox

          3. Grizzly

            I didn’t ask how much ITV you watched .. I choose to watch Heartbeat and Downton Abbey series now because I have never seen them before .. I had a very busy life when they were originally screened ..

            I need soft relaxing progs , because not much else catches my eye , apart from travel progs etc .

          4. Margaret,

            I know you didn’t ask how much ITV I watched but I told you in any case, since you mentioned an ITV programme and asked me if I knew it.

    1. Did Raab throw a mobile phone at anyone or call a member of the public a stupid woman?

      1. Don’t have one Grizz – I hate to see good food burnt beside which I don’t have a plastic apron with a bint in suspenders on it 🤣

  53. Bitter Remainers have learned absolutely nothing

    The Ryanair boss’s insulting comments should be widely condemned. Some hardliners still think we live in 2016

    ROBERT TAYLOR • 20 April 2023 • 5:22pm

    You would have thought it would be unacceptable to talk about the impending death of a large number of people in a positive context. You would have thought any business executive would regard such talk as completely off limits. And entirely inappropriate.

    Well, you’d be wrong. Because the death of Leave voters seemingly doesn’t count.

    So, yesterday, Michael O’Leary of Ryanair, a man who apparently believes controversy is the best form of profit-making, saw fit to observe, after bashing ‘delusional’ believers in the Brexit cause, that the impending death of millions of older voters will take Britain back into Europe.

    Where do we start with this? If he had been so insulting to any other section of the population, he’d quickly find no business to manage. He’d be lucky to last 24 hours. He’d be booted out by his own shareholders for making a slur that was not only profoundly offensive to them but potentially damaging to business.

    But if it’s Brexit supporters, then different rules apply.

    Why do we Leave voters, 52% of the population, allow ourselves to be condemned like this, when it would be unacceptable to mete out such treatment to anyone else – say, socialists, environmentalists or Mancunians? Sadly, we know the answer. It’s because, in the circles in which O’Leary operates, Leave voters are deluded simpletons whose views can be dismissed. We, alone, are fair game.

    So here we are, seven years after the vote, and some Remainers like O’Leary haven’t moved on from their bitterness. To them, it’s as fresh and shocking as if it all happened yesterday, not two American presidents ago. So they downplay any positives of Brexit, forgetting the vaccine rollout, Britain’s immediate and principled response to Ukraine, in contrast to the EU’s shameless shilly-shallying, the Asia-Pacific trade deal and the very fact that a democratic vote has been respected in the face of a concerted campaign to have it overturned. And they continually search for reasons that Brexit has ruined everything. The inability to move on must be crushing.

    The irony, of course, is that this blatant elitism is exactly what led to Brexit in the first place. We know the script: some people are too stupid to vote; at least they won’t pollute the polling stations for much longer; let’s just wait till they die.

    Thanks, Michael. Some Remainers never learn.

    And of course, O’Leary falls into a trap of assuming that because more older people voted for Brexit, the demographics will mean a return to the EU “within a generation”. To think that you’d have to believe that Leave support peaked, for some obscure reason nobody can work out, on June 23, 2016, when all the polls had predicted a comfortable Remain victory, and that was the only day that more people wanted to leave the EU than stay. Remarkably, it coincided with a referendum. How extraordinary.

    The danger is that people like O’Leary will hold more influence if Keir Starmer gets into Number 10. Let’s remember that before Starmer’s conversion to “making Brexit work”, he was as big a Remainer as anyone and determined to overturn the referendum. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Starmer shares a similarly condemnatory view of Leavers.

    Brexiteers like us aren’t going to change Starmer’s mind. Nor O’Leary’s. But what we can do is show we don’t appreciate trash talk. Why should we hurry on board a Ryanair flight where we’re clearly not wanted? Perhaps if millions of us voted with our feet, O’Leary will think twice before consigning us to the political grave.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/20/bitter-remainers-have-learned-absolutely-nothing/

    1. I’ ve never flown Ryanair and have no intention of ever doing so. O’Leary always comes across as an unpleasant man, even when he’s talking about horseracing.

