Friday 5 April: Israel’s war strategy must take into account the full nature of the enemy

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

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

821 thoughts on “Friday 5 April: Israel’s war strategy must take into account the full nature of the enemy”

      1. “So those who are last now will be first then, and those who are first will be last.” 16 “Here it is again, the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first.”

  2. Second! And I did Wordle in 3 today.Wordle 1,021 3/6

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    1. Well done, a poor 5 here

      Wordle 1,021 5/6

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      1. Wordle 1,021 4/6

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    2. Fitted my starter nicely.
      Wordle 1,021 2/6

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  3. Second! And I did Wordle in 3 today.Wordle 1,021 3/6

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  7. UK ‘should consider Sweden-style selective conscription system’. 5 April 2024.

    Britain should consider a Sweden-style selective military conscription system, a former head of MI6 has said.

    Sir Alex Younger, who was chief of the Secret Intelligence Service from 2014 to 2020, argued that the UK needed a “wake-up call”.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Tez .

    I’m ex-forces, but why on earth would you want to fight for a country that hates its indigenous population?

    Another Top Comment to be soon deleted one suspects. I’m far too old and decrepit but if Vlad really needs a hand I’ll try my best.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/04/uk-sweden-selective-conscription-former-head-mi6/

    1. Morning Minty & all

      I read the article and the none too polite comments below. I had to check the date to confirm it wasn’t an April Fools’ piece.
      My own view is that given the mix of tensions now inherent in the UK one day we will be faced with joining the local Fyrd for self-defence…..

      1. Morning Stephen. These people not only hate us, as Tez observes, but are seeking to erase us from existence. I am not going to be their accomplice!

        1. Fyrd: tribal militia-like arrangement existing in Anglo-Saxon England from approximately ad 605. Local in character, it imposed military service upon every able-bodied free male. It was probably the duty of the ealderman, or sheriff, to call out and lead the fyrd.

          1. Thanks, Annie, I only hope I remember your explanation when I next encounter it.

        2. Old Anglo Saxon word – a locally assembled militia with the task of persuading invaders to Fyrd Off!

          1. I doubt if I will ever remember this, King Stephen, but thanks for the explanation.

    3. I shall have to have a good hunt round to see if I still have my “medically unfit for service” letter.

  9. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) list

    AN AWFUL CROP OF ‘DAD’ JOKES

    When chemists die, they barium.

    Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

    I know a guy who’s addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time.

    How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.

    I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

    This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I’d never met herbivore.

    I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can’t put it down.

    I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

    They told me I had type-A blood, but it was a Type-O.

    PMS jokes aren’t funny; period.

    Why were the Indians in America first? They had reservations.

    I didn’t like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

    Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn’t control her pupils?

    When you get a bladder infection urine trouble.

    Broken pencils are pointless.

    I tried to catch some fog, but I mist.

    What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.

    England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.

    I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.

    I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.

    All the toilets in London’s police stations have been stolen. The police have nothing to go on.

    I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.

    Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

    Velcro what a rip off!

    A cartoonist was found dead in his home. Details are sketchy.

    Venison for dinner again? Oh deer!

    Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings, too.

  10. ‘Morning all! Snowing here, and blooming cold! Glowball warming, innit?

  11. Labour will struggle to resist the temptation to tax pensioner wealth. 5 April 2024.

    The Tories have had 14 years to get the intergenerational balance right but ended up too far down one end of the scale. It caused such resentment that the phrase “anti-Tory young” now applies to most people under the age of 50. It would be a grave error for Labour to swing the other way and continue the idea of politics as a generational battle. But it will be a temptation that many of Starmer’s new MPs may find impossible to resist.

    I don’t think that it will be that much of a struggle.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/04/labour-struggle-resist-temptation-tax-pensioner-wealth/

  12. Got a couple of chickens? Apparently DEFRA are now planning to make you register their number, type and location on pain of gaol.
    The Tory party – delivering bureaucracy that even Labour couldn’t.

    1. I have one in my fridge and 2 in the freezer.

      The one in the fridge is called “N0 1 Sunday”

      The one in the top basket of the freezer is called “Curry”

      The other one is a “Don’t Know

      1. As a carnivore you will have to register as a potential risk to other species and keep logs of all the meat you buy…

          1. Wood burning? You must register as a threat to the climate and buy an annual licence, keeping detailed records of all the logs you burn, their type, source and length of seasoning, keeping photographic records of all logs stored…

          4. They’ve already started Bob. The log seller registration scheme, increasing pressure of wood burning stoves, ban on backboilers…
            The aim seems to be to squeeze out any food or heat production autonomy.

  15. Torrential all night in Devon, quite extraordinarily heavy. The lane is now a river.
    The new storm tank the water company have just spent 6 months installing in the village sewage works to prevent run off into the river filled in only two hours two days ago. Money well spent. 🙂

  16. Good morning all.
    A dull and slightly less chilly 7°C this morning. No rain as yet, but a heavy overcast that does not augur well.

    A couple of BTL Comments:-

    Dave Rush
    8 MIN AGO
    There should be total and full world pressure on Hamas to release the hostages. Only when the hostages have been released and accounted for, should a cease fire be discussed.

    Reply by Comrade Woke.
    4 MIN AGO
    Reply to Dave Rush
    Hamas are afraid of the PR when the world finds out how many are still alive, and how the survivors were treated. They cannot release any survivors now.

    R. Spowart
    JUST NOW
    Reply to Dave Rush – view message
    Message Actions
    But that would destroy the whole point of the exercise, which is to goad Israel into further military action and the unavoidable conversion of “Innocent Human Shields” into “Propaganda Units” that can then be used to show how Israel is committing genocide and thus gain Hamas a massive propaganda advantage.

  17. Morning, all Y’all.
    Snowy – again. Some 6″ fell overnight, all wet and ucky. Hoped we were done with it for this spring, but no. Oh, well…

  18. Another BTL:-

    R. Spowart
    11 MIN AGO
    Message Actions
    OK, can I have some clarification here?
    Are the British “aid workers” actual aid workers who died in a total SNAFU or were they armed security guards, aka mercenaries, mistaken for Hamas?
    REPLY
    7
    1

    1. Our intellectual culture is in one heck of a mess.

      It is actually in the process of dissolution.

      1. Much of it is, certainly, but while there is intellectual and cultural resistance it is not over.

      1. Another good one yes. As the article highlighted, if you remove that sense of the divine, or better, if you eliminate God altogether then you aren’t left with nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum as they say.

        The deception in Atheism is that having removed the divine, you’re left in command of your own faculties. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    3. Yes, good article thanks. Dawkins has only himself to blame for his muddled thoughts, of course. To find space in his thinking for the passions of humans he was forced to idolise the meme so that in the end humans became its servant. Thus the meme is Dawkins’ god.

      1. What Dawkins etc haven’t grasped yet is that a sense of the divine seems intrinsic to the emergence of sentience and self awareness. They haven’t asked why that should be, perhaps because they wouldn’t like the answer, and what happens to humanity if that sense of the divine is excised. On the latter point we’re already see some of the societal consequences and they’re not pretty as Dawkins seems to be recognising.

        1. Well, everyone wants to be their own god, don’t they. Guarding against that impulse is as good a reason on its own for having God in the first place.

          The trouble is with everyone wanting their own version of god is of course that all the little gods tend to fight among themselves. I’d have thought as a University professor he’d have been more aware of how Power actually works, to be honest.

  20. 385495+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Treacherous treasa was a placement well before the leadership farce was triggered.

    The gove chap played as candidate then swapped roles finding back stabbing more to his liking. johnson being the victim, leadsome as candidate, after one visit found seemingly the kitchen to hot, ALL political slabs paving the RESET way for the poisonous may.

    No intentions what so ever in building on what UKIP ( four million votes) UKIP that one. not today’s ino party, had won on the day.

    The shite mindset of the majority voter then decided in their mass stupidity after saying ” no need of UKIP now,” returned to supporting the lab/lib/con pro eu coalition party.

    Believe it or not they are actually gearing up to select one of the odious trio to sample more of the same as in mass paedophilia, mass murder by assorted means, people culling has had a successful pilot run, ALL fronted by a chorus line of dancing coppers.

    1. Ogga, you’re getting a bit incoherent. As Angelina says below, we have to get lower – despite being so low already. Now the recovery would be difficult, once Labour really ruin everything as they always do the recovery to sanity will be truly painful – bleeding, broken bones painful.

      People are going to die because of the malice of the state but from that it will be shredded, burned and the wounds cauterised. The alternative is communist dictatorship under the jackboot of the EU and war (which I think is more likely as we’re going to be forced to the IMF who, under the stooge la garde will make a condition rechaining to the hated EU. I honestly believe that’s the game plan. There is no other reason for the deliberately, fundamentally stupid, easy to avoid, moronic decisions being made.

      For example – Coutinho – blithering on about cheap energy while slapping massive subsidy on windmills. That sort of incomprehensible doublethink cannot be an accident.

      1. “The lamentable change is from the best;
        The worst returns to laughter.
        ……………………………………………

        “The worst is not
        So long as we can say ‘This is the worst’.”

        [Edgar in ‘King Lear’]

        When things are going well they can only get worse – when things are truly bad we have not yet reached rock bottom until we cannot still imagine something even worse!

        1. Reminds me of Jim’s nurse who could not compete with the lion for awfulness.

  21. An X-Tw@ter comment:-
    https://twitter.com/robbi_fahey/status/1776101907599114597

    With text for the non-Tw@erati:-

    Robbi Fahey
    @robbi_fahey
    Why do you lie? There has never been an independent Palestinian state. A self-identifiable, self-ruling and recognized Palestinian entity never existed.

    Palestine was the name of a region, not the people.

    Between World War I and II, part of Palestine’s land was owned by absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus and Beirut.

    The Palestinians were never the custodians of the land. No more than a renter is the owner of the dwelling. They lived there, but its not theirs.

    Palestinians deny Israel’s right to exists. They say it over and over. That is the only reason the conflict never ends.

    Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a Palestinian state. Before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire, not a Palestinian state. Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, not a Palestinian state, etc.

    The facts are that the Arabs rejected the 1947 UN partition for a two state solution and embarked on a never-ending war against Israel. When Arab armies continually got their asses kicked, they switched to terrorism based on supposed victimhood.

    The “Palestinians” as the official name was invented in the 1960’s to distract from the fact that the Jewish State was a tiny sliver of land surrounded by huge and hostile Arab states. Before that, Palestine was the name of a region, not the people.
    5:17 am · 5 Apr 2024
    ·
    7,737
    Views

    1. The fact that what everyone has bothered to find out for themselves already knows has to be repeated even now, is a sad reflection on the propaganda we have to live with from day to day in Britain. But then apparently many young people think things such as the Holocaust are just war stories, too

      1. Schools don’t teach it because it might upset the kiddiewinks. More, I imagine, because the parallels of suppression, internal conflict, dissent, authoritarian government, crushing taxation, a failing economy and propaganda spewing state mouthpieces and the complete lack of democratic accountability might just have the brighter ones asking how the current regime is so different to Nazi Germany.

        The trouble there is they’ll swiftly realise that they’re not in the hard Left club.

        1. Schools seem to spend most of their time teaching propaganda these days.

    2. Meanwhile even GB News talks of Argentina wanting to take back the Falklands.
      A state can’t take back something that was never part of that state.

      1. In fact, when Britain first occupied it, a State that was yet to even become a State if it comes to that.

        1. Moreover while the Falkland Islands are occupied entirely by the descendants of colonists, so is Argentina.
          Why would anybody would think that the descendants of a motley crew of Spaniards, Italians and Germans (many of whom only arrived there in the 20th Century) plus a smattering of Welsh, should have any rights over islands a couple of hundred miles off the coast? I think the only argument is that the daughter of one of the original (Scottish) claimants of the Falklands married a resident of Argentina

          1. Oh yes, I hadn’t thought of that. That is in fact very true. There’s so much ‘grift’ and hustle goes on in the world. When you think of it in that light politicians make so much more sense, don’t they.

    3. Lefties are usually historically inaccurate. It’s the only way they prevent cognitive dissonance in their own minds.

      Everyone keeps forgetting that muslim started this. Hamas bombed Israel. All they had to do was… nothing… and this conflict, the deaths the rapes – by muslims – wouldn’t have happened. I manage to do nothing consistently most days. It’s terribly easy. Getting into a little paraglider and dropping things on people is immensely hard work. You’d have to be a fanatic to do that. A nutter with too much time on his hands and hate in his heart.

    4. Actually I thought the catch was going to be America. It all fits their treatment of the native American tribes.

  22. No surprise, Sherlock….

    Men who work entirely from home are more likely to get overlooked for promotions and pay rises than women who do the same, academics have found. A survey of 937 UK managers by the University of Warsaw found that bosses were 15pc less likely to promote men who worked from home full-time compared with their peers who were entirely office-based, and 10pc less likely to increase pay.

