Friday 3 May: Ireland’s border antics make nonsense of the EU’s posturing on Brexit

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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680 thoughts on “Friday 3 May: Ireland’s border antics make nonsense of the EU’s posturing on Brexit”

  2. Good morning all.
    A bit of a dull start, overcast but dry, with little or no wind and an almost warm 7½°C on the Yard Thermometer.
    Dr. Daughter is due to arrive this afternoon so have to get the bed settee sorted and the room tidied up!

    1. Good morning, BoB. Is she the one who is planning to buy a house?

      PS – Sorry, BoB, I just re-read your late post made last night and I see that it is Welder Son who is buying a new house. Apologies.

      1. Her & her boyfriend have already bought a house.
        Previous occupant had moved to a care home and his daughter just wanted rid of the place, so, after she’d taken a small number of his effects, it went on the market with contents.

        They’ve done a huge amount of work to it.

        Ironically, the place Welder son is buying also has a lot of furniture in it!

        1. Well, if the sale goes through and Welder son wants to improve his new home by replacing the old furniture with more modern items, then you might find the “old stuff” valuable as wood for your own fires without the hassle of splitting logs! Lol.

  3. Boris Johnson turned away from polling station after failing to bring correct ID
    Former prime minister caught out by rules he introduced … but is eventually able to cast his vote
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/02/tory-mp-unable-to-vote-photo-id-rules-tom-hunt/

    Boris Johnson was turned away from a polling station on Thursday after failing to bring correct identification, despite having been prime minister when a law mandating voter ID was introduced.

    Mr Johnson attempted to vote in the local elections in South Oxfordshire but was initially turned away because he did not have sufficient proof of identity.

    He is understood to have later returned with the correct ID and been able to cast his vote. A spokesman for the former prime minister said he voted Conservative.

    Wally.

    3. Reportedly, he drew up a list of pros and cons for voting aTory or Liberal Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley before opting to go Green with Ben Holden-Crowther.

    4. Boris is a man who needs a good woman to organise his life. He had one but was stupid enough not to understand that a nubile form is temporary but a class act is permanent.

  4. David Cameron commits £3bn a year in aid to Ukraine ‘for as long as necessary’. 3 May 2024.

    The UK has promised £3bn a year “for as long as it is necessary” to help Ukraine, David Cameron said on Thursday as he made his second visit to Kyiv since becoming UK foreign secretary.

    He also said he had no objection if weapons supplied by the UK were used to strike inside Russia.

    Oh that’s alright then. I’m sure Vlad will understand. It’s a good thing we don’t have roads that need repairing or an NHS incapable of functioning.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/02/david-cameron-commits-3bn-a-year-in-aid-to-ukraine-for-as-long-as-necessary

    2. He clearly wants to be our next peace envoy. He has the same delusional attributes as Blair so it should be a shoo in.

    3. This man is unspeakable. Why, why, why is he doing his utmost to promote WW3?

    4. Nothing for our potholes and crumbling infrastructure then?

      Ukraine is a lost cause. Cameron’s deluded aspirations to obtain a foothold in Odessa have already failed. Russia will take Odessa in the next month or two.

      Cameron has to be the most hapless and dangerous Foreign Secretary of all time.

  5. Good morning, chums. I hope you all slept well, as did I. And I hope you enjoy your day. I was very lucky today with Wordle.

    Wordle 1,049 3/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie and to all, another sunny day for NI, a good gardening session coming up.

    2. Well done, four here

      Wordle 1,049 4/6

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    3. Me too.

      Wordle 1,049 3/6

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  7. Morning All. 11C , sunny intervals, gentle breeze. on the Sussex coast.

  8. Ireland’s border antics make nonsense of the EU’s posturing on Brexit

    It just shows that they can make it up as they go along, all those rules we seem to have obeyed in the past could have been ignored, if they had the will to.

  10. Quite depressing election results,
    People punish Conservatives for behaving like Labour
    Then they vote Labour locally and have to suffer four years of their local council going bust and rates ballooning.
    Those that bother to vote, that is.

    1. I know,, a right mess coming up with another bunch of incompetents in charge of local affairs.

      1. Probably.
        Blackpool has been the dumping ground for difficult social housing tenants for years. Difficult being alcoholics and druggies.

      2. There’s a massive underclass there; a big problem with drugs too. Blackpool has seriously nosedived in the last 20-30 years.

    3. The instructive thing is the appalling turn out figures – Blackpool was just 32%.

      1. When Blair won in 1997 it was the lowest turnout ever. That guy has had waaay too much influence on our country. And his repulsive wife.

      2. When Blair won in 1997 it was the lowest turnout ever. That guy has had waaay too much influence on our country. And his repulsive wife.

    4. I think the results are encouraging – but not encouraging enough. I am hoping that the majority of abstainers and those who voted Conservative will now see that the party is truly over.

      Nobody must vote for the Conservative Party ever again and until and unless a better party emerges they must give Reform a chance. Is there another option?

    5. But to a large extent they don’t vote. The victorious Labour candidate in Blackpool South secured fewer votes than the beaten Labour candidate did in the 2019 GE.

    1. Jocks who continue to insist that having a wee pretendy parliament is, somehow, good for them and their country, deserve all they get from these cretins.

        2. Maybe, Spikey, but they have more MPs in the UK parliament than any other party.

          3. Ah I see where you’re coming from now – I misread your post – Scottish party!

      2. Once you’ve been First Minister, once you aren’t it any longer apparently you get £52k a year every year as a “pension”.. it’s almost worth pretending you care, and getting the job – definitely nice work for thems that can get it.

  13. 386784+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Proving a point, you cannot keep a good lemming down in their never ending search for a cliff.

    Seemingly the night of THE LONG KNIVES is being re-enacted for anyone missing it first time round.

    Those that initially introduced the long knife wielders to these Isles, yet another 771 potentials touched down on the dover invasion beach head on Wednesday, are still finding favour in the polling stations.

    Surely that tells one that it matters NOT whos child gets the chop as long as it is not ones own.

    Local election results 2024 live: Labour make early gains on ‘difficult’ night for Tories

    Realistically at this moment in time every every upright
    ( lamp posts etc ) construct on the route to the polling stations countrywide should be sporting a NOOSE, a well meant warning
    in regards to political future actions.

    Local election results 2024 live: Labour make early gains on ‘difficult’ night for Tories

  15. Good morning. Slate grey skies and dampening yet again.

    Sunak is the anti Midas, whose touch turns everything to the brown stuff. From the DT:

    The Conservatives have lost the Blackpool South by-election to Labour, beating Reform UK to second place with just over 100 votes. The swing from the Conservatives to Labour in the Blackpool South by-election was just over 26 per cent, the third-largest since the Second World War. Keir Starmer hailed a “seismic win” as Labour took the seat from the Tories with a 7,607 vote landslide majority, winning 58.9 per cent of the vote.

    Reform’s 16.9 per cent vote share was the largest in its history as Richard Tice’s party came just 117 votes behind the Conservatives. He told The Telegraph that it was “onwards and upwards” for his party, which has steadily gained in the polls over the last year. “We are delighted with our best Reform vote to date, way above our national polling average. We are rapidly becoming the real opposition to Labour in the north and Midlands as the socialist Tories sink in the polls. Onwards and upwards,” he said.

    1. Morning, Paul. Continuing (four days now) of wall-to-wall blue skies, here, are being tempered a little by a fresh breeze. 13ºC at 0700hrs.

        1. Spring in Scandinavia cannot be beaten. Over a 2-3 day period, all leaves are back on the trees, bright green & fresh; flowers start erupting, sunshine…

  17. SIR – Geoff Blackman (Letters, May 2) seems to have forgotten the intense pressure people were put under to be vaccinated against Covid in 2021. He describes a decision based only on personal risk analysis, which was simply not the case.

    The risk was heavily exaggerated for younger age groups, with Government advertising designed to instil fear. We have evidence of this intention in Matt Hancock’s Whatsapps: “We frighten the pants off everyone”.

    Then there was the near-universal condemnation of “the unvaccinated”, which amounted to a form of coercion. We should not forget that questions were being asked such as “should the unvaccinated be denied hospital treatment?”, or “should unvaccinated relatives be invited for Christmas?”

    Joanna Evans
    Nantgaredig,
    Carmarthenshire

    “Government advertising designed to instil fear?”. “We frighten the pants off everyone.” Fear was only ‘instilled’ in the brain-dead. The pants were only frightened off the hard-of-thinking. Anyone possessing a single molecule of brain-power knew that vaccines have only — throughout modern history — been used to protect an individual against contracting a disease.

    It has never, historically, been claimed that subjecting yourself to a vaccine will protect those around you! Please explain to me in standard, easily-assimilated, English: how the fuck does that work?

      1. I simply do not believe this propaganda bollocks called ‘herd immunity’. Having a vaccine to protect you against the effects of a virus (which is omnipresent during an epidemic) doesn’t stop that virus from being on your skin, on your clothes, your furniture, and around you. Being vaccinated will not stop those circulating viruses affecting those who you are in close contact with.

        It’s the same with masks. Those cotton monstrosities that most people wore — thinking that they protected them from breathing in the virus — were not just made of an unsuitably flimsy material (with their mesh several thousands of times wider than a virus), they did not cover the eyes! Apart from the silliness of that making it impossible to see; no one considered that the tear ducts, which drain directly into the nasal passage, provide the easiest direct route for a virus to enter the system.

        All the propaganda was transparently idiotic; you had to be severely deranged not to see through it.

        1. People were frightened and kept so by an incompetent and stupid government desperate for power and publicity.

          1. I wasn’t frightened. I used my powerful thought processes to see right through the crap.

        2. So just to add, our stupid governments have obviously allowed millions of people into the UK who have never been vaccinated in their homelands.
          I seem to remember having to have certain vaccination certificates before being allowed to emigrate to Australia.
          And let’s be honest the vaccines against covid were obviously not vaccinations as we know it or are led to believe, the jabs just didn’t work.

      2. I simply do not believe this propaganda bollocks called ‘herd immunity’. Having a vaccine to protect you against the effects of a virus (which is omnipresent during an epidemic) doesn’t stop that virus from being on your skin, on your clothes, your furniture, and around you. Being vaccinated will not stop those circulating viruses affecting those who you are in close contact with.

        It’s the same with masks. Those cotton monstrosities that most people wore — thinking that they protected them from breathing in the virus — were not just made of an unsuitably flimsy material (with their mesh several thousands of times wider than a virus), they did not cover the eyes! Apart from the silliness of that making it impossible to see; no one considered that the tear ducts, which drain directly into the nasal passage, provide the easiest direct route for a virus to enter the system.

        All the propaganda was transparently idiotic; you had to be severely deranged not to see through it.

      3. I had all three jabs in 2021, had the disease in 2022 (albeit mildly). I’m sure that I was capable of spreading it, which is why a dinner was postponed on account of the age of those attending.

        1. I had covid before vaccines were available. Like a heavy cold/mild flu. Never took a vaccine after flu shot some years ago, after which I was sicker than a dog. Never again.

      4. I had all three jabs in 2021, had the disease in 2022 (albeit mildly). I’m sure that I was capable of spreading it, which is why a dinner was postponed on account of the age of those attending.

    2. Most people still believe what government tells them, and so put a lot of pressure on those around them to get the shot. Doesn’t work for me & mine, we’re too skeptical.

      1. You and yours are sceptical, Paul, because you possess functioning brains.

      2. I’m also a skeptic and full on. 😉
        I don’t think I have ever hated so much, what certain people and the things they do in the whole of my life.

      3. Half the population is sub average intelligence. That such people are allowed to affect the lives of others is idiotic.

          1. According to YouGov, only 2% think they are below average intelligence

            I suspect that this poll was conducted amongst the staff and clients of YouGov. Their poll results prove it.

    3. They have always used the herd immunity argument to get people to have their children vaccinated against measles mumps, rubella, whooping cough, polio etc etc.

      1. ‘Herd immunity’ is fiction. See my response to Stig’s post, below.

        FFS, if having a vaccination protects ‘those around you’, why were ‘those around you’ also urged to have a vaccination?

        1. I think people were rather reluctant to announce that they had not had the jab, not because they were frightened but because they wanted to avoid attention.

          Caroline and I have not been Covid jabbed. We take zinc and Vitamin D which seems to have boosted our immunity as we get far fewer colds than we used to get.

          Who else on this forum is happy to state that they have not been Covid jabbed – or that if they have had a Covid jab that they wish they had not succumbed to the evil propaganda?

          1. Same here with the vit D, Rastus. No cold since I started some years ago.

          2. When my GP asked me if I would take the injected poison I told him that under no circumstances was he to ask me again. He has never attempted to.

            I have personally had no problem in telling people that I have not, nor shall ever, succumb to being injected with an experimental potion.

          4. I regret having the Covid jabs. I have a number of sub-clinical problems related to the vascular system which ‘coincidentally’ started after having the third ‘booster’ jab. Never had a jab since, and will never again have an mRNA-based jab now that I am aware of the damage that they can do to you.

          5. I regret having the Covid jabs. I have a number of sub-clinical problems related to the vascular system which ‘coincidentally’ started after having the third ‘booster’ jab. Never had a jab since, and will never again have an mRNA-based jab now that I am aware of the damage that they can do to you.

          6. When the government indemnified Big Pharma I decided to do some research. When I found that all the animals Pfizer had tested its “vaccine” on had died we decided not to have the jab under any circumstances.

      2. ‘Herd immunity’ is fiction. See my response to Stig’s post, below.

        FFS, if having a vaccination protects ‘those around you’, why were ‘those around you’ also urged to have a vaccination?

    4. Yes, they were really tin-pot nasty about it. Remember how young people were threatened with being excluded from venues if they weren’t vaccinated: football stadiums, concerts etc. And this was when there was plenty of evidence that young people were unaffected by Covid. I have utter contempt for these people.

    5. Yes, they were really tin-pot nasty about it. Remember how young people were threatened with being excluded from venues if they weren’t vaccinated: football stadiums, concerts etc. And this was when there was plenty of evidence that young people were unaffected by Covid. I have utter contempt for these people.

    6. The more the state forces the more effort must be put in to ignoring it.

      It was so farcical it’s a meme now: You don’t have to be vaccinated. That’s your choice…

      But if you don’t we’ll close your bank account, steal your savings, prevent you buying a house, prevent you selling a house, inform your employer, prevent you from using the NHS, police, welfare, using airports, driving, gong to any gym and face it, we’ll paint a plague sign on your door. If you don’t do it, we’ll force you to.

