Friday 22 March: What are voters to make of unelected Lords delaying the Rwanda Bill?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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825 thoughts on “Friday 22 March: What are voters to make of unelected Lords delaying the Rwanda Bill?”

  1. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story
    HOW TO INSTALL A REDNECK HOME SECURITY SYSTEM

    1. Go to the Charity Shop and buy a pair of size 14-16 men’s work boots.
    2. Place them on your front porch, along with a copy of Guns & Ammo Magazine.
    3. Put four giant dog dishes next to the boots and magazines.
    4. Leave a note on your door that reads…

    Bubba, Me and Marcel, Donnie Ray and Jimmy Earl went for more ammo and beer. Be back in an hour. Don’t mess with the pit bulls. They got the mailman this morning and messed him up bad. I don’t think Killer took part, but it was hard to tell from all the blood. Anyway, I locked all four of ’em in the house. Better wait outside. Be right back.
    Cooter.

    If you think this is a good idea – translate for English!

  2. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story
    HOW TO INSTALL A REDNECK HOME SECURITY SYSTEM

    1. Go to the Charity Shop and buy a pair of size 14-16 men’s work boots.
    2. Place them on your front porch, along with a copy of Guns & Ammo Magazine.
    3. Put four giant dog dishes next to the boots and magazines.
    4. Leave a note on your door that reads…

    Bubba, Me and Marcel, Donnie Ray and Jimmy Earl went for more ammo and beer. Be back in an hour. Don’t mess with the pit bulls. They got the mailman this morning and messed him up bad. I don’t think Killer took part, but it was hard to tell from all the blood. Anyway, I locked all four of ’em in the house. Better wait outside. Be right back.
    Cooter.

    If you think this is a good idea – translate for English!

    1. Why should there not be “Men Only” clubs is the question that springs to my mind.

      1. Being a woman, it would. What aout the WI to name but one.ing.

        Sorry, missed out the ‘not’ when read

      2. Being a woman, it would. What aout the WI to name but one.ing.

        Sorry, missed out the ‘not’ when read

      4. Any woman moaning about the fact there are so many “Men Only” clubs in London should be directed to:

        Fiena
        Sorority
        The Step Up Club
        The Trouble Club
        AllBright
        University Women’s Club
        The Merit Club

        … and a good number of other “Women Only” clubs in the capital.

          1. Still very puffy around the eyes, Spikey, but my vision remains (thankfully) unimpaired.
            I’ve probably got some time to go before it recedes.

      5. Into sports? Try playing at the Toronto Women’s Golf Club.

        Gentlemen guests may park their cars in the car park beside the maintenence shed. They are not allowed in the clubhouse.

  4. Morning everyone. I’ve recovered from my cold. Which I would not wish on anyone. Exhaustion was its main symptom.

  7. Liberal elites put their reputation at Davos ahead of Britain’s interests. 22 March 2024.

    If nation states are to succeed in an age of intensifying great power competition, politicians must relentlessly pursue the interests of their country’s citizens over those outside it. That means reaffirming the enduring principle of national interest to deliver the common good. That is our duty as elected representatives. The leaders who grasp this are invariably those whose reputations endure.

    That would be Vladimir Putin and Russia. The rest of us are toast.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/22/liberal-elites-put-their-reputation-ahead-of-our-interests/

    1. I thought it a good and surprising article. Jenrick is preparing a leadership move but I wouldn’t believe he’d change much at all.

      1. Would he pull Britain out of the WHO and the UN Migration Pact? If no, then he’s just another one-world government shill trying to make out that he understands what the people want.

        1. Morning all. Nobody is going to pull GB out of anything, they don’t have the balls.
          ETA: Or the desire!

        2. Morning all. Nobody is going to pull GB out of anything, they don’t have the balls.
          ETA: Or the desire!

  9. The Cultural Marxists are everywhere and will stop at nothing!

    The National Trust must return to democracy

    The use of the ‘quick vote’ has undermined the checks and balances that protect members’ interests

    SIR WILLIAM PROBY
    21 March 2024 • 7:37pm

    The National Trust has always attracted controversy, because of its importance in our national life and the passion that so many people feel for what it does
    As a former chairman of the National Trust, I have been reluctant to criticise my successors – but I do believe that governance changes in recent years are taking this great institution in the wrong direction. A new report by the Legatum Institute highlights serious flaws.

    I have a personal interest in this because, as chairman, it was my responsibility to introduce the radical reforms recommended by the Blakenham governance review. Lord Blakenham took a whole year to complete this review, and interviewed a large number of people from every part of the Trust.

    Its conclusion was that it was no longer practical to run an organisation as large as the Trust with a 52 member-strong council.

    The review therefore recommended that a new board of trustees of about 12 should be set up as the controlling body. It was, however, recognised that, by doing this, there was a danger of concentrating too much power in the board. So the report recommended that the council should be retained as an advisory body and, most importantly, that it would retain powers of appointment to the board.

    Given these important powers, it was vital that elections to the council by the Trust’s members should be as democratic as possible. Since the trustees are mainly appointed from the council, being elected to the council is the only way for most ordinary members to be appointed to the board of trustees.

    It was recommended by Blakenham’s review that the practice of using the chairman’s proxy vote for elections should be abolished. The chairman’s proxy for members’ resolutions was retained on the basis that chairmen would have the ability to listen to the debate at the AGM before casting their vote.

    It was quite normal for members critical of the Trust’s policy to be elected to the council. It took two years to introduce the reforms and, during my time, there were at least seven members of the council who were very critical. I welcomed their presence as it allowed a frank debate where all views could be aired, a vote could be taken and the organisation could move on.

    The Legatum report shows that, in more recent years, there has been a steady erosion of the safeguards that Blakenham introduced. In particular, the introduction of the “quick vote” – an extreme form of proxy voting – goes against the whole spirit of the Blakenham review by making the election process undemocratic. In addition, it seems that the chairman’s discretionary vote on resolutions is actually cast before the AGM.

    In the past two years since it was introduced, all the candidates who have been elected to the council were proposed by the board of trustees. All the others were defeated by the “quick vote”. This is not credible, especially when one of the candidates was of the calibre of Lord Sumption. It is tantamount to the board of trustees appointing the people responsible for appointing them.

    Unfortunately, the “quick vote” is not the only problem with the governance of the Trust. For many years, it used advisory panels and regional committees to provide advice and oversight to the staff. The members of these committees and panels were all volunteers. Importantly, they were sub-committees of the board, appointed by the board of trustees and the chairman. They were strongly endorsed by Blakenham as part of the checks and balances.

    In 2015, however, the Trust demoted the status of the panels and regional committees on the basis that they were there to advise the staff and presumably by implication not the chairman and board of trustees.

    I think this was a mistake. I relied heavily on the advice of the panels and committees, and met regularly with their chairmen. I believe the director-general of the time felt that they slowed down decision-making, but they served to give external oversight and endorsement to what the Trust was doing. A slower decision is better than a wrong decision. Any organisation of the size and importance of the National Trust needs some form of external oversight.

    The National Trust has always attracted controversy. This is because of its importance in our national life and the passion that so many people feel for what it does. This is healthy and should be welcomed by the management and board of trustees.

    A truly democratic structure allows these issues to be debated, voted on, and the organisation can move on. Stifling dissent will only lead to a running sore of disaffected members outside the organisation, which inevitably will damage this great institution.

    I hope the Legatum report will encourage the National Trust and the Charity Commission to look again at its governance and restore it to the democratic principles set out by Blakenham.

    Sir William Proby is a former chairman of the National Trust

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

    Russell Thomas
    11 HRS AGO
    The National Trust should be required to return to its core value of preserving the Nation’s Heritage and maintaining unspoilt areas of natural beauty, and stop preaching anti British Woke nonsense!

  10. What are voters to make of unelected Lords delaying the Rwanda Bill?

    The whole Rwanda Bill is just a time wasting diversion exercise while they downgrade the country

      1. Indeed.

        The exploitation of the British legal establishment led to a breakdown of border control, one of the prime duties of Government. This is the prime cause of the demolition of the reputation of the Conservative Party, regardless which gormless Aunt Sally is currently leading it.

        As for Labour, its current Leader owes his position to a campaign by an influential pressure group to legalise genocide and make it a crime even to level criticism at a regime that is currently and systematically exterminating a city of its people on sectarian grounds. The cost of aid relief is being borne by the British taxpayer and diverting funds from the charitable sector here. This same man was the Director of Public Prosecutions using Equality, Diversity & Inclusion rules to excuse mass sexual offending in British cities by a favoured group, and again laying down the law against critics of this procedure.

        The Liberal Democrats are led by a man who ignored a serious miscarriage of justice within the Post Office some twelve years after it was first brought to the attention of Downing Street. This party has shown utter inconsistency when it comes to conflicts between developers and environmentalists.

        The SNP have created an atmosphere of fear under their Hate Crime regulations, and have shown utter incompetence when commissioning ferries, running a health service or educating the young.

        Even the minor and fledgling parties have shown scant evidence that in power they would be any better.

        From where I am, the only person with any influence with the Establishment to have shown a sense of public duty and national interest is a 75-year-old king getting over a bout of cancer and a normal set of family dramas and the frailties of being human, rather than demigod.

    3. I agree. It’s a sop to ward off the righteous indignation of the native British.

    4. I think they are spinning out the time before the election – they won’t call one until the WHO pandemic treaty is passed (end of May?). That is the single biggest issue of our time and they will not want to risk it being discussed during an election campaign.

      Reform is playing its part, hoovering up people’s support and then trashing it by sacking all candidates not passed by Hate Not Hope.

  11. Good morning. There is no historical basis for the CoEs claim that it ever benefited from investing in the slave trade via the South Sea Company, by the world’s leading expert on the subject.
    So it’s yet more ahistorical lies to justify defrauding the British citizen,

    1. Your link did not copy correctly.
      It appears to be directing people to your C Drive for a .pdf document.

      1. Thanks.
        It keeps reverting to the C drive rather than the weblink. It’s by Jim Dale in the Church Times.

  12. Anyone notice how these not cross buns with a tick that could easily become a crescent moon over time once accepted as the norm

  15. Good Morning All. 11C grey sky. Turning colder and clear later. Forecast 2C overnight.

  16. Good morning all and the 77th,

    Grey overhead McPhee Towers, wind in the North-West, 9-10℃, rain imminent.

    I popped up ‘Climate the Movie: The Cold Truth’ last night but here it is again for those who had retired early. Truth bomb after truth bomb to share. Ivor Cummins introduces:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4vSMj4R5Rg

    If you prefer, Climate The Movie: The Cold Truth has it’s own website:
    https://www.climatethemovie.net/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

    1. I watched most of it last night. Will finish it off today. Trouble is most people who will watch it already know the whole thing is a huge scam.

    2. I hated the fact that it appeared to be put together as a comedy with that irritating musical background.

    3. The sort of thing the BBC should be making if it was serious about impartiality.

  17. Good morning.
    I came across this on Twitt. Apparently he is Macron’s designated successor in France? I hadn’t heard of him, but if this post is to be believed, he’s been a busy boy…

    Arnaud Bertrand
    @RnaudBertrand
    Ok, Raphaël Glucksmann is now in 3rd place in the French polls for the upcoming EU elections so I think it’s high time someone wrote a honest portrait of him.

    He’s right behind Le Pen and Macron’s parties and to me he’s by far the scariest character of the three. And I absolutely hate and despise both Macron and Le Pen…

    Glucksmann has a very revealing personal history. He was a key actor in several US-led color revolutions and their aftermath (in Georgia and Ukraine) and his father André is an ex-Maoist philosopher turned American-asset – a so-called “atlantist” – towards the end of the cold war (you can literally read, directly on the CIA website, a report on how he defected entitled “France: defection of the leftist intellectuals”: https://cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86S00588R000300380001-5.pdf)

    After the cold war André Glucksmann, the father, became one of France’s staunchest supporters for American military interventions. For instance in this unreal Le Monde article at the start of the Iraq war (https://lemonde.fr/international/article/2003/04/14/point-de-vue-la-faute-par-pascal-bruckner-andre-glucksmann-et-romain-goupil_316794_3210.html) he wrote: “What a joy to see the Iraqi people rejoicing, celebrating their liberation and… their liberators! A few months ago, France claimed to be channeling the belligerent ardor of the United States into the ‘legality’ of the UN. Unfortunately, opposition to the war degenerated into systematic opposition to Washington… France put itself out of the game, ridiculed… In this respect, Tony Blair, who took the risk of confronting his electorate while remaining true to his convictions, proved to be a true head of state.” Everyone can agree that this degree of apologia and sycophantism for what history will remember as one of America’s greatest crimes against humanity is beyond nauseating…

    Sons are obviously not accountable for their fathers’ mistakes but it turns out that in this case Raphaël actually goes further than his dad: he not only systematically praises American interventionism abroad but directly participates in it!

    For instance he started his career at the end of his 20s as the right-hand man to Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili after the “Rose Revolution”, a US-sponsored color revolution. How does a young French man in his 20s find himself as right-hand man to a Georgian president in the aftermath of a US-sponsored color revolution? You tell me 🤔

    And Georgia wasn’t enough: 3 years after he took up his position with Saakashvili, he moved to Ukraine to help with the Euromaidan movement – a pro-US coup – following which his then wife Eka Zgouladze, who was a minister in Georgia, became a minister in Ukraine!

    Raphaël is also, coincidently, one of the founding members of the “Cercle de l’Oratoire”, a French pro-US think tank created for the purpose, I quote, of “defending US policy in the French public opinion and fighting against anti-Americanism” (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cercle_de_l%27Oratoire). In other words, it’s a pro-American propaganda shop.

    Raphaël is systematically at the forefront of all the US propaganda campaigns. For instance he took a leading role in Mike Pompeo’s “Uyghur genocide” campaign, spreading the most ridiculous pieces of disinformation that even US officials wouldn’t dare to claim, for fear of ridicule. For instance here on his Instagram account (https://instagram.com/p/CdLpKMXDW_2/?hl=en) you can see a video of him speaking at the EU parliament and claiming that the “CCP” harvests “Halal organs” from executed Uyghurs for “wealthy clients from the Gulf”…

    He’s obviously 100% behind Europe’s belligerence:
    – vis-à-vis Russia (here he is on NATO’s “Strategic Communication” YouTube channel saying “we have enemies, and first of all, Putin’s regime”: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NJ9raSU5N68)
    – vis-à-vis China (he even led a recent delegation of EU MPs on a visit to Taiwan: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/11/877e1b649820-european-parliament-delegation-arrives-in-taiwan-amid-china-tension.html)
    – and vis-à-vis Iran (here on his Instagram account he writes that “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards must now be considered terrorists and hunted down as such”: https://instagram.com/raphaelglucksmann_english/p/CnrZwzCsQCH/?img_index=1).

    His position on Gaza? You’ll have guessed it: 100% aligned behind the American position. He writes (https://euradio.fr/emission/20mZ-parlement-europeen-session-pleniere/klnx-pleniere-au-parlement-raphael-glucksmann-condamner-lattaque-du-hamas-et-demander-une-pause-humanitaire): “The fight against Hamas is perfectly legitimate; one has the right to defend oneself against such a terrorist organization. But we must also be able to remind ourselves of the obligation to respect international humanitarian law, the obligation to respect international law (…) true peace involves the dismantling of Hamas.” Almost straight out of a communiqué of the US State Department…

    Raphaël founded his own political party in France – Place Publique – in 2018 and has been an EU MP since 2019.

    Immense irony – and I do mean immense! – in 2020 he was elected president of the “Special Committee for foreign interference in all democratic processes in the EU, including disinformation”. The guy who is literally THE poster child for US interference and US propaganda in Europe has been put in charge of fighting foreign interference and disinformation in Europe… That’s the EU for you…

    Anyhow, we now have this guy in 3rd place in the French polls for the upcoming EU elections, which I find absolutely astonishing. Hopefully this will help folks make a more educated decision in their vote…
    4:31 AM · Mar 22, 2024
    ·
    93.7K
    Views

  18. Good morning all!
    Another bright overcast, dry start with 5°C, little wind and Handel’s delightful Harmonious Blacksmith on BBC R3.

  19. Good morning, all. A bit washed out but still here. Grey and damp outside. No news, I see.

    2. Good to see you (approximately) vertical.
      Just take it easy.
      MB and I did that and the extra 24 hours of dossing certainly paid off.

      1. Thank you. I shall continue to do very little. Fortunately, the MR is slaving at exam marking – so I need not feel that I am inhibiting her outdoor activities.

  20. Ukrainian army official ‘embezzled £1m meant to feed soldiers’. 22 March 2022.

    A senior Ukrainian army official who allegedly embezzled more than £1 million meant to buy rations for the military has been detained.