    They are much more likely than their female colleagues to be overlooked, with bosses saying they were 7pc less likely to promote home-working women than those in the office and 8pc less likely to give pay rises. Agnieszka Kasperska, a researcher at the University of Warsaw, said: “Both male and female remote workers experience career penalties, but they are substantially larger for men.”

    The gender gap widens in organisations with very demanding cultures, where for example staff work long hours, do overtime, and tend to put work above personal life, the study found. In these organisations, managers were around 30pc less likely to promote men who never go into the office and 19pc less likely to give a pay rise. The figures for women doing the same were 15pc and 19pc, respectively.

    1. Thank goodness the dustmen aren’t working from home, otherwise our garden would be awash with soggy plastic and cardboard.

  23. Good Moaning.
    Phew. Back to normal. No bright yellow blob in the sky. Glowball Warming postponed for another day.

  24. Yes, Israel must take into account the nature of its enemy. And that nature is to hide behind its own civilians in the hope that Israel will be forced to kill them so that they, Hamas, can win the propaganda war. And sadly, the savages of Hamas are succeeding, having convinced fools, the gullible and of course the Jew haters that Israel is engaged in genocide. That notion is obviously ludicrous, and anyone who knows anything about Hamas knows that it is a murderous authoritarian Islamist sect bent on the extinction of the Jewish state.

  25. Bore da all and the 77th,

    Showery at Castle McPhee, wind in the South-West, 11℃ with the Met Office Climate Cultists promising 14℃. Should top rainiung soon – until tonight.

    What’s this, I thought, is Britain going to re-arm? Will the RAF have nukes again?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1564cccfd2ab72c7527ac6b325f1d7b1d3fb6226044858f20d58a8b80792ea46.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/04/mini-nuclear-reactor-built-hartlepool/

    No. It’s actually a little bit of good news at last about the building of SMR power stations.

    Britain’s plans to renew its nuclear industry have so far been blighted by cost overruns and planning delays.

    Hinkley Point C, in Somerset, is set to cost as much as £35bn, which is more than £10bn than previous estimates, and will be delivered four years later than planned.

    Rolls-Royce in February threatened to put its first mini reactors in Europe instead of the UK over delays in government decision making.

    Great British Nuclear, the public body charged with preparing the way for a “nuclear renaissance”, last month delayed its decision on where the first mini-nukes will be sited until after the next general election, amid fears the losers may threaten legal action……

    …..Andrew Bowie, the minister for nuclear and renewables, said innovation was key to building out the sector, as he awarded the new funding.

    He said: “We are backing innovation in nuclear – from building large-scale plants better to encouraging new advanced technologies – to achieve our ambition for a quarter of our electricity to come from nuclear power by 2050.

    “This funding supports the next step in the development of advanced modular reactors and shows our commitment to keeping the UK at the forefront of nuclear technology.

    But why aim for only 25% of Britain’s power to come from nuclear generators? Why not 50%? Or even more. Get rid all those ghastly turbines and solar panels on good agricultural land.

    1. They should have awarded it to Rolls Royce to build them in Severnside where the Berkeley power station was.

    2. They’ve sat on their hands for two years. If they’d gone for it two years ago with RR they’d be breaking ground on the first sites by now.

      1. Apologies, but they wouldn’t. They don’t want to. The plan all along for the demented greeniacs is not to match or exceed demand, it’s to stop it. the hoax of ‘climate change’ is not about energy, it is about destruction – of society, economies. The plan is to ram us backward by any means possible to socialism.

    3. There are micro nuclear reactors that could be bought an deployed. They’ve been used in South Africa and Tanzania as well as Australia. They’re the size of half a container lorry, some a large shed. They generate about 20MW of power, enough for a small area. Siting dozens around cities would provide masses of power and after an initial interest free loan to deploy say, 10; paid back from operating profit with the proviso that profits are reinvested in new deployment. That’d create a wave of installations of cheap energy. In exchange, the state stops all subsidy of any sort for windmills. All green taxes are scrapped, permanently and the lie of net zero abandoned.

      The energy market made just that. Remove the subsidy for heat pumps and put it on solar, or put it on both. Create a new generation of folk putting solar on their rooves for even more energy generating capacity. With masses of abundant energy we can then get on with changing the energy mix and get fracking and building coal power stations.

      Then sack the entirety of ofgem’s management team and make it a regulator with one goal – an energy surplus of 20% this year, 25% next, 30 the year after until we get to 50%,

      Alas, the state is deliberately ramming us toward energy and fuel poverty. The intent is not to meet demand, it is to destroy it.

    4. When I left my first “proper” job, I was involved in the safety case for Hinckley “C”. That was 1990. Not a watt has been generated there yet 34 years later… and the “later than planned” refers to the latest re-edited plan, not the original schedule.

  26. Good morning, all. Raining here with the forecast showing improvement from mid-morning: radar indicates the rain front is moving quickly and so forecast is probably accurate. Washing on 3 hour cycle in anticipation!

    Here’s a WEF sponsored word salad, I could have typed that it sounded double-dutch to me but I decided to refrain from typing something so blatantly obvious.😇

    My take on this this short piece from Rutte is about control and only control, everything else is mis-direction, camouflage, BS etc. Typical WEF control: control of what you are allowed to eat, how much of it you will be allowed to eat and when it will be available for you to eat and finally, how expensive, in your digital credit score, it will be to purchase.

    Beware WEF Young World Leader Graduates promising initiatives/improvements in your life-style.

    Apologies to Virgil.

    https://twitter.com/juneslater17/status/1775860927356674547

    3. Rutte and his attempts at destroying farming in the Netherlands, on behalf of his WEF overlords, started the ball rolling on the large scale farmers protest over the past two years. Not that such protests have been widely promulgated in our supine ‘free’ media.

      1. He must be as thick as pigsh*t if he can’t see that when the day of reckoning comes, it’ll be he who gets the blame, not his billionaire backers!

  27. I fear they will achieve their target of a quarter of electricity to be nuclear by simply reducing the total amount of electricity produced!

    1. This is the intent. If no energy is demanded because it’s simply too expensive then the quota is automatically met. That’s the plan all along. If you insist on paying for it, to you know, heat and eat then they cut you off.

      The exact opposite policy – deprivation, not over supply – is planned.

      1. She is a benevolent master – she permits me some cheese until it starts smelling out the fridge. 🙂

        1. She’s very good to you. Some have speculated that benevolent dictatorship is by far the best political system around.

  31. Morning all 🙂😊
    My word same old, same old, weather wise. Its absolutely awful.
    I’m not sure if today’s headline actually fits the bill. It’s pretty obvious who the number one enemy of Western civilised culture is and has been and will be for centuries to come. . And being kind showing the slightest hint of respect and tolerance is seen by them as weakness to be taken full advantage of. Our useless political classes as we already know have effed up everything they come into contact with. Why not this ?
    Remembering it took the Spanish more than 300 years to flush them out. And they are still there.

    1. It’s rained nearly every day this year. Still, we’ve plentiful reservoirs to collect it all, haven’t we?

      Haven’t we? We’ve not, for example, got a water policy designed for Spain, have we?

      2. Despite the huge increase in our population, our political idiots have backed down from building much needed and new reservoirs because of the ursula fond of lying threats.

    2. Wet and windy, with much more of the same promised over the weekend. On the brightside, the Met Office forecast of a ‘340 mile snow bomb’ (h/t Wayne the Covid Marshall on X) should pass through rather quickly.

      Talking of conflicts, have you seen the latest tweet by the spoon-faced twit Recall me Dave Camoron? He does a walk through towards camera, spouting his warmongering bollix whilst gesticulating like a Poundshop Magnus Pyke impersonater.

      I’m not sure who persuaded the former PR titan to do his piece to camera in such a way, but it comes off like the ‘Fast Show’ sketch where Paul Whitehouse (dressed as a ‘youth’) walks along saying such lines as, “Isn’t war brilliant!”

    2. We’ve seen ourselves how the media deliberately excludes the perpetrator from the crime. In fact, it’s almost comical.

      Boy stabbed in London – right, you know the stabber is going to be black, you know the victim will be white. You know the stabber will have blithered on about ‘wespek’ or some other tripe.

      If a bomb goes off it’ll be ‘police called to explosion in night club’ But it’s a gay club and it’s a muslim terrorist. The BBC will never admit this, so they lie and hint it’s a gas problem until it gets out on CCTV that some bearded middle easterner called Abdul was seen throwing a rucksack through the door after shouting for a loo and a snack bar.

    3. We’ve seen ourselves how the media deliberately excludes the perpetrator from the crime. In fact, it’s almost comical.

      Boy stabbed in London – right, you know the stabber is going to be black, you know the victim will be white. You know the stabber will have blithered on about ‘wespek’ or some other tripe.

      If a bomb goes off it’ll be ‘police called to explosion in night club’ But it’s a gay club and it’s a muslim terrorist. The BBC will never admit this, so they lie and hint it’s a gas problem until it gets out on CCTV that some bearded middle easterner called Abdul was seen throwing a rucksack through the door after shouting for a loo and a snack bar.

    2. We didn’t hear his answer in the clip – but the truth is he has no answer.

      And another truth is that he doesn’t give an airborne act of fornication about it!

        1. Typical answers from pricks in politics. They don’t have a clue what to do.

    1. When he opened the silver casket in The Merchant of Venice the chap saw a self-portrait:

      What have we here? The portrait of a Blinken Idiot!

    3. I thought Ukraine would much rather join the EU. Vastly bigger gravy train with no requirement for military response.

    4. I was under the impression that; NATO countries that began a conflict (bombing/shelling the Russian speaking areas in Eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2022 must be regarded as such) could not call an Article V to bring fellow NATO members into such a conflict, and, perhaps more pertinently, countries in a conflict would not be considered for NATO membership whilst in conflict.

      Who changed these NATO rules? Or are those beholden to the military-industrial complex just prepared to overrule such sensible rules in their drive to war?

      All I can see is that the western financial house of cards is about to meet gravity and they are desperate for deflection from their failure over the past 70 years.

    5. I’m trying to think of a war since 1945 involving the US, that they have actually won.

  37. I am off – to be measured for new glasses after the cataract procedure. Back later – hoping to “see” you all then!

    1. If we don’t sell them arms someone else will. The arms dealers who should be targeted are those that arm Hamas ie Iran

    1. Let me guess, she didn’t punch anyone who looked at though they might punch back harder?

  40. Four in Ten Repeat Knife Crime Offenders Spared Jail Time by Lax British Judiciary

    The lax British judicial system is sparing more repeat knife crime offenders from prison than at any time since the government introduced a so-called two-strike system in 2015.

    According to an analysis of Ministry of Justice statistics conducted by the Independent website, almost four in ten of the over 4,000 repeat knife crime offenders did not face prison time in the year leading up to September of 2023 in England and Wales.
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/04/05/four-in-ten-repeat-knife-crime-offenders-spared-jail-time-by-lax-british-judiciary/

  41. Mourning all. Dull day but no rain.
    Yesterday I made a remark about Iran interfering with Israel because it would destabilize the Mullahs. Co-incidentally this popped up in my You Tube feed today. I notice that there is no mention of this in the Telegraph.

    BREAKING: Huge Clashes In Iran Between Islamic Occupiers And Rebels
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X4-pg0DZ6M

    2. It’s odd on the face of it that Iran is taking the risk of getting involved in a hot war for all sorts of reasons.

      1. I agree. But I think, like a lot of religious fanatics, the Mullahs down realize they will have to face a revolt of their own people. They think that an appeal to patriotism will overcome any possibility of revolt. I think they are much mistaken.

        Have you seen the video of women in a hospital going after a Mullah?

        1. No I haven’t. That would be an interesting and hopeful development. The Iranians deserve so much better than their islamic government.
          They are financially close to Russia now, and probably in a much better state than the West, so I would have thought all they have to do is sit tight and avoid getting sucked into some war by the US.

  42. That’s a worry, I’ve just put a USB plug in right way up first time.

    1. Did you know they sometimes have a symbol on them to show you the right way up?

      1. It’s always made to be invisible unless you squint hard and hold it up to the light!

          3. Sue probably meant no harm as she doesn’t realise that JD stands for Josephine Dolores and your pronouns are they/them.

        2. I’m the same. Any new piece of kit and i just press buttons to see what happens. Worked first time on my new dishwasher. Didn’t bother opening the manual.

        3. Nowadays I need to wear 2 pairs of glasses and use a magnifying glass to have any chance of deciphering instructions. Sometimes I have to read them in French because I can’t find the English section .
          Mostly I just use common sense.

        2. Oh, I don’t know.
          You can probably hire a marquee large enough to conceal him/her/it.

      1. They caricature femininity. It’s mockery. A male chauvinist idea of what it is to be a woman and he probably has no idea of just how wrong he is about that. He wants to be what he thinks we are and it’s grossly insulting.

        1. Misogyny at its worst and most openly expressed is what trans actually is.

        3. The Victorians had the answers to people like this. Commonly and rightly known as ‘The Looney Bin’.

    6. Yuk. More appropriate for a gay bar or nightclub than a courtroom. It’s challenging the other participants to say something and clearly they are intimidated by that get-up.