    2. Russia was an easy scapegoat. ‘Busy troubled minds with foreign quarrels’ and all that.

    3. Russia was an easy scapegoat. ‘Busy troubled minds with foreign quarrels’ and all that.

    1. Sounds like Tony Martin who was repeatedly targeted by pikey gangs, plod did nothing and Martin snapped.

    2. The DT is very much playing the sympathy card for the guy who was shot! Pictures of him and his distraught mother, where he went to school and ‘murder’ being bandied about. What happened to balanced reporting?

        1. That’s always a giveaway. They know the comments would be 99% “inappropriate”.

    1. Cut sodding spending you stupid, miserable, useless, gormless, arrogant, incompetent and maleolent useless FOOL!

      1. Also, stop importing millions of legal and illegal immigrants, which are a net drain on the economy

    2. Cut sodding spending you stupid, miserable, useless, gormless, arrogant, incompetent and maleolent useless FOOL!

    4. Ah, “failed to rule out”. Those words can be used to attribute any outrageous idea to a politician e.g. “Prime Minister, will you rule out scrapping all benefits to unemployed people?” Headlines next day – “PM fails to rule out making millions of people destitute”.

  21. 386784+ up ticks,

    SOD sunak and his ilk they never were working to benefit these Isles, far from it.

    What they and their current supporters have done is left the decent peoples of these Isles wide open to 24 / 7 abuse of the worst kind, up until the islamic take over.

    The lab party are the real killing arm of the coalition the tories (ino) are the bullet makers.

    Rishi Sunak’s future at risk as Tories face worst local election results in 30 years
    Critics will use crushing Blackpool South defeat to Labour as an example of how the Prime Minister has failed the Conservative Party

    1. Sunak and any replacement that is brought in is a complete irrelevance.

      1. 386784+ up ticks,

        Morning R,

        I do not believe it is of any consequence who the leader is
        Tis the party name that is the magnet pull,REGARDLESS of consequence as proven.

        1. The worst thing about these election results is that the Conservatives have not been completely wiped out.

          While the corpse is blocking the charnel house it is holding up the building of something better to replace t.

          1. 386784+ up ticks,

            R,
            Regarding the voting pattern, the fools, sorry, voters believe they have found something better in the shape of the lab cartel.

            lab =
            Mass illegals, mass paedophilia activist,
            R us also

  22. Police investigate Laurence Fox ‘upskirting’ tweet. 3 May 2024.

    Police are investigating a social media post by Laurence Fox in relation to an “upskirting offence”.

    The tweet, posted on Tuesday, featured a compromising image of Narinder Kaur, a broadcaster on Good Morning Britain and GB News. The post remained on Fox’s account until it was deleted on Thursday.

    This man is his own worst enemy!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/02/police-investigate-laurence-fox-upskirting-tweet-narinder-kaur

  23. Good day all and the 77th,

    Dreich at the McPhee’s. Wind in the West, 8℃, 12℃ this afternoon. It’s hardly May weather, is it?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/196c69f985613790a6d1ef03b1309d95aaf64f0dc69c4bb0360553770e3bb3dc.png

    With the turn-out in the by-election a miserable 32.5%, it’s hardly as described, a landslide win. It’s surely more a case of Conservative voters boycotting the party.

    A ‘Hampshire Independent’ got my vote in the local council election and someone declaring himself to be from the ‘Justice and Anti-Corruption Party’ got my vote in the county Police and Crime Commissioner election. I’ve done my bit to help to deliver a kicking.

    1. You’re lucky! My house is in cloud and I can’t see beyond the gardens for mist.

      1. You see, whilst Terpsi was on Olympus trying to bring you sunshine, Aeolus the God of fog and keeper of the winds turned up. Terpsi will ask Aether, one of the primordial God’s to tell Aeolus to clear off and then your house won’t be surrounded in mists and you’ll see your garden .
        Muses are divine entities here to serve 😁

    2. Bet you the Tories refuse to consider Reform a problem and will waffle on about how bad it is and how important ‘the plan’ has helped Blackpool.

  24. Ha! Reform only 100 votes behind the Conservatives in the Blackpool by election. Watch out Sanook…….beware the Ides of May

      1. Well I hoped he’d win there as well. Hoping is not the same as expecting as anyone who buys a lottery ticket knows!

        1. The good thing about this election is that it shows that the Conservative Party is finished and not worth voting for any more.

          Maybe the penny has finally dropped and come the general election the Conservatives will be completely wiped out.

    2. Let us hope that this will show the voters that the Conservatives are definitely the past. Now that it is fatally wounded it must be put out of its misery and euthanised. Britain needs a party of the future which is well to the right of centre. The country does not need or want the Conservative Party any more.

      I am not sure that Reform is the answer – but its rhetoric is conservative which is more than be said of the leftish Conservative Party.

      Reform must not even dream of making a pact with the Conservative Party. I hope that Tice has learnt his lesson – the Conservatives betrayed the Brexit Party and lumbered UK with a flawed deal surrendering Northern Ireland and fishing to the EU.

  25. Ha! Reform only 100 votes behind the Conservatives in the Blackpool by election. Watch out Sanook…….beware the Ides of May

  26. The rain has started. What a difference a day makes. It is cold and wet and dark and horrible here.

    1. And here. The night was bad, the morning’s been bad and I could comfortably blow the whole damned planet up and not feel a damned flicker about it.

  27. If the Conservative party is to have any chance at all at the forthcoming General Election or even just limit the damage, it really has to pick this up and make it stick.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/40705e6d2a90a146d22e42220c22ed76e37ad4684219832ee25432123b3c64b2.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/02/keir-starmer-has-just-admitted-labour-are-the-party-of-open/

    The new Left – an entirely different entity from the patriotic socialists of the past – doesn’t believe in boundaries of any sort. The new Left seeks a world where everyone – except the “oppressors” – can have what they want, whether that’s higher benefits, a change of gender, or to move to our country from anywhere in the world. The new Left dismiss concerns that such a liberal approach will be abused, outraged at the suggestion that migrants – like anyone else – might seek to exploit loopholes and weaknesses in the law. In this, they fundamentally misunderstand human nature. It is simply not possible for a society to be free or safe, or for the vulnerable to be protected, without clear boundaries that are consistently upheld.

    I have every confidence that it will not take the shots at the open goal.

    1. So are the damned Tories! Yes, exactly as you’ve said, that is what your own damned party seems to believe in. You, the entire state machine and the useless wasters in Labour.

      You’re all the damned same. You’ve done nothing. Nothing whatsoever to stop the invasion and race replacement of this country.

  28. If the Conservative party is to have any chance at all at the forthcoming General Election or even just limit the damage, it really has to pick this up and make it stick.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/40705e6d2a90a146d22e42220c22ed76e37ad4684219832ee25432123b3c64b2.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/02/keir-starmer-has-just-admitted-labour-are-the-party-of-open/

    The new Left – an entirely different entity from the patriotic socialists of the past – doesn’t believe in boundaries of any sort. The new Left seeks a world where everyone – except the “oppressors” – can have what they want, whether that’s higher benefits, a change of gender, or to move to our country from anywhere in the world. The new Left dismiss concerns that such a liberal approach will be abused, outraged at the suggestion that migrants – like anyone else – might seek to exploit loopholes and weaknesses in the law. In this, they fundamentally misunderstand human nature. It is simply not possible for a society to be free or safe, or for the vulnerable to be protected, without clear boundaries that are consistently upheld.

    I have every confidence that it will not take the shots at the open goal.

  29. Morning all 🙂😊
    What a horrible day it is out there.
    And the weather’s pretty awful as well.
    I see that the London wrecker and his team are back in place. Can we all imagine what our parents and grandparents would be thinking at this moment in time. Especially after their own friends and family lost their lives saving our culture and social structure from possible invasion. I not only dispare. I’m afraid for the futures of all of our grandchildren.

    1. Khan gets imposed by the muslim voting bloc. Same as Labour do. He win by mass voter fraud, nothing else.

      I include the deliberate pollution of this country in colossal numbers by the alien as voter fraud.

  30. Leibour are crowing about the Blackpool South “gain”. Turnout was about 31%. The “massive swing” reported, was really towards apathy rather than Leibour.

    1. Fear not, the outgoing Conservative at Thurrock has declared the problem. Having said that people need a reason to vote for Conservatives he has it all in two words: change Sunak. Sunak’s not a good campaigner apparently. Anything else? Nope.

      Basically a better salesman would do. Rolls eyes towards ceiling 🙄…

      1. They refuse to acknowledge the problem. It’s not Sunak. It’s the entire ethos. Boris hiked corporation tax to remain aligned with the hated EU. What has Sunak done? He took the credit for inflation – which he caused. He’s destroyed energy generating capacity. He’s pushed the ‘climate change’ tax scam. He’s made living and working in this country harder than ever by refusing to do what must be done because it is politically unpalatable and because his entire party is dedicated to declinist, pro EU spite.

        1. They wouldn’t see the problem even if it jumped up and smacked them in the chops frankly.

          Sunak, as even he knows has little or no control over inflation. Cheers up though. Starmer’s demanding an immediate general election having just won the by election, in order to, and I quote, “stop the decline”.

    2. Fear not, the outgoing Conservative at Thurrock has declared the problem. Having said that people need a reason to vote for Conservatives he has it all in two words: change Sunak. Sunak’s not a good campaigner apparently. Anything else? Nope.

      Basically a better salesman would do. Rolls eyes towards ceiling 🙄…

  31. Leibour are crowing about the Blackpool South “gain”. Turnout was about 31%. he “massive swing” reported, was really towards apathy rather than Leibour.

    1. “Murder”? That’s a stretch. On the strength of this clip this speaker affords far to much deity like reverence to government.

      1. He seems rather pointing out that the government is a deceitful pile of fools determined to cheat the public.

      2. 386784+ up ticks,

        Morning AAL,
        I believe him to be referring to “A government” this collection of political miscreants is nowhere near being of that status.

        In my book corporate murder looms large within the issue.

        1. Fair comment. I would have to hear more from the speaker but I am not convinced from this extract. It’s not the slam dunk as Ms Dowding suggests.

  33. I have an old car, a 1987 2CV, which makes a far better contribution to Net Zero and local employment than if it were scrapped and replaced every three years with a swish electric SUV favoured by London’s New Labour “business-friendly” champagne socialists.

    Sadiq Khan therefore fines me £12.50 for every day I drive it in Greater London to visit my 98-year-old mother. I last saw her therefore in September 2022 on my way home from Poland to see the dentist. I suppose I could go by train, but it’s £75 for a return fare from Malvern, and there is always the problem of finding somewhere to stay in a capital that is only hospitable to people of colour.

    She does not think a lot of ULEZ, but did not go out to vote, fearful of falling over on the way back from the polling station.

    How would her vote have shifted Khan? Voting Conservative in today’s mood is a waste of space, and she never heard from Susan Hall. Nobody else could shift Khan.

    I don’t have any grandchildren. My estranged son and daughter have no intention of providing me with any. Breeding is for Muslims.

    1. That’s about it. In my view the average voting Londoner is a deluded metro, so despite being in a minority will always call the shots. There are simply not enough reasons to vote Conservative and so most will simply stay at home.

      In common with most of the party that Con candidate, Hall, didn’t really have a handle on things. Her pitch was vote for me and I’ll overturn ULEZ: a protest vote in other words. Research shows that Londoners’ real chief concern is cost of living and ULEZ is well down the list. If she’d had the nous to link ULEZ to cost of living then at least that’d have been a start, but no. In keeping with CCHQ policy she was out of touch, lacked personal gravitas, a poor campaigner and most of all appears to have a hide as thick as a mammoth’s.

      Result: 1st place NOTA, 2nd Labour, 3rd Con. Didn’t see that coming

      1. I don’t understand how people can not see the cost of energy, fuel and transport as the biggest impactor on cot of living. The state keeps the lie that it’s all the oil companies/energy companies/supermarkets but that’s utter BS. The fault is entirely, solely and completely the responsibility of government.

        This is why when that runt rodent Sunak stands up and says ‘we’ve got inflation down’ he’s lying. He is the reason it spiked. Oh, he blames Ukraine but ensures the press never discuss other nations that are not cripplingly indebted, massively overspending and devaluing their currencies,

        1. Yes, all true. It’s a measure of how dull our political class has become. They’re all flim flam merchants currently. I’m sure they all realise they’re telling lies, but as long as people give them some sort of imprimatur every 5-years they’ll keep claiming that they have a “mandate” from the people.

    2. You should visit your poor old mum. And make an effort to reconnect with your estranged children.

    3. Good morning Jeremy, and everyone. I understand the economics, but there will come a day when even paying a million pounds would not allow you to see your lovely Mum. Railcard? Coach ticket? Drive and park on the ULEZ outskirts and take communal transport for the last lap?

    4. On my London walk yesterday I passed a polling station in Kidsgrove. Heaving. Your mention of ‘people of colour’ gave me a little chuckle, yes there were plenty of those there casting their vote for their beloved leader.

      1. I once went through Kidsgrove on the train. A grim looking place.

          1. Thank you! The fact that Tom has removed the joke makes me look a bit of a loon!

  35. “[Bush v. Gore] was the first presidential election of the twenty-first century.” No, Kirsty, it was the last one of the twentieth century. Don’t you know the difference between ordinal and cardinal numbers?

  36. I imagine Fishi will be out and about boasting that the Tories have “turned the corner” and that the “only way is up”….

    2. He’s turned so many corners he’s worn the roundabout a new lane. Under his and Labour policies the only way is further down.

    3. The meandering will end up with the Cons cut off in a political ox bow lake.

  37. Good morning all .

    The current dull weather is proof that that the country is in a very dire state of health .

    I do hope our area retains it’s colours .

    I cannot bear the thought of a Starmer led government .

    Why doesn’t he blow his nose .

    1. He’d still be a nasal bore. He has nothing to say Everything those fools do is wrong because they don’t understand that they’re parasites, not producers. Frustratingly, they think they matter.

    2. It was bad enough to have one new Labour MP this morning crowing about what a Lab government is going to do. I can’t bear the thought of the media coverage the day after the next election. May have to have a news blackout for a week or ten.

    1. Give over. They’ll get away with it, as they always do. Nothing will happen. The sewage will get promotions, backhanders, the brown envelopes will keep flowing, the corruption, grift and graft will carry on. No one will face any penalty or punishment whatsoever.

      What *WILL* happen is this: those people demanding a semblance of justice, of decency, of an apology will be destroyed, utterly and completely by the machine. If not directly then exhausted through the courts, through intentionally inefficient process, through bought judges. I imagine right now some scum MP is finding this woman’s address to arrange a plod visit using the big door key.

      They’re evil. Relentless and they do it using our money.

      1. 386784+ up ticks,

        Morning W,
        Then that leaves two options
        consent or quit,I still believe there are enough NON lab/lib/con coalition, pro eu 48% voters to fight against this daily murderous shite.
        Looking back we never did, as a nation go into a world war prepared.