    The suspect, named locally as Oleksandr Kozlovsky, was working as the head of a military department that procured food for soldiers before his arrest.

    Tip of the iceberg this. One of the most interesting aspects of this war is the lack of personal reporting. Though you can get there by bus no one goes. I remember Vietnam. There were hordes of journalists. There was no subject out of bounds. You can’t even get any Ukrainian independent front line coverage. Something Amiss!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/21/ukrainian-official-arrested-embezzle-1m-food-soldiers/

    1. Good morning.
      Besides journalists being as rare as rocking horse poo…what about the tiktok/instagram/facebook generation? Does no one in Ukraine have a smart phone? In the UK you only have to fall over in public to have half a dozen people filming it.

      1. A while ago I queried that a with a military person who is involved, and they said that there was plenty of footage on youtube etc.

  21. Converting the cross of crucifixion to half of an inane tick/cross pair is beyond insulting.

  22. You may recall i applied for postal votes for me and the children earlier this month – for me, because i refuse to take id to the polling booth when we all know that the fraud is taking place in the postal voting system.
    You will recall that i was horrified that you didn’t need to know your date of birth or even be able to write your signature in order to apply for a postal vote. But you needed your NI number.

    Due to Richmond Borough Council stuffing up the application for the kids (and sending them Poll Cards) i have just reapplied for their postal votes. Now it seems you don’t even need to know your NI number.

    3. A trip to the polling station can be fun. On Brexit day I strolled towards the door of the village hall and was hailed (accosted, greeted) by a local lady (also about to vote) who asked my intentions. It was 2030 or later. When I admitted my all-day-long doubts, she said that I should vote for Leave, because the elite would NEVER EVER allow us another opportunity.

  24. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2c9d519df98fd1151da355a115a0a8d0f56437b1/0_0_3778_2573/master/3778.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=ac13a62948bee7e1bc344d58181a9673
    Sydney, Australia
    People take part in a ‘chicken run’ during a media preview of the Sydney Royal Easter Show

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c8abd6e2da661f28f9f83458c033e5382d9f6f3b/0_0_4000_2667/master/4000.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=434f36f71b8e331f1485a9710a7ce403
    Zagreb, Croatia
    Artists perform at the opening ceremony of the annual Festival of Lights

  25. Note the excellent BTL forensic accounting analysis by Dichotomy Dave.

    Andrew McQuillan
    Varadkar’s true achievement was screwing over the Brits
    21 March 2024, 1:09pm

    The departure of Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach yesterday should really be marked by Irish nationalists with elaborate memorials and tributes in Dublin, on a par with those for the founders of the Irish state.

    This smooth-talking politician achieved more in one dinner than so-called freedom fighters did over 20 years

    Despite the ignominious manner of his departure, having been conclusively told where to go by a chunk of the Irish population in a recent referendum designed to change fundamental elements of the constitution, Varadkar achieved something which most Irish leaders desire deep down: he managed to stiff the Brits.

    His star turn at a dinner in Brussels in 2018, when he told his fellow EU leaders of tales of bombed customs posts during the Troubles, is viewed by many as the moment European leaders internalised Irish concerns about the return of the so-called ‘hard border’ during the tortuous series of Brexit negotiations.

    Aided and abetted eventually by a British prime minister in Boris Johnson who jettisoned the cause of unionism in the name of political expediency, Varadkar accelerated the process of the UK government effectively ceding profound elements of the sovereignty of Northern Ireland to the Republic almost effortlessly.

    This smooth-talking politician achieved more in one dinner than so-called freedom fighters did over 20 years to shift the dial on Northern Ireland. The ramifications of this achievement are an unparalleled poisoning of the well of relations between parts of unionism and an Irish Taoiseach since the days of the rogue that was Charles Haughey.

    Varadkar’s frequent pontification on the internal affairs of Northern Ireland – unchallenged by a series of pliant Northern Irish secretaries – and visits to Belfast like some touring satrap, naturally led to unionists describing Varadkar as a ‘venomous interloper.’

    Many will suggest this is unionist sour grapes in response to an Irish politician who thoroughly outfoxed them and got their government to buy into his interpretation of events. Yet it must be recorded for posterity that Varadkar’s maximalist approach did little for good politics in Northern Ireland.

    Away from Brexit and the border, Varadkar was never slow to rattle the cage of anti-British sentiment for narrow ends. Varadkar’s government is pursuing an inter-state case against the UK over its Troubles legacy legislation, with Varadkar claiming he was doing so because of ‘commitments to survivors in Northern Ireland and to the families of victims that we would stand by them.’

    The hypocrisy, given the Irish state’s singular failure to examine or investigate its own role in providing support and a safe haven for the IRA, is obvious to anyone. Yet by dressing this up in the language of human rights Varadkar was yet again able to posture as the good guy versus the perfidious Brits.

    Yet for all that, Varadkar and those around him in the Irish political establishment have failed to halt any sense of momentum around Sinn Fein.

    Varadkar was very good for an anti-Shinner soundbite – he once told a Sinn Fein politician that ‘it does not take very long for your balaclava to slip’ – but his style of statecraft and rush to nudge the hydra of anti-British resentment has only emboldened the party.

    Married to other elements of his domestic legacy – the hyper-liberal kulturkampf he has waged and failures around housing and immigration – Varadkar has aided and abetted those political forces which he was so publicly sniffy and condescending about.

    As he no doubt takes to the global rubber chicken circuit – Varadkar is one of the most stereotypical of Davos Men after all – his rhetoric around progressive moderation fails to marry up with a legacy which put an emphasis on division, particularly in Northern Ireland.

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

    Blindsideflanker
    18 hours ago
    Aided and abetted eventually by a British prime minister in Boris Johnson who jettisoned the cause of unionism in the name of political expediency,

    No , the framework of the deal had been set by Theresa May who took no deal off the table. The stitch up set by her and Olly Robbins was to force us down a path of being in the Single Market , the only way around that was to put a border down the Irish sea .

    Dichotomy Dave Blindsideflanker
    18 hours ago
    Exactly. In truth the ‘divorce bill’ she agreed to was even worse. According to the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee the UK’s contribution to the EU pension liabilities are estimated to be:

    €9.8 billion (£8.5 billion) HM Treasury
    €13.4 billion (£11.9 billion) OBR
    €14.3 billion (£12.2 billion) European Commission

    Nobody actually knows for sure, but let’s call it £11 billion.

    How many British nationals were working for the EU?

    In 2018 there were 1,262 British nationals working in the EU institutions, but some of these would have been contractors not eligible for a Brussels pensions, so let’s call it 1,100.

    Quick back of the packet calculation (£11 bn / 1.1k) equates to a nice round (and grotesque) £10 million liability per British person directly employed by the EU.

    The EU’s 2017 accounts showed that its pension liability stood at €73.1 billion[3]which is around £63.4 billion GBP.

    So based on the UK’s liability of ~£11bn this is 17.3% of the EU entire pension liability at time of leaving.

    Which is odd because the UK accounts for 12.3% of the total EU population, but just 1 in 50 EU Staff were British or some 1.9 per cent of its total payroll

    So, in summary UK had a:

    1.9% share of the EU workforce
    12.3% share of the total EU28 population
    15.8% share of total budget contributions (2018)
    16% share of EU total economic output
    17.3% share of EU’s pension liabilities
    It really does not appear that Theresa May and ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ managed negotiate a fair share for the taxpayer.

    But the real injustice here is how overlooked and underrepresented Brits were in the plum Brussels job market. In fact, it appears that 98% of the UK pension payments (or £10.8 bn) will be spent on funding the retirement of non-British technocrats.

    1. This sort of gross imbalance was a strong factor in why I voted to leave.
      Mrs May should be hauled up before the Public Accounts Committee.

      1. The main reason I voted to leave (apart from the sheer undemocratic nature of the EU) was to restore Common Law over Corpus Juris. I was brought up under a system where everything was permitted unless it was specifically forbidden. Corpus Juris (the Code Napoleon) is the exact opposite.

    2. This sort of gross imbalance was a strong factor in why I voted to leave.
      Mrs May should be hauled up before the Public Accounts Committee.

    3. Thank you for reposting that BTL, and ten thousand upticks to Dichotomy Dave. Many Nottlers will have worked and lived abroad and consequently speak at least one other language with reasonable proficiency. However, the vast majority of UK nationals have always suffered from a disadvantage with regards to potential employment within the EU commission and its offshoots: when compared with continental Europeans, Britons learn English first and do not start another modern language until at least the age of eight. However, all the educated and aspirational continental school students (code for middle class) have to learn English (for some it used to be Russian!) and their 3rd language can tacked on later. IIRC the European Commission demanded THREE languages for entry level bureaucrats, prior to Brexit. At most (OK, many) UK state secondary schools the only option is French, or ONE foreign language. Yes, times have changed and many UK children speak some Urdu, Hindi or Thai, but the Commission wasn’t ready for external tongues. It’s a complex subject, so please excuse any errors.

  26. The latest outrage from the world of Woke. There is a magazine called Guernica (no, me neither, but you can imagine from its name). It published an article by a British Israeli woman called “From the Edges of a Broken World.”

    Can anyone guess what happened next?

    Well, obviously, the snowflake staff all started melting, threatening to resign and in the end the editor folded, withdrew the piece and will be issuing a “fulsome” apology in due course.

    Washington Monthly has reproduced it.

    https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/03/18/from-the-edges-of-a-broken-world/

    3. Just read that and marvelling how, despite the death and destruction wrought by both sides, some people can still pick up the pieces and continue to strive to build bridges between the two sides.

      And it’s suddenly got dusty in here.

  27. Bailey (Governor of The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street) issuing orders (notional inflation rate showing on his cooked books) on the bridge of HMS Great Britain which is headed for the rocks.

  29. Seems my medical practice has “reviewed my notes” and feel I “may benefit from a statin medication to control [my] risk of heart attacks and strokes..”

    I am 56 ffs.

        1. Nor did I when they stated my records indicated I would benefit from statins. I just refused and managed to refrain from pointing out the only thing that would benefit would be their bank account.

    2. Ask who it was that reviewed your notes.
      The chances are that it was not a registered medical practitioner but a ‘pharmacy technician’ (whatever that means).

  30. Going quiet now – off to Brum airport to pick dad up after his jaunt to Oz visiting my bro.

  32. Good Moaning.
    Well, who’d a thunk it?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/21/furlough-didnt-save-millions-of-jobs-true-costs-clear/

    “Furlough didn’t save millions of jobs. Its true costs are only now becoming clear

    Sunak was right to worry about his £70 billion scheme. It has led to a welfare crisis, not a jobs recovery

    21 March 2024 • 7:15pm

    The latest Rishi Sunak advert paints him as quite the hero. “14 million jobs saved” it declares, in Hollywood poster style. And underneath: “Furlough announced, four years ago today.” SuperSunak is shown in three action-man guises: at his desk, in trademark hoodie. Then walking, with a look of urgent purpose. Finally, wearing a face mask, tie tucked into his shirt, ready to save a life or two. It recalls happier times: when he was more popular than Churchill, hailed as a financial miracle-worker who had saved the country from the worst economic impact of Covid.

    At the time, the real-life Sunak was nowhere near as confident. He didn’t sleep the night before furlough launched, feeling physically sick at the sheer scale of his gamble. It would pay 80 per cent of employees’ wages: might such generosity end up creating welfare dependency, making things worse long-term? Would it just prop up jobs that were never coming back, spending a fortune to delay economic rejuvenation? The test, as he knew, would come years later.

    In the end, Britain has turned out to be one of the few countries in the world whose workforce is still smaller than it was before the pandemic. Furlough was a powerful drug initially designed for three months. It ended up being used on and off for a year and a half, with £70 billion given to 11.7 million people. Companies, not all of which actually existed, were helped with loans. That was the short-term cost. We’re only now starting to see the longer-term effect.

    So it’s nonsense to say – as the Conservatives are now doing – that Sunak “saved” 14 million jobs. Most who took furlough would have been safe anyway, as we saw from places without such a safety net. Yes, far more jobs would have been lost – at least for a while. But an even greater number would have probably come back later and at better salary levels. This has been the experience of the United States, whose economy is now roaring.

    What struck me, in my small magazine, is that we got the money whether we needed it or not. We feared the worst, furloughing receptionists and events organisers. But The Spectator boomed, as those locked down bought in entertainment. It was springtime for Netflix subscriptions, Peloton bikes, lockdown kittens and sourdough starter kits.

    It felt unseemly to add taxpayer subsidy on top of this windfall, so we said we’d return it to the Treasury. We were told by an incredulous HMRC that there was no means of doing so. Only when we threatened to leave it in a swag bag outside the Treasury did they relent.

    Would it have been so hard to deny furlough cash to companies who, in all honesty, didn’t need it? We saw, here, a new reflex: when ministers panic, they splurge. Companies and even the rich now expect to be bailed out.

    In the energy price crisis, Liz Truss subsidised everyone’s bill – so taxpayers ended up helping billionaires heat their swimming pools. From the crash onwards, the list of things that the public expect protection from has grown and, with it, the size of the state (and tax burden). The risk is that this makes everyone poorer.

    When the Bank for International Settlements looked around the world, it found employment “recovering more slowly where pandemic-related fiscal support was larger”. Intriguingly, it also diagnosed an “apparent change in the attitude towards work and the way we think about work and the labour market”. In other words, people seem more keen to work in places where Covid-era unemployment was higher.

    This is – and can only be – a theory. It’s impossible to prove an attitude or a mindset. But we do know that, in Britain, lockdowns soon gave way to a worker shortage crisis. But bizarrely, at the same time, worklessness in our great cities was comparable to the 2008 crash or 1992 recession. In Blackpool, official figures show 25 per cent on out-of-work benefits. In Middlesbrough, 22 per cent. In Liverpool, 20 per cent. With these cities teeming with jobs, the worklessness is an economic and social scandal.

    It’s wrong to blame furlough, but it certainly is a contributing factor. The longer you stay out of work, the more reluctant you are to return to it: this is a basic fact of economic life. It helps explain why over-50s left the workforce in such numbers. But the real problem is one that started a year before furlough began: people saying they’re too sick to work. Five years ago, 2 million were in this category. Now, it’s 2.7 million. That’s the equivalent to losing the working-age population of Birmingham, our second city.

    This is, quite simply, a calamity. No economy can prosper while casting aside the skills of so many millions. No other country has it quite so bad. If Britain’s post-Covid workforce had recovered at the speed of Germany’s, we’d have 1.3 million more in work now and the recent recession would not have happened. Keeping up with France would have meant 1.2 million more in work by now; with Japan 1.1 million.

    Sunak’s big mistake was thinking that, because the new Universal Credit system had moved record numbers into work, it could do so again. He didn’t see – no one did – that mental-health complaints had started to discombobulate the entire system. Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, recently told this newspaper how it works (or doesn’t). “If they go to the doctor and say ‘I’m feeling rather down and bluesy’, the doctor will give them on average about seven minutes. And then on 94 per cent of occasions, they will be signed off as not fit to carry out any work whatsoever.”

    The Prime Minister still tells friends that he will always be remembered for furlough, “for better or for worse”. The triumphalist Conservative Party adverts don’t reflect his own mixed feelings.

    It’s easy to see why party spinners are invoking the days when he was the toast of the nation – but he always saw that as illusory. “Let’s see how these polls look when they get the bill for all this,” he told aides back then. He was, as so often, right first time.”

    1. What bothers me most about these schemes is that they consider it desirable that all eggs are placed in one basket to make it simpler to administer or present to the public. Just the other day, I heard someone official saying they were going to put a stop to any development of hydrogen technology lest it confuse and complicate their plan to electrify everyone by 2030.

      Isn’t this sort of idiot thinking the very reason most of us voted to leave the EU in 2016?

      I welcome a diversity (and this word’s meaning has been wrecked by our Betters) in approaches to energy use. The more, the merrier. The market will weed out most of them, but there is always the possibility then of one taking off, and something that could not have been planned by a committee. Often it is the bloodymindedness of folk just wanting to get on with their lives that comes up with a workable solution.

      1. Absolutely correct Jeremy. Free market competition, which is what you are advocating, will deliver the best outcome far cheaper and quicker than any state backed initiative.

    2. A son lives in Texas. He has a 3 phase supply to the house – 110v for house lights etc and the high voltage for Air Conditioning etc. & car charging
      Bought a Porsche Taycan and installed home charging point. The home charging worked a treat. The 280 mile range for the car however was optimistic, 2 battery changes, software upgrades and a realistic range was still under 200 miles.

      12 weeks off the road “awaiting parts” made him trade it in having only had the car 18 months.

