An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its commenting facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning. Persistent offenders will be banned.
Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.
Morning all.
I had a bad start to the week (did you all miss me?) but did see at some point a post with a link to an hour and a half long thing on the Constitution and someone replied that it was very interesting and they had learnt a lot despite already knowing a fair bit about the Constitution.
Could whoever posted the link please repost? I wanted to watch it but cannot remember when it was posted and my efforts at finding it this morning ended in failure.
Thank you!
It was a link to Neil Oliver’s Youtube channel and an interview with a David Keyte who made some important points about Common Law’s importance but then veered off into some pretty weird assertions about occultism, Natural Law philosophy etc. I got the feeling that Neil Oliver was pretty kind and gentle with him, and a stronger interviewer might have exposed the crank I suspect Mr Keyte to be,
Ah ok thank you! That i can find.
Patreon, Mir, Neil Oliver interview with a constitutional expert, William Someone.
Good morning, everyone, waltzes onto the page first 💃
David Frost’s article also worth posting before I race off to work:
“ I don’t generally wish to send traffic to The Telegraph’s competitors, but if you can bear it, I urge you to have a look at The Times’s interview last weekend with Sir Tony Blair. Then contrast his approach to politics with the sadly departed Frank Field’s. Two Labour Party figures, two Christians – and yet how different their worldviews.
Frank Field came from a Christian socialist tradition that has almost died out in the Labour Party – more’s the pity, as it was the source of most of what is good in that party’s philosophy. Field wrote in his final book last year of Michael Oakeshott’s “emphasis on the danger of rationalism in politics”, of the need to recognise the limits inherent in human nature, the importance of “a sense of self-interested altruism”.
Blair runs a global governance organisation. Not surprisingly, his philosophy is quite different – and we must take it seriously given his obvious influence on Keir Starmer. He sees government in entirely instrumental terms. “The problem with countries that aren’t democracies is they’re fine if you happen to have really smart people running them, but if you don’t, there’s a problem.” Here, competence is the only test for good government: the important thing is not the system, but having “smart” people in charge.
Look around the world, though, and neither democracies nor authoritarian states seem to be particularly good at giving political power to smart or competent people. The system doesn’t select for that. The odd exception, like Singapore or maybe the UAE, about both of which Blair speaks approvingly, doesn’t disprove the general point.
But in any case, competence and smartness are not the most valuable qualities for leadership. Able and intelligent people can become prey to intellectual fads just as easily as anyone else – maybe more so – and take the most terrible decisions. Consider the poll tax, the Exchange Rate Mechanism, net zero, or the Covid lockdowns, if you doubt me.
Blair seems blind to this. Indeed he goes on to claim that “politics works when policy comes first and politics comes second. When you ask what’s the right answer to a problem and then you shape the politics around that.”
He isn’t, of course, unique in thinking this. This centrist dad worldview, the idea that men and women of good will from all parties can get together and find the indisputably right answer to our difficulties, is widely shared across the so-called centre ground of politics, from the Blairite Left to the supposedly “One Nation” Right.
It’s still wrong. There aren’t unambiguous “right answers” to problems in politics. Everything depends on the value system you bring to them.
Suppose you are trying to reform the benefits system, as Frank Field spent much of his life trying to do. If your priority is to encourage work, aspiration, and individual freedom, then you will arrive at one set of solutions. You’ll come to quite different ones if your primary aim is to reduce inequality and make sure absolutely no one can slip through the net.
Or: if democracy, national cohesion, and immigration control are your top priorities, then you probably supported leaving the EU. If you favour diversity, migration, and being part of a bigger power bloc, then you probably didn’t. It depends what you think is more important. The value system, the politics, comes first.
This is why competent administration, the capable managerialism that so many seem to wish for, simply isn’t enough on its own. In the end, however well done, it must fail. It’s no good being good at doing things if you don’t know why you want to do them. There has to be a value system that visibly drives actions.
And you have to win the arguments in public for that value system. That’s how to bring people with you. If instead you take the view that there are self-evidently “right” policies supported by all sensible people, and then reduce politics to the task of shaping public opinion so it supports them, that squeezes out political choice and turns politics into a technocracy. Blair says the country has had too much politics: I say it hasn’t had enough.
Yet that isn’t even the worst consequence of this way of thinking. It’s: where do you stop? If you think every problem can be solved by clever people, then why not try to solve every problem?
But there will never be an end to problems – which means there is no limit in principle to what the government can do. The only constraint is a practical one, and AI, digital currencies, restrictions on speech, or China’s emerging social credit system show that the limits to social control are weakening all the time.
So that’s the politics I fear if Labour wins the election: that of the moral improvers, the politicians who think they know best, and will not give up trying to make us live as they think we should. Give me the Frank Field’s any day. I’d much rather be governed by normal capable human beings who may have flaws but who understand human nature, than by relentless high-achieving busybodies with noble goals. Those people will never leave us alone until they have achieved perfection – and they never will.”
Blair = Evil.
Agreed, Johnny. (Good morning, btw.)
Didn’t both GK Chesterton and CS Lewis say something similar? A profound point and a very Christian one which leads me to doubt Blair’s Christianity because the faith as taught by its founder teaches that human perfectibility is impossible in this world, that by extension human efforts to construct utopia will end in disaster (Tower of Babel?), and that improvement is individual and through spiritual and moral repentance., and ultimately through faith that inculcates God’s transforming Grace in individual hearts. Christianity is a faith of individuals, not the collective which is why collectivist ideologies loathe it.
Good morning, JD.
Good morning Ma’am.
Lyrical and insightful as ever JD. I might expand on your point of individual repentance; contained within Christianity laid the foundation for the abolition of slavery, with British Christians in particular leading the way.
I’ll wander off here but maybe bear with me. This history is ignored by UK Race Marxists. It was why I was so shocked and appalled when Keir Starmer bent the knee to the US Race Marxists of BLM. The claim was he was moving Labour towards a so called “centre ground” but this action was a huge explicit swing to the mad Identarian Left. Within seconds of becoming leader and potentially reclaiming ground for the patriotic British working class he flew off into pandering to the racist fantasies of the Marxist riddled Left.
I noticed in his recent soulless ChatGPT generated posturing over patriotism Britain’s involvement in the abolition of slavery wasn’t present.
Agreed AAL, but I would add that Paul’s statement that “IN Christ there is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female,” was even more anti slavery.
Thank you JD. I am not that knowledgeable on the teachings of St Paul. But when I do encounter his words they certainly carry with them a certain weight to the proceedings.
Thanks AAL. I am a huge admirer of Paul, the original Protestant/ 🙂 It’s worth reading his Epistles.
Thank you again JD. I will take heed of that recommendation.
He was also anti the welfare state (2 Thessalonians 3:10): he that does not work, neither shall he eat.
Liberals and Lefties hate Paul.
Lyrical and insightful as ever JD. I might expand on your point of individual repentance; contained within Christianity laid the foundation for the abolition of slavery, with British Christians in particular leading the way.
I’ll wander off here but maybe bear with me. This history is ignored by UK Race Marxists. It was why I was so shocked and appalled when Keir Starmer bent the knee to the US Race Marxists of BLM. The claim was he was moving Labour towards a so called “centre ground” but this action was a huge explicit swing to the mad Identarian Left. Within seconds of becoming leader and potentially reclaiming ground for the patriotic British working class he flew off into pandering to the racist fantasies of the Marxist riddled Left.
I noticed in his recent soulless ChatGPT generated posturing over patriotism Britain’s involvement in the abolition of slavery wasn’t present.
…and the reason why I am agnostic.
I posted a comment under the DT article itself quoting CS Lewis on the subject of the tyranny of “relentless high-achieving busybodies with noble goals.”
Precisely. C S Lewis wrote Mere Christianity which contains similar references.
Beautifully said .
Blair.. “Sometimes, things are just too important to involve the little people..”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee3bf78566eea09f6f6be4b9fb9f38bab68457ab82e9a1e64ecbcbdc03e6541b.png
Mad as a snake!
The stinking turd in the shitpan that refuses to be flushed away.
Steady on, BoB, you’ll be calling him a Silly Sausage next. Lol. (Good morning, btw.)
same shape!
@SageDespatches on twitter has tweeted some articles from the Belfast Telegraph, declassified after 25 years, that shine a light on the skullduggery employed by Blair to get his flawed Good Friday Agreement signed off by government and the republican terrorists. No doubt, you’ll be as stunned and shocked as I was that the terrorists, still on the run, got a better deal than former soldiers who had already faced unit inquiries and or Court Martial.
Having read through his shady dealings in Norn Iron, it makes me wonder what he has to hide regarding Thomas Hamilton and the Dunblane shooting. Blair managed to have those records sealed for 100 years!
Blair is protecting paedophiles in the upper echelons of the Labour Party.
Steady on!! He is far more dangerous and poisonous than your average serpent.
You are too kind.
“We know about Keir Starmer what we didn’t know about Tony Blair. Blair.. it has now emerged because he eventually told historian Peter Hennessy long after it since mattered.. that he was a University-Trotskyist. We never knew anything of Blairs politics at the time. In the case of Keir Starmer it’s very much on record he carried on his Trotskyist ideals into his 30s.”
Peter Hitchens.
Excellent post, MIR, and thank you for posting it. (Good morning, btw.)
Blair is a narcissistic, meglomaniac money grubber. He seriously needs to be in jail. Whatever his billionaire friends want, he will shill for.
Spot on. We have only to look at the US where Obama and Clinton’s very smart people such as Blinken, Sullivan and the Kagans (Victoria Nuland) have caused chaos and interminable wars around the world.
Thank you for pasting this – an excellent article IMHO.
There are different types of ‘clever’. Blair was clever in some ways – he played the system and has come out as a very rich and powerful man but his intellectual gifts are mediocre according to people who have tried to converse with him and, as PM, he had the misguided belief in the ability to solve everything through technology that only those with no scientific knowledge can have.
Good Morning All. 8C rain showers and grey overcast.
Bright and sunny here.
Good morning, Ndovu.
Good morning Elsie.
Good morning, Johnny.
4°c and supposedly sunny, here in The Borders @ 09:22. Patchy blue sky.
Morning everyone.
Good morning, Minty.
Uncharacteristically on topic: last night on GB News Nigel said that the railway was privatised in the Eighties. Perhaps he was thinking of Sectorisation, the very successful reorganisation of BR, which gave us, inter alia, Network SouthEast. It never gets the credit it deserved. Mrs T didn’t like nationalised industries, and hated the railways. Go figure.
Stephen Byers, as Secretary of State for Transport in 2001/2002, effectively renationalised the railways infrastructure as Notwork Rail. The only private parts of the railway system are the operating franchises, doled out by government.
P.S. When checking for the dates of Byers subterfuge, it turns out that it was Byers political advisor Jo Moore who was stupid enough to be quoted as saying that the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre made it “a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.”
They really were a nest of rats.
Unkind to rats.
Kyiv pulls back Abrams tanks due to drone raids and losses, says US. 26 April 2024.
Ukraine has taken American Abrams M1A1 battle tanks off the frontline, partly because of Russian drone tactics, Pentagon officials have said. The US agreed to send 31 Abrams to Ukraine in January 2023. Five have been lost to Russian attacks. The proliferation of drones means “there isn’t open ground that you can just drive across without fear of detection”, a senior defence official said on Thursday. “Now, there is a way to do it,” he said. “We’ll work with our Ukrainian partners, and other partners on the ground, to help them think through how they might use that, in that kind of changed environment now, where everything is seen immediately.”
Just a bit of rare hard information.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/26/ukraine-war-briefing-kyiv-pulls-back-abrams-tanks-due-to-drone-raids-and-losses-says-us
The MBT has gone the way of the battleship. Air power in WWII sealed the downfall of the latter.
From USA sites I’ve read that there is concern over the aircraft carrier deployments in the Red Sea area. The crew complement of these behemoths runs into many thousands and a total loss to new weaponry would be a catastrophe.
The Abrams tanks have a red hot heat signature on account of their engines. They can be picked off at will and have been.
Good Morning Folks
Dull start here
Wordle 1,042 3/6
⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟩⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Good morning, Bob3.
Good Morning Folks
Dull start here
Wordle 1,042 3/6
⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟩⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Labour’s rail plans herald a return to the bad old days of the 1970s
So back to doing the same things over and over while expecting a different outcome again
Good morning everyone. Early for me. Frost covering the grass this morning.
Apparently (a word much in use these days as we are not given full information and have to dig and delve for ourselves):
https://x.com/Ricky_K67/status/1783584946323333280
Early for me too, but I’ve been awake for hours.
Good morning, poppiesmum. Where did you get that information from?
Oh sorry to be late in my reply, it was from Twitter.
Will Putin get the blame for her mental instability and psychopathic tendencies?
Goodness me; that certainly doesn’t fit the narrative. Or her brother being arrested.
Good morning all.
A rather disturbed night after getting up to pump bilges a 01:30, but a lovely sunny start with blue skies though still a bit chilly at a tad over 3°C.
A BTL Comment:-
Very true, BoB.
Morning all, a sight lost forever, thanks to Blair and his ilk.
Presumably these people are queuing up to go to work, so maybe not so different a make-up today?
Have you seen how people dress to go to work these days? I was shocked by the slovenly attire of the people presenting the prizes at Sandown today.
First – it is now New Crescent…..
I agree with GGG last night, he doesn’t post at the Speccie anymore regardless of the £ 5 they offered him out of desperation to remain posting at the threadbare and inadequate site, they’re really taking the pee now. Both GGG and Opopanax shan’t post there anymore until the Spectator return Disqus to that site . Im really surprised that people are like sheep – If no one posted at the Spectator then they’d be forced to return to the previous commenting system with disqus. This one they have now is totally inferior and not forgetting more stasi like.
I don’t suppose they care.
I don’t agree with his views about Tommy Robinson.
Nigel Farage believes Tommy Robinson is a racist thug and when UKIP became friendly with Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage cut ties. I do believe the fight against Islam Is genuine with Tommy Robinson but sadly he does have football hooligans attach themselves to him ( I don’t think Tommy Robinson himself is such ) but they all turned up at the cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday looking for a punch-up with the police of which resulted in Braverman being sacked.
Tommy Robinson’s primary failings are that he is White, Straight and Working Class. He doesn’t portray any of those epicene characteristics of the Elites. These qualities have served him well. Anyone else would have been crushed by a State program of intimidation. By comparison Navalny in Russia had a feather bedded ride.
Good morning, Araminta.
Recently I posted about ‘rough men’ being one reason why other folk sleep peacefully in their beds. Tommy Robinson is one of those ‘rough men’ and he and his ilk will one day, and IMHO that day is not too far off, be called upon to do what they see as their raison d’etre i.e. stand and fight for their homeland and right to exist.
Thousands of alien young men of fighting age are not being imported by the PTB to ensure that the hotel trade doesn’t go under financially. There is no logical reason for them to be here outside of their number posing a threat to the indigenous and long-settled integrated immigrants. The PTB’s reason/excuse for this mass importation i.e. the incomers are refugees fleeing their war-torn nations is risible.
“I am Millwall!” will have to become a rallying cry.
Always an air of concern at Colchester United’s Layer Road ground when Millwall were the opposition.
Did you see his address to the Oxford Union, Minty?
Tommy Robinson isn’t working class.
11 November fell on a Saturday last year, that was the occasion that had Met Plod in riot mode. Thankfully, Remembrance Sunday passed without trouble.
Nigel Farage is very far from being infallible and he certainly upset many people , and not just ogga, by his approach to Tommy Robinson.
Political parties are often obsessed with image. Farage thought that Tommy’s image – that of an uncouth yob – was not an image he wanted UKIP to be associated with. But what Tommy actually says is often very clear, very coherent and very sensible and needs serious consideration.
For those who have not seen it Tommy’s performance at the Oxford Union is worth watching:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Tommy+Robinso+at+the+Oxford+Union&oq=Tommy+Robinso+at+the+Oxford+Union&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCggCEAAYgAQYogTSAQkxMjA1MWowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:11c71474,vid:_YQ94jFg_4A,st:0
Me neither. ‘Morning all!
Yes, but you think Putin is a decent person ffs………
https://thecritic.co.uk/dont-forget-armenia/
I’m not sure how much more heartbreak one can endure. Evil is loosed upon the world and no one says or does a thing.
I mentioned W.B. Yeats’s The Second Coming yesterday. ………….. mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The Turks do not deny that many Armenians were slaughtered but they vigorously deny that they practised genocide against the Armenians.
And the word genocide is a word that is being bandied about today with regard to the Israeli’s response to Hamas which, ironically, states that it wants Israel and all Jews wiped from the face of the earth.
It was a genocide, it inspired Hitler. it was an act of state to extinguish an ancient minority that has lived in the region for millennia before the Turks turned up. Anyone who quibbles about that has my utmost contempt.
The Turks are very sensitive about the word because it paints them as cruel, merciless and barbaric: adjectives which seem very applicable to many followers of Islam.
When we first kept our boat in Marmaris the Turks were very keen to deny their past and there were posters and pamphlets put up and distributed at the airports putting the Turkish view of history.
I suppose you could describe it as the Turkish version of Holocaust Denial.
