Friday 25 March: With his Spring Statement, the Chancellor torpedoed his credentials as a true Conservative

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

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

549 thoughts on “Friday 25 March: With his Spring Statement, the Chancellor torpedoed his credentials as a true Conservative”

  1. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    The first of the Letters – and spot on:

    SIR – With his Spring Statement (report, March 24), Rishi Sunak has demonstrated that he is not a Conservative.

    He can wave goodbye to becoming Prime Minister.

    Sandy Pratt
    Storrington, West Sussex

      2. Good morning, Hugh! We used to say his budgie had died and his trousers were at half mast because he was in mourning!

      5. He’d feel happier in a Achkan/Sherwani, Bandhgala, Lungi, Kurta, Angarkha, Jama, Shalwar Kameez and Dhoti or Kurta Pajama. Whatever was worn ‘at home’…

    2. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. People will still avoid voting for Starmer.

  3. Soshul Meeja

    Morning all.
    Reading the Telegraph on line in bed this morning at 3:45 AM I thought about the collection of ‘regulars’ who write in to Nottl almost every day. Most, like me, are older, grumpy folk who think Britain and the rest of the world are going to Hell in a handcart snd look back fondly at older times.

    Speaking for myself, I registered with Nottl many years ago but although I dip in to the blog several times every day, I only contribute a few times a month.

    On January 2nd 2021 Rastus/Richard published a list of our noms-de-plume and birthdays and that list seems to hold around 46 ‘names’, but is there evidence that there are perhaps hundreds or even thousands of others who read but never write?

    You don’t have to leave a calling card when you dip into Nottl but as an ex webmaster to a couple of social organisations myself, I used to look at analytics now and then to see who was watching my output and from where.

    So Geoff (Graham, aka Boss): how many hits is Nottl getting per week, and are these hits international? And you Moderators, how do you carve up the incoming posts between yourselves in order to weed out the trolls? Is there a Mod Roster?

    We Nottlers are mostly an inoffensive lot who moan and grumble (and also greatly amuse and entertain [I’m looking at you Rik and Citroen]) but generally don’t get out and march, demonstrate or disrupt things. So perhaps we ARE being watched by the likes of GCHQ or the Police, but since we’re just a lot of older grumpies letting off steam but not hurting anyone they leave us alone.

    Does anybody think I have a point?

    1. I would certainly be interested in the number of hits on this excellent blog, RC.

    2. Morning RC. I have always been curious as to how many people actually read our offerings. We did have one guy call in from the Middle East telling us to keep it up as it was the only way he knew what was actually happening in the UK. The numbers? About 500 I would guess!

    3. My feeling is that you’re spot on. Anywhere we’re allowed to dissent from the narrative will be shut down in time, but the harmless ones like this breath of fresh Nottling air will get away with it for a while longer.

      I personally rejoice that, as someone a little younger than most and who has been marching and demonstrating as much as I can, I feel supported in my actions by many here, and can truthfully tell people that not *all* older people are going along with the narrative.

    4. Good morning,
      We ‘older, grumpy’ folk don’t just think Britain and the rest of the world are going to hell in a handcart. We KNOW we are. We are also aware, unfortunately, there is little we can do about it.
      But, from fellow Nottlers, we know we are not alone in our opinions. We can express our perfectly sane beliefs and facts here without censure. Or to use the trendy word, we won’t be cancelled.

    5. Good morning Roughie.
      “Nottlers are mostly an inoffensive lot” hmm, a matter for Plod´s opinion, that one.

      Nevertheless that would be a lovely name for a pub, ‘The Inn Offensive’. or vice versa.

    6. Good morning Roughcommon – it’s good that you speak up from time to time!

      Regarding modding – there is no rota but I generally keep an eye out for spambots – they come in waves but are currently in abeyance so not much modding to do.

      As we are mostly retired grumpies, and all adults, most posts stand unless they are clearly out to disrupt our normal equilibrium.

      Any watching censors can probably use us as an indicator of non-woke opinion.

    7. There are about 80 Nottlers if you include those who do not celebrate their birthday.

  5. Refusing Boosters

    My wife and I (both 81 now) received our Covid jabs in January and April 2021. My first university degree in 1962 was in Bacteriology/Virology so I insisted on the Oxford/Astra Zeneca ‘vaccine’ (which is a modified chimpanzee virus) rather than Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA/graphene injectate.

    At the end of August 2021 we both tested positive for Covid-19 and thereby acquired a (hopefully) solid immunity to a range of viral antigens, rather than just to a single spike protein.

    Since then we have both been bombarded with phone calls, texts and letters urging us to get out and submit to ‘booster’ jabs (which are virtually certain to be Pfizer). Because my wife has dementia, I keep refusing on behalf of both of us, but the bombardment continues.

    I came across the attached fim clip from Twitter entitled ‘Me Refusing a Mandatory Vaccine’ and it gave me a chuckle again this morning while waiting for Geoff’s store to open for Nottler contributions. My aim was to get both first and second this morning, but I forgot to clear my cache and so two others got in before me..

    https://twitter.com/miss_anthrop75/status/1405989438203781133

      1. Hi Hugh,

        Just drifted back in after a long day (started at 03:45, remember) and saw your comment ‘Must try harder’.

        Your nom de plume reminded me of another scurrilous Hugh character Hugh Jampton, played by Michael Bentine in the Goon Show (now we ARE dredging the depths of old age). The actors who played the Goons had all been in the Army and the name Captain Hugh Jampton was applied to an army officer who made brief appearances, primarily as a means of getting an indecent British Army joke past the censors (Hampton being shortened rhyming slang for Hampton Wick…)

        Not too long ago (1996) I was involved in the desperately boring installation of tens of thousands of new NHS numbers onto the computers of 18 separate GP Practices in East Kent. One of the names that caught my eye was Richard Head, born not in the 1880s but the 1980s. What could his parents have been thinking about? Poor Dick!

        One of my hobbies is Family History and I subscribe to several Family History websites. A quick dip into FindMyPast yielded the astonishing fact that since 1837 there have been 359 Richard Heads born. But the term D!ckhead has only been in common use since the 1960s.

        I couldn’t find it in my Shorter Oxford Dictionary (1933: 2 volumes, 2600 pages) or in my Concise Oxford Dictionary (1961 edition, 1 volume, 1558 pages) but there it is in the Oxford Complete Wordfinder (1993, 1892 pages).

        Since 1970 there have been over 70 boys born with the name Richard Head, though of those 70, only 26 had Richard as their first name. Wonder how many used one of their other forenames as soon as they realised.

        2. How many boys were named Michael Hunt?
          And yes, I remember Cisco and DEC, but as a user not a techie. I recall being very impressed by a switching device made or marketed by Gandalf.

      2. Hi Hugh,

        Just drifted back in after a long day (started at 03:45, remember) and saw your comment ‘Must try harder’.

        Your nom de plume reminded me of another scurrilous Hugh character Hugh Jampton, played by Michael Bentine in the Goon Show (now we ARE dredging the depths of old age). The actors who played the Goons had all been in the Army and the name Captain Hugh Jampton was applied to an army officer who made brief appearances, primarily as a means of getting an indecent British Army joke past the censors (Hampton being shortened rhyming slang for Hampton Wick…)

        Not too long ago (1996) I was involved in the desperately boring installation of tens of thousands of new NHS numbers onto the computers of 18 separate GP Practices in East Kent. One of the names that caught my eye was Richard Head, born not in the 1880s but the 1980s. What could his parents have been thinking about? Poor Dick!

        One of my hobbies is Family History and I subscribe to several Family History websites. A quick dip into FindMyPast yielded the astonishing fact that since 1837 there have been 359 Richard Heads born. But the term D!ckhead has only been in common use since the 1960s.

        I couldn’t find it in my Shorter Oxford Dictionary (1933: 2 volumes, 2600 pages) or in my Concise Oxford Dictionary (1961 edition, 1 volume, 1558 pages) but there it is in the Oxford Complete Wordfinder (1993, 1892 pages).

        Since 1970 there have been over 70 boys born with the name Richard Head, though of those 70, only 26 had Richard as their first name. Wonder how many used one of their other forenames as soon as they realised.

  6. Looking forward to the elections in May

    This is a Party Political Broadcast –

    People keep saying that prices are going up but not if you base things on the cost of a full tank of petrol.

    For instance, one can purchase far more goods and groceries now for the cost of a full tank of petrol than one could just a few months ago.

    This is all thanks to Rishy and his erudite management of the economy.

    Vote Conservative

    1. The new fascists want to make energy be the currency, so that is entirely in line with their thinking…

  7. ‘Morning All

    Funny Old World……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f4c12c641ace325ae1cb4cb75cdc454c5242d0ecd9ef9f93503ca4adb6e1aee0.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9937c22181e27bf03469dd068498a8291901dd76b7f1fb083896677a66223932.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4b41dd944a64ee8adc0011dd017c7e9bf0db283ebe4008afb17078f34466c97b.png
    Terrified of the Trans lobby and cancel culture what cowards these people are and our pathetic politicians are no better

    1. She’s going to be the Diane Abbott of the US Supreme Court, the gift that keeps on giving.

  8. This letter follows on nicely from the DT article posted by BoB late on yesterday’s Nottl (see Thursday/Newest):

    SIR – The leaders of Jesus College, Cambridge, have stated that they are “shocked” by the Consistory Court’s refusal to permit them to remove the Tobias Rustat memorial from the chapel (report, March 24), and have declared: “We will now carefully consider our next steps.”

    Many of us alumni hope that those steps do not involve wasting more of the college’s historic resources – so many of them deriving from the generosity of Rustat himself – in pursuit of a lost cause inspired by a spiteful cancel culture.

    Francis Bown

    London E3

  9. This letter follows on nicely from the DT article posted by BoB late on yesterday’s Nottl (see Thursday/Newest):

    SIR – The leaders of Jesus College, Cambridge, have stated that they are “shocked” by the Consistory Court’s refusal to permit them to remove the Tobias Rustat memorial from the chapel (report, March 24), and have declared: “We will now carefully consider our next steps.”

    Many of us alumni hope that those steps do not involve wasting more of the college’s historic resources – so many of them deriving from the generosity of Rustat himself – in pursuit of a lost cause inspired by a spiteful cancel culture.

    Francis Bown

    London E3

  11. UK resettlement scheme for Ukrainians is a ‘disgrace’, says Briton in Lviv. 25 March 2022.

    The UK’s resettlement scheme for those fleeing Ukraine has been called a “disgrace” by a Briton who said few in the country knew about its existence.

    What’s really happening here is that there is no space left for the government to put these people and the propaganda campaign to house them privately has failed due to lack of enthusiasm on the part of indigenous Brits. Both these facts have to be denied!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/25/uk-resettlement-scheme-ukrainians-is-a-disgrace-says-briton-in-lviv

    1. 351583+up ticks,

      Morning AS,
      We are courtesy of the majority of the electorate fast becoming a cheap
      labour island and a successful beacon for other nations contemplating reset slavery.

      The return of tower blocks en masse is the answer, build,build,build the aim.

      While awaiting construction mandatory
      lodgering is a must these political reprobates now out in the open would have no qualms in bringing it in as a pro war law.

    2. The number of idiots willing to let strangers live in their homes is slowly creeping up in my local rag (as the propaganda intensifies, no doubt), but it’s still only 17%.

    1. 23 years ago I still had to work for a living. Never noticed anything about this at all! I suppose I had other things on my mind.

  13. SIR – On the Tube on Tuesday I saw one of Sadiq Khan’s “anti-staring” posters, warning that “intrusive staring of a sexual nature is sexual harassment and is not tolerated”.

    It’s not explained on this poster how individuals’ intentions may be ascertained by passing strangers, nor is the word “staring” defined. But it does, worryingly, direct passengers to snitch on one another whenever they “see or experience it on public transport” and to “text what, where and when” to a given number.