      15 months on his petrol Porsche has been 100%

  34. Every day’s a pity party in UK plc: we’re all paying the price for Generation Feeble Judith Woods, DT, March 22, 2024.

    Mel Stride. Cometh the election, cometh the statesman. Here he stands, our only defence against a radical new political movement that looks guaranteed to deliver a disastrous landslide. I say statesman, but let’s be honest; none of us could have reliably identified the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions in a police line-up – until now.

    But, after courageously pointing out that feeling a bit down in the dumps doesn’t technically constitute a mental health crisis, I think I can reliably assert the 62-year-old is be-Striding his pusillanimous “it’s not for us to judge” peers like a clear-visioned Colossus.

    May I present to you His Majesty’s official opposition to The Pity Party. Because in these days of sick notes and self-diagnosis, where duvet days outnumber economically active ones, and you can barely reach for a Kleenex without someone chirping up that it’s OK to not be OK, those of us who are not droopy and despondent need someone to represent us. A space to gather free of those wretched souls suffering from “that Sunday night feeling”, or sad they’ve finished their boxset; too psychologically fragile to turn up for work and too stressed to apply for a job

    Increasingly, every day’s a Pity Party in UK plc and we are all paying the price for Generation Feeble who refuse to believe the science, namely that work is good for mental health, ultra-processed foods lead to depressed mood and sometimes the answer isn’t more self-care, it’s getting off your proverbial and helping those less fortunate.

    “While I’m grateful for today’s much more open approach to mental health… there is a real risk now that we are labelling the normal ups and downs of human life as medical conditions, which then actually serve to hold people back and, ultimately, drive up the benefit bill,” Stride told this paper.

    Brave man. His proposal is to get 150,000 people with “mild” conditions off benefits and into work as a way of tackling the ballooning welfare bill, set to reach £100billion this year. Analysis shows the rise is fuelled by a sharp increase in the number of people, especially the young, who have been signed off work long-term due to mental health conditions.

    There has been much outrage from all the predictable quarters, yet when did work become such a dirty word? A study by the University of Cambridge last December revealed that when people moved from unemployment or stay-at-home parenting into paid work of eight hours or less a week, their risk of mental health problems reduced by an average of 30 per cent. Admittedly, working longer didn’t provide any extra boost, but then most of us don’t just put in the hours – and accordingly pay our taxes – for the sake of our health.

    I freely concede I have had my share of mental health issues and I know of an alarming number of teenagers still struggling to cope post-lockdown. I would never cast aspersions at those who are mentally ill. But there is a great deal of difference between a lost 15-year-old who can’t get out of bed or brush his teeth and a high-maintenance millennial who has self-assessed herself as too emotionally unstable to hold down paid employment.

    Maybe she needs clinical intervention. But given that exercise very often works better than antidepressants, she definitely needs to make all those bleedin’ obvious lifestyle changes: walking or running in green spaces, a better diet, meaningful activity, mindfulness and the rest.

    Perpetuating a victim mentality reinforces feelings of low worth, isolation and hopelessness – by contrast, voluntary work positively impacts self-esteem, wards off depression and reduces loneliness; quite simply, doing good makes people feel good.

    I despair for us as a society if successfully getting people into employment is decried as a punishment rather than valued as a prize that pays dividends for the individual and wider community – economy – alike.

    To my mind, the only sticking point is how to make work pay, because nobody should be left worse off financially. Any common purpose calls for common sense; come on Mel Stride, you’ve already said the unsayable, now do the maths and make it happen.

    Other nations have recovered from Covid and shown far more resilience. They haven’t weepily taken to their beds in droves, feeling sorry for themselves. The moment has now come to call time on the Great British Pity Party.

    Generation Feeble? I like it. I also call them Generation Spineless; Generation Brainless; Generation Gormless; Generation Clueless; Generation Witless; Generation Hapless and — best of all — Generation Useless.

    And, before any of the parents of Generation Useless commence their whingeing, wailing, snorting and rending of garments as they moan that their children are not redolent of Generation Gormless; let me assure them that there are always exceptions to the rule, however, there are still insufficient of those who retain a backbone and intelligence to make even the slightest dent on the whole miserable generation.

    3. I heard quite enough from the likes of Hutton, Milburn and Purnell to get the message that kicking down-and-outs is no way to run a country. It was Tebbit that started this Americanized “boot–up-the-backside” approach. It may get teenagers out of bed, but if there is nothing for them to do, then it hardly achieves much more than a sore bum.

      Despite all the upticks from the self-righteous, this comment, pretty well throughout, is a vindictive disgrace and will cure nobody of their self-imposed misery. I myself once got myself signed off sick because I was getting utterly run down with this relentless cycle of hope and rejection that is the lot of the unemployed, and evidently unemployable.

      I have an alternative message. There is actually nothing wrong with these people, other than utter disillusion. It is not that they are unfit to work; it is that they struggle with the utter uselessness of anyone in a position to offer them a route into productivity and, dare I say it, excellence in their chosen niches. Every one of “Generation Useless” has the capacity, if enabled and made worthwhile, to become wonderful members of society. Doing them down all the time does nobody any favours.

      1. In order to motivate the massed ranks of Generation Useless you need to impose a whole sea change on every aspect of society. You need to get rid of the current occupants in every area of influence in the government and the country. A complete clear-out of politicians of ALL parties; all members of the educational establishment; health; the judiciary; the police; the mass media and so on. You also need to sever connections with the global corporations and the WEF. Where are you going to find suitable replacements for this army of Lefty-wing, Common-Purpose-indoctrinated wastrels?

        Wearing rose-tinted spectacles and stating there is “nothing wrong with these people’ is simply carrying on with the status quo. The country is in terminal decay and no amount of weasel words or calling intelligent commentators “self-righteous” is going to change anything.

          1. “I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.”

          2. Come on, Joseph, Quote the whole bloody passage not just the Labour Party’s favourite soundbite:-

            There is no such thing as society. [end p30] There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.

            https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689

        2. I have a sneaky suspicion we are singing from the same hymn sheet.

          Tackling the indoctrination is precisely what we nottlers are endeavouring to do, each from our own unique sets of life experiences and our own sets of indoctrinations and understandings. I lament how “Safeguarding” has denied the young access to much of our cultural heritage, in their drive to make everything “appropriate” to what is accepted Common Purpose. “Safeguarding” swallows up much of what I have to pay in Council Tax these days.

          You ask a salient question “where are you going to find suitable replacements…”. Well, where are we? We can only work with what we’ve got. Or we can ship them in from abroad, but I am not convinced this is necessarily a good idea.

  35. From: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/21/rishi-sunak-leadership-contest-reform-general-election/

    Do we really want 10 years of Labour supercharging Woke in our institutions, brainwashing schoolchildren to despise their country and feel guilty about its remarkable history, abolishing patriotic feeling (Bye bye Rule Britannia at the Proms, so long Union Jack!), banning parents from talking their own children out of mutilating their young bodies, giving comfort to Islamists and far Leftists who wish to destroy our way of life, repatriating Shamima Begum (Sham’s human rights being more important than ours, of course), pursuing a “safe routes”, all-barbarians-welcome immigration policy, expanding the WFH quango class and suffocating the spirit of free enterprise. Purse-lipped cultural revolutionaries making that British pastime “having a laugh” illegal (just you wait). To cap it all, legislating away free speech to the point where even discussing any of the above is a hate crime.

    Well, no, we don’t, Ms Pearson. But we’ve already got ALL those hateful things under the faux Tories. People squeal vote Reform get Labour, but we already HAVE all these hateful, stupid policies.

    1. The article argues that the slump in Conservative support from its core vote can be addressed by replacing the Leader for the fifth time since 2016.

      I am not a core Tory voter (and actually voted Labour in 2015 and 2017), so I am not best placed to argue on behalf of the disgruntled stay-at-home Tories. I am, however, the sort of floating voter than can swing elections as I did as recently as the Brexit Referendum in 2016.

      I voted Leave because I considered the delapidation of Britain’s national institutions whilst under the supervision of the EU Commission since 1973 and felt that here was an opportunity to show the world that my country, freed from this wretched and burgeoning treaty, could once again lead the world in excellence.

      How wrong I turned out to be! It seems that the problem lay with ourselves rather than Brussels edict. Removing the smokescreen of the Euro bogey exposed our own institutions’ rottenness. In a way, I am glad that we are forced to see the truth, and hope that we may do something about it.

      I have precious little confidence in the leadership of anyone currently running things, with the possible exception of the King, whose own influence is restricted constitutionally.

      Certainly, the Labour Party needs to replace its leader, who is sucking all the goodness there is out of the whole movement, and he must go pronto to avoid carrying on where Blair left us in 2008.

      The Liberal Democrats also need a new leader – one who is not tainted by Clegg’s betrayal of the student vote in 2010 and implicated in the gross perversion of the course of justice by the Post Office.

      As for the Conservative Party, their pool of talent has been much depleted. Mordaunt, who showed promise, turned out when actually faced with the possibility of leading the party, to be humourless peddler of platitudes, and the author of a most unfortunate book on gender politics, as well as commanding little loyalty from colleagues in the military.

      That leaves the only senior politician with the gravitas and commonsense to pull it off who, with cruel irony, seems to tick every diversity & inclusion box calculated to upset Tunbridge Wells, and seems genuinely to be trying to present herself on merit, rather than because of race or gender. She of course is loyal to the present leader, which is perhaps why this makes her such a strong contender.

      1. You set out much that I agree with. Who are you talking about in your last paragraph?

  36. 384881+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Friday 22 March: What are voters to make of unelected Lords delaying the Rwanda Bill?

    The semi retirement home for, in the main elderly,
    obease on treachery, politico’s.

    Does not matter one iota what the voters think

    The lords are part & parcel of the current sour cream of the political crop, money laundering on a daily basis for a signature for adding a thin veneer of honesty.

    Flooding these Isles with illegals is one of the main successes the lab/lib/con coalition party and majority voters can, these last three plus decades, lay claim to with perfect honesty.

    The flooding via Dover orchestrated via
    parliament / lords, given consent via the polling booth must have near run its course, as the nations hotel chain is currently, embarrassingly, having to run a “hot bed” program.

    1. What’s really important is that when big fat state wanted it’s own way – for example over the egregious net zero idiocy – it forced the parliament act. No discussion, no debate, absolutely no opposition. It could do the same with Rwanda (OR, even better, repealing the laws that hinder us from rejecting the criminals in the first place rather than letting them get here then hoofing them out). It chooses not to.

      Why? Because it doesn’t really want this bill to pass at all. It is happily obeying the globalist agenda of massive race replacement to create a welfare dependent class all to enforce some sort of demented socialist analogue.

      1. Parliament was also able – overnight – to close down this country and criminalise an entire population for two years.

  37. THIS is an injustice which the last Liebour Lot gave us and which the faux-conservatives have had ample opportunity to remove yet have failed to do so. It’s nearly as bad as the tax victimisation of single-earner households. It replaces a zero rate band with a 45% band making an effective marginal rate for that band of income of over 60%. No wonder people who are near the zone want to work less or even retire early.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/43dbd3bd0757022dc2be6ba4e41fdf2b3a16d7fd30de63a915eb47e81ac87b21.png https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/stealth-tax-100000-earners-net-treasury-extra-47bn/

    1. The treasury have all ready allocated that.
      Some of it will be useful for our ‘struggling’ politicians in their expenses claims.

    2. Just realised – all the failed politicians that will be slung out of Parliament – will “qualify” for enormous lifelong pensions…..

      What joy.

    3. The number is interesting, as government tax buys, at best 30p for every pound stolen in tax. That means call it 5bn destroyed – 2 days state spending – has really returned about 1.5bn in actual value.

      However, as individuals create wealth by buying what they want, adding to the market economy private spending generates about 1.60 worth of value.

      What the government has done with these tax hikes is destroy 6.5bn of growth. The problem is state spending. That cannot be resolved by hiking taxes which just destroys wealth.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fxZZGv8a5U

      1. Norway’s Labour government has just introduced a “Leavers Tax” – there have been so many rich folk moving out of the country as the govt takes so much tax that the same govt has decided to confiscate a large chunk of their fortune if they dare to go.

    4. At what marginal rate does income tax become counter-productive? (Asking for a friend.)

      1. 384881+ up ticks,

        Morning PJ,
        Not as disgusting in my book as the islamification, via the polling stations, of the United Kingdom.

        1. That’s a bit of a quantum leap. That aside, the pigs have no choice and no agency, we do.

          1. 384881+ up ticks,

            Evening PJ,

            Choice ? heard on the radio today a bloke doing well with a pigs kidney transplant.
            In the animal kingdom humans rule the roost so to speak.

          2. Evening Ogga1.
            Yes I read about that yesterday. We may rule the roost in the animal kingdom on this planet, but we had better be careful how we use that power because we are not all-powerful nor are we the ultimate power.

  39. Morning all 🙂😊
    Wet once more. Anyone planning to cut their grass will be challenged, again.
    The Lords???
    Can’t we have a whip-round and pay an SAS squad to go in and have a bit of a ‘spring clean’. Make them see sense and understand public opinion. And stop the effing boats, it’s absolutely stupid.
    It’s the only way to deal with all this noncompliance.

    1. Better to send the SAS to our South Coast Ports or even better to the beaches of France.

          1. There was a bloke who turned up at Lodge in a skirt a while ago. He wasn’t Scottish. Weird.

  40. I’ve long advocated that as soon as IR35 was imposed all MPs should have been shoved into it, and made to deal with HMRC for their tax affairs and manage their own pensions.

    See how they like having 60k of their offensive salaries destroyed in tax.

    1. In this country that cartoon would be banned as ‘extremism’ for wanting to overthrow the ‘representative democracy’. I imagine Spitting Image would also be banned.

      That is how far back the Left have forced us.

      1. “That is how far back the Left have forced us.”

        Au Contraire. This is how far back we have permitted the Left to force us, while remaining sitting with our thumbs up our arses!

        2. Ogga says similar. I don’t remember ever being asked or given a choice. We were forced by a police state, controlled by threat and force. We have never been given any ability to refuse, Grizz.

          1. Is it beyond time to take up the cudgel in the manner of Wat Tyler, George Loveless, Robert Kett, etc?

            Revolution is the only stratagem that changes things, Wibbs.

          2. A letter to the Daily Telegraph today:

            “I joined Reform this week and today received my membership certificate. I was surprised to find that 1.2 million people are members.

            Conservative party has 200,000 members. Labour has 400,000 members.

            There is such a massive groundswell of revolt against the old Uniparty arrangement. Things are looking up”.

            .

            That should cheer up Grizz !

            PS: The LibDems only have 74,000 members

          3. But but – all those members are spread thinly across 650 odd constituencies. I’ll bet you a groat that Reform get several million votes but NO MPs.

          7. They did indeed fail, because they were up against the massed ranks of the establishment of their times (an all too familiar story). That, however, took nothing away from their determination to show that establishment that they (and their followers) were not prepared to simply roll over and ‘comply’.
            A spirited revolution of such robust leaders is what we need today. Trouble is, where to find them.

          9. Good luck with that. I have been saying same to everybody I know and knew for 40 years.
            Reply was a big fat zero.
            Powell was ahead of his time and a visionary.
            T Robinson is cast in a different mould, but of the same ilk.
            Patriots to a man…

      2. “That is how far back the Left have forced us.”

        Au Contraire. This is how far back we have permitted the Left to force us, while remaining sitting with our thumbs up our arses!

    4. The inference is that America was great before the white man with forked tongue appeared. Not true.

      1. Certainly not by my method!

        Wordle 1,007 5/6

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

  44. I’ve just had the invitation to have my cataract surgery next Thursday. I’ll need lots of chocolate over that weekend to help me get over it. :-))

          1. She has a macular degeneration problem in that eye as well as the cataract so it will take a while for it to settle down and see what difference it makes- the two had made her pretty blind in that eye.

        1. Mine were done (as regulars will know) ten days apart Just waiting to see the optician for new glasses.

          1. Yes I remember you were worried and I said you’ll be surprised at the result, as you are. The one I’m having done on Thursday wasn’t ’ripe’ but now is.

          2. So, removing the lens means you can’t see opticians? Is there a version for politicians?

    4. That is good news.

      Someone mentioned the other day that Cadbury’s mini eggs are Halal certified and they wouldn’t buy them. It’s not as if they strangled the chicken !

    6. Brilliant operation.
      Quick, simple and effective.
      Unlike many facets of life in C21 Blighty.

    7. Keep safe until then Alf.
      Two days before my op on the 14th of March I sprang an eye infection.
      Next shot 21st May.