      Real professional women don’t dress or act like that.

        1. Oh, I thought it was Theresa May. Or may not, according to the replies below. Whatever it is, it’s a fright.

          2. I was beginning to doubt myself, oh thank goodness it is her! She has very masculine arms and chicken legs. She thinks she is still a teenager. Miaow!

          4. I didn’t know whether or not it should be ‘it is she’. So I looked it up. “You can use either “This is she” or “This is her.” Although “This is she” was grammatically correct for years, “This is her” is also grammatically acceptable. “This is she” was grammatically correct because the verb “to be” is a linking verb, which makes the subject pronouns “this” and “she” interchangeable.”

            Had I used “it is she” everyone would have thought I were/was (I suspect were is correct because it is conditional…!) going to burst into poetry. I think you can tell I am on my second glass of red wine…. it’s Friday night…

        2. Much too short and would look better on someone half her age but at least she’s female. And i think that was her holiday attire rather than office wear.

    1. The Mohammedans were of course both the aggressors and the winners but they cry foul if their victims have the temerity to fight back. Nothing changes?

      1. Hi Sue. Yes indeed.
        I have been listening to Islamic/Christian debates but it is obvious that Islam has no sincere arguments refuting Christianity. They willfully misrepresent and constantly misinterpret Christian thought. When they are cornered they immediately resort to threats of violence, obscenities and ad hominem attacks. It makes for difficult listening but I’m trying to get into their heads, so to speak.

        1. They are just not good people and many would do us harm without question. thats what total brainwashing does for you

        2. Take Gaza, Israel is attacking terrorists because they are terrorists and an ongoing threat; not because they are Muslims.
          If the Muslims stopped their terrorists attacking Israel, the Israelis would not attack them.

          Hamas is attacking Israelis because they are Jews and they will continue to attack them until there are no Jews left.

          That’s a huge difference.

          1. There is a very good reason why Palestinians’ fellow Muslims will have nothing to do with them.

  45. S.S. Byron D. Benson.

    Complement:
    37 (10 dead and 27 survivors).
    91,500 barrels of crude oil

    The unarmed Byron D. Benson formed a small convoy with the American steam tanker Gulf of Mexico (7807 grt), the USS Hamilton (DMS 18) and HMS Norwich City (FY 229).
    At 04.47 hours on 5th April 1942, U-552 (Erich Topp) fired one torpedo from a distance of 1000 yards 7.5 miles off Currituck Inlet, North Carolina and hit the Byron D. Benson (Master John G. MacMillan) amidships between the #7 and #8 tanks. The explosion sent burning oil hundreds of feet in the air and all over the after part of the tanker. The crew of eight officers and 29 men in panic began abandoning ship in two lifeboats without orders, so that the engines were never secured and the vessel was still moving at six knots. Ten men in the boat of the master were seen drifting into flaming water and were not seen again. Four officers and 21 men in the other lifeboat were picked up by the USS Hamilton (DMS 18), one crewman on a raft was picked up by the trawler and another was later found by the US Coast Guard cutter USS Dione. All survivors were landed at Norfolk, Virginia. The burning tanker did not sink until three days later.

    Type VIIC U-Boat U-552 was decommissioned in February 1945.
    Scuttled on 5th May 1945 at Wilhelmshaven, western entrance to Readerschleuse. Wreck broken up

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/am/byron_d_benson.jpg

      1. That is a good read.

        I’ll recommend this one to him:

        https://www.amazon.co.uk/Battle-Atlantic-Sword-Military-Classics-ebook/dp/B00CLEARKQ/ref=sr_1_6?crid=35Q7WEQ2EDWM1&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.mxmPZeHrppGDfdH9uTAFa_I8eKcT9Xg57WTWmQJIqjj-RnuudbmaVNBC0P_VAMI1NbDuFl0t8qW2W90-Fe97N2nh-c1V1WpkSzoLL8JGAUUa8Nt9XlfeogEbs2hIMf4Bntmt1zIDivesPEKoFPs5ngoCdC3hm1dpPYhbs8WtmeD6-JNOXo8pD42McaySp1G3n15wDuWNR-iiwOykbJZSiLKtT9JbsQv2yfTC81fo5Ts.pOU3c0QugUyPqGEFEQkredj6JAQjx09nanhT3sMVXuk&dib_tag=se&keywords=donald+mcintyre&qid=1712322383&sprefix=donald+macit%2Caps%2C120&sr=8-6

  46. I can remember the early 1970’s , when interest rates rose to a frightening height re mortgages and just about everything .

    The oil crisis of the 1970s was brought about by two specific events occurring in the Middle-east, the Yom-Kippur War of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Both events resulted in disruptions of oil supplies from the region which created difficulties for the nations that relied on energy exports from the region.

    What was the main cause of the 1973 oil crisis?
    During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations.

    A surprise attack on Israeli territory by Arab coalition forces on October 6, 1973, began the final and bloodiest conflict of the Arab-Israeli wars. October 6, 2023, marks the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, but it didn’t emerge out of nowhere.

    1. I remember picking up petrol coupons from the Post Office for the impending fuel shortage in the early 70s.
      Those were the days when I used to travel to London in a train!

      1. I think I may have some stashed away somewhere (the consequence of being a compulsive hoarder).

    3. I was travelling up and down to Hull that year. Finding petrol stations that would serve non-regulars (although by the end of the crisis I had become a regular!) was a nightmare. The amount of fuel one could buy was severely restricted. They even contemplated issuing ration coupons. Shades of things to come.

    1. If people want to play cricket, surely they’ll pay for it? What about badminton? Judo? Heck, why not just give me my own salary back rather than taking 70% of it so I can spend it on what I want to?

  48. Thousands of new homes have been built here in Dorset .

    The infrastructure isn’t coping , not enough chemist shops, doctors surgeries , dentists , schools and roads .

    Moh and I watched one of these video blog things , people who take their cameras to Europe and other far off places .

    The vlogger or what ever you call him was travelling through Romania and Bulgaria .. The lack of resources and down rural trodden towns that were once soviet influenced , concrete jungles , resembling the worst of 1960’s /70’s building in Britain .. When societies collapsed because Soviet funding was withdrawn … dead factories and huge symbols of Soviet power in many villages.

    Communism/ socialism is similar to cancer or any dread disease … it destroys slowly .

    Do we want a return of socialism in the nastiest form , because the mindset of the current ignorant destructive generation will guarantee it will.

    1. No we don’t – but it’s our children and their children who will see the worst effects.

    2. A return? Surely we’re already living under it. It just acts more politely these days, that’s all.

  49. No! I’d hate to use the word “Philistine” on this occasion; however, I’m now under a degree of internal stress just having to think about it.

      1. Domestic abuse is a terrible thing to have to live with. My sympathies of course, but don’t ask me for any assistance with your plight, dear chap.

  50. This ‘World Central Kitchen’ , what is it? It is a not-for-profit organisation, based in the USA, and it sends people and supplies to disaster zones where its volunteers and ‘partners’ kindly prepare free meals for immediate distribution. Started by a Spanish celebrity chef, it was awarded a grant of $100 million by Jeff Bezos (the co-founder of Amazon, a multinational business, m’lud) and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez. WCK’s annual income has varied during the last five years, but is generally in excess of $100 million. All the figures are available on IRS forms 990 (USA) via its website. There are nine named employees who earn more than $100,000 per annum. In principle, it should be a great idea, but the reality is borderline crazy (IMHO).

    wck.org.
    Incidentally, the website lists Gaza as a country.

    1. Travelling chefs get over $100K a year? Danger money, or because they can?

      1. The 9 named employees are probably not the chefs etc on the front line.
        What, apart from Jeff B’s $100M, is the source of the income if they have managed to get something like that sum each year?

      2. Private chefs can earn money like that. They get to travel first class too, paid for by their employer. Chefs in that organisation won’t be earning anywhere near that amount.

      4. I was referring to management staff based in New York or Virginia. Annual tax submission is downloadable on the website. WCK is well meaning, but daft. Who asked them to enter Gaza, a war zone?

    2. Most of the people who would be conscripted would be the very people who have been told repeatedly over the last decade or so that they are privileged and worthless, as is the country that they would have to defend.

    3. Why should my sons and grandson – pale and male – risk their lives for a country that constantly denigrates them?

      1. 385495+ up ticks,

        Morning Anne,
        You really must keep in mind the arms
        dealers / investors

        In reality they should only see combat in house, first and foremost fighting to rerouting
        RESET so it disappears up its own …..
        It is eventually going to come to that.

    4. Well, despite government assurances that immigration brings us endless skills such as business men, doctors, nurses, electricians, plumbers and… erm… car cleaning specialists, surely many of the boat people can’t be in those worthy categories. Perhaps they’d like to become conscripted in loyal defence of their new chosen homeland. That’s got to be true integration all round, yes?

      1. If they had any brains the Government would have made it compulsory for any adult illegal immigrant to be conscripted for a minimum period of 10 years…. I could be wrong but I don’t think there would be many risking the rubber boats….

  52. William Wragg admits involvement in Westminster honeytrap sexting scandal
    Vice chairman of 1922 committee says he handed contact details for colleagues to man he met on Grindr
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/04/william-wragg-admits-honeytrap-sexting-scandal-whatsapp-pic/

    This man Wragg is not fit to be in the human race let alone be an MP! He sent pictures of his own naughty bits off to a very dubious source and then gave this source the contact details to several other MPs some of whom sent off pictures of their own genitalia as well.

    YUK!

    couple of BTL comments:

    The fact that the Conservative Party selects people of the calibre of Wragg to represent them in Parliament explains why the Conservative Party is in terminal decline. It must be killed off completely at the coming general election. The Reform Party may not be perfect but no rational conservative should now vote for any other party.

    If only Jacob Rees Mogg, David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith, Suella Braverman and Priti Patel and the few remaining conservative Conservative MPs could resign from the Conservative Party NOW and join Reform that would be a serious fly in Starmer’s ointment. Indeed it might even stop Labour winning the election!

    1. A remarkably high proportion of Tory MPS seem to be creeps, crooks or deviants. One wonders if such as selected to enable them to be blackmailed into compliance as they clearly have zero integrity.

      1. And most of them are foisted onto their constituencies by central office, the constituents get little choice in their MPs..

      3. Blame Central Office who insist upon selecting candidates rather than local Tory offices

    2. OT Rastus but last night you asked about husband and wife Nottlers – and it was only later I thought of Alf the Great and VW who seem to both manage quite amicably.

        1. I haven’t seen Jack since the 2020 US election. He didn’t care for Trump I remember.

    3. Ah, the happy days of the Major regime.
      Conservative MPs taking brown envelopes or stretched across their kitchen tables dressed in a plastic bag, fishnet stockings and with a satsuma segment in their mouth.

    4. What ever happened to Nick Brown , now an Independent ex Labour ?

      Personal life
      Brown is a holder of the freedom of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne award,[1] a supporter of Humanists UK, a member of GMB,[13] and an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.[14] He is known to have a love for classical music,[15] which developed during his time at Manchester University. Brown is a member of the Labour Friends of Israel group.[16]

      In 2011, Brown came out as gay after a former lover contacted the News of the World offering to sell his story. In a speech, he announced: “The sun is out – and so am I.”[17]

      From 2012 until 2022, he was a Non-Executive Director of the Mariinsky Theatre Trust (the Anglo-Russian friendship organisation that supports the work of the Mariinsky Theatre in the UK). He is a governor of Walker Riverside Academy, a patron of Leeds Youth Opera and a trustee of the Biscuit Factory art exhibition in Shielfield, Newcastle.[18] He formerly chaired the all-party parliamentary group for motorcycle speedway racing.[19]

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

      Nick Brown, a veteran Labour MP and former chief whip, has announced he has resigned from the party over a long-running internal disciplinary process involving him that Brown said had become “a complete farce”.

      In a lengthy and furious letter, Brown said he would not stand again at the next election, in part because he is now 73 and has been in parliament for 40 years.

      However, he said this decision was made against the “backdrop of a long-running internal Labour party disciplinary process against me – a process which I consider (and am advised) is so fundamentally, and inexcusably, flawed that I can no longer engage with it”. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/12/nick-brown-resigns-labour-complete-farce-disciplinary-process

    5. It is said of Willy Wragg that he will bend over backwards. and forwards, to please his fellow ‘Rainbows’ in either house – and their boyfriends too if given the opportunity.

      Following the 2019 general election, the UK parliament has the largest number of self-identified LGBT members of any national legislature worldwide. I haven’t the time to count them all but here is a list of those that have been outed already:

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

      Not a new trait by the looks of it.

  53. It’s what the showman said . . .
    Wordle 1,021 4/6

    ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
    ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Bit of a ‘hit and hope’ on guess 3 swings a birdie!
      Wordle 1,021 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨⬜🟨
      ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  54. Further to my comment re Rutte.

    It would appear that the government that was elected to protect and serve the people has another agenda. Who would have thought that!

    Putting Labour in will not stop this madness and will more than likely exacerbate the problem: ration books anyone?