    This is surely a mistake. How can “stares” be categorised as “intrusive” when they might be admiring, curious, distracted or innocent? Who is Mr Khan to tell us what’s in our heads, who we can look at, and for how long?

    These posters are simply another of his woke, knee-jerk ideas.

    Veronica Timperley
    London W1

    More public money flushed down the drain…

    1. Unless women are in a head to toe burka they will be stared at in a sexual way (according to you know who). You read it here first.

  14. SIR – The decision by Save the Children to refuse a donation of $1  million (£750,000) from the North Sea gas company Neptune Energy (report, March 23) is staggeringly self-indulgent and morally questionable, since it betrays the interests of all those needy children whom the charity will now be unable to help as a result of turning down this substantial sum.

    Neptune’s business is in no way ethically dubious. Indeed, North Sea gas is recognised as a relatively clean energy resource that even environmental zealots concede will be needed for many years to facilitate the transition to net zero.

    The Save the Children decision amounts to no more than vacuous virtue-signalling.

    I for one will never donate to the charity again, since if it can airily turn down such a large donation it obviously does not need my money.

    Nigel Henson
    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    Nor mine, it would seem.

    1. The decision by Save the Children to refuse a donation of $1  million (£750,000) from the North Sea gas company Neptune Energy (report, March 23) is staggeringly self-indulgent and morally questionable…

      Morning Hugh. It certainly is. Who gave them the authority to distribute their customer’s money?

    2. I cancelled my monthly fiver to Save the Children when the scandal of their exploitative workers emerged a few years ago.

  16. We had to eat a stray dog, admit people forced into fight for survival by Russia’s ‘Butcher of Mariupol’. 25 March 2022.

    A mother cradles her son, her hand placed protectively across his head as if such an action will stop Russian missiles from killing them.

    Photographs emerged on Thursday showing the full horror caused by the indiscriminate bombing of Mairupol by Vladimir Putin’s troops. The city has been reduced to rubble, flattened by carpet bombing.

    In another image, a little girl in a pink hat plays on a slide – an innocuous photo, except that in the foreground is a makeshift grave. In Mariupol, the playgrounds have been turned into cemeteries.

    This article is a filler. My guess is that, judging by its content and other sources, (Delingpole. Nottl last night) the city has actually fallen to the Russians and the MSM are concealing it because of the meeting in Brussels (embarrassing political optics) and adverse effects on the propaganda campaign! It will probably seep out on Sunday; “heroic defence” “deportations” etc.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/03/24/full-panic-mariupol-family-forced-eat-stray-dog-survive-city/

  17. SIR – I can go online and input a vehicle registration and instantly see the MOT and road-tax status of the vehicle. Similarly I can go to the government portal and see various details about my tax and state pension status.

    Why does a similar system not exist to see the status of my driving licence (Letters, March 24)?

    Even if the DVLA has not fully processed an application, surely a portal could show that it had been received and was in order, so that one could drive legally under Section 88 of the Road Traffic Act.

    This would save applicants having to make repeated attempts to contact the DVLA by phone, and reduce its workload.

    Robert Taylor
    Nottingham

    SIR – I telephoned HMRC this week to query a tax bill. It took 45 minutes to get through. After a few minutes of conversation with a lady, she said: “I am really sorry but I have to let my dog in”. I was flabbergasted. This total incompetence needs to stop.

    Sarah Trethowan
    Par, Cornwall

    I understand that it is possible to see one’s own licence info, but only when renewal has been completed?

    This government still appears to have no idea just how bad the service is in parts of the public sector. After 2 years of hiding behind Covid it is time for a top-level clearout of those Snivel Serpents who are happy to ‘coast’.

    1. Ah, but the worse the snivel serpents perform, the more they can argue for everything being digital. Including banking and CBDCs.

  20. Welcome to the Free Speech Union’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture.

    Rustat remains, Nottingham under scrutiny, and other education news

    FSU Chairman Nigel Biggar has successfully campaigned along with others to retain a seventeenth-century memorial in Jesus College, Cambridge of its benefactor Tobias Rustat, who had some financial involvement in the transatlantic slave trade after donating to the college. Historian Dominic Sandbrook excoriated his former college, describing the controversy as “an extraordinary story, capturing so many aspects of the ‘woke revolution’ – its profligacy, its hypocrisy, its indifference to nuance and its contempt for truth”. The Diocese of Ely ruled that the memorial should remain at the college, suggesting that the college could provide contextual information about it, and said that activists seeking the memorial’s removal had created a “false narrative” about the extent of Rustat’s involvement in slavery.

    We have lodged a complaint with the Equality and Human Rights Commission and written to Nottingham University after it withdrew its offer of an honorary degree to Dr Tony Sewell on the basis that Sewell is the subject of “political controversy”. Sewell, who chaired the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, had received widespread criticism and abuse when the Commission published its report last year concluding that Britain, while far from perfect, is not “institutionally racist”. In its correspondence, the FSU identified a number of characters whom Nottingham has awarded honorary doctorates to in spite of being embroiled in “political controversy”, such as Uighur concentration camp denier and former Chinese ambassador Liu Xiaoming, and asked whether the University discriminated against Sewell for voicing “views which, in the minds of some, black people ought not to hold”.

    William Deresiewicz wrote an insightful piece for UnHerd on the new dark age in American higher education – much of which translates to the UK – on how an oppressively box-ticking academic culture has eroded intellectual curiosity for a generation of students who seek meaning in woke social justice campaigns instead. Thomas Prosser argued that debate is important in university environments not for the ostentatious swagger but for its challenge to prevailing orthodoxies at a time when university environments are more monoculturally liberal than ever.

    Nadhim Zahawi has urged headteachers to take political impartiality in schools seriously, telling the Conservative Party spring conference that children weren’t “snowflakes” and it was important to cover controversial political issues but that there were situations where teachers were “keen to either shut down free speech, or to only present one side of an opinion”.

    Unintended harms in the Online Safety Bill

    Our Chief Legal Counsel, Bryn Harris, set out the risks to free speech posed by the Online Safety Bill, arguing that the Government cannot protect freedom of expression while simultaneously protecting adults from ‘legal but harmful’ content online. Fraser Myers added that financial penalties will incentivise Big Tech platforms to “censor it first, and ask questions later” and anticipates a proliferation of new harms that the public will inevitably need protecting from. In the Conversation, Laura Higson-Bliss queried the definition of ‘harm’ in the Bill and quoted the Samaritans’ concerns. Sam Dimitriu, writing in CapX, was unimpressed with Nadine Dorries and described the Bill as “a disaster”, and said: “If the Government wants Britain to be a place to build a new tech business, then they need to kill this Bill.”

    The End of History author Francis Fukuyama described the problems of allowing a handful of private companies to regulate online speech, arguing that “a big concentration of private power has contributed to the toxicity of a lot of the discourse in modern democracies,” and adding “it’s not clear that the government is the right regulator of that kind of activity”. And the Spectator looked at Big Tech’s appalling track record when it comes to choosing which disinformation to prioritise.

    NYT cancels cancel culture, and other arts and culture news

    The New York Times took an editorial stand against cancel culture, writing: “Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.” A poll commissioned by the NYT revealed that 84% of Americans believed that fear of cancellation was a “serious” or “very serious” problem for everyday free speech.

    In UnHerd, Park Macdougald suggested that the NYT’s tack to the centre might be a response to Americans’ impatience with the excesses of the progressive left, while Hadley Freeman noted that women polled by the NYT were more concerned about cancel culture than men, and that women were more prone to smears and cancellation campaigns over gender-critical beliefs or for perceived racial infractions. Freddie deBoer wrote about the New York media classes’ frenzied online response to the NYT’s editorial: “You have to understand this to understand our media class: the number one priority in their entire lives, above and beyond literally any other, is to earn insider status with other people in media.” And New York magazine reports on novel developments in HR consultancy with a story on the work of Lacey Leone McLaughlin, the “rage coach” who assists stressed-out senior Hollywood producers in managing the demands and whims of Gen Z teams with access to anonymous social media whisper accounts to denounce their bosses.

    Even the Guardian acknowledged that the left is sometimes involved in US book-banning, with attempts by both progressives and conservatives to remove books from school libraries. The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood described the US right as “playing woke snowflakery back: ‘This might upset people’.”

    In an interview with the Telegraph, Jacqueline Wilson said that cancel culture was like “walking a tightrope” and defended her rewrite of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, which the FSU criticised earlier in the year, insisting that it was not motivated by political correctness but was “simply that the children in my book are modern”.

    Russia and authoritarian rule

    Fraser Nelson wrote that Ofcom was wrong to take RT off the air because “the fight is not just between Russia and Ukraine, but the democratic way of life and authoritarian rule” – and argued that allowing authoritarian propaganda channels to continue broadcasting, even when they’re owned by our enemies, was the sign of a society confident in its own democratic values.

    Meanwhile, Russian Media Group announced that it was taking a number of high-profile Russian and Ukrainian musicians off air due to the “arrogant and contemptuous attitude of the musicians towards Russian listeners” in opposing the war in Ukraine. And in a depressing example of what happens when a state has the power to censor social media posts it doesn’t like, the BBC reported the story of a popular Russian geography teacher who was fired for “immoral behaviour” after posting criticism of the war on Instagram. The Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny reacted with a defiant grin after being sentenced to nine years in a penal colony and the Times described his courage against state persecution as “heroic”.

    Lawfare and journalistic freedom

    HarperCollins publisher Arabella Pike wrote in the Times about the relentless legal campaigns – and sinister extra-legal harassment – levelled at her authors Catherine Belton and Tom Burgis after their books Putin’s People and Kleptopia riled oligarchs and corporations. Pike argued that lawfare – the practice of using expensive, stressful legal attacks in a war of attrition aimed at wearing down the finances and resolve of critics – is having a “chilling” effect on journalistic coverage of the rich and crooked and welcomed the Government’s consultation on legislation designed to prevent it. In the Law Gazette, Jonathan Goldsmith acknowledged this abuse of our legal system and asked for greater legal clarity on balancing privacy and reputation against freedom of expression. A Times leader argued in favour of safeguards for journalistic freedom of expression, stating that “rights to privacy have progressively encroached upon the public’s right to know”. This is a point we made in our response to the Government’s consultation on reforming the Human Rights Act.

    It’s not just Russian oligarchs – Prince Harry is suing the Mail on Sunday again, this time citing “serious damage to his reputation and substantial hurt, embarrassment and distress which is continuing” after anarticle inspired “a feeding frenzy of hostile comments” online. And journalist Chris Mullin was successful in challenging West Midlands Police’s demand that he reveal his sources relating to the Birmingham Six, after he discovered that they had framed six innocent men for the 1974 bombings and helped to wage a campaign that led to their release.

    Ideology has no place in medicine, and other Peak Trans stories

    Great Ormond Street Hospital cancelled an NHS conference for trainee psychiatrists after Mermaids and other trans activists, including a conference participant, protested that including gender-critical voices would make trans attendees feel “unsafe”. The Economist’s Helen Joyce, who was due to take part alongside some of the UK’s most senior gender identity experts, said that the no-platforming campaign was “outrageous”.

    The Observer came out against the polarising of debate around gender identity, saying that “ideology has no place in medicine” and there was “a deplorable tendency by some to mislabel clinical concern about the affirmative model as transphobia”. Philosopher Kathleen Stock argued that the fiction of gender identity entailed a set of dangerous demands to ignore material reality; and FSU Advisory Council member Andrew Doyle described the obfuscation of questions surrounding biological sex as the gaslighting of the political class, concluding that “It isn’t a ‘gotcha’ to ask a politician to define terms such as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ – it is a means by which we can assess the honesty of the ruling class.” (We recently hosted a Speakeasy with Andrew Doyle that you can watch on YouTube.)