As far as I know the Germans weren’t still carrying out anti Jewish pogroms in the 1950s and 1960s as the Turks were against the Greeks and Armenians.
Wordle 1,042 2/6
🟨⬜🟨🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Good morning, chums. I hope you all slept well. To my amazement I got the Wordle today in just two. I think this is a first for me.
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-secrets-of-familial-suffering/
Well done The Critic. I waged a campaign for many months at the Spectator trying to persuade Mr Nelson to published at least one article on the evils once again attacking the Armenians. Complete silence for whatever reason.
The idiot won’t know where Armenia is.
Nelson is a woke scoundrel
“We’re doomed!” – as another Fraser often repeated.
When did The Spectator last have a reasonable editor?
Most certainly well done to the Critic for having an article on the Armenians,
I shall read it at the weekend. Yes I remember you were faithfully and continually speaking of the Armenians at the Spectator and asking when they’d have the decency to put up an article. They never did and they never will now.
Britain is getting ready for war. It’s time to cram our ships with American weapons. 26 April 2024.
This week’s Prime Ministerial announcement on an increase in defence spending was interesting on a number of levels. As all the new money for British defence (as opposed to Ukraine aid) is supposed to arrive post-election, and Labour has refused to back the plan, there has to be a large chance the cash will not appear. Even if it does, there are a lot of different ways to look at the pledges. The actual amount available to spend after dealing with the various ongoing disasters and cost overruns is by no means clear.
This article and the many like it contain the implicit assumption that we are going to war with Russia to prevent them taking over the EU and UK. I just wish to say that I have no interest in such a project. I feel no threat from Vladimir Putin or the Russian people. In fact they are a long way down any list I might compile of possible dangers to myself or the UK, the Primary one being the Globalist assault on the West. Even if they were to make such a threat explicit (which they haven’t) I would simply laugh. There is no way that such an ambition could be realised. Ukraine tells us everything we need to know about Russian military capability. This, contrary to the propaganda, is not a secret. The Polish Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikeorski recently announced.
It is not we, the West, who should fear a clash with Putin, but the other way around,
This is true. Russia here is the one under attack. It provides a distraction from the gradual destruction of Freedom, Democracy and the enslavement of ourselves by our own leaders and their allies. Vladimir Putin, however unlikely it appears, is our ally against these forces. He seeks to preserve Russia and its people from those same powers.
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-would-lose-in-a-war-with-nato-polish-fm-warns/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/25/british-defence-war-footing-nato-us-weapons-missiles/
Putin and his Russians, would probably improve both the EU and The Uk!
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Good morning, all. Cold and drizzle. Some blue sky showing. Will risk a bonfire. Prolly.
Good morning, Uncle Bill.
The BBC has gone to war on our civilisation. Douglas Murray. 26 April. 2024.
Now the series has been re-released by the BBC with a warning note alerting fragile viewers to the fact that it reflects “standards and attitudes” of its time, which is one of the most banal statements it is possible to make. Who does not reflect their time? But really what this is of course is a trigger warning. A warning that this series was made in a less enlightened time than ours.
The BBC should be shutdown.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/25/the-bbc-has-gone-to-war-on-our-civilisation/
Privatise, then they would realise just how popular they are. Not that it would make any difference to me, as I don’t pay the tax.
The BBC doesn’t seem to realise that it’s relentless propaganda is also ‘of it’s time’ and all it’s current programming should come with a similar warning for bland, unfunny, immersating twaddle.
Kenneth Clark’s son, Alan M.P., was a renowned roué who married a girl of 16 to whom he was always unfaithful. He was the chap who cast nasturtiums at the plebs who had to buy their own furniture.
I was at UEA at the time that Civilisation was broadcast. UEA at that time was new and trendy and much was made of Denys Lasdun’s architecture.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/38c01fb1af3328a7eb3cfaa49c4c38244b27e09cb35627bdac531a0b0b60ba0f.png
As far as modern architecture goes i don’t think that design is bad. A place of learning with lots of windows is a good thing. Reminiscent of the pyramids. Not that the buildings will last a fraction of that time.
That looks like a pile of discarded cardboard boxes that have been dumped at the local refuse tip.
Or a nasty insect pod.
My room was very comfortable and the view over the former golf course and lake was very agreeable.
UEA was built on a site previously occupied by a golf course. A cruel observer stated that they had destroyed a second-rate golf course to build a third rate university!
However I greatly enjoyed my time there and many of the friends I made then remained my friends forever.
I also went to Southampton University to do my PGCE but I much preferred UEA.
Back in the 1980s, a very good friend — John Barnes of Norwich — who unfortunately died quite young (early 40s) was permitted to set up a sandwich stall within the UEA campus, selling his own-recipe bread-roll sandwiches with a variety of delicious and innovative fillings.
Apparently they were very popular among the students and he invariably sold out, each day, very quickly.
John gifted me my very first carbon-steel Chinese wok, which I still use and treasure.
It was Michael Heseltine who Clark rebuked saying he “had to buy his own furniture”.
I visited those buildings early seventies. The raking stepped corridors feeding the levels was impressive as were the views from the rooms. As with much modern architecture the views from within are not matched by the views from outside.
Kenneth Clark’s son, Alan M.P., was a renowned roué, who married a girl of 16 to whom he was always unfaithful. He was the chap who cast nasturtiums at the plebs who had to buy their own furniture.
I was at UEA at the time that Civilisation was broadcast. UEA at that time was new and trendy and much was made of Denys Lasdun’s architecture.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/38c01fb1af3328a7eb3cfaa49c4c38244b27e09cb35627bdac531a0b0b60ba0f.png
Good Morning
Another grim day
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F8232d5d0-3051-4592-8dc6-2e171983c6f7.jpg?crop=2613%2C1742%2C698%2C180&resize=1027.5
Something OFSTED don’t like to mention is the radical difference in demographics. Bad schools often have a mass of diversity in them. That’s not because they’re thick (although you’d expect it to normalise at university level and it doesn’t, attainment widens) but for language, home life, significantly higher welfare dependency, lower incomes and so on.
Until that is addressed, and the reasons for it removed (such as scrapping welfare) schools will continue to decline as the diversity are simply having more children than the natives.
And yet The Michaela School run by Katharine Birbalsingh has an almost exclusively ‘diverse’ roll of pupils and the results the school gets are outstanding.
And look how hard the establishment are trying to bring it down
London schools are highly diverse and their pupils do better on average than in the rest of England. But that is underpinned by higher funding and it masks a wide variation between the various ethnic groups.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/PortalPictures/april-2024/DAVEY26042024.jpg?imwidth=640
A doubting Thomas?
Labour’s desperation to nationalise everything despite the obvious failure of doing so is miserably hilarious as their policies always are, but – Switzerland has a single rail operator. It is an arms length arrangement which owns trains and track, as I understand it.
Swiss trains are remarkable. Clean, incredibly efficient, well run and cheap. When you look at the rail franchise you see why nothing works, so why not adopt the Swiss approach?
We – and the left – refuse to learn from modern history.
I took the night train to Berlin Zoologischer Garten Bahnhof. The front end of the train was German and the back end which split on part of the journey was Swiss. The difference in carriages was glaring. Though modern the German half was worn and a bit tatty. The Swiss half was luxurious. And they had a Bar.
Last time I travelled on a Swiss train they had wooden, slatted seats!
If the stabby girl IS a Uke refugee – then the defence will be:
Bewildered at being uprooted from her safe, caring home; confused by being forced to learn pointless Welsh while struggling with English. Frustrated by being misunderstood at school. Stressed out by her parents being, er, stressed out. Otherwise a model pupil and delightful “child” – adores her Grandpops – just had a moment of madness.
There – sorted.
And in this particular case, probably true.
Is your if a strong if or an iffy if?
Have we yet been told anything about the stabby girl and her brother? Will they ever tell us?
My (unfounded) suspicion is that they are static travellers and therefore we are being racist.
Minister ridiculed on Question Time for asking if Rwanda and Congo are different countries
Audience gasps as Chris Philp seems to ask if the two African nations are the same place
Telegraph Reporters
26 April 2024 • 4:00am
*
*
*************************************
Give that man a clap
Herr Peas
3 HRS AGO
I gave up with this program as the audience was full of social workers, ethnic minorities and left wing students. It would appear that the BBC could not find one person in the area who thought that mass immigration was a bad thing or that anybody in the country was choosing to live on benefits as a lifestyle. It would now appear to be unreasonable to expect opposing views to be represented on a debating program.
They make sure that there are no dissenting views in the audience selection process Herr Peas.
They make sure that there are no dissenting views in the audience selection process Herr Peas.
Perhaps he’s auditioning to take over from Joe Biden?
Always Worth Saying does a bBC QT review on going-postal.com each Friday morning. AWS suffers so that we don’t have to, and his review (including a depth of background on the panel that would give the bBC palpitations) is far more entertaining than anything Fiona Bruseless and co could ever imagine.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68903573
That is exactly what happened. I read the transcript. And the person asking the question was not a native English speaker from what I could make out.
That is exactly what happened. I read the transcript. And the person asking the question was not a native English speaker from what I could make out.
That is exactly how I interpreted it. Mr S persists in his habit of letting BBC Breakfast run on after the Business News and the odious presenters were in 7th Heaven over the suggestion that Philp didn’t know that Rwanda and Congo are 2 separate countries. They ensured that the smirking face of Wes Streeting (a man who thought it hilarious that the Belgian police shut down a perfectly legal conference) was given full prominence. The questioner was making a highly contrived point that didn’t really make sense. If Mr Philp had been able to work out what he was talking about the response should have been “why would somebody living in the Congo (a former Belgian colony) need to seek asylum in the UK if there is unrest on the border with Rwanda?”
And still Ofcom attacks GBNews while thinking that the BBC still smells of roses after years of wallowing in septic tanks.
Ofcom doesn’t police the bBC, as the bBC is permitted to have it’s own department for handling viewer/listener complaints. The only connection between Ofcom and the bBC is that Ofcom is chaired by a former beeboid, and half of the committee comprises of former beeboids
Nothing to see here, mover along..
Somehow, in stock broker territory, QT managed to find a Left wing long haired geordie socialist. The entire audience is deliberately selected to represent BBC views and the BBC finds the bias it supports.
I read about that and the headline is utterly misleading. He seemed to be clarifying the muddled point the ‘guest’ was making. Right or proper centrist people should refuse to go on Question Time in its modern iteration. It’s just purposely constructed confirmation bias. Why feed the dragon?
I would lay odds that the bloke in the grey suit and blue tie last night was a prepped Labour Party Candidate.
G’day all,
Cloudy and cold but dry at the McPhee’s. Wind in the East, 4℃ going up to 9℃.
Much blather about the renationalisation of the railways. I’d prefer the re-nationalisation of the population.
The way we were less than a human lifetime ago:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/af2c5634b44a9b97eafa743c78598e017f600a72ec3bd0396e0a181f1e41a60e.png
New Cross is now so enriched and diverse there is scarcely a white face to be seen.
I’ve never been there but I assumed that would be the case.
As I said below – it is now New Crescent…
I’m pretty sure that at around the same time the school up the hill from the station which had around 700 hundred boys there was just one Singaporean, a Pole and a Hindu…..
I used to hate British Rail when I was a student. I seldom use the railways these days, but the reports I hear from those that do are that it remains unpunctual and unreliable but is now very expensive as well. Other countries seem to have decent rail services, so why can’t we? Perhaps renationalising the railways might work, but the state of the NHS suggests that it would simply become another money pit whilst continuing to offer poor service.
I use the local trains a lot, maybe it helps when you have a station just five minutes walk away. For my weekly walking exploits in London I get a day travel card for £20 (with rail card) that gives me access to the whole of TFL. The occasional hiccup, and having to work around strike days, but by and large pretty reliable and punctual. Was up in town yesterday walking Green Chain section 11 around One Tree Hill – passed through New Cross station as well, no queues outside that I could see…
Those who criticise the railway clearly don’t use them, many do and find they do the job.
London is well served by public transport, but even at £20 a day, it is not cheap. To get from Malvern to London and back these days is £75, and rather offputting, and I am blessed that Great Malvern was spared Beeching, which denied railway access to a great number of other places.
Fair enough, and the day travel card for £20 does not sound outrageous either, but outside of London I think the situation is less rosy. Commuters, in particular, seem to being taken for a ride in more than one sense.
Perhaps because those who use them infrequently often do so at peak times, around bank holidays and the like, when the system seems to break down and is greatly over-crowded.
Off peak travel is certainly better.
Bank holiday weekends are a popular time for engineering works, mainly because fewer travellers are inconvenienced than on a typical working Monday to Friday, and because the disruption is over three or four consecutive days rather than the mere two of a normal weekend.
Good morning, Dave.
Have you managed to find out where the public lavatories are on the routes you take?
Yesterday I used the loos in the grounds of the Horniman museum – and very clean they were too…. I expect those are shown on toiletmap.
On the cost of the trains, the pub meal I had after the walk cost me £30 (for so called ‘table’ service when all she did was put my food on the table) so £20 for the train doesn’t sound too bad. Our trains were busy but just a few standing. As for the tube, the Jubilee line train I caught was quite definitely standing room only – and nobody offered the oldies priority seat for me….
Most restaurants here in Brittany offer excellent workers’ menus with three courses and a carafe of plonk for 15 € (c.£13). If you want to splash out and spend 21 € (c £18) at one of our favourite places the meal you will get will be outstanding but wine will be extra.
If you lived in the sticks, as I do, you would find that getting anywhere by train is nowhere near so convenient.
We went to Derbyshire last weekend- the train on Friday was standing room only.
I haven’t been on a train for 45 years and have no intentions of doing so.
The last train I went on had open carriages and a guy called Stevenson was driving
The only time I use the train is the metro In Rome .
I’ve not travelled on a train in the UK for 25 years unless a stream train which is hardly the same. Prefer travelling by car – it’s far more civilised and convenient in every way
I don’t mind taking the train. The problem is, if we’re going anywhere as a family it’s £250, the seats are horribly uncomfortable for both of us (I’m 6’3, she’s 5’8 and a bit with boots on and while far narrower than I she’s still not the anorexic midget train seats are designed for), we need space for baggage (hers), water and fodda let alone carrying it back home and you’re stuck with the timeline the train provides – let alone the nearest intercity being in Soton central which means driving in to town or getting the bus, adding an hour on to the journey, parking charges and what not so… why bother when the car costs a tenth as much, has a boot, goes point to point, we can take the dogs and be comfortable?
If you ever get to see the rail franchise document you’ll see why. It’s the sort of thing only the civil service could conceive of as rational. An A2 sized poster of spaghetti arrows.
Why can’t we adopt the Swiss system? That way if the trains go on strike it’s not a political issue but a commercial one, and more drivers are continually trained so there’s a pool of non-unionised workers who can be rewarded and keep the service running.
The rolling stock is much improved as are some of the stations. Electrification has allowed for faster acceleration and deceleration. HS1 is a big success. Staff are smarter in appearance and more congenial. Ticket machines, websites, e-tickets and suchlike have streamlined the purchase and use of tickets and made journey planning easier. Automated barriers have made travelling without paying more difficult. Improvements to tracks and signalling have made journeys smoother and safer. Electronic notice boards on trains and at stations keep passengers better informed. The rail link north of Kings Cross to St Pancras station, combined with the cross-London Thameslink now allow seamless north-south journeys through London – without the underground – between the east coast mainline and much of Surrey, Sussex and Kent.. Yes, there are still delays, strikes and prices have risen, although various railcards and discounts for restricted tickets at specific times can trim the price for some passenger groups who have flexibility in their journey plans. I was able to reduce the overall cost of a return journey between Stevenage and Ramsgate by about £11 by purchasing four singles rather than one period return ticket.
We agree David, but the last time that we visited London we found that our electronic tickets wouldn’t open the barrier.
Fortunately MOH had downloaded paper copies so we were able to pass through a manned gate.
If the railway ticketing is going “all electric” they’ve got to get it working correctly 100% of the time.
Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story. Late on parade again,
THE SPANISH MAID.
The Spanish maid asked her boss for a pay increase. The wife decided to question her about the raise. She asked: “Now Maria, why do you want a pay increase?”
Maria: “Well, Señora, there are tree reasons why I wanna increaze. The first ees that I iron better than ju.”
Wife: “Who said you iron better than me?”
Maria: “Jor hozban he say so.”
Wife: “Oh yeah?”
Maria: “The second reason eez that I am a better cook than ju.”
Wife: “Nonsense, who said you were a better cook than me?”
Maria: “Jor hozban did”
Wife increasingly agitated: “Oh he did, did he?”
Maria: “The third reason is that I am better at sex than ju in the bed.”
Wife, really boiling now and through gritted teeth asked “And did my husband say that as well?”
Maria: “No Señora… the gardener did.” :
Wife: “So how much more do you want?”
I enjoyed Peter Sellers as Chancy Gardener in his last film Being There.
The film was faithful to Jerzy Kosinski’s book.
Other books by Kosinski are by contrast quite harrowing accounts of all manner of bestialities such as are recounted in The Devil Tree, Steps and The Painted Bird.
Wasn’t Kosinski a concentration camp survivor?