      2. Families of people who died after Covid vaccination abandon attempt to sue AstraZeneca

        Lawyers believe pharmaceutical firm could be covered for people who received jab after April 7 2021 because leaflet noted rare side effecta

        Investigations team
        2 May 2024 • 7:08pm

        Families whose loved ones died after taking the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine have abandoned attempts to sue the pharmaceutical giant after being told that they were likely to lose.

        Gareth Eve and other families whose relatives were harmed after having the jab have pulled out of the High Court case after being told that they would be unlikely to succeed with their claims because a leaflet issued at the height of the pandemic warned of a rare side effect associated with the vaccine.

        The document, given out at vaccination centres, said that “extremely rare cases of blood clots with low levels of platelets have been observed following vaccination with Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca”.

        Legal experts believe that this could potentially protect the pharmaceutical firm against cases brought by families whose relatives were given a dose supplied after April 7 2021.

        In total, 12 families have now dropped out of the legal action.

        More than 50 are still suing the pharmaceutical giant in the High Court, however, because their vaccines were supplied before the warning about blood clots was added to the patient safety leaflets.

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/02/bereaved-families-abandon-sue-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine/

        1. I had the two Astra Zeneca jabs and developed blood clots in the legs diagnosed as peripheral arterial disease. I am not prepared to go to law as i could lose everything. I have put in a claim with the Government for vaccine damage.

        2. Were patients given a copy of the safety leaflet and time to read it properly before the injections were administered?

        3. Were patients given a copy of the safety leaflet and time to read it properly before the injections were administered?

  39. I ring her up every day, and all attempts to reconnect over the years are rebuffed. “Should” is easy to write.

    1. Get on a coach and go and visit your dear old mum. My mother died last year and I’d love to be able to see her again. You’ll be glad you did and so will she.

  40. And yesterday I thought that I wouldn’t need the stove again until the back end.

    1. Background temp 10⁰C here today but crucially next to no need. It was the wind a week or two ago caused us to relight the fire for a few days. It’ll stay off for now but only if the cold wind doesn’t blow.

      I don’t think we’re about to get a 1976 again, but apart from the wet it wasn’t too dissimilar back then was it. It snowed in the morning on June 2nd for 30-mins that time.

      A poor attempt to cheer you up, I realise!

  42. True…..but well worth the effort, surely? Children can doubtless be stubborn, but you are still their father.

  43. Good Moaning.
    If you are a duck or a slug.
    Or a Labour council candidate.

      1. Ten days ago for the first time in many years I listened to Tubular Bells, and recognised the voice of Vivian Stanshall.

  44. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/03/local-elections-rishi-sunak-tories-worst-results-30-years/

    Don’t understand this. MPs ousted Truss who presented truly Conservative policies for the first time in 20 years. Tory Mps imposed Sunak and Hunt. They’ve fully supported the intentional, enforced declinism, the refusal to reject the EU, the refusal to cut taxes, the big state, Left wing , high welfare , anti business, pro EU agenda. Now they want to get rid of Sunak?

    Do they think they’re somehow not responsible? Do they think that it’s all down to him, when they set about removing the member elected leader?

    A bunch of sewage. Nasty, cretinous, back stabbing, selfish, spoiled, wretched effluent. The dogs poo more useful things than politicians.

      1. I will find it. I doubt much will as this morning the Warqueen and I argued which set Oscar off which had me tell him to stop which the Warqueen ignored and encouraged which set Mongo off which upset Junior.

    2. Absolutely spot on, especially the last paragraph.
      But greedy as well they take home many, many millions a year in expenses..

    3. We want your vote for a new type of Conservative government…

      Number Six: You won’t get it.
      Number Two: By hook or by crook, we will.
      Number Six: Who are you?
      Number Two: The new Number Two.
      Number Six: Who is Number One?
      Number Two: You are Number Six.

        1. He use to pop into my local pub occasionally, he was a free man.
          The Adam and Eve Ridgeway NW7. He lived in a large house almost opposite Mill Hill School.

        2. Fondly remembered. I confess to having that theme as ringtone on my phone.

  47. Bingo!
    Wordle 1,049 3/6

    ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  48. Well no. I could try identifying as one of aforementioned approved victim groups I suppose.

  49. Because you’ve been given a DIE slot by the BBC, you think you can tell us how to live. Go back to Kenya if you want to babble on in Swahili. Only English spoken here and don’t you try to change our language, you jungle-bunny.

    BBC presenter says calling animals by their English names is ‘jarring’

    Gillian Burke says she prefers to refer to them by their traditional Swahili names rather than those commonly used

    Telegraph Reporters
    2 May 2024 • 4:59pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/05/02/TELEMMGLPICT000274484173_17146651447610_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Burke grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, and moved to Austria at the age of 10
    Gillian Burke grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, and moved to Austria at the age of 10 CREDIT: PETE DADDS/BBC

    Calling wild African animals by their English names is “jarring”, a Springwatch presenter has said.

    Gillian Burke said she prefers to refer to animals by their traditional Swahili names rather than those commonly used in the BBC’s acclaimed nature programmes.

    But the biologist acknowledged naming animals can be a “useful tool for storytelling”, as is often done by Springwatch with Freya the Golden Eagle among others.

    Writing in BBC Wildlife magazine, Burke said: “The English names for east Africa’s iconic wildlife – so heavily featured in natural history films and in this magazine – jar, at least to my ear.

    “In my own writing, I prefer re-introducing these familiar animals by their Swahili names: ndovu (elephant), twiga (giraffe), fisi (hyena) and my personal favourite, because I used to love how my dad said it, kongoni (hartebeest).”

    Burke said Swahili was itself a combination of other languages and she would have to “dig deeper” to find the “true indigenous animal names”.

    Swahili is regarded as Africa’s most internationally recognised language.

    The presenter grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, and moved to Austria at age 10. She studied biology at Bristol University, afterwards becoming a natural history researcher and later a producer.

    Burke first appeared on Springwatch in 2017 and became a regular presenter alongside Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan, and Megan McCubbin.

    Inequality in naming
    She added: “Perhaps it is this inequality in who gets to do the naming, and the sense that we are unwittingly wielding some form of power by naming wild animals.”

    The presenter did acknowledge that “naming animals is a useful tool for storytelling”.

    She added: “It can help audiences connect with our animal characters and allows us to share experiences on social media.

    “But naming is not just useful for us media luvvies, of course.

    “Pet owners will know that naming is one of the first rituals that marks our bond with our companion animals.

    “In science, the binomial system of Latin names serves as an anchor point.

    “No matter where scientists are in the world, they know they are talking about the same species.

    “All this is well and good, but … what we call living things matters.”

    1. They closed the comments! Not one positive for the deluded race baiter!

    2. I’ve read the article and I think she’s talking about the personalised or pet names given to individual animals in nature programme narratives. Perhaps I’m mistaken but I don’t think this about species names.

    3. How come ‘blackface’ is not OK but ‘white hair’ is fine?

      2. It’s free speech, innit? Any vacblac can say what they want, but we aren’t allowed to reply.

          2. It could be that I am a little over sensitive I suppose but had it been aimed at me I would not have like it. People have feelings which are sometimes not rational when they are not 100%

          3. I can certainly understand that.

            Bill Thomas was very annoyed with me yesterday when i gave him a downvote for rubbishing my post about harnesses being better than leads for dogs. @)

          5. Actually, as I wrote above, it can be useful to have a bit of repetition. We aren’t all glued to our laptops all day (well, some may be, but that is their choice).

      2. Not all of us can ( or wish to) spend all our waking hours online. I, for one hadn’t seen this, and was glad it was posted. If you have already seen something, nobody is stopping you from scrolling on.

        1. “Not all of us can ( or wish to) spend all our waking hours online. “

          It’s always worth looking at the late contributions on here to see if someone has posted some of the next day’s DT articles.

          1. I’m afraid I am often in bed by the time the late contributions come in!

    6. When I first became a field ornithologist (birder/bird-ringer) I learnt all the Latin (Linnaean) names for birds, as well as for some mammals, insects and plant species, since they are all unique for each species and used universally around the globe.

      That way you cannot be confused between, say, the huge Black Vulture Aegypius monachus in Mediterranean regions and the smaller Black Vulture Coragyps atratus in the USA.

    8. Perhaps someone should explain to the silly girl that we use English words for these animals because, living in England, we speak English, not some African tribal language.

      1. Does she want all countries that have their own names for these animals to change the names, or just the UK? The vacuous “wielding some form of power” comment would indicate that it is the latter.

        And what about animals that live in several countries, with different names? Stupid woman. Edit: or should that be “mwanamke mpumbavu” as she originated in Kenya?

    9. There’s nothing wrong with using the Swahili names when in Africa – but we live in England and the BBC is supposed to be in English!

      1. My colleagues in Bombay insist on calling it Bombay, not Mumbai.

        It is ridiculous. We don’t call Cologne “Koeln”, etc.

  51. Morning to all. Gloomy day in more ways than just the weather but entirely predictable. Although I do find it rather depressing that the same evil is to continue to wreck London as its mayor. My MP is Gillian Keegan who is Secretary of State for Education. I was thinking of writing/complaining to her about the utter uselessness of the Tories dwelling, or so it seems, in their mountain redoubt of delusion and. specifically, on her part, to do something about purging, the left wing students now trying to ape their American counterparts occupying university property. But then I thought, what’s the bloody point ? All I would get, at the most, is a form letter of self congratulations on her part about what a magnificent MP she was toiling in the gloom of parliament, totally dedicated to her constituents as she, in fact, screwed us and the rest of the country over. So here I sit with a F***k it attitude to domestic politics with the simple thought, long my they all rot.

    Meanwhile here is an interesting video about a Canadian family that have emigrated to Russia. What is most instructive about it is the plain nasty propaganda leveled about them by the Western media, demonstrating, I feel, clearly who are the real villains in this conflict. It isn’t Putin and it isn’t the Russians.

    Family of 10 Leaves Canada for ‘Economic Opportunities’ in Russia
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ay_QBFGtwg&t=51s

    2. If I lived in a dictatorship such as Canada, I’d move elsewhere too. Probably not Russia though! Switzerland would be my choice.

    3. A great many White South Africans have moved to Russia for the farming. It’s safer.

      1. I remember hearing about the offer from Russia but obviously our media don’t want to report anything positive about either white south Africans or Russia.

      2. Hi Araminta! Yes, I’m aware of that. The Russian government actively recruited them, 500 of them if I recall correctly.

  52. Donald Tusk says that Poland’s GDP per capita will exceed ours by 2030. I wish them well, but I don’t see how this can be achieved without mass immigration.

    1. Use of machine power, not muscle power. Creating items with real value, not cardboard crap.

    2. Donald Tusk should remember that Poland was in receipt of approximately the same amounts in billions as the UK contributions to the EU over decades.

    3. Mass immigration would increase GDP, but is unlikely to increase GDP per capita as – if the UK is anything to go by – a huge proportion of the incomers will not be contributing, hence the per capita decreases.

      1. Just had a thought – maybe our GDP per capita will decrease even more quickly than his…

  53. I’m not a Covid conspiracy theorist. I was right

    Complacent pundits monstered those of us who questioned the lockdowns. They’ve gone quiet now

    ALLISON PEARSON • 2 May 2024 • 6:11pm

    My mother has a sweet habit of keeping all my cuttings – columns, reviews of books. In the unlikely event that anyone should ever need to lay their hands on a Pearson opus from 1999, they will find it neatly filed in a bungalow in Carmarthenshire.

    A couple of weeks ago, Mum alerted me to a piece by Janice Turner in The Times on the subject of motherhood. Turner, whose writing Mum admires, kindly mentioned the impact my novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It, had on shaping policy for working women with children.

    Mum was pleased, but also worried that Janice had rather taken the shine off the compliment by adding that Pearson used to be good before “her latter swerve into populism and Covid conspiracies”.

    Let it go, I thought. Janice Turner was hardly unique in doing nothing to challenge lockdown and other Covid measures which have left Britain both broke and broken. Most of our trade, journalism, either fell shamefully silent during that period or actively egged on the Government to close schools for longer, to have people arrested for sunbathing, to introduce vaccine passports and other authoritarian measures which it is the job of a free press to challenge. Or so I thought.

    The few of us who continued to ask, “Why?” after the imposition of frankly bonkers rules (or was it “guidance”, Matt Hancock?) were routinely reviled, even threatened. Peter Hitchens, Toby Young, Julia Hartley-Brewer and I were some of the names on a so-called fact-checking website convened by Neil O’Brien, the Conservative MP for Harborough, which set out to shame “Covid cranks and dangerous conspiracy theorists”.

    It got worse. Sceptics like me who wondered, for example, why fathers were banned from attending the births of their own babies or why one devastated daughter was told off for not wearing a mask and gloves as she went to kiss the brow of her dying father and was marched smartly out of the room before Dad took his last breath, were called “murderers”.

    Challenging Professor Sunetra Gupta, probably our greatest epidemiologist (and world-renowned expert in coronaviruses), who said that the old and the vulnerable must be protected while everyone else got on with their lives, O’Brien claimed that moving away from lockdowns would lead to “hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths”.

    He and his ilk have gone very quiet now that there are, indeed, thousands of unnecessary deaths. Among people, many of them distressingly young, who had early cancer symptoms but couldn’t see a doctor after the NHS effectively became a Covid-only service. People who got scared and depressed and drank or ate themselves to death.

    Teenagers cut off from friends who took their own sweet lives or plunged down a dark well into mental illness. The shattering cost of all this is slowly beginning to occur to even the most ardent lockdown cheerleaders. “Looking back, I think we failed our children during the pandemic,” mused Susanna Reid last week.

    The Good Morning Britain presenter was commenting on a study which found that children in England face the worst exam results in decades and a lifetime of lower earnings because of school closures during Covid. National GCSE results will steadily worsen until 2030, when it is expected that “fewer than 40 per cent of pupils [will] get good grades in maths and English”.

    A devastating picture of educational decline, I’m sure you’ll agree, especially when compared to Sweden where no school for 16-year-olds and under was closed and Swedish educational attainment is as good as ever.

    Anyway, I thought it might be instructive to revisit some of the conspiracy theories, of which Turner accuses me, and see how they worked out:

    Conspiracy Theory No 1: Schools must not be closed, I argued. Children are at no risk from Covid and teachers are in one of the lowest-risk professions. It will do incalculable damage to kids’ education as well as their mental and physical health. Reality: UK schools were closed for longer than in any other country except Italy. By 2023, one in five children and young people aged eight to 25 had a probable mental disorder. The Mental Health of Children and Young People in England report found that 20.3 per cent of eight to 16-year-olds now suffer mental health problems. An “explosion of tics” was seen during lockdown, believed to be caused by anxiety. Children are “becoming more violent at school because lockdown delayed their development and created a background of fear”.