    8. Keep safe until then Alf.
      Two days before my op on the 14th of March I sprang an eye infection.
      Next shot 21st May.

  45. Both have their benefits and their limitations. It is up to us folk to decide where each can be best applied. Public libraries are great.

  46. It’s now clear that our Diocese wants to suppress our letter pointing out the toxic behaviours of our Vicar, including some clear safeguarding contraventions. It’s illuminating to see how they move problem people around the organisation because they are popular in HQ and how they tell the parish that it’s the parish’s fault. As one of our PCC said, “It’s just like the Post Office.”
    Well they’ve picked on the wrong parish, we have the evidence and we’ll get lawyered up.

    1. Took us five years to detach our parish from the group with a charlatan of a rector. All the “men in black” sided with the villain. We were universally dismissed as “trouble-makers”.

      Eventually, a new sub-bishop was appointed. He agreed to meet us. Two hour meeting. At the start, his position was identical to the others. Then – suddenly – the scales fell from his eyes. “Leave it with me. I’ll sort it.” And he did. Our parish ceded from the group and the Rector of he church in Fakenham agreed to be “priest-in-charge”. That has been the happy situation for 15 years.

      But it was a terrible (and wholly unChristian) struggle. Talk about feeling abandoned…

    3. More power to your elbow! This sounds depressingly familiar. Our wrecktorette appointed herself Safeguarding Officer (after the last one resigned over concerns) and took some convincing that this was illegal. She has now found some patsy to do it for her.

  47. It’s now clear that our Diocese wants to suppress our letter pointing out the toxic behaviours of our Vicar, including some clear safeguarding contraventions. It’s illuminating to see how they move problem people around the organisation because they are popular in HQ and how they tell the parish that it’s the parish’s fault. As one of our PCC said, “It’s just like the Post Office.”
    Well they’ve picked on the wrong parish, we have the evidence and we’ll get lawyered up.

  48. Exactly and you were lucky to find an honest Bishop.
    Fortunately our PCC are completely united and angry.

    1. One of our problems was that two of the other six PCCs thought that the villain was “wonderfully caring”. They discovered after we had left that he was a shyte, after all. How we tittered!

      1. I don’t much care for my local vicar. He’s the sort that shakes your hand and smiles and when the handshake is finished the smile goes with it. Most insincere. I mean really…how could anyone not think i am absolutely wonderful !

    1. What the hell happened to educate? Why is it ‘schools’? You go to school to learn. You learn from teachers. Therefore you are taught, not schooled, yank cretins.

      2. These days you go to school and they teach you 1) What is right for you to think and 2) To depart from this makes someone a hateful person who deserves everything thay get.

  51. Good morning , another dull day , but even more green than yesterday.. birds are singing , weeds are growing, grass needs cutting .

    Penny Mordaunt drops first mention of ‘frottage’ in Hansard history
    One wonders if the speech-writer for the Leader of the House of Commons has just won some sort of bet.

    Perhaps as a diversion, Mordaunt dropped the first ever mention of “frottage” in Hansard history via the sentence: “Despite all the Armed Forces frottage that has been coming from the Opposition front bench, they are planning an EU defence pact.” One wonders if her speech-writer has just won some sort of bet. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/21/penny-mordaunt-frottage-hansard-history-house-of-commons/

    frottage
    To induce a sexual pleasure by applying one’s body to another’s. The process may occur in an undulating motion or during general perambulation.

    A decade or more back I was the victim of a frottage assault on a crowded tube train , my sons alerted me , we were hanging onto the handle things on the tube , packed out .. and my Barbour jacket was ruined . My sons told me that the perpetrator was probably from the sub continent .. The smell of that tube train is an experience I will never ever forget or want to travel in again. I have mentioned this before on Nottler .

    2. Sorry it’s a dull day with you, Belle. It’s absolutely gorgeous here – brilliant sun, perfect blue sky, and +8C! Looking forward to a few days in the mountains, skiing… in this weather, I’ll get sunburned!

      1. Morning OB,

        There is a cutting breeze , we were going to do some gardening , but chill goes straight to the bones .

        10c at the moment , rain due soon.

        Moh has repaired his golf trolley , it is a battery driven one , the wheel came loose , and it was a real palaver for him attempting to fix it.

  52. It does mean that any animal based ingredients in the egg (I have no idea whether there are any) came from creatures that were drowned in their own blood.

  53. Some people just cannot take in the idea that a vicar may be a scumbag as they are only human like everybody else.

  54. It is all so uncertain.
    Presumably there were not myriad polling organisations just after WWI to influence the 1922 general election.

  56. Apart from the facts that they are all from Mississippi, all white, all bearded, all ex-policemen, all going to prison for a long time for what they did, what do these six men have in common?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8a72c3b7cd747bd4bf5246f16063d9d1b06b59922ec9f12d76aeb257f9269aa0.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/03/21/racist-police-goon-squad-sentenced-to-decades-jail-torture/

    They are all over-weight so have probably been stuffing themselves with industrially-produced, ultra-processed foods which, as we know, are very bad for human physical and mental health. The American corporate system made them.

  57. Apart from the facts that they are all from Mississippi, all white, all bearded, all ex-policemen, all going to prison for a long time for what they did, what do these six men have in common?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8a72c3b7cd747bd4bf5246f16063d9d1b06b59922ec9f12d76aeb257f9269aa0.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/03/21/racist-police-goon-squad-sentenced-to-decades-jail-torture/

    They are all over-weight so have probably been stuffing themselves with industrially-produced, ultra-processed foods which, as we know, are very bad for human physical and mental health. The American corporate system made them.

    2. Made them… what?

      Which corporate system? The shops? Are you suggesting that having a beard and eating pizza makes you want to hurt people?

      What rot.

      The other bloke – this Jenkins and Parker. Who were they? What did they do that caused these men to flip? What was the ‘torture’? Too many questions to reach a snap judgement.

      1. Are you suggesting that having a beard and eating pizza makes you want to hurt people? Err, no.

        I’m suggesting that industrially produced, ultra-processed foods with their low nutritional value and high chemical content MAY have influenced their behaviour. It is a known problem. Have you ever observed the behavioural and personality changes in people, especially children, before and after the consumption of said gunk?

      2. Are you suggesting that having a beard and eating pizza makes you want to hurt people? Err, no.

        I’m suggesting that industrially produced, ultra-processed foods with their low nutritional value and high chemical content MAY have influenced their behaviour. It is a known problem. Have you ever observed the behavioural and personality changes in people, especially children, before and after the consumption of said gunk?

      1. Whose is the motorcycle, Butch?
        It’s not a motorcycle, baby, it’s a chopper.
        Whose is the chopper, Butch?
        It’s Zed’s.
        Who’s Zed, Butch?
        Zed’s dead, baby, Zed’s dead!

  59. Morning All

    I see the Rwanda squirrel has been deployed again…….

    Meanwhile Lee Anderson nails it

    The Rwanda Bill is a mere distraction from the real issue

    Legal migration is at an unsustainable record high – and is only headed further up unless drastic action is taken

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/21/rwanda-bill-mere-distraction-from-real-issue/
    We have consistently voted for politicians who have promised largely eliminate gimmegration only to see those votes ignored when the bastards gain office
    Put simply this is treason most foul
    Democracy?? Pah!!

  60. Medley Time

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4ff5ce7617087b7a18bb1f5eddcd6806123cc2aaf36c99e501e301af9057b096.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d7a6e6d6859d833cbe0bedc12822144bb5c7461b74678783430b3b59dda6b6f8.jpg

    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/160/198/593/original/a426b051a7cdb888.jpeg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a2cf92e75dab4e0379b01a4baf31e90fedfa507516b7c56434da0113691ec98e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c8693b8c54f718fe212a33cb04f5afe351b1feb93a4c73bbe56d4dd8c1ee194e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/67c309b67569b70b8af2576c4bc75aced16a33374b8b69bab7d7a15d69c9e32b.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/da047dafa7ee58107d815fe29b0d567c9ef39d218bf301fa32b8292a5baa8d61.jpg

  61. Ok, at the airport, with its Wudu toilets…luckily, it’s a multifaith washing atea.

    As if.

  62. Just For Golfers

    A man and his wife were playing 18 holes of golf. It was a beautiful sunny day and they had the entire course to themselves.

    When he was about to hit off at the 13th hole, he collapsed to the ground, clutching his chest, having a heart attack. Despite the fact that he was 6‘2“ and weighed 18 stone, she picked him up, put him on her shoulders and headed for the clubhouse.

    She eventually arrived at the clubhouse, still carrying her huge husband on her shoulders.

    Two other club members arrived and helped carry him inside, called an ambulance and sent him to the hospital.

    “How could you carry such a large man on your shoulders from the 13th hole?” the Club President asked the wife in amazement. “Wasn’t it difficult?”

    “Yes,” said the wife, but carrying him wasn’t the hard part. It was picking him up and putting him down after each shot that was difficult.”

    2. Ok it might be a spoof…. But you know he would, if he thought there were votes in it…

    4. Looking forward to it, one is getting
      too infirm to transport a gallon of petrol any great distance now…

        1. Only if ‘on the hoof’. Accompanied by a quantity of dripping, the religious kind, you understand…

    5. I know it’s a spoof, but it would be what is described as a ‘target-rich environment’.

  64. As spring advances I wonder if I’ll be able to add this year to the list of bird species seen in or over our garden?

    Hedge sparrows
    Robins
    Blackbirds
    Blue tits
    Bullfinches
    Great tits
    Long-tailed tits
    Starlings
    Magpies
    Nuthatches
    Treecreepers
    Goldcrests
    Goldfinches
    Chaffinches
    House martins
    Swallows
    Wrens
    Song thrushes
    Wood pigeons
    Great spotted woodpecker
    Green woodpecker
    Canada Geese
    Greylag geese
    Jays
    Rooks
    Red kites
    Buzzards
    Sparrow-hawks
    Pheasants
    Many owls heard but not seen.
    Cuckoos heard but not seen

    Conspicuous by their absence are greenfinches and siskins. What has happened to them?

    2. We had a greenfinch in our north London garden last year and 16 from your list plus Mistle Thrush, carrion crow and (unfortunately) ring necked parakeets.

    4. I’m looking at a pair of greenfinches on the feeder as I’m typing this. They’ve been around a lot lately. Siskins are here but have become rare visitors to the garden.
      I can add marsh/willow tits, blackcaps, collared doves, herons, peregrine falcons, swifts, chiffchaffs and the occasional hobby. No red kites in, or seen from the garden, nor greylags. Oh, pheasants and herring gulls.

    5. Where I live we see pigeons and seagulls and that’s about it. My assumption is that the seagulls fly up the Thames estuary to remind us that London is a sea port.

      2. Gulls (the term “seagull” is a misnomer) live far inland everywhere. Many that are born near lakes, hundreds of miles from any sea, remain there all their lives.

    6. I have no intention of boasting, since the playing-field is not flat as I live in Skåne, southern Sweden. In the past decade I have observed — and occasionally photographed — the following list of species in, from, and flying over, my garden:

      1. Great Cormorant
      2. Grey Heron
      3. Mute Swan
      4. Whooper Swan
      5. Canada Goose
      6. Greylag Goose
      7. Mallard
      8. Common Buzzard
      9. Red Kite
      10. Hen Harrier
      11. Goshawk
      12. Sparrowhawk
      13. Rough-legged Buzzard
      14. Golden Eagle
      15. White-tailed Eagle
      16. Kestrel
      17. Common Pheasant
      18. Common Crane
      19. Oystercatcher
      20. Wood Pigeon
      21. Collared Dove
      22. Cuckoo
      23. Tawny Owl
      24. Common Swift
      25. Great Spotted Woodpecker
      26. Lesser Spotted Woodpecker
      27. Skylark
      28. Barn Swallow
      29. House Martin
      30. White Wagtail
      31. Waxwing
      32. Wren
      33. Dunnock
      34. Common Redstart
      35. Thrush Nightingale
      36. Blackbird
      37. Song Thrush
      38. Redwing
      39. Fieldfare
      40. Lesser Whitethroat
      41. Garden Warbler
      42. Blackcap
      43. Chiffchaff
      44. Willow Warbler
      45. Pied Flycatcher
      46. Spotted Flycatcher
      47. Goldcrest
      48. Marsh Tit
      49. Blue Tit
      50. Great Tit
      51. Nuthatch
      52. Nutcracker
      53. Magpie
      54. Jackdaw
      55. Rook
      56. Hooded Crow
      57. Raven
      58. Starling
      59. Tree Sparrow
      60. House Sparrow
      61. Chaffinch
      62. Brambling
      63. Bullfinch
      64. Greenfinch
      65. Goldfinch
      66. Siskin
      67. Common (Mealy) Redpoll
      68. Lesser Redpoll
      69. Hawfinch
      70. Yellowhammer
      71. White Stork
      72. Common Gull
      73. Herring Gull
      74. Lesser Black-backed Gull
      75. Great Black-backed Gull
      76. Honey Buzzard
      77. Common Whitethroat.
      78. Jay
      79. Woodcock
      80. Treecreeper
      81. Barnacle Goose
      82. Common Crossbill
      83. Black Woodpecker
      84. Green Woodpecker
      85. Northern Lapwing.

      1. In addition to the above, I have also recorded the following species within a mile of my home:

        Black Stork
        Red-necked Grebe
        Common Teal
        Garganey
        Marsh Harrier
        Coot
        Golden Plover
        Jack Snipe
        Curlew
        Wood Sandpiper
        Yellow Wagtail
        Whinchat
        Northern Wheatear
        Marsh Warbler
        Reed Bunting
        Gadwall
        Tree Pipit
        Linnet
        Tufted Duck
        Greenshank
        Great White Egret
        Grey Partridge

          1. I wasn’t competing. I’ve been a field ornithologist for over 40 years and just record all species I come across.

        1. Why not as long as the money goes to maintain the palaces etc?
          Likewise the CoE – pay it straight to the churches on the ground for maintenance, not the sticky fingered clowns in the hierarchy.

        2. Why not as long as the money goes to maintain the palaces etc?
          Likewise the CoE – pay it straight to the churches on the ground for maintenance, not the sticky fingered clowns in the hierarchy.

      1. The cynic in me has been asking myself ‘Why now – what are they hiding?’

        1. You’d have thought his mother would have taught him how to tie his tie properly.

          1. I imagine his mother is to blame for a lot of stuff in his weird little life!

    3. The Scottish Parliament doing something sensible – wonders will never cease. Still, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

    6. This is 8 years old from The Scottish DM but tellingly prophetic

      CHRIS DEERIN: Pass the quinoa, comrade! Hypocrisy of the middle-class revolutionaries

      PUBLISHED: 00:54, 7 March 2016 | UPDATED: 03:07, 7 March 2016

      Patrick Harvie almost knocked me over a few weeks ago. I was strolling up the pedestrianised bit of Sauchiehall Street, distracted by a gigantic betartaned hairy busker who was angrily attacking a guitar and shouting Scottish folk songs, when I suddenly became aware of a bicycle approaching at great speed.

      As I leapt to safety I looked up to see the co-convener (male) of the Scottish Green Party whiz by. He looked strained, as if late for a train or needed urgently to find a toilet – though this may simply have been the effect of the g-force. He was in such a rush he had forgotten to wear a helmet. I didn’t have time to check for bicycle clips.

      As he zoomed down the hill, and I watched terrified Glaswegians scatter from under the wheels of his deadly green machine, I mused that although a world without cars might be better for the environment, it wouldn’t necessarily be safer.

      The Green movement has long been the preserve of the middle-class intellectual, the superior ideologue who, like a speeding cyclist, puts far more store on reaching his destination than on the welfare of those who may be in his path

      https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/03/07/00/13D1943A000005DC-0-image-a-30_1457310877427.jpg
      The Green movement has long been the preserve of the middle-class intellectual, the superior ideologue who, like a speeding cyclist, puts far more store on reaching his destination than on the welfare of those who may be in his path

      It also struck me that Harvie, in his taupe suit and waistcoat and his multi-coloured protest badges, resembled nothing more than a character from a 1950s campus novel, the eccentric academic too full of great thoughts and empty of self-awareness to notice the chaos around him.

      Intellectual

      And how fitting. The Green movement has long been the preserve of the middle-class intellectual, the superior ideologue who, like a speeding cyclist, puts far more store on reaching his destination than on the welfare of those who may be in his path. Environmentalism is a purified politics of the upper air, an inhospitable climate for ordinary human beings.

      In this, it is of a piece with the wider hard-Left family to which it has attached itself. Radical politics is a pursuit for the moneyed conscience, an indulgence for those who can afford to fight the good fight, who are feather-bedded enough to give their lives over to peripheral causes, doomed campaigns and utopian schemes.