    Picked up via the Colchester Council Watch website: thanks to Rachel Mathews.

    https://twitter.com/Beck_Sall/status/1775028081327296711

    1. They haven’t learnt by the disaster in Sri Lanka when fertilisers were banned and the rice crop failed.

      1. That led to petrol rationing in Sri Lanka.
        Food shortages -> people on the streets -> people looking for someone to bring order -> government “solution”

        Sri Lanka was a practice run.

      2. I don’t think that they didn’t know that without adequate fertilizer the crops would fail. Their plan was to see the reaction of the people, both to shortages and to the government, and then amend their strategy as required.

        Here it has been a more sneaky approach e.g. the government offering inducements to farmers to sell up and get completely out of farming. If we knew who was buying up the land we might have a better idea of what this ‘flat-on-its-back’ Tory government has put in train and what to expect from the shower in-waiting.

    3. It’s still good time to plant seeds for this year. The more food that is grown, the better.

      1. I would have sown early carrots and planted my potatoes by now if the ground – it’s light well drained soil as a rule – wasn’t sodden. It sodding well rained again this morning!

        1. I have similar problems, but I’ve planted my spuds in compost in a potato bag.

  57. There’s a canine chorus going on next door. It’s somewhat annoying.

    However it made me wonder: why doesn’t Mongo bark? Oscar does a bit, but that stops after a raised eyebrow. In all, both dogs are fairly quiet. Mongo whuffs occasionally but it’s rare. He’s spent all day over the Easter hols sitting on Junior’s bed looking over not so small boy’s shoulder as he talked the dog through building the Batmobile.

    Are my dogs odd? Should they be barking more? Is it a problem?

    1. Don’t dogs mostly bark to communicate that something is wrong? Perhaps yours are just contented.

    2. I can’t ever remember our Newfoundland barking to the extent of causing an annoyance.
      We were however on a caravan site in Suffolk and during the night he let rip but we couldn’t think why.
      The next morning a camper on site came over and asked if it was our Newfoundland that they had heard barking.
      MOH apologised for the noise but the camper instead thanked us that our dog had raised the alarm and frightened off bicycle thieves who had abandoned unchaining their locked up bikes.

      Newfs know how to give a warning when they are ready to go and render a miscreant helplessly pinned to the ground.
      If you’ve ever been sat on by a Newfoundland you’ll know what I mean!

    3. No. Dogs are individuals. Some are more vocal than others. Some breeds (I’ve had a couple of part Cairns) are more vocal than others!

  59. Kenny Everett copied his manic leg crossing from Arthur Lucan (Old Mother Riley).

  60. Well knock me down. I am reading daughter’s first draft dissertation and she has used the word “purposive”. Twice in two days, having never heard of the word before.

    1. Google translates as:
      adjective
      having or done with a purpose.
      “teaching is a purposive activity”

    3. It should be made law, that when “people of a certain age” buy any sort elctronic equipment, they should be given access to a four year old child, to fix any problems, for the first 6 months.

    6. Am I misunderstanding the other replies in this thread? The reactions are is if your humorous anecdote was an account of a true incident.

  62. Just had an email land in my inbox for a C# – C++ translation job. Must be familiar with C++ 98.
    Oh, I thought, a nice little earner translating some old crap into modern C#
    On closer inspection I see…it is for translating C# into C++ (98, one assumes) …. legacy code nightmare on steroids. no, no, no!
    Probably using VS2008.

    1. Thanks Sue But it is odd, I’m actually watching this video and I have been for the last 1 hour and 45 minutes.

  64. ‘Morning All (just)

    Belated Medley

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/15427edb0bda556129178a1903187c3510d40a54a28aade0eb0271cdb4b952bc.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3694d801dfac5c0f0efe6c9d5113d33c08cb19f6762897c715748307c69d03a0.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d49ca9245d248be8f8880c4b6560f5a9fea9d1c95cc16497284711c497a28dab.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c10fc9f9a69248f8d737aceffa3723476fa841904409aa57240f7601f24a6d5e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e9901bef453a1a3bda8c2299e7e3d0102cb3c3d971725d14f820ca5c974337a2.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f2e6700e729085a942829bff9b65164fc4049d6e1dad5d1a0fcdf1bd60ad40a1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/166617d554ff0e675d966cae42cf630eb1eadfff30c2c0723b36123daf712572.jpg

    1. I’d share the DEI one but surely it should be tyre not tire? One does feel deflated when tired, but…maybe I can figure out how to recreate the meme.

  65. Oh, they’re almost certainly an imported army. They’re good for nothing else.

  67. 385495+ up ticks,

    Afternoon JG,

    NO, they are already spoken for as in, political
    protection squads.

    1. Morning O. Yes quite, but if the State does want to go around oppressing people my view is that it ought to be more productive about it!

  68. My thoughts exactly. The military’s argument is always that conscription is no good, since the modern services require higher individual skills to function themselves days. Can’t see it myself. There’s always calls for cannon fodder. The skilful ones can specialise

  69. Now the Americans have come out against war with China over Taiwan!
    So it seems that they are going for Russia and Iran.

    https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1775956928838992165

    In other words, another dirty little war to rake in more wealth for the predator class and try and kick the can of dollar collapse a bit further down the road. They must have got China’s consent. What a shitshow international politics is!
    https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-russia-trade-local-currencies-instead-us-dollar-state-media-2023-12-27/

    1. Always bear in mind that Russia and China are never the best of bedfellows. CCP will be very pleased, if true.

    2. Again. The US of f-ing A has been nothing but grasping $$$ for a long time now – and has wrecked the world in the process. At least the British Empire, for all its faults, conferred something beneficial to the countries within it.

  70. Eric sounds like a complete prat. That’s how we started out and If I’d called my customers idiots they wouldn’t still be customers.

  72. Children aren’t toilet trained either , many use baby language because their parents baby them .

    Yet when we listen to English children in top primary schools talking and explaining, or Indian children conversing , they are streaks ahead , and are wonderful pupils .

    1. Is it? Then how do they distinguish between tire as in to become tired and fitting a tire?

      2. You have to blame the retard, Noah Webster, for bastardising proper English words in order to make them easier for dim Yanks to assimilate.

  74. Put a macro in her Word programme to translate “purposive” into “purple explosive” automatically…

    1. You’re evil! 🤣

      PS Can one still do that? Ir was useful, so I assumed they’d canned it.

  76. A programme came on the radio earlier while I was in the car, radio 4, okay, I should have known better, you must be thinking.
    In any case, O’Brien was on LBC and I didn’t fancy music.
    Then the announcer said we will be investigating the effects of climate change on ethnic minorities.
    Well I switched off then, everyone knows that it causes them to breed like flies.
    Especially the parts of the world where they come from with hot climates, it has made them the only places in the world where the birthrate is soaring.
    Not sure why the climate scientists are saying that a warmer climate is a bad thing.
    When they look back in the records for when the CO2 in the atmosphere was much higher than it is today, wildlife was flourishing.

    1. “the effects of climate change on ethnic minorities” you say? A glorious piece of The New BBC. I’m surprised Trans was not in there or is that tomorrow?

      1. If it wasn’t so bluddy hot in Africa they would all be ‘White’ and by definition racist!

    2. “the effects of climate change on ethnic minorities” you say? A glorious piece of The New BBC. I’m surprised Trans was not in there or is that tomorrow?

    3. “the effects of climate change on ethnic minorities” you say? A glorious piece of The New BBC. I’m surprised Trans was not in there or is that tomorrow?

    4. With a boiling planet, evolution will turn us all blick. World’s problems solved (except for slammers).

  79. Back home. No new glasses. There is “haze” over my left eye after the cataract procedure that needs laser (EEEK) removal.

    At least the rain has stopped.

    2. YoBill

      Been there, seen! it. had it done.

      It is just another trip to look at the 1960s Glitter Ball

  81. Phew!
    Last load of full logs carried and stacked to await further sawing & chopping. These are the larger diameter lengths of the fallen trees I’ve been shifting down the hill and, after my having some words with him, Graduate Son has finally stacked the ones I’d sawn and chopped yesterday.
    And I wish the weather would decide what it is going to do! The dull start cleared and the sun came out! So I hung the washing out and got on shifting the logs.
    Then it went dull and began to rain, but no sooner had I got the washing unpegged, then the sun came out again so the washing got hung up again and I carried on shifting the logs.
    Then it rained again, only a lot heavier this time.
    The washing is now hung up indoors and it’s glorious sunshine outside again!

    And graduate son wonders why I get crabby at times!

    1. Get Graduate Son to create a log of your activities and then perhaps he’ll realise what you’re up gainst. 😉

  82. Radio 4 1pm News – first 28 minutes devote to castigating Israel and demanding sanctions for wilful murder of innocent British civilians who just happened to be carrying weapons to ward off Jewish thieves who could have attacked the food relief convoy.

    What was the real reason were they carrying rifles?

    2. JRM tied himself in knots on GBN the other evening trying to justify holding Israel to higher standards than the third worlders they’re up against. He acknowledges the hypocrisy but tries to make excuses.

      1. JRM slipped off my “acceptable” radar some time ago. I used to think that he was a decent and quite intelligent politician.

  83. Just opened an Express newspaper link and noticed that they’ve removed the Reach PLC (aka Mirrorpix) name from their website. It only appears if you know which link to follow in the small print right at the bottom. Why have they suddenly become cagy about who their publishers are?

  84. Meanwhile in LA LA land, the British Columbia government have issues an edict to hospital staff to not interfere with any patient taking illegal drugs, they are even supposed to ignore drug dealers visiting patients (clients?).

    How on earth do people vote this kind of stupidity into power?

      1. They are saying that they want to destigmatize drug taking, this will allow addicts to use drugs openly instead of harming themselves in some back alley den. To protect against bad drugs, they even provide free opioid drugs to addicts.

        The BC Supreme Court recently ruled that it is illegal to restrict where drugs can be used so even school playgrounds are usable.

        If they can survive teen drug usage, legal drinking age in BC is nineteen.

        1. Ah, so the same twisted logic that’s used to justify aborting millions of babies legally because if you don’t, well, “back street abortions”. They did happen of course but surely in very small numbers.

        2. I would give as many drugs to the druggies that they want – I’d get the state to pay for their funerals. Eventually there wouldn’t be anyone taking drugs, the dealers I would shoot, no trial and I doubt if there would be any left in business anyway. Come up with a better solution

          4. They do give as many drugs as the druggies want. The druggie sell the good stuff so that they can buy the latest extreme high.

            Drug dealers in the US and Alberta are now selling unopened packs of government grade drugs.

    3. The problem with a patient having taken an illegal drug is that there is no evidence of the drug’s formulation.
      Wrappers will not provide recommendations for treatment in event of unintentional ingestion.
      Medical intervention in such casss may lead to a charge of medical misdemeanor.

    4. “...How on earth do people vote this kind of stupidity into power?...”

      Just watch the British GE, when it comes, to see the idiots in action

    1. I suspect he stays awake so as not to miss the thrill of being ‘Taken by surprise’.

  87. Terry Barnes
    Australia’s activist governor-general spells trouble for the royals
    4 April 2024, 9:29am

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/SamanthaAlamyWeb.jpg?resize=1536,864

    While the King and the Princess of Wales both battle cancer, the business of monarchy goes on. In the realms of the Commonwealth that includes ensuring the Crown is represented in each respective constitutional government. In Australia, though, the choice of candidate for governor-general is far from reassuring news for the monarchy.

    Samantha ‘Sam’ Mostyn, an activist and lawyer, was named by Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese as the country’s 28th governor-general. ‘Ms Mostyn is known for her exceptional service to the Australian community. She is a businesswoman and community leader with a long history in executive and governance roles across diverse sectors’, said Albanese. There’s no question that Mostyn is a capable and talented woman, with a high-profile corporate career spanning three decades behind her. But is she the right person the job?

    Mostyn’s values, and in particular her record of advocacy for them, are the most troubling aspect of her appointment. She is a long-time friend of Albanese – not a disqualification, but a strong hint that she is seen as a congenial fellow traveller of a Labor government. She has long been vocal in support of progressive social, political and climate issues, including Black Lives Matter and last year’s failed referendum on an Aboriginal ‘Voice’ to parliament and government. She also once labelled Australia’s national day of 26 January, the anniversary of British settlement being established in Sydney, ‘invasion’ day.

    Mostyn is not hiding her activism. Rather, she is embracing it as a champion of the diversity and inclusion movement. In her announcement statement, she made it clear that her service as governor-general would be shaped by her values. Stood next to Albanese when he presented her to the media yesterday, she gave a dignified yet highly personal address, outlining her background and her beliefs. This was more like a presidential candidate launching her campaign than someone who, in the Westminster constitutional tradition, is required to be impartial and apolitical.

    ‘Alongside my broad business career, I’ve forged a strong connection with many other aspects of Australian life, including in sport, civil society, arts and culture, First Nations reconciliation, sustainability in the environment, policy development, mental health, gender equality and young people’, she said.