    1. WTF is “a person of global majority heritage?” and why is he rabbiting on about white people? Do people like David Monteith realise how cultish and unrealistic they sound?

      2. Black. By far the global majority. Apparently.

        Anyway – DEFINITELY not white.

  58. Uganda’s president rejects new hardline anti-gay bill as not tough enough. 21 April 2023.

    Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has refused to sign into law a controversial anti-LGBTQ+ bill that imposes the death penalty for homosexuality, requesting that it be returned to parliament to make it even harsher.

    The decision was announced on Thursday after a meeting between the president and ruling party MPs who resolved to return the hardline bill to the national assembly “with proposals for its improvement”.

    Let me guess. He’s not going to be on Stonewall’s Christmas Card list! Lol!

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/apr/20/ugandas-president-refuses-to-sign-new-hardline-anti-gay-bill

      1. If not true, not funny either.
        There’s two questions I can’t get a plausible answer to:
        1. Why do so many people hate Jews?
        2. Why do so many people hate homosexuals?
        to the extent that they become out of their heads with incoherent rage… It’s not as if you have to join in (with either).

          1. Their behaviour tends to be forced on others, so I see the logic. You don’t often find people’s heads being sawn off because they aren’t Jewish, and Jews in countries where the mainstream religion isn’t Jewish, don’t tend to go around taking possession of the religious buildings, or forbidding behaviour and foodstuffs.
            Islam adherents tend to be rather too evangelical, that everyone must behave Islamic.

        2. Don’t be naive.
          Jews help each other and have a separate community, which fosters suspicion. I am not saying it’s justified, merely that it is inevitable.
          Homosexuals have worse mental and physical health outcomes – this has been known for generations before our own, and therefore it’s seen as an undesirable trait in society.

          1. There’s also a perception that homosexuality goes against the instinct for the preservation of the species, though the urge to reproduce is not actually confined to heterosexuals.

            The Jews have a high average IQ and more than their share of talent so they’ve tended to dominate the banking and entertainment industries and success breeds envy.

            Handing over one of your own to the Romans to be crucified can hardly be cited as a uniquely sinful act so that excuse doesn’t wash and besides, someone had to do it in order for Him to triumph over death.

          2. Afternoon Sue. Both of these classes of people are now protected by historical experience and cultural convention. Nevertheless, as my original post observes, it is not universal and is limited to a dying West.

        3. I don’t ‘hate’ either group – or any other, for that matter. What I hate is when any group impunes on my own rights and freedoms. I, and I think most others; just want to be left alone.

          When a muslim starts raping children, when Hamas fire missiles at Israel, when blacks stab one another and white politicians fiddle offensive unreliable subsidy into their back pockets I find their actions egregious and I want their freedom to act revoked.

  59. Uganda’s president rejects new hardline anti-gay bill as not tough enough. 21 April 2023.

    Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has refused to sign into law a controversial anti-LGBTQ+ bill that imposes the death penalty for homosexuality, requesting that it be returned to parliament to make it even harsher.

    The decision was announced on Thursday after a meeting between the president and ruling party MPs who resolved to return the hardline bill to the national assembly “with proposals for its improvement”.

    Let me guess. He’s not going to be on Stonewall’s Christmas Card list! Lol!

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/apr/20/ugandas-president-refuses-to-sign-new-hardline-anti-gay-bill

  60. All NATO allies have AGREED Ukraine will become a member. 21 April 2023.

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg today said all members of the military alliance have agreed that Ukraine will join NATO in a major boost for Volodymyr Zelensky.

    The NATO chief said that Ukraine must have ‘the deterrence to prevent new attacks’ from Russia once the war ends – and joining NATO would give Kyiv protection.

    Stoltenberg said the NATO allies had agreed that Ukraine would eventually become a member of the alliance and that Zelensky had been invited to attend the next NATO summit in July.

    That will be a help. It pretty well guarantees a fight to the finish!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11998793/All-NATO-allies-AGREED-Ukraine-member.html?ico=topics_pagination_desktop

    3. We had always understood that a country could not join NATO if it was actively involved in a war????

      1. They are making up the rules as they go along. Or perhaps that’s the meaning of “eventually”.
        Fine by me, the longer they postpone it the better.