    Oh, and as I also predicted, children’s immune systems are in trouble. According to Nature, social isolation during the pandemic had lasting effects on the composition of microbes in a baby’s gut. (Could that spell lifelong health problems for lockdown infants?) Researchers claim children are now more vulnerable to other infections, in part due to reduced interactions during, yes, lockdown. The number of under-18s on the waiting list for paediatric care in England soared to 423,500 last year, the highest on record. Of those, 23,396 have been forced to wait over a year for their appointment.

    Conspiracy Theory No 2: With the help of a senior source inside NHS England, Planet Normal, the podcast I present with Liam Halligan, was able to point out that many of the graphs for hospital admissions shown at No 10 press briefings were deliberately alarmist. The Guardian took me to task for this heresy. It tutted:

    “On 29 December, Pearson wrote, ‘ICU occupancy is 78 per cent today. Remarkably low for this time of year’ and that ‘winter 2020 is the lowest hospital bed occupancy for 10 years’.”

    Reality: Those figures may be surprising but they were, and they remain, correct. While many ICUs dealt heroically with large numbers of Covid patients, the NHS was never in danger of collapsing, as we were told. Entire departments were empty, excess capacity in the paid-for private sector and the Nightingale hospitals was never used.

    Meanwhile, hospital admissions for Covid were misrepresented by bundling together patients who were actually admitted for Covid, patients admitted for some other condition who happened to test positive for Covid, and patients unlucky enough to contract Covid while in hospital. Stay at Home to Save the NHS turns out to have been a very bad deal for the British public who now face hospital waiting lists in excess of eight million. More than 250 people a week could be dying because of long waits in A&E. Why did no one tell us that would happen? Oh.

    Conspiracy Theory No 3: I said vaccine mandates were both discriminatory (creating social lepers) and pointless because the Covid jabs neither completely prevented infection nor transmission.

    Reality: When it was belatedly admitted that the Covid vaccines neither completely stopped infection nor prevented transmission, I recall no apology to those of us who had been called “Granny Killers” and accused of “peddling misinformation”.

    Nor, by the way, was I ever “anti-vax”. I had two AstraZeneca jabs and consider myself jolly lucky not to have had any of the side-effects suffered by some. As I argued at the time, mandatory Covid vaccines being brought in for care home workers in 2021 was a catastrophe in the making. Thousands upon thousands of workers left their jobs. It created a staffing crisis which is now responsible for bed-blocking in hospitals because elderly patients have no care home place to go to. The Government revoked the mandate by March 2022. Too late. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

    Conspiracy Theory No 4: Children and young people must not have the Covid vaccine.

    Reality: I got myself into hot water for pointing out that it was morally wrong and deeply suspicious when an initially hesitant MHRA approved the Covid vaccine for youngsters. Where were the medical ethics? Although Covid vaccines mitigate serious symptoms in elderly and vulnerable people, they should never have been offered to the younger, healthier population where there was nearly all risk and practically no benefit.

    Reported cases of myocarditis, more common in young males under 25, are worrying and highly credible. Only this week, I read about a preliminary scientific paper which investigates a hypothesis that increased fits in babies and small children are related to the jab.

    Dear God. I could go on, and on, and on. I have left out the impact on our economy of spending £70 billion on furlough (as Halligan, a brilliant economist, suggested, millions did indeed get used to enforced indolence and free money and decided they liked it well enough not to return to work).

    Altogether, we printed a boggling £450 billion to pay for the whole futile farrago; our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will still be picking up the tab long after Covid-19 has taken its rather undistinguished place in history.

    “A third-division pandemic”, Professor Gupta calls it. Even recalling that list of horrific collateral damage makes me upset. How unforgivably cruel those draconian restrictions were. The playgrounds bolted up, when each one of us should have been outside where it was really hard to catch Covid. The tiny children at the mercy of their abusers; murdered. The lonely and confused who died in nursing homes thinking they were unloved, forgotten. FOR WHAT?

    Yes, of course I got some things wrong, but nowhere near as much as the Government and the entire political, medical and scientific establishment. What we now know for certain is our country is weaker, poorer, sicker; our younger generation has taken a battering and recovery is uncertain. FOR WHAT?

    Janice Turner insults me for my “Covid conspiracies”. What ignorance and complacency. Almost every “conspiracy theory” I wrote between spring 2020 and winter 2022 turned out to be correct, tragically. And is more vindicated by the day. Who are the murderers now?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/02/im-not-a-covid-conspiracy-theorist-i-was-right/

    1. I fear she will never convince those who do not wish to be convinced.

      2. I repeat – my father used to say to us
        “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”

        I really think he was right.

        1. What is the point of an insincere apology? There must be a forgiver and a forgivee – the prodigal son must want and need to be forgiven and his father must genuinely want to forgive him.

      3. ‘It’s easier to fool someone, than to convince them they’ve been fooled’ Dear Mark Twain on the money, again!

  55. Good Morning Folks.

    A bit later than I had hoped but all good here except the weather.

  56. Leadsom warns ousting Sunak would be ‘very big mistake’
    Dame Andrea Leadsom said it would be a “very big mistake” to oust Rishi Sunak and replace him with somebody else.

    The Conservative Party has made so many mistakes that one more won’t make very much difference.

    Since they ousted Margaret Thatcher has there been a single decent leader of the Conservative Party?

    2. No – they’ve all been ghastly. Even Boris didn’t live up to his promise.

    1. Oh, the irony. The population of Gaza is increasing. I suppose genocide, like so much of our inverted language, now means the opposite of what it says. Point this out to the river to the sea people and the response is, “So you’re saying that Palestinians can’t have children”! (Been there, tried that, on TwitX and that really was the answer.)

    2. Oh, the irony. The population of Gaza is increasing. I supposed genocide, like so much of our inverted language, now means the opposite of what it says. Point this out to the river to the sea people and the response is, “So you’re saying that Palestinians can’t have children”! (Been there, tried that, on TwitX and that really was the answer.)

    6. Only when the final results are in is it known. He’s got to be defeated.

      1. 386784+ up ticks,

        Evening W,
        Yet again a case of better the devil you know.

  58. ‘Dine and dash’ solicitor struck off after refusing to pay £43 to delivery driver. 3 May 2024.

    A “dine and dash” solicitor has been struck off after ordering a £43 takeaway from Just Eat and shutting the door on the delivery driver without paying.

    Kerry Ann Stevens insisted she had already paid for the food online but this was untrue and the cost of the meal was subsequently deducted from the driver’s wages, a professional tribunal heard.

    Lawyers! Who’d trust ‘em?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/02/solicitor-struck-off-after-refusing-to-pay-for-takeaway/

    2. She must have known it would impact her reputation and career. Perhaps it was done on purpose.

      When i was much younger i worked Bar in a nightclub. Terrible hours and terrible pay. I was forced to work Christmas Eve and New Year Eve. I was so fed up by New Year Eve that every time a customer ordered (it was sardines in there that night) i poured myself a drink. I didn’t charge the customer. Of course they fired me.

    3. I hope the driver gets damages, they must of got a ton of grief from Just Eat. Just Eat needs some wiggle room to account for this sort of thing. Like dishonest buyers and sellers on eBay.

  59. ‘Dine and dash’ solicitor struck off after refusing to pay £43 to delivery driver. 3 May 2024.

    A “dine and dash” solicitor has been struck off after ordering a £43 takeaway from Just Eat and shutting the door on the delivery driver without paying.

    Kerry Ann Stevens insisted she had already paid for the food online but this was untrue and the cost of the meal was subsequently deducted from the driver’s wages, a professional tribunal heard.

    Lawyers! Who’d trust ‘em?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/02/solicitor-struck-off-after-refusing-to-pay-for-takeaway/

  60. Here’s the latest show of intelligence from lefty government.

    The Toronto council are asking the federal government to decriminalize hard drugs but unlike in BC where everyone can shoot up on whatever poison they like, Toronto is asking that decriminalization only applies to children.

    It obviously hasn’t occurred to the councilors tthat drug dealers will take this as an open invitation to use young kids as couriers.

    2. They never do look any further than their noses for any knock-on effects.

      2. No, because what our politicians love is giving away responsibility. This gives them a perfect opportunity to say “Sorry, we’d love to do something but we can’t. It’s our international commitments, you know.”

    1. Someone sent this to me yesterday not sure of the origin ……….

      Andrew Bridgen: Covid 19 mRNA Shots Have Had More Adverse
      Reactions Than All Other Adverse Reactions Recorded By The United
      Kingdom In 40 Years
      Read full story
      “The Long Term Effects and Efficacy of the Vaccines Are Not Currently
      Known” – The Purchase Agreement Between the EU Commission and
      Pfizer
      Read full story
      BOMBSHELL: Pfizer Employees Were Given a *Special Batch* Different
      From What Was Forced Into the General Population
      Read full story
      U.K. Government Tried To Bribe MP Andrew Bridgen For His Silence
      Read full story
      Pfizer Offers Millions in Bribes To Buy the Silence of Outspoken Doctors
      Read full story
      Liars and Deceivers: French MP Says Macron and Most Elites in France
      Received ‘Fake’ Covid Jabs
      Read full story
      Dr. Paul Alexander: US Hospitals CEOs and Senior Doctors “Too
      Valuable To Suspend” Were Offered FAKE Vaccine Cards When They
      Refused the Jab
      Read full story
      Safe and Effective: Police Charge Big Pharma Boss With Falsifying His​

    2. Not just COVID19 or its vaccinations but any medical intervention has side events which in some individuals may be fatal. The pharmaceutical industry can benefit by making available other drugs that can counteract many common side effects.

      I was lucky in that I was able to monitor my nocturnal blood oxygen levels during my course of treatment during which I was able to provide documentary evidence of the sentinal signs of approaching cardiac failure and preempted death by complete drug withdrawal with a complete ‘washout’.

      Unfortunately in the case of vaccinations this is not possible so one is stuffed good and proper.

    1. I guess the sunny people don’t approve of the shite version of the Koran. They also don’t want anyone getting in the way of what is shaping up as a fruitful relationship between the House of Saud and Israel. One can almost forgive the Saudis for their ooman roits record as long as they keep their disgusting practices within their own borders.

      1. I doubt the Saudi Sheik will appear in his robes when he takes up his membership of Whites club.

      2. They could have disposed of the journalist (what’s his name?) a bit more discreetly at home rather than in Turkey.

  65. Labour are briefing they believe they are on course for defeat in the West Midlands mayoral race, with support for independent candidate Akhmed Yakoob, who stood on a pro-Gaza ticket, a major factor.

    A senior party source said: “It’s the Middle East, not West Midlands, that will have won [Conservative candidate] Andy Street the mayoralty. Once again Hamas are the real villains.”

    A Conservative source told me that quote is “vile” and they insist the contest is “extremely close”.

    The result in the West Midlands is not expected until Saturday afternoon.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-68609729

    1. Why Saturday afternoon? Are they printing up some more postal votes?

    2. Brilliant. Import the third world….

      What was it our Enoch said again? Watching a nation build its own funeral pyre?

  66. The Starmbot is trying to portray the Blackpool bye election result as seismic and historic.
    Ummm – not really.

    The Labour candidate won with fewer votes than Labour got last time and the turnout was a mere 32%.
    There is no enthusiasm for Starmer, or for Labour, or for anybody else.

    The conservative vote has collapsed; but after two years of Starmer I’d be willing to bet that his unpopularity will rival that of Rishi Nicknack’s.

    2. Unfortunately that doesn’t help the country – a great deal of damage can be done in 2 years. I guess the best we can hope for is as close to a hung parliament as possible; but the LibDems are such tarts that they will get into bed with any party, and swing the votes.

  67. Plus it would have been English speaking Victorians that catalogued the animals.

  68. You are right, it will probably be less. Starmer has been able to avoid much scrutiny because Labour aren’t in office. Once he doubles down on devolution, greeniac lunacy, wokeness and open borders, the scales will drop from people’s eyes.

    2. Well that deals with all the pen pushing virtue signalling councils in the UK. Where exactly is the Kingdom of LGBQWERTYUIOP+, though?

  70. Hello NoTTLers!

    Advice needed! we have a generation 1 Smart meter, which happily doesn’t work with any supplier except the one who installed it (British gas, who we are no longer with). Unfortunately the battery has gone, so we can’t take a reading.

    Our current supplier (Octopus) say they can only fix this by changing the whole meter, and installing a Smart Meter Gen 2, which we emphatically don’t want. This doesn’t seem very green to me, but in any event I know some of you have had an even older meter replaced with another older meter and circumvented the Smart route. Has anyone any suggestions what the best step is, please?

    1. Nice if you can do that. I didn’t realise. I thought that the deal was once you go over, you’re stuck. Plus of course having to change smart meters every time you change supplier a given. One of many reasons I won’t have a smart meter for elec or gas. Mind you, I don’t have gas, so that’s a no brainer.

      1. Our meters work with the distribution company, not the electricity supply company, so we can change elco at will.
        Why did the UK do anything differently?

    2. SIL has hit a brick wall with same problem – blank meter display.
      He is on his third smart meter and on the latest gas technician visit he was told that the battery nreded changing and hasn’t heard anything since.

      Looking up what the protocol is for this problem it seems that this is rated as equivalent to a gas leak because the customer is unable to check that no gas is flowing by observing the meter when all appliances are off.

      I don’t think the gas utilities have sufficiently qualified staff to change a battery which requires a registered sparky.

      2. Sparky? I thought that sparks were electricians. I would have though it needed a Corgi -qualified (or whatever it is now) type gas fitter?

        1. Electricians are are known as Sparkys.
          However sparks and gas don’t go well together.
          UK has now become so regulated in all industry sectors that I wouldn’t be surprised if a technician certified to install a gas meter would not be allowed to change its battery because of the danger of creating a sparky. 💥

  71. Why is the cunning BBC posting up the EU Referendum results of each constituency with the results of the council and mayor elections?
    Are they going to use them as an excuse for rejoining the EU when Labour gets into government?

  72. Anyone receive emails from “Together”? There is a survey on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods they are encouraging people to complete.
    My responses were fairly negative. There are also some “optional” questions but you only get to see them by answering “yes”. I didn’t give them much information as it the questions were highly intrusive. Go on – give it a go and make sure we have our say!!

    STEP 4: Post on social media, tagging the Transport Minister

    Use our text below, or write your own – tagging in your MP as well if you can

    I’ve just completed this survey for Parliamentary debate on Low Traffic Neighbourhood roadblocks: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=nt3mHDeziEC-Xo277ASzSpMLsAawCSdBvMh9cdt5o9ZUODBSVFBTREpKRjZKVlBQREo0MkI1VlZQRi4u

    These schemes often imposed against wishes of locals & do huge damage @Mark_J_Harper @labourtransport @uklabour @togetherdec

    Once again, the deadline to respond to the survey is 10am on Monday May 6th.