    But the biggest question lies over her loyalty and commitment to the institution that Mostyn has been appointed to represent.

    Mostyn has never served as an elected politician. She has, however, worked in Labor politics as a special adviser to several ministers, especially the arch-republican 1990s prime minister Paul Keating. Anyone who knows how Keating operated knows he couldn’t – and still doesn’t – tolerate anyone who disagrees with him. She may be more tactful and diplomatic than her old boss, but her close association with Keating, and the progressive causes she’s embraced in the years since, indicate that the King’s new representative in Australia very much prefers a republic.

    Indeed, what she has said of Keating reveal her own nationalistic, republican, beliefs. In a 2020 speech, she said of her former boss:

    [He] was a prime minister of our country actually able to articulate his ambition for the country. And they were things that I really cared about. He wanted a republic, clearly. He wanted a fully evolved Australia but that was linked to his desire for a lasting reconciliation with First Nations and First Peoples of this country. His commitment was absolute.

    That the progressive values she endorsed in 2020 and again on Wednesday also happen to be central to Albanese and his Labor government can’t be ignored. Mostyn ticks diversity boxes, but she also ticks the ‘friend of Labor’ box, a friendship that might be especially valuable to Albanese in the event of a constitutional crisis.

    Since the Voice referendum debacle, opinion polls indicate electoral support for Albanese’s government is sliding, with a general election due by May next year. As things stand, the most likely result after that election will be a hung parliament, with a cross-bench dominated by the hard-left Australian Greens party and a motley array of independent MPs.

    What will Mostyn do if the opposition Liberals, in particular, become the largest party in parliament? Who will she take advice from, and how will she maintain her impartiality in the greater national interest? Indeed, opposition leader Peter Dutton, while wishing Mostyn well, noted that she ‘obviously is well-known to many people within the government over a long period of time’. That connection may well prove crucial in post-election negotiations.

    In appointing a friendly republican and activist like Mostyn, Albanese has continued his subtle but calculated assaults on the standing of the monarchy in Australia. He came to office by including an assistant minister for the Republic in his ministry, and he ensured the King’s image was removed from Australian banknotes. But by ensuring that someone who shares and articulates his left-of-centre outlook acts for the Crown, at a time when the governor-general may become crucial to who forms the next government, Albanese has successfully infiltrated the institution of constitutional monarchy itself.

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

    Mulga Bill
    a day ago edited
    You give this parasitic creature too much credit when you write she’s a “businesswoman”.
    She’s an opportunistic trougher par excellence, with an entirely predictable career trajectory. After a short period with Labor-friendly law firms, she became a political advisor. She then “leveraged” this position to garner a bunch of board-level corporate appointments in policy, communications and HR. Following that, she has made her way into various boards on the basis of her activism and being a woman; *Boards* mind you, nothing requiring the production of anything, or demanding any real accountability. Despite having made a career out of the unchallenging “work” of advocacy, she has rarely stuck with anything for longer than two years. Now after a life of left-wing political activism, she settles into the supposedly politically neutral role of governor-general, and this despite being a republican.
    So in summary she’s a greasy and immoral hypocrite who has never produced anything in her life except acceptable soundbites; Par for the course for what passes for high achievement on the left.

    Christian Paul
    a day ago
    A friend of mine is on the board of one of Australia’s largest retail groups. She oversees the retail sales and operations of around 50o stores in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. As you can imagine, she has a busy schedule and a lot on her plate. At every meeting she has to begin with the following affirmation “We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which we work and pay our respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging.”, she isn’t required to say the optional phrase “Sovereignty has never been ceded. It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land”. Since her company has no intention whatsoever of handing any property rights to indigenous peoples, the affirmation is sheer hypocrisy. My friend showed me a short video in which she had to wear an Aboriginal cape and throw a spear (she managed to lob it about three yards). There is no limit to the BS and mendacity of the Left.

    1. While I have more sympathy for a republic than I used to have, this is a purely political appointment when it should be an impartial one. Once the abos are in charge, they’ll find Oz will be a new SA.

  88. If the European countries and their controllers in the USA are so upset about Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip why don’t they form an EU/US task force and take over from Netanyahu’s murdering mob and rescue the hostages still being held by Hamas. They would do it much more humanely and without all the disruption and damage caused by the Jewboys, of course. Problem solved.

    The UK could watch from the side lines and reward the rescuers with medals and lifelong pensions for their troubles.

        1. They should provide proof. Even if they’ve been taken out by Israeli air strikes.

  89. Ross Clark has the bit between his teeth on EVs and is of course quite right….

    If you fancy a new petrol car, best buy it now, before it is too late. It surely won’t be long before car manufacturers start to admit that their UK sales operations are in serious trouble, leading some to start withdrawing from the UK market altogether. Why? Because since January car-makers have been under the zero emission vehicle mandate (ZEV), to make sure that at least 22 per cent of the vehicles they sell are pure battery models – a proportion that will rise steadily until it reaches 80 per cent by 2030. If they fail to reach the target they could be fined £15,000 for every extra non-compliant vehicle they sell.

    The trouble is, the proportion of sales made up by electric vehicles in March was only 15.2 per cent, and it going in the wrong direction. In March 2023, it was 16.2 per cent. It isn’t hard to work out what is going to happen. Unless there is a sudden pick up in interest in electric cars, manufacturers are going to find themselves in an impossible situation. They will be left with masses of unsold electric cars, while the cars they can sell – petrol and hybrids – will be subject to huge penalties.

    So much for the idea that the Government has done the motor industry a favour by putting back the date of the proposed ban on petrol cars from 2030 to 2035. It is the ZEV which is the industry’s slow, silent nemesis. If car-buyers don’t want to play ball – and it seems they don’t – it is going to destroy the industry in Britain.

    Electric cars are a lesson in how governments can’t force people to buy a product they don’t want to buy, however much carrot and stick they use. Handouts of up to £4,000 per vehicle may have kept the market for electric cars purring for a while, as wealthy motorists scooped up taxpayers’ money to help show off their environmental credentials. But as soon as those grants were cut back, and eventually abolished, demand fell. Electric cars continue to enjoy a bizarrely generous tax regime, with owners still paying no road tax and – if they charge at home – only 5 per cent VAT on powering them. Buy a litre of petrol, on the other hand, and over half of what you pay goes to the taxman. Electric cars are heavy vehicles, and yet owners are paying virtually nothing to maintaining the roads which they are helping to wear away – still less contributing to the cost of new roads or to general government coffers.

    The idea that the handouts would propel electric cars to the point at which they attracted mass interest has proved to be wrong. Motorists still aren’t taking the bait because, for many, electric cars remain impractical. They are too expensive to buy new, they don’t go far enough on a charge, they take too long to charge and – if you are one of the nine million UK households without off-street parking – they can be expensive, and a complete pain, to run.

    If the Government wants to retain a car industry, it needs to rethink the ZEV quickly – before car-makers start to find themselves paralysed by huge fines for the heinous crime of selling too much of a product people want to buy and not enough of a product which they don’t.

    1. The Government doesn’t particularly want to retain a car – or any other industry. It simply wants the salaries of its over-paid MPs to continue.

    2. If the Government can’t get everyone to have electric cars then to reach net zero car factories

      will have to be closed down.

    3. BTL under the article:

      Give me an electric car that can run over 750 miles on a full charge even when it is raining or snowing and the heater, windscreen wipers and headlights are fully on. Make it also cheaper to recharge with ample recharging points available which can deliver a full charge in a couple of minutes and at lower cost than a tank full of petrol or diesel and I shall be the first in line to buy one and so will a great number of other people be wanting to join the queue. Until then I am staying with my ICE cars.

  91. I open Disqus, and am confronted by a huge female cleavage entitled “The most beautiful woman in the world!”.
    Do you get this?
    And – there’s more to a beautiful woman than her sternum. If I could block these, I would. It’s puerile.

    1. I don’t get any of that on my laptop. On my phone I just quickly scroll past the rubbish.

    2. Yes, on both my phone and laptop and it’s all click bait. Opening the links doesn’t provide the promised information, just dozens more ads and more links.

    5. I’m paranoid about online security – got rid of all my online bank accounts, investment portals etc following the advice of an former IT director of mine, and now I chair a software company I’ve seen nothing to change my mind. If you’re interested I use an incognito browser called Epic which blocks all cookies, trackers as well as adverts, I buy the premium Malwarebytes anti spy and malware system, and Defender backed up by Sophos anti virus software, as well as a subscription VPM with additional external firewalls.
      I’d rather the inconvenience of slightly slower download speeds and premium telephone banking than have my savings stolen like the poor couple cited in the Katie Morley column in the DT today.

      1. We have a G-Tech hedge-trimmer with a long handle. A bit heavy on the arms but it does the job.

        1. I don’t have a hedge. Just a fence that the snowplough took a dislike to this winter 🙁

      1. That’s a lesser known subgenus – the Alfudgepaca, found only in its native habitat of public lavatories….

    2. “It identifies as a dog. I say “it”, I don’t know it’s preferred pronouns.”

    1. Just came across that myself Ndovu, really great. Highly recommend and it is free.

      2. #metoo, but my version just blocks malware and viruses. I have an ad blocker called uBlock (free) installed as well

  96. Of I want pictures of boobs, I’d go to a suitable (unsuitable?) site for them.

  98. Took off an hour early today to recoup some missed lunchbreak time. Sitting in pub, could be any friendly local in UK… Except for the Dane I’ m talking to. Oint #2 of London Pride sliding down…

  101. If you were a poor young white girl in many UK cities you’d have been in Hell for a couple of decades.

    1. Most “Human Rights” lawyers don’t give a hoot about human rights of the indigenous in this country. If you look at them, and/or their politics, you will know why.

  102. If you have 26 minutes to spare and can cope with the voice of the narrator then this documentary is well worth the time. I don’t need to spell out the implications if true. Furthermore, the Sumerians with their unique language themselves believed they originated in the mountains of Armenia which is where the four rivers cited by the Book of Genesis clearly state Eden to be. It’s also where metal working, wheat cultivation and wine making started, and just up the road (in relative terms) from Gobleki Tepe etc.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hnU0pM_Xcc

    2. I’d forgotten about Pat. Thanks – a great pioneer of the internet voice of sanity

    3. Personally I do not laugh at these unfunny clownish cretins.

      I find them utterly emetic so they simply make me throw up!

    4. The concept of there being just two sexes is in fact the law in Thailand.
      Yet the existence of lady boys is accepted as being part of the Buddhist culture.
      This video explains the issues arising from such a difference between the law and cultural norms in Thailand:

      https://youtu.be/MsaxURxb8Ow?si=9_e7y1pcGtYmppu8

      1. I wonder how much veracity is in that voiceover? AFAIK, the “ladyboy” option was always on the table for the abject poor with large families, as a means of making money through prostitution. Hence the slightly built pretty boy would do this to himself to make money to sustain the family.

        In the Far East there is a very thin line between transaction and exploitation, particularly in the sex trade.

        1. Exacto
          When I lived there the almost constant story of the bar girls was pregnancy with handsome Thai guy who promptly decamped child left with parents while girl goes to make money to support child and parents the only way she can
          As for the ladyboys a quick google of Nanai Plaza or Bangla Rd tells the story,the suicide rate as they age is horrendous

  105. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/04/spies-honeytrap-spear-fish-parliament-hari-profumo-vanunu/#comment

    R. Spowart
    5 MIN AGO
    Message Actions
    OK, so what exactly WAS the kompromat held on him and what other information did it persuade him to divulge?
    If anyone really believes that 50 phone numbers was the whole story, I’ve a bridge and a battleship they might want to buy.

    Reply by Ryan Brighton.
    Ryan Brighton
    3 MIN AGO
    Reply to R. Spowart – view message
    Who knows.
    What could a man on a gay hookup app have possibly told someone that they desperately don’t want the public or indeed their employer to hear, to the degree that they lose their head so completely..?

      1. It is such a comfort that so many of our parliamentarians are not only routinely high on cocaine but also screaming queans

  106. The last of the daffs and a lone tulip:
    .
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1c6c6f4cd7539b8768cb195827df190ffac490c8517eb90759320c90ff2ed510.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/30dfbeafd15a4dffb91c082b65f1db64cea893a0a26bb71e43922fe7cb2dea9d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f47dd2d216bbb9ba949872bef6cc1bc4d55c0cf45f05ba0da844a9cdb268eec2.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c6640a9eaa5a6a7ea996da009c61e15e8268b614edacf006ad63e0dbdd7548dc.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3197e54dc25b847afcf70f0ac16bdbc42f436c5c26d326e74316a91cd5bea761.jpg

    1. Very nice.
      Just went to Garson’s Garden centre for chilli/tomato/cucmber/aubergine etc plants. £126 !

      1. Ouch!
        I have planted all seeds this year, but they will probably come out much smaller than the ones in the garden centre. Still, I hope to learn more about raising seeds this year. I also have some cabbage stumps from last year that are sprouting and flowering, from which I would like to collect seed.