      2. Tut tut – this is just a military operation – NOT a “War”. Just ask Vlad.

      3. They are going to wait Janet but it must nevertheless confirm Vlad’s fears and suspicions.

    4. Stoltenberg’s grasp of English is as good as Little Cats grasp. He’s crap. It’s quite possible he mistranslated the Norwegian word “eventuelt” as “eventually” when it doesn’t mean that, it means “possibly“.
      Somewhat changes the meaning of the statement.

  62. Just wondering. If a couple of gay black guys adopt a child, how do they decide which one is supposed to abandon the family?

  65. An amazing story

    An unconscious Indian climber rescued three days after falling into a crevasse as deep as the Eiffel Tower had a “one in a million” chance of survival.

    Anurag Maloo was found barely alive on Thursday in the 300-metre (985ft) chasm on Nepal’s Mount Annapurna, the 10th highest peak in the world and known as the “killer mountain”. Sherpas who led the rescue mission could find neither a pulse nor a heartbeat when they reached the experienced climber.

    His body was taken down from the mountain to a hospital in the nearby city of Pokhara. There, Maloo’s family pleaded with doctors to try to resuscitate him. After two hours of CPR, the doctors noticed some heart activity and he was transferred to the Mediciti Hospital in Kathmandu, where he remains in a critical condition.

    “We were almost going to pronounce him dead as we didn’t find any pulse or heartbeat in the beginning,” said Dr Sujana Poudel, who treated the climber in Pokhara.

    Prateek Gupta, boss of the Indian insurance company ASC 360, which organised the rescue, said that “to find someone alive after three nights is a chance in a million”.

    The climber, 34, who is on a mission to climb all 14 peaks in the world above 8,000m as well as scale the highest mountains in each of the seven continents, went missing on Monday, plunging into the crevasse on his descent from Annapurna. It is thought that this helped to save his life as it protected him from the coldest winds. Still he cheated the odds as it is generally assumed that a climber will perish after just one night in the open.

    It was announced earlier this week that Noel Hanna, a Northern Irish climber, had died while descending Annapurna. His body was found in his tent at base camp on Monday. Six other climbers were rescued.

    Maloo’s brother, Ashish, and his uncle flew to Nepal from India the moment he went missing. For his parents in Kishangarh, Rajasthan, who have always been fearful whenever Maloo left home to pursue his passion, the news that he was alive ended an agony of uncertainty.

    “After the first day of the rescue mission, the rescuers came back and threw up their hands, saying they were helpless,” his father Om Prakash Maloo told The Times. “But my son Ashish was there and he insisted that they keep trying and it’s God’s mercy that they found him.”

    It took numerous efforts and astonishing bravery by the rescue team, four sherpas and two Polish climbers, to find Maloo. Gupta described the past few days as “hell”. “In the area where Maloo fell, avalanches happen all the time on all sides. Do you risk the lives of six men who might be buried alive under snow at any moment by sending them down into a crevasse only for them to come back with a dead body?” said Gupta.

    He confirmed that even the rescuers did not want to keep trying because of the risks. “They knew it could mean certain death. It looked as though you could have offered the sherpas a billion dollars and they wouldn’t have done it,” he said. Eventually, though, they capitulated. Since none of the technology — thermal cameras attached to drones to detect human body heat — worked to locate Maloo, they had no choice but to lower themselves down by rope.

    “It was like going down a narrow deep hole. The ice formations on the sides can cut you open. Once they saw Maloo, they initially assumed he was dead until they felt some sensation. Then the struggle was lifting a body weighing some 80-90 kilos up to the surface where he was winched onto the helicopter,” said Gupta.

    Maloo’s father said his son was so obsessed with climbing that he has refused to marry. But if he recovers the family said they will not let him near another mountain. “While he remains critical, we cannot sleep or do anything,” he said. “But if by God’s grace, he gets well and comes home, we are not going to let him climb again. That would be tempting fate.”