    Labour MP Charlotte Nichols said that critics of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas should “frankly pipe down”, which Sharron Davies described as “disappointing of an MP supposedly representing females too”. Hadley Freeman suggested that American men complaining about gender-critical views on Mumsnet could turn their attention to “the crushing of US women’s access to abortion and the lack of maternity leave in the US” instead.

    In Scotland, taxpayers paid £150,000 for the SNP’s failed attempt to redefine the meaning of “women” in quotas for public sector boards.

    Reminder: Battle of Ideas

    FSU members in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland may wish to attend a Battle of Ideas event in Belfast tomorrow (Saturday, 26 March) as part of the Imagine Belfast Festival. The day will include three panel discussions: “The Dangers of Online Safety”, “Can Culture Survive the Culture Wars?” and “Snowflakes or Revolutionaries? Free Speech on Campus”. (Click here to listen to a podcast of the event we co-hosted with the Academy of Ideas last week to launch Jacob Mchangama’s book Free Speech: A Global History From Socrates to Social Media. And Matt Ridley’s Online Drop-In with the Free Speech Champions on the origins of Covid, science and scepticism is available to view here.)

    Dominic Frisby at Comedy Unleashed

    Comedian Dominic Frisby is doing a full length show at Comedy Unleashed next week with his band the Gilets Jaunes. The Times says Dominic is “outstanding”; the Telegraph says he’s “excellent”; the Spectator says he’s “mercurially witty”; even the Guardian admits he “can be entertaining”. You can get tickets here.

    Sharing the newsletter

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    You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below to help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

    1. “Free Speech”
      In a world where Ofcom threatens the licence of any broadcaster that doesn’t follow the government line on Convid and the Al-Beeb decided the “science is settled” on Climate Change a decade ago and no other views are allowed.
      Ofcom will of course be the enforcer of the Online Harms Bill,what could possibly go wrong…..
      ‘Morning Grizz

    3. I’m beginning to believe these creeps are capable of doing anything, such is the control they are under. They are the puppets of others who are working the strings of these weak minded politicos. Well chosen by the puppet masters. Disastrous for the World and its people.

    4. They are desperate to expand the war into greater Europe. We are already paying the financial cost of their policies, I am worried that they are now content to see the continent set alight to show their strength in a conflict that is none of our business.

      1. And I note that despite Biden’s ravings, it’s not the continent that he lives in that will once again bear the brunt of any insanity!

  23. A NATO rift emerged overnight as Emmanuel Macron said supplying tanks and jets to Ukraine would cross a ‘red line’, after Boris Johnson called on allies to do so.
    Addressing the NATO summit via video-link on Thursday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded for ‘1% of all your planes, 1% of all your tanks’.

    For probably the one and only time, thank goodness for Macron. Please France don’t surrender on this one.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10649541/Boris-Johnson-pledges-extra-missiles-Kyiv-British-troops-region.html

    If they are not very careful, Biden Johnson and Zelensky will get millions of people killed.

    1. Boris has not a clue about military tactics. Dangerous nonsense and virtue signalling.

  24. Who would have thought even 10 years ago that such a decision would be regarded as good news and worthy of column inches in a broadsheet?

    The Rustat verdict is a humiliation for woke activists

    The tide may have finally turned against campaigners, and we can now hope that rational thinking is returning to our great institutions

    DAVID ABULAFIA

    Representatives of Jesus College, Cambridge, have declared themselves “shocked” at the verdict that, despite the strident demands of campaigners, Grinling Gibbons’s monument to Tobias Rustat should remain in the college chapel.

    What is truly shocking is the sheer certainty of these campaigners that the judgment of the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Ely, tasked with deciding the monument’s future, would go their way. It is of a part with the arrogant attitude of activists across the country, who have closed their ears to intelligent debate about how we commemorate notable people from the past whose social and political assumptions were very different from our own.

    It turns too on a distorted view of the past: one that is rooted in the assumption that modern British society is deeply and ineradicably impregnated with the legacy of the slave trade. What the judge in the Rustat case, Deputy Chancellor David Hodge, rightly called the “evil, utterly abhorrent, and repugnant” slave trade did have a role in the making of Britain. But to afford it such exclusive predominance is to ignore all the other ways in which Britain enriched itself over the centuries. No better example of this distortion can be found than the row over Rustat, who, it has now been shown, made his many benefactions with money obtained elsewhere than the slave trade.

    Some quiet victories have been obtained in recent months by those who oppose the new iconoclasm championed in universities and museums. Imperial College, for instance, has agreed not to remove the name of Thomas Huxley, one of the college’s founders. But it is the Rustat judgment which provides the firmest indication yet that the tide has finally turned. It is a landmark decision in the resolution of our current disputes. We must now hope that rational thinking is returning to British institutions just as the public grows exasperated by increasingly absurd claims about historical figures.

    Deputy Chancellor Hodge had harsh words for those who jumped to conclusions about Rustat, enlarging his role in slavery out of all proportion, making it out to be the main source of his wealth, though it was not. Sloppy research about links between colleges and slavery is unacceptable in one of the world’s leading universities. In Jesus, as in other great educational establishments, the absurd generalisations of “Critical Race Theory” have been allowed to guide debate about events and behaviour several centuries ago. In one email a student even complained of “a concerted effort by external white supremacist organisations” to retain the Rustat monument.

    The judgment also makes powerful positive points about the religious setting for the monument: a church or chapel belongs not to humans but to God, and “the Rustat memorial may be employed as an appropriate vehicle to consider the imperfection of human beings … Forgiveness encompasses the whole of humankind, past and present, for we are all sinners; and it extends even to slave traders.”

    Nor should we forget the words of the Rustat monument itself: “The greatest part of the Estate he gathered … he disposed in his life time in works of charity.” Such a man, whose bones lie under the floor of his beloved chapel, deserves more than to be reduced to a cardboard caricature.

    David Abulafia is a professor of history at the University of Cambridge

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/24/rustat-verdict-humiliation-woke-activists/

    1. Who would have thought, 10 years ago, that such a controversy would have led the removal of the memorial even being contemplated?

    3. Spine. Belief. Principles.
      We have no-one in politics or amongst their apparatchiks who knows the meaning of those words.
      The Ukrainians – and Russian conscripts – are paying a heavy price for Putin’s assessment of the current state of the “free world”.

  25. Good morning all, another clear, becalmed day on the Costa Clyde. Which should make it more pleasant when I go looking for errant golf balls.

    It feels a bit deja moo at the moment; war imminent, Chyneez flu figures ramping up, the meeja ‘suddenly’ realising that the two year shutdown will have to be paid for – both fiscally and mentally. Though, of course, they seem a tad reluctant to mention the second part as they attempt to steer the blame for our financial struggles on Russian ‘aggression’.

    Anyway, I have some fairways to avoid, enjoy the rest of the morning.

  26. Good morning all. Another bright sunny morning and, after a cloudless night it’s not quite frosty with 0°C in the yard.

  29. Another sunny good morning to you all. There’s an article about the Met Office’s project rainfall in the DT today, oddly no comments allowed, I can’t think why that might be. I will supply the link and the text below.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/24/weather-history-books-rewritten-victorian-archives-push-back/

    Weather history books rewritten as Victorian archives push back records by close to 180 years
    A project digitising the Met Office’s archive has found that several records were set much earlier than previously thought

    By
    Olivia Rudgard,
    ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
    25 March 2022 • 6:10am
    Britain has been battered by floods and parched by drought in recent years – but our Victorian ancestors didn’t escape weather extremes.

    A project digitising the Met Office’s weather archive has found that several records, particularly those for dry weather, were set much earlier than previously thought.

    Scientists at the University of Reading asked the public for help digitally transcribing 130 year’s worth of handwritten rainfall observations from across the UK and Ireland.

    Thousands of volunteers in the “Rainfall Rescue” project studied records from between 1677 and 1960, based on rain gauges located in almost every town and village across England and Wales.

    Records go as far back as 1836
    The project, launched in March 2020, has extended the rainfall data available in the official Met Office national record, meaning it now goes back to 1836 rather than 1862.

    New records include England’s driest May, originally thought to be May 2020 but now believed to be May 1844, when the country saw just 8.3mm of rain.

    The overall driest year on record, previously thought to be 1887, is now recorded as 1855.

    November and December 1852 were also exceptionally wet months, with the year seeing the wettest November on record for many regions in southern England.

    1852 was also the wettest year overall for parts of the UK including Oxfordshire, where there was significant flooding.

    The year’s floods were known as the “Duke of Wellington floods” as they coincided with the military hero’s funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

    Rainfall methodically recorded
    Victorian “observers” methodically chronicled the weather, with rainfall particularly important because of its impact on crops and food supplies.

    Britain’s Victorian ancestors also endured weather extremes, with the Royal Suspension Chain Pier in Brighton destroyed during a storm in 1896

    Rainfall has been monitored systematically in the UK since the 1860s, when George Symons established the British Rainfall Organisation, later absorbed into the Met Office, but most records made before 1960 were still in paper form.

    The 65,000 paper records held in the Met Office National Meteorological Archive were scanned during 2019 and many were written in ornate handwriting meaning humans were needed to transcribe.

    Professor Ed Hawkins, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, said he had expected the project to take months but high levels of interest from the public meant it was completed in days.

    He said: “A lot of the dry records that we’ve got have been rewritten, and that’s purely because our climate is getting wetter now.

    “Just like all the cold records are back in the past, it’s the same with the dry records, because the climate’s got wetter.

    “Most of the wet records are more recent – the exception to that was 1852 which was an extremely wet November, and I’m sure at the time they wondered what was going on.

    “That would be a stand-out month for that period. Now it wouldn’t look so unusual.”

    The UK’s average temperature is thought to have risen by 1.5C since the pre-industrial period, he said, and the extra data “helps us better understand the long-term trends towards the dramatic changes we’re seeing today”.

    Data given new life
    Catherine Ross, Met Office archivist, said: “This project’s 66,000 formerly inanimate sheets of numbers have been given a new life by placing data that can be interrogated and compared into the hands of scientists at the Met Office and around the world.”

    Jacqui Huntley, one of eight Rainfall Rescue volunteers based near Stranraer in Scotland who worked across the whole project, said: “I got involved because I’m British and therefore a fanatic about the weather, especially rain. And it rains a lot where I live in Scotland.

    “The data are obviously valuable to scientists, but I have also loved learning about the rainfall observers who were so dedicated in measuring the weather day after day.”

    1. Hmmm “…many were written in ornate handwriting meaning humans were needed to transcribe.”

      Probably written in copperplate (joined-up) hand-writing, which is easily readable, except by today’s computers and scribblers whose hand-writing is devoid of any form of joined-up writing but is often printed in capitals.

    2. Professor Ed Hawkins, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, said he had expected the project to take months but high levels of interest from the public meant it was completed in days.
      He said: “A lot of the dry records that we’ve got have been rewritten, and that’s purely because our climate is getting wetter now.
      “Just like all the cold records are back in the past, it’s the same with the dry records, because the climate’s got wetter.

      A climate change advocate getting his effects of climate change changed to fit climate change theory…
      One day it’s warming, then cooling, then windier, then drier, now wetter.

      Sorry mate, it’s that big orange thing in the sky. I wouldn’t mind betting that if we had actual records of sunspot/storm activity rather than theoretical calculations (good though they may be) they would correlate well with the changes.

      We’re destroying our economy on the back of Net Zero nonsense.

        1. Possibly.
          I wonder if he’s going to have to rejig his climate spiral to fit the facts. I should have thought drier would have meant warmer.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWoCXLuTIkI

          This visualization shows monthly global temperature anomalies (changes from an average) between the years 1880 and 2021. Whites and blues indicate cooler temperatures, while oranges and reds show warmer temperatures. As you can see, global temperatures have warmed from mainly human activities as time has progressed.