Another I recall from that era was Ka-Tsetnik 135633, pen name of Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Yehiel Feiner, whose books were inspired by his time as a prisoner in Auschwitz.
I believe Kosinski was a Holocaust survivor for the reason that The Painted Bird gives a boyhood account of the horrors of Satanic Nazism.
A valid point, and directly related to my feelings when I entered the polling station in 2016 to vote in the Brexit Referendum. A whole raft of bad practices, such as intrusive, expensive and counterproductive regulation, goldplating, bling empire building, conflicts of interest and a general ethical breakdown of our institutions were blamed on the EU, and its nonsense constitution and the unhealthy rapport between lobbyists and unelected legislators. Free of all this, within a couple of years, Britain could revive its fortune, restore Common Law, commonsense and decency and become the global powerhouse it once was, as well as somewhere to be proud of culturally.
I was wrong.
It seems that all along the problem was in Britain, and that the EU was all these years just a scapegoat. It took Brexit to find this out, so I think I was right to vote Leave. It leaves us the problem though how, with a new generation, to make things right.
Any ideas?
Total betrayal by Johnson and his government; total betrayal by both Houses of Parliament; total betrayal by the MSM; total betrayal by the civil service,. All of these charlatans did not want Brexit and were determined to thwart it.
The deliberate obstruction of Brexit shows us very clearly that democracy in the UK is dead. I don’t often agree with Peter Mandelson but he is right in saying “We are now in the post-democratic age..”
Mandelson is a wankocrat.
I don’t think that’s the fault of Brexit. Brexit gave the state the opportunity to do the things that the EU has hindered (such as reservoirs, abandoning HS2). The problem is, the state has deliberately stepped in to ensure that absolutely none of the positive changes were made.
At every turn the machine has forced decline, poverty and chaos. It should have cut taxes. It hiked them. It could have cut spending. It spent more. It could have sorted welfare. It expanded it. It could have paid down debt. It hasn’t. It should have refused the EU over Ireland. It gave NI to the EU specifically to ensure that useless edifice had a foothold in the UK.
At every turn, the state has done the wrong thing.
Why do you think they have done the wrong thing? What has made them so incompetent? I honestly think it’s because they are used to outsourcing national decisions to the EU. Withdrawing from the EU should have made them take up the mantle of proper accountable governance again. But they didn’t. Instead they fuelled a quangocracy of NGOs, charities, the judiciary and national institutions to make their decisions for them. Govt decoupled from accountability in other words. Resulting in expanded vested interests and decisions made by power hungry ideologues. How Covid was handled is a case in point.
Yes, the UK government could have insisted that Northern Ireland had the same relationship with the EU as the rest of the UK, but that would have meant stronger trade barriers along the Irish divide, not something that businesses in Northern Ireland wanted.
Thus far, the bother of Brexit outweighs its benefits. However, we’re only 3¼ years into it. You are correct, though, that many of the perceived irritations of EU membership were self-inflicted by a political class that largely agreed with it and remains happy to pursue its doctrines to this day.
I would beg to differ that we are 3.75 years into Brexit. We haven’t actually had Brexit as all the EU regs were taken into UK law and the govt is still signing up for anything the EU can come up with.
Brexit includes mimicking EU regulations when it’s freely chosen rather than a treaty obligation. Besides, EU regulations are not necessarily bad merely because they have the imprimatur of the EU on them.
True Brexit would not include any EU regulations at all unless they were good for us and suited out situation. What we’ve had with “Brexit” is wholesale adoption of all EU regulations regardless. The EU is bureaucracy personified; that in my view makes the EU imprimatur not a good thing.
Belonging to the EU inculcated a culture of non-accountability. Brexit should have restored accountability but too many MPs and cultural influencers no longer know how to assume responsibility, preferring to blame Brexit instead than their own shortcomings. Which is why charities and quangos have been able to take such a hold. They have filled the unaccountability gap – and government has allowed them to do so. Government now outsources decision making which is why such as Stonewall can dictate its policies through national institutions such as the NHS and education. Government does not want to make decisions which are tricky or might be unpopular so hands over decisions to the quangocracy . It also explains increasing immigration. Government has handed over decisions about immigration to the judiciary and refugee charities. They have the power now and not government. And now the wagon has ditched the horse and government is flailing. Things have gone too far. Govt has rendered itself utterly impotent. No-one will vote for them. What is there to vote for? They do not do their job of making decisions never mind the best decisions for the country. And they don’t even know why the electorate despise them. They don’t even know what they have done. Lazy incompetent and useless. Brexit gave them a chance and they blew it.
I was driven through on my way to Central London from Kent a few years ago. To be honest, I was quite astonished. I knew there were a lot of foreigners in that part of London but it was way beyond my wildest imaginings. Black, Muslim, Indian, quite a few in ethnic costume. The white people I saw were a small minority.
I wonder if the country will ever have a collective “Colonel Nicholson Moment”?
London is overrun.
I agree with whatever Nigel Farage says about most things .
Anyway I’m off to the dentist shortly, a £700 procedure wasn’t done sufficiently.
So you’re going back for more?
Farage tends to reinforce what his audience says. That’s been done throughout history, but I’d prefer he went into a bit more detail in his opinions.
Precisely why we only go to the dentist once, rather than twice, a year.
I don’t have a dentist, Anne. Too rare and expensive.
I went to a Turkish dentist in Marmaris in 2005. He did extensive work – six crowns, three bridges, an extraction and a deep filling – total cost under £1,000.
The work he did is all still in place and has never given me any trouble.
Washed SWMBO’s little car yesterday. The thing that struck me was how splattered the radiator grill, headlights, windscreen and wing-mirrors were with insect corpses. And with the spring being cold so far too. What’s this about the extinction of insects? Another environmental scare?
Insect populations are down. This is mostly due to a rapid expansion in bird life in cities due to exposed waste.
I thought it was supposed to be the pesticides on the fields?
Some might be certainly, but then you get the same from muck spreading. A lack of wetlands doesn’t help. This is why we need reservoirs and to not build houses, but to reduce the population – about 50 million would be a good start. Empty London and Birmingham, then Sheffield, Luton, Bristol.
68 million minus all the immigrants and immigrant descended = c. 50 million. Funny that.
Although that would entitle all the world’s other nations to eject their UK immigrants back to the home country. Nearly 20 years ago it was about 5.5 million, but I’ve found it very difficult to find anything more up to date. Since then, more will have emigrated, some will have returned, some will have died abroad and some will have dependents born abroad. Include the emigrant descended and you’re talking hundreds of millions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/brits_abroad/html/#:~:text=An%20estimated%205.5m%20British,UK%20every%20week%20in%202005.
We used to get a lot more on the windscreens 40 years ago.
Par something:
Wordle 1,042 4/6
⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜
⬜🟩🟨🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Proof if it were needed that an expensive education and entry to an Oxford college and UCL is not a guarantee of intelligence. I know she writes well but could not Petsy have worked this out for herself when she was still of child-bearing age?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48b1f408c3329fd468f87009c6d7d66f19c4f14c8a9966e32c8c663ee658724f.png
Feminism, birth-control, abortion, anti-marriage tax systems, LGBTQWERY – all part of the globalist Malthusian Marxists’ agenda.
Gullible. These people are unbelievable.
Gullible maybe. For me what is more likely it is the blinding nature of engineered resentment. From what I can currently make out the source of this resentment from Feminism was an infection of Marxism in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Humans are not all the same, men and women are different. But Marxist Feminism likes to think otherwise. This got the ball rolling for the resentment to get to work.
Feminism, basic equality for women and men is fine and a good thing. However ‘modern feminists’ don’t want equality, they want a leg up. They don’t want to do the work to earn the roles, they want to be handed them. Same for all the positive discrimination lark. Why expect someone to work as hard as a colleague just because they’ve a different colour skin! No, can’t have that. Let racism reign!
Hence ‘course work’ rather than exams.
(I prefer exams – I’m an essay crisis type)
Me too!
#Me Too. When I took my radio amateur exam I made sure I did it before it went multi-choice. I much preferred writing the answers in my own way. It worked; I got a Distinction in both parts (regulations and electronics).
Agnew and Johnstone – your mention of leg up reminds me of leg over.
Everyone is now the same; so nobody is anything.
Well observed.
Gullible maybe. For me what is more likely it is the blinding nature of engineered resentment. From what I can currently make out the source of this resentment from Feminism was an infection of Marxism in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Humans are not all the same, men and women are different. But Marxist Feminism likes to think otherwise. This got the ball rolling for the resentment to get to work.
When the Muzzies write the European history of the twenty first century they will rightly point out that its demise was down to Feminism.
Or gays. Or tolerance.
On the upside, muslims haven’t invented anything, so writing will likely die out. As soon as the middle east went muslim all the science, mathematics and technology vanished.
I do wonder what the civil service will do when there is no one to pay for it. When there is literally no money left, not even that destroyed by QE or crippling debt, when the number of spanners in the machine outweighs the cogs. What will it do when it has broken everything?
Wasn’t she one of Boris’s girlfriends?
Yes. It seems he didn’t impregenate her, or if he did……… maybe that’s what bugs her.
I’m not sure she’s right. I think the country changed around the early 90’s. I think we had reached a stability point where the country was growing, taxes were lower and there were jobs. Thus as healthcare improved we got older and had children later. More people went to university (when it meant something) and the workforce was more educated and literally ‘went career’ and had families later.
Thus folk married later, bought houses/sold their flats and had children later and because taxes were lower and there was less competition jobs were more stable you could raise a family on one income.
Then Blair got in and vomited ‘the diversity’ all over the country and suddenly the economy stopped growing, welfare soared, failure was rewarded and the single earner nuclear family was assaulted by Left wing ideological spite in endless tax grabs and removal of allowances. The state expanded every year while service declined, jobs became unstable and those individuals who before would have started families in their late 30s could no longer afford to as they were keeping the Sharon, Tracey and Abdul’s of the world in bennies.
As the economy slowed, competition for jobs soared and wealth reduced it became harder and harder for the normal people to have a family – they were on the edge of high earnings but due to tax and societal assault (fuel taxes, soaring council taxes) could never get ahead of the state grifters. Thus they had fewer children while being forced to pay for the rest.
Government policy has created the mess we have now, where the wrong people are breeding. They literally watched Idiocracy and implemented it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA
And what’s the Government’s answer to this situation?
To encourage immigration of illiterates from foreign parts to scrounge off British taxpayers.
Other nations just can’t believe it.
They, like us, cannot understand the intended result.
And what’s the Government’s answer to this situation?
To encourage immigration of illiterates from foreign parts to scrounge off British taxpayers.
Other nations just can’t believe it.
They, like us, cannot understand the intended result.
When I was at a boys prep boarding school we called each other by our surnames i.e. Jones, Smith, Robinson. We felt rather sorry for a boy whose surname was Jane because we called him by a girl’s Christian name.
Imagine my dismay when I discovered that my noble family name would be ringing around the council estates of Great Britain when Sharons called out to their daughters!
(We had two sons but we did not have a daughter. Had our second child been a girl the name given her would have been Emily Alice after my paternal grandmother)
Poor woman. Aborting Boris Johnson’s child will probably weigh heavily with her for the rest of her life.
Aborting Boris Johnson’s child, would be doing the world a kindness.
Carrie’s made up for any that didn’t make it.
Carrie – a bag that Boris took to the sack.
(Seeing BT on the Forum is always an encouragement to cone up with weak puns!)
REPOSTED FROM LATE LAST NIGHT
Friday 26th April. 2024
Harry Kobeans
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bdf3559344655ab5eef02ba181732a5c7e9c2b3b9248e323ab15528b45af2439.png
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e281877e66f9640965428cfaf7612b736a56b10f037dc7830d6ff3f7e0f8aba9.png
And very many Happy returns.
(We hope you’re keeping full of Beans!)
With very best wishes,
Caroline and Rastus
Happy Birthday Harry 🍻🥂🍷
Wishing you a very Happy Birthday, Mr. Beans! Have a wonderful day! 🥂🎂🍷🎉
Happy birthday Harry 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 🥂 I hope you’ll look in on us today.
Happy Birthday, Max.
Have a happy, happy day, Max, followed by 364 happy unbirthdays
Happy Birthday. And well done for choosing Friday as it means you have a whole weekend to continue the knees-up.
Many happy returns, Max!
Grattis på födelsedagen, Mr Beans. Make sure it’s a good ‘un.👍🏻🍷🎂😊
Happy Birthday, Monsieur Kobeans!!
Thanks for your kind felicitations. Just got back from a very agreeable lunch and will now rest until I’m ready for a couple of pints later on! I’m buying if anyone wants to join me!
Very good to see you here!
Happy Birthday, Harry!
Wonderful, if true.
It does raise a few questions.
If it has to be “bespoke” why was mass vaccination of the population for Covid considered safe?
Did they discover this new therapy because they were investigating adverse effects of the Covid jabs?
Were the Covid jabs an experiment for the far greater goal of a cure for cancer where the ends might justify the means?
Could the Covid jabs have triggered immune systems adversely to harm the recipient?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13350191/cancer-vaccine-melanoma-breakthrough-NHS-trial.html
Why do I not trust this?
I have never in my life before found it so difficult to trust any organ of the state – or any professional body.
We used to trust the Police, Doctors etc etc – not any more.
Who can we trust? Can I trust you? Or even me?
Snap, Nagsman.
The government gaslighting and lies has a lot to answer for – house arrest, stupid masks and restrictions for a type of flu virus….. all designed to make people fearful.
Yes – I blame Boris & Co.
Designed to cure the cancers caused by the covid jabs.
Well, that worked for “covid”, didn’t it?
Playing around in the genome to influence the immune system, no thanks. In many people these ‘genetic scriptwriters’ have caused havoc and will not admit to their disastrous failures.
So many of these experts are so utterly certain of their own genius that they cannot even contemplate, let alone accept that there is even the scintilla of a chance that they might be wrong. And thus plough on regardless.
I certainly understand the notion of identifying markers which are unique to particular cancer cells such that a vaccine designed to combat them recognises and attacks those particular cells and no other.
A local man is undergoing this trial treatment. He had a melanoma on his scalp, since excised, but this new treatment is expected to eliminate any surviving cancer cells.
https://www.thecomet.net/news/24280086.stevenage-man-tests-worlds-first-personalised-melanoma-jab/
There have also been encouraging results from treating cancer with ivermectin and fenbendazole (pennies per dose for both of them), but let’s go with the expensive gene therapy…
Daily Mail?
386481+ up ticks,
Friday 26 April: Labour’s rail plans herald a return to the bad old days of the 1970s
Morning Each,
If only it were so it would soften the blow we are about, in the near future, to receive.
In my book I can only see labour, in regards to the rail, is us as a nation being railroaded to the nearest mosque.
The timing makes me wonder.
Me too. I don’t suppose we will ever know – at least not in my lifetime. I had only the 2 AZ jabs. I did not like the idea of mixing AZ and the MRNI jabs so declined them.
Now – I have lung cancer – never experienced any symptoms at any point until the gall stone issue blew up – at which point the pain incurred was not typical of gall stones – and further scans revealed the tumour.
Given that it is not unusual for cancer sufferers not to experience symptoms I would so like to know if the jabs are responsible for my cancer.
Maybe my children will get the answer one day – but I seriously doubt it.
My GP was shocked when I told her about my heart attack. Her face was a picture, she couldn’t hide her surprise.
Was the jab a contributory factor? Like you I suspect I’ll never know, but I do know what I think.
I only had the AZ jabs – coercion as it was clear they would be mandatory for travel. Even last year I had to show my vax cert at Nairobi airport and the previous year upload it to some global health website. They’d dropped all that before I went this year.
I’ve had no boosters and will not. So far I’m still well and hope my body has eliminated any crap by now.
My OH had two Pfizer jabs and a booster and went from being a fit and active man to a heart patient – triple by pass in December 22. He’s ok now but no longer the sporty man he used to be.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f27daa120f1cea46940119e389e6e8d8ab0a34b462c2db69c7b34c388dbd7934.png
Reminds me of when Sonny Boy and his class went on a school holiday to the Ardeche.
The one lesson they learnt was that an awful lot of French wine is crap.
I never had a bad glass of wine in Malta. Red, white or rose. Cheap too. Average 12 euro a bottle local wine at the time. About 18 euro now. The wines themselves are one dimensional and not complex but very easy to drink in the sunshine.
I did on one evening have a blow out and bought a bottle of Sangiovese Montalcino. It was superb. And so it should be for 110 euro ! Served with panache by the waiter who made a great show of things. Took about 10 minutes to get through the ritual. By this time lots of other tables were watching the show.
They also serve bruschetta and canapes included in the price. Happy times.
The only drinkable red wine in Malta was La Valette when I visited 1978. The wines of Gozo were undrinkable.
I think there has been a general improvement since then. Though i doubt they would win any international accolades.
I discovered, when touring the Champagne region, that yer average Frog, when refreshing at a roadside café, will purchase a small bottle of cheap plonk and then dilute it with water 50/50 before drinking it and then going (sometimes merrily) on his way.
That cheap plonk, I discovered, was neither improved nor impaired by that dilution. It tasted wronk both ways.