    Read the account on ExplorersWeb.com for a more details of the heroic work by the Polish climbers and the Sherpas, and the helicopter pilot.

    1. Anurag…what an unfortunate name.

      I find it a bit difficult to believe that they administered CPR for two hours.

    2. In the first ascent of Annapurna in 1951 the French climber Maurice Herzog lost his gloves on the descent and knew that he was doomed to lose his fingers. His account of this is among the most harrowing personal narratives in Mountaineering

    3. In the first ascent of Annapurna in 1951 the French climber Maurice Herzog lost his gloves on the descent and knew that he was doomed to lose his fingers. His account of this is among the most harrowing personal narratives in Mountaineering

    2. AHOY THAR CAP’N!
      THAR SHE BLOWS!
      LANDWHALE, 2 POINTS OFF THE LARB’D BOW!

  69. Could one of you green fingered Nottlers tell me what this is, please! I acquired it last year from the show house garden of a new build development and I’m sure it came with a label – long since disappeared! Thanks in anticipation!

        1. Thank you Bill! And MR of course! I thought the leaves were a bit light coloured?

    3. Shouldn’t there be a picture with this post? Or are we supposed to be clairvoyant?

  73. Thanks to a distinct improvement in the weather, I’ve now split the 2nd large rock into manageable pieces. 3 decent long ones and one of a more compact size.
    I now need to get a mix of mortar done and the bits laid to get them clear of where I’ve been working, then I can crowbar the 3rd and larger piece out and get that dealt with.

    Being a fairly low quality limestone, the rock isn’t breaking exactly how I’d like it to, but I’m still getting some useful stone out of it.

  74. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/20/rishi-has-just-played-a-masterstroke-to-stop-the-small-boat/

    Reply to ‘most liked’ comment by Anthony Goodson:

    I hope somebody has considered how difficult it will be to load two or three hundred young men onto a plane taking them to somewhere they don’t want to go.

    Yes. That’s why we have guns and they should be in chains. They’re criminals.

    I might make an exception if there is a family but that family must know it will be returned to France.

      1. Obtain a human cannonball rig and fire them across the channel one by one, those coming across in dinghies will watch them fly overhead and think FTFAGOS and turn back

      2. Obtain a human cannonball rig and fire them across the channel one by one, those coming across in dinghies will watch them fly overhead and think FTFAGOS and turn back

  75. Ukraine targets high-level double agents who helped Putin invade. 21 April 2023.

    Ukraine is deepening a purge of double agents in its spy service, saying top-level traitors laid the ground for last year’s Russian invasion by helping enemy forces seize the southern city of Kherson and Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the north.

    For traitors read ethnic Russians!

    https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-double-agent-russian-invasion-fsb-intelligence-operatives/

    1. They’ll appeal and be made asked to do 100 hours of “community service”…

      You read it here first.

    1. I’ve a pear tree that has never produced fruit, largely because there are no other pear trees nearby, so last year I bought a 2nd and both are in blossom at the moment, though the new one is still fairly small and does not have a lot of flowers on it, I might still get some fruit.

      1. Did you forget to put a partridge in it?

        I have planted Conference Pear, Braeburn Apple and another Cherry this year.

        1. I am not keen on Conference pears (we used to have them at my parents’ home). I have Concord, Beurre Hardy and Doyenne de Comice.

      2. I hope you didn’t plant the two trees anywhere close to the Great Wall of Bonsall, BoB. Their roots could easily undo all your hard work. Lol.

      3. It’s amazing the effect that having a hive or two of bees in the area has on the productivity of fruit trees.

        1. We tend to have wild bumble bee nests up the hill and there must be honey bee hives somewhere as they are often seen too.

    2. My apple trees haven’t come into bloom yet; all the buds are tightly closed. My cherry, pears and plums, on the other hand, are flowering madly and the golden gage finished weeks ago.

          3. Do you know, Sue. One of the reasons i like Nottle so much is that even if a post could be considered offensive none of the ladies take offense. Obviously a generational thing.

            Erm…not that i’m implying you are old….

            anyone got a spade? This one is wearing out.