          These temperatures are based on data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Anomalies are defined relative to a base period of 1951 to 1980. The data file used to create this visualization can be accessed here: data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v4/GLB.Ts+dSST.csv.

          The “climate spiral” is a visualization designed by climate scientist Ed Hawkins from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading: https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/sp…. Climate spiral visualizations have been widely distributed; a version was even part of the opening ceremony of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

          Download the video: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4975

      2. “In 1801 Sir John Herschel discovered an 11-year sunspot cycle” From ‘Supernature’ by Lyall Watson, 1973. He goes on to list the cycle’s effects on climate, from tree rings to icebergs and drought and famine in India.

        1. 11 years isn’t the only cycle range either.
          I strongly suspect that, similar to earthquakes, there are also unexpected eruptions/flares that can have considerable effect on the planets in the solar system, let alone the nearest ones

      3. Good morning Sos,
        He sounds like that comedy sketch character (Vicky Pollard?) from 20 odd years ago, ‘Yeah, but no, but ……’

  32. Good Moaning.
    Algae on the terrace and paths vaporising very nicely.
    (Note to self: seriously – do get a life.)

    2. Algae met a bear,
      The bear met Algae,
      The bear was bulgey,
      The bulge was Algae.

      Sorry, missed a line.

      1. The bear was hungry!

        Talking of which I remember looking westwards across the bay from Gibraltar.

  33. No doubt NoTTLers realised this yesterday. That snap (and video) of Fishi Rishi “filling up his car”.

    All bollocks. The car belonged to someone who worked at the filling station.

    So – as I postulated yesterday – his “I am just like you” pitch fell on its face.

    1. Morning all. Why do they bother? It’s so crass. They just have no idea do they of how stupid they look.

      1. You are quite right : Port to Port is the rule.

        A.P. Herbert wrote a series of humorous stories which were televised in the 1960s. This narrated fictitious cases brought to court by Albert Haddock (played by Roy Dotrice) and heard before the judge (played by Alastair Sim).

        One of these stories involved an accident involving a car and a rowing boat.

        There had been very heavy rain, the Thames was flooded and the Embankment was under water. Haddock was rowing along the road beside the river when he collided with a car and this damaged both the car and the boat. His case was based on the fact that maritime law – port to port – was relevant and not the rule of the road which is that cars should drive on the left – i.e. starboard to starboard.

        1. I think I learnt that boating nugget from somewhere in the Swallows and Amazons books, which I devoured aged 7. Probably Coot Club or We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea.

          1. I imagine all those books have been banned. First, because of the name of the third Walker child. Secondly, ‘elfin safety.

          2. Thirdly, they were gently moralising, i.e., this is the right way to behave (even when being naughty).

          5. It is a good test of person’s upbringing and recollection to see if he or she can recite the list of the 12 Swallows and Amazons novels in the correct order without having to look it up.

            (As my sons are both still in their 20s and we read the books aloud en famille aboard Mianda in the last fifteen years or so I can do it.)

            They were very happy days sailing round the Med home-schooling the boys and encouraging them to love books. They are still both avid readers.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee4c747e48c39a4ef17302fc22426c7229044ca276b9a04ebf14cb57a6167b1b.jpg

        2. There is an episode of the Goons , The Rent Collectors, where Neddy Seagoon is arrested for swimming in the canal. He is tried and the judge asks the crowd what they should do with Neddy. “Hang him,” is the response. No, says Neddy, you can’t hang me!
          He’s right you know, says the judge, he hasn’t got a neck.

        4. Good afternoon, Rastus.

          Coming late to the discussion (as I am wont to do) I have asked, locally, what the Swedish names for port and starboard are. Respectively, they are: babord and styrbord. Interestingly, I am told that the name ‘styrbord’ [pron: “steer-board”] comes directly from the fact that it is the side from which vessels are steered.

          I’m also guessing that ‘babord’ may also be related to the Old English term ‘larboard’ for ‘port’. It seems that ‘larboard’ comes from the Middle English ladde-bord or latebord most likely referring to the side of the ship on which cargo was loaded.

      1. But not in Scotland. The poisonous chief Snazi witch has pardoned all the witches, no further duckings permitted.

  35. I have to thank True Belle for posting the link to the film of ‘Doctor in the House’ yesterday. I’d read the books – my father was given several copies – but not seen it before. So I watched it to escape from today’s reality and to relax after a long cycle to and from and walk along the beach.

    What a pleasure! Now I see why we had so many of the books! My father bore a passing resemblance to Bogarde, studied at Barts not long after this was set, nearly got chucked out for rugby-based shenanigans, and became an obstetrician and gynaecologist. I got a vivid impression of part of his life – thank you from the heart, Belle.

    1. Good morning Ashes

      So glad you enjoyed the film . They just don’t make them like that any more .

      I wonder what Richard Gordon would say about the current NHS management debacle .

      We need more doctors similar to Sir Lancelot Spratt, just to shake the system up .

      It sounds as if your father was a stunning looking man , lots of women fell for Dirk Bogarde’s handsome film star looks .

      I also enjoyed reading the Richard Gordon books , different era , wasn’t it.

        2. Private Hospitals still have them, with the same status afforded, developed over centuries.

      1. 351593+ up ticks,

        Morning R,
        My confirmation stalker ( truth denier) unfortunately the three shots missed so it being a demented soul will have to continue to suffer.

  37. Weather records shattered… 180 years ago

    Data from Victorian times show that extreme rainy and dry spells were just as common then, says study.

    BRITAIN has been battered by floods and parched by drought in recent years – but our Victorian ancestors did not escape weather extremes.

    A project digitising the Met Office’s weather archive has found that several records, particularly those for dry weather, were set much earlier than previously thought.

    Scientists at the University of Reading asked the public for help digitally transcribing 130 years’ worth of handwritten rainfall observations from across the UK and Ireland.

    Thousands of volunteers in the Rainfall Rescue project studied records from between 1677 and 1960, based on rain gauges located in almost every town and village across England and Wales.

    The project, launched in March 2020, has extended the rainfall data available in the official Met Office national record, meaning it now goes back to 1836 rather than 1862.

    New records include England’s driest May, originally thought to be May 2020 but now believed to be May 1844, when just 8.3mm of rain fell.

    The overall driest year on record, previously thought to be 1887, is now recorded as 1855.

    November and December 1852 were also exceptionally wet months, with the year holding the wettest November on record for many regions in southern England. That year was also the wettest year overall for parts of the UK including Oxfordshire, where there was significant flooding.

    The year’s floods were known as the “Duke of Wellington floods” as they coincided with the military hero’s funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral.

    Victorian “observers” methodically chronicled the weather, with rainfall particularly important because of its impact on crops and food supplies.

    Rainfall has been monitored systematically in the UK since the 1860s, when George Symons set up the British Rainfall Organisation, later absorbed into the Met Office, but most records made before 1960 were still in paper form.

    The 65,000 paper records held in the Met Office National Meteorological Archive were scanned during 2019 but many were written in ornate handwriting, meaning humans were needed to transcribe them.

    Prof Ed Hawkins, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, said he had expected the project to take months but high levels of interest from the public meant it was completed in days. He said: “A lot of the dry records that we’ve got have been rewritten, and that’s purely because our climate is getting wetter now.

    “Just like all the cold records are back in the past, it’s the same with the dry records, [as] the climate’s got wetter.

    “Most of the wet records are more recent – the exception to that was 1852, which was an extremely wet November, and I’m sure at the time they wondered what was going on.

    “That would be a stand-out month for that period. Now it wouldn’t look so unusual.”

    Hmmm! Over to you: ‘climate change’ activists and ‘global warming’ fanatics.

    1. Good morning Grizzly, and the others.

      Some cold or wet weather can be linked to previous volcanic activity elsewhere in the world.

      1. Good morning, Tim.

        I visited Los Angeles in 1980, some months after the Mount St Helens eruption in Washington State. The locals were rejoicing that the change in the weather systems, following the volcano, had blown away all the smog from LA and people could see and breathe freely for the first time in decades.

  39. I won’t post again the item about weather records….Twice is enough!!

    But – I am listening to the biography of King George V – and how, during the great political storm about the Parliament Bill in 1911, London “sweltered” with record temperatures exceeding 100ºF. It was so hot that starched stiff collars “melted”, to the embarrassment of the toffs wot woz wearing them.

    And in the 9th to 11th centuries – there was a general rise in temperatures across Europe which made crop-growing easier.

    Bloody global warming, eh?

      1. Good morning Belle,
        That’s an interesting site, thanks for posting. I’ll pass that on to MOH.

    2. Man made global warming is a complete scam. The only question to ask is who is making money out of this scam. We also know that many people have vested financial interest in exploiting Covid.

      At least we can be confident that we are being told the whole truth about the war in Ukraine.

      Or can we?

      2. You are of course joking in your remark about the war in Ukraine, I hope? Here is a article title from todays Telegraph: “The secret life of Alina Kabaeva – the star gymnast who became Putin’s ‘Eva Braun’” With this sort of obscenity for a title no one could possibly believe that we are being the truth about what is going on in Ukraine. And one that as an Orthodox Christian I find deeply offensive: “The Russian Orthodox church has blood on its hands. Moscow’s Patriarch has twisted the Christian faith into the nationalist ideology beloved of Putin”. Another outright lie.

        1. Good morning Jonathan

          I thought you were aware of the fact that I am extremely cynical about politicians and the MSM!

          1. Yes. And good morning Rastus! But the fact is that this situation is one in which you have no idea where people are going. It is, to use a term, Kafkaesque. When the Patriarch is accused of being a heretic because he disapproves of what in the article are called “Western values”. Men can be women etc. We have entered a surreal world. Where ridiculous words as the following are actually taken seriously: “The clash, therefore, is not between Russian “traditional values” and Western “godlessness”, as claimed by Patriarch Kirill – but between brutality and civilisation. It is a clash between totalitarian autocracy and democracy”. In other words traditional Christianity is brutal, and uncivilized and only Democracy, minus God, with its decadence is paramount. This quote is such a twisted observation of civilization that it obviously does not occur to the author that it reaffirms the Patriarchs remarks.

          2. And, by the way Rastus. I’m rather tired today and still having a running battle with the hospital. So easily taking things the wrong way.

        2. Good morning Jonathan

          I thought you were aware of the fact that I am extremely cynical about politicians and the MSM!

    1. The only question worth asking is ‘how many are British names’. Then you look at the capacity of a hercules transport, chain them by the ankles, troop them on board and then open the bay door 10,000 over Pakistan. If they won’t get out voluntarily shoot them in the groin.

      When they’re bleeding to death, kick them out.

      It’s not f-ing complicated.

      1. 351593+ up ticks,

        Afternoon W,
        You are at heart, ALL heart & an old softy who means every word
        regarding the 600 & the justifiable use of gravity.

  41. Good morning, my friends

    Allison Pearson has entered the fray about trans women : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/24/nhs-trans-guidelines-straight-1984/

    She cites the case of the poor woman who was raped when she was in the all female ward of a hospital by a trans woman with a willy and the hospital claimed it could not have been rape as there were no men there to commit it.

    Might I suggest that trans women should not be allowed to keep both their testicles and their willies? If they keep their willies until a full willioscopy has been done they should be castrated and made impotent and incapable of getting a stiffy – this might cut down on rape of women by ex-women.

      1. I am not an expert on the subject – I have no direct personal experience of sexual impotence.

        However I believe there are ways of ensuring that a person has permanent erectile dysfunction and these ways should be used until a trans woman has had the full williyoscopy to protect women who are women without just having to say they are.

        2. Instead of just looking up it (willyoscopy), I think a wllyectomy might be what you have in mind.

      2. In which case, no man should be allowed to self identify as a woman until he has had his bits chopped off. I would also suggest it be mandatory for them to then have an implant (yet to be invented….) that would give them all the pain of the menstrual cycle.
        I reckon virtually all trans women fall into one of two categories. 1. They are what, in a once saner world, was considered to be sensitive/soft.
        Or 2. They are perverts who want easy access to girls and women, especially in places those girls and women should feel safe and protected.

        3. Control.

          In my (admittedly limited) experience, it is about control – they are weak men who seek to make the universe dance to their tune.
          Dominant mothers also appear to feature quite strongly.
          It is a huge power over another person to force them to say something that they know to be a lie. Extrapolate to a whole workplace…

          1. I fear it’s a lot of the latter. The current world seems dominated by people who want the world to revolve around their own ego.

          2. Some years ago, a boy at a local primary school decided he wanted to be a girl. Started secondary school as a girl, and was still a girl at 16. At primary school, he rarely played with the boys in his class – though to be fair, who could blame him as most of them seemed a bit rough. I suspect he will still be a quiet, pleasant sort of person, and highly unlikely to be ‘in-your-face about being a trans.

          3. Certainly so for the activist ones. They probably have great feelings of inadequacy, and think pretending to be a woman will make them feel important. Deranged, mentally unstable creeps.

      3. Remember this verse of the song sung to the melody of the Eton Boating Song?

        Christmas night in the harem
        The eunuchs were saying their prayers
        A hundred dusky maidens were combing their pubic hairs
        When in comes Father Christmas
        And out aloud he calls: “What do you want for Christmas?
        And the eunuchs shouted : “Balls.”

    2. Don’t be daft Rastus, that would mean sanity was in charge. A few raped women is considered unimportant compared to the ‘rights’ of those mentally deluded man creeps who declare themselves to be women.

    3. Morning all.
      Totally agree, off with their bits………….you can’t have it both ways.

      Here is a little poem……

      My nookie days are over,
      My pilot light is out,
      What use to be my sex appeal is now my water spout !
      Time was when, on it’s own from my trousers it would spring.
      But now it’s just a full time job to find the friggin’ thing !
      It use to be embarrassing the way it would behave.
      For every single morning it would stand and watch me shave !
      Now as old age approaches,
      it sure gives me the blues, to see it hang it’s little head,
      and stare down at my shoes.

      1. Good morning Paul

        Reminds me of the story of the young man in the railway compartment who is seated opposite a particularly unattractive woman. He has to go to the lavatory along the corridor but is so eager to get back to the exciting novel he is reading that he fails to adjust his trousers after his pee.

        He returns to his seat and the woman is outraged and says: “Young man, you are a disgrace’ Your penis is sticking out.”
        The young man observes that he has made a sartorial faux pas and replies: “Madam, I apologise but I must correct you: you flatter yourself – my penis is not sticking out, it is hanging out!”

        2. Yo rastus

          ..and the Vicar in the corner was doing the DT Crossword: when the lad said when he had settled back down
          Help with a clue please
          To do with a female, Four Letters, ending ..unt
          The woman says Aunt.
          The Vicar quickly changes his answer

          No 17 on Oft Repeated Joke List

        3. It is supposed to be a quote from Winston Churchill. Probably apocryphal, but all the same, a good one.

    1. Morning Maggie! I hope you’re feeling better today!

      I thought the Icelandic volcano threw out a huge dustcloud………

        1. And the opportunity to bed-and-isa another £20K of dividend bearing shares out of Sunak’s way…!

          3. Yet the state will continue to hammer the absolute trousers out of any private income it can – it’s doing the damage deliberately as punishment for Brexit.

  43. Dear NoTTLers,

    Thank you for all your kind wishes and words of comfort for Izzy (or Issy as he is known here too!) He has received them all, and they mean a lot to him.

    The doctors have decided not to operate; and the intention is for Izzy to go back to be in the comfort of his own home, surrounded by his things and with his carer there.

    1. Oh, Gawd, Lass, that sounds like terminal decline. We all hope that’s not true.

    3. Thanks for passing the wishes on. What a shame it’s not better news but being home will be a small comfort.

    7. I am so sorry to hear that, but to be at home in familiar surroundings is probably the most comfortable for him. Our thoughts are with him.

    10. Oh dear.
      It is, I believe, a while since Izzy posted on here. Does anyone know if it is possible to find his archived posts to read?

  44. Dear NoTTLers,

    Thank you for all your kind wishes and words of comfort for Izzy (or Issy as he is known here too!) He has received them all, and they mean a lot to him.

    The doctors have decided not to operate; and the intention is for Izzy to go back to be in the comfort of his own home, surrounded by his things and with his carer there.

    1. Good morning!

      Goodness, Zelensky is the darling of the WEF but these Polski-Russian types really don’t get the woke thing, do they? Do the trannies have the balls for a fight…

    1. Number one priority?
      Act as if you wanted the best for the UK rather than the best compromise so as not to ‘leave the door open to rejoin’ or offend anyone.
      Just play hardball with the EU slimebags.
      It’s been long enough already for Christ sake !

    2. Yes, the new relationship being : how much can we screw the British public over to keep forcing in and gold plating every EU policy going to do so much damage to the economy that we’re forced to rejoin?

  47. Motorcyclist who identifies as a cyclist sets new world record.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d752ea003d6d5546590da0fb056eaad488762bebabaebfff17ce35dc499d9aa1.jpg

    There is a very amusing and charming rapper (Yes he is intelligent, amusing and charming) called Zuby who appears regularly as a guest on GB News. Not only does he have a first class Oxford degree in computing but he is also very fit. He decided, for fun, to extract the urine from this trans nonsense so he identified as a woman and then proceeded to break several world women’s weightlifting records! Having done this he re-self-identified as a man again!

    https://www.facebook.com/zubymusic/videos/zuby-destroys-uk-womens-deadlift-record/293358261360283/

    1. Talks a lot of sense, does Zuby. I’m so happy to see another musician with brains; seems to be the general assumption that we don’t!

    2. I was driving up a local hill last Sunday morning and there were cars half parked on the opposite side of the road. It’s not particular wide, but a cyclist was struggling up the steep incline in front of me. When suddenly to avoid a head on with inconsiderate drivers coming down and passing the parked (they could have waited) cars I had to cut in close to the cyclist, I had no choice no harm done. But passenger ‘Erin’ gave me a right b*ll&cking,…….. what could I do ??? It was just an unfortunate incident of Tran sport.

    3. The late Donald Campbell’ family have stated, that Bluebird has now to be ‘re-identified’ as a 12 Metre Yacht and therefore they claim the 1958 America’s Cup

      The Second World War marked the end of the J-Class, and when America’s Cup racing began again in 1958, it signaled the beginning of the
      12-Metre era. The Americans would successfully defend eight more times over the next 25-year period.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird_K7

      https://www.americascup.com/en/history

    2. Actually it has occurred to me that “adult female” is a linguistic definition that can be got around. You can play the game of what is female etc. So it seems to me that you have to say that a female is someone that has xx chromosomes. There is no way that a man pretending to be a woman can get around that.

      1. Their answer to that is “you’d be amazed how many people are walking round with non standard chromosomes”
        I’ve never looked it up, but I bet it’s a very tiny number of people.

        1. There is no such thing as far as I understand it. There can be confusion about a child’s sex because of ambiguous genitalia but that is to do with the development of the foetus. But there is no alternative to XX or XY. Is there a doctor in the house that can clarify?

          2. I found an Encyclopedia Britannica article which stated that while it is possible to have both sets of chromosomes and to be born with both sets of genitalia, at puberty only one set will function normally therefore there isn’t actually any confusion as to which set should be removed.

        2. I would guess that it is miniscule too. So unusual that I doubt the vast majority of people have actually met such such a person. On top of that I bet that precisely zero of such people claim to be transsexuals.

          1. I agree. The only reason I did not research it and demolish the argument at the time I heard it, was that by that point I had lost the will to live. It was in real life too.

    1. According to Hebrew tradition, God’s calendar is 7,000 years and we’re currently at year 5782.

    2. We are safe from anyfing Nuclear, here in UK:- Net Zero, the Greens and Johnson have banned it

  50. ‘You’re playing a game with me’: Biden says sanctions were NEVER meant to deter ‘brute’ Putin, will last a year, and promises US will respond ‘in kind’ if he uses chemical weapons in tense exchange in Brussels

    If that’s the case why the Hell have sanctions been imposed?
    All they achieve is misery all round.

    NWO and great reset anyone?

    EDIT for link
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10649093/Biden-speaks-meeting-NATO-European-leaders.html

    1. If the US drops chemical weapons on Russians, don’t be surprised if Russia finds a way to drop chemical weapons on the US. preferably the White House or the Capitol.

  51. Just for fun. A Russian supply ship/tank landing craft was blown up in Berdyansk harbour a couple of days ago. There are a number of interesting points. The design of this ship is over 50 years old, and the ship itself may be no newer than 35 years old. So an ageing vessel to an old design.
    We are told that the Russians carefully studied the Falklands Campaign because, it involved the UK, it was as far across the planet from the military base as you can get, the islands were defended by dug in troops, and it was an impossible task.
    The Russians will have noted that the Sir Galahad was destroyed when unloading, the most vulnerable time. The design of the Sir Galahad was very similar to the Saratov which was destroyed in an almost identical manner. It might have occurred to the Russians back in the 80s to replace their vulnerable landing ships as soon as possible, and ensure that they were equipped with the appropriate air defence systems.
    Well, the Russians ordered a couple of Mistral class troop carrier/command vessels from France. France decided not to honour the order, gave the Russians their money back when the Crimea returned to Russian rule, and sold the ships to Egypt.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60859337
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alligator-class_landing_ship
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistral-class_amphibious_assault_ship
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFA_Sir_Galahad_(1966)

  52. Good morning. A large company who are partners of ours just went into administration after their power costs were set to multiply sevenfold as demanded by
    the power supplier. Why is this not at the very top of the domestic news agenda? Similar outrage is happening all around the country to
    homeowners and businesses. Vernon Coleman reported his local cafe’s bill has just been hiked from £900 pm to £2,800 pm.

    If anyone thinks this is either not a deliberate act of assault or something to do with the cost of power production they need to awaken rapidly. It is the
    start of a drive to turn us all into peons.

        1. Ah oui; mon français a été corrompu par les archaïsmes de l’opéra 🤣

    2. I agree with you all the way. But what can we do about it? We’ve written to our MP many times about various things, individually and separately, but nothing changes or is likely to. It fits in neatly with the great reset, you will own nothing (and be nothing, although that’s not mentioned), and be happy. It’s my children and their children that I worry for.

    4. Beats me how any increase in the price of fuel can justify a 100% increase in the standing charge – the two are not related. Profiteering at it’s worst. I’ve written to both my MPs – standard reply was utter bollox

      1. Until they can be forced to obey, they won’t. Most are morons who don’t understand where the cost comes from, the others are in bed with the green lobby, troughing away on our cash.

      2. Quite. I had a fixed tariff with Octopus until last October. They advised me that the equivalent fixed tariff would rise from £950 to £1746. An 84% increase. That included a 19% increase in Electric standing charge, and a 46% increase in the Gas equivalent. In the end I switched to British Gas (who I despise) on a two year fixed tariff for £1448 pa (52% increase) – though after a mild winter, I’m nowhere near that amount.

    5. 35% of the cost of energy is tax. The intent to reach the impossible net zero was to have people stop using it.

      Oh, hang on. As people *can’t* not use energy, the intent was to tax people into penury.