The most popular, most vacuous and most irritating insult thrown around by the ‘Woke’, Leftists, and similar brain-dead detritus, is the tiresome, banal and witless jibe, “You’re a racist!” Well, I have some news for them. In every single case, they are correct.
MY NAME IS GRIZZLY AND I AM A RACIST. [It’s in my DNA].
Pugilism is a natural machination developed by most living organisms as a vital strategy to ensure survival.
Humans, in common with all other animal species, are hard-wired by nature to — first and foremost, as a necessity and priority survival stratagem — take positive steps to look after themselves and safeguard: their family; their friends; their tribe; their shelter; their food supply; their territory.
This will naturally take place, with vigour, against whatever happens to threaten any of that; whether it be another tribe, race or species — of their own kind or another, of any living organism — or anything else. This is an irrebuttable presumption of natural fact that cannot be challenged by any trite and ephemeral political dogma. It is in our genes.
It is an evolutionary consequence that every human, and every animal, will fight (to the death, if needed) to defend itself against attack by anyone — or anything — that threatens it. It will naturally do the same to protect those close and dear to it: e.g: its family; its home; its food sources; its shelter; its community; its country.
This has been the case since humans and other animals first appeared on the surface of this planet; it will continue until they are wiped out or superseded by whatever means or agency, natural or artificial.
A caveat. Being a ‘racist’ and displaying ‘racial hatred’ (i.e. hating and loathing someone else for no other reason than they are different) are two, very separate things. I do not hate members of other races — or display any irrational prejudice against them — for no other reason than they are different. In fact I have made very good friends of members of other biological human races, have enjoyed their company and would defend them if attacked, physically or intellectually.
However if I, or a group of members of my race, were attacked, en masse, by a grouping of another race (for whatever reason or excuse), then my natural, undeniable, and innate sense of self-protection would come rushing to the fore.
As well as being Racist, I am also disease-ist, pathogen-ist, pest-ist, poison-ist, venom-ist, rotten-ist and politician-ist. I have ingrained -isms for anything that threatens my survival.
Good morning all
Dull day , again , very cold night , and now 7c.
Not much to comment on re the DTletters , except I enjoyed reading the recent DTL comments .
It is ages since I have travelled anywhere by train , even though we do have a station in the village .
Our trains are SW trains , modern and frequent , Weymouth /Waterloo.
Fares are expensive , so are coach fares.
The worst train ride ever , ever ever was about 15 years ago when I attended a conference in Birmingham , which lasted a couple of days . Travelled by Virgin from Bournemouth , filthy, overcrowded thank goodness my seat was reserved because people had to stand once we reached Reading , unclean loos .. the calibre of the uncivilised public travelling was terrifying , and not a bit like thirty/ forty/ fifty years ago or longer !
The public just do not know how to behave on public transport .
Years ago , when I was a young student Naval nurse , I missed my train( I had a travel warrant ) Kings Cross.. to travel to see my aunts in the North , the Station master put me on the Pullman .. (I was wearing my walking out uniform which was similar to the WRNs uniform ) no word of a lie . I had just finished 2 weeks of night duty , and was rather fazed and upset that I would have to hang around for a new connection , especially after travelling from Haslar, across the harbour to catch the Portsmouth /Waterloo train then find my way to Kings Cross. So the Station master intervened and put me on the Pullman !!!
I enjoyed the experience , and even had lunch , quite amazing really, a chap who looked familiar asked if he could sit at my table , he had an Irish accent , and of course I said , please do.. and wow, the chap was Danny Blanchflower!!
All a distant memory now .. I knew nothing about football, but didn’t mind good looking chaps , he was a very entertaining companion , and the Pullman experience was just that!!!!
We travelled on four trains last Friday – ok as far as Cheltenham, then standing room only to Birmingham – we couldn’t get any further than the door by the loo – with people continually pushing by to use it. From Birmingham to Derby was even more packed and people with reserved seats couldn’t get to them to turf the occupiers out. We got a seat ok on the little stopping train to Belper, but that was only 10 minutes.
I guessed you had had a difficult trip, and our trains are nothing but cattle trucks, the public do not know how to be civilised ,the whole experience can be very frightening.
I think the British have a very bad reputation for being rude common and noisy.
The people standing by us were civilised enough – all in the same boat. The young mother with a toddler in a pushchair and a four year old had a hard time too, with the toddler bawling her eyes out for much of the way. There was a bit of cameraderie in the cattle truck.
Every single thing they’ve done (as it’s one entity, not separate ideologies) has been the exact opposite of what should have been.
The state is an obese, corrupt leviathan and government continues to let it expand. Big government is bad government.
Globalist uniparty government.
Two men charged with immigration offences after five migrants die in Channel. 26 April 2024.
Yien Both, a 22-year-old from South Sudan, has been charged with assisting unlawful immigration and attempting to arrive in the UK without valid entry clearance, according to the National Crime Agency.
Tajdeen Adbulaziz Juma, a 22-year-old Sudanese national, has been charged with attempting to arrive in the UK without valid entry clearance.
Who would ever have guessed?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/26/men-charged-immigration-offences-channel-migrant-death/
They must be the first to be so charged!
Someone must know who all the smuggler’s are.
Minty , just repeating what I said a few days ago.
Politicians should start calling out the mess that Africa and other Muslim countries have got themselves into,
Britain and Europe educated and built a better Africa, giving it railways , education , hospitals, roads , trade and many financial benefits as well as acting as mediator with regard to tribal wars and and the many conflicts warring tribes have inflicted on innocent good people , Nigeria and the Sudan , Zimbabwe , Uganda and others are prime examples .
Now we are NOT hearing much criticism aimed at the post Mandela regime in South Africa which is hurting many people , murders rape , food shortages , mendacious financial deficiencies , and the infrastructure is being ruined by stealing and inefficient maintenance .
Africans and those from Arab Muslim countries are now ruining us , by bankrupting us.
Britain should halt the guilt trip , and deny strongly that colonisation has ruined Africa and Asia .
Hindsight is a wonderful thing .
Britain and Europe should have left them all alone in their mudhuts and squabbling tribal massacres a century plus ago .
Not our problem .
Get them all out of here , for goodness sake .
You must worry about your siblings still living in South Africa. We spent three weeks in SA in 2013 but I wouldn’t want to go back there again.
Good Heffings.
Not John Smith and Robert Green?
Are they sure they’ve got the right
men. persons?My father loved the Sudanese people – especially the Dinkas.
Since the departure of the evil British colonialists the Sudan has suffered endless civil war, economic collapse, famine, disintegration of its infrastructure, education and health services, genocide and finally partition.
As I mentioned here a couple of days ago, when my father returned to the Sudan for a visit a few years after he had retired a group of elders arranged a party for him: “All you ever did wrong,” they said, “was to leave us.”
Reminds me of the elderly beekeeper we met in Uganda – he spoke very correct English – said it was his British schooling.
Most of my Kenyan friends speak good English and are strong Christians.
A familiar story. The problem both there and here are resentful Marxists who know better regardless of the misery and negative outcomes their ideology causes. As long as it makes the Marxist feel superior.
They’ll be rewarded with income for life, somewhere to live and UK citizenship
It will collapse Wibbles!
It’s already collapsing, shops shutting up, businesses closing – we had our big meeting thing last month and it was a close thing to continue with the company.
Big government just sees the workers in the country as nothing but a tax scam.
Good Moaning.
Or is it?
There’s a strange yellow object in the sky and raindrops are not falling on my head.
Should I be worried?
And yet it’s still so cold. That’s a worry.
But, but, but we are in a climate crisis and it’s getting hot, hot, hotter. Apparently.
Global boiling, innit?
Never knew boiling to be so bloody cold.
-1°c here this morning. Now 7°c and cloudy@ 12:59
The met office has said that this April has been “one of the warmest on record”!! They are seriously taking the you know what. It’s chilly here and has been for weeks!
But, but, but we are in a climate crisis and it’s getting hot, hot, hotter. Apparently.
I saw a daffodil and I’m terrified. Or was it a tulip?
The daffs and tulips have lasted well as it’s so chilly.
Good morning Anne
Very chilly, but the sun comes out briefly then vanishes .. Time for a walkie with Pip.
It’s blasted cold.
I’m waiting for an important parcel (son’s birthday tomorrow) so I can’t take Spartie out because MB doesn’t hear the door.
Sunny here too so far this morning. Washing is on.
No, just move to Dubai – no sun and plenty of rain (Well during the seedy seasom anyway).
Why do politicians get gender politics wrong?
This is very simple.
Go to the Open Society Foundations website.
Do a search for “Trans people”.
You will get more than a thousand hits going back to at leat 2013 and maybe beyond.
George Soros has been banging the drum and backing the trans cause for years now; and our politicians do love Uncle George.
This isn’t a loony conspiracy theory, you can check it in two minutes. It’s in plain view.
I had a trans customer when I worked for DWP. Very bitter and mixed up he was – couldn’t get a job. He’d had surgery, including on the Adam’s apple. At least he was an adult, and fairly harmless. I got to know him quite well. I retired in 2011.
Babies can be born hermaphrodites.
Remember babies like that from nursing days , their special area , baby boys and girls have are similar to a deformed rootstock on young sapling .
So I am wondering whether chemicals in drinking water , food , lifestyle choices of parents before conception .
It’s very rare to have a physical cause like that – eg Caster Semanya the runner.
Environmental causes are a possibility, but I think the vast majority of children who think they are ‘trans’ are responding to peer pressure.
As a very young teenager, I didn’t much like the changes taking place in my body and thought it would be good to be a boy – but I did know I wasn’t.
Semanya isn’t a hermaphrodite as that would mean that both ovaries and testes were present. I think she has adrenogenital syndrome ie is genetically male but has an enzyme deficiency in the metabolic pathway that produces androgens.
There have always been a few true hermaphrodites, albeit a minuscule percentage of the population as a whole. I suspect that their relative numbers have not increased so much as their mere existence has been politicised.
I’m surprised any of them have jobs, tbh.
Composer and conductor Wally Stott became Angela Morley; American composer and arranger Walter Carlos (of Clockwork Orange fame) became Wendy; military historian Aryeh Nusbacher (often on tv) became Lynette. Admittedly these are not usually occupations of employees, but they continued to pursue their professions after transition.
Thanks for that. According their own account these people do not believe in objective reality. The diamorphic sex type categorization is superceded by subjective woo.
I tried watching the accompanying video. Quite simply it’s deranged. I haven’t got time to pull apart line by line the holes in every sentence. “Our world is littered with things we struggle to understand.” so f*cking what? It’s also full of things we do understand, like sexual diamorphism. And so on the bullsh*t flows.
In a nutshell they are swapping out sex type for gender identity. Overall it is presented in a facile condescending childish cartoon visual style with a mawkish minor key piano accompaniment, the authoritarian New Puritan in house aesthetic. It is designed to manipulate “Mah feels”.
One wonders when they will learn that ‘gender’ is a grammatical construct, coming from Latin.
This is an interesting response Sir Jasper. I do agree and understand what you are taking about. However this will not rub with them, we are dealing with a pre-Enlightenment cult. They will not learn because they cannot learn. What you are selling is oppressive to their emotional subjectivity. Thank the Postmodern Knowledge Principle and Standpoint Epistemology. But “Mah feelings” and “Ways of knowing”.
At least 90% of the Home Office.
They don’t know if the truth is inconvenient.
Actually, they do know that the truth is inconvenient 🙂
And they’re from the South Downs….
. . . down South?
I meant ‘sarf dahns’!
Someone posted a video of how the pyramids were built. The video is in cartoon format. Can anyone help with a link pls. I can’t find it.
https://twitter.com/historyinmemes/status/1779331238245069067
Thank you very much.
😊😉
Ingenious!
Not playing :0(
Try this… https://twitter.com/historyinmemes/status/1779331238245069067?
Thanks Phizzee, I jumped on a different device and it’s playing now.
Reminds me of the old schoolboy riddle:
What’s the difference between a dam and a giraffe?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e07e51a32a01eae556d2743442c5c3321752abe790d1b16056c2027da2164dcb.png
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/920d018c64fc135c5a41f417b3c9569f156a9e6d79f9a8af3d55cee9dbc99fe2.png
Why did that music make me think of Wilson, Kepple and Betty?
My 3-month-long experiment with X maybe reaching its natural end. It’s a confusing place to be, as much full of garbage and boring as anywhere else and still censored as I found out when I tried to be disparaging about the Rockefellers (a polite little notice telling me that other posters don’t use such expressions. I hadn’t been profane so the offending word can only have been Rockefeller). Above all, I’m seriously disappointed that I haven’t been piled-on.
My 3-month-long experiment with X maybe reaching its natural end. It’s a confusing place to be, as much full of garbage and boring as anywhere else and still censored as I found out when I tried to be disparaging about the Rockefellers (a polite little notice telling me that other posters don’t use such expressions. I hadn’t been profane so the offending word can only have been Rockefeller). Above all, I’m seriously disappointed that I haven’t been piled-on.
Ah, a pile-on rarely happens to us mere nobodies because the volume of posts constantly flooding in to XTwitter is such that most of us go unseen except by those whom we follow and who follow us. I once got a 10 hour ban for suggesting a certain form of justice for the WEF hierarchy. As the 10 hours was mostly night time, I barely noticed.
I got one of those at the time of the G7 meeting in Cornwall, for suggesting gently that Matt Hancock might get washed out to sea. I barely noticed mine either. But five months was annoying.
X aka Twitter is a very useful place for bugging Journalists.
386481+ up ticks,
The very truth in verse,
https://x.com/KingBobIIV/status/1783079628992622641
It and Twitter were always a snake pit – I seldom stay more than a couple of minutes but I do keep going back. I haven’t been suspended yet from X – on Twitter the censorship was much worse and in 2020 I lost my account for five months – all because I couldn’t let them text me to my phone because it was dead – and I didn’t have one for several months. Even when I’d eventually replaced it they still wouldn’t do anything for ages.
https://twitter.com/aquitainexox/status/1783794258983448722
Apols for the rudery
He’ll linger as long as he can. That’s what politicians do…
I am always rather surprised that this word is used to say that something unpleasant has been done to you when many young – and even not so young – people quite enjoy it and want it to happen!
Apparently this is Woking, Surrey. We have nottlers in this area but I doubt they were in the queue. Cazi also adds, “Although there was a sign saying if you are abusive to staff you won’t get jabbed. That’s an invite if ever I saw one”.
https://twitter.com/NovaxForcazi/status/1783599855002079653
Such a shame the late Queen did not make the Sussexes Duke and Duchess of Woking instead.
They are as thick as pigshit so perhaps Duke and Duchess of Woking Ham might have been more apposite?🐖
I thought that might have been a reference to the Duchess’s thespian pretensions.
Class.
“There really is no helping people.”
I think I may have mentioned this before: stupidity is running out-of-control and there seems to be no cure.
It ought not to be forgotten that many people only access mainstream news sources. They might very well be quite unaware of dissenting opinions regarding covid-19 vaccines and have no personal experience themselves or of others experiencing any adverse consequences of taking them. I rather dislike the suggestion that they are utter fools for putting themselves at risk despite being aware of all the contraindications, as if they spend hours of their time trawling through social media endeavouring to find such information then pig-headedly refusing to believe or take heed of it.
Some do, Stig. I know young people who are, for example, “terrified” of climate change despite looking at clear, strong evidence indicating that it is a myth.
There’s also counter-evidence that it’s not a myth. Being human, we exercise a choice about which of the conflicting narratives we prefer.
I prefer this:
Climate Change and You
The climate ‘science’ is wrong. CO2 being 0.04% of the atmosphere is a cause for good, as it is essential for plant life.
The atmosphere is 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen. The remaining 1% are various trace elements of which CO2 is but a small part.
The greatest cause of any change in the Earth’s climate, is due to the cyclical nature of the Sun’s phases, which may lead to vast differences between ice ages and continual heatwaves
Check https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/03/04/challenging-net-zero-with-science/
Please feel free to copy and paste this anywhere appropriate.
Yes, that’s one of the competing explanations.
No need to ruin our economy though seeing as there is so much conflicting info. You would think a sensible govt would investigate more before implementing such expensive policies.
Sensible and government juxtaposed! Chapeau!
I have intelligent friends still lining up for the ‘booster’ – whoever would think you’d need so many jabs for a respiratory virus – and in the spring, too? I’ve given up talking about it to them.
Read btl comments in Daily Mail. People no longer trust the govt or the NHS on this issue.
The information’s out there. I’m not going to waste time insulting them, but sadly everyone has to understand that our environment is not as safe as we thought it was in the past, and it’s up to each and every one of us to inform ourselves about the dangers.
One needs a suspicion that one is underinformed of the dangers out there. Without it, there’s no rationale to go hunting for it.
Those who adapt fastest are more likely to survive…
I went down to our GP surgery yesterday to collect a prescription. Queue of oldies like me lining up. I find it sad that so many people just blindly accept everything they are told by “the authorities”.
I request repeat prescriptions by email to the surgery, as I’m housebound.
Our surgery has some sort of system (which I haven’t used) but OH said his various meds have got out of synch. So he has to collect things separately instead of all at once.
My local pharmacy is very slow in delivery – +5 days v often.