  80. Heather James: ‘Deborah is a hard act to follow but Seb has our blessing to move on when he’s ready’

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/deborah-james-bowelbabe-cancer-heather-james/

    I was ‘lucky’

    Bowel Cancer diagnosed

    Operated on

    A ‘bag’ for a year.

    Chemo: 17 Tablets a day, for 3 Months

    Endless oscopies “Down There’

    Bag removed

    Piping all reconnected

    Functional checks carried out

    That started 20 years ago

    The most important thing I can say to people when going for a Number 2

    “The Job is not finished til the paperwork is done.”

    I saw blood on the paper, three weeks later, I was on the operating table

    Sorry if this seems crude, but it could save YOUR Life

    1. Listen up chaps. If you haven’t had your rear end endoscopy then book one now. It could save your life.

      1. Just been on the phone to arrange The way ahead,having changed location and hospitals.

        1. I had one a while ago. Not painful though when he pumped some air up me jaxie it did make me squeak a bit. They do that to open it up for a better view. I decided not to watch the live video.

          The only problem i had was having to buy the camera crew a round of drinks after. :@(

        1. The two at the back are Prince Edward’s kids, therefore HM’s grandchildren- the rest are greats.

          1. Didn’t Archie and Lillibet get an invitation then? Or wouldn’t their Mum/Mom let them attend?

          2. It is very strange that they don’t get to share their ‘parents’ limelight, isn’t it?

  82. Bogey Five today.

    Wordle 671 5/6
    ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Me too.

      Wordle 671 5/6

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

    1. She’s awful. Another useful idiot positively wetting herself at being in the company of very rich people.

  84. Just home before the Friday rush. Plenty of traffic in the opposite direction.
    Nice to meet with old friends and and catch up. Lunch at The Woburn. At large bar restaurant I’d never heard of the actual venue previously. Perfect, friendly staff. And a good choice of good food. Plenty of free parking.
    I won’t be eating again until breakfast.

    1. Excellent. I really do enjoy a place that is run well with good food.

      Not too far from Woburn…about an hour and a bit is the Red Lion at Horsell. Recommended to me by Alf the Great. Exceptional.

    1. Much as I dislike the man, and the process that got rid of him, at least he said he would resign if found “guilty” and he did so, so respect for that.

      1. Apparently all he did was try and get the civil servants to carry out their jobs properly. It wouldn’t be too far fetched to imagine some form of racial tension being involved.

    2. It shows that the blob has too much power. Assuming there is no substance to the complaints and they are simply ‘waaah, waaah, nasty man told me to do my job! Waah!’ Raab resigning is to placate the mob – the press.

      I imagine Sunak was thinking of the election and any bad press, wanting to show himself as a strong leader. What he has really done is weakness, but he won’t know the difference. Meanwhile, the complaint will be sealed. The complainer protected.

      1. Raab’s departure, not that I care, sets an unhealthy precedent. Now, any politician the so-called civil service oiks don’t like, they can complain about something and get the person removed.
        The stench of corruption is everywhere.

        1. Yep, spot on. The utter and wilful refusal to resolve the spite of the civil service is the absolute greatest debacle of this useless government.

          Hunt keeps saying we need more tax to pay off the debt, then adds to the debt… with those taxes. Brown’s greatest act of power and malice was his massive expansion of the most useless and inefficient organisation in the world.

      2. Richie boy might have stimulated more votes if he’d stood up to civil service.

    2. Your generalisation, “In UK, you would be hard put, to find a taxi-driver or shelf stacker who could speak English”, doesn’t apply in Argyll and Bute.

      Perhaps you live in Leicester, OLT?

      1. Are you suggesting that the next time one needs a taxi one should head for Argyll and Bute?

  88. The Dutch farmers are under severe attack from Rutte and his cabal. Sunak and DEFRA are taking a different route i.e. softly, softly catchee monkey. However, the destination is the same: reduction in food production = higher prices + poor nutrition + poor health outcomes + famine + death. The farmers need the people’s support to put an end to this seriously evil regime.