        1. I did buy quite a lot but they are not cheap there.
          There is a disused railway line at the end of my garden. All the neighbours have built over the embankment or expanded their gardens in other ways. I built a 6×2 metre decking.
          This year it is covered in pots waiting for the plants.
          I have had success in drying chillis and making passata and i intend to do it big time this year.
          The neighbours trade too.

          I give Trombetti and get figs in return !

          3. Figs wrapped in parma ham and once baked sprinkled with blue cheese. Heaven.

            Neighbour Margaret. She has an allotment too so i get lots of other stuff.

        1. I am very careful now where i buy this stuff. I bought some plants from B&M and have spent the last two years getting rid of weevils.

        1. Unlike landed gentry i have limited space. I need enough room for my piano, my chaises longue and my refectory table where i entertain guests. Not in the Tory way mind you…no fishnets or oranges here.

          1. Oh. The last sentence leaves me crestfallen…I was about to invite myself up.

    4. My daffs are mostly over now. For some reason I’ve only had a few tulips this year.

    5. A sign of things to come for us, only a few daffodils have popped their heads above the snow so far.

  107. A carpi Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,021 3/6
    🟨⬜🟨⬜🟨
    🟨⬜⬜🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Amazingly, me too.

      Wordle 1,021 3/6

      ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
      🟨⬜🟩🟨🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. But not for me
      Wordle 1,021 4/6

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

    1. Herbs with attitude !

      Hard herbs are things like Rosemary and Bay. I grow them as bushes.

        1. I had a huge one but it got those wormy bugs on it and it was difficult to treat. I have standard Bays now. Not only do you get the leaf for cooking but they are also ornamental and create height in the border.

          1. Have not come across “those wormy bugs” but no doubt I am tempting fate by saying so : )

    2. How things have changed. But it didn’t take too long to realise we didn’t really need trainies.
      Are they on strike again ?

    3. I’ve had a couple of Trannies.
      A diesel Mk1, a V4 Mk1 caravanette, a Mk2 petrol and a Mk3 Diesel.

      1. As you are the sort to have “decking” (ugh”) I’d have thought you would be an ideal bay watcher.

        1. I built a wall and the decking/boardwalk sits atop of that going over the embankment. It’s a real suntrap.

          Not everyone can have gilded estates like you. You snob !

          I also have astroturf !

          All the Nottlers i have entertained here showed good manners ! :@)

          1. Well they would wouldn’t they? Just so that they can make their excuses and leave. Quickly.

      2. The latest default relates to a £400m bond and is separate from a £190m loan facility due for repayment this month.

        A leading Thames Water bondholder said it is unlikely that creditors will take legal action against Kemble despite the breach, which could include issuing a winding-up petition in the High Court.

        He said: “At this point, it doesn’t feel like anybody has got any control.

        “Given the lack of bondholder power, we will have some standstill agreement and an out-of-court restructuring process will begin.”

  116. That’s me for today. Sunny afternoon. Hedge (and ladder) work completed to the MR’s complete satisfaction. Tomorrow the worrying heatwave…!
    Then back to normal, I gather.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  118. German factory orders fell by a tenth in February in a fresh blow for Chancellor Olaf Scholz as he battles to revive Europe’s biggest economy.
    Orders were 10pc lower than a year earlier, despite hopes that demand for the country’s manufactured goods had started to recover. They were only 0.2pc higher than in January, according to the Federal Statistical Agency, rather than the 0.7pc predicted by economists.

    It came as Janet Yellen, the US Treasury Secretary, warned China’s “unfair” subsidies mean its cheap goods are undercutting Western businesses.

    The underlying index for German factories, which strips out major one-off orders that can obscure wider trends in industry, shows demand is at its lowest since the worst days of the Covid crisis in June 2020. Some industries are rebounding. Orders in chemicals rose 3.1pc with pharmaceuticals up 6.6pc.

    But in carmaking, which is critical to the nation’s success and its sense of identity, orders plunged 8.1pc. Eric Heymann, an economist at Deutsche Bank, said that sales of electric cars in particular have been hit by the phasing out of subsidies at the end of last year. Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) accounted for one car sale in every eight in the first quarter, down from the peak of one-in-four at the end of 2022.

    1. Yes, I’d call slave labour, as in Uighars, a “subsidy”. What did they expect?

  119. Things are going from bad to worse in Germany….

    German police in the southern state of Bavaria have been forced to take drastic action to shed light on a chronic shortage of uniforms plaguing the force. Officers decided to strip down to their underwear, as they grow increasingly frustrated at delivery times for essential items of clothing.

    A video posted by the German Police Union (DPolG) to YouTube and Instagram shows a police car with two officers driving into an inner courtyard surrounded by modern office buildings. Inside the car the two officers reveal they have been waiting four and six months respectively for the delivery of their new uniforms.

    Jürgen Köhnlein, chairman of the Bavarian DPolG union, said the problem was no laughing matter (Image: DPolG union)
    One officer says he is completely fed up with the situation, before they both get out of the car and walk towards an entrance of a building. In the process they reveal they have no trousers on, exposing their police underwear for all to see.

    1. Let them eat broomsticks. Can’t these uniforms be run up in a concentration camp?

  120. Evening, all. I’m here relatively early because I had to put the laptop on to receive some emails and instead of switching it off and getting a life, I moved to nottl 🙂

    Frankly, whatever Israel does, it will be in the wrong. People are determined to do it down, despite its being the only functioning democracy in the region.

    1. And after they had pulled out the beach towel, they pulled out the German tourist who had used it to claim a sunbed.

      2. Exactly. I mean, why else would the python eat it. Perhaps it had a taste for dried meat.

    2. Are you sure that isn’t the cloak of invisibility?
      keep going, Harry Potter is in there somewhere

      2. An unsackable bureaucracy becomes an aristocracy. And i’m not talking Royals here.
        They are unsackable. They choose their own pay rates and pensions. If energy prices rise…so do their expenses.
        They are the enemy.

    2. They can remain at home full-time if they refuse to come into the office and get the sack as a result. That should satisfy everyone.

    3. From Gamekeepers to Gentlemen: The Bowler 0
      BY MARGARET MAY ON MAY 3, 2016

      Where has it gone? Once the height of sartorial elegance, and beloved by city bankers, civil servants and the man about town, the bowler hat has virtually disappeared. A symbol of respectability (warranted or not), social standing and English tradition has dematerialised somehow. We can, of course, trust royalty to maintain such tradition and so they do, but mostly on state occasions. Perhaps this is what maintains such pomp and ceremony – something now out of the ordinary, but a stalwart from the past, reminding the general public of how things were, once.

      https://www.arbuturian.com/lifestyle/theidler/musings/the-bowler-hat

      Civil servants?

      Don’t they have a code of conduct these days?

      1. Where’s the bowler gone? They’re in boxes on my wardrobe. I used to wear them for stewarding and occasionally riding (I wore one when I won the Concours d’Elegance at my local show).

        1. I once did an Easter tour of Ireland with my Rugby Club.

          We went into Dublin for a few drinks with our President, a combative cove, who insisted upon wearing a bowler hat, or ‘blocker’ as he termed it, on our pub crawl.

          To say you could cut the tension with a knife as we went into various pubs would be an understatement. It was like the saloon doors swinging open in the Western…..

          Only a few minor skirmishes (there was 25 of us) and just one run-in with the Garda – result!

          2. Absolutely, and we all knew it, but he wouldnt be moved – he was out to cause trouble. Have you ever heard of the term ‘blocker’?

          3. The Telecomms ad: ‘The Future’s Bright. The Future’s Orange”.. didn’t play well in certain parts so I’m told…

      2. I don’t see how anyone would dare wear a bowler hat these days, given the amount of sneering and ridicule directed at white men by the media and the establishment.
        I remember seeing them occasionally in the nineties in the City.

        1. According to Quora .. here is why!

          Nobody in London has worn A bowler hat since 1969, when the BBC transmitted an episode of a TV show called “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” which featured a sketch called “The Ministry Of Silly Walks”, which began with a scene in which John Cleese, wearing full Civil Service regalia, I.e a black jacket, striped trousers, silver waistcoat and tie, and a bowler hat, walked up Whitehall in the style of a spider on a hotplate.

          After that, anyone foolhardy enough to go out in public wearing a bowler hat would be accosted by idiots demanding that they show them a “silly walk”.

    4. Well as the old saying goes: “Statistics may be used to support anything but particularly statisticians….

      1. It would only take the one time for others to learn…and let’s cancel their pension rights too!

    6. A non too subtle memo to the Senior Civil Servant of the ONS might be: “Would you please make sure the Unemployment figures are up to date by the end of next week as we are anticipating X more…”

  128. No, the alternative name for a bowler that I know is a “Coke” (pronounced Cook).

    1. Yes, that’s the alternative name that I was aware of – I think he must have been making it up.

  129. Mail to John Redwood’s Diary……….

    Now it turns out that Andrew Bailey, chairman of the Bank of England, worked with George Soros’ close friend Mark Carney who was appointed by Soros’ puppet, David Cameron.

    What an extraordinary random coincidence that George Soros loves QE and that Sajid Javid, who praised Soros on Twitter, appointed Andrew Bailey, who also loves QE, to chairman of the Bank of England.

    It’s even more of a remarkable innocent coincidence that the chairman of the OBR has a close connection to Soros too through his previous employment where his boss was on the board of Soros’ Best for Britain and is on the board of Soros’ Institute for New Economic Thinking.

    As well as the Financial Services Authority which was chaired by Soros’ close friend and puppet Lord Adair Turner during the period when banking was being remodeled after the financial crisis from which Soros made another massive fortune.

    Is it possible that the BOE, OBR and FSA are Soros clubs just like the Climate Change Committee.

    If so, that would be four in a row!

  130. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f540083563044c52daf8033ff2af72a4b439c1c489f5dac8d02c0020da95696d.jpg
    Taking into account the other two events of the last couple of days, namely the US says Ukraine will join NATO and the US says it’s not interested in defending Taiwan, I think the Iranians’ suspicions are more than justified.
    The US/Israel/UK axis thinks it can beat the Russia/Iran alliance, and is doing everything it can to provoke war.
    Of course we will be assured that the Russians and the Iranians started it…

    1. The reason why Biden, Sunak, Johnson, Cameron, Macron and others are stirring the Ukraine pot is because Soros controls all of them and Soros wants Russia out of Ukraine to protect his business interests, laundering, in Kiev.

      David Cameron is back because he’s a Soros puppet and Sunak is a Soros puppet too.

      1. This is far bigger than Soros, Polly. They need an excuse for a massive wave of dollar printing – the last one before they have to reset the currency. Russia and Iran are at the forefront of dedollarisation.

        1. Soros is the brains behind everything. Nobody else has his financial and intellectual capability. Elon Musk is right. Soros loathes the West and intends to destroy it. After all, Soros planned and executed the fiscal expansion 2009 via his puppets. Including Gordon Brown to whom he gave the credit to hide his own involvement due to epic level insider trading based on his choices for which US corporations received federal financing.

          1. Meh, he’s not that clever. I can look that smart too if my path is smoothed to make billions by the central bankers. Soros was just another of their smart young men put in the way of making a fortune in exchange for serving the parasite class.

          2. Oh no, that isn’t true. Soros has cultivated and subverted politicians and officials around the world, including the UN. They bow to him. Presidents of the United States (except Donald Trump) bow low to Soros and his money which finances them. Obama, Biden, every UK PM since 1990, they’re all in Soros’ bag.

          3. We probably don’t even know the names of Soros’s bosses, the families that own and control the central banks

          4. You know very little about this. Central bankers are nobodies, mere appointees of those who control them. The Rothschilds, Rockefellers etc but all of them look to Soros for the plan. He gets his hands dirty, they don’t.

          5. Well we shall have to agree to disagree on that one. It’s all far, far outside the paygrade of any of us anyway.

          6. No it isn’t. I know who planned the US fiscal expansion 2009 and it certainly wasn’t so called “central bankers” and it wasn’t the clueless numpty Gordon Brown either!

          7. Try following some financial commenters like Alistair MacLeod or maneco64, they explain how and why such things happen.

          9. Polly, you have totally discredited yourself with your blatantly antisemitic views on the Hamas attacks on Israel, and Israel’s consequent (necessary) response. So it is now very hard to credit anything you say, anything at all, even if it touches on that which we all can see.

          10. That’s a fib because I have done no such thing. I have merely interpreted the evidence.

            Why was the music festival moved at the last minute from a place of safety to a place of danger?

            How did Hamas know the new location long in advance?

            Why were junior soldiers threatened with court martial for reporting unusual Hamas activities?

            Why were warnings from Egypt ignored?

            Why did it take the IDF five hours to get to the massacre?

            Do you know?

          11. Of course I don’t, Polly, and neither do you. For me, it points to a traitor embedded in the chain of command, if it wasn’t just simple complacency and confidence in the nigh 20 year “ceasefire” agreed with Hamas when Israel withdrew every Jew from Gaza in 2005 and the remaining Arab Gazans elected Hamas, who then proceeded to murder their political opponents .