Our GP surgery needs a week’s notice for repeat prescriptions. Unlike the 24-hour turnround at the vet’s.
That’s working days of course.
Not so good if you need them urgently then.
I know what you mean, but it wasn’t a repeat!
Just in from a VERY successful bonfire. The stuff to be burned occupied 100 square yards. Mainly tree debris and trimmings but a lot of prunings, weeds etc.
Anyway, it has all burnt to a small heap about 3 ft high and will chunter on during lunch. Then I’ll level it out, while it is still red hot and get rid of the last few barrow loads of detritus.
I shall reward myself with a Breton beer: Duchesse Anne.
Is it the bonfire that is chuntering?
Or is it the gardener?
Fires outside except in prepared fire places (such as a barbie) are now banned here until late autumn. Too high a risk of a forest fire of the magnitude that would make Hiroshima look like a weasel’s fart.
Duchesse Anne is a well loved historical figure in Brittany. Indeed the first time we drove to Brittany in 1988 we stayed at the Hotel Duchesse Anne in Dinan and did our house hunting from there. The patron and his family are still our very good friends.
Duchesse Anne was married twice to Kings of France and one of the things that she managed to achieve for Brittany in perpetuity was that there should be no tolls on Breton roads and indeed those who drive through France on motorways usually have to pay at places called péages but not in Brittany.
When we drive South we don’t have to pay for motorways until after Nantes and when we drive East we don’t have to pay until after Caen.
Unpersuaded by the case for nationalising the railways Anglo and I have come up with a new plan for saving the nation (after we have put immigration into reverse, that is)
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/65205722f53eae058a8f81455a5895d964e71aadbf62aab558f52c8716161ce4.jpg
Ha, just seen this on X:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2ece2f735be60eb051e13124889463f466205687a524ea3ac675c4f4775d1a0d.png
Oh the horror.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/82edd5b117a6e498fcf3430ca822c7949436c0dbe64d6a2226d6ded7ea4256cc.jpg
Sadiq Khan accused Chief Rabbi of singling him out for criticism because he is Muslim
London Mayor implied that Sir Ephraim Mirvis had condemned his call for a ceasefire because of his religion
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/26/sadiq-khan-chief-rabbi-row-muslim-jewish/
This is a propaganda war which Hamas seems to be winning.
How would Khan ensure that Hamas also respected a ceasefire, stopping crying out that they would like to wipe out the State of Israel and exterminate the Jews, and stopped saying that they planned to repeat the events of October 7th until their aims have been achieved?
Typical response to criticism. Play the race card.
Islam isn’t a race.
Khan seems to have forgotten that on the world stage in general and in Israel particularly, he is a nonentity.
Shut down the asylum system until we figure out what the hell is going on. Nigel Farage. 26 April 2024.
Our leaders have lost any sense of moral courage, any notion of standing up for what is right, and any adherence to British values.
We know what’s going on Nigel! The British people are being destroyed.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/26/shut-down-asylum-system-until-we-figure-out-what-the-hell/
Watch this and tremble. Further evidence that the covid pandemic and, especially, the vaccines forced on us, was a deliberate attempt to murder people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwXt_eEtYp0
I’ve had nearly five years of the NHS trying – sometimes at great length – to keep me alive. It’s already had a perfect opportunity to allow me to die. I find it scarcely credible that it would also be a party to a wicked endeavour to kill me.
As I have said before, if there’s a conspiracy to reduce the population, it’s been a miserable failure.
My grandfather, a Devon GP, thought that there were too many of the wrong sort of people so he determined to redress the balance by producing better, more useful and more creative people. So he and my grandmother had eleven children.
The trouble today, 120 years on, is that too many of the wrong sort of people are reproducing and not enough of the right sort of people are doing so!
How do you know?
The population in Britain is increasing because of migration. We don’t really know what the world population is, but I have heard it credibly estimated that it had already peaked before covid.
The NHS has good parts and bad parts. The pressure to have the vax was political. There was also a financial incentive for doctors to administer it.
That’s why, Stig, I refuse to go to horse piddle. They’ll kill me, it’s cold as are the Staff.
My time with NHS staff has been very different, both as an in- and outpatient. Kindness has been my overwhelming experience.
Try DGRI, Cold and the Staff.
You’re lucky, Stig.
There are some demons in the NHS. Letby and Shipman to name two. No reason why they shouldn’t exist at management level too.
I’m glad that the NHS succeeded. But I also saw it bump of my, and friend’s parents. What was it, the Liverpool pathway? But that’s beside the point. To say that all in the NHS are part of a conspiracy is absurd, but that does not mean that there isn’t a conspiracy at the very top of western society.
I think it is those at investment level who should be looked at.
The evil that men do lives after them.
[Mark Antony: Julius Caesar]
The consequences of having the Covid jabs will pass on from generation to generation.
Good afternoon all – I hope everyone is well and happy. – even if the world out there is a bunch of Sh1t
Thank you, Nagsman (always good to see you), and we hope that you are well (considering) and happy too.
I am in the best shape I can hope for Grizzly. 95% pain free after 10am and whilst I am much slower than usual I am able to do things – ordinary things like loading the dishwasher and preparing the veg – and cleaning up after pup ect.. All very mundane but NORMAL – and that is what I have been craving – normality.
Now I just need a project to occupy my brain.
My brother-in-law has taken up Lego modelling. He has been suffering from a badly worn-out right knee which has been impairing his mobility while he waits patiently in the NHS queue for a replacement. In the meantime, this new hobby engrosses him as he can do it while seated. The models are very complex – thousands of pieces – and put me in mind of Bill and the MR’s jigsaw puzzles, albeit in 3D form. He has so far constructed two motorcycle models, has started on a Vespa scooter and is looking forward to starting on a car. It’s by no means for everybody and the complex sets are rather expensive, but the finished products can look rather impressive – not necessarily with the studs on show.
This range is aimed at adults.
https://www.lego.com/en-gb/categories/age-18-plus-years
My neighbour has just started making Lego flowers. They look surprisingly good.
I got a Lego set from my son when he was about 5 – I asked him why he bought me that – he replied ” because I heard you telling Mummy you wanted one”
Good afternoon! Will you be out on the gee-gee today?
Possibly – but more likely that I will get him in and give him a good grooming today and ride tomorrow – last week was 5 minutes – got to double that this week. Also pup is wild about daughter and will be wildly excited to see her at the yard – so I will need to keep and eye on that situation. Pup is growing like a weed – and just so much fun. Some folk thought I was wrong to get her but they are the ones who are wrong – she is such a blessing.
And I’m sure she helps you to feel better and that your life will be coming back to normal. Pup and horse – the best way to recovery.
Good afternoon Nagsman and good to see you here again!
I’ve just done my online driving licence renewal. I seem to remember it was quite quick to return last time.
Regardless of the way of the world, my life is a happy one, and I have no intention of allowing a pall of moroseness to take a grip of me.
Great – that is just the way I feel about things – going to kick on doing stuff!
Challenge accepted!
Ambiguity leads me to question who will be the target of your challenge.
A sad and dystopian comment, Nags. Hope all’s in better than good shape with you.
A sad and dystopian comment, Nags. Hope all’s in better than good shape with you.
Surely it is our rulers themselves who are behind the small boats trade. How do the supposedly desperate migrants come to be in possession of thousands of pounds paid to so called people smugglers. It’s almost certainly a money laundering process whereby the money comes full circle, from the establishment elites to the migrants to the people running the boats and back to the elites who doubtless give the boat operatives a share of the spoils for their trouble. The official story is full of holes. If only that could be said of the boats.
I think they only pay part of the fee up front and the rest by slave labour.
Or… welfare. That’s what they’re here for.
If rulers were behind the immigrant scam the the boats would only make it 12″ from the French coast.
I left out the “charities”. Open Society etc down to Care4Calais. Very likely to be in the loop. (Where’s Polly?)
For all the amateur logophiles among you, who knows how to spell the longest word in the English language? Here is some help for you. it is so long that no lexicon (dictionary) has ever attempted to print it.
The short version, ’Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl…isoleucine’, is the chemical name of ‘titin’ (also known as ‘connectin’) – the largest known protein. It has 189,819 letters, and it takes three-and-a-half hours to just pronounce!
https://www.digitalspy.com/fun/a444700/longest-word-has-189819-letters-takes-three-hours-to-pronounce/
I know how to spell it…
…I and T.
A protein that complex would take a hell of a lot of resting after roasting, don’t you think?
Just finished my veal steak. Saute potatoes and home grown asparagus. Served with bearnaise.
No resting required as it was flash fried for 20 seconds a side.
Didn’t the bears like it? Were all of them nays or just some?
I have to put up with the death stare from Dolly while eating. Bears would be a pushover
I was sure it ended with “… gogogogh“
I said English … not Welsh.
Now well into my sixties, I’m no longer pro-teen.
60s? Pup!
I thought that was a railway station in Wales.
That’s the longest in Welsh. I said English.
Well its Great Britain then.. the word you are looking for is elastic.
Look you, Boyo.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Pronounced: “Llan-vire-pooll-guin-go-ger-u-queern-drob-ooll-llandus-ilio-gogo-goch”.
It’s like gargling Listerene.
Thats not English its Welsh.
That’s what I said.
Normality has a lot to recommend it. Best wishes for much more normality, and for a long time, Nagsman.😊
I know the song but it is the first time I have seen the Chordettes – Mr Sandman:
https://youtu.be/eU5UkSP7u2Y
Beautiful singing.
Pretty but twee.
Twee?
Definitely four…
Wholesome …. and then some more!
Speaking of wholesome.
https://youtu.be/L_FW-oqIpis?si=sFhUDYILWfxNK9fK
https://youtu.be/eX28cgKHHyc?si=xxnpofV9fcPXK5nc
That Archies noise was a blight on one of my favourite years.
I quite understand how Sugar Sugar became a big international hit. Its catchy tune and easy-to-follow and singalong-to lyrics made an impression on millions of minds – for good or ill. We were largely spared the Archies’ other singles in the UK. These two were top 30 hits in the USA, however.
https://youtu.be/q1bQ6ybu7iM
https://youtu.be/T5zt5Tr56zc?si=IjaCeQV3_7BAXqeA
I, too, have fond memories of 1969 but never forget that the year was topped and tailed at the top of the charts by Lily The Pink from 1968 and Two Little Boys into 1970. I prefer Sugar Sugar to those two.
Even back then, my tastes in music were a lot more sophisticated than bubblegum pop.
Bravas!
Brilliant – and the clarity of the words is very impressive.
Another fine Mark Felton production…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrKmDUNi6sY
Seem to be a darned good reason for criticising the little runt..
Sadiq Khan accuses Chief Rabbi of singling him out for criticism because he is Muslim
The London Mayor has issued an apology, in which he said he ‘deeply regretted’ the comments
Robert Mendick, CHIEF REPORTER
26 April 2024 • 12:49pm
Sadiq Khan has accused the Chief Rabbi of singling him out for criticism over his Israel stance because he is a Muslim.
In seemingly incendiary comments, Mr Khan implied that senior members of the Jewish community, including the Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, had condemned his call for a ceasefire because of his religion.
He said similar calls for a ceasefire made by Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, had not prompted a backlash and said that was because he was “not called Ahmed Burani, he’s called Andy Burnham whereas I’m called Sadiq Khan.”
Mr Khan issued an apology on Friday, in which he said he “deeply regretted” the comments. The remarks risked stoking further divisions in London just days before he seeks a third term as London’s mayor.
After seven months of pro-Palestine protests in the capital, Jews have complained that central London has become a no-go zone at weekends. Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has faced calls to resign after one of his officers prevented an “openly Jewish” man from crossing the road as a march was passing.
Mr Khan appeared to be responding to criticism levelled at him by Sir Ephraim in autumn in the wake of the Oct 7 massacre. In a post on X, formally Twitter, on Oct 31, Sir Ephraim said after meeting Mr Khan that he had explained to the Mayor that “a ceasefire now would be an irresponsible stepping stone to yet more Hamas terrorist brutality”.
*
*
*
Formerly Twitter, not ‘formally’….
I would be surprised if any Jews would vote for Khan in the upcoming elections.
There are probably not enough of them to much influence the outcome. I reckon that a Jewish boycott of Khan would merely reduce his upcoming majority.
Have voting cards been delivered to Golders Green?
I haven’t yet received my postal vote, here in SNP land.
The Sandman was a traditional character in many children’s stories and books. In Scandinavian folklore, he is said to sprinkle sand or dust on or into the eyes of children at night to bring on sleep and dreams. The grit or “sleep” (rheum) in one’s eyes upon waking is the supposed result of the Sandman’s work the previous night.
I doubt that most of today’s youngsters had heard of him.
Wipe away the sleepy dust.
Didn’t Sandy have a friend with him when he called – Julian wasn’t it?
Resting actors available for hire.
https://youtu.be/CX45pYvxDiA?si=lmIbsx17HO-9nU87
Anybody who drank port in the sixties would have seen him!
Much has been made in the inquiry into the Post Office-Fujitsu Horizon scandal of the fact, initially denied by Post Office management, that Fujitsu had access to the data and the means to manipulate it. The suggestion seems to be that this was the means by which apparent discrepancies eventually led to the prosecution of sub-postmasters and -mistresses. However, I have yet to see any evidence that actual manipulation took place. If it did happen, why would Fujitsu do it? Was the Post office complicit and for what reason? I cannot get my head around the notion that Fujitsu, with or without the knowledge of the Post Office, falsified the accounts of sub-post offices for some inexplicable heinous purpose.
Whether Fujitsu did or did not falsify accounts doesn’t really matter. The fact it that it has since transpired that Fujitsu did potentially have access to the data, and that it could have been manipulated. This in spite of initial denials. This fact alone makes all prosecutions and convictions of Sub-Postmasters unsafe.
Are there no audit trails available by which actual data manipulation could be uncovered?
Audit trails are a feature of all well-written software, especially where proof of transactions need to be provided (I worked on a Laboratory Information Management System where such evidence had to be provided to the FDA). However, a bug or even a piece of coding designed to allow manipulation of data would bypass any such audit trail.
And possibly allow funds to be siphoned off to a private bank account?
It was the Post Office that had the power to prosecute.
As I understand it the PO chose to go down that route where they could have involved the police.
Surely even if the fault was generated by badly programmed artificial intelligence and not a direct result of human malice, Fujitsu as the IT service provider is responsible for the flaws in its systems.
Customers understand and accept that there will be bugs. But they have a reasonable expectation that the company will own up and fix them!
As various ATMs were joined to the Horizon system, it appears that anyone could remove money from the appropriate ATM, then
reprogram Horizon to debit the withdrawal to whichever sub post office he/she wished.
This would certainly explain the statement made under oath some weeks ago by the head of the PO “we cannot trace the missing money”
.
** We’re certain that the actual withdrawals were done in a far more sophisticated manner than above.
I’ve a feeling they were testing in live and changed balances to test various features and responses without thinking about it.
But you don’t do that in the live system, you do that in the test system!
I spent more than a decade working as a consultant for Fujitsu, the team I worked with was very professional – they wouldn’t have made an elementary mistake like that.
Can’t answer for management of course….or the honesty of individuals.
Doesn’t matter why Fujitsu did it. The fact that it could be done when the PO hierarchy denied it could be done, is the important point. Who knows why someone did it. There could be a whole host of reasons: lone malevolence; techies messing about trying to improve the system; someone syphoning; a glitch unaccounted for.
There was a period when Post Office bosses genuinely believed that data manipulation at Fujitsu was not possible but, once having been made aware of it, they ought to have pursued that line of enquiry with far more vigour.
I’m sure they didn’t – the false accounts were caused by a software bug.
It’s normal with a system like that, that the developers have access to the live system.
They would set up a parallel test system where most of the testing would be done, but the customer usually needs help configuring the live system too, so the developer company has access to it. I have never heard of anyone altering customer data.
This is just normal practice, where they slipped up was lying about the bugs!
Modern life (aka “I blame the teachers”…)
On arriving home from Malta, I found a note saying that a man had called to check the solar panel meter reading. They do it every two years. They invited me to take a photo and send it in. That involves balancing on a table in the boiler room. So I decided to make an appointment for a man to visit. After 20 minutes, this was arranged. I then received two further e-mails asking for a sodding photo. So the MR and I clambered onto chairs and took a snap – and I posted it online. (Still with me?)
I have just received this message:
“Hi there,
thanks for reaching out with this.
I will make sure to note the account that the appointment is no longer required as we have received the photograph from yourself.
Best wishes,
Have a wonderful Day!”
Heartwarming – especially the clear evidence of deep feelings of happiness…..
At least it didn’t start: “Hi William…”
Just William then?
And how is yourself?
AAARRRGGGHHH!
I had an email in reply to my complaint. It began “thanks for reaching out to us” – aagghh! They should be pleased they were in Kent or my hands would have been reaching out to them! It took me several emails in which I had to repeat the information I’d originally given them and issue a threat to report them to my bank before I got redress.
Ukraine agriculture minister detained in multimillion-dollar corruption inquiry. 26 April 2024.
Ukraine’s agriculture minister, Mykola Solskyi, has been detained after being named as a formal suspect in a multimillion-dollar corruption inquiry.
Blighted by corruption scandals since the fall of the Soviet Union, Kyiv has pledged to bolster its anti-graft efforts as part of its bid for EU membership.
Solskyi was accused of illegally seizing land worth more than $7m (£5.6m) when he was the head of a major farming company and a member of parliament.
God knows how much of the war finance has been syphoned off.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/26/ukraines-agriculture-minister-detained-in-multimillion-dollar-corruption-probe
Shut down the asylum system until we figure out what the hell is going on
Our leaders have lost any sense of moral courage, any notion of standing up for what is right, and any adherence to British values
Nigel Farage – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/26/shut-down-asylum-system-until-we-figure-out-what-the-hell/
Nigel Farage, says that politicians are unaware of or totally indifferent to how the British people think about uncontrolled immigration and the fear that people’s lives are being put in danger by the fact that many criminals are entering the country illegally without restraint.
BTL Percival Wrattstrangler
“They are more separated, more divided from the general public opinion on this issue than on anything else in my lifetime”
Yes but the next one will be the damage done by Covid jabs. A week ago the House of Commons was empty when Andrew Bridgen gave his report but the public gallery was packed. Indeed, the deputy speaker threatened to expel those in the gallery for cheering Bridgen so loudly.
and another issue where politicians are in denial about what the ordinary people think is Net Zero. More and more people – and more and more serious scientists – are becoming aware that man-made global warming is a myth and that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is both beneficial and necessary.
Their denial of so many important things puts us all in grave danger. Unless they change there will be a tipping point where the whole political landscape will have to change, I think.
The Warqueen pootled downstairs from her lair and said, in breathy tones ‘Put something thick and warm inside me…’
So I made a sponge pudding with custard.
Try some treacle on it
That’s for dessert.
Too sticky ! Squirty cream and maraschino cherries !
Your inner Casanova still burns brightly, I see.
Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a Super Nova!
A big spotted dick, I hope.
Followed by toad in the hole.
Ahem….
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/853325a8a1ad2493c698f88f019457870a48d23c195d1227f1cd4d0bc3292dd8.png
Pudding before main? How very pseudo-retro would that be?
The clever men at Oxford
Know all there is to be knowed
But not one of them knows one half as much
As intelligent Mr Toad
Rivetting.
You can get a cream for that
You can get a custard for it too.
🤣🤣🤣
100-mile US glide bombs fail in Ukraine. 26 April 2024.
Much-vaunted US-supplied glide bombs given to Ukraine “didn’t work” due to a combination of mud and Russian signal jamming, the Pentagon has admitted.
The long-range weapons, which were not officially named but have been identified online as Boeing’s Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB), were sent to Ukraine to help them hit targets at twice the distance reachable by current rockets.
The history of this war will be fascinating. Victory in Ukraine sounds like a good title. Perhaps I will be able to get a translation from the Russian?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/04/26/russia-ukraine-latest-us-abrams-tanks-drone-threats/
Seems like a smart way to get paid for dud inventory…..
Apropos a previous post of mine, it would appear that a degree of sesquipedalianism is uncharacteristically affecting the uncopyrightables and incomprehensibilities that those with a propensity towards floccinaucinihilipilification routinely display. They may also have a tendency towards antidisestablishmentarianism even though they may never have contracted pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis or, indeed, pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism but their errant beliefs that supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a viable word and that Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is even English (it is Welsh)will surely deprive them of any possible future honorificabilitudinitatibus.
That last word must have been coined by Ken Dodd.
That’s easy for you to say
It seems you have blocked me, I have to ask why?
There’s no block on Tom, must be a glitch. I checked when MIB mentioned it yesterday so I re-started Discus and there was nobody blocked
It’s a puzzle. Can we blame Fujitsu?
As long as no one at the PO gets it in the neck!
Men In Black? Did they use the mind block thingy? 😘
The neuralyser. It is often used by politicians, especially after attending a beer and curry event.
Thanks, Lola!
Nor for me, Spikey, but I keep seeing the post that states, “Content unavailable”. Where Do I go from that?
I’m glad it wasn’t you – I didn’t think so!
As I can read your posts and you can read mine where’s the ‘block’?
Phizzee/Phil says that logging out and scrolling down to the “Content unavailable” post reveals both the content of the post and the username of the person responsible for it. I can vouch for it as it confirmed, as I suspected, that poppiesmum, whether inadvertently or otherwise, has blocked me.
Please accept my heartfelt pericombobulations.
Ack: E. Blackadder
Please accept my heartfelt pericombobulations.
Ack: E. Blackadder
Rishi the Tanking Engine.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8d7cb9defa2f716ddaecfe5115e7158e258a75d345d3451784f194994b586e2d.jpg
Is Starmer the Fat Controller?
I complained a week or more ago about excessive incidental music in TV broadcasts. Just now, during a live golf broadcast from the USA on Sky, a leaderboard caption was accompanied by rock guitar musak – probably directly from NBC’s US feed. Why?
I keep the sound off on my phone and laptop unless there’s something I particularly want to listen to. I hate background Musak.
Something by The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross and the Birdie Song by the Tweets?
No, Colonel Bogey.
Lowest common denominator. Thick people don’t listen to voice. You keep their attention by playing loud music.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/67f8483494c0a6bea9e189658bfaa8638c91605cadc0e099cd24db986e58090d.jpg
Too many other faces missing.
Wishful thinking…
Keep George Galloway here. He annoys people you like to annoy.
True.
If only!
I wish
I would never wish that lot on the Rwandans.
Atlantis would be my preferred destination for them.
I watched a program about Rwanda a couple of months ago. Very green and fecund. Local guys had set up a business delivering medicines to outlying villages by drone. The drones were launched by a catapult system and the medicines were dropped in peoples back yards. The drones then went back to base and were captured on what looked like nets you might see at a baseball match.
Yes an excellent video. Brilliant entrepreneurship!
Tartarus would be mine!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d1ff6d74332fa75967e94669c1850b6b1787920878ebb8ab7f063593d33db96b.jpg
Eh?
It suggests it is painful to be around stupid people.
Did you ever receive a well-argued, point-by-point reply to your whingeing mail to the Royal Warrant holder outfit?
the whole affair was rather fishy….
I’m waiting with baited breath….
It’s all a load of codswallop….
Just a red herring, then?
Bleak!
Well, he’s had his chips now.
If you are talking about the fish i don’t believe i mentioned a Royal Warrant did I?
Good Afternoon Philip,
Thank you for your email and your feedback.
We do appreciate all feedback, may it be positive or negative.
Having a look into those products, I found that they do have high star ratings so I was a little surprised by the feedback.
Nonetheless, this will be passed onto the relevant teams to look into.
We do pride ourselves in supplying the best quality and take all feedback seriously to ensure we do just that.
I am sorry that this did not work out this time and do appreciate your discretion.
We thank you for your time and custom.
If we could ever be of any assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Kind regards,
Cassandra
The Fish Society
+44(0)1428 687768
Cassandra, eh? Well we all know what she was good at…
A Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed.
I think their reply could be summarised as – “F*ck off”.
Yes, I got that too. But at least they were polite about it even if all their statements were bullshit. They have no intention of improving their wares.
Not everyone is as discriminating as you are, I expect.
I think my humour might of been a little too subtle.
No, it’s me.
It is a reference to Henry Windsor.
Is this chappie hoping Scotland will be free to become Albania?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/be54d87ae910ebc116fc225e8e109eb08653cb842b76a7f3426198b2c6d27f50.png
Not only is Alba the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland, it can also mean “white” in Latin. Is it a dig at Humza Yousaf?
In Spain Alba is a surname.
Duchess of as well.
“Writing on a blue background…wwwwwhhhh”
By ‘Eck!
The dark web? 😘
Ooh! Incey Wincey?
I’m 15 minutes in, it’s breathtaking…
https://youtu.be/l7UmG7MR6p4?si=daHBr0DYT0DmAgmB
Apparently Ms Aluko is a “lawyer”, a qualification gained from Brunell, graduating top of her class.
Pro-Palestine students blockade Macron’s university in Paris
Protesters occupy Sciences Po building as demonstrations spread across institutions
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/04/26/pro-palestine-students-blockade-macrons-university-in-paris/
It is illegal to cover your face in France but these people are using Covid masks so it’s all right!
Good afternoon everyone, hope you’re In fine fettle
George Soros and his far-left movement is paying student agitators to co-opt and amplify anti-Israel protests at colleges across the country, the NY Post reports.
The protests, which began at Columbia University, have expanded nationwide – with copycat tent cities erected at colleges including Harvard, Yale, Berkeley in California, the Ohio State University and Emory in Georgia, with organised branches of the Soros-funded Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) having organised them.
Just wait until the latest cop-killing by kneeling on a black man kicks off.
A police bodycam has captured the final words of handcuffed black man Frank Tyson as police knelt on his back.
2020 Presidential election run up to be repeated?
“I can’t breathe”. Apparently overuse of fentanyl has that effect?
Pass, I don’t know, I thought it caused heart problems, but either way it’s self-inflicted.
Overdose rather than over-use. One account I’ve read is that George Floyd was carrrying fentanyl and consumed it rather than be found with it in his possession.
Is this in the UK? A link would help.
I would have thought you might have made an educated guess from the information available.
It’s in the USA, but from a Daily Mail link, which people keep complaining is behind a paywall.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13353567/Bodycam-captures-handcuffed-black-man-Frank-Tyons-final-words.html
One never knows, these days. The DM has a paywall for some of its “exclusives”!
My VPN seems to avoid it.
It seems to have one for anything that a person with an IQ above 100 might want to read. There is unlimited free access to articles about slebs one has never heard of and has no interest in.
In the case of Mr Floyd it turned out he was saying “I can’t breath” several minutes before the police had to withstrain him on the floor.
He had enough breath in him to carry on struggling and pose a threat, it was why he was restrained.
I think Soros is a legitimate target for Mossad.
I see the slimy caliph has apologised to the Chief Rabbi.
Hmmm – bet he had his fingers crossed.
Crescented surely!
https://cdn.braze.eu/appboy/communication/assets/image_assets/images/662b95eb2b008b100175fd10/original.jpg?1714132459
Schwaubsorosaurous?
Sooner or later some pillock is going to press the trigger!
“Seizing assets? Two can play at that game…
Just days after Washington voted to authorise the REPO Act – paving the way for the Biden administration confiscate billions in Russian sovereign assets which sit in US banks – it appears Moscow has a plan of its own (let’s call it the REVERSE REPO Act) as a Russian court has ordered the seizure of $440 million from JPMorgan…..”
https://twitter.com/IntrovertTexan/status/1783852176227385385
Ah, first the Sharia Courts and now the Sikhness seems to be spreading….
Parliamentarians should familiarise themselves with the Magna Carta. One law for all.
Common law at that, Philip.
OT – Tom, I referred your question to Alec about his blocking you – he indicated he hadn’t blocked you, it must be an error of the disqus system but he would look into it. He also wondered if you had blocked him accidentally, as he can’t see your posts either (which is the case when one blocks, both are lost one to t’other).
Thank you for that, Mum. Only just seen it.
It is simply a form of arbitration – which has been used in England for generations to resolve civil disputes. Nothing sinister at all.
I would suggest that like all our enrichment, it’s a thin edge of a very large wedge.
Muslim man launches UK’s first certified halal cat food
Aihtsham Rashid says he was frustrated with the lack of options for his feline friends so decided to start his own brand
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/26/muslim-man-launches-uk-first-certified-halal-cat-food/
Words fail me.
A Muslim cat? Not a Cat-holic?
Allo Catbar.
It’s a Purr-sian.
Of course the Swimming Cats of Lake Van are slammers….
Earlier this afternoon I saw an advert on TV for bug protein dog food!!
I suppose it’s like veganism. The human knows they’re wrong but accepting it causes such cognitive dissonance as to be painful, so they transfer it on to everything around them to assuage their madness.
What next Burkhas for female Mouselem cats?
I thought pets were haram, so WTF?
Dogs are haram unless they are for guarding or hunting.
No, no no , the cat food is his to eat .. the cats that he eats have to be Halal.
Remember how everyone assumed curry chop houses were currying cats / rats and anything else that crawled jumped or hopped…
That is why most of those places are full of rat droppings and filthy fridges .
How silly, considering that the mice the cat kills to eat aren’t halal.
Incoming Ukies…Expect some more Ukies in the UK imminently….
“Poland says it is ready and willing to help Ukraine with its crisis-level manpower and recruitment problems, as it could be poised to round up Ukrainian military-aged males and return them to their home country. Government officials are now strongly signaling just such a controversial plan.
Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz issued the words Wednesday, largely in response to Ukraine’s new law and policy requiring men between 18 and 59 living abroad to get or renew their passport only at offices inside Ukraine. It is designed to prevent them from leaving in the country and thus avoid military service.
“Poland has suggested in the past helping Ukraine so that those who are subject to military service go back to their country to fulfill their civic obligation, Kosiniak-Kamysz told Polsat News television,” according to Reuters.”
Ukrainians much preferred over Africa’s cast-offs.
Not in Wales at the minute!
Here, the Ukies work. The darkies sponge.
Up to a point. Friends of mine hosted a Ukrainian woman with 2 kids who has now moved out and married another east European. She had just qualified as a doctor in Ukraine. She can’t work as a doctor here as her English is nowhere near good enough (we also doubt the standard of her medical knowledge would be adequate for passing the requisite exams here) but, still, one would think she might work as a health care assistant, But no, she chooses instead to work 16 hours a week at a fish processing plant because she may not have learned much English but she sure has learned about our Benefits system.
Norway too?
Why? I met a Ukrainian not so far from here last year working in a petrol station. She seemed happy and was pretty.
The stabby girl is said to be a Uke.
An appropriate punishment would be to send her straight to the front line then.😂
Not stabbing her classmates, then?
A feeble Bogey Five!
Wordle 1,042 5/6
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
🟨🟩⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Par four.
Wordle 1,042 4/6
🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜
🟨⬜🟨🟩⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Wordle 1,042 3/6
🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
3 today.
Wordle 1,042 3/6
🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Ooh, just back from 5 o’clock club at the pub.
Something I made earlier. Not many words fitted.
Wordle 1,042 3/6
🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Boring boring par…
Wordle 1,042 4/6
⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
A short but interesting assertion from Tucker:
https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1781484602756124759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1781484602756124759%7Ctwgr%5E7ea4b6e7d3db1ba8a0a38ac6e7848bbdcf96691e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Ftaken-out-fbi-cia-bob-woodward-tucker-carlson-says-watergate-was-orchestrated-remove
Paul Craig Roberts
I have several times reported the same. Nixon was removed because he was making arms limitation agreements with the Soviets and opening to China. This was normalising the enemy that the military/security complex needed for its budget and power. It was for the same reason that President Kennedy was assassinated by the military/security complex. The growing suspicion about Kennedy’s assassination meant that the military/security complex could not risk a second violent assassination, so Nixon was politically assassinated.
The same strategy was applied to Trump. When Trump said he intended to normalise relations with Russia, he presented himself as the same threat to the military-security complex as Kennedy and Nixon. That is what Russiagate was about, and what documentsgate, Jan 6 Insurrection, and two failed impeachments are all about. When Russiagate and the impeachments failed, they decided to steal the election. When Trump’s support survived all of this, they decided on the indictments. In the least, the indictments will keep Trump off the campaign circuit and use up his resources in legal fees.
It is the determination and ability of the military/security complex to protect its budget and power that makes peace impossible and wars our way of life.
Probably close to the truth.
So was “Deep Throat” FBI/CIA?
Don’t know but Strepsils are unlikely to cure it….
If I recall, “Deep Throat” was FBI Ass. Director, Mark Felt, who reported to Woodward and Bernstein of the Washington Post.
May the 2nd local elections .
Voting by post
Apply to vote by post
Can’t get to the polling station on polling day? Apply to vote by post by downloading and completing the application form.
How to vote by post
If you’ve applied for a postal vote, you’ll receive a postal voting pack with your ballot paper ahead of polling day.
Voting by proxy
Apply to vote by proxy
Can’t get to the polling station on polling day? Ask a trusted person to vote on your behalf and apply for a proxy vote.
How to vote by proxy
If you’ve applied to vote by proxy, you need to ask someone you trust to cast your vote on your behalf.
Making voters aware of changes to postal and proxy voting
Voter ID requirement
Voters in England need to show photo ID to vote at polling stations in some elections.
This applies to:
UK parliamentary elections, including general elections, by-elections and recall petitions
Local elections and by-elections
Police and Crime Commissioner elections
Find out more about accepted forms of photo ID, how to apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate, and what to expect on polling day.
Excuse me , but tell me honestly am I thick .. but how does this photo id thing work if I am voting by proxy, or wearing face covering, etc etc
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-elections/voter-id
Already applied (and approved), Maggie. Still waiting for the paper-work.
That wasn’t exactly what I meant, Tom .
It won’t come until after the election, Tom. You should have identified as Mohamed….
When the muslim is allowed to vote by proxy there is no point demanding voter ID. It’s like speed limits. By all means, reduce them but the criminal will ignore it and you just annoy the honest.