    Daily Sceptics has a full report here

    https://twitter.com/thedoctorxxx/status/1649347328547991553

    1. They said it was a consultation, but I only see a document telling us what they’re planning (none of it good), no opportunity for anyone to protest.

    2. DEFRA are doing nothing deliberately to ensure they do not divert from EU rules. Their intent is to avoid doing absolutely anything regarding farming subsidy in the expectation that by the time they do we’ll be rechained.

        1. Yes, but they should replace the CAP farming subsidy with… well, the same – only instead of dictating what farmers spend it on leave them alone. And scrap all the petty, pointless, stupid EU rules to control what is grown and where. That’s the Soviet – the EU – model.

  90. That’s me for today. Wet morning. Cold but sunny afternoon. Better tomorrow – then COLD for three days.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain…I hope.

  93. BBC R4 news at 6pm:

    “Dominic Raab does have his supporters, both in parliament and in the civil service. One civil servant who worked in his private office and gave evidence to the enquiry said they were very sad at his resignation and the report reflected a big pile-on [sic] culture at the civil service. They said their experiences working alongside the former Secretary of State had been very different and felt that they were side-lined in the coverage of the allegations.”

    One’s singulars and plurals appear to be in conflict with one another…

    1. It’s the beeb! It has trouble identifying as anything, especially impartial!

      1. And it detracts from a serious story – Raab the bully or the civil servants the milk-sops?

        1. Well, having read the report I’m very pleased we never employed civil servants when we ran our business! HMRC and SEPA were bad enough to deal with!

  94. I’m not particularly keen on snakes.
    If I see them from a distance I’m not bothered by them but if I find one when moving something else, I instinctively flinch and jump back.
    I was about to remove the waterproof cover from a log pile, ready for adding more wood, when I spotted a superb mature grass snake, sunning itself right at the edge of the logs . It looked at me and I looked at it for a few minutes, when it decided I was ugly and potentially harmful and it disappeared under the pile.
    Good things to have in the garden, they eat lots of creatures that I don’t want!
    We have numerous different snakes, including adders, and it’s a rare treat to see them. Usually the only evidence of them being in the garden is when we see the sloughed skins.

    1. You be careful, I’m sure there are numerous Snivel Servents ready and willing to bring allegations that you bully grass snakes forcing them back into the dark.

      The floodgates have been truly opened with Rabb’s resignation.

    2. I love English nature, but its low number of species of reptiles and amphibians does get me down a bit. I blame this damned interglacial period we’re going through.

      1. We have lizards various, frogs various, toads various, snakes various, newts various, salamanders various.
        I’m always amused by the ranting and raving on Spring Watch, Countryfile etc etc by the likes of Packham.

        My garden, if it was in the UK, would almost certainly be labelled a SSSI.
        Everything from bugs to beasts to birds and down from plants to fungi.
        The happenstance of location.

        1. Native English species;
          Lizards 3
          Snakes 3
          Frogs 1
          Toads 2
          Newts (no salamanders) 3

          1. I’m no expert, but I would bet very good money that I can beat those numbers in my plot easily.

          3. The only ones I have not seen are: smooth snake; natterjack toad; great crested newt; and palmate newt.

          4. I’ve seen a natterjack on a southern heath. A British sand lizard, chez Belle, at Studland, but like you, no smooth snake. I found a great crested newt under a dead tree in Richmond park, and its size was impressive.

    3. Firstborn’s little cat came in with a lizards tail just now; the tail was still wriggling… ARGH!

      1. I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m amused by the number of lizards in the garden with varying lengths of stump.

        1. Dopping the tail really confused the cat – allowing the lizard to slither off and survive til another day.

          1. Many years ago now in CT, my Golden Fred, caught a chipmunk. The little tail was hanging out his mouth. OK, said my ex, I’ll hold Fred’s mouth open and you pull the chipmunk out. On no, I said, I will hold his mouth open and you pull the chipper out. This happened and a very bemused and soggy chipmunk staggered off and into a hole in the dry stone wall, where they all lived.

    1. His mistake was expecting high standards similar to what you would get in the private sector.
      That said, there are ways and ways of criticising people.