    1. Excellent, thanks – just given LTNs both barrels. Amusing to “prefer not to say” for the optional questions (sex, gender, blah blah)

  73. Labour have distanced themselves from an earlier quote from a party source that we reported here. The source linked an expected defeat in the West Midlands mayoral race to the war in Gaza.

    A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party has strongly condemned this racist quote which has not come from anyone who is speaking on behalf of the party or whose values are welcome in the party.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-68609729

    Racist?

  74. Labour have distanced themselves from an earlier quote from a party source that we reported here. The source linked an expected defeat in the West Midlands mayoral race to the war in Gaza.

    A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party has strongly condemned this racist quote which has not come from anyone who is speaking on behalf of the party or whose values are welcome in the party.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-68609729

    Racist?

  75. Good afternoon, all. Atrocious wet weather again with a forecast of an improvement around sunset.

    Between chores I’m watching a long, around 3 hours presentation in Spanish with subtitles, from La Quinta Columna. The latter is a scientific group that has been researching SARS-COV-2 and the disease this alleged virus causes i.e. Covid-19.

    Ever wondered why ‘boosters’ are required?

    According to LQC’s investigation one of the major ingredients in the “vaccine”, that’s all of the major players’ products, is dealt with by the body’s immune system and expelled through the lungs over a few months. Ergo, to maintain the level of active ingredient flowing around the body regular top-ups are required. If you think that this top-up fights the alleged virus and keeps you free from Covid-19 you’d do well to think again, or better, watch the video.

    This particular main ingredient is intrinsically linked to the 5G network and other radiation.

    Here in the UK the PTB are putting pressure on to us ‘crinklies’ to get the jab before the end of June. First it was the general NHS call to action that I binned immediately but the other day my GP surgery sent me a similar text: my surgery should know that I declined the first jab and that I agreed to have my wishes written into my medical records. That text followed the route the first one took.

    Friends of mine have been contacted and are about to receive their 7th/8th or it could be 8th/9th jab whilst another friend who has suffered adverse effects from two AZ jabs has declined.

    The “unvaccinated” have upset the PTB’s timetable. Little wonder that we came under attack from every direction including dim celebrities.

    1. Sounds feasible! I don’t believe a word of the propaganda any more so I think the two jabs I had have been very effective on that score!

      I haven’t had my wishes written into my medical records as I just ignore all the texts and emails I get from the surgery. I think the current one is jab #8 but I won’t be having it. I can’t believe my intelligent friends have mostly fallen for this scam which seems so obviously bogus to me. Who needs a six- monthly jab against a cold?

      1. Quick scan and several references appearing in the linked document also appear in the video presentation.

        Thanks, Phizzee.

    3. Why are they saying the main ingredient is linked to 5G? How so?

      1. Graphene and reduced graphene, the latter I believe is the oxide.

        Link to 5G? Too complicated for me to attempt to explain.

        If you want the link I’ll provide it. It’s not an easy video to watch due to the pace of the presentation. Being fluent in Spanish may help.

        Other investigation teams, in particular, lawyer Todd Callender in the USA, are coming to a similar conclusion. Several researchers are making further claims about the contents of the vials.

        2. OK thanks, qill keep it in mind, although I won;t follow the Spanish. A bit out of my league.

  76. Probably to tie them in with the kind of people who voted Leave also being the kind of people with negative attitudes to their gerrymandering.

    1. Thanks, J – I do remember some NoTTLer/s having done it, and I just hope one of them reads my post…

  78. Apparently Cons in Aldershot saying their poor showing is all Reform’s fault. Just wondering if doing Conservative things in a Conservative way might have helped.

    Strewth, how out of touch do you have to be in order to be accepted into politics?

    1. By making that sort of statement it certainly shows how indifferent to public opinion they have been and still are. How many millions of brits have been demanding “Stop the invasion”.
      The government has totally ignored all of our demands aka requests.
      Politicians are incapable of carrying out the work they are employed to do.
      No excuses they are useless.

      1. Their conversations are exclusively among themselves and have been for a good few years. Maybe people hopefully are beginning to wake up to that fact. The biggest problem in Britain isn’t cost of living, woke culture or dare I say immigration; as big as these are and they are massive. It’s democratic deficit and the outsourcing of government to unelected lobbyists, experts, judges and foreign powers. The electorate simply isn’t involved in the conversation any longer.

        To paraphrase another of my posts today: I resign.

    2. I’m 4.3 miles from Aldershot, as the crow flies. Leo Docherty, their Tory MP, vanished without trace when a new housing project was earmarked for illegal immigrants. I’m no racist, but Aldershot, Farnborough and the like have taken their fair share of (admittedly blameless) Nepalese, thanks in no small part to Joanna bloody Lumley. Even the local Stagecoach buses now display Nepali messages on the front.

      1. Oh dear. Sounds like you’ve got a much better handle on the situation than the local Conservative party machine, Geoff. Talking of Nepali messages, I’m pretty sure I caught some Middle Eastern language announcement on the tube going through London this week.

    3. I’m 4.3 miles from Aldershot, as the crow flies. Leo Docherty, their Tory MP, vanished without trace when a new housing project was earmarked for illegal immigrants. I’m no racist, but Aldershot, Farnborough and the like have taken their fair share of (admittedly blameless) Nepalese, thanks in no small part to Joanna bloody Lumley. Even the local Stagecoach buses now display Nepali messages on the front.

  79. Kremlin attacks ‘b—–d halfwit c–t’ Zelensky over peace talks. 3 May 2024.

    A top Kremlin official and ally of Vladimir Putin has called president Volodymyr Zelensky a “bastard”, “halfwit” and a “c–t” over plans for a peace conference in Switzerland.

    Dmitry Medvedev’s expletive-laden rant comes after Mr Zelensky has repeatedly insisted that Russia is not invited to a proposed June “peace summit” in Switzerland as there is no assurance that Moscow will bargain in good faith. Mr Medvedev is Russia’s former president, put in power as a puppet for Mr Putin.

    The language leaves something to be desired but Medvedev is notoriously slack jawed. His sentiments are understandable though. You can’t have peace talks when one of the protagonists is absent. The real purpose of the conference is really just to stall public opinion and to keep the War going.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/03/russia-ukraine-war-live-chasiv-yar-offensive/

    1. Don’t ‘Peace talks’ usually involve somebody from each side and an independent negotiator? It seems that these ones are nothing more than show.

      1. One would have thought so Ndovu but it shows the real agenda of this war which is to weaken Russia. The Ukies are just dupes.

  81. From the Guardian June 2021
    Gloating over advertising being pulled from GBNews for political reasons

    Brands pull ads from GB News TV channel over content concerns

    Jasper Jolly

    GB News, the television channel that launched this week with backing from pro-Brexit tycoons and a mission to produce “anti-woke” US-style news content, is facing an advertiser backlash after big consumer brands including Ikea, Nivea and Grolsch said they would pull their adverts from the network.
    Fronted by a clutch of familiar names including the former BBC and Sky presenters Andrew Neil and Kirsty Gallacher, GB News, which launched on Sunday evening, is pitching itself as an alternative to the mainstream media with a focus on generating opinion and controversy, rather than original reporting.
    However, activists are already calling for boycotts of brands that advertise on the channel, on the grounds that they believe it is hoping to monetise divisive political issues and to push the boundaries of UK TV news regulations, which require politically balanced broadcasts.
    The channel is broadcast on television and online across Great Britain, as well as in other parts of the United Kingdom such as Northern Ireland.
    Ikea, the Dutch beer brand Grolsch and the Swedish cider maker Kopparberg said they had suspended adverts because of concerns the channel’s content would go against their aim to be inclusive. Nivea said it would review its position in three months. The brands said they had not been aware their adverts were being aired on the channel.
    The Open University, which is publicly funded, also said it had paused advertising on GB News. It said on Twitter that it had not planned or purchased advertising on GB News, and added that it was investigating why it had happened. Kopparberg said it also had not been aware the channel would air its spots.
    Octopus Energy’s founder, Greg Jackson, published a letter to customers on Tuesday evening that said it had asked its agencies to suspend advertising on GB News. “We’re not currently running ads on GB News,” he wrote. “We will monitor it, and only advertise if it proves to be genuinely balanced.”
    He added that the “furore” over the channel’s launch “gave GB News much sought-after publicity” as well as adding to division.
    Some of the channel’s financial backers have supported prominent rightwing causes and campaign groups, while some GB News programmes are presented by journalists with outspoken views on issues generally associated with rightwing politics. The former Brexit party leader Nigel Farage was one of the first guests on the channel’s opening night.
    The channel was launched by Neil, who chairs the Spectator magazine and presents a show called Woke Watch, which aims to highlight examples of “political correctness” gone mad.
    Advertising slots on GB News are marketed by Sky Media, the advertising sales arm of Sky Group, which represents about 130 other channels, more than any other company in the UK. A company spokesman declined to comment.
    Companies advertising on television tend to hire media-buying agencies to buy slots on their behalf, according to audience categories such as age and income, rather than targeting specific channels. This means that companies often do not have advance knowledge of where exactly their adverts will be broadcast.
    A television industry source said advertiser boycotts of entire channels were very rare. Instead, they tended to happen in relation to particularly sensitive programmes or with editorial content criticising companies.
    The source said that the actions of a small number of advertisers were unlikely to make a significant difference to GB News’s finances. This is because media agencies tend to buy large blocks on behalf of multiple clients, meaning they could simply fill the vacated slots with adverts for other clients.“I don’t think it will touch the sides,” the source said.Sweden’s Ikea, which is the world’s largest furniture retailer, said it had not knowingly advertised on GB News.

    In a statement Ikea said: “We have safeguards in place to prevent our advertising from appearing on platforms that are not in line with our humanistic values. We are in the process of investigating how this may have occurred to ensure it won’t happen again in future, and have suspended paid display advertising in the meantime.”

    Grolsch, which is owned by Japan’s Asahi, said in a statement that it “prides itself on core values of inclusion and openness to all people, and we want to be clear that we do not associate ourselves with any platforms or outlets that go against these values”.

    “We will do everything we possibly can to ensure Grolsch does not appear on this channel again,” the statement said.

    Nivea said its policy is to wait a few months after a new channel has launched before allowing advertising. Nivea said it would review its suspension of adverts on GB News after three months. The skincare company’s owner is German multinational Beiersdorf, which also owns brands including plaster maker Elastoplast.

    Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk

    Kopparberg revealed its decision to remove its adverts from GB News on Monday in response to a Twitter user who listed advertisers on the channel.

    The firm said: “We want to make it clear to everyone that our ad ran on this channel without our knowledge or consent. Kopparberg is a drink for everyone and we have immediately suspended our ads from this channel pending further review of its content.”

    GB News was approached for comment.From the Guardian

    1. Which is why GB News is no longer right wing but as woke as the rest of them.

          1. Sure. I recognise that. But Woke is a far deeper and sinister outlook.

          2. Ok – Not that I ever watch it anyway. I’m done with all news outlets.

          3. GB news has dissapointed and I have stopped watching. They are going the same way as the rest.

  82. We – the male half of this family – have gone out. Well, sans Oscar, who decided to stay indoors and be ignored by the Loo Roll thrower of London Town.

    Mongo has done his bit for the hospice folk, we then went shopping and acquired party food because I am imensely fed up.

    I’ve had a cest infection. Therefore, I’ve carried a loo roll around with me. I’ve secreted them about in emergencies. This was ‘disgusting’ and they were thrown at me. They actually rather hurt when it hit my forehead.

    This led on to ‘mentions’ of other unsavoury habits and the endless demands for her body, not her, her body (I had said ‘it’s your day off tomorrow, do you want to do anything together?’. Thus as we went out there was complaint that ‘I spend more time with the dog than her’ and so on.

    As there’s an underlying to all this I haven’t got to yet aside from being a depressing day, as a little girl from the hospice is missing and a new one appears I honestly can’t handle the hystrionics.

    1. Were the loo rolls still unperforated, or were there little bits of used ones lying around? I think we need to know! My old man leaves paper hankies around the place…

      1. I drop them in the dunny, and flush. Who needs used snot rags lying about, loaded with bodily secretions?

      2. I put them in the waste bin which I’ve taken to carrying around with me.

          1. It was that there were loo rolls everywhere and apparently this means poo is everywhere as well.

      3. Gather them into a large polythene bag – and place under his pillow.

        1. As long as they’re not still in his pockets when they go into the washer…

      5. I never use paper ones. Proper hankies for me! I boil them up if I’ve got an infection otherwise they just get washed.

    2. Viagra. Then Vodka Martinis. Then coochy coochy coo. Perfect stress reliever. Don’t cough in her face .

      1. Nope, finished at proper time less lunchbreak that I didn’t take.
        08:00 to16:00 are normal hours, and we’re UK+1 time

  85. Just started watching Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’ on iplayer for a laugh. Or as the ex-first minister would say ‘ White’.

      1. Actually there is a muslim, black and jew. Obviously too young to go into a Bar. :@)

  86. Leftie Stu Grant returns home from protest..
    “Hello mummy, meet my new bestie.. Ashley.. you’ll love him & his mates they’re a right scream.”

    Asylum seeker with ‘dreadful crime record’ allowed to stay in UK
    Ashley Simbarashe Maparura arrived in the UK in 2017 and has since racked up 68 convictions.

    1. Objecting to imported career criminals is analogous with the aims of Hitler. Natch.

  87. It seems we are importing Canadian Communists to harass peaceful UK citizens and South East Asian (probably Chinese) anti-Communists. For starters the antagonistic loudmouth Canadian keeps calling the piano man “racist”. As distasteful as this is it’s the milder form of Far-Left “activism”, just ask Andy Ngo.

    It’s a hard watch this, the Canadian is exceedingly hard work.

    https://youtu.be/bDthleInIMw?si=NIncGP1d98KM959R

    2. Why did plod not say to the Chinese woman that the right to protest is enshrined in law but it is not there to silence people she dislikes. If she wants the law used that way perhaps she should move back to China.

    3. Why did they not take the wanqueur away at the start rather than wait 15 minutes?

    6. Who exactly is that posturing nitwit? Canadian communust? We have that from Trudeau on down.

    2. I was expecting a membership pack from the Free Speech Union. *Dominic Frisby starts playing *

      1. Even as we comment, hundreds of “lost” ballot boxes have been found….

        1. That is a very cynical remark, Bill – but I must admit I wouldn’t put any such cynical view as unlikely these days.

    2. Are you kidding? After my moaning about the bastard this morning. A truely bright ray of sunshine has come through the clouds to light up London!