Multiple proxy votes should be declared invalid – especially from the diversity.
I’ve got some very nice Kate Bush songs to put up slightly later this evening when it’s music and wine o’clock 😊
Oh dear..
Rachel Reeves
Do I detect an Adams apple , her voice is debateable ?
I wondered, as well, Maggie.
Nah – just a dinner lady’s voice…
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1783725093660570046
An ingredient from a Phizzee meal?
The version with the voice over is funny:-
https://twitter.com/BeardedBob7282/status/1783936351739519459
There’s lovely.
Shw mai; iachyd da!
You have a French one, I imagine.
It changes my “place” periodically.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/90405a767dc9f0304c148d59ab551a218e970e66ae333869f3d5b616d148ccc6.jpg
Well, nothing. We make almost no difference to the weather. Nor does any industrial activity. But ‘climate change’ isn’t about the environment. It’s about controlling what people can do. It’s about forcing socialism.
Not quite true, wibbling. Isn’t cloud-seeding supposed to influence weather? As for industrial activities, the dirty ones are partly responsible for smog. Some might take advantage of climate-change theory to control individual liberty, but many genuinely believe that human activity is harming the planet, a greater harm than constraining individual liberty.
Smog was a problem when we didn’t have clean burning coal power stations. We do now.
Cloud seeding has to be carried out directly and is a stupid thing to do.
Then those people who believe so should restrain their actions. They have no right to demand others adopt their perspective. This is the attitude of the tyrant.
There is much we can do to help our environment such as recycling and re-use, but the state has made physically making equipment so expensive that it can only return a profit through mass production and, criticailly, NOT here, where these rules apply.
Shutting down our economy on the altar of green is moronic as it just shifts the pollution elsewhere (as we see with ocean waste – it’s all ours thanks to the WEEE directive) and makes goods expensive, destroys jobs and security.
Some oaf has written a report blithering on about ‘carbon’ and how much food production uses it. What these morons forget is that food crops are incredibly expensive, hugely energy inefficient and don’t produce enough, so shutting farming down for ‘carbon’ is stupid.
Greeniacs are ignorant, wrong and mostly stupid. They also want to control others to force their ideology. That’s the most heinous crime and why net zero and the climate change acts must be abolished.
As nobody believes all should be at liberty to do whatever they want and damn the consequences, we’re all on a spectrum of believing in constraining individual freedom to some degree or other. It’s just a matter of how much. I don’t like seeing litter wantonly discarded in public spaces. I welcome constraints on such behaviour, or is that me wanting to control others just because of a petty bugbear and my tyrannical tendencies?
Now the week’s work is over (weekend’s work starts tomorrow…), relax to the finest Welsh Male voice choir for a moment.
https://youtu.be/_RjRicjIaKI?si=ykPo5aqZ131d43lK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BXXLW52xgQ
https://twitter.com/EugeneJ89312567/status/1783816038787825970
In two cars? At the same time??
Schizophrenic?
One for him – the other for his wives….
Schizoarsenic apparently….
The man is a miracle. He can ride two bikes with one arse.
Security detail following. Only needed because non-existant far right extremists would like to kill the little shit.
It costs a million £’s in cars and security so he can walk his dog in the park.
From the DM…
The Labour Mayor of London has spent years railing against car owners and has repeatedly badgered drivers to stop taking unnecessary, short journeys.
His office issued an alarming report last Monday warning that car pollution was endangering the lives of 3.1 million children in England – and praised the Mayor’s policies to cut emissions.
But three days later, the politician was seen being driven with his wife Saadiya and dog Luna in a convoy of three vehicles, including a £75,000 petrol-driven Jaguar, which has a five-litre V8 engine, a £50,000 diesel Volkswagen people-carrier, and a Volvo hybrid petrol-electric SUV worth £50,000.
Staggeringly, the Mayor was driven to Battersea Park to walk his dog – despite living just a few hundred yards from one of London’s largest commons in Tooting, South London.
Two days earlier, Mr Khan had criticised car journeys, tweeting: ‘Time is running out to stop a climate catastrophe – and London’s road to recovery from the pandemic cannot be clogged by cars.’
Mr Khan, 50, set out for his walk on Thursday afternoon with his wife and yellow labrador, before he was seen in a diesel-powered VW Caravelle.
The Jaguar, which clocks up just 13.8 miles to the gallon in the city, was in the convoy with the Caravelle, which does 36 miles per gallon. The more environmentally friendly Volvo was at the head of the fleet.
In heavy traffic, the cars crawled past Tooting Bec Common and began a bumper-to-bumper journey through South London towards Battersea that lasted 25 minutes.
Just like all Lefties…A fucking hypocrite.
Funny him and his dog. Slammers loathe dogs. I wonder if it is a cat in disguise…
There must be a politician’s handbook somewhere that tells them to get a dog as a way of appealing to the average British voter
I suspect he imagines he is some where in Paki land ..
I don’t have exact percentages, but a large number of the male population suffers from the tragic Small Penis Syndrome (SPS for short.) Here are a few ways to tell (without actually having to witness his tiny penis.)
1. Overcompensation
This side effect pretty much encompasses the entire list, but can be spotted through a few simple behaviors. Men who have tiny penises normally over compensate by attempting to own expensive things.
For example, a man driving a Ferrari probably has a really small dick. By driving a fancy car, a man is pretty much saying, “HEY! Focus on the car, NOT my small penis! PLEASE!” If a man feels the need to wave his money in your face, then he is more than likely the owner of an undersized package.
A man with a normal penis knows that once the time comes for you to see see his penis, it will not be a disappointment, and he will not need other tactics such as bribery to keep you around.
I think it very cruel to write about Phil in this way, Mags!!
Now now , Bill !
Security back-up.
One for him, one for his ego
Is that Sacha Baron-Cohen with all the medals?
He wouldn’t look out-of-place driving around in a Mercedes Grosser, like other international tinpot dictators.
I’m so glad I no longer contribute directly to his profligacy…..
I don’t hold with teenagers going round stabbing people.
However, it does seem to me to be bloody silly to shove a Ukrainian child “refugee” into a Welsh school and expect it – not having any English – to learn useless Welsh* AND a bit of English. Especially as, when the Clown wins the “war” in the next couple of weeks, they will all be returning home…..
I’ll wager that there are not more than six people in The Ukraine who speak Welsh…..
* Sorry Stormy – but the language of your fathers does have limited use…
The PTB wanted to spread them far and wide and didn’t much care how they would cope. They want all our towns, villages and cities to be completely mixed with all foreigners to water down our culture.
“Especially as, when the Clown wins the “war” in the next couple of weeks, they will all be returning home…..”
Your ‘Intelligence’ differs from mine, Bill.
Care to expand on your Crimean prognostication?
Sorry – it was intended to be a joke. Many apologies. I’ll try harder next time….
I was somewhat discombobulated by your ‘joke’, Bill!
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1783545961169461527 Andrew Neil – Why Wont Chris Packham Have A Real Discussion on Climate Change ‘ Chis Packham isnt a scientist – he is a Greenie zealot employed by the BBC to manipulate and spread lies. I used to warch Springwatch – I always recall Michaela Strachan travelling over here from Africa and spouting stuff about us polluting our seas.
Possibly. But possibly not. I have been involved in arbitration several times during my illustrious career. Cheaper and quicker than going through the courts.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae805c849dfff250cf1e12cc36b0f171798f47714eb588f5504daf94da927c22.jpg
When I were a teenager, here in England It was very much the thing for 15 year old boys to have a sneaky cigarette to show off in front of girls and for whatever other reason, girls rarely smoked but it seems times have changed . Girls now smoke whilst boys rather not smoke.
When I was a teenage girl we spent any money we had on clothes and make-up so we had nothing left to spend on cigarettes.
I was 15 in 1969. A great age to smoke and not just a sneaky one. When I could up to a packet a day. It made you look grown up, impressed kids who didn’t smoke and sorry but most girls smoked.
And very quickly I learned that it proportioned a wonderful feeling of happiness.
Obviously sooner or later we leave our childish ways, I stopped at 25.
But I never felt that kind of happiness ever again
Raw? As in sushi?
You sushi yourself!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/55e2f613fb85e8a7604cc56a582d5e2c580abd58c803e4a9bf828e956b5dc047.jpg
A man needs an ear transplant, but unfortunately the only ears available belonged to a pig.
When asked if he liked them he said “Yes they’re great apart from the crackling.”
Bet you heard that at Friday “Prayers” today!!
Hate crime ! Hate crime ! I suffer from Tinnitus and all i hear is a badly tuned radio. Plus i would be tempted to nibble my own ears and i’m sure that’s not allowed !
Should have got sheep’s ears, then all he’d have heard was rustling.
His hearing would be a bit woolly.
Why not ram that home?
I woke up with custard in my right ear and raspberries in my left ear.
It made me a trifle deaf.
https://thecritic.co.uk/religious-freedom-is-back-on-the-agenda/ A brilliant article from the Critic ..
‘ Religious Freedom Is Back on The Agenda ‘
‘ Religious freedom is a cordon santaire against the worst instincts of all kinds of Western Identity politics ‘
Lefties with their antisemitism use fake words like Islamophobia to protect Islamic atrocities . Religious freedom is the righrt to be Christian in the civilised West.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/26/over-half-drivers-fail-theory-safety-test-resit-survey/
More then half of Drivers would fail the Theory Safety Test resit survey ‘
Probably because its been made impossible to pass, id imagine part of the war on cars.
It is not impossible to pass if you have a rudimentary grasp of English and can understand simple informational pictures.
My son – who is a computer whizz-kid – says that if you answer each question with a random option but VERY FAST – you’ll pass, even if you don’t understand English!
Not sure i believe that. Unless it is online.
I merely report what he told me he did. The rapid answer fools the programme and it allows the choice and moves on to the next question.
I see. When i did my theory test i had to sit on a chair in front of a desk with others and fill out the test on a thing they used to call paper…using a pen.
Online is open to abuse. But then there are people (blacks) who offer services to sit these test for a price. This is why more than one million people in London alone would not pass a resit. Most of them never taking the test in the first place.
When I took my driving test, my examiner asked me a few questions on the Highway Code after the practical part was over 🙂
The old-fashioned method!
What’s this Highway Code I heard a rumour about?
OT – so there IS a use for the ridiculous, faux-medical jargon so beloved for the woke…
“I seem to be particularly sensitive to the annoyance of loud music in a restaurant. If you ask ‘Can the music be turned down, or off?’ management often resist, claiming that the other customers are enjoying it. But if you ask for it to be turned off ‘because I’m neurodivergent and suffer from sensory overload’, they can’t help quickly enough.”
I’ll try that (if I can remember the words…!)
Nottlers already know you are neurodivergent. We have even had badges and posters made to warn the newbies.
Very droll. The curious thing is that I did not know that word until a couple of days ago, when some daft bint wrote a whingeing article in The Grimes in which she mentioned that her daughter was “neurodivergent”. Still have no idea what it actually means – if anything.
neurodivergent
/ˌnjʊərə(ʊ)dʌɪˈvəːdʒ(ə)nt,ˌnjʊərə(ʊ)dɪˈvəːdʒ(ə)nt/
adjective
adjective: neurodivergent; adjective: neuro-divergent
differing in mental or neurological function from what is considered typical or normal (frequently used with reference to autistic spectrum disorders); not neurotypical.
“there are some things that neurotypical people just know or can figure out and that neurodivergent students may need to have a model for”
Origin
1990s: from neuro- + divergent.
We used to call such people…Thickos.
Ah – the class dimwit. How apt that you should know!!
TTFN (or, if you prefer FTNT)
I dread to think what FTNT means.
As it happens out of a family of six, plus parents…i was the youngest. Only me and my sister passed any exams. I was the first in the family to get O-Levels.
Dyslexic joke..never mind, too advanced, I know.
If you had failed the O-Levels – you could have become Jamie Oliver.
The MR tells me that there is a huge industry in “education” these days ensuring that vast numbers of children are found to be “on a spectrum” or ND – so that they can have an extra hour or two for their exams…and get lotsa “help” during said exams.
I am happy with the concept of giving people extra help if they need it but i really believe they should just be sent to the fields to harvest the produce. Their parents too.
Or stone picking and bird scaring. They usually only have one parent. All that virgin birth malarkey.
You are Pol Pot and I claim my £5!
Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac? He used to lie awake at night wondering whether there was a dog.
It means ‘barking mad’.
OT – so there IS a use for the ridiculous, faux-medical jargon so beloved for the woke…
“I seem to be particularly sensitive to the annoyance of loud music in a restaurant. If you ask ‘Can the music be turned down, or off?’ management often resist, claiming that the other customers are enjoying it. But if you ask for it to be turned off ‘because I’m neurodivergent and suffer from sensory overload’, they can’t help quickly enough.”
I’ll try that (if I can remember the words…!)
Ernest Hemingway never met a drink he didnt like ! in fact he he had a rather tumultuous lifelong affair with alcohol.He said wine is the one of the most civilsed things in the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection and offers a greater range of enjoyment and appreciation, who can disagree with that.
[opens bottle of decent Chianti in agreement]
A superb idea encouraged by the very wise Hemingway, several toasts should be made in his honour and Chianti is a superb choice for my steak later this evening 🍷 cheers ! 🙂 I shall find some drinking songs 🎵 to liven everyone up 🙂
Why do you need booze to liven yourself up?
She doesn’t. She’s an effervescent person which makes a change.
Thank you most kindly 😊
I don’t, I’m one of those naturally cheery lively people and only have a glass of wine or two at the weekend. But I’ll have a glass tonight as I went to the dentist today and I’m sure Mr Hemingway would think it nice . Teetotals are a bore- everything in moderation.
Teetotals are a bore?
Did I hear right?
Ode to the Weekend Warrior
On Fridays, we hail the liquid cheer,
With a pint, a shot, or a cocktail near.
The weekend warrior’s battle cry,
“Another round!” we all imply.
In taverns dim or bars so bright,
We celebrate into the night.
With tales of glory, love, and sorrow,
Promising to quit come tomorrow.
But as the sun greets us with scorn,
We wonder where our dignity’s gone.
Yet by next weekend, without fail,
We’re back again on the merry ale trail.
Beautiful .
Glad you liked it ..
Enjoy your meal and your tipple .
Including moderation, as a wise man once said.
I have just finished up our spaghetti bolognese from last night so thought it appropriate – our beef, own tomato sauce, own garlic and own beans of various sourts.
You have your dinner earlier then me, sounds delicious and the chianti highly suitable, have another glass at Mr Hemingway’s suggestion 🙂
I have generally cooked for our sons when they come home hungry from school so we got used to eating early!
Yes, people do eat earlier with children. I do tend to eat too late, 7.30 pm is rather late and I do get heartburn sometimes, I’m going to try and eat earlier. Eating earlier means you can relax and have a whisky later in the evening. There was an article up recently about appreciating Churchill’s drinking abilities which were quite substantial.
If you want some (albeit very coarse) Rugby songs, I’ll be happy to chip in!…..
Do you know the song that goes ‘Sambo was a lazy coon, slept all through the afternoon’?
So tired was he, so very tired was he
Off to the jungle he did go swinging his chopper to and fro
When along came a bee, a f*cking great bee
Singing this song as we went along
Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz
Fly away you bumble bee I aint no rose
I aint no syphilitic prick get off my f*cking nose
Get off my nasal organ, dont you come near
If you want a bit of fanny you can f*ck my Granny
But you’ll get no arsehole here
Singing arsehole rules the Navy, arsehole rules the Navy, arsehole ruuuuules the Navy
There was f*ck all else to do.
Verily, loquacious ….
It works better when you sing it – it has a pretty good tune to it!
That’s me done for today. Very satisfying day, too. Bonfire completely successful. The first for six months and all the stuff has gone.
It was almost nice out – a bit of sun but still a biting wind. More tomorrow – then a bit of global warming for a few days where the temperature reaches double figures. Just.
Have a spiffing evening.
A demain.
Well, put it away! There’s a policeman coming!
What goes around comes around…. [snigger]
The influx of migrants crossing into Ireland from the UK is because Dublin is “reaping what it sowed” in the Brexit negotiations, a leading unionist has said.
Micheál Martin, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, has blamed the Rwanda plan for an increase in asylum seekers entering his country from Northern Ireland. Dublin believes that more than 80 per cent of asylum seekers in Ireland have crossed the open border.
Jim Allister, the leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice party, said it was not the Rwanda plan but Ireland’s insistence on keeping the border open after Brexit that was to blame. “You reap what you sow. The Republic of Ireland insisted there wouldn’t even be a camera allowed on the international frontier and now they lament the consequences of the open border they demanded,” he told The Telegraph.
“It’s hard to find sympathy for those so driven by their all-Ireland agenda and poking the British over Brexit that they insisted on the very thing now swamping them with immigrants.”
Mr Martin, speaking in Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday, said: “I believe the Rwanda effect is impacting on Ireland.
“I don’t think anyone’s gone to Rwanda yet, but to me it’s reflective of a policy,” he said. “But it is having real impact on Ireland now in terms of people being fearful in the UK – maybe that’s the impact it was designed to have.”