      When you’re skint, funding the next meal or paying the leccy bill or covering the rent tends to be more of a priority than shouting slogans at students through a megaphone in Freedom Square.

      The middle-class radical can see no good in the society that has raised them, fed them, kept them healthy, educated them and now allows them to make a living shouting it down. It has long been thus.

      Writing in 1941, George Orwell lamented the mentality of the Left-wing intelligentsia and their ‘generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power.’ ‘England’ – by which he meant Britain – ‘is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.’

      Orwell perfectly parodies this psychology in his novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying. The main character, Gordon Comstock, turns his back on a promising career in advertising in order to live the impoverished life of a poet, from where, voluntarily penniless, he rages against the rule of the ‘Money God’ over society. He chooses and romanticises an existence that anyone born into will try to escape – and yet treats every authentically working-class person he encounters with contempt.

      Comstock’s friend is an aristocratic publisher called Ravelston who has taken up the newly fashionable ideology of socialism and frets guiltily about his personal wealth. He is hopelessly conflicted between the two: ‘In every moment of his life he was apologising, tacitly, for the largeness of his income… when he wasn’t thinking of coal-miners, Chinese junk-coolies and the unemployed in Middlesbrough, he felt that life was pretty good fun.’

      The hypocritical Left is never not easy to pastiche. Consider the Corbynistas, a middle-class movement if ever there was one. Data published in the Guardian showed that the largest group of Labour members to have joined since the 2015 general election are urban, long-term homeowners with high levels of income. In a single street of multi-million-pound properties in Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington North constituency, 40 people joined over 12 weeks.

      In Scotland, the mainstreaming of the SNP – which must now trim, triangulate and compromise with the population like every other elected government – has seen many radicals from the Yes campaign splinter off into more comfortable territory, where they can maintain their pure hearts and outsider rhetoric.

      At the forthcoming Holyrood election, a ‘Left Alliance’ called RISE (Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism – I kid you not) will put forward candidates via the party list system. RISE, supported by the charmingly named Republican Communist Network, is fronted by a 30-year-old woman, Cat Boyd, who, like the SNP’s bright young hope Mhairi Black, is impeccably middle-class.

      Agitators

      Boyd’s mother Isabelle was awarded a CBE for Services to Education in the 2008 New Year Honours and is currently head of Education Standards and Inclusion at North Lanarkshire Council.

      Like a fair number of Scotland’s prominent Lefty agitators, Boyd writes a weekly column in the pro-independence news-paper The National. There’s good money in the independence industry; there’s a good living to be had from the poor.

      https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/03/07/00/26955BAF00000578-0-image-a-33_1457311181075.jpg
      Scottish Green Party co-convenors Patrick Harvie and Maggie Chapman arrive ahead of the all party talks at the Smith Commission in Edinburgh

      The truth is that Scotland’s radical Left fits every cliché you could name. It is a home for those yet to outgrow the student politics mindset and those who never will; for otherwise unemployable hackademics and bloggers, and for ageing journalists desperate to keep their show on the road for a few more years; for young posers on the make and lifer scenesters; for the terminally parochial and the reality-averse.

      The co-convener (female) of the Scottish Greens, Maggie Chapman, lists her hobbies as ‘the violin, fiddle and accordion… walking and cycling throughout Scotland… star-gazing, watching the sun set, strolling along the beach and browsing second-hand bookshops.’

      Unlike Chapman’s politics, this is all admirable and harmless. What it isn’t is in any way representative of the lives of Scotland’s poorest. The truth is that, like the rest of their deathless, self-regarding class, Chapman and Harvie are here to do things to you, not for you, and they intend to have pretty good fun while they’re at it. Speaking from personal experience, whatever you do, keep out of their way.

      1. Those bikes cost at least four times the value that my insurance company places on the Noddy car.

          1. Thanks!
            It’s a colour? Who knew? Sounds like some kind of wading bird… Grizz would know, I guess.

  73. I’ll have to chicken out for now. SWMBO wants woindows cleaned ( the rain has passed).

  74. I’ll have to chicken out for now. SWMBO wants windows cleaned ( the rain has passed).

    1. So long as they attack and injure each other, I care neither a jot nor a tittle.

      1. 384881+ up ticks,

        Afternoon MT,

        It is so easy when using pidgin English to make a muddle, stench could so easily be mistaken for strength, and by the by much nearer the truth.

    1. I haven’t yet got round to watching this but I shall in due course.

      It strikes me that it should be shown in schools and universities and the current King and his heir William should be obliged to watch it.

      1. I’ve tried to reply to the lady who sent it to me and it keeps bouncing back saying it contains spam. I’ve even tried just sending her a plain email and it does the same thing. Perhaps she is being targeted by the thought police.

        1. Perhaps the article (anti-climate change) has been recently censored, Ready Eddy?

          See above.

      2. I sent it to a hard Left greeniac friend of mine.

        He said “There is nothing here I need to see.”

    2. Surprised YouTube still has it up and not taken it down for ‘misinformation’

    4. It’s all those pale stale white highly eminent scientists speaking the truth…
      Burn them!

    5. Terrible – all the scientists are Christians and Jews – where’s the enrichment and diversity?

    6. I thoroughly recommend this brilliant article re the fallacy of ‘Climate Change’!

      I wish that I could record it.

      2. I managed to watch it all. It’s too true and honestly factual to exist further.
        Who are these censorship bastards?

      1. It’s been tampered with the Holy self righteous ‘THEY’ Bob I’ve tried to reply to the sender and it seems her email has been shut down.

  78. “A Sudanese people smuggler, who was involved in the death of an asylum seeker on a French beach, has been jailed for 18 months after his boat was intercepted off the Kent coast.

    Howmalow Mawum-Duop was carrying 70 migrants in an inflatable dinghy last September when Border Force officials, who had been alerted that the vessel had left the coast of Sangatte, northern France, stopped him just miles away from British land.”

    WHY wasn’t this jungle-bunny gaoled for 18 YEARS?

    1. Back in the days when we were allowed to laugh, Howmalow Mawum-Duop would have been a great name to have fun with. And damnit, all humour is at someone’s expense, even the politically correct kind. This guy should be fair game.

  79. Government incompetence? Never!

    Trudeaus mob have realized that a whole bunch of clapping seal MPs will not receive their gold plated pensions if the next election is held on the latest possible date of October 20th next year. Whatever the minimum period for a vested pension is, they would come up one week short. Their solution is to push through an election law change that will delay the election by the needed week.
    As their pensions depend on the delay. I guess that we are stuck with this mob for some time.

  81. Would you ‘adam and eve’ it – it’s bloody snowing
    Edit – back to blue skies and wind

    1. Well, If you will live in the Arctic Circle.

      I remember a foot of snow falling on May 1st one year in the 1960s. That was when my family were living just to the West of Falkirk.

      1. About here, then? It once snowed on my Mothers birthday – June 14th in Newcastle!

  82. About here, then? It once snowed on my Mothers birthday – June 14th in Newcastle!

    1. Hannibal Mthimkhulu. He was being mocked on Headliners last night but I think he makes a very valid point?

  84. Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin is being taught in Russian schools. 22 March 2024.

    Pupils in Russia are watching extracts of President Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson in lessons, according to posts by numerous schools on social media.

    Putin began the two-hour interview in February by lecturing Carlson for about half an hour on the history of Russia from the year 862, arguing that Ukraine had no tradition of independent statehood – a notion rejected by Kyiv as false and self-serving.

    Yes. Should be taught here!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/tucker-carlson-putin-russian-school-b2516539.html

    1. David Starkey is pro-Ukraine but, being an honest historian, he acknowledges that it is a creation of the Soviet Union, dating only from 1922. Of course Starkey has also been cancelled. Honesty won’t do.

      1. Ukrainians declared their independence in 1917 after the February revolution. The Bolsheviks eventually stamped it out in 1922.

    2. Do we have politicians who know enough British history to talk on it for half an hour?

    2. Every time I walk past the beautiful magnolias around our patch, I could throw a brick through the window of the numpties who had their tree butchered just as the buds were fattening up.

    1. As long as they continue to stick it to each other – preferably fatally – then I see no problem.
      Unless one of them uses the wrong pronoun, in which case BrumPlod would be justified in wad(dl)ing in.

      1. Do try to keep up – we dealt with this hours ago AND I made the comment you have stolen!!

  87. S.S. Empire Kingsley.

    Complement:
    57 (8 dead and 49 survivors).
    Ballast

    On 22nd March 1945, U-315 (Herbert Zoller) attacked convoy TBC-103 northwest of Lands End with a spread of LUT torpedoes, reported one ship sunk and heard two detonations after running times of 8 minutes 27 seconds and 8 minutes 35 seconds. However, only the Empire Kingsley (Master David Hunter) was hit and sunk. Eight crew members were lost. The master, 38 crew members and ten gunners were picked up by the British armed trawler HMS Fir (Lt W.H. Buley) and transferred to the Sennen lifeboat.

    Type VIIC U-Boat U-315 surrendered at Trondheim, Norway on 9th May 1945.
    Unseaworthy. Not transferred to UK. Scrapped on-site in Norway in March 1947.

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/br/empire_kingsley.jpg

    1. Yet we have the highest tax take of post war time. Anyone would think the government is either incompetent and wasting the money on forcing socialism or that high taxes do not generate higher revenue.

      In either case, the solution is obvious. Less government, lower taxes.

    1. The problem is that every time that the lefties hire an incompetent just because of the colour of his/her skin

      it means that a competent person is denied the job.

      Thus slowly the nation becomes more incompetent and unprofitable, and nothing works properly any more.

    2. They should be considered guests, nothing more. An invitation that can be rescinded at any time. Frankly, if the intent is to erase this country and it’s heritage and history then fine. Just remember who’s language you speak and don’t let the door – which we invented – hit you on the way out.

    3. I can make claim to a place in the history of Hamstead Heath.
      I was born within 200 yards from the White Stone Pond. Right at the top.
      But oh dear, I’m English and White.

    1. The only reason the shameless government is pretending to care is that an election isn’t too far off. They have had many years to deal with this major problem, and they know full well that most voters (of all ages and political leanings) are extremely angry at the never-ending invasion. They have no intention of stopping this.

    2. The whole of the completely useless Conservative party is not worth one tick between the lot of them at the ballot box.

  91. I’m in my local. Excellent boozer! They have massive screens for sport, but just now showing break dance competition.
    I made moves like that once, after a near-fatal mistake had a younger me spray my genitalia with Deep Heat rather than deodorant :-((

    2. :-))))

      A Greek chap having had his vasectomy screamed louder and longer than any woman as the antiseptic was sprayed onto his recently opened family jewels!!!!

  92. Uncle Bill may recall our discussion when the Sturgeon story first broke. I was unable to tell all. BTL ‘nanumaga’ hints at the overall picture.

    Iain Macwhirter
    Why is the police’s SNP probe taking so long?
    22 March 2024, 6:15am

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GettyImages-1959989596.jpg

    Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has plenty to worry about right now with the imminent implementation of his much-criticised Hate Crime crackdown. But there is mounting anxiety within the SNP about something else: the progress, or lack of it, of the police probe into the party’s finances.

    It is nearly a year now since Nicola Sturgeon’s home was raided by police, as part of Operation Branchform, their investigation into what happened to £660,000 of donations for a referendum campaign that never took place. The nation was agog last April as stony-faced officers descended on the former first minister’s home and put up that blue forensics tent. Sturgeon was later arrested and then released without charge, as were her husband, the ex-SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, and former party treasurer, Colin Beattie. All deny wrongdoing. But, as the affair drags on, it is all but impossible for the SNP to move on.

    Former chief constable, Sir Iain Livingstone, who launched Operation Branchform, remains unrepentant over the delay. He insisted this week that the investigation is ‘proportionate and necessary’. It has morphed, he has said, into a highly complex investigation into ‘potential embezzlement and fraud’. That was a real marmalade dropper.

    Livingstone has, at least, said that ‘the sooner Operation Branchform is over the better for everyone’. Sean Clerkin, the nationalist campaigner who made the initial complaint to police in 2021, smells a rat: he has accused police of ‘dragging their heels’ and demanded an update. But Livingstone’s successor, Jo Farrell, remains, as they say in the Scottish media, tight lipped.

    Clerkin had complained that the £660,000 was ‘ring fenced’ for the referendum campaign and should not have been recycled into general party expenditure. The SNP leadership has always argued, for their part, that since the SNP has an ongoing manifesto commitment to Indyref2 the money was not misused. But that has become somewhat academic now the investigation has evolved.

    The fear in SNP Towers is that, whatever happens, the taint of corruption is going to hang over the party until polling day. In the worst case scenario, if someone senior is charged on the eve of the election, it could even wreck the SNP campaign. Even if there are no charges, and the police investigation runs into the ground, there is enough embarrassing material out there for opposition parties to fatally undermine the SNP’s probity.

    Some of it has come from SNP politicians themselves. At last weekend’s National Council conference, senior party figures were quoted (anonymously) by STV demanding that police return the £110,000 Niesmann and Bischoff campervan that was famously seized from outside Peter Murrell’s mother’s home last April. They say they need it for the forthcoming election campaign. Their frustration is understandable, but it was a big mistake to raise the issue at all just when voters and the media had started to forget about Branchform. The SNP Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, then further fuelled the story by joking that perhaps Tartan Army football fans could use the mobile home to travel to the Euros in Germany this year.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GettyImages-1480265337.jpg
    Police outside the home of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell (Credit: Getty Images)

    The less SNP politicians say about this affair, the better. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, COPFS, was not best pleased when former SNP media chief Murray Foote, suggested last year that the investigation was a ‘wild goose chase’. Nor when Nicola Sturgeon’s former senior adviser, Noel Dolan, described it as ‘over the top’. Prosecutors and the police have repeatedly warned journalists and politicians against ‘ill informed speculation’ and attempts to exert political pressure. Nevertheless, details keep emerging about Operation Branchform – such as the refusal to give back the said campervan – which only fuel public interest.

    There is another more serous issue here still. In recent years, politics and policing have become dangerously intertwined north of the border. It began with the failed attempt to prosecute the former first minister, Alex Salmond, on charges of sexual assault and attempted rape. The police charge sheet was based on accusations made by senior figures in the SNP and Scottish government. Salmond was acquitted on all counts.

    Police Scotland is now coming under intense scrutiny over its guidance on the much-criticised Hate Crime laws, which come into effect on 1 April. It emerged this week that comedians and playwrights could end up in hot water, even though Yousaf has always insisted that the arts community had nothing to worry about and that free speech is protected.

    Most political of all however is this ongoing fraud investigation in an election year. Nationalists are paranoid at the best of times, but many are beginning to suspect that Operation Branchform is being allowed to drag on to damage the nationalist cause. There is no evidence to support this and the complaints about fundraising initially came from a nationalist. However, activists always put two and two together and come up with Unionist Perfidy. Chief constable Jo Farrell is holding a very hot brick. When, and how, she drops it could decide the fate of the First Minister.

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

    Agent of Fortune
    7 hours ago edited
    The SNP are effectively skint in a general election year. They evidently want the campervan (AKA evidence) back so that they can liquidate it.

    I would imagine that Yousaf’s brother-in-law Ramsay El-Nakla – who was charged in January with possession and distribution of heroin in Dundee – would quite like his drug stash back from the police, to assist with his own cash flow issues.

    Meanwhile, as a Scottish tax payer, I’d quite like the £750,000 of public money back that Yousaf used to facilitate the release of his in-laws from Gaza.

    But as anyone who interacts with public services in Scotland knows – life’s full of disappointments.

    Jim Pick
    9 hours ago
    What’s to worry about? Merely thinking there’s something dodgy about the SNP will soon be be designated a hate crime – they’re headed towards becoming a North Korean type regime.

    TomTom McOot Jim Pick
    6 hours ago
    Headed? Remember the kids lined up to spout the praises of Sturgeon, on Scottish Television’s evening news programme? That shark has long been jumped.

    The video itself has been disappeared, appropriately North Korean style, but we still have the poor brainwashed kids’ immortal words (on primetime news):

    ‘The children of Scotland would like to say thank you – to Nicola, our
    First Minister of Scotland. We are so grateful. Thank you for always
    keeping us safe. Working so hard. For being strong for us. Thank you for
    caring for every individual life and for always thinking about the
    children of Scotland. Thank you, Nicola.”

    nanumaga
    7 hours ago
    I have to believe that Police Scotland is acting seriously, and honestly in their investigation into the missing £660,000 of ‘ring-fenced’ donations, handed over in good faith on the premise that these funds were exclusively designated for IndyRef2. Last time I looked, there had been no new campaign which would justify the release of any of those funds.