    3. Is this some sort of double-bluff – so that if he wins he can claim it wasn’t the Muslim vote that did it?

    3. One of them has just given away more £Bns of UK taxpayer money without any reference to taxpayers or their representatives. A thoroughly despicable move.

      1. I believe he’s committed £3 billion per year of our money “for however long it takes”. Nobody voted for him. We weren’t consulted. How dare he? Absolutely disgusting.

        1. I am only surprised it wasn’t £30 billion ‘for however long it takes’. I wonder if he even hears himself. The loss of so many men fighting for nothing. Dying for nothing. I hope he and his family burn in hell ‘for as long as it takes’.

    4. I couldn’t stand Cameron one iota in 2010 , so much so that I courted Labour for a few months running up to the election , I appeared on Sky TV and then 2 days later Labour lost . At that time the constituency MP was not a Tory .. but dare I say a very good man , and an excellent MP and Minister

      My Moh saw me on Sky TV with Brown and his cohorts at a garden party down here .. Moh had no idea of my whereabouts until then , so much so was my dislike for Cameron as a leader .. I was a traitor . Moh was furious . My principles were challenged .. but Brown lost and Cameron carried on the national damage with Clegg

      I was spotted by various Tory people who knew me , I was called a turncoat .. I flipflopped .. but of course my heart thumped badly .. and since then I have stayed relatively quiet , apart from Brexit and Ukip and many other issues 😊😉

      Politics is like Catnip to me .

      Our collective voices have to be heard , loudly.

        1. Mog or Tram. Memories…Well not memories…because i don’t have them !!!

    5. I’ve never liked Lord Greenswill, but that photo makes him look even more of a wanquer than he usually does!

  91. Just copied from Faceache:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0a1baa02bc0e616e6c8d2787c89ef0ec4a7b75566895693410aef67da38c7f71.jpg

    This poem never fails to bring a tear to my eye. LEST WE FORGET 🌹
    THE ANZAC ON THE WALL – By JM Brown
    I wandered through a country town, ‘cos I had some time to spare,
    And went into an antique shop to see what was in there.
    Old Bikes and pumps and kero lamps, but hidden by it all,
    A photo of a soldier boy – an Anzac on the Wall.
    ‘The Anzac have a name?’ I asked. The old man answered ‘No’.
    The ones who could have told me mate, have passed on long ago.
    The old man kept on talking and, according to his tale,
    The photo was unwanted junk bought, from a clearance sale.
    ‘I asked around’, the old man said, ‘but no-one knows his face,
    He’s been on that wall fifty years… Deserves a better place.
    For some-one must have loved him, so it seems a shame somehow.’
    I nodded in agreement and then said, ‘I’ll take him now.’
    My nameless digger’s photo, well it was a sorry sight
    A cracked glass pane and a broken frame – I had to make it right
    To prise the photo from its frame I took care just in case,
    Cause only sticky paper held the cardboard back in place.
    I peeled away the faded screed and much to my surprise,
    Two letters and a telegram appeared before my eyes
    The first reveals my Anzac’s name, and regiment of course
    John Mathew Francis Stuart – of Australia’s own Light Horse.
    This letter written from the front… My interest now was keen
    This note was dated August seventh 1917
    ‘Dear Mum, I’m at Khalasa Springs not far from the Red Sea
    They say it’s in the Bible – looks like a Billabong to me.
    ‘My Kathy wrote I’m in her prayers… she’s still my bride to be
    I just can’t wait to see you both, you’re all the world to me.
    And Mum you’ll soon meet Bluey, last month they shipped him out
    I told him to call on you when he’s up and about.’
    ‘That bluey is a larrikin, and we all thought it funny
    He lobbed a Turkish hand grenade into the CO’s dunny.
    I told you how he dragged me wounded, in from no man’s land
    He stopped the bleeding, closed the wound, with only his bare hand.’
    ‘Then he copped it at the front from some stray shrapnel blast
    It was my turn to drag him in and I thought he wouldn’t last.
    He woke up in hospital, and nearly lost his mind
    Cause out there on the battlefield he’d left one leg behind.’
    ‘He’s been in a bad way Mum, he knows he’ll ride no more
    Like me he loves a horse’s back, he was a champ before.
    So Please Mum can you take him in, he’s been like my own brother
    Raised in a Queensland orphanage he’ s never known a mother.’
    But Struth, I miss Australia Mum, and in my mind each day
    I am a mountain cattleman on high plains far away.
    I’m mustering white-faced cattle, with no camel’s hump in sight
    And I waltz my Matilda by a campfire every night
    I wonder who rides Billy, I heard the pub burnt down
    I’ll always love you and please say hooroo to all in town’.
    The second letter I could see, was in a lady’s hand
    An answer to her soldier son there in a foreign land.
    Her copperplate was perfect, the pages neat and clean
    It bore the date, November 3rd 1917.
    ‘T’was hard enough to lose your Dad, without you at the war
    I’d hoped you would be home by now – each day I miss you more’
    ‘Your Kathy calls around a lot since you have been away
    To share with me her hopes and dreams about your wedding day.
    And Bluey has arrived – and what a godsend he has been
    We talked and laughed for days about the things you’ve done and seen’
    ‘He really is a comfort, and works hard around the farm,
    I read the same hope in his eyes that you won’t come to harm.
    McConnell’s kids rode Billy, but suddenly that changed.
    We had a violent lightning storm, and it was really strange.’
    ‘Last Wednesday, just on midnight, not a single cloud in sight,
    It raged for several minutes, it gave us all a fright.
    It really spooked your Billy – and he screamed and bucked and reared
    And then he rushed the sliprail fence, which by a foot he cleared’
    ‘They brought him back next afternoon, but something’s changed I fear
    It’s like the day you brought him home, for no one can get near.
    Remember when you caught him with his black and flowing mane?
    Now Horse breakers fear the beast that only you can tame,’
    ‘That’s why we need you home son’ – then the flow of ink went dry-
    This letter was unfinished, and I couldn’t work out why.
    Until I started reading, the letter number three
    A yellow telegram delivered news of tragedy,
    Her son killed in action – oh – what pain that must have been
    The same date as her letter – 3rd November 1917
    This letter which was never sent, became then one of three
    She sealed behind the photo’s face – the face she longed to see.
    And John’s home town’s old timers – children when he went to war
    Would say no greater cattleman had left the town before.
    They knew his widowed mother well – and with respect did tell
    How when she lost her only boy she lost her mind as well.
    She could not face the awful truth, to strangers she would speak
    ‘My Johnny’s at the war you know, he’s coming home next week.’
    They all remembered Bluey he stayed on to the end.
    A younger man with wooden leg became her closest friend.
    And he would go and find her when she wandered old and weak
    And always softly say ‘yes dear – John will be home next week.’
    Then when she died Bluey moved on, to Queensland some did say.
    I tried to find out where he went, but don’t know to this day.
    And Kathy never wed – a lonely spinster some found odd.
    She wouldn’t set foot in a church – she’d turned her back on God.
    John’s mother left no Will I learned on my detective trail.
    This explains my photo’s journey, of that clearance sale.
    So I continued digging, cause I wanted to know more.
    I found John’s name with thousands, in the records of the war.
    His last ride proved his courage – a ride you will acclaim
    The Light Horse Charge at Beersheba of everlasting fame.
    That last day in October, back in 1917
    At 4pm our brave boys fell – that sad fact I did glean.
    That’s when John’s life was sacrificed, the record’s crystal clear
    But 4pm in Beersheba is midnight over here……
    So as John’s gallant spirit rose to cross the great divide,
    Were lightning bolts back home, a signal from the other side?
    Is that why Billy bolted and went racing as in pain?
    Because he’d never feel his master on his back again?
    Was it coincidental? same time – same day – same date?
    Some proof of numerology, or just a quirk of fate?
    I think it’s more than that you know, as I’ve heard wiser men,
    Acknowledge there are many things that go beyond our ken
    Where craggy peaks guard secrets ‘neath dark skies torn asunder,
    Where hoof-beats are companions to the rolling waves of thunder
    Where lightning cracks like 303’s and ricochets again
    Where howling moaning gusts of wind sound just like dying men.
    Some Mountain cattlemen have sworn on lonely alpine track,
    They’ve glimpsed a huge black stallion – Light Horseman on his back.
    Yes Sceptics say, it’s swirling clouds just forming apparitions
    Oh no, my friend you can’t dismiss all this as superstition.
    The desert of Beersheba – or windswept Aussie range,
    John Stuart rides on forever there – Now I don’t find that strange.
    Now some gaze upon this photo, and they often question me
    And I tell them a small white lie, and say he’s family.
    ‘You must be proud of him.’ they say – I tell them, one and all,
    That’s why he takes – the pride of place – my Anzac on the Wall.
    By Jim Brown

    1. Bot of a tearjerker. I watched the film of The Light Horsemen just the other day.

  94. From Spectator Coffee House. Gavin Mortimer

    No, the war in Gaza is not like Vietnam
    Comments Share 3 May 2024, 12:11pm
    America’s National Public Radio (NPR) this week likened the 2024 student protests in campuses across the USA to those of 1968. Similar comparisons have also been made in France where last week students staged sit-ins at the prestigious Sciences-Po in Paris and claimed that ‘Gaza = Vietnam’.

    NPR quoted a history professor at Manhattan’s Columbia University, the focal point for America’s pro-Palestine student protests. ‘It is an uncanny resemblance to what transpired in the late sixties in this country, where US students and other people in this country were inspired to speak out and mobilise against what they saw as an unjust war in Vietnam,’ said Frank Guridy.

    Decades later, left-wing politicians and protestors still don’t understand the Islamist power structure
    An uncanny resemblance? The social class of the students is the same now as it was in 1968, but where are the other parallels? There are no American troops fighting in Gaza. Nor back then were campuses infected by anti-Semitism, as so many are today.

    Neither, crucially, was there any self-loathing. That is the essential difference between the student demonstrators of today and half a century ago. In 1968, the students wanted an end to what they regarded as an unjust war; in 2024, indoctrinated by ‘decolonisation’, students want an end to what they regard as an unjust West.

    At George Washington University in D.C, for example, the statue of the first president has been vandalised with the words ‘genocidal war mongering’. Yesterday, at Goldsmiths in London, protestors occupied two floors and hung banners proclaiming ‘Decolonisation is not a metaphor’.

    A feature of these protests is the number of people who have culturally appropriated the Palestine keffiyeh. It is the 21st century equivalent of the Mao suit in the 1970s, which, according to the BBC, ‘became fashionable for left-wing intellectuals…before the full horrors of Mao’s reign came to light’.

    Some of the 1960s protestors supported communism ideologically as well as sartorially, among them a handful of celebrities. Vanessa Redgrave was the most notorious in Britain, one of 10,000 who marched through London in an anti-Vietnam protest in March 1968, even though Britain had no presence in the country. Three years later she participated in a demonstration through London organised by Sinn Fein to promote the IRA.

    America had Jane Fonda, who spoke warmly of Mao’s China in 1970 and visited Hanoi, Vietnam in 1972. There she posed for photos with her hosts, and later said of American prisoners of war: ‘If a prisoner tried to escape, it is quite understandable that he would probably be beaten and tortured.’ Richard Grenier, the former film critic for the New York Times, knew Fonda and described her in 1979 as an apologist ‘for totalitarian regimes of the harshest sort’.

    Fonda and Redgrave were outliers half a century ago, but in today’s West these apologists proliferate in every walk of life: the arts, academia, journalism, the judiciary and even the police – an officer in the West Yorkshire constabulary was this week charged with terror offences after sharing pro-Hamas image online.

    The Iranian government has been crowing this week about the student protests in America. President Ebrahim Raisi praised ‘the uprising of Western students, professors and elites in support of the oppressed people of Gaza’, describing it as ‘a big event with vast dimensions’. The key word is ‘oppressed’: it explains why so many gullible Western left-wingers indulge Islamism, whether it’s Hamas, Hezbollah or even Iran itself, whose misogyny has been exported to Europe and embraced by bien pensants who believe that wearing the hijab is liberating.

    The West’s working-class rejected communism in the second half of the 20th century so instead the left-wing political parties began to champion another ‘oppressed’ – in their eyes at least: Muslims. As the number of Muslims in Europe began to increase dramatically at the start of the century, these parties saw how they could prosper electorally – what the French call ‘clientélisme’.

    This explains the dramatic transformation in Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran far-left politician up until recently best known for wearing suits with Mao collars and expressing admiration for Latin American Marxists. Mélenchon gave the eulogy at the funeral of his friend Charb, one of the Charlie Hebdo journalists shot dead by Islamist extremists in 2015. ‘You have been murdered as you knew you would be by our oldest, cruellest, most constant and most narrow-minded enemies: the religious fanatics,’ said Mélenchon.

    Now Mélenchon courts those same fanatics. Having lost the white working-class vote to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, Mélenchon has turned instead to France’s six million plus Muslims. His strategy appears to be working: a poll last month found that 38 per cent of French Muslims are ready to vote for his La France Insoumise (LFI) party in next month’s European elections. Their second preferred candidate is the Socialist Raphaël Glucksmann on 14 per cent. Incidentally, Mélenchon has dropped the Mao collar and now wears an ordinary suit.

    The focus of LFI’s European election campaign is devoted to the conflict in Gaza. One of their candidates, a Franco-Palestinian called Rima Hassan, was this week questioned by police on suspicion of apology for terrorism. Hassan has been present at some of the student protests in Paris and called for a nationwide ‘uprising’ not just in universities but ‘throughout France’.

    Hassan hadn’t been born when French students rose up in 1968; nor was she alive when, a decade later, Iranian Marxist groups revolted with the support of Ayatollah Khomeini. Once in power, Khomeini executed most of his communist allies. One who survived, Chahla Chafiq, reflected in 2022: ‘Nobody had the slightest idea of what an Islamist power structure could be, using fascism and killing people to keep its power.’ Among that number was the French communist philosopher Michel Foucault, ‘the founding father of wokeness’, who visited Iran extensively in the late 1970s and believed the revolution would be utopian.

    Decades later, left-wing politicians and protestors still don’t understand the Islamist power structure. Then again, many are so ignorant that they sing about the river and the sea without even knowing which river and which sea. The centuries change, the ideologies change, but what is immutable is the absurdity of the West’s useful idiots

    1. From readers’ comments

      Stanley
      43 minutes ago edited
      The main driver of the opposition to the Vietnam in the late 60’s by young people in the USA was the draft, where young people were drafted in to the army and sent to Vietnam.

      Like many things, these protests transferred across the Atlantic where the bleeding heart poser students jumped on the bandwagon.