      1. Raab’s private sector experience is a few years as a lawyer. He has less idea of the real world than an illegal gimmegrant.

  96. If GB news continues on its current track, numerous interviews with these eco people and an hour of the reverend on Saturday evening, they will lose viewers. If I want to hear about that stuff I can find it elsewhere.
    Knock it off GB news and get back to basics.

  97. It’s dusk here and after my earlier snake, more creatures are appearing in greater numbers.
    I had to go into the boiler-house just now and was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a bat.
    They are gradually coming out of hibernation and are far more active. They live in the walls and appear in groups as the sun vanishes.
    Where I might have seen the odd one or two as the sun goes down, I’m now seeing several.
    I was moving logs the other day and three deer appeared, there are several very young leverets hunkered down and the tree frogs are making a cacophony Ped would appreciate. Butterflies everywhere and the hummingbird hawkmoths are also appearing.
    The downside is that flies, hornets and wasps are also showing themselves.
    At least ten orchid species are now out, the Marguerites are starting to flower and all the things you proper gardeners would hate are flowering like crazy: buttercups, dandelions, wood anemonies, wild strawberries and vetch.

    I love it here, nature as it should be enjoyed!

    2. Staying at Firstborns smallholding this weekend – working, not boozing :-(.
      The bees are very active when the sun is out, despite the snow depth being only a bit lower than the hives (on stands). There’s oceans of pollen around, and it’s great to see that both hives survived the winter. Result!

      1. Good news indeed.
        The wild bees here have been extremely active for a couple of months, I’m pleased to see what appear to be honey bees out in good numbers now.
        I leave most of my patch fairly wild, it gets cut once a year, (which means Swallow/Marten/Swift heaven at the time just before they migrate) and there are numerous plants that the bees seem to like. What do extremely well here are things like butterflies and dragon flies, I must have seen at least a dozen different species of butterfly over the last week,.

        1. The bees here ar very plentiful this year. We have some early flowering clematis that is full of them all day.

    3. I’m so jealous.
      We use to have bats in our garden and owls. But because many of our new commers are afraid of the dark they have been illuminating their gardens overnight. And I’d guess its been the reason for the changes of these creatures habitat.
      We occasionally have muntjac deer in the area. And foxes. And I have slow worms living in a woodpile. But not seen a hedgehog for around two years. It’s all a bit sad.

      1. Sad indeed.
        Just to rub it in: };-O
        We’ve had an eagle owl. That is one very impressive bird.
        Tawny, barn and little owls are commonplace.
        We have raptors almost coming out of our ears, buzzards, common and honey, kestrel, sparrowhawk, and others, I’m confident Grizzly could identify many more; we get at least five varieties of woodpecker, it’s a very rare day I don’t see at least three different species.
        Red squirrels? Common as muck! Stoats and weasels, harder to spot but yes.
        Moles? yep, I hate the bastards!
        Rabbits no longer, the stoats got them, hooray for the stoats.
        Hedgehogs think it’s heaven here, lots of slugs and snails, but I do wish the little beasties didn’t leave their calling cards, particularly from the side into the pool, bastard trick!
        Mice shrews voles, help yourself, the birds of prey certainly do.
        We close the windows at night during the summer because it’s murder central in the garden and the screams and screeches can disturb ones sleep!

        1. Alright don’t rub it in 😆…. we do have red kites. I use to catch rats in a trap, drown them and put them on the shed roof. The kites take them.
          We currently have a very vocal black bird who spends several hours in a rowen tree each day singing his heart out.

      2. The increase in badgers has been a dissaster for hedgehogs. As a food competitor badgers kill them on sight (or smell).

    4. That sounds wonderful! An extra uptick, were it possible, for “after my earlier snake”, which made me grin.

      1. Thank you.
        We truly fell on our feet when we moved here.
        I’ve been trying to garden in a way that attracts/encourages wild orchids as well as all the other things I’ve been writing about. Even the local workmen and all the neighbours know about the crazy Englishman who trims bits on the verges and marks potential orchid growth with sticks. The plants when young look very similar to weeds and it’s as much by luck as by judgement that I spot them.
        What has been extremely gratifying is the number of locals who are now doing similarly. Orchid numbers are rising throughout the immediate communes.
        It amuses me that the locals in the commune refer to chateau sosraboc as “la belle maison”, probably because it’s an old stone house in a position on a hill that accentuates its beauty.