    6. There is more to the rise in power prices than meets the eye imho. Oil prices were higher in 2008 than they are now and we apparently have all this ‘free’ energy now from sun and wind which must dilute the increase in gas prices. I just can not fathom what is going on. But for sure, there are a lot of people about to be very hurt financially, unless our warmongers manage to start a European conflagration first, In which case we will only be worrying where the next missile will land. No talk of pushing a peace process from our glorious leaders I note.

    1. If we’re going to base it against a metal that’s dangerous. It can only be permitted when there is only one, unchangeable algorithim. If, at any point government can manipulate the value of that currency then it becomes worthless.

      The whole point of crypto is that it cannot be fiddled and has universal value. A bitcoin spent in the UK should have the same effective value worldwide – and that means it’ll be worth more in Kahzakstan than the UK because of how difficult government has made it.

      1. I don’t follow you, sorry.
        I know that XRP is limited, but there are a couple of billion XRP, and they have a plan for releasing them slowly. I’m not sure how the price of XRP should be related to gold in reality – to whose gold, for example?

      1. Dolly is very choosy about who she is friends with. She chases big dogs but like little ones. She often meets a tiny black Chi called Hoppy. Poor little thing only has three legs.

        2. I had a dog called Woodbine, only had 2 front legs so had to take it out for a drag. Woof woof..

    2. Oh the shame for that poor German shepherd having to face its doggie acquiantances after the story gets out.

  56. Entertaining article here on Matt Hancock… it’s spot on.

    I thought the last paragraph particularly insightful:

    “People, including Hancock, like to talk about learning the lessons of the pandemic. So we can prepare better for the next one. They don’t realise that between the million mentally hamstrung teenagers, the NHS waiting list hitting 9.2 million within two years, an endless backlog of cases in criminal courts, and inflation, that the pandemic hasn’t ended yet. It’s barely started.”

    https://unherd.com/2022/03/the-tragedy-of-matt-hancock/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=dea878f3dc&mc_eid=7115eb14ff

    1. He obviously knew how to get out of a tricky situation, knew exactly where the cameras would be and went for it.
      But he’s still there which is very worrying.

    2. The government is caught between two groups: those who want the facts to make their own risk assessment and those who want to be told what to do – and have someone else take the blame for it.

    3. Adding to the backlog of criminal cases should be one about Halfcock’s contracts – not that I ever expect it to happen!

    1. Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un moment
      Chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie

      1. Handy that the Palace of Westminster sits on the river bank.

        With regards to the bankers, there was probably a large dollop of anti-semitism mixed in with 18th century sentiments.

    2. Trudeau is doing it the modern way by imposing a profit tax on financial institutions.

    1. She has always made jibes about white people. Isn’t there a word for that…it’s on the tip of my tongue…

    2. Notably the Tetley corporation provides massive amounts of money to India and does as much as it can to keep people in jobs. When people retire, they keep the home they are given when an employee.

      I think Ms Goldberg is ignorant and hypocritical.

      1. I know some Indian people who’s family have been in the UK for decades. They are lovely, friendly, sociable and hard working.
        But they do have large families even over here. And then again we still send a lot of money to the Indian government in sweet F.A. each year.
        How does ‘whoop whoop’ help them I wonder ?

    4. Perhaps she will take responsibility for all the black crime in the USA and the fact that a lot of black fathers abandon their families.
      Stupid woman.

  60. EU signs US gas deal to curb reliance on Russia. 25 March 2022.

    The US and the EU have announced a major deal on liquified natural gas, in an attempt to reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian energy.

    The agreement will see the US provide the EU with extra gas, equivalent to around 10% of the gas it currently gets from Russia, by the end of the year.

    Well the Americans have been trying to swing that for ages so I guess they will be much happier now!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60871601

      2. We could have had the deal if we had been fracking our considerable gas reserves.

        However the British government decided to cease fracking in order to look good at Cop26.

  61. The woke EU is too decadent to fight for European civilisation

    Brussels’s relationship with Russia has been catastrophic for Poland

    PIOTR GLIŃSKI, STEVEN EDGINTON • 25 March 2022 • 9:34am

    Poland’s deputy prime minister is a busy man. His country has taken in two million refugees in a matter of weeks [plenty of space for them, given the number of Poles that have left Poland in recent years…], and many are worried that Poland could be Putin’s next target. However, Piotr Gliński – and the Law and Justice Party of which he is a member – sees no reason why this should mean greater EU integration.

    In a wide-ranging interview with the Telegraph (below), Mr Gliński shot down the suggestion of a European army and warned that attempts to further centralise power in Brussels could lead to mass repression in Europe, similar to that seen under the Soviet Union.

    “I do not believe in the European army. It’s not a good idea,” he tells me. “I prefer NATO. The role of the USA and Great Britain is more important to me, so [talk of a European army is] not stabilising the situation.”

    Mr Gliński, who regularly works late into the night closely tracking the situation in Ukraine, is clearly concerned not just about the future of his own country, but that of the whole of Europe. “As we can see in Ukraine, the will to fight is something which is absolutely the most important factor,” he says. “Because even if you have weapons, if you have technologies, you could be very weak if you have not got this ability to sacrifice your life, to defend your values, your family, your nation. And I’m not sure if contemporary Europe is ready for such a confrontation.”

    It is those values that he sees as the main cause of a new divide within the EU, between so-called progressive Western democracies such as France and Germany, and more traditional countries to the East, led by Poland and Hungary. When asked about the two camps’ opposing visions for the future of the EU, the first of closer integration and “more Europe” and the second of national sovereignty and looser cooperation, he firmly comes down for the latter.

    He describes dreams of a European superstate as “utopian”, and Poland knows better than most where utopian ideologies end up. “Utopian thinking caused a lot of victims and a lot of, really, really horrible things, like communism; one hundred million victims,” he says. “This utopia of European culture and European society is … politically motivated because a lot of interest groups are interested to introduce it.”

    The Polish approach is to look back to tradition and to build on history. “Of course, we are for those institutions which are effective economically and culturally,” he explains. “What we observed in Ukraine … if we can say about conclusions after three weeks, it proved that real character of values and priorities based on stabilised basic social institutions like family, like nations… These are something which is most effective not only for satisfying people’s needs but also for surviving and for defending our sovereignty and independence.

    “These experiences from the Ukraine war support our vision, not the vision of something which is artificial, which is ineffective and is naive in its assumptions.”

    A professor of sociology specialising in culture and civil society before entering professional politics, Mr Gliński serves not only as Deputy Prime Minister but as a Minister within the Department of Culture and National Heritage. It was here that we met for my interview, and it is an area that clearly holds special interest for the Minister.

    Is Europe woke? “Yes,” says Mr Gliński. “They lost the feeling of what is important really in the life of nations. They have lost it years ago. The first visible crisis was probably after the war, when they were so focused on Leftist or communist ideas, of course, they were still in the Christian tradition to some extent … but there were signs of the first pro-decadent changes.

    “There was post-modernistic thinking or ideas and these different kinds of Marxism were very popular amongst intellectuals in Europe. The weakness of Europe is stemming from this tradition, generally speaking. European institutions are not ready to build any effective opposition to the danger from the East.”

    The European Parliament’s recent vote to continue with economic sanctions against Poland and Hungary, despite events in Ukraine and their leading role in managing the refugee crisis, has exacerbated existing tensions. Brussels claims Poland has defied the supremacy of European law and says it has concerns about the independence of the country’s judiciary. The Polish government describes these accusations as false and unjust.

    When asked about these sanctions, Mr Gliński contrasts the “organised miracle” of Poland’s response to the millions of Ukrainian women and children pouring over the border since the war began, and what he views as the EU’s refusal to help Poland. “There is no real material support from the EU. There are some talks. There are some promises. But we are spending our money. We are organising our people and we are trying to do our best in this situation. And on the other hand… we have still these sanctions against Poland which are politically motivated.”

    There is one country within the EU for which Mr Gliński saves his greatest ire. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused Germany’s new Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to hurriedly announce a reversal of Berlin’s close economic ties to Moscow, and therefore undo the legacy of his predecessor, Angela Merkel. The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Germany directly with Russia looks all but over for now, and Scholz even announced a monumental rearmament programme in an about-turn for previously demilitarised Germany.

    Even so, for the Polish Deputy Prime Minister, this is all too little, too late. “The relationship between the European Union, mainly Germany, and Russia was catastrophic for years,” he says. “And we as a part of the European Union sacrificed because of these relationships and because of this dependency.”

    Britain comes off far more lightly in my discussions with the Polish politician. Before Putin’s invasion, Britain, Poland and Ukraine signed a trilateral cooperation agreement, and all three have worked closely together in preparing Ukraine’s defences.

    There have been some who have suggested that Brexit has diminished Britain’s influence in Europe and around the world. According to Mr Gliński, the exact opposite is true. “There is a new coalition [between] London, Warsaw and Kyiv. This is because Great Britain is now independent from the European Union and so it’s easier for us… in some respects to build a coalition with Britain, that’s for sure.”

    When asked what Britain means to him, he is less straightforward. Mr Gliński invokes both memories of “betrayal” during the Second World War, when France and Britain failed to come to Poland’s aid during both its Nazi invasion and Soviet occupation; and of Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Warsaw during the dying years of Communist rule.

    During the 1980s Mr Gliński was a member of the trade union movement known as Solidarity, which campaigned for economic liberalisation and democratic elections within Poland. Mrs Thatcher was an active supporter of Solidarity, and many in Poland still remember her vocal assistance in helping to end Soviet rule.

    In what I was told was the Deputy PM’s longest ever English-language interview, he was not afraid to apply Polish history to the country’s current issues. He argues one of the greatest problems facing Poland is its historic division.

    “There’s no one Poland because of these historical changes, because of almost 50 years of communism in Poland. We are very deeply divided as a nation, as a state and also as the result of pressure from both sides. So Putin and also Germany. They were interested in dividing Poland and in building this furious aggression in the country.”

    For most Poles, however, their country’s past is far less important than their future. With Ukraine holding off Russia for now, and with Poland firmly within NATO, there are signs of safety. And yet to Mr Gliński, everyone must be prepared to fight and even to die for their country if they want any guarantee of national survival.

    “We were witnessing these values, like to be ready to die for something, to sacrifice your life, as something which is rather characteristic for museums, not for real life. And now there is a change.”

    Is Britain, or indeed Poland, prepared to make such sacrifices? He’s not so sure.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/25/woke-eu-decadent-fight-european-civilisation/

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

    1. That’s because the Eastern Europeans have largely kept their countries closed to immigrants from totally different cultures. I know many who would have fought for the old England. The new one – I’m not even sure what I’d be fighting for.

      1. I think it’s entirely possible that a civil war is more probable. In UK, I mean.

        1. Do you mean Indigenous v Others? Isn’t that part of the reason behind importing them in such numbers in the first place – to get the natives to lose it and then clamp down on all of us “for our own safety”?

          1. I don’t know, as I don’t know if all the indigenous would even fight along side- you know the bleeding hearts? Everything is such a mess and there is so much hypocrisy from everywhere.
            The government is a sham; that so-called budget was an insult and yet, still millions of £s are being spent on immigrants and we are supposed to house yet more ourselves…
            I am particularly bitter today because of some news we had which I am not disclosing here. We native Brits count for nothing.

          3. Sorry to hear you’ve had bad news. It seems to me (from my NHS experiences) that those of us who’ve paid our way and contributed count for nothing – we’re being cancelled.

      2. A white face in a TV Advert, but then Round One would be a Home Match.

        We have lost our way

        Archbish of Canterbury does not seem to be a Christian

        Being White is evil

        Being a Heterosexual is evil

        Not to kow tow to Wokism is evil

        I give up

        1. Welby was a sinister and evil agent of Cameron who was given specific instructions to wipe out Christian belief and destroy the Church of England.