      The students in the USA today are the same as the UK students in the 60’s no chance of any involvement, but full of fake outrage because it’s the cool thing to do, not because it’s right.

      They have no idea of what Islam is or it’s ultimate goals, and because it’s the US, they don’t know what is happening in Europe, and how they have infiltrated thinking in many intuitions of learning.

      Today, the Irish Government have fined the Students Union at Trinity College Dublin over 200,00 Euro because of the disruption caused on campus by Pro Palestinian protests.
      So much for free speech, That’s a new one that the UK and the US could learn from

      1. The protests aren’t really about Palestine. They’re communists, agitating for revolution.

  96. A lousy Bogey Five!

    Wordle 1,049 5/6
    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
    🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨
    🟩🟨⬜🟨🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Had my five yesterday. Lucky three today.

      Wordle 1,049 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟨
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. Lucky here.

      Wordle 1,049 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
      ⬜🟨🟨🟨🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    5. Plodding along to a par.

      Wordle 1,049 4/6

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

      Bogeys were unfortunately reserved for the golf course.

    6. Agreed… disappointing bogey….

      Wordle 1,049 5/6

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

  97. I am guessing all the Leftie manchildren that don’t drive cars underestimated Londoner’s passion for ULEZ.

  98. That’s me for this wet, miserable, cold winter’s day. Rain since 8 am – and still raining. The MR went to Norwich to have her hair done – just the say….not. Still, it enabled me to have my once a quarter lunch treat of baked beans on toast! And a poached egg on top…

    Have a spiffing evening wondering whether the global boiling might restart this month.

    A demain.

    1. If you toast some grated cheese on the toast first, it improves the dish immensely.

      Cheese-on-toast, beans-on-toast, egg-on-toast, all together. Mmmmmmm!!! I have this every few months.

        1. I’m very much like the Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis: I never buy nor use shop-bought ‘curry’-powder.

          I grind (and toast): cumin seeds, coriander seeds, cardamom pods, dried chillies, chilli powder, cayenne pepper, cloves, cinnamon (a lot of ‘C’ words there), fennel, fenugreek, asafoetida, and mix it with a paste of garlic, ginger and onions. Then I fry it in ghee before adding it to what I wish.

          The difference is like comparing ambrosia with anuses.

          1. I bought some asafoetida I’m a fit of enthusiasm a while back and don’t remember why, and don’t know what do do with it. Apart from making curry powder, does anyone have any suggestions?

            (I am batch cooking this weekend in preparation for my daughter’s 21st in mid-June, which coincides with our 22nd wedding anniversary).

          3. When I fancy bland food, I go for an English. “Give me the blandest food in the house! Bread and butter!”

          4. Yeah yeah. I have all those spices. This was for a quick fix. Asofoetida is a weird one. It’s why most people when they try to repro a curry at home it’s never the same.

          5. It needs a sharp fry in ghee – more than any other spice – to “bring out the flavour” (ie to make it palatable)

        2. If I use a tin of baked beans I slow cook it to make ‘sticky beans’ and also spice it up any way I fancy.

      1. I love baked beans but oh the gas. If only it was useful to the national grid.

  99. It might be justified to criticise all of the county councillors involved in the reported ‘debate’ for wasting time on matters over which they have little influence but to have Tories opposing UK steel-making and Greens supporting it is another sign of a country standing on its head.

    I rather they spent a bit more time on dealing with matters such as the fly-tip in the copse 30 yards from my front door.

    Tensions flare as north Northants Tories vote against motion to support UK steel campaign

    One councillor voted down the motion stating that that China, Brazil, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Africa, and Norway produce better quality steel than we have here

    By Callum Faulds, Friday 26th Apr 2024, 15:41 BST

    Tensions flared at last night’s meeting calling on North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) to support the UK steel campaign. A motion was voted down by the ruling Conservative group, with one councillor saying that steel produced in other countries is better. Cllr John McGhee (Lab) put the motion forward, which he said was not a political issue and called on the council to support it.

    The motion urged NNC to ask the leader of the council to write to the Prime Minister asking that Parliament support our local people and the economy by supporting the campaign to save UK steel by supporting five points – expanding steelmaking ability by at least double, tackling energy prices, changing procurement rules to ensure UK public contracts use 100 per cent UK steel, taking a public stake in our steel industry and public investment of £12bn.

    But a number of Conservative councillors spoke to voice their unwillingness to support the motion.

    Council leader Cllr Jason Smithers (Con) said he could not support the motion because of the wording and that it was ‘clearly party political’. He also described the motion as ‘quite frankly ludicrous’.

    Cllr Andy Mercer (Con) called the motion a ‘not very sensible’ and ‘a very naive approach’. He did also say that he really likes the idea of trying to support British Steel and really likes the idea of trying to support Corby but was unable to support the motion.

    Cllr Jonathan Ekins (Con) said that China, Brazil, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Africa and Norway all produce better quality steel than what’s being produced in the UK.

    He said: “We can’t produce the quality at the right prices here. If we could, we would, but it goes to prove that Brazil has the best quality iron ore in the world and that’s why we import this ore. The ore makes the steel, so if we can’t afford to do it, we import it. We’re not digging the ore from this country, we’re buying it in, so what is the difference, if you can buy steel ready made cheaper than what you can dig it out and create it here, it makes sense, it makes fiscal sense.”

    Cllr Lora Lawman (Con) questioned whether investment would stay in the UK and could also not support the motion.

    A number of councillors from across the room supported the motion including Cllr Emily Fedorowycz, leader of the Green alliance, who described it as a ‘fantastic idea’ and said it was a shame that it was ‘immediately politicised’ and ‘shot down for no real good reason’.

    Independent councillor Martin Griffiths queried why, if Cllr Mercer liked part of the motion, then an amendment could not be proposed.

    With his closing remarks, Cllr McGhee strongly expressed his disappointment with the council.

    He said: “He [Cllr Jason Smithers] doesn’t want to work with any of us, he just wants to work with us when we’ll agree with him, that’s what it’s all about. From now on that won’t be happening with me, that’s for sure. We are sick and tired of you [the Conservative councillors] playing the political game. This came forward not as a political statement, but trying to get people to work together and what do you lot do? You turn it down, you don’t grasp it.

    “You don’t deserve to be there, you’re there to support the local residents, local economy, local jobs and you’ve failed again. The devastation of the steel industry has come under your party anyway, so it doesn’t really surprise me. I’m ashamed of you, I’m ashamed sometimes to sit in here because all you do is play political parties on a straight forward motion. That’s not a way to do politics and work together, it’s about working together for the sake of the residents in this county.

    “20-odd years I’ve been doing this and I’ve never seen that sort of attitude to a simple motion to support local workers and local economies.”

    The vote was recorded in which 14 voted for the motion, 38 against and there were two abstentions. No Conservative councillors voted for it.

    https://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/people/tensions-flare-as-north-northants-tories-vote-against-motion-to-support-uk-steel-campaign-4606987

  100. 386784+ up ticks,

    Might be an idea to have a nationwide register signed by all the indigenous peoples of a decency stance to sign, informing
    Vladimir Vladimirovich that fat twat the political tree hugger of great renown, does NOT speak for me, as a sale-guard for when the shite hits the fan.

    https://x.com/UnityNewsNet/status/1786435033676296439

    1. I see Zelensky has been working out in his bunker. All that masturbating on cocaine . Lord Dave should introduce him to Gove. A match made in hell. Made for each other.

    1. The phrase that stood out for me was: “…the acquisition of new voters is not a
      sign of an epochal swing, but rather of an unstable British politics, in
      which voters are increasingly disconnected from party loyalty, and
      mistrustful of politicians.”

      This seems to be a good summary of the situation.

    2. I don’t think I can cope with another 4 (or 5!) years of the Labour Party in government. I long for a lottery win and a one-way ticket out of Dodge.

        1. I thought that, too, once. But I’m at that stage of my life where I need things to happen, and I can’t see their happening in the U.K. any longer.

          2. I’m having a mid-life crisis. I may have to buy a Porsche Boxster and grow a moustache. In that order.

          4. Please tell me it’s not a current generation M2. That thing is well ugly!

          5. Love it! It’s hyper masculine, accelerates like a rocket and sticks to the road like a clam. 🙂

          6. At least when you’re driving you don’t have to look at that front. Or rear. Dear goodness! BMW’s designs have been going downhill since the early 2000s.

          7. I love the front and back – it’s joyously masculine. It’s all black and my sons call it the ‘Batmobile’. It’s an act of rebellion.

          10. I have an X1(M) – it goes like shit off a stainless steel shovel – you’ll enjoy it!!

          11. I always wanted one of the original ZM series Roadster Coupes – I reckon being so light they’d take off!

          13. I always wanted one of the original M series Roadster Coupes – I reckon being so light they’d take off!

          14. I’m cheap. I bought myself a little mini cooper as a play thing.

            The boss cannot get into it and getting out would be an even bigger challenge for her.

          17. I had a mate that bought a Boxster at that time of life (in crisis green) – he hated it, the suspension was so hard it buggered up his back!!!

          19. Well, it was before the pothole crisis but you’re right – my X1M has pretty hard suspension and I really feel the potholes, but it’s getting ridiculous, isnt it?
            I dont like conspiracy theories but it’s difficult not to think that the commies that run our local government are content to make driving totally unsustainable (for all but the chosen few)….. assholes…..

          20. They’re most definitely anti-car, but I think it’s as much that they’re only interested in allocating council funds for their woke and vanity projects, and not road maintenance, refuse collection and all the other stuff we actually want to be done.

    4. And we thought drag queen Conchita was the Wurst ever.

      Bring back the days of Sandie Shaw, that was a really bad ear worm.

    5. It’s Britain’s what entry?

      I don’t watch or listen to drivel. I only like proper music.

    6. Of course it’s a joke, the giveaway if that his bra is a spangled Union Jack.

    1. I reckon it’ll be how I feared: Labour won’t gain many more votes over the last general election, but they’ll win a lot more seats because of non-voters and those switching to Reform, independents et al.

      1. The Tories have failed miserably, not Labour have succeeded,
        Labour will regret winning the election.

      2. There’s nowhere else to go except violence, so try Reform. I’d like to see Reform and the Heritage party unite. If their leaders don’t come to some sort of unification then we’re probably buggered.

        1. Reform, Heritage, Reclaim, UKIP and the Silent But Deadly should definitely unite. But they won’t, will they?

          1. Unfortunately that’s probably true, so we can only try to ask them to. I’m talking to our Reform candidate tomorrow in Calstock.

          3. I understood (maybe wrongly) that is was Tice who didn’t want to unite.

    2. But, but, but !
      Will the bloody Conservatives learn anything from this and change their direction. As in doing what the electorate expect from a government in the UK.

      1. Why are they blaming the PM for this fiasco? Yes he is top dog but only after all other dogs gave it a go. Blaming the leader is ignoring the problem, it is a much deeper malaise than just one person.

        We have the same issue in Canada with the Liberals going off in their own progressive direction, Trudeau is primary a*hole but replace him by any of the other cabinet leaders and we will still get the same shit agenda from the government.

        1. I’m sure you realise Richard what a shambles our governments have all been for around 35 years.
          I think we need a new system.
          Even robots and computer systems fed with the updated correct and honest information would make sense and better job than the self serving, devious, money grabbing opportunists we have in our parliament, Whitehall and the house of Lords.
          It’s a shambles here in the UK now. Similarly in advertising if you want success and to sell your product you make people feel comfortable with it and they’ll buy it.
          In the UK now it’s as if the people in charge hate the public. But need their support, so they rob them. And rub their noses every horrible they have created.

  104. Good evening everyone, from Mercia & Olympus, very briefly popping in – have a good weekend.

    May the Fifth
    The arrival of the swifts
    For days I’ve watched,
    Nothing :
    And yet there they are ,
    Five on the evening air –
    Curved into substance
    By the thought of summer or even spring

    Cuneiform on blue papyrus –
    Fluent with contrast
    All night they fly –
    Ink to the sky’s ink
    Lost to the liquid
    Of the sparking stars.

    Tomorrow ,
    When the flowers wake –
    When the words of fragrance
    Climb on the voices
    Of the warming earth
    They’ll underline v
    The language they make
    Screech over paper
    Like a quill dipped ink .

  106. I had E30 M3s until they replaced them with larger V8s. The M2 is more like an M3 E30 but much rawer and with over 460 bhp.

    1. In 2006 I was taken for a ride (back seat) in a convertible M3, at high speed around the periphery of Sydney.

      Good job I haven’t much hair because it was certainly a hair-raising experience.

    1. It’s definitely more for bragging rights. I’ve always preferred Alpinas. Subtle, pretty but very quick.

  111. Changing leader will not save the Conservatives: the two-party system can’t be bucked

    The Tory obsession with replacing Rishi Sunak blinds them to the fact that voters are simply fed up

    CHARLES MOORE • 3 May 2024 • 6:42pm

    Did you know that Labour got a lower vote in Thursday’s Blackpool South by-election than in the same constituency in the Conservative landslide general election of 2019? Yet it lost then and won now.

    The reason, of course, was the turnout. In 2019, it was a little over 56 per cent. This week, it was 32.5 per cent. This does not lead me to argue that Labour did not do well on Thursday night in Blackpool, or in most of the country in the local elections. Even less does it lead me to claim that the Conservatives, despite Ben Houchen’s victory in Teesside, did all right. But it is of some interest that only 10,825 Blackpuddlians voted Labour and yet they were enough to make up 59 per cent of those voting.

    Turnout is often low at by-elections, but the Blackpool South result contrasts with that in Wirral South in February 1997, the last by-election before Tony Blair’s New Labour chucked out the Tories in May of that year. There, Labour gained the previously Tory seat in a turnout of 71.5 per cent, more than double the Blackpool South percentage. Which is a long-winded way of saying that Labour, though well into the phase of winning seats, has not yet done the same for hearts and minds.

    A fair summary might be that, after 14 years, voters feel the Conservative Party has delighted them long enough, but they have not yet decided exactly what to do about it. The options available to them now include Reform, and also – probably more attractive to most – doing nothing at all and staying at home.

    It was a by-election which led me to break the habit of a journalistic lifetime. Three years ago this Monday, in Hartlepool, the Conservative candidate gained the “safe” Labour seat, taking over half the vote (on a turnout a third higher than in Blackpool South). I suggested then, only slightly tentatively, that this result might mean the death of Labour.

    My point was that Sir Keir Starmer, the man brought in to rescue his party from the depths to which it had sunk under the extremist Jeremy Corbyn, was almost equally unattractive to voters. This second-referendum Remainer had little more to offer Red Wall voters than did Friend-of-Hamas Jeremy, I wrote. Sir Keir seemed to have got precisely nowhere.