    Might I advise the new Chief Constable of Police Scotland to check out the fees paid to ‘m’learned friends’ by Mr and Mrs Murrell over the last 10 years? It’s impossible for a journalist to report on the fact of a ‘Super Injunction’, or, as I believe it’s known in Scottish legal terms, an ‘Interdiction’, by the very nature of the existence and enforcement of said legal instruments.

    I’m pretty sure that Mr and Mrs Murrell have sought to protect their ‘unconventional marriage’, and the different partners with whom they’ve passed their time, by slapping ‘Super Injunctions’ on all, and anything, pertaining to this.

    These don’t come cheap. At a rough guess, I’d say about £50,000 a year, as they aren’t granted for indefinite periods.

    Now, let’s have a look at this: £50,000 per year for 10 years = £500,000, plus £110,000 for a new Motorhome = £610,000. I can’t explain the Jaguar, much less Mr Murrell ‘lending’ SNP HQ £107,620 in 2021, half of which was repaid later that year.

    I’m assuming that Police Scotland might be able to get legal access to the accounts paid to m’learned friends without too much difficulty and bank records are easily checked. I doubt if too many Chambers in Edinburgh take cash.

    The Judiciary in Scotland is, after all, a devolved matter, and I’m sure that The Right Hon Lord Carloway, Lord Justice, wouldn’t object to any reasonable case being presented by the Police for a full disclosure of any and all documents, and agreements, pertaining to this matter.

    I may be wrong. I do, however, have a feeling that I’m not completely wrong.

    1. That’s very interesting! Odd that the Scottish meeja haven’t done any digging! 🤔

      1. When the story originally surfaced the Scottish meeja were racing for the hills because of Sturgeon’s injunctions and ruthlessness. I spoke to one of the finest legal brains known to man and decided that no mention should be made. The Scots journos are still scared but Police Scotland must have some good dirt if they are stringing it out. As ever, Humza is completely out of his depth.

          1. I speculate that he/she might be a very Big (maga) Eskimo (nanu) which first appeared in Mork and Mindy. It doesn’t live in Norfolk. {:^))

  93. Back in the modern world after having a new internet provider connecting us earlier. Mind you, the main difference (the previous speed was fine for me, new one is super-fast fibre) is that the spaghetti tangle of wires/cables where the thing comes into the house is now new and dust/fluff free. Impossible to keep clean, even when I have them under a box. Why don’t these providers offer optional short cables?

    1. Our wires under the desk downstairs are like spaghetti junction – and plenty of fluff accumulates there too.

  94. Another clueless leftie do-gooder who hasn’t a clue. Nobody makes these uncivilised free-loaders illegally invade our country, and what about OUR rights to live safely? None of them are genuine asylum seekers.
    This country has a proud history of helping genuine refugees, the vast majority of whom are grateful for our hospitality, behave themselves, and soon integrate and work/contribute to society.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/where-is-your-humanity-demands-question-time-audience-member-as-tory-mp-defends-rwanda-plan/ar-BB1kjkZX?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=efe532601164497199dfd26282b716db&ei=21

    2. Well she’s clearly a brainwashed idiot – Rwanda is quite a civilised country these days and nice and warm too.

      2. Blighty is nice and warm for them too. Unlike us, these scum don’t have to worry about their heating bills.

  95. Nato ‘ready for direct conflict with Russia’. 22 March 2024.

    Nato is “ready” for direct conflict with Russia, Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of the Nato Military Committee, has said.

    “Are we ready? Answer: Yes! Our primary task is to be prepared,” Adml Bauer told ArmyInform, the information branch of Ukraine’s ministry of defence. “If this happens today, you must fight with what you have. It is always a combination of being ready for today and improving opportunities for the future.”

    Well carry on. Needless to say I won’t be participating and not just because I’m 77. What would any indigenous Englishperson be fighting for in such a war? Freedom? Democracy? These are both extinct in the UK. The country, its traditions and beliefs? These are no more. I’m going to sit this one out. I’ve even ceased to worry about it going nuclear. In fact I’ve begun to harbour the unworthy thought that it might be best.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/22/ukraine-russia-war-live-zelensky-us-oil-refineries/

  96. A putrid Par Four!

    Wordle 1,007 4/6
    ⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜
    ⬜🟩🟨🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Happy with a birdie.
      Wordle 1,007 3/6

      🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
      ⬜🟩🟨⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Better than my five! Plus I did Wordle on the work laptop yesterday and forgot to copy it over to my phone, thereby reducing my “current streak” to one!

      Wordle 1,007 5/6

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

    2. It might have one of those spider-track thingies underneath. Or maybe they’ll install a stairlift.

  99. Just watched the last bit of the Climate movie – great stuff but I wonder how many people who view it will be the ones who believe the nonsense, or will it just be the sceptical people like us.

    1. The ‘Climate change movie’ has vanished – within the last hour – I suspect that it has been censored!

  100. Most people are quietly sceptical in my experience, certainly those outside the public sector.

    1. I took the point about the more manual workers like the truckers in Canada and the farmers in Europe and Africa, who are being suppressed, also the ones inconvenienced by the stupid theatricals of the protesters. I do think ordinary people are able to see through that nonsense. But the scientists on the programme are mostly retired and younger scientists have to toe the line or they’re out on their ear.

    2. I am enraged JD: at the biggest and – perhaps – the most dangerous scam of all time …

  101. Been out most of the day so a lot to catch up with now. Just spent an hour in the garden tidying up – what a lovely mild day out there! They’ve promised a cold weekend now.

        1. At least I’ve got my lawns cut. Now I need the ground to dry up so I can sow the seeds I’ll need to keep food on the table this year!

  102. Well, well. I thought I had posted a “Good morning, chums” greeting but apparently not. Anyhow in my apparently unposted post I advised you all that for the second day running I did my Wordle in just three attempts and that, because Friday’s page was not yet up, I had posted it at the tail end of Thursday’s post. (For those interested enough to look at.)

  104. Signing off for a much better day. Stomach seems back to normal. Phew! Three hours useful work in the garden. Almost 40 years ago, my neighbour (an amateur wood-turner) asked if he could erect a shack on the part of my land that abutted his so that he could store timber for his hobby. I naturally agreed. Said neighbour died last back end and his son has just finished removing the timber (mostly consumed by woodworm) and the frame of the shack. We now have 60 square yards of cultivatable garden – and have been clearing it – digging out titanic quantities of bindweed.

    The MR is now investigating suitable trees/shrubs for the boundary – and looking out miscellaneous vegetable seeds to grow pot luck edible stuff.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain (when it will be chilly – and for the following three days).

  106. If I should cry, think only this of me:
    That there’s some corner of the internet field
    That is for ever Nottl. There shall be
    In that rich ether a richer distrust concealed;
    A distrust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
    Gave, once, her freedom to love, her ways to roam;
    A body of English, breathing English fair,
    Unwashed by the rivers of Woke bar none!

    (With apols to Rupert Brooke)

  110. I hope all the Press, and internet trolls are thoroughly satisfied with themselves, hounding that poor woman.

    The Princess of Wales has cancer.

  111. This is rather weak and muddled stuff from the writer. If Thornberry, Max and The Fakir are critical of the shirt, they’re merely playing to the gallery. And the ‘hooligans wrapped in the flag’ is tired and cliched.

    As for England being ‘one of the most successful multiethnic places on earth’, well perhaps it was eventually after the Angles, Saxons, Danes and Vikings had finished knocking one another around while the ancestral Britons looked on in dismay at the invaders fighting on their patch. BUT…they had something in common with one another, and they made something of it. It was the Normans who spoiled it and gave the English a bad name in Britain and Ireland.

    Today’s invaders are determinedly the opposite of those of the first millennium and are encouraged to be so by the likes of Thornberry and Max. Englishness never was quite as singular and identifiable as Scottishness, Welshness or Irishness simply because of the relative size of the country and the number of influences in its formation. It’ll soon be a provincial and rural identity. Our cities are all but lost. Perhaps our only hope is that these multicultural, multiracial melting pots will well and truly melt down one day and the ethnic cleansers will themselves be cleansed by their own actions. In the meantime, the ancestral Britons will continue to look on in dismay at the invaders fighting on their patch.

    England and the English are treated with contempt by our Anglophobic elite

    No other country in the world would be expected to see its flag messed with, and just put up with it

    CAMILLA TOMINEY, ASSOCIATE EDITOR • 22 March 2024 • 5:22pm

    When even Labour’s Emily Thornberry has got a problem with England’s controversial new football shirt, it suggests that there may be more to the fury than mere jingoism.

    You’ll no doubt recall that the former shadow foreign secretary was forced to resign from the Opposition frontbench in 2014 after appearing to sneer at a house with three England flags hanging outside it. Posting the image on Twitter, as X was known at the time, she opined: “Image from #Rochester”. She was later forced to apologise and stand down following a huge backlash.

    What a difference a decade makes. Ms Thornberry appears to have completely changed her tune when it comes to her attitude to England’s national symbol.

    Asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari on Friday what she thought of the newly released England shirt, which features an altered, multicoloured version of the traditional red and white St George’s Cross, she replied: “I think it’s a bit weird, isn’t it? Why can’t we just have an England flag that looks like an England flag? Imagine if they started putting purple on the French tricolore or changed the Welsh flag, and took away the dragon and put a pussycat on instead. I mean, it isn’t on.”

    It came after Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer joined in the condemnation of what Nike quite idiotically described as a “playful update” on the nation’s flag. The FA has insisted the changed kit is a nod to the 1966 World Cup winners. Really? I suspect the likes of Sir Bobby Moore and Sir Bobby Charlton will be turning in their graves at the sight of it.

    Joining the call for the kit to be withdrawn and the emblem returned to its usual form, Starmer argued the St George’s Cross is “unifying” and something “to be proud of” while Rishi Sunak said: “Obviously I prefer the original. My general view is that when it comes to our national flags, we shouldn’t mess with them. Because they are a source of pride, identity, who we are, and they’re perfect as they are.”

    Both the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition agree on this, along with what seems like the vast majority of England football fans – but Nike and the FA think they know better because the £124.99 shirt has “flown off the shelves” since its release on Monday. I hope shoppers now start boycotting it – not just because it’s embarrassingly woke but also due to the fact it’s offensively expensive. One hundred and twenty five quid for an “interpretation of the flag of St George?” Don’t be daft. (Of course this is the same Nike that at first couldn’t even be bothered to produce replica shirts of the Lioness goalkeeper Mary Earps, who was later named BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2023).

    But this is about more than mere incompetence. As one sports commentator pointed out: “No other country would allow this to happen.” And that strikes true. The English and their national symbols are treated with contempt by a liberal elite hellbent on mischaracterising any form of pride in England as bigotry.

    In some ways it was ever thus. As George Orwell once remarked: “England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.” But what we’ve witnessed in more recent times is a move away from what I would call apologetic Englishness, a tendency to self-flagellate – to actually being metaphorically flogged by other people seeking to demonise who we are, and what we stand for.

    They have revelled in talk of the St George’s Cross being “toxified” by far-Right hooligans – despite the fact that the vast majority of people who fly it are anything but thugs. They pretend that Englishness is indelibly linked to “whiteness”, when in fact England is one of the most successful multiethnic places on earth (far more diverse, by the way, than Scotland and Wales, which I will come to in just a moment).

    The focus should never have remained on a tiny minority of bone-headed morons draped in the flag while performing Nazi salutes – when the truth is that the St George’s Cross is far more likely to be waved by millions of ordinary patriots at football matches, royal events, concerts and such like.

    It is simply not right that the flags of other parts of the UK are deemed a source of national pride, but the red and white cross representing St George, the patron saint of England, is treated differently.

    Even more troublingly, while the English are vilified when they fly the flag – the liberal Left has turned a blind eye to fanatical nationalism elsewhere in the British Isles, where Anglophobia seems to have become an acceptable form of bigotry in some parts.

    Leo Varadkar, who this week announced his resignation as Irish Taoiseach, became notorious for his Brit-bashing, in part because of the electoral threat he faced from Sinn Fein. The SNP, which disguises its dislike of the English as “progressive nationalism”, has been accused of stoking Anglophobia since it emerged as the biggest party in the Scottish parliament in 2007, while Wales under Labour has been hostile as well.

    Will Vaughan Gething be any better than Mark Drakeford, the former Welsh first minister, who was famously “moved” when reading a letter written by a 15th-century Prince of Wales envisioning a country free from the rule of the “barbarous” English? Don’t hold your dragon breath.

    And all this when England subsidises the other UK nations to a massive extent. England’s GDP dwarfs that of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland combined and yet we’re not even allowed our own Parliament.

    But back to flags. Can anyone seriously imagine the Scots allowing the Saltire to be messed around with, or the Baner Cymru being doctored? Of course not. So why on earth are the English just meant to suck it up and take it?

    It speaks to a complete imbalance in how different nationalities are treated in the UK. Pride in being Scottish, Welsh or Irish is treated as entirely legitimate and benign, but being proud to be English – and celebrating England’s emblems and national symbols – is deemed to almost be dangerous.

    And this is despite the fact that being English is indeed something to take immense pride in. This is the greatest country on earth, with the most extraordinary history.

    We have an unparalleled cultural heritage, a tradition of democratic governance going back centuries, and a legacy of global influence. From literature to music, from film to fashion, we are the envy of much of the world. Such is our international renown that a poll by US News & World Report last year revealed that Americans rated the UK (of which England is, of course, the most significant part) as the “Best Country in the World.”

    We should be celebrating and promoting all we’ve achieved – not allowing it to be degraded by this sort of virtue-signalling nonsense.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/22/england-english-treated-with-contempt-anglophobic-elite/

  112. Breaking news: ‘terrorist attack’ at Moscow concert hall.

    It will be intriguing to see what the BBC makes of this. Resistance to Putin or another Islamist attack?

    1. The attack was co-ordinated.
      Even if it was a protest against Putin or Islamist or Ukrainian or US sponsored, what type of bastard shoots up innocent concert-goers?

        1. Putin’s got his position secure, unless it can be proven to be unequivocally a group needing dealing with, why do a false flag?

          3. So you say. I was just reflecting on the many events in Russia where bombs have gone off, people killed, blocks of flats exploded etc etc – where the “forces of law and order” were always nearby

      2. “…what type of bastard shoots up innocent concert-goers?”

        In Moscow? Chechens.

      4. It doesn’t matter who did it, it becomes the justification for upping the war (sorry, special military action) effort in Ukraine.

        1. I believe the correct parlance is “Islamist”, you don’t want a knock at the door.

  113. LAST POST.

    What dreadful news about the Princess. It brings it all back to me – Jim was 45 when we had the ghastly phone call from his mother to break the news. He lived for 27 months.

    I pray that the Princess’s treatment will be successful – and that she will have many, many years ahead of her.

  114. Genuine question: does anyone think the jibby jab could be the cause of the Princess’s cancer?

          1. It could be caused by a hiatus in cancer treatment during the lockdown periods, thus causing a backlog and build-up of diagnoses when things started getting back to something approaching normal. That, and the fact that the cancer will have been picked up at a later stage, so the outcome will not be as good.

    2. It has occurred to me that the RF are not required in the Great Reset, although this may not have occurred to WKClll when he was espousing his depop plans at the WEF. They will not want anyone with whom we identify in any position of leadership.

    3. It’s possible, but I imagine that she would have had the placebo.

      I attended two funerals a fortnight ago. One was my next-door neighbour, whose wife repeatedly told me over the garden fence that they were ‘going for their boosters’. A week or so later, she’d materialise in her garden, and say ‘we’ve both been ill with Covid’. I gently suggested that the boosters don’t work, but they persisted.

      Second funeral was a 59 year old, utterly fit and healthy, but died from a brain haemorrhage. I don’t know her jab history, but – being somewhat left-leaning – I expect she was fully boostered.

    4. I thought at the time they would have had the saline. But let it not be forgotten that the Duke of Edinburgh became ill shortly after the injection, and HM developed cancer within two years.
      There is a theory going round that the King does not have cancer, it is just a propaganda exercise to normalise the disease. I would laugh that out of court except that we were told that Boris had covid, was in intensive care etc, then he came out just as chubby as when he went into hospital, so that wasn’t very believable either.
      Short answer, they lie too much for me to believe anything they say. I really do not see how Kate can have been in the pink of health last week when that Mothers Day photo was taken, and all her children apparently roaring with laughter, and then she looks pale and ill this week in the video.
      I wish her the best of health, she is far too young to be so ill, but I am long past believing what comes out of the Establishment’s mouths.

    1. Unreadable. But I’ll say this for Sarah Vine: she wrote an article post-referendum which basically confirmed that the result wasn’t supposed to happen.