          We must not judge lest we be judged – but if there is a Hell then Welby will certainly deserve to be there in my opinion; we may not be judges but we can be on juries!

  62. Going back decades now , yet viewing the current shennanigans that William and Kate seem to be involved in .. you know , pretending to be grsnd regals in impoverished overbred West Indian States / Carib or what ever you call them .

    No wonder they have got up the noses of many out there … I wonder whether the locals preferred the idea of the Meghan and Harry team ?

    If I dare say to any of you that when I was younger when living in Africa , a white face was associated with gifts and handouts .. crowds would gather and scream “European , what have you got for me” ( in pidgin English)

    Strangely enough , the same thing applied in South Africa.. Africans would hold their hands out , but wealthy black Africans would ignore pleas for small change .

    White faces are associated with the giving of freebies .

    BBC breakfast this morning showed strange articles about poor families who have large families , but no beds , and children who have to sleep in the bath .

    One woman had taken it upon herself to provide beds for poor families in the Leeds area.

    She stopped at a terraced house , and was greeted by a black mama, with a baby in a sling on her back and about five cute little black children .. who had no nightwear or beds . This black mama type , probably West African , was a recent arrival from SPAIN…

    The BBC cameras panned around the overcrowded room , and all we heard were thanks and pidgin English .

    Why was that Black family a recent arrival from SPAIN?

    Is there a war in Spain ?

  63. The Northern Ireland Protocol continues to tear the fabric of our Union

    Rishi Sunak exposed the Government’s inability to set VAT for the whole country. This cannot go on

    IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/25/northern-ireland-protocol-continues-tear-fabric-union/

    The EU has still got us by the short and curlies.

    BTL

    Lord Frost was all set to go for ‘No deal’ and liberate British fishermen and those in Northern Ireland from the tyrranical, autocratic EU but then – just before the Brexit deal was announced – the Serpent Gove arrived in Brussels and so Frost’s firm stance was completely undermined by both Johnson and Gove and we were lumbered with the disastrous Brexit deal we have got when we would have been far better off without a deal.

    Has everybody forgotten the evil meddling of Gove? And why are not Rees Mogg and Truss getting on with invoking Article 16 and scrapping the NI Protocol? Why the delay? Something very murky is, I suspect, behind this sell-out to the EU.

        1. I’ll have you know that kippers would have delivered a proper breakfast Brexit 🙂

    2. 2 for me today, sweetie! … x

      ‘It’ said ‘magnificent’ – and I have to agree 🙂

    4. You did better than me…

      Wordle 279 6/6

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

    3. At last, someone not afraid to speak out. Especially brave as I believe he may run for presidential nomination and no doubt will be denounced by the usual idiots.

      1. He will have to wait because Trump is going to run again. But then, Trump cannot go up for re-election after he wins. That is not allowed. So his second term will be as short as the first.

  67. “Boy falls to his death from 430-foot amusement park ride in Orlando”. Pushed off by a Russian no doubt..

  68. 351593+ up ticks,

    If there was an academy award for nasty stupidity this bird would win it outright.

    breitbart,

    Whoopi Goldberg Demands British Royal Family Apologise for Empire, Slavery

    1. Didn’t she get expelled from something like Facebook recently but she was only expelled for five minutes because she is black and must be entitled to black privilege?

      1. 351593+ up ticks,

        Afternoon R,
        Surprises me she was banned as long as that, in regards to black privilege I only apply it to puddings.

      2. She got taken off ‘The View’ for two weeks for making ignorant remarks about the Holocaust that if any Conservative had said them would have caused the culprit to be banned for life and ground into the dust. But being the usual fascist dressed up as a liberal, she got a slap on the wrist, then allowed to return after that short hiatus. Ignorance seems to be her stock in trade.

    2. Whereabouts in UK was the Cotton Plantation that her forebearers were incarcerated

      I believe this Richard Cranium is a Yank, albeit a black one

      Gold Old English, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch goud and German Gold, from an Indo-European root shared by yellow.
      No clues there

      Berg German for Mountain….. Still no England responsible clues.

      Did she make a fortune, making films in Yiddish, Arabic or ……English. If she hates us that much, she can donate all her money to Ukraine

      What an Arris Ole (O with a squiggle on top)

      1. 361593+ up ticks,

        Afternoon OLT,
        You are, without doubt a challenge to old shaky in penmanship well put.

    3. Africa is empty,they are welcome to return.America even carved out a country
      for the returnees,what happened there?Africa is a massive continent and I’m
      sure you’ll all be welcome.

    4. WE have nothing to apologise for. What she should do is demand an apology from the black costal tribes of Africa that kidnapped her ancestors and sold them off to the white man. Further, I seriously doubt that those people were English but people inhabiting America after the revolution and therefore Americans. Furthermore, it is quite amazing how ignorant these people are about the role of the British in defeating the slave trade. If not for us, it could well be continuing to this day or be more widespread than it is.

      1. Perhaps all these whiners should read a bit more history – they could start with “Royal Navy versus the Slave Traders – Enforcing Abolition at Sea 1808 – 1898” by Bernard Edwards, a man who has almost certainly been “cancelled”!

        1. 1833 the Abolition of Slavery Act was passed in this country. Brought into being by William WIlberforce.

          3. 16 March 1807 – abolition of the Slave Trade Act – one year later the RN Africa Squadron was formed – the loss of life, and cost, of such action against the slave trade thereafter is conveniently ignored by many!

            “William Wilberforce was a member of parliament, and another key figure in the abolitionist movement. Although his proposals met with fierce resistance, from 1789 Wilberforce began to introduce anti-slavery motions in Parliament. He continued to do so until 1807, when the British Parliament introduced the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.” Ironically – the BBC!
            https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z2qj6sg/articles/zn7rbqt?topicJourney=true

          4. Yes, I can only comment on dates I really remember. I do not know all the details as am more of a medieval history person. And, no, I wasn’t born in the 15th C. 🙂

        2. Exactly. But it seems to me that people in positions such as the Duke and Duchess should be thoroughly instructed in the subject so that they do not make apologies that are based on a superficial knowledge of the subject. We are no more guilty than anyone else and less so than most considering that we policed the world for years stopping other countries, including African ones, in the practice of slavery.

      2. Perhaps all these whiners should read a bit more history – they could start with “Royal Navy versus the Slave Traders – Enforcing Abolition at Sea 1808 – 1898” by Bernard Edwards, a man who has almost certainly been “cancelled”!

  71. Prince Charles urges men to ‘dismantle lies, words and actions’ that lead to violence against women
    The Prince spoke out as he and the Duchess of Cornwall met the family of Ashling Murphy who was murdered in Tullamore, Co Offaly in January
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2022/03/25/prince-charles-urges-men-dismantle-lies-words-actions-lead-violence/

    BTL

    I agree that violence against women is a heinous thing and we should not allow or encourage it in any way.

    However, Prince Charles has got himself so involved in completely potty causes in the past that his involvement in good and sensible causes might actually be counter-productive. “What,” people ask themselves, “is the bumbling and idiotic old meddler getting involved in now?”

    His elder son, William, is making the same mistakes as his father – the whole point of a constitutional monarchy is that it steers clear of politics?

    1. Ah, but has he defined what a woman is?

      As you say, this is a prime example of stupid meddling in politics by the RF.

    3. He really has to be one of the stupidest people I have ever heard! This thick-headed jug-eared moron was married to a very beautiful, if flawed woman but he continued to plough his own furrow, and produce two stupid thoughtless sons who know nowt. I hope he gets out of the way very soon and perhaps Katherine may help William be a proper monarch, because Charles certainly ain’t!

    2. Technology and it’s offerings are not the problem. The problem’s people. We’re shallow, empty, vaccuous and self obsessed.

      Well, some of us are. It’s ironic that you’ll find beneath a Daily Wail clickbait article of Liz Hurley in a bikini thousands of messages from unhappy, frumpy, lonely women – and men – doing her down to lift themselves up. Where is their self worth? Embedded in hurting others.

      It’s a sad power struggle for the weak in society, the need to climb up by stepping on others. At heart, they’re ashamed but as no one can feel shame or responsibility, guilt these days because they’re bad things and we cannot allow ourselves to feel bad lest we actually have to ask ‘why am I like this? What can I change in my life to make myself better?’

      Equally though, when the mirror is held up by the carcrashdash family, by the ‘pretty people’ (who are ghastly ugly plastic abominations) looking at ourselves is scary, as we are not perfect like them and all to frequently we’re sold by the press, adverts, that if we don’t look like that, there’s something wrong with us.

      Tech has just enabled the proflieration of that mirror – it was always there.

      2. I don’t recognise it – it may have been composed for that clip.
        I do that sort of thing for video clips

  76. I see that the virtue-signalling, recently qualified HGV driver, formerly known here as the Babbling Poltroon – managed to leave the UK en route for Poland WITHOUT A SPARE WHEEL.

    I always knew he was a wazzock.

        1. We could club together and send a drone missile. It would put him out of our misery.

  78. HAPPY HOUR – Over 35 NoTTlers …..?

    It’s downhill from here! Harvard professor reveals how to find purpose and success in later life in a valuable self-help book.
    High-skill professionals often hit the downward slope after their late 30s
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-10649485/Harvard-professor-reveals-purpose-success-later-life-valuable-self-help-book.html
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/37512fa7694fbf62a96285bcf01fb8032bca1f2e4818fb7ed3a563a62e42f7e0.jpg

    1. Best self help ever:
      If you think you have a problem.
      Look in the mirror
      Then blame:
      Your parents, siblings, partner.
      Having done that:
      Look in the mirror again.
      It was right the first time.

    1. What is the context, do you know?
      Were all those people in on the joke, or were they sitting listening to him in all seriousness?

      1. The chap is a prankster. The heavy American accent is difficult to grasp but the reference to the ‘duty’ to be vaccinated and to Klaus the Schwab is very funny as is the ‘taking the knee’ to George Floyd at the end.

        I received the clip from my American neighbour who is from Atlanta.

        1. I understood that he was trolling them, but it stretches the credibility to see people solemnly sitting there listening respectfully!

          2. It’s appalling what the legacy media lets pass. It is a well known characteristic of abusers that they expect the victims to stay silent in order to protect them, the abuser. The same silence is now being demanded of the American people. Nobody’s supposed to let on that Biden is senile and corrupt and his son’s a paedophile mafioso, even though this information is in the public domain.

  80. That’s me for today. Another glorious summer’s day. Things bursting into bloom. Tomorrow likewise – allegedly. Ladderwork successfully completed.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  82. There was a bit of a mix up in Asda today. When the cashier said “Strip down- facing me- he meant my credit card!”

    Yes, I will leave the stage.

      1. I meant after my appalling jokes over the last couple of days- afraid you poor souls are stuck with me for now;-))

      1. She needs to go on a walking tour of her ancestral homelands and see how long it takes before she is raped and murdered by a ……………………..black man.

  84. I’m not particularly a fan of William and Kate, however, I do think they have been dropped in it with this Carribean tour and they’re holding up well in the face of petulant prejudice and bigotry. Whatever they say or do is going to make someone unhappy. I’d rather they hadn’t waded into the whole slavery subject at all, but they’ve done their best.

  85. Evening, all. A fair scorcher of a day today (16.5 degrees C around midday), so the mixture much as before (although I did manage to do a bit of sorting out in the shed). If it’s the same tomorrow, I think I shall be filling the doggy paddling pool and trying to entice Oscar in so he’s clean without too much stress.

      1. I shopped a bit earlier than usual today, so it was a different crowd. Lots of masks in evidence. I also noticed Morrisons had put the board back up outside encouraging mask-wearing. I ignored it and smiled sweetly at the door-guard.

      2. After hearing about how you reacted to “Strip down- facing me- he meant my credit card!” who would be surprised?

          4. You haven’t met me Sos. I can be very scary which I have heard from many people. However to those I like, I am a sweetie.