    I should have stuck by one of the only two sensible rules about British general elections, which is that it is extremely hard to break the two-party system. (I’ll come to the other sensible rule in a minute.) So long as we have first-past-the-post elections, voters will naturally incline to a binary choice between the centre-Right and the centre-Left.

    After a bit, the floaters will get fed up with whichever lot they have put in and turn them out, putting in the other. Each of the two main parties will quite often suffer internal convulsions, but in the end, enough of them will stay together to survive. The splittists will fail.

    This has been the pattern throughout the history of our parliamentary democracy. The cast changed a century ago when one of the two main parties – the Liberals – fell and was replaced by Labour; but the binary system quickly re-established itself.

    Almost as soon as I had made my post-Hartlepool mistake, Covid aftershocks and Boris Johnson himself began to undermine the success of Boris Johnson, creating an opportunity which Sir Keir, without panache but with doggedness, took.

    Three years on, and people are talking instead about the death of the Conservative Party. I do not propose to repeat my mistake of 2021. Although I have never seen the Tories in a worse mess than they are today, and although we are almost certainly entering a Labour era, I think it highly unlikely that Britain will end up without a Conservative Party. The Reform Party, you see, is not a phenomenon in its own right. It is what doctors call an epiphenomenon, a secondary symptom.

    It may well attract some Labour votes that the Conservatives could never win, but the fundamental reason it exists is because the thing called the Conservative Party is in a bad way. The natural effect of our system is that, after a period of defeat, a mainstream party rethinks, revives and the cycle continues.

    In the years since the political death of Margaret Thatcher, we have had the Referendum party, Ukip and the Brexit Party, later renamed Reform (forgive me if I have forgotten a few others along the way). Collectively, they have made some difference. Nevertheless, none has succeeded. The Tories have been in power for 21 of those nearly 34 years. If the Conservatives reflect on this cycle, they will see they can only make it worse by trying desperately to break it.

    The year 69AD was known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Galba, the successor of Nero, was murdered by Otho in January. After defeat at the hands of Vitellius in April, Otho committed suicide. In December, Vitellius was killed by a mob. Vespasian took over.

    I need not labour comparisons with the Empresses Theresa and Liz, the Emperor Boris and his trusted Treasurer Rishi, who somehow contrived his fall. I simply make the point that those Tory legions who think it would be fun to install yet another emperor must be crazed by bloodletting. Look at the atavistic yearning for Penny Mordaunt as leader among some party members. It is caused by little more than the thrill at seeing her carry that Coronation sword.

    Unlike in the Roman Empire, we have general elections. And while our system has never insisted that every prime minister must first win a general election before holding office, none can enjoy the full confidence of his/her MPs and the electorate unless he has been victorious at the ballot box.

    Part of the contempt the public now feel for the Tories derives from the sense that we have been impotent witnesses to a series of mini-coups d’etat in which one faction gains brief, almost worthless mastery over another. The reign of Liz Truss was the apotheosis of this.

    What the plotters seem never to appreciate is that victory in these battles does not necessarily command wider consent. The Tories’ unhappy mixture of MPs’ votes and party members’ votes needed to choose the leader makes it possible for victory, even when won according to the rules, to lack the necessary buy-in from colleagues. For voters, it gives the maddening impression that the Tories think they own the freehold of government.

    There may well be a widespread longing to get rid of Rishi Sunak, but it is ridiculous to suggest that he is the central obstacle to another Conservative victory. Besides, at this stage, the only people entitled to do the deed are the voters themselves. As I write, we do not know the results in London or the West Midlands, but it would seem that Lord Houchen’s victory has stilled the party clamour for Mr Sunak’s head.

    I promised to mention the other sensible rule about general British elections – as opposed to local, mayoral elections or by-elections, which tend to exaggerate. It is that their results are always deserved, including the ones that seem inconclusive.

    On present showing, the Tories seem to deserve to lose, but Labour does not seem to deserve to win. Which seems to suggest that there is a good battle still to be had.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/03/local-elections-results-rishi-sunak-blackpool-south/

    1. The two-party system was ‘bucked’ in the early 20th century.

      The age-old Tory/Whig (Liberal/ Conservative) duopoly became the present Tory/Labour hegemony.

      Parties can be replaced if there is sufficient will in numbers to effect it.

    2. Like football supporters on away days who march through town centres chanting mindlessly – an invasion of the opposition’s territory. However, those supporters go home after the match…

    3. And still the Useful Idiots admire this ideology and can’t wait for it to replace oh-so-boring Christianity

        1. I’ve seen similar with our ewes and a new ram. He was on the job within a few minutes.

    6. Bit like grab a grannie night at the Samson & Hercules in Norwich in the 60s

    1. Well I used to go to Church a long time ago , and the boys at Irreverend are doing a very good job on me. It’s one of my favourite podcasts.

  117. I would give the asafoetida a miss to be safe. Having said that, I’ve never dared to use it. My olfactory sense can be quite sensitive though.

  118. Bored with the clown-world tonight I though I’d share with you what I think is a beautiful rendering of one of my favourite pieces of choral music, Sir John Tavener’s Song for Athene.

    Tavener wrote it in memory of a young woman, a family friend, who was killed in a cycling accident. She was Greek and her name was Athene. He drew on Greek orthodox tradition for the style – a bass drone throughout – and he had the words provided by a Greek Orthodox nun. There are references from Shakespeare but mostly from Greek Orthodox prayer. It came to the world’s attention when it was sung for the Recessional at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.

    Meet Sonus Choir. The setting is a replica Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee.

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

    Alleluia, Alleluia.
    May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
    Alleluia, Alleluia.
    Remember me O Lord, when you come into your kingdom.
    Alleluia, Alleluia.
    Give rest O Lord to your handmaid, who has fallen asleep.
    Alleluia, Alleluia.
    The Choir of Saints have found the well-spring of life and door of paradise.
    Alleluia, Alleluia.
    Life a shadow and a dream.
    Alleluia, Alleluia.
    Weeping at the grave creates the song Alleluia.
    Come, enjoy rewards and crowns I have prepared for you.
    Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

    1. A friends mother died yesterday morning. This seems entirely appropriate. Thanks.

    2. I remember hearing that at Diana’s funeral. It’s beautiful. This weekend is the Orthodox Easter.

      1. Despite my opinion of that day, the rendition of this piece in Westminster Abbey remains the greatest I have heard, aided not just by the vast space but by the drone accompaniment of basso profundos, not often used in performances of the work.

      2. Yes. We used to celebrate Greek Easter with a spit roasted lamb at this time in the past

        1. What, more than usual.for a musician? Duly noted.

          Ok; I.like Tavener’s music.

          (Thanks.)

  119. Maybe try it in a small dish before batch cooking with it at the very least.

  122. Has Sunak said anything yet? You know, perhaps admitting the delilberately immiserating and spiteful policies he has pursued are deliberate and labour will continue and worsen things?

  123. The Welsh results are the usual misery. Not that it matters. Hell, it’s only money.

      1. Exactly. it wouldn’t be sprayed around so liberally if any of these people bore any kind of personal responsibility. OPM=opium

        =Other People’s Money

        1. And that’s the fundamental problem. The state does what it pleases regardless. It needs to be collared and chained, forced under true democratic oversight so it serves, rather than merely grows.

          1. Agreed in spades – but how is this to be done, given the capture of all our institutions by our enemies?

    1. What’s the guy’s problem?

      Edit. Wow. What a gigantic pain in the arse the Canadian chap is. You are correct, it is pure Cluster B.

  127. Why does the (I assume wholly innocent) piano player wear dark glasses?

    Just asking…

    1. I don’t know sir. This gentleman only came to my attention after the CCP got involved a couple of months back. He seems to advocate the “It’s a free country if you aren’t bothering others” position, which I believe is what most of us in the British Isles would agree with.

      It jolly fare his playing and the world is a little better for it, although I’m not a huge fan of the style myself.

      1. Have not heard him play? If it is proper boogie woogie then it’s good clean fun

        1. I need a bit more harmonic meat on the bones. Think Oscar Peterson and beyond. I do recognise this chap is good at what he does and the station is all the better for his contributions. I would be happy to hear is stride piano work as I went about my journey.

    2. That’s only the Republicans at their nomination convention, it has zero impact on anything.

      Maybe more significant is the Democrat Governor signing off on a numbed of covid jab mandates for schools and industry. There are limitations on what she agreed to but a Democrat moving away from blindly saying “covid jab good” is quite a change.

      1. 386784+ up ticks,

        Evening R,

        To have the odious issue in the spotlight at all in any shape or form is surely beneficial.

      2. 386784+ up ticks,

        Evening R,

        To have the odious issue in the spotlight at all in any shape or form is surely beneficial.

  130. Late for me, we had a lovely facetime chat with our youngest in Dubai this evening. All dry there now.
    Popping off to bed now.
    Night all.
    Catch you tomorrow. 😴

  131. Good night, chums. Sleep well, and I hope to see you all tomorrow.

    1. The British way of life is under threat from Muslims who refuse to accept British culture

      NORMAN TEBBIT • 12 December 2016 • 2:33pm

      Like any former political party chairman, I cannot resist trying to read political significance into by-election results. Still, the Sleaford by-election last week did not set my political pulse racing.

      It simply confirmed that the Corbyn/McDonnell Labour Party has at present no appeal to traditional Labour voters, and if I were Conservative Chairman today, I would tell Mrs May that it no more than confirms the opinion polls.

      Then I would advise her to look at the Casey Review into opportunity and integration. Dame Louise Casey deserves credit for uncovering many of the truths about the state of British society which the “establishment” would rather not acknowledge, although they stare us in the face. There has to be something going seriously wrong when, as Dame Louise observes, the department responsible for integration policy spent more money in 2011/12 and 2012/13 on promoting the Cornish language than the English language – or when some trade unions challenge a strategy for all public sector workers to speak English.

      For that it deserves credit, but Dame Louise shrinks from spelling out the threat to the stability of our society. That is the increasing proportion of our population who simply do not accept many basic assumptions about how that society should be organised.

      All societies are defined by their dominant culture. While a political entity can govern a state in which there is more than one society, as in India, no society within such a small state as the United Kingdom can accommodate more than one dominant culture.

      I emphasise that the important matter is culture, not race or ethnic origin. Our race is unchangeable, but our culture is a matter of choice.

      Until very recently in our society, child marriage, bigamy, divorce at the will of the male partner, the imprisonment of wives at the will of their husband, female genital mutilation and abortion on the grounds of the sex of the unborn child were unacceptable and indeed criminal offences.

      Nor did we have any challenge to supremacy of statute and common law from a rival legal system with its own courts such as that now represented by the network of Sharia law and courts.

      These thoughts are not an attack on Islam and its values. They are simply a warning that a population in which different groups observe different laws is inherently unstable.

      Dame Louise sets out some initial thoughts on what might be done to promote opportunity and integration. We should, she says, build resilience in the towns and cities where the greatest challenges exist by such things as the promotion of English language skills and empowering marginalised women.

      More positively, she suggests giving more weight to British values, history and laws in schools, but sadly says nothing about what we do with schools and education authorities which do precisely the opposite. Perhaps she had that in mind in her final recommendation of the development of a new oath for holders of public office.

      I would go further. Right now, there has to be a halt to any proposals for devolution of powers to regions or cities until the danger that they will become power bases for groups who do not accept the majority’s culture is overcome.

      It is a pity that Dame Louise’s review was not undertaken a decade or more ago, before the doctrine of political correctness forbade the establishment from talking about such matters. It might then have been sufficient to avert the crisis which we now face as Islam challenges our way of life in our own country. Today it is too little, too late.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/12/british-way-life-threat-muslims-refuse-accept-british-culture/

      The Sleaford by-election was triggered by the resignation of Tory Stephen Phillips who said that he believed the government was becoming more right-wing, and that its attempts to begin negotiations to leave the EU without consulting Parliament were “divisive and plain wrong”.

  133. Political party Number of seats (82 total)
    Conservative 30
    Green 4
    Independents for Dorset 3
    Independent or other 1
    Liberal Democrat 42
    Labour 2

    So that’s that then !

    1. Stinks doesn’t it, Belle? The turnout for the Welsh Police Commissioner vote was apparently in a single figure percentage. As reflected in the dire results. Not that we had any range of choice at all

      1. I am shuddering , the turn out was pretty miserable and negative .

        All I can think of are their crackpot policies and the arch rat Clegg.

        1. Clegg the fattest of fat cats with the best feathered nest. This is the pinnacle to which all the venal turds aspire these days. I cannot express my contempt in punchy enough terms. How can people possibly believe that any amount of money in their fat little pockets is worth destroying everything that has real value? Philistines, all of them. It is, by the way, interesting that the people who trade on the pretend identity of “The Palestinians” actually do refer to themselves as “Philistines” in their own language. Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? From the River to the Sea/ Philistines will be free oh yeah

    2. If only the hammering that the Tories are getting could be replicated when we finally get a chance to vote against the liberal dictatorship that we are suffering under in canada.

      Trouble is that we expect the liberals to get into the free money game that opopanax mentioned and bribe the electorate.

      1. Well, we could all begin by reclaiming our common language. These people are not liberal, they are Fascists and need to be identified as such. This huge scam must be stopped – ended for good – asap

        1. Until October 2025. Who knows how much more damage they can do in that time.

  135. Letters: Voters are tired of the Tories – but have little enthusiasm for the alternative
    SIR – The local elections have been an unmitigated disaster for the Conservative Party. The re-election of Ben Houchen as Tees Valley mayor should not be allowed to mask that.

    The continued rise of Reform UK reflects the Tories’ lurch to the Left, away from the values held by most party members and Red Wall voters. In recent days the Prime Minister has announced several policies that appear to be more Right-wing, but the reality is that Conservative voters no longer trust their MPs to deliver such policies.

    One Nation MPs – many of whom would be more at home in the Liberal Democrats – have blocked policies that would have persuaded us that the Government is on our side, and Conservative Party headquarters seems intent on selecting more of the same candidates.

    We can only hope that the general election, which will almost certainly be equally disastrous, brings about a reset and a return to a truly Conservative agenda.

    Norman Inniss
    London SE9

    My BTL comment to another BTL poster:
    It is not beyond the wit of our own Parliament to listen to the public, agree on a definition and pass legislation that gives dying people a real choice at the end of life.
    Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)
    London SW1
    I have one question: When did our parliament ever listen to the public? Or take note of it!

    1. “We can only hope that the general election, which will almost certainly be equally disastrous, brings about a reset and a return to a truly Conservative agenda.”

      By which time the nation will be beyond salvation.

    2. After Brexit a number of Conservative MPs made comments on the line of “we’d be happy to lose our seats as long

      as Britain Remains in the EU”

      Be careful what you wish for-

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