      1. Life can be so cruel sometimes. As if the King having cancer wasn’t brutal enough, now this. The news that the Princess of Wales too is battling this cruel disease is almost too much to bear. I know cancer doesn’t discriminate – but this just seems so horribly unfair.
        Hasn’t the Royal Family suffered enough in recent years? The death of Prince Philip and its great matriarch, Queen Elizabeth II; the tragic and embittered departure of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex; the King falling ill so soon after the Coronation, just as he was getting into his stride.
        It’s been one hammer-blow after another. And yet it seems the Fates are not yet done with the House of Windsor.
        The Princess of Wales? That is the cruellest twist of them all.
        Not only is she a woman in the prime of her life, she is also a mother to three young children, George, ten, Charlotte, eight, and Louis, five. They will be her utmost priority now, both in terms of shielding them from the public reaction to her illness but also in terms of reassuring them of the most important thing of all: that Mummy is going to be OK.
        There is nothing more frightening for a child than seeing a parent unwell. I have had friends who have faced similar situations – and the guilt and worry are intense. In particular, it’s incredibly hard under going exhausting and at times debilitating treatment while putting a brave face on things – which is what you have to do if you’re a parent.
        Life must go on for the Waleses’ children, in as normal a way as possible. A degree of seclusion is undoubtedly best for them all now. As she said in her poignant video message: ‘It has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I am going to be OK.’
        She has never been anything other than exemplary in the execution of her royal duties, and since the death of the late Queen and the departure of the Sussexes, she has taken on more than her fair share.
        But the person who needs the most care and attention is, of course, the Princess. Like most women in her situation – a busy wife and mother with a demanding role of her own – I suspect she may find it quite hard to just sit back and get better.
        Girlfriends of mine who have run-ins with the big C have had to learn to let go, to get used to the change of pace. And it’s not always easy, especially if you are the sort of woman who, like the Princess, demands of herself the highest of standards.
        She has never been anything other than exemplary in the execution of her royal duties, and since the death of the late Queen and the departure of the Sussexes, she has taken on more than her fair share. She is such a dutiful, reliable person, no doubt she will be worried about letting everyone down.
        But she really mustn’t. If there’s one thing that the past couple of weeks have reinforced it’s the sense that she is held in very high estimation indeed by the British public.
        In fact, I’d go so far as to say that they absolutely adore her. It’s abundantly clear that in the 12 years she has been married to William (and the almost two decades she has been in the public eye) she has very much earned their respect. Unlike others, she has never expected it or demanded it, simply worked hard and consistently, little by little winning over hearts and minds.
        This is why she is such an important and precious asset to the Royal Family. She occupies a space somewhere between the late Princess Diana and the late Queen herself, a unique combination of the former’s beauty, glamour and warmth – and the latter’s stalwart sense of duty and strength of character.
        Her illness is not only a blow to the royals as a family, but also to the institution itself, which has rarely seemed more vulnerable.
        Her focus now should be on getting better, and giving herself the space and time she needs to make a full recovery. I’m sure an entire nation wishes her well.

        1. Just as Charlie was getting into his stride? If it’s stopped him making even more stupid interventions, we should be thankful for small mercies.

          1. I appreciate you ain’t keen on the RF but however you may feel about them they appear to be getting more than a generous shovelful of shit.

          2. That’s because, like all British institutions, they are scheduled for demolition (agenda 2030).

          3. I think they may not be aware of that, WKClll being a founder member an’ all that of the WEF.

          4. That applies to so many of the useful idiots who are manipulated by the actively evil. I’m sure Charlie boy is a nice man but he’s really not the sharpest tool in the box.

          5. Actually, I’ve always been a monarchist; I swore to serve HM QE II and would have gladly laid down my life for my country. Unfortunately, neither the current lot nor my country is any longer what I was prepared to serve.

      2. It does make one wonder what was the real, true number of the result. I think ‘they’ underestimated the number who voted for Brexit in their machinations.

  116. Well, shocking news , poor Princess of Wales .. terrible.

    My initial knee jerk reaction is the curse of Diana . Wearing that wretched engagement ring that belonged to Diana has carried pain forward .

    Sorry I am sounding horrid , but that lovely girl has a huge load on her shoulders , the very wicked witch Markel hasn’t helped and she has added fuel to the flames of nastiness that ended the life of the Duke of Edinburgh and our beloved Queen Elizabeth .

    1. This is so sad. She has always ‘come across’ as a really lovely young lady.
      It’s an absolute irony that none of the many, many, horrible people in public life, never seem to suffer serious life threatening illnesses.

      1. The Devil looks after his own. Look at Blair, for example, and the material rewards he is now reaping for what he did to this country

        1. I was once told that Blair had been treated for AFIB (kept quiet) at Hammersmith hospital. I was also treated for that at Hammersmith. I just hope that properly disinfected the whole operating theatre.

  117. Just remember the golden rule with events in Russia and with Kate,
    If we are being told in the mainstream media , it is most probably untrue

        1. We simply have to keep our wits about us, Bob3, that is what it is all about and keep an open mind on everything. We live in difficult and troubled times.

      2. Well, the Palace was trying to mislead. She was seriously ill and they were trying to keep it a secret. Doctored photos and videos all leading to wild speculation.
        The obvious conclusion is that someone has been trying to sell her medical records. Hence the decision of the Palace to finally come clean and tell everyone what’s going on.
        Hope everything goes well for her.

          1. I read that The London Clinic did say that someone tried to access her records after she had been discharged from hospital, so it looks as though that may well be what happened.

          2. I read that The London Clinic did say that someone tried to access her records after she had been discharged from hospital, so it looks as though that may well be what happened.

        2. I wish Kate well, but, cynic that I am, it did cross my mind that it might be a good day to bury unpalatable news. Why now? Oh, look! A squirrel!

          1. Yes, that too. Also it did occur to me that this is happening in other families during and since 2021 – is this an attempt to ‘normalise’ what was once a very non-normal situation? Just as an aside, it has been noticed that the background in the video was not moving, not a branch nor daffodil nor blade of grass swayed in the breeze.

  118. Oh dear, now what are the Democrat lawfarers going to do next?
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/22/trump-truth-social

    Investors approved plans to take Donald Trump’s social media platform public on Friday, netting the former president a paper fortune of $3bn.

    Trump Media & Technology, the firm behind his minnow social network Truth Social, has spent years fighting to land on the stock market via a so-called “blank check” merger with a shell company.

    It finally succeeded on Friday morning, following a vote of shareholders in Digital World Acquisition, the vehicle with which Trump’s business has sought to combine.

    While Trump Media has struggled since Truth Social’s lackluster launch, generating sales of only about $5m since 2021, Trump’s supporters banded together to boost shares in Digital World. The stock has rallied by some 145% since the turn of the year, boosting the firm’s value to about $6bn.

    I can’t help thinking this is a classic bubble and investors will be badly burned.

    1. We were just listening to the US equivalent of the BBC.

      They refer to Trump as former President Trump but follow convention and refer to other past presidents as President Bush, President Carter and so on.

      How childish can they be.

      1. They sure are going on and on about Trumps inability to come up with 400 million dollars. I can imagine that if he had that much cash sitting around, they would be calling him out as being a bad finanier.

        The Canadian press are actually worse when it comes to defending the village idiot, but there again they have been totally bought by grants bribes to help media stay solvent. Something like 1.3 billion dollars a year to the cbc so of course they sing to the liberal playback.

      2. Never underestimate the hatred of the Left. Trump, like Truss and to a greater extent, Lady Thatcher proved them wrong. They absolutely hate the loss of control and viciously set about sniping, bickering and smearing those they hate.

        This is why they’re so desperate to scream that Hitler (and other Lefty nutters) are Right wing.

  119. 1) A cancer diagnosis is not the kiss of death it used to be. I hope and pray that Kate will survive and thrive for many years, as so many do.

    2) The vultures should withdraw. One of the worst predators on the immune system is excess stress. Back off, Press.

    3) Kate is far more “the people’s princess” than her ill-fated, aristo- rock-star mother-in-law. A beautiful, sweet-natured and dutiful commoner who fell in love with a handsome prince and saved him.

    2. I’ve honestly no idea what to say. It’s a cruel, vicious disease and desperately unfair that Kate develop it.

      To be going through it in the public eye, under such scrutiny is just horrible. I wish her the best.

      1. Could be worse. I do think, though, that she is genuinely good news, if presently eclipsed.

      3. Maybe ‘saved’ in that she has introduced a degree of normality into his life. His own children are having a relatively normal childhood, especially compared to his own.

  120. Evening, all. Lovely sunny (but still very cold) day here. My lawns are cut! [cue fanfare!]

    What voters will think (assuming they do), I have no idea, but if they want to be accurate, they’ll consider it was all Blair’s fault for stuffing what used to be an independent House with political placemen.

        1. I was trying to write “pedant” in German, but according to google translate it’s the same.
          );-((

      2. Yes, the greengrocer’s comma has penetrated (and I use this word as a euphemism) the British psyche. What else has, I wonder?

    2. The daft poofter logo on the back of a football shirt is just stupid. Firstly, your average football fan isn’t. Secondly, sticking too fingers up to the people who keep your game alive and you in a job is… oh what’s the word? Ah yes. Stupid!

  122. Just been out to do the neds. Brrrrr it’s a bit Pearl Harbour out there! (Nip in the air)

          1. We hit 23.
            A bit of a mixed blessing, I like the warmth but everything is growing like crazy and I can’t do much about it.
            Roll on the all clear.

    2. It is chilly outside. Thing is, got to open the bathroom window to vent the bathroom.

        1. Nah, my shower is set to 46’c and sometimes hotter. Bob digs a hole in the North pole and waits for it to freeze before laying on the ice waiting for it to freeze over him.

        1. No…. both Warqueen and I have had showers and the bathroom has no outside window so it’s drying out after a good karchering. As it dries into our bedroom we have to have the window open lest our room become a sauna.

          Ah, I see. My typo was bathroom window where I meant ‘bedroom window’.

          The sleeping arrangements here are simple: Mongo goes in with Junior – they’re watching Iron Man at the moment, Oscar sleeps on the floor beside the Warqueen. He wakes me up if he wants to go out though.

          Beast, bless him, would sleep on me, but we think he decided he’d had enough of his surrogate family.

  123. Goodness me the ftse closed high this evening. Up goeth before a fall, it has been high for a while now.

  126. There seems to be some confusion over this. There is an investigation as to whether the London Clinic delayed reporting this attempted breach for an unacceptable length of time.

    1. Yes, I read that too – who knows what to believe these days 🙁 In this post-truth, social media dominated era what people don’t know they simply make up and stick it on social media where it snowballs. Smart move on the part of Kate and the Palace to have the announcement made by Kate herself and filmed by the BBC for release. It won’t stop the ghouls and those who wish her harm from continuing to speculate though.

  128. Completely and utterly off topic.

    Hip Hip hooray.

    The car passed the French equivalent of its MoT today so good for another two years, by which time it will be 20 and over 200k miles on the clock.
    It’s served us well as a workhorse and a very comfortable long distance transporter.

    1. I had a small diesel (Connect) Transit van, for almost three years it was parked on our drive for around 5 plus days a week. Very low mileage, my local garage owner pestered me every time it went for an MOT. early last year it needed quite a lot of maintenance. Tyres brakes wheel rim rust faded body work loose and missing bumpers.
      It was 15 years old with only 54 k on the clock.
      He gave me 200.00, took it off my hands and spent a lot of time and effort fixing it up. It looked fantastic the next time I saw it. And he told me he’d traveled more miles in his first two months than I had covered in nearly two years.
      He even replace the sun faded Ford bonnet badge.

  130. AMANDA PLATELL: How do all Kate’s vile online trolls feel now?
    What utterly shocking news. It is just so devastating.

    After months of cruel speculation about the health of the Princess of Wales, we learn that she has cancer.

    So cherished is our lovely Kate that it feels like being told the disease has struck a long-loved friend. It’s truly heartbreaking.

    How dreadful to think that, even as she was undergoing chemotherapy, the online haters persisted in taunting her by peddling their loathsome conspiracy theories. No wonder she and William circled the wagons around their young family.

    Despite Kensington Palace’s pleas for a bit of Kate-time so she could recover in private, such was the fever of prurient innuendo that when she and William went to a farm shop last weekend and someone photographed them, the pictures went round the world.

    This on the back of the row over that family photo, which was also intended to reassure us that Kate was OK. A snap for which she was pilloried after photoshopping the picture, as millions of mums do. Yet Kate put up with the abuse in the manner we have come to expect of her — quiet dignity.

    Before learning yesterday about her cancer, I was actually worried we would never see her again as a full-time working royal, given the personal attacks and savage slights she’d had to endure.

    But yesterday she proved me wrong. She insisted in that video that she will be back and will be all right as she thanked people for their good wishes.

    There is such inner steel in that woman. And if prayers count for anything, there will an ocean of them washing over her tonight and in the weeks to come — while the vile trolls rot in hell.

    Hear hear

      1. I shudder to think how that bitch will try to use this to her own advantage.
        edit for “try to”

        2. She used her husband’s mother’s death as a marketing gimmick. Nothing is too low for that wretched creature.

      2. I shudder to think how that bitch will try to use this to her own advantage.
        edit for “try to”

    4. Unsurprisingly, Kate certainly didn’t look well, and it must have taken quite a lot of courage and effort to make that video. Hopefully, now that the media and assorted low-life trolls can see how unwell Kate looks, they will afford her the privacy and sympathy she needs.

      1. The Mail has over a dozen stories about it. They won’t.

        Mainly because the damned proles will keep buying the paper to read about. After all, if no one had bought the papers who bought the Diana photos she might not have died in a tunnel.

        All those wailing and gnashing candle and flower pushers bought the papers and killed her as if they’d done it themselves.

        1. Diana died because she refused royal protection and was driven by a drunk driver chosen by her lover over more reliable transport. The press, as usual, did behave disgracefully and maybe that influenced such a stupid decision, but the decision was made by Diana and Dodi, both well over the age of responsibility.

          2. Well, she was in the back. Various people (including, I believe, the sole survivor) have opined that had she been “strapped in” she might have survived.

            Accidents do happen, though, to the best and the worst of us and to all in between.

        2. How many days before ‘reality tv’, and ‘sleb/slob news’ pushed Kate off the top of the page?

        3. Interesting piece by Charles Moore in the Spectator this week comparing 1984 (the year he became editor) with the present day.
          It brought to mind several of the articles he wrote about Charles and Dianna, their marriage and the rumors circulating up until their separation.
          Charles Moore refused to believe the stories from the press and even appeared in a discussion programme which I saw on Sky featuring a dramatization of their marital conflicts. He had decided not to watch it although he did criticize it.
          He was wrong, of course, in all his criteria. The rumours and the films were accurate, because both parties, Charles and Dianna had been independently filtering their versions of the events to the media.
          So much for conspiracy theories. None present in that story, only facts.
          The press was used by the couple for their own purposes.

        4. In much the same way as I’ve killed people by not donating to charity as much I can afford. If only I’d not indulged in self-pleasing enjoyments and led a more austere life.

        5. In much the same way as I’ve killed people by not donating to charity as much I can afford. If only I’d not indulged in self-pleasing enjoyments and led a more austere life.

    5. The photo of Kate and her children was faked and only served to rouse suspicion. The video coming soon after the doctored family portrait was not convincing. Clearly someone was trying to pull the wool over our eyes. And we were right. She was in fact seriously ill.
      Let’s hope it all works out for her.

      1. Using her illness to raise ones own profile and to attempt to undermine the individual in question is despicable behaviour.

        As is the “I told you so” or the “She should have been open at the outset” continuation of the indirect attacks on her and the Royal family.

        1. I’m sorry. This is the Royal Family not the Holy Family.
          We are discussing recent events and opinions and not attacking anyone.
          The photos were faked and there was a deliberate attempt to mislead.
          Indeed we can still not be sure that the Palace is being entirely candid, possibly they are using the princess’s illness as a cover for something else (possibly the King’s recent health revelations)

          2. The Palace published a doctored photo of Kate with her children. When it was rejected by international news agencies, they published an apology purported to be from the princess herself but it probably wasn’t.
            There then followed a couple of photos anda blurred video.
            The only thing the the Palace did was to stimulate curiosity as to what exactly they were trying to cover up.
            Finally it was revealed that someone had tried to purloin hospital medical records and one imagines that there was an attempt to sell information.
            The Palace then decided that the only option was to make a statement explaining what was going on.
            Is that the full story? No, we don’t know the full details of her illness and as you say it is private. But most certainly morbid speculation has been stopped for the time being.
            The princess is the future Queen (consort) to the future Head of State. She is not an ordinary person and the public had a right to know what was going on.