Tensions over immigration have risen in Ireland amid an increase in migrant numbers and a housing crisis. On Thursday, police arrested six people after officers came under attack by protesters at a site earmarked for asylum seekers in Newtown Mount Kennedy, Co Wicklow.
Mr Allister is a fierce opponent of Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal for Northern Ireland, which he says puts the region’s place in the UK at risk.
The Windsor Framework kept the land border with the Republic of Ireland open after Brexit but at the price of introducing an Irish Sea border between Britain and Northern Ireland.
Dublin and Brussels insisted on the deal to prevent a post-Brexit hard land border on the island of Ireland, in the negotiations to take the UK out of the EU.
Ireland said the return of border infrastructure would put the peace process at risk and that a Brexit treaty was necessary to protect its place in the EU’s Single Market.
Northern Ireland continues to follow hundreds of EU rules under the agreement, which also gives it lucrative dual access to both the UK and EU markets.
Power-sharing was restored in Northern Ireland after negotiations ended a two-year boycott of Stormont by the DUP over the Irish Sea border.
Hard-line unionists, including the TUV, which has formed an election alliance with Reform UK, fear the deal is a precursor to an attempt to unify Ireland. Sinn Fein has called for a reunification referendum by 2030.
Lord Dodds, the DUP peer, said: “The complaints from Irish politicians ring hollow. At every point in the Brexit drama they never hesitated to advance their own interests at the expense of relations with unionists and the UK. Now in true Dublin style they blame others for the consequences of policies they pursued.
“Dublin has been vociferous in advocating a totally open border and has even castigated UK efforts to introduce new travel visa requirements for non Irish citizens wanting to travel from the republic into the UK through N Ireland,” he added, referring to British plans to require a permit from non-Ireland residents.”
Baroness Hoey said: “The Republic of Ireland is a foreign country. It’s a bit rich for them to be complaining about something when they themselves have been the country that has refused to accept that there is a frontier with the United Kingdom and their independent country.
“British taxpayers are paying for the EU single market to be protected. We’re spending all this money and putting up border posts in our own country to protect their Single market, which of course also ultimately is also affecting trade between GB and Northern Ireland,” The Brexiteer peer, who is from Northern Ireland, said.
She added, “Chickens come home to roost, as they say. Ireland and the UK are also part of a Common Travel Area that predates both countries’ EU membership.
On March 22, the Irish High Court said a decision by the justice minister to designate the UK as a “safe country” after Brexit was unlawful. It said she exceeded her powers. Legislation is in the works to remedy this but in the meantime Ireland cannot use a refugee returns deal with the UK.
Well, the way I see it is ..
Those with papers and who have flooded in to the UK legally ie on aircraft will probably be making their way to Ireland , but how are boat people getting into Ireland with out papers , how on earth are they travelling there?
With the money our daft government give them.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/555c172303f28182e4c36dab6c07b444fae48c4466bf9fa1a7a99338c701d20c.png
An enterprising canny Scotsman should be looking at delivering rubber dinghies to this area.
Plentiful supply on the south coast
Boat?
‘Night All
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9df48a62ea635a414e6ad274adc73816d0424ca4f902ad1bdec04758e384d03a.jpg
P45 White
Unemployment forms White
Etc
Night night Rik.
Good night Rik, sweet dreams.
Not really a suitable subject for a Landseer, methinks.
Night Rik…This made me laff when i opened it… https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3956a7493b34fc9f8926e63357d2fe7ee714c866f661b567b2776f993a66d12e.jpg
I laughed out loud too!
Deer me!
Stag at eBay?
386481+ up ticks,
Another stitch up ?
https://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1783856395428806754
386481+ up ticks,
O2O,
https://x.com/KTHopkins/status/1783590411493130738
Judge Wokeish.
Amidst all the doom and gloom this is just lovely, and brings a tear of joy to the eye.
https://x.com/Motabhai012/status/1783562054831599885
Wonderful! Thank you for that, pm!
You’re welcome – it was so inspiring to see the foal so knobbled, and finally stretching out as all young animals should, enjoying the strength of their own movement, with years of youth still ahead.
In the wild it would not have survived.
My goodness. Just IMAGINE the vets’ bills……
Indeed…!
Beautiful, caring people and what a gorgeous foal .
Just about to have dinner ( and a glass of chianti – suitably suggested by JD and inspired by Ernest Hemingway ) it’s lovely to eat dinner when it’s light at 7.30 pm .
One of the most wonderful things about Spring – My favourite time of year .
I will suggest an Amarone.
Good thought!
Goodnight. Bath v Saracens coming up shortly.
Bath to win. (Edit: Sticking my neck out, comfortably!! Finn to boss it) I never realised you were a Rugger Bugger Lola!
That is not aging well. Currently 12-0 to Saracens.
Shit, I thought it was going to be a walkover – I’ll have a bit of a watch I think!
Yeahhhhh!
Excuse me! Saracen’s every time!
Sounds like you might be right Mrs C!
Bloody hell 15-12 to Sarries – Finn Russell (currently the best player on the Planet) wasnt even playing, but Farrell was!
“Jo Biden uses team of walkers to hide his shuffling gait as he walks to Marine One”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/04/26/joe-biden-us-presidential-election-age-walker/
Poor old Joe. Not even allowed to get old in peace.
He’s been a parasite for over 50 years.
I hope he suffers.
Not ideal for re-election.
Not ideal for election, but he was.
Odd how all these Lefties always get incredibly rich on a politician’s salary.
There’s a stock market group that follows Pelosi’s investments on the basis that she’s on the take. It has never lost money.
Her father certainly was on the take
A Conservative minister left the BBC Question Time audience aghast after he asked if Rwanda and Congo were different countries.
When asked how the government’s Rwanda Bill would apply to refugees and asylum seekers from neighbouring countries in central Africa, Chris Philp, the policing minister, demonstrated a surprising lack of knowledge of African geography.
The repeated gaffes made on the BBC politics show, which was broadcast live from Tottenham, came after an audience member asked whether refugees fleeing conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo would be sent to Rwanda amid ongoing conflicts between the two nations.
He said: “Right now, in Goma, there is a genocide going on, and there’s such a big conflict going on with people from Rwanda.
“So, had my family members come from Goma on a crossing right now, would they then be sent back to the country that they’re supposedly at warring, Rwanda? Does that make any sense to you?”
In response, Philp said: “I think there’s an exclusion on people from Rwanda being sent to Rwanda.”
Both the audience member and the Question Time host, Fiona Bruce, interrupted, correcting the minister by telling him that they were Congolese, not Rwandan.
The audience member repeated his question, asking: “Are they then going to be sent to Rwanda if they came here on a crossing?”
Philp replied: “From Congo?”
As the audience shook their heads and laughed, Philp said: “Would people be sent from … well … Rwanda is a different country from Congo, isn’t it?”
The Democratic Republic of the Congo–Rwanda war began in March 2022.
Sources close to Philp said he had difficulty hearing clearly what the audience member was saying. They added: “It was clear Philp was asking a rhetorical question, not an actual substantive question.”
Philp later clarified that there is a safety clause built into the legislation. He said: “So there is a clause in the legislation that says if somebody would suffer — I think the phrase is ‘serious and irreversible harm’ by being sent somewhere they wouldn’t be sent so there is that safety mechanism built into the legislation.”
Jeff Dale
20 HOURS AGO
It is absolutely staggering that a government minister should not know that Congo is a country separate from Rwanda.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is the second largest nation in Africa by landmass and the fourth by population (over 100m).
It’s even more incredible that he appeared to think it may be part of Rwanda which is tiny by comparison, being only the 46th largest country in Africa.
What an utter embarrassment.
riccarda monticello
19 HOURS AGO
Hope the pilots are better at geography. Who knows where the abducted will end up?
Reply
Recommend (45)
Share
Steve Kelly
15 HOURS AGO
Replying to riccarda monticello
Well, as Ryanair are offering to fly them, wherever it is it will be 100 miles away from where there the intended destination is situated.
Reply
Recommend (11)
Share
Richard Ward
12 HOURS AGO
Replying to riccarda monticello
Abducted, Hah! You’re funny.
Surely if they’re in Africa they should go to a safe frican country. Why head here? Go away. We don’t want you. While you behave like savages you should be treated like savages.
What it tells you is that there aren’t any “safe ” African countries. They are as racist and prejudiced as whitey, if not mores so.
Then there’s nothing we can do. Nothing we should do.
Not true.
If all African countries are the same, we should send them off at random, every single one of them.
From the transcript above it seems to me the Minister was asking a rhetorical question – if so it just shows the malevolence of the MSM in its reporting…
It was rhetorical. Not only that, you should have seen how the audience was stacked against him – scarcely a white face in sight and I suspect that the person who asked the question to which he was responding was planted as well.
Gave up on the BBC when they started licking Blair all over!
I didn’t watch it either, but checked it out afterwards.
Phew for a minute I thought you might require decontamination!
Oh that is truly disgusting!
I know that’s why I abandoned the Beeb!
Standard procedure, I would have thought.
He did better than the American President who muddles up entire continents,
Incontinence surely?
So, which Congo? The Republic of the Congo, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo? The questioner just said ‘Congo’. He then mentioned the town of Goma. Has anyone else heard of it? And Wes Streeting, with the eye-swivel. How crass is that?
Yes, I’ve heard of Goma.
I’ve ‘heard‘ of Goma, and have also been in the DRC as well as the RotC. Just a river between DRC and Rwanda and the same river between DRC and RotC. The Congo river separating Rwanda from RotC and the Congo river separating DRC from Rwanda is up to 800 miles apart. The questioner just mentioned Goma and Congo and a crossing. An African geographer would have been puzzled by the question.
I’ve been to both, Matadi in DRC, and Pointe Noire in RoC. Two nastier ratholes you cannot find, except perhaps Conakry in Guinea.
We had an extended stop in Pointe Noire after an accident involving our seismic streamers. There was a nice Chinese restaurant that we tried. What I remember most though was the waterside bar with hundreds of fighting rats in the rafters and having to cover your beer to stop the rat shit dropping into your drink.
Oh, you went to the posh bit then.
Guinea Foul? I’ve been to Equatorial Guinea but not Guinea.
Don’t go.
My brother g rcin law has to go to Conakry a lot with work. Tbh i’ve never thought about what it is like, but i know he’s not a fan.
Ebola country.
Totally agree. The questioner caused the problem, perhaps deliberately, or from a lack of knowledge of African geography.
The rumble in the jungle.
Good Lord:-
https://youtu.be/yuoFsi2iIi0?si=afRuno7VYqlymK0O
And with that, I’m off for a bath!
Dont confuse the soap with the Araldite!
It’s a common DIY mistake – or ‘fail’ as I believe it is called these days……
Loved the song.
That’s a fake.
https://twitter.com/spikeyspud/status/1783814969760342188
That’s got to a very bad mash-up or maybe it’s just his Dad’s hat?
But is he too big for his boots?
His head shrank in the wash.
It used to fit him before his long ‘vacance‘ to Borneo.
Ah, after paying a visit to the local tribal shrink?
Probably keeps his lunch up there.
Is that his dad’s hat?
An LP smuggling special.
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1783935429118459922
Brilliant!
Bloody hell!
At the end? FTW.
386381+ up ticks,
To those who currently want to forget “Lest we forget” for the sake of a party name, the original long deceased,
https://x.com/dorand1976/status/1783836107999957071
For Mola Mola
https://twitter.com/Believer2202/status/1783936666639667522
Are you sure it’s not a Rock Salmon?
Hammerhead shark?
I am of the opinion that it is an Englishman’s inalienable right ‘to take the piss’…
PS
The North East of England lays claim to the phrase’s origin, citing the urine trade which was seen as an undesirable cargo for sailors working from the River Tyne. Because the city collected urine from public facilities and exported a refined version of it, it was often used as ship’s ballast in place of water – having a resale value at the other end of the journey. Consequently, sailors discussing their cargo in local establishments would genially accuse others reputed to be lying about their cargo of “taking the piss”, or hauling urine.
Sounds plissable, Stephen!
Indeed it is. Given there’s a 100 gallon holding tank on the boat!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4881f9863535249d5c86784ddbb787ba5ab458052a9d74d44604ad19ba3d21e2.jpg
No solar panels? Nice paint job, but surely a bit hot in the summer?
Yes I now have a couple of solar panels which do a great job of running the 3kw inverter and 240v fridge when the outside temperature is 30 C . The boat is insulated and with windows and doors open cools down enough to be able tosleep on those exceptionally hot days (probably no more than 10 a year).
Nice try, but I do believe that you are taking the piss bonny lad.
I too am sort of into small ship owning management…
Top tip: don’t piss in the bilges.
I understand that urine used to be a valued commodity as it was an important ingredient of gunpowder and consequently needeed for defence of the realm and protection of its overseas colonies.
Nowadays, urine is still important as it contains urea which is an essential additive to the exhaust emissions of diesel engines to minimise air pollution. Whilst modern diesel chasses will have a receptacle in the vehicle for the addition of urea it is not advisable to take the piss as a substitute for urea in cleaning up the environment.
In fact it’s quite a relief to know that your bladder emissions would be more fruitfully applied to your compost heap.
Indeed my motor has an Ad Blu tank for the urea which neutralises the Nitrous Oxide emissions to zero…
N₂O 😂
Indeed my motor has an Ad Blu tank for the urea which neutralises the Nitrous Oxide emissions to zero…
It was used in tanning. Tanners used to buy it off the poor – hence the expression “didn’t have a pot to piss in” for extreme poverty. Pissing on one’s compost heap is a necessity!
Urine was essential to the dyeing of cloth for Highland wear whether jackets or kilts. After a church service the male congregation were expected to pee in the bath behind the church. The ultimate product was Tweed.
I seem to remember that dog ‘poo’ was used in the leather trade and had a collectable value. Now we just bag it and bin it. Just where do those small trucks that empty the dog poo bins take it?
Into landfill, probably.
Some people hang it in the trees like Christmas decorations.
We have those people round here.
Urine was collected from all over London too. Then taken by ship up the east coast. But if the North wishes to be associated with urine that’s fine by me. Ghastly place.
Watch it, you ‘bleedin softy suvverner!
Offpiss. :@)
I resemble that remark!
Evening, all. Labour has learned nothing from its disasters since it took office in 1945. Sadly, neither, it appears, has the electorate.
Gullible is hardly strong enough for our justice system… From the DT: Pair charged over deaths of five migrants ‘might be children’
Judge says there is ‘real doubt’ after defendants, initially believed to be 22, tell court they are 15 and 16
Let me guess, that’s what their ‘ooman rites lawyers told ’em to say?
It was interesting that the 3 people the authorities have concentrated on are charged with not having the correct immigration permissions. What about the other 45000 in the last year, I pondered. As Mrs Pea is an immigrant to UK, I am fully aware of the cost and difficulty of legal migration, so it riles me somewhat when illegals are welcomed ashore all expenses paid. For the record, Mrs P will return to her country of origin with me when I need full time care or have been reduced to dust. Long term planning eh!
My mate in Bristol imported his Malaysian wife, and had the devils own job getting her residency, although she was highly educated and had professional work.
When my children emigrated to Australia they had to have viable employment, paid for their healthcare and had to make a substantial contribution to their children’s schooling in the State sector.
Confiscate their phones then and ground them
386481+ up ticks,
Evening KP,
Change the judge for one whos eyesight & brain is not impaired.
Evening Ogg. Glad to see TR won his case but the state has succeeded in harassing him for 6 months and keeping him on the ropes financially. It sends a message to anyone who might consider taking on the establishment view.
Are they also recently converted Christians?
I expect the BF told the judge that they found them walking on water..
And that’s me for bed.
A bit of music to unwind to:-
https://youtu.be/VpteQBGs6O8?si=MFqyDtZEB5kMilA8
Reminiscent to me of Finzi or Ireland.
386481+ up ticks,
Dt,
Rishi Sunak throws red meat to Tory Right as local elections loom,
Fresh from the 3D printer.
386481+ up ticks,
There COULD BE a back lash if the peoples so chose, as in
a hungry fighter has more success, and a fight in the near future is the only viable end game.
https://x.com/tlloydjones/status/1783809358679208125
Given that this year’s harvest is likely to be a disaster in UK, 🎵there might be trouble ahead🎵
386481+ up ticks,
Pillow ponder,
They will have a hard time equalling England in political treacherous top rankers and the consequences of there being put in power.
I jested compulsory lodgering was on the cards, it could very well be a reality.
https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1783908551586468351
Good night chums. Sleep well and see you all in the morning.
Goodnight, Elsie.
You too, Conners – and Kadi.
Goodnight all. Went to the final of the Kathleen Ferrier award at the Wigmore this evening. The judges took an hour and a half to reach their decision to give first prize to the worst singer. There were some enjoyable performances along the way though.
Let me guess. She ticked the diversity boxes?
A he. Fashionably unkempt (unshaven and wearing an ill fitting suit with a jacket that fastened with a tie instead of buttons) with a very nasally tenor voice with no discernible difference in sound and delivery, whatever the music!
My first thought too!
Goodnight, all.
Good morning, all – Saturday’s new page is here.
‘ Morning, Geoff and thank you for all your efforts on our behalf.
Thank you Geoff and a good morning to yourself.