            I can go into the history off this, if you like.

          12. Who gains from obliterating Gaza? Netanyahu of course not least because it kicks the corruption enquiry into his activities into the long grass.

          14. Of course it isn’t. Netanyahu is off the hook now thanks to invading and destroying Gaza.

          17. Do you know what, O, I take it as a badge of honour that Polly actually blocked me

            Not sure why – I was never that beastly to her (I actually think I got too close to who ‘she’ is) – but I enjoy seeing the endless ‘Content unavailable’ stuff.

          18. Does ‘content unavailable mean that someone has blocked you?
            That is what I see from Polly’s posts most of the time. I regard blocking/unblocking as a silly trick, so I do hope it is coming from disqus and not from Polly.

          19. Yes, at least in my experience.

            If you sign out of Disqus – use the drop down menu at the top right of this page – you can see the blocked comments if you want to, rather negating the whole purpose of blocking!

            I’m with you – I’ve never blocked anyone, it seems ridiculous.

          20. Relaxing Israeli security goes straight to the top. That’s why it’s all been covered up and nobody has been terminated.

          21. These are reasonable questions, to which I would add, how did the camera crew just happen to be on hand?
            Much skullduggery goes on and ordinary people suffer.

            But you have a bee in your bonnet about Soros. He is just a peasant out of eastern Europe, he has only a subsidiary role in a plan that’s been going at least since the early 20th century.
            I’m off to bed now, so will not take part in any more wrangling tonight.

          22. Presidents of the United States don’t bow low to people who are just “peasants out of eastern Europe”.

            You’ve got this wrong I’m afraid.

          23. People are not so incurious as you imagine, and if they’re on the ground, especially since 2008, they can see what’s going on.
            There are a lot of factors at play, not just the plan for world government (which predates Soros by some years) but looting the fiat currency system and sheer market forces.

          24. It’s important to understand what’s happened since 1990. I’ve posted the explanation with a great deal of evidence.

  131. This is another example of how stupid our government is. Just over one hundred thousand people have signed a petition complaining about bright head lights on cars.
    And devoted to keeping things in ‘perspective’ they are going act on the wishes of this worried minority of British people.
    Oh what a tangled Web they weave……
    Meanwhile the millions of us who consistently do not approve or appreciate the ongoing massive invasion of our country and destruction of our culture. Are simply brushed aside. Headlights being more important.
    Dazzling eh !

  132. Further to my earlier comment on fish Friday there is a story today about the world’s oldest living man. John Tinnisswood getting on for 112 years old, from Liverpool. Who puts his longevity down to fish and chips on Fridays and taking long hikes when he was a younger man.
    Good old boy 😉😊

  133. True blue Tories ‘banned from standing in the general election’
    No 10 accused of purging ‘high-quality’ Right-wing candidates with traditional Conservative values to ensure party is dominated by centrists

    Gordon Rayner,
    ASSOCIATE EDITOR and
    Allison Pearson
    5 April 2024 • 7:28pm https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/05/true-blue-tories-banned-standing-general-election/

    Downing Street has been accused of blocking “true blue” Conservative candidates from standing in the general election as it wages a battle for the future of the Tory Party.

    Those on the Right of the party believe Rishi Sunak is trying to purge it of those who support low-tax, small-state conservatism so that it will be dominated by centrists after the election.

    It would mean that if the Conservatives lose the election and Mr Sunak resigns, he will have already ensured it cannot move to the Right by packing the parliamentary party with One Nation Tories who would reject Right-wing leadership candidates.

    Some Tory MPs have expressed despair that high-quality applicants for the list of approved parliamentary candidates are being rejected because of their traditional Conservative values, while those who believe in high taxation and high public spending are put through, even if they lack the requisite skills to be an MP.

    It is the latest evidence of the civil war raging within the Conservative Party between those who believe it must move to the Right to combat the growing threat of Reform UK and those who believe the only way to remain electable is to occupy the centre ground.

    Applicants who have spoken to The Telegraph describe those in charge of the selection process as “yellow Tories” whose preference is for candidates largely indistinguishable from Liberal Democrats.

    They describe a clear anti-Brexit bias among those who interview applicants and complain that rather than being grilled on Conservative values, they are asked multiple questions about promoting diversity.

    Former Brexit minister Lord Frost ‘is a member of the House of Lords who is also trying to remove the Party leader’, one Sunak loyalist said
    Former Brexit minister Lord Frost ‘is a member of the House of Lords who is also trying to remove the Party leader’, one Sunak loyalist said CREDIT: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire
    Aman Bhogal, a former diplomat who contested the Upper Bann seat in Northern Ireland in 2015 but has not been selected since, said the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) was involved in a “stitch-up” by blocking right-wingers from making it onto constituency shortlists.

    He said: “In the past, you were asked to talk about your Conservative values and your Conservative ideals, but that has all changed. Now it’s ‘tell us about how you have promoted diversity and how you have addressed white privilege’.”

    CCHQ is in charge of the approved candidates list, with a handful of people wielding immense control over who is accepted and who is rejected.

    Among those who would like to be a Tory MP is Lord Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, who has made it clear he would renounce his peerage to sit in the Commons.

    Although he has not made any public comment, The Telegraph understands he has been blocked by CCHQ from applying for seats in the Commons.

    Lord Frost is a critic of the party’s policy direction under the Prime Minister, and one Sunak loyalist suggested he was not being considered because “he is a member of the House of Lords who is also trying to remove the Party leader”.

    David Campbell Bannerman, a former Conservative MEP who has been on the approved list of candidates since 2019, says he is being blocked from progressing to the long list for any particular seat “because I wasn’t being nice enough about Rishi Sunak”.

    He said: “The whole thing is fixed. It’s pretty blatant and undemocratic. The members have woken up to it and are pushing back against it because they are not getting the choice of candidates that they want.

    “This is not about me but about the wider system. It is happening to a whole range of good candidates who are left mystified, let down and driven out of the party. It’s all about power and control and a lack of democracy letting the people down.”

    If the Tories lose the election and Sunak quits as party leader, he can determine what his successor inherits by controlling the list of potential parliamentary candidates
    If the Tories lose the election and Sunak quits as party leader, he can determine what his successor inherits by controlling the list of potential parliamentary candidates CREDIT: UK Parliament/Maria Unger
    Another candidate who has been overlooked said: “Essentially, true blue conservative candidates are just campaign fodder, people who will shove leaflets through doors – CCHQ has no serious intention of letting them stand in a winnable seat, if at all. They only want candidates who are One Nation Conservatives and it’s no wonder we are getting a low calibre of new MPs coming through.

    “When I applied for a seat, the chairman of the local association rang me and said they wanted me to be their candidate, but of course, I was blocked by CCHQ.

    “If, like me, you’re pro-Brexit, tough on immigration and want low tax, CCHQ see you as a repulsive headbanger. Too many in the Party might as well be Liberal Democrats.”

    Problems with the selection process have been blamed for MP defections in recent years, including former Totnes MP Sarah Wollaston and former South Cambridgeshire MP Heidi Allen, both of whom jumped ship to Change UK and then the Lib Dems, and former Wokingham MP Phillip Lee, who defected to the Lib Dems.

    To date, 63 Conservative MPs have announced they are standing down at the election. The record number of Conservatives who have stood down from Parliament in a single term is 75, which was set in the run-up to the 1997 election.

    A YouGov poll earlier this month suggested the Tories could suffer their biggest-ever electoral defeat, with Mr Sunak on course to retain just 155 seats, ten fewer than Sir John Major was left with after Labour’s 1997 landslide.

    A CCHQ source said: “These claims have no basis in fact. It’s obviously a bit difficult for candidates who attack the party leader to be selected given they will be asking constituents to cast their votes for him to be Prime Minister.

    “But the idea that people are not being put forward because of some ideological bent is totally false. This is the PM who is cutting taxes, bringing in major immigration curbs, curbing the excessive elements of net zero and trying to get illegal immigrants sent to Rwanda. That’s hardly some Left-wing agenda.”

    By Gordon Rayner, Associate Editor

    ‘CCHQ is obsessed with diversity and no longer picking people on merit’
    When Gary Pound* made his way to the basement of Conservative Campaign Headquarters for his candidate selection interview, he was preparing himself for questions about law and order, immigration and taxation.

    He need not have bothered. During a one-hour interrogation in a glass-walled box, the primary focus was on diversity, not politics.

    Mr Pound had once been considered such an outstanding candidate that he was on a priority list, making him eligible to apply for any vacant constituency. This time, though, he did not make it onto the list at all.

    “They were just obsessed with diversity,” said Mr Pound, a successful businessman who has been a committed and active member of the Conservative Party since university. “They wanted to know what I had done to promote diversity within the Party and within politics generally.

    “Most Conservatives are meritocrats so they just want the best people, regardless of their sex or ethnicity, but it’s clear they are no longer picking people on merit.

    “It also seemed clear that if you voted for Brexit, like me, your card was marked.

    “It seems the party is being purged of true believers in Conservative values, and the people that should be Liberal Democrats who have infiltrated the party are taking over.”

    MPs and party insiders have expressed deep misgivings about the candidate selection process, which has long-term implications for the Tory Party and the direction it is taking.

    The growing row over who will stand in the next election is regarded by some as a symptom of how dysfunctional the Conservative Party has become as different factions wrestle for control over its uncertain future.

    Even if he loses the election and quits as party leader, Rishi Sunak can determine what sort of party his successor inherits by controlling the list of potential parliamentary candidates.

    Constituency associations have the final say over who stands as their parliamentary candidate, usually choosing from a short list of three or four, but CCHQ can block Right-wing candidates so that only One Nation Conservatives, as the centrists call themselves, are put forward.

    The CCHQ gatekeepers include Gareth Fox, chief of staff to the chairman of the candidates committee, a Remainer who was tasked by David Cameron with making the party more diverse, and Baroness Jenkin of Kennington, who co-founded Women2Win with Theresa May almost 20 years ago with the aim of increasing the number of female Tory MPs.

    Baroness Jenkin of Kennington is one of the CCHQ gatekeepers CREDIT: Julian Simmonds for The Telegraph
    Other influential figures include Matt Wright, chairman of the candidates committee; Matt Lane, director of candidates, and long-term Number 10 fixer Dougie Smith, who helps to vet candidates and acts as a liaison between Downing Street and the candidates committee.

    Would-be MPs must submit a written application, which is followed by due diligence checks and then an interview in front of a Parliamentary Assessment Board, usually comprising two people, one of whom may be a sitting MP.

    Those who pass are entered onto the approved list of candidates, which is subdivided into those on the comprehensive list, who can apply for any seat that comes up; the key list, who can usually only apply for the seat where they live, and the development list, which means they will be considered for unwinnable seats where they can gain experience of campaigning.

    So far, 63 Conservative MPs have already announced they will step down at the election, meaning candidates are now being selected to stand in their constituencies.

    People who apply to be considered for a particular seat are considered by the candidates committee, which produces a long list and then works with the local association to whittle the list down to a shortlist of three or four in a process known as sifting.

    Aman Bhogal, a 39-year-old former diplomat and founder of the Global Britain Centre, which campaigns for free trade and free enterprise post-Brexit, also believes he has been snubbed because of his Brexiteer credentials.

    He said: “I joined the party when I was still at school and I once worked out that I have spent about 14,000 hours campaigning by knocking on doors, distributing leaflets and so on.

    “In the past when I have been interviewed by a Parliamentary Assessment Board I have been asked about my Conservative ideals, but now it’s all about diversity.

    “You are asked how you would promote inter-racial harmony and the answer they’re looking for is that you would take the knee with Black Lives Matter.

    “It’s rotten and it’s shoddy. Along with a lot of other people I am thinking of switching to Reform.”

    Mr Bhogal said that after trying and failing to get onto the shortlist for 15 different constituencies, he met Mr Fox and Mr Lane to ask them what he was doing wrong.

    He said: “I was told my application was perfect and what they call my political footprint was spot on, but that I wasn’t getting people to call in and support me.

    “They said, ‘who do you know in the Cabinet?’ and told me to get Cabinet ministers to call association chairmen putting me forward. I walked out very saddened.”

    Mr Bhogal believes he has been blocked because he campaigned for Brexit and backed Liz Truss for the Tory leadership.

    He said: “Bear in mind that two-thirds of the party members voted for Liz Truss to be leader, so if they are alienating all of those people that’s not creating a unified party at all.”

    The process of sifting candidates can be short-circuited by CCHQ in the case of a by-election when a candidate needs to be chosen quickly. In those circumstances, CCHQ can impose a shortlist on an association, which might contain only one truly viable candidate, meaning the system can be gamed.

    One person on the approved list of candidates claimed some MPs who have already decided to stand down are being told to wait until the election is called before announcing their retirement so CCHQ can use the by-election rules to impose its own candidates on local associations.

    Some of those might include current MPs tempted to do a “chicken run” to a safer seat than their own, or MPs whose seats are being abolished under boundary changes that will take effect at the election.