        1. Eat the beanz and fart horribly at them.
          When they complain about the smell, point out that they are getting it through their mask, as they would get any airborne virus…

      4. Waitrose Cambridge was full of them today. I no longer see them as people, the mask-wearers. I think that may be the intended outcome.

  87. We are now taking a break in our holiday lodge on the Suffolk/Norfolk border but were completely unaware of a major blackout affecting. Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

    What seems to have alarmed people is that the internet, mobile phones and other electrical devices weren’t working.
    However people who cooked on gas were not short of a hot meal but you would have had a problem if you were trying to buy one with plastic!

    Have any Nottlers experienced this blackout or are we all prepared for a fossil fuel based economy with electrical power being supplied for phones down Openreach’s copper based line plant?

    “No internet, no mobile phone coverage…old fashioned phone and line was only communication.”

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1585918/UK-power-cut-Suffolk-Cambridgeshire-Hertfordshire-Bedfordshire-latest-mobile-signal-down

    1. I’ve booked a campsite with no mobile phone coverage – I’m looking forward to being incommunicado!

          3. I am delighted to report that Oscar has not come anywhere near my toes (or anything else, for that matter!) for some time now. Even when he had a major grump after having been woken up recently, he kept his distance. It’s nearly ten months (doesn’t time fly!) so hopefully, he is starting to realise what side his doggy biscuits come from.

          4. Oh Conway! You have both come so far, and you deserve all the joy and happiness you share.

          7. The price of safety is constant vigilance 🙂 He is a work in progress, but he’s come a long way.

          10. Words to strike dread….Woollen bathing suit. I think Pam Ayres wrote a poem about her dad wearing one her mum had knitted.

    3. Congratulations on having the foresight to have a gas-powered laptop. The other week, Eunice reminded me that – unlike analogue phone lines (which have battery back-up, reinforced by diesel generators) – the mobile network is utterly reliant on power from the grid. A comforting thought, when Openreach are determined to delete the analogue, copper network. Not.

    4. Hi, Angie, we live in Mid-Suffolk and have seen no power-cuts today or recently.

      Thank goodness we have a gas-hob and oil-fired central and water-heating.

    5. South Cambs reporting here, nothing to report. Everything working ok today. Even me.

  88. We are now taking a break in our holiday lodge on the Suffolk/Norfolk border but were completely unaware of a major blackout affecting. Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

    What seems to have alarmed people is that the internet, mobile phones and other electrical devices weren’t working.
    However people who cooked on gas were not short of a hot meal but you would have had a problem if you were trying to buy one with plastic!

    Have any Nottlers experienced this blackout or are we all prepared for a fossil fuel based economy with electrical power being supplied for phones down Openreach’s copper based line plant?

    “No internet, no mobile phone coverage…old fashioned phone and line was only communication.”

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1585918/UK-power-cut-Suffolk-Cambridgeshire-Hertfordshire-Bedfordshire-latest-mobile-signal-down

  92. Had a very busy day so have just read through the threads! I (as you probably know!) live in Nikeliars northern paradise, dealing with her illogical bilge on a day to day basis, and I was at a British Basketball Trophy final at the Emirates Arena last Sunday. Neither of the finalist teams were Scottish, so 3000+ fans from England took no notice of the ‘rules’ and didn’t wear masks! On Wednesday, my friend and I went to see Van Morrison at the Playhouse in Edinburgh. Same ‘rules’ supposedly and I’m guessing most of the audience were fairly local. 90% of us didn’t wear masks. Even on the train it was obvious that the nonsense is over!

    2. Perhaps that’s why they are scaremongering again about the ‘cases’ being higher than ever again.

    3. Perhaps that’s why they are scaremongering again about the ‘cases’ being higher than ever again.

        1. Ah, just eejits at work who confuse rushing around in a fluff with getting things done.
          As a severe introvert, it drives me apeshit how extroverts can’t just STFU and get on with it.
          Sigh.
          Ah, well. for a change we have French red in a 3 litre box. Not bad, actually, and it’s Merlot, one of my favourite fermented grapes.

          1. Sue Macfarlane has asked me to comment:
            What possible use is a 3 litre box?
            Not enough for one for a week too much for a day.

          5. OUCH!!!!
            3 litres of very acceptable wine here, red white or rosé: ~£7:50
            Moving up to what I gulp, 5 litres of very pleasant Red ~ £14.

          6. Which equates to £10 a bottle. Maybe it’s a decent wine? Meanwhile, I just had a dozen bottles of Yellow Tail Merlot delivered by Sainsbury’s. Priced at £6 rather than £7, they’re offering 25% off for six bottles. A good deal, methinks.

          8. There was a really good boxed wine in the US- Peter Vella- their Chablis was super. Can’t get it here.

          9. Good point, well made. Though there are perfectly palatable wines around the six quid mark (or better still – £4.50 with 25% off for six). And they’ll do me for day to day quaffing.

          10. Yellow Tail or as we call it, Kanga Juice, is good value and is nice wine. Their Shiraz is good too; as you know I am a Pinot slurper and I don’t like Sauvignon Blanc anyway.

          12. You are talking to Obers who, I would guess, could match me with the vino; especially ce soir.

            Thank god for Vivaldi…

          15. Now there’s a puzzle:
            What wine would match with LotL.
            A Romanée-Conti 1945 perhaps?

          16. I have read that described as liquid rubies. Can’t say I recall having ever drunk it.

          21. Sos always puts words into other’s mouths- when he’s asking for himself;-)

          23. Sue, Sos and I have a long standing battle of irritating each other. I get him going and vice versa.
            He thinks he’s so smart and I know I am smart so we just, basically, torment each other. Anyway, he’s a busy person- he has his castle to haunt and others to annoy also.
            I try not to interfere with his fun too much ;-))

    1. As Paul Anka wrote and Frank Sinatra sang:

      For what is a man, what has he got?
      If not himself, then he has naught
      To say the things he truly feels
      And not the words of one who kneels
      The record shows I took the blows
      And did it my way.

      (To be honest I always thought these lyrics were horribly smug, boastful and self-aggrandising.)

      The original song, written by Claude François, had far more sensitive and self-effacing lyrics:

      Je me lève et je te bouscule
      Tu n’te réveilles pas
      Comme d’habitude
      Sur toi je remonte le drap
      J’ai peur que tu aies froid
      Comme d’habitude
      Ma main caresse tes cheveux
      Presque malgré moi
      Comme d’habitude
      Mais toi tu me tournes le dos
      Comme d’habitude

      Et puis je m’habille très vite
      Je sors de la chambre
      Comme d’habitude
      Tout seul je bois mon café
      Je suis en retard
      Comme d’habitude
      Sans bruit je quitte la maison
      Tout est gris dehors
      Comme d’habitude
      J’ai froid, je relève mon col
      Comme d’habitude

      Comme d’habitude, toute la journée
      Je vais jouer à faire semblant
      Comme d’habitude je vais sourire
      Comme d’habitude je vais même rire
      Comme d’habitude, enfin je vais vivre
      Comme d’habitude

      Et puis le jour s’en ira
      Moi je reviendrai
      Comme d’habitude

  95. The Mariupol theatre story – take your pick.
    Russian laser guided bomb, or explosives set by the Azov battalion?
    Wouldn’t it be nice if the reporters found out what was happening and reported accordingly? If they know nothing then they should say nothing.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60835106
    https://www.rt.com/russia/552266-mariupol-theater-civilians-survived/

    PS The Syrian Observatory has been replaced by “McKenzie Intelligence Services”.

      1. I’m not sure. So far my searches have suggested a weather forecaster in London.

    2. We are being manipulated by lies and propaganda into agitating for British boots on the ground in Ukraine.

      1. I notice the MSM have taken to describing Ukraine as a ‘democracy’. Ukraine is anything but and is in fact an oligarchy.

        Zelensky is an oligarch and the industries are owned by oligarchs.

        If the last two years have taught us anything it is that the MSM are strangers to the truth. Those on the ground say they witnessed an explosion inside the theatre and that the supposed children’s hospital was occupied by Azov Battalion troops after the site had been vacated and closed to the public.

        I know who I believe and it is not the BBC.

  96. Well! What a day!
    After dropping all but one of the dead elms from a clump in the “garden”, I went shopping in Belper.

    Heading home from Morrison’s in the traffic queue on Bridge Street, I’d just moved forward with the traffic, stopped and was applying the handbrake when BANG!!! a dirty great jolt from behind!
    Pillock in a following Transit had just run into me. His foot slid off the brake pedal he claimed!

    Pulled over to one side, checked the damage, dents in the bottom of the rear doors, and swapped details.
    Had a closer look at home and the rear bumper is going to need a bit of attention together with the plastic bit inside the rear right wheel arch and the bloody read doors will not open.
    I’ll have to get it into the garage for a closer look.

    1. It never bloody ends, does it? One thing after another. Hope you sort it soon and with minimal cost, Bob.

          1. I see y’all spring forward this Sunday. Big debate going on here about abolishing the time change every six months, senate has approved, now up to Congress.
            Have a nice weekend, Lottie and don’t let the turkeys get to you!!

          2. Boing!! I do try to not let stuff get me down- it’s tough at times.
            Have a nice weekend and regards to Jack.

          3. Boing!! I do try to not let stuff get me down- it’s tough at times.
            Have a nice weekend and regards to Jack.

        2. Sorry about that BoB! You never know what’s coming – behind you or not! Take care!

    2. Bugger. Sounds quite extensive. Almost like the time I stopped my Orion at traffic lights near King’s Lynn, and the dozy woman behind transformed it into a Fiesta…

    3. Good evening Bob.

      The last time I damaged a vehicle was when I was using the minibus in the garden to help me pull out an elder. I dug a hole around the tree’s roots and attached one end of a 6 metre rope to the elder and the other to the towbar. At first the elder resisted and then it suddenly gave and catapulted itself into the back doors of the minibus making quite a large dent.

    4. Man, what a bummer 😬.
      Similar event in Sidcup 30 years ago, stopped at the lights, bang! and the car shook. Looked in the mirror – nothing there, then noticed a column of smoke. The tandoori just by the car had blown up!

    1. Why do we need British troops in Mali, an ex-French colony (or something like it)?

      1. The possibility of starting to mine uranium there is what concerns France.
        They have been to keep Mali free of armed hostile musl1ms, Tuareg, who might kick off because of ground water pollution inevitably caused by any future mine.

    1. I had the BCG inoculation in 1963 (following a failed Heaf test). Will I still be safe?

    2. I had the BCG inoculation in 1963 (following a failed Heaf test). Will I still be safe?

  100. Well, we have almost completed 24 hours within the auspices of an expired Coronavirus Act (24 March, midnight) and we are all still alive and kicking.

    1. …and I have celebrated by spilling Port down the side of a fabric-covered sofa and onto the floor.

      Wow, am I popular – shades of Carrie & Bojo but x 100.

    1. I interrupt my break to heartily concur with you regarding your other half (Caroline), Richard.

    3. Many happy returns, Caroline. Hope the weather stays nice for you today!

      PS Rastus, nobody would know either, if you hadn’t told us!

  102. What does the Tory Party stand for?
    It isn’t clear whether the party still supports individual ambition, personal responsibility and a smaller state

    TELEGRAPH VIEW : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/03/24/does-tory-party-stand/

    BTL comments

    Tez Gb

    There is now a clear gap on the Right of centre for a new party to make significant gains and be influential in the future of this country. The Reform UK party needs now to step up to that challenge.


    Reply to Tez Gb

    A significant number of back bench Conservatives should join the Reform Party. But they must do it honestly (unlike Soubry and Woolaston) by surrendering their parliamentary seats and presenting themselves under their new colours in by-elections.

Comments are closed.