          3. Whatever happened does not change the fact that even the Royal family should be allowed privacy regarding their medical conditions.

            A prurient Press did not need to chase this down when it became clear, or so all you voyeuristic detectives tell us categorically, that something was amiss.

            The fact that she may or now may not become the Queen consort is irrelevant.

            What DO you all want?

            Pictures of her being operated on, blow by blow descriptions of her every bowel movement, or how about pictures of her next smear tests?

            Get off her back.

          5. It’s about time that “people” realised that they are not entitled to know everything about those in the public eye through little or no choice on their parts.

            If “people” were required to tell their neighbours and associates all the information they are demanding of the royal family they would soon be protesting.

          6. These are not private citizens. They are the leaders of the country. If we were talking about minor royals I would agree, but this is the King and his immediate heirs.
            We have every right to information about their well-being.

          7. Bullshit.
            in the case of detailed private medical information EVERYONE has the right to privacy.

          8. At no time were we given detailed medical information. We have been given information as to why this woman has disappeared from public eye. And we have the right to know about her wellbeing because she is a high ranking member of the royal family, a representative of the country and unless she exercises a right to renounce her role the citizens have every right to know what is going on.

          9. Again bullshit.
            People in the press and on social media have been demanding to know what is wrong with her.
            Where DO you draw the line?
            Judging from your comments to date you don’t.
            Like a voyeur, it gives you thrill peering over the garden wall

          10. More unfounded accusations.
            Besides an obvious concern for the princess, she had been spirited away and many feared for her wellbeing, there was also the interest of watching an obvious conspiracy in the making.
            The administration, with the active collaboration of the British press , published articles, doctored photos, videos, provided interviews with fake witnesses all to persuade us to believe what we knew wasn’t so.
            We’ve all lived through conspiracies before but this was particularly interesting because of its glaring transparency.
            Anyway I don’t really understand why you’ve taken this defensive position but I imagine its for the highest of motives. Rest assured that I wish the princess well and hope she can put this nasty illness behind her.

          11. It’s called protecting her privacy.
            As to your conspiracy theory I very much doubt the press collaborated, quite the reverse, why do you think the apologies are coming thick and fast?

            And you still haven’t answered my question WHERE do you draw the line on what the public must be told?

            The reason I am defensive of her is that I’m sick and tired of all the people, like you, hounding her and her family for more and more information at this very difficult time for them all.

          12. ‘As to your conspiracy theory I very much doubt the press collaborated, quite the reverse, why do you think the apologies are coming thick and fast?’
            Who’s apologising?
            Not the Spectator with all the fawning articles published recently. Not the Daily Mail. Nor the Guardian or The Daily Telegraph. Even Piers Morgan who was more outspoken said nothing reprehensible.
            The apologies are coming from across the Atlantic. Horrible talk show hosts who wallow in nastiness have suddenly found themselves with egg not only on their faces but all over their persons.
            But, if you forgive me, i would venture that you already know this and have been rather dishonest in your eagerness to attack. The British press, as always, has followed instructions, as best it could, from the Palace.

          13. Utter bullshit again.
            British journalists were falling over themselves to apologise and retract.
            I read articles in the Mail, the Guardian, the Standard, I don’t know because I don’t subscribe but I suspect the Times and Telegraph were similar and funnily enough they are now vanishing into the ether because none of the toads want their comments to be seen now they’ve been shown up for what they are.

          14. Please, the articles were all about poor Kate, poor William. Kate in her innocence fixing the photos so as to show her children in the best possible light. Charles Moore, I think said it was really normal to have such foliage in the south of England in winter. Living abroad I heard allegations about the royal couple which would make you gasp and stretch your eyes. Nothing about any of this in the British press. Even George Galloway on his Youtube show was careful with his words.
            No one has apologised in the UK. It’s in America where it’s all hit the fan.
            The Spectator articles were particularly sycophantic possibly because they had more to lose from falling out with the administration.
            It’s always interesting when the press folds sails together. They receive their instructions and their articles all follow the same arguments.
            The media is very controlled and that is one reason why so many like to read and write on threads such as this.

          15. Numerous articles were also about photoshopping, unexplained absences, lack of information, all of them chasing the royal family.
            Constant speculation.
            Why do you think the Royal family were under pressure to release information? If the press had been complicit it wouldn’t have been in the papers at all.
            You’re a fantasist.

            And I note you still won’t say where you would draw the line as to what they should disclose.

          16. It was the international press where the pressure was. The British media was very complacent. I live abroad, heard it all. Most of it I wouldn’t like to repeat.
            The British press said none of this. Their lips were sealed.

          17. And certainly we have the right to not be given misleading information and badly doctored photographic material.

          18. Why?
            What gives us that right?
            A photoshopped picture that nobody other than a professional or relatively skilled amateur would have spotted which purported to show a happy family gathering.
            Who in their right mind, other than a trouble maker, would really care about it.

          19. But it was spotted by professionals because these were not private citizens but the country’s leaders and representatives.

          20. In this instance they were private individuals.

            I get the impression that you are amongst the group of anti-royalists who positively salivate over the slightest errors they might make.
            Just like all those so-called journalists and celebrities who were being so extremely unpleasant at the time, and now trying to apologise for their crass behaviour.

          21. No they are not private citizens.
            As to your unfounded accusations you need only read my posts. I have nothing to apologise for.
            My criticisms have been for those incompetents responsible for bad advice, divulging misleading information and most certainly those ridiculous photos and videos which inspired the world to laugh at the royal institution.

          22. I agree re your final sentence but my accusations certainly fit your apparent desire to see everything about them made public if it might be of interest to any members of your citizenry.
            As I asked before, where do you draw the line?
            From your posts I conclude that you don’t.

          24. One further point of course is that the Palace’s absurd cover up has made the British royal family look ridiculous and a butt of low humour all over the world. This public embarrassment was caused by the incompetence of those employed to protect the family’s public image.

    6. Her family and friends might be heartbroken. What a ridiculous overreach for a journalist to pretend to feel likewise.

    1. It is, I wonder who is behind it. Rumour has it that the CIA got wind of it and warned the Russians, who ignored them. Apparently it isn’t Ukraine related which would make sense, because inside Russia their targets have all been military.

      2. Western intelligence were warning the Russians over a month ago – it was all over the press but the usual Putin fans all said it was a psyop.

    2. I rather hope Russia now exterminates the threat, forces them out and slams the border forever with this plague.

  132. ‘Night All

    Things that make you go hmmmm…………

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fa75f63c1dd82a7fc66492912e10d740436bdf9f29c091ed161db0537276bc0d.jpg

    I guess we’re about to find out how a proper country responds to a terror attack on a concert.

    The Russians are the very definition of revenge. They never forget and they never forgive. Implacable isn’t in it.
    See Grozhny for more details
    Edit
    ISIS claims responsibility for attack in busy Moscow-area concert venue that left at least 40 dead
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/22/europe/crocus-moscow-shooting/index.html
    Ramanadingdon strikes well done chaps you just earned an extermination level event

    1. Thought th emuslim population in Russia was properly dealt with and kept on a short chain?

        2. ‘Morning, found you here – no longer see you on Spectator? hope you (& cats) are keeping well:-)

          1. Morning KJ – or afternoon here! I am still on the Spectator but don’t comment nearly as frequently as I did because it isn’t nearly so much fun! All keeping well thanks, and hope you are too?

          2. More people are returning, there was a suggestion some hadn’t paid their subscription hence their inability to post, previously having piggybacked possibly from Telegraph. Perhaps they’ve paid now, or found another loophole. Good you are having fun. Yes, all well thanks.

      2. There are mosques in Russia including a grand mosque in Moscow. The Russian government keeps an eye on things unlike our lot in the UK.

        Incidentally I worked in the seventies, for a short time, with the architectural practice commissioned to design and build the Central Mosque in Regent’s Park. From memory there was a single token Muslim in the office working on it, a disagreeable Pakistani who fancied himself at cricket.

    2. Islamic State have claimed responsibility for the attack on the Crocus City Hall on the outskirts of Moscow.

      The full statement posted on its Telegram account reads:

      “Islamic State fighters attacked a large gathering of Christians in the city of Krasnogorsk on the outskirts of the Russian capital, Moscow, killing and wounding hundreds and causing great destruction to the place before they withdrew to their bases safely.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/mar/22/moscow-concert-attack-crocus-city-hall-shooting-russia-live-updates

      Chechens, almost certainly. Some of the nastiest bastards on the planet. Let’s hope they don’t have contacts in the UK.

      1. And, unfortunately, fetishised in the UK almost to the degree of adulation accorded to the people calling themselves “The Palestinians”.

      2. It was Ukrainians for sure. Nuland threatened such an event before being retired. Ukraine has lot its war and has now resorted to vengeful terrorist attacks within Russia.

        Alternatively Chechen mercenaries might have been commissioned by Ukraine to carry out the attack in Moscow.

        Either way Ukraine has shown no compassion for either Russian speaking civilians nor its own unfortunate young men sent to the front. Ukraine is about the most corrupt and despicable Eastern European regime and in world terms second only to the Obama/Biden administration presently polluting the White House.

  133. Very sorry to hear the news about Kate. I do hope she makes a full recovery very soon.

    After all the endless controversies about faked photos, why not make it 100% genuine this time? I just wonder why the park bench doesn’t appear to be in a park. Nothing is moving in the background, it looks like it was filmed in a studio, or could it even be AI?

        1. Polly, it looks like a backdrop of some sort. So what? Kate is real. Leave her alone.

          1. Well at least we’ve established she’s not sitting on a park bench surrounded by daffodils as the Mail claims.

            So it isn’t genuine which leads to the question, is there anything else which is fake too?

          2. I don’t want to discuss this with you Polly. We have had this conversation before – by which I mean that when you overreach as you are doing now you make all the good evidence you sometimes produce look invalid.

            Leave the poor woman alone.

          3. Surely after all the controversy all over the media, they would make it 100% real this time?

            They haven’t made it 100% real so why not?

      1. I agree with Polly, the background is completely static throughout. Nothing moves.

      2. Yes, I did too until I realised it isn’t. The bench, imho, doesn’t belong to the background.

      3. To whom are you replying, Jules, because whomsoever it is, it comes up in my comments as ‘Content unavailable‘?

        It used to be RichardSK but from other comments it now looks like Pretty Polly, as was.

        1. Could have been anyone in the thread – and it matters not as it was just an observation.

      4. To whom are you replying, Jules, because whomsoever it is, it comes up in my comments as ‘Content unavailable‘?

        It used to be RichardSK but from other comments it now looks like Pretty Polly, as was.

    5. I think it more than coincidence that Kate and William were pushing the jabs.

      Whilst I may have mistakenly assumed that the Royals will have been given saline solution it does seem odd that so many young persons are experiencing all manner of cancers, some 70% more than prior the jabs.

  134. Over here, wearing a seat belt in the back is mandatory. Can’t speak for France (I normally sit in the front passenger seat).

      1. All I remember 1997 for is Blair’s victory and the start of the complete destruction of our country and way of life.

        1. It coincided with the death of Diana, on which Blair shamelessly capitalised. I can no longer bear listening to St Paul’s epistle remembering his horribly ham, self-serving rendition at her funeral. By the way.

          1. I didn’t watch it. I never liked her and I couldn’t stand Blair. Seemed a good enough reason to give it a miss.

          2. Wise move. I was a bit transfixed, even though in the same category as you. Like those saddos that gawp at car crashes , I suppose.

    2. I don’t think it was mandatory here in 1997. Front seat belts were only mandated in 1983.

      1. “Front seat belts were compulsory equipment on all new cars registered in the UK from 1968, although it did not become compulsory for them to be worn until 1983. Rear seat belts were compulsory equipment from 1986 and became compulsory for them to be worn in 1991.” (From Wiki)
        In the late 60s, I remember my brother and I pestering our parents to ‘belt up’ (clunk, click, every trip) but I hadn’t realised front seat belts didn’t become compulsory until as late as 1983.
        Before our son was born in 1987, we had to change my much-loved, trusty old car because it was so old that it didn’t even have fixing points for rear seat belts to be installed, and we wanted to be able to have a secured baby seat.

  135. 384881+ up ticks,

    Pillow ponder,

    Could we the decent peoples, not set up a fighting fund to prosecute the likes of the political creature that crept from the park public toilet after being on an importuning mission, to lift the latch on hellish mass illegal immigration, and finance his victims in suing his bent arse off, for starters.

    https://x.com/CathyMo41926708/status/1771099302082797598?s=20

    1. He needs deporting first then serving his sentence – or better still just shoot him

    2. He needs to be castrated and then pulled apart very slowly. My daughter lives opposite that cemetery. She used to walk her lab there because it was always such a quiet place.

    3. When I see photographs of Blair I think that God has already visited his powers on that evil devil worshipper.

      That combination of Scottish Freemasonry and Devil worship is obvious in Blair’s decrepit and contorted appearances. I imagine Satan will take him in due course.

      His ill gotten millions if not billions should of course be confiscated and paid in compensation to those that wicked bastard has harmed.

      1. 384932+ upticks,

        Morning VW,
        We could be missing out on
        real justice served, prisoners
        have mums, sisters, etc,etc.

          1. 394932+up ticks,

            Evening EW,

            I said the same many moons
            ago but we surely know by now, it is us the political RESET overseers want rid of.

  137. Of course it’s ”our business”. It’s purporting to be 100% real about an extremely important subject when clearly it’s not.

    1. I agree we have to keep an open mind on this. The media has form and is adept at manipulating our perceptions and emotions. In view of the static background I have wondered about cgi.

    2. Your not British, are you, Polly? If you were, you would understand how very gracious it is of our Royal family to provide us with any personal information at all. I repeat – it is none of our business. And it’s not a “park bench” as such. My guess it is the Princess sitting on a garden bench in front of a green screen with their garden projected behind. Ever had a serious operation? or chemo? it does restrict activity in many ways.

  138. It is a testament to brass neck that the Telegraph expects to be believed about anything at all after the last three years. Trolls may be trolls, but fake photographs were not the work of trolls. The reality could not be of less consequence, whatever it is. In the meantime Con Coughlin, that well-named troll for the warmongers, continues to abuse the truth and is endorsed by these people at the grave of journailism.

    1. We live in a world where state designed and media supported narratives take precedence over the Truth.

      Believe nothing that the media shysters tell you. In fact it would be wise to assume as default that the bastards are lying to you.

  141. Well, that’s me off to bed now chums. Good night, sleep well and see you all tomorrow.

  142. Can’t sleep. Another day is done so, I wish you goodnight and may God bless you all, Gentlefolk. Bis morgen früh.

  144. Yo, Mr Effort.

    My pet peeves are “12 a.m.” and “12 p.m.” There are no such times! 12 noon and 12 midnight are the correct titles, since there cannot possibly be such times as “12 before 12” or “12 after 12”. The idiots editing newspapers are the worst for proliferating this abomination.

    1. Noon and midnight would suffice the 12 is superfluous.
      Edit Good morning Grizz.

  145. How can you piggy-back from the DT to the Spectator? Their commenting systems are different. I know some people do find a way to comment without subscribing but it is all a mystery to me :D!

    1. I only said ‘possibly’, I have no idea either. All I know is a large number of ‘regulars’ seemed to not post for a while, but then returned eg the recent Murray piece, excellent as ever. What did you think to it, couldn’t see you there?

      1. It was excellent, but while I upticked a few comments I didn’t comment myself, though I can’t actually remember and can’t be bothered to check :D! I think a lot of the regulars, like me, just don’t comment as much as they did but are still around.

  146. Yet you still won’t tell us all where you would draw the line over what they should be compelled, and here it is becoming compulsion, to tell us about their state of health, which as far as I am aware is normally purely down to anyone’s choice as private individuals.

    1. I think they themselves have drawn a line. We know little about the nature of their illness. Only that they are receiving treatment.
      Sosraboc, I have delighted you long enough. Someone else must now take my place or better still we can draw a line under this.

      1. Fine but I note you still haven’t answered my question over where YOU would draw the line at what they should and should not need to disclose.

        1. Back in the autumn of 1975 when Franco, the Spanish head of state, was in his death thralls there was a fear amongst some that his supporters would not tell the public when he had died but would continue pretending he was alive in order to maintain the regime. Hence his doctors gave detailed information about his deteriorating health and the different interventions he was undergoing. Morbid reading many thought and it was also agreed that his life was being prolonged painfully and unnecessarily.
          One would imagine that something so meticulous would be considered intrusive and out of place in the British royal family.
          But with the head of state and the immediate heirs one would expect an openness which has not been forthcoming.

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