    A Tory councillor who holds a Cabinet position on his local authority said: “There is a gulf between what the membership wants and what the party hierarchy wants.

    “The odd thing when I applied was the number of ex-Liberal Democrats that were applying, and it was quite clear that that was the type of person they were looking for.”

    Wendy Whittaker-Large, a property investor from Cheshire who was rejected after saying she was a small state, low-tax Tory, agrees. She said: “The people who were getting through were those who believe in high taxes and high public spending – basically LibDems.”

    A scientist who was taken off the list after 10 years said they were told by Mr Fox that they “were not political enough” after saying they did not agree with the Government’s response to Covid.

    A barrister who was rejected by CCHQ said: “The Left wing of the party is in charge and they won’t let anyone else in. But the mistake is that the country and the party need both wings of the party.”

    *Some names have been changed to protect the anonymity of those who spoke to the Telegraph

    1. How would I promote racial harmony? I’d get rid of the blek criminals and illegals!

  134. 385495+ up ticks,

    Getting worse, if possible, seems like old shagawragg is a wooly woofter mp seemingly dishing out other MPs phone numbers out of fear of being compromised regarding other issues, I believe one issue could be highly serious and strongly frowned upon as in truth-telling.

    Watch: Tory MP reveals he was targeted in ‘Westminster honeytrap’
    Dr Luke Evans, the Tory MP for Bosworth, said he had been sent a photo of a naked woman out of the blue over What sapp

    Many MPs I believe, kneel inclusive, were heard to mutter
    “so that’s a woman”

    2. The Wragg case is of no interest to me. I’ve not bothered to read any further.

  136. Be warned: Trawling for fish puns is like dredging up wrecks from previous threads….

    1. This is not the plaice for crabby comments…we like fishy puns to mull over ;-))

      1. Are you in Seine?

        A Danish seine is similar to a small trawl net, but the wire warps are much longer and there are no otter boards. The seine boat drags the warps and the net .

  137. Spider Woman crawls out of her lair again.

    Moore’s article is a good one but marks must be deducted for his praise of The Fakir and for pointing the finger in the wrong direction about Ukraine.

    Politicians, not lawyers, must decide our policy on Israel in the interests of Western security

    An open letter from the legal profession fails to grasp that there are times when civilisation depends on the use of lethal force

    CHARLES MOORE • 5 April 2024 • 6:46pm

    When I edited this newspaper, I was proud to employ Joshua Rozenberg (ex-BBC) as our legal affairs editor. He stood in that great tradition of specialist journalists which 21st-century media have mostly lost. That tradition insisted on specialist accuracy, defying the journalistic urge to oversimplify. The law is a speciality in which accuracy makes all the difference.

    I just said Joshua stood for this, but I should have written “stands”. He is still going strong, writing an authoritative legal blog. This week, I naturally turned to it. As I sometimes did when editor, I also telephoned him to make double-sure I had not misunderstood him.

    On Thursday, 809 former judges, KCs, barristers, solicitors and academic lawyers wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister “reminding” him of his “obligations” under international law in relation to Israel’s actions in Gaza. Among many things, they called for Rishi Sunak to suspend “the provision of weapons and weapons systems to the government of Israel”.

    By way of legal justification, the letter cited the “provisional order” of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January which, it alleged, “concluded that there was plausible risk of genocide in Gaza”.

    No, says Joshua Rozenberg, that is wrong. The phrase “plausible risk” does not occur in the ICJ’s order. The court could not possibly have come to this view, as it had not heard evidence and made a judgment. All it decided was that South Africa’s arguments for making a case before it were plausible enough to be heard. “In simple terms,” writes Joshua, “it is the Palestinians’ rights which were found to be plausible, not the risk they may face.”

    The signature of Lady Hale (she of the spider brooch) headed the open letter. As a former president of the Supreme Court, she is well capable of understanding this distinction. That she, and the 808 legal names below her, ignored it suggests that the massed might of lawyers lacks the majesty of the law. Their letter is political, and part of a wider political campaign.

    If our Government does not understand the need for a firm political counter to it, we are in deep trouble. So far, Mr Sunak has robustly supported Israel, but this able and reasonable man has the defect – so strange in a politician – of seeing politics only in terms of following processes. It is almost the opposite: politics is what you need when processes cannot do the whole job.

    At any one time, there will be many issues on which any government will be at risk of breaking international law (as it will of breaking domestic law). Sometimes, a government will deliberately take this risk. For example, David Cameron, when prime minister, defied a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that our refusal to give votes to prisoners was in breach of the European Convention. We were actively in breach of this between 2005 until 2018, because we believed we should decide who may vote in our country.

    Government lawyers are important, but they give advice: it is not their place to decide. Besides, advice can be wrong, as law and as tactics. We seem to be developing a doctrine that a decision not to follow legal advice is itself an illegal act. No, ministers, most of whom – though not, in his new incarnation, the Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron – are elected, must decide.

    All we have in this case is Foreign Office legal advice, which almost no one invoking it has seen, allegedly arguing that we might be in breach of international law if Israel were in breach of international law by committing genocide (which no court has held that it is) and we continued to sell it arms. There is, as yet, no court case or court judgment against us, just some advice. This is an almost comically rickety edifice for the moral and political weight it is supposed to bear.

    Any proper government must weigh such advice, but when it does so, it is not low politics to balance other factors, it is its positive moral duty.

    Such factors include the following: does Britain itself think Israel is committing genocide and/or other crimes of war? Would breaking our current agreements with Israel affect our own security?

    Our arms trade with Israel is small, but the help we get from the Israelis is greater than what we give them. Co-operation spreads wider. We have a deep level of trust and technological synergy in intelligence. Each learns from the other about state and non-state terrorist threats over there and on our shores. Do we want to break that trust?

    By breaking our arms trade with Israel, we would be sending a signal to other clients that when they get into difficult situations, we are ready to drop them. How would that feel to countries to which we sell – Saudi Arabia, for example, or the United States itself?

    Good, some will say, we should be out of an evil trade. But it is not evil to defend one’s own country, and one does so best with mutual help, both in terms of alliances and of kit. If we gave up defence sales abroad, the vacuum would be filled not only by the Americans and the French – sacrificing British jobs and know-how – but by the Chinese, the Russians, even the cheery old North Koreans.

    And if, as we ought, we still tried to defend our island, we would soon be buying from abroad exactly the sort of things we had decided were too wicked to produce at home. As Tom Tugendhat, the Security Minister, has been known to put it, we could easily decide to become saintly, but “we would end up only the saintliest man in the graveyard”.

    On the BBC, Lord Sumption, the most brilliant of the signatories to the open letter, explained why he felt so strongly. Israel is an essentially Western country, he said, and “one is concerned much more by the terrible things done by one’s friends than by the terrible things done by more distant and remote societies”.

    One wants to agree. The claim to be civilised certainly imposes high obligations. But I worry about the unintended effects of this somewhat inward-looking way of thinking. There are occasions when “more distant and remote societies” commit atrocious violence in the West or against its friends. That happened in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It has happened in London and Manchester, in Paris, Brussels and Madrid. It is happening over almost the whole of Ukraine. It happened, with infamous depravity, when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year.

    If civilised people and polities accept such evil, the perpetrators will be emboldened. Civilisation itself will eventually collapse. To resist the power of evil, it is sometimes absolutely necessary to use lethal force.

    Unfortunately, it is not the case, particularly when fighting people such as Hamas who have no scruples about murdering civilians or using them as human shields, that lethal force can always be neatly contained. If our societies cannot accept this, our own armies will be reduced to toothless peace-keeping forces in other people’s war-zones and there will be precious little peace for them to keep.

    Traditionally, the Western countries which best understood this paradox were Britain and the United States. Today, that is declining. The Western civilisations which, every day of their lives, bravely confront this reality are Ukraine and Israel. They should be our exemplars, not our pariahs.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/05/israel-arms-sales-gaza-legal-open-letter-human-rights/

    1. “The Fakir”? Do you mean Joshua Rozenberg?
      Who? Please explain, William.

      I agree about “pointing the finger in the wrong direction about Ukraine.”

  138. I have posted this on The Spectator comments. I wonder how long it will last?😂

    William Wragg was a Tory MP
    Much given to swiping on Grindr was he,
    A horrid man caused him alarm and affright
    By threat’ning to tell what went on in the night.
    Some MP’s had posted their dìck-pìx by text,
    Should these be made public, careers would be hexed.
    Now cowardice in MP’s is all too well-known,
    So under the bus Willy’s colleagues were thrown.
    “I’ll give you their numbers and details” said he,
    “As long as you promise you’ll never name me!”

      1. It lasted only five minutes on the Spectator. I’d disguised all the naughty words as well.😂😂

    3. Thanks, I hadn ‘t bothered to follow the details of this sordid little story, but your lines make it all perfectly clear!

    4. Well done Squire – dont let the bastards grind you down……. or non illegitmo carborundum to give it its Latin phrase!

    2. Not very keen on the Rose, and I gave up puddings years ago, but I do like Port with the cheese board after.
      How’s Kadi doing, is he still missing Oscar? I am sure you are.

      1. I am still missing Oscar, it’s true, but I think Kadi had secretly longed to be an only dog and had never had the chance! He has sole possession of the fleecy rug with nobody telling him to move now 🙂 The only thing he seems to miss is the cheese treat (Oscar had to have half a paracetamol three times a day for pain relief and I gave them to him in cheese – Kadi, of course, had a little cheese with no medication).

  140. Thought for the day.
    Gibraltar is British.
    Shift EVERY single gimmegrant and Muslim to Gibraltar and then hand it over to Spain.

    1. What has Gibraltar done to deserve that (apart from voting to remain, of course)?

      2. It’s a kindness, they have barbary apes, so the gimmegrant barbarians should feel totally at home.

      3. They voted to remain because the adverse consequences would be more keenly felt there.

        I hope you won’t be questioning the very notion of adverse consequences, as if not a single soul in the entirety of the United Kingdom and Gibraltar did not experience a single scintilla of adversity.

        I ask because some I sometimes get the impression that anybody who claims to have experienced any adversity whatsoever is cast as a scheming, devious liar of the biggest magnitude.

        1. Frankly, the only adversity I’ve experienced has been of the government’s making. Brexit (such as we [don’t] have it) hasn’t affected me at all.

    3. Not quite sure what the EUSSR Commissar finds difficult to understand:

      Treaty of Utrecht = Gibraltar is British in perpetuity.

  142. That was nice and relaxing! Just had a much needed bath after all the sweaty work I’ve been doing and now sat with a small dram.

    1. ‘Wee dram’ is the name of the WhatsApp page I have with my three sons. 🥃 cheers.

  146. Earthquakes appear to be becoming more frequent, will silicon valley win the big one?
    If it does, will China and the Muslim world unite and strike the West?

    1. I would regret the loss of life, but do wish that the California earthquake would come and swallow up the whole mess that seeks to rule the world. I have other bad wishes for other would-be world-oligarchs, some also geographical

      2. New York shat itself earlier. Maybe some of the corrupt lawyers thought it a potentially divine (Trump) retribution. I do hope so.

        The epicentre of the earthquake was funnily enough Trump Tower or on other reports one of his golf courses.

  147. I’m off to bed now, good night all.
    I wonder what tomorrow holds in store.

    2. Perhaps a cheery Good Morning chums from me, a recycled joke from Sir Jasper, and a happy group of happy NoTTLers, Eddy.

  149. We’ve read about things like ‘heatwaves’ here in Snowdonia, but we’ve never actually seen one. Some say they are myths, invented by Saesnegs to scare gullible Cymru folk.😁

    1. Even the Nigerians are deeply envious of the ‘Global Warming – Net Zero’ scam….

    1. Night Bob. Sleep tight…( i was going to say the bed bug one, but wish you very beautiful dreams instead)

      1. Fat chance of that!
        Woke to pump bilges, the DT woke up too and we’re now sat up with mugs of tea.

        2. If you are championing the “too many notes” point of view then I vehemently disagree – particularly on Bach. Yes, it could be argued that some Mozart is decorative, but that is part of its joy.

          1. That I like the works of Erik Satie will help answer that question, with the exception of those who play his mood pieces so slowly that the gentle pulse of his music breaks down.

          2. I love (and enjoy playing) Satie. too. Also the Gurdjieff/ De Hartmann music. They are not mutually exclusive.

          3. Not so much love as admire. I experience little in the way of emotional engagement.

          4. Interesting response, David. I am supposed to b in bed, asleep, just now, but would really like to know why you think that the sparse Satie pieces, lovely as they are, discredit Mozart and Bach

          6. Bloody hell – someone else who likes Satie! I always thought I was a bit odd. Most people just like ‘La Diva de l’Empire’ but he really is much better than just that!

  155. Another day is done so, I wish you goodnight and may God bless you all, Gentlefolk. Bis morgen früh.

        1. Entschuldigang, velicht I shouldn’t have used the very familiar. Chane that to ‘dich’ bitte schon. verstesin sie?

  156. Well that’s me finished for the day. Good night all, sleep well and (hopefully) see you all well and rested tomorrow.

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