  98. Evening all! We’re in Sheffield, staying with family. Had a good dinner, too much wine. Boys have been playing the piano. OH is catching up with the snooker.

    4. Sounds lovely J.

      I had caulilower cheese and Moh made a hot curry for son and he ,

      The house stinks of curry .

      Then walked / ran the dogs on the heath , lovely sky, but chilly.

  99. Raab again. We’ve talked much about how experience generally makes for better politicians. Here’s one who had plenty of it before entering politics and who, once he was in government, knew how to deal with the civil servants. To listen to the whole programme is an experience that is almost moving but for the relevant part, start at about 15:50 (it’s about eight and a half minutes).

    Reflections – Peter Hennessy interviews Norman Tebbit in 2013

      1. Unless he stood as an independent or for one of the small parties, he’d never get through the selection process.

    1. The Left – Netflix – would not be happy casting a black man as Hitler. He would have to be white and old. They would also describe him as Right wing.

    2. If Anne Boleyn, and several white characters in Dickens, Jane Austen and and Shakespeare can be played by black actors then why not Hitler, Rasputin, Pol Pot, Professor Moriaty, Dracula and Klaus Schwab?

  101. Had a new lawn laid on Tuesday and the guy warned me that I needed to water the lawn twice a day if it was dry, to encourage root growth and avoiding shrinkage. I am thus delighted with the rain of the morning hours here in Birmingham and the promise of plenty more this weekend.

    Chilly, isn’t it …

    1. I had let the Rayburn go out for the last two days as it was so warm; this morning it was so cold and damp I had to light it again. So much for global warming!

      1. Who invented the lie that Co2 is harmful to the environment and why have so many people been taken in by this lie?

  102. Evening, all. The government is responsible for most of the ills afflicting us. Whether they will answer for it remains to be seen.

  104. Oh well a decent day enjoyable day behind us.
    I’m off to bed. I must be getting old. Our eldest is coming to cut the grass tomorrow. I’ll strim the edges.
    Better get plenty of rest.
    Good night all.

  105. After the appalling start to the day it brightened up and I got one of the large rocks broken into more manageable bits.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/729a6bc7b0a668cff52d8f4e2cc68f9f6ae27708ccb62ef039645945152ac7da.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e17fbb6e4fbf39037796c9dfc49e0599bb5eba5c025fa44a1d454e82db785980.jpg

    And the tools for the job:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/844b22282329ee63afb18a87fd7e82d07bb4776f79147c6f16e2fdb99c0e26da.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/02dd79ab29919c2e084b35c80f918311ae66367c9d9c79563710164911fe2ed4.jpg

    Work in progress:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/05ca060185b6750d096759fc077310fcfb001a62e45c4c45a7275eeb3a24143d.jpg

    And a big lump of basalt to slot in somewhere
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94701eee7658500e1f273fcec5458b7e66ef34481ea0aeb712fff938a95c7146.jpg

    1. It looks impressive Bob. I am especially impressed by the drill. Two handles means business.

      1. I’ve an even bigger one that I bought to break out a basalt outcrop so I could lay some concrete where I now have the smaller container beside the house.
        It rarely gets used, but when it does it’s very welcome.

  106. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d159c2a77eb0de434c47ff44b4d03f33b2ec2b834a44e22f99de7c91af6641c2.jpg Another few photos;
    The next rock for splitting up:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7d274ef5cb186a36f503776b49727636744805342a28858ec4a8f2060fd32630.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0920a81b59f847685f4fceebd7479bf20005273591144f60ebb989b171c9069b.jpg

    And the bluebells are out:-
    As are the forget-me-nots
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f3f7963c04ed2c79c18243d0c1a58997b1c65788c2586af7d90108364874697e.jpg

    1. My bluebells and forget-me-nots are out, too. After the yellow of early spring, blue is taking over.

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