Monday 13 March: The BBC was right to punish Gary Lineker for repeated rule-breaking

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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599 thoughts on “Monday 13 March: The BBC was right to punish Gary Lineker for repeated rule-breaking”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Have A Guess

    David Beckham gets into a taxi and he sees the driver looking at him in the rear-view mirror.

    After about 5 minutes the driver says “OK give me a clue”

    Beckham says “I had a glittering career at Manchester United, played in America and got over a100 caps for England, is that enough?”

    Driver says “No you thick twat, where do you want to go?”

    1. David Beckham is an appropriate icon for England.

      He is lauded and idolised and has been made enormously rich but in all his appearances in the England football team England never won a single trophy.

      Reminds me of Bob Dylan’s line:

      There’s no success like failure and failure’s no success at all.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZzyRcySgK8

  2. ‘Morning All

    Start with Laffs

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  6. Medley

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  7. The BBC was right to punish Gary Lineker for repeated rule-breaking

    A red herring, no he was punished for calling the government Nazi’s in a round about way.
    Have you noticed that they keep trying to change the narrative onto whataboutery?

    Such as Alan Sugar hasn’t been fired.

    1. ‘Morning, B3. Why did I feel from the outset that the BBC could not bring itself to get rid of the grossly overpaid leftie? He was already emboldened by their weakness in the face of previous breaches, and now he will be unstoppable.

      This shambles will make an excellent case study for future management trainees in how not to resolve a problem.

  8. Good morning, chums. Miserably wet weather here, but I have plenty to keep me occupied without venturing out.

  9. Good morning, all. Bright and very breezy at 6 am this morning . Beautiful and bright gibbous Moon in the southern sky being at tmes obscured by the scudding clouds. An hour or so on and the weather has turned showery.

    The weather will not obstruct my work in the top greenhouse i.e. building the second brick square in which to concrete a post that will form part of the support for a new red seedless grape.

    Thetford is being threatened by the local councils with containment described as a 15 minute city/20 minute neighbourhood and the local people are, to say the least, not impressed.
    The Mayor was forced to meet the people at a very well attended meeting fronted by some very concerned locals. The meeting was recoded and put up on YouTube. An interview with Richard Vose followed. A useful 40 minutes or so.

    Richard Vose:

    I talk to Kris Brooks, Mike Ball and Bob Seys from Thetford in Norfolk to learn how the community are pushing back against the imposed so-called 20 minute low traffic neighbourhoods.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awRztENVNl8

  10. Mornings 😁 slept ok except when a bed was wheeled in to the room with much noise, the occupant vomited hugely & noisily & was wheeled out again. Yukk. All at about 02:00.

      2. We are all with you at this harrowing time. May your ticker tok nicely after repairs. Morning!

        1. Ta much, like.
          Most urgent item: A shower. Have been flat since Friday, and need “freshening up”.

  11. Wife of jailed Russian opposition leader makes poignant Oscars speech. 13 March 2023.

    The film “Navalny” about the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, won the Oscar for Best Feature Documentary on Sunday.

    His wife Yulia Navalnaya joined the film’s director Daniel Roher on stage to accept the award and gave an impassioned plea.

    I’m sure it’s just a coincidence!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/03/13/dasha-navalny-oscars-speech-best-documentary-russia/

    1. I predict the final episode in this series will be a heartfelt plea by Mr A to endorse Net Zero, by turning in your motor car and banging pots and pans to proclaim your unselfish* support!

      (* No Fish puns please)

  15. Prince Andrew ‘bewildered’ he has yet to receive inheritance from late Queen. 12 March 2023.

    Prince Andrew has been left “bewildered” that he has not yet received any inheritance from Queen Elizabeth II, royal sources have claimed.

    After the Queen’s death last September, her £650 million Duchy of Lancaster estate was automatically left to King Charles.

    However, Prince Andrew, 63, is said to have told friends he feels “despair” that the King has not shared any of his new wealth among his siblings.

    I have no doubts that Andrew has leaked this to prod his brother. If you wish to see naked human greed in all its malicious nastiness you can do nothing better than to receive a legacy. When my Grandmother died she omitted her three sons from her Will in accordance with my Grandfathers (he thought they were all drunken wastrels) wishes but instead of dividing it equally between her grandchildren, as he had advised her, she instead dispensed it to her favourites. This engendered such hatred and resentment that the family as a unit never recovered. It persists to this day! The moral of this tale is if you really love your children you should give them a hand in life and leave your money to some worthy cause.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/03/12/prince-andrew-bewildered-has-yet-receive-inheritance-late-queen/

    1. KC will not be happy about Andrew leaking to the Press.

      My Father left all of us six children exactly the same amounts. Around £20,000 each. It still caused major upset in the family as the older siblings expected more than the younger siblings and the ones with the most children also expected more. Six months later the family imploded with my elder sister attacking me, grabbing my other sister by the throat and punching my brother. I’m glad to be shot of the lot of them.

      1. An unhappy episode Phil. But a perfect demonstration of ‘Where there’s a Will there are relatives’!

        1. There was always plenty of violence. I stopped going to family gatherings many years ago.

      2. My mother left her furniture and about £1000. My ex said I should have given it to the kids. (They were still teenagers and I had to keep them). We separated shortly afterwards.

      3. My mother left everything to my elder brother. Hey ho! That’s life. What you don’t have, you don’t miss.

    3. ‘Royal sources have claimed’ or just unverifiable muck-stirring by the meeja?

  16. WILL LLOYD
    Yes, the left are as miserable as they seem

    Studies show a link between left-wing values and anxiety — something that undoubtedly informs the outlook of Labour

    Monday March 13 2023, 12.00am, The Times

    December 13, 2019 was a strange morning to be walking around central Oxford. For several centuries the city was sternly, even unbendingly Tory, but in recent decades it had become a left-liberal enclave. A bubble, complete with a rainbow flag fluttering above every honey-coloured college entrance. A hermetic monoculture that, in rejecting views that did not conform to its own advanced ethical standards, had returned to the overbearing orthodoxies of its medieval founding.

    That morning, in the colleges and on the streets, a bathetic misery was in evidence; this was the numb pain after the winding shock of the general election result, and the predominant mood of deep heartbreak hung over everything like rain clouds. Voices were funeral-hushed, tears masked faces and I had to swaddle the naked fact I’d voted for Boris Johnson beneath several layers of denying irony.

    The night before, and for several weeks before that, it had been explained to me that Jo Swinson was well on the way to becoming an emergency prime minister at the head of a coalition government. (She was bereaved of her seat on election night.) Or that Jeremy Corbyn was about to surprise everybody by putting a Labour majority government together. (Labour won its lowest number and proportion of seats since 1935.) Or that Johnson was “literally Hitler”, his prorogation of parliament that September analogous to the Nazis’ concocted Reichstag fire emergency in 1933. (Johnson was a clown, not a fascist.)

    These were Oxford views, left-wing chit-chat and fantasies. Reality swallowed them all up when Johnson won his crushing majority. And my left-wing friends, whom I admired for their optimism, returned to their baseline political setting, where most of them have remained ever since: a pinched, futile misery.

    If you can count on the left for anything, it is earnest miserablism. Political movements are more than the sum of policy papers and press conferences. Over time they acquire their own characteristic idioms, gaits and dress codes. Beards are more common on the left than the right, for instance, and a peculiarly intense interest in British Rail is usually a giveaway that you are, unfortunately, speaking to somebody who once sang the words “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” at a music festival.

    Joylessness, too, comes with this territory, a stereotype that has remarkably solid groundings in social science. Left-wing political views tend to shake hands with high neuroticism, which is associated in individuals with anxiety and overthinking, and in political movements with consistently blowing elections. In the US, a 2021 paper by Catherine Gimbrone, Lisa Bates, Seth Prins and Katherine Keyes entitled “The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalising symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs” took the emotional temperature of 12th-grade (year 13) students between 2005 and 2018. It found that liberal girls, with liberal boys following them, experienced surging rates of depressive symptoms. Conservative teenagers, perhaps inured to inequality or the climate crisis or the rise of populism by their beliefs, were not nearly so sad.

    Were these distressed teenagers left-wing because they were miserable, or miserable because they were left-wing? The paper does not quite give an answer. I wonder if both can be simultaneously true. Misery, in any case, was tied to ideology.

    Considering these findings, the economist Tyler Cowen claimed that “you cannot understand the American public intellectual sphere” without a grasp of the close connection between left thinking and depressive tendencies. The same holds in Britain, and not just among public intellectuals. Over the past ten years I have attended demos, protests, drum circles, vigils, Marxist reading groups, union meetings and picket lines. At each of these gatherings there was usually talk of “joy” and “care”, though little of either in evidence.

    I know few natural Tories, fewer cradle Labourites, and many born-again, creedal left-wingers. The Tories, perhaps justifying John Stuart Mill’s indestructible label for them (“the stupid party”), have wafted through these crisis years without once discussing therapy with me, or reaching for antidepressants. The same cannot be said of the others.

    Once you are aware of this link between private sadness and publicly proclaimed left-wing beliefs, it is difficult ever to forget. New Labour’s behind-closed-doors difficulties begin to make more sense when you understand that many of its leading players were not the happiest warriors. The thunderous black moods of Alastair Campbell; the tapeworms of envy that wriggled inside Mr Happy-Go-Lucky himself, Gordon Brown. The very fact that Tony Blair presented the opposite of this — all blokey with the lads and Bambi with the ladies — was one of the things that made him such electoral dynamite; the weirdly bouncy leader of a movement defined by maladaptive sadness, nostalgic utopianism and pointless, scab-picking internal fights.

    That Labour have followed up these years with Ed Miliband (almost too geeky to bully), Jeremy Corbyn (thicko iconoclast) and Sir Keir Starmer (a man who looks like he would nick you for stealing a Dairy Milk) explains their difficulties ever since. The party’s membership desire a reflection of their own choppy mental weather; the public, consuming politics, like football, on television, want chummy, squeeze-of-the-shoulder reassurances.

    Now, even stratospherically high in the polls, you will find few in Labour, either at the top or the bottom of the party, who do not discuss the next election with a shudder. They think they are being professional but it’s closer to the truth to see this caution as another symptom of neuroticism.

    Of course, the right has its own pathologies. An obdurate lack of empathy and, more recently, a bovine, unconvincing embrace of “man in the street” aspirations. (Nothing is funnier — or more expensive — than being lectured over drinks in the Carlton Club about what the Red Wall really wants.)

    But there is a reason why the ingenious left-wing German essayist Walter Benjamin railed against “left-wing melancholia” in the Thirties. There is a reason, too, why the most brilliant British left thinker of his generation, Mark Fisher, wrote most insightfully about depression, not capitalism. A movement that longs, in its depths, for a utopia that will never be built is usually going to be unhappy. This constant state of unfulfilled desire, the painful political equivalent of unrequited love, is the birthmark the left can never truly hide.

    Will Lloyd is a commissioning editor and writer at the New Statesman

  20. G’moaning all,

    Wet, windy and 11℃ at McPhee Towers. Might brighten up this afternoon.

    I like Kip Waistell’s advice concerning the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Must look into it.

  21. Nicked comment

    The Russians blasted a ‘ secret’ undergound Air Defence bunker in Ukraine
    last week . The bunker was 250 feet below ground and had up to 300
    Ukrainian military and up to 40 NATO members .

    The missile
    used was a Kinzhal hypersonic weapon carrying a 500 kg explosive
    head and travelling at Mach 12 – 14000 kilometres an hour, which gives
    it enormous kinetic energy when it strikes – the equivalent of 16.9
    gigajoules of kinetic energy excluding detonation, which is the
    equivalent of 4,000 kg of TNT.

    I’ll bet anyone who survived has a lot of ringing in their ears .

    NATO has absolutely nothing capable of stopping them .
    I.ve seen this reported on several sites both in the UK and the US but have no idea of its veracity the fog of war is dense but if it IS true what the hell were NATO troops doing there??
    These idjits are flirting with WW3

    1. WW2 British invention – Grand Slam (?) was the first of these deep-penetration bombs that actually worked.

      1. Tallboy. Same principle but smaller. Grand Slam was 10 tons, Tallboy just below 6 tons. Both required Lancasters to be modified to load them.

      2. Tallboy. Same principle but smaller. Grand Slam was 10 tons, Tallboy just below 6 tons. Both required Lancasters to be modified to load them.

      3. Strictly speaking it was the 2nd. The 6 ton Tallboy preceded it by a few months.
        Grand Slam heavier by 4 tons.

          2. I received my Ph.D at the same graduation as Frank Whittle received his (honorary) Ph.D.

    2. It’s long been rumoured, and denied, that the USA has a ‘kinetic energy only’ orbital weapon system, THOR, in place. No explosives required, the destructive energy being derived solely from the mass of the missile and its velocity at impact. Such a weapon is classed as unstoppable.

      1. Something like that would likely be visible, and advertised by astronomers / Russia – and how would it get there, being so heavy? Anyhow, surely The Sword of Damocles would be a better name for something like that?

        1. The ISS was built from modules capable of being placed in orbit, why not another system? The missiles have been described as telegraph pole size tungsten rods. If the velocity is high enough the mass of the missile can be reduced to achieve the desired effect. Would a satellite with say, ten missiles, be visible if placed in a distant orbit? THOR and his hammer comes to mind.
          Like Grand Slam these missiles, if they existed, would be used against specific targets e.g. command and control bunkers.
          The USA has denied such a deployment (???).

  22. You read it here first…

    Federal Reserve announces that ALL depositors at Silicon Valley Bank will be protected as another bank – Signature Bank – closes, and an auction is held for SVB’s assets

    The Federal Reserve on Sunday evening announced all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank will be protected – even those exceeding the $250,000 guarantee.
    *
    *
    *
    All the Dems luvvie big donors. Harry, Meagain, and Oprah are safe

  24. Good morning all.
    A damp and blustery start to the day after a wet & windy night. Temperature outside is an almost balmy 5½°C!

  25. Some very ill-informed letters on the subject of Lineker in the letters’ page…

  26. The serially hapless mandarins at the Rugby Football Union need to be replaced. Twice they have spurned the opportunity to employ the English defence coach, Shaun Edwards. As a direct result he first gave Wales, now France, an unbeatable defence.

    Similarly they ignored the opportunity to select another Englishman, Andy Farrell, as national coach. Ireland snapped him up and now their team is the world’s No 1. Edwards and Farrell are products of Rugby League. It seems the ingrained snobbishness towards that code, from the RFU, still lingers.

    1. That attitude pervades all over, Grizz. No wonder the country is so feckin’ useless at everything.

  27. The serially hapless mandarins at the Rugby Football Union need to be replaced. Twice they have spurned the opportunity to employ the English defence coach, Shaun Edwards. As a direct result he first gave Wales, now France, an unbeatable defence.

    Similarly they ignored the opportunity to select another Englishman, Andy Farrell, as national coach. Ireland snapped him up and now their team is the world’s No 1. Edwards and Farrell are products of Rugby League. It seems the ingrained snobbishness towards that code, from the RFU, still lingers.

  29. Morning all 😉 😊
    My word it was a very wet and windy night.
    Broken cloud and some sunshine.
    And still the Lineker subject emerges.
    Typical of our press. Amongst them all, they seem to have an addiction to continuous and pointless speculation.
    STFU please.

  30. 20 years on, memories of the Iraq war may have faded, but it shaped the diminished UK we know today. 13 March 2023.

    But now, an uneasy anniversary arrives. Next Monday will mark 20 years since the invasion of Iraq: a reminder not just of Blair et al’s responsibility for the greatest political and humanitarian disaster the UK had been involved in since the second world war, but a moment when the supposed political centre ground suddenly lurched somewhere reckless and catastrophic. Support for the invasion, let us not forget, also enveloped the Conservative party, and the vast majority of the British press. In that sense, the anniversary is a vivid reminder of the perils of groupthink, and the grim results of squeezing complex realities into simple narratives.

    This war was of course an unmitigated disaster. Not just for the Iraqi’s but for everyone. It’s the cause of a great deal of the Refugee Problem in Europe. It also destroyed the confidence people used to have that Government would listen to them; one of the reasons for the general political malaise among the British people. The PTB did learn something from it; though not what you might think. They learned to lie! Not simply untruths but to control the whole public narrative. Such that a vast apparatus now exists to mislead the populations of the West. Today is not simply the anniversary of the Iraq war. It also that of the beginnings of the Decline of the West and the end of Representative Government..

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/12/iraq-war-diminished-uk-2003-public-trust-government

    1. And still today Bliar and his repulsive mates get away with it.
      The scene from the film The Ghost Writer springs to mind. A Shot fired from a roof top.

    2. In the words of one of Blair’s special favourites, Peter Mandelslime:

      “We are now living in the post-democratic age.”

          2. So far, nowt.
            Waiting for the consultant to arrive & explain. I guess he’s reading notes and forming plans after the weekend. Or, drinking coffee and reading the paper.

    3. This is about 70 miles from Mauna Loa which is itself an active volcano which is……….where NOAA takes CO2 data measurements!
      Wot’s up with that?

  33. Gary Lineker to return to Match of the Day as BBC bosses back down
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/12/gary-lineker-return-match-day-bbc-bosses-back/

    At last there is something we British can take pride in: ABJECT SURRENDER.

    Be it about allowing the EU with its ECJ to remain in control in Northern Ireland; giving millions upon millions of pounds to France to do nothing about stopping boatloads of illegal immigrants; capitulating to France on the rugby field; the CoE bowing to woke cries to ban Calvin Robinson from presenting a celebration at Easter for believing in Christian doctrine; or the BBC crumbling to wokedom over Gary Lineker presenting a sports programme – the British have got it taped:

    If in doubt – just give in.

    1. I totally agree.
      And all we the public get is an off button.
      I’ve never watched it and never will.
      But sadly that doesn’t effect anyone or anything.

        1. Yes, ……..He trivialised the very real evil of racism a while back when, in an

          interview with Jake Humphrey, he pretty much claimed to be non-white,

          saying that as a youngster he had endured ‘pretty much racist abuse…

          without being good at sport, life would have been very different for me…

          I think I would have been bullied at school, I was kind of marginally

          that way anyway because I was this tiny geeky kid, with darkish skin and

          I had pretty much racist abuse although I’m not, I’m as English as they

          come.’

          https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-ignorance-of-gary-lineker/

          1. What I was asking was whether the statement attributed to the racist Brown woman was fake.

      2. I have had a considerable amount of racism directed against me because I was born in the Sudan which is next door to Ethiopia where the Emperor Haile Selassie became worshipped as the Second Coming by many Rastafarians which might give you a clue about my soubriquet.

  35. Doncha just lurve horsepiddle? Spoiler for those who haven’t had breakfast yet… Someone throwing up outside, very noisily. Oh, good.

    6. Yuk. Had that once on a visit to A&E. A lad sitting opposite who was going to have to spend all night in the waiting room because there wasn’t a bed. He was given a chair, a blanket and a bowl to be sick in.

  36. Sorry about picture 2 but it is an example of ‘know your enemy’.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8b34590d3cee877802b9da850fb6e14d219406e5bb02c4e5d8908f0b92ff3dea.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c501243973302f9eaca79872bfab33ce84965eea19ba1aeb2ddc6c57e2428760.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/576cae2d2e34dfb81833be34ed718eaf83b415549d8dff29877f9e548abdadcf.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b17138a4828034f4ddcad96900b489cb10e0e68a0a8153672843a972a1f81b73.png

        1. One black one,
          One white one,
          And one with a bit of shite on,
          And the hairs on her dicky dido
          Hang down to her knees.

          That one?

          1. I rather assumed that those who read the posts I put behind spoilers know that without having to spell it out!

  37. Yo and Good moaning all

    I have just lashed real money out and bought a book telling ‘The everyday story of country folk: UK 2023’

    1984

  38. ‘Morning, Peeps. Did anyone else watch the very last episode of Endeavour? What a superb series, and I shall miss DCI Thursday, Sgt Morse and Chief Superintendent Bright. A quality production from ITV and, in my view, head and shoulders above any other police drama that I can think of.

    1. On the whole yes but I found the shoehorning in of a homophobic anti EU serial killer grating got to get a bit of woke into everything…………

    2. Of course Morse should have married Joan Thursday in Episode 3 and divorced her in Episode 7!

      Many must have screamed at the screen in frustration at the young man’s amatory procrastination.

      The Strange who married Joan in the final episode of Endeavour and became Morse’s boss (in the Morse with John Thaw series) lost about a quarter of his body weight which means that he would have had to have gone on a feeding spree to put on the weight!

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4ba0b5a32fccf2258b072c7328ec384256fa50a077e02a2d4c5b7ecacc90f43a.jpg

    3. A really good series. Thoroughly enjoyable. I thought the last shot of Endeavour driving away in the black Jag, passing the red Jag going the other way and seeing John Thaw’s eyes in the rear view mirror was an excellent touch.
      I think Shaun Evans directed some of the episodes.

      1. He did. There was a short programme about the making of Endeavour afterwards. Interesting to see (and hear) the cast out of character.

  39. First trailor load of manure dumped. (The verb was deliberately chosen with Young Phil in mind!!)

  40. The DT has an item about static caravan parks unable to provide sufficient charging facilities for EV cars. The national grid cannot supply the power. Some such parks have up to a thousand static caravans to deal with. It was obvious from the start of the EV era that caravans, both static and trailer/ motor caravans would suffer badly. The government needs to think again about Net Zero. It is not welcomed.
    ps I am not a caravan fan.

    1. Nobody admits to making errors nowadays, clydesider! Especially not our PTB!

    2. We cannot have a car charger fitted at home, even if we wanted one, as the grid cannot supply and they are forbidden.

  41. The Grimes has a story about billionaires Fishi and Mrs Fishi needed their electricity supply upgraded to meet the power demand for their olympic swimming pool.

    How the other half lives etc etc.

    1. I think the surplus from my So Lah panels goes directly to them: Barstewards!!

  42. If it does nothing else it should finally establish whether the Dominion machines could have been tampered with.
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/13/tucker-carlson-donald-trump-capitol-attack-fox-news

    There are parallels between Carlson and Lineker too.

    More so, Carlson likes controversy. He remains hugely powerful, and may be beyond the reach or will of the organization to rein in. He has survived controversies over racist comments and his embracing of tenets of white nationalism.
    Fox News primetime anchors, particularly Carlson and Hannity, exert so much power in that organization that even the Murdochs have to dance around it, Grueskin said.
    “It goes beyond Tucker Carlson,” he says. “Rupert Murdoch may be the smartest media person in the world, but you can’t fix this problem they’ve created for themselves.”

  43. I had 2 short power cuts about 7 am this morning, one of about 3 minutes and shortly afterwards another of about a minute. Was this a warning about the future?

    1. Around here, when they are very short like that, it’s usually a sign they are about to work on the power lines.
      They seem to cut from the grid, hook up the huge portable generators, switch them on and off to check they’re OK and then on again until they reverse the power supply back to the grid when they’ve finished whatever work they are undertaking.

  44. Good morning!

    As many here probably know, the Silicon Valley Bank in California has gone bust. It is run by left-wing wokes and proves the adage ‘Go woke, Go broke’.

    You may wonder why I point out something that happened in the US. But, wokeness is alive and well in the UK, doing its best to undermine western civilisation. As reported today in the US press, Jay Ersapah, the boss of Financial Risk Management (sic) at SVB’s UK branch, launched initiatives such as the company’s first month-long Pride campaign and a new blog emphasizing mental health awareness for LGBTQ+ youth. She spent considerable time spearheading multiple “woke” LGBTQ+ programs, including a “safe space” for coming out stories, as the firm catapulted toward collapse.

    Her efforts as the company’s European LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group co-chair earned her a spot on SVB’s “outstanding LGBT+ Role Model Lists 2022.”

    No wonder SVB failed – so much for financial management!

    1. Good morning, Sguest.

      Good to see you (and hear from you). Trusting Lefties with your money? Perhaps not the best idea.

  45. Partisans destroy railway used by Putin’s forces 13 March 2023.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75c829a1fbd34d804d7cbba1639f592135924239f48df0d7a4b8a264e889457a.png

    Pro-Ukrainian guerrillas destroyed a stretch of railway in occupied Kherson in a logistical blow to Russian forces.

    The Atesh partisan movement claimed responsibility for the apparent strike, which they said would hinder the supply of Russian troops in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

    “We work around the clock for the destruction of the occupying forces and the liberation of Ukraine,” the group said alongside a video of the explosion,

    Railway?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/03/13/russia-ukraine-war-putin-news-latest-bakhmut-attack-wagner/

    1. Clearly a road bridge of course. Unlikely the Russian troops will mobilise en-masse for at least a couple of months. It seems that the ground remained frozen for a much shorter time than is usual for a Russian winter and is now deep mud. The mud will dry but probably not before May.

      1. And the mud will almost immediately become dust, yet another bitch to fight through.

    2. I count a myriad [nay: plethora] of examples of execrable ‘journalism’ every day in the DT/ST. The Daily Mirror of the 1970s provide better quality reporting than the Telegraph of today does.

    3. Judging by the debris on the upstream side that bridge has been down all winter.

      1. Turnuslegen (registrar?) has visited and laid out the red carpet for the consultant, who is pondering his share portfolio and will come & discuss the case when he is done pondering. Otherwise, just waiting and running out of Youtube videos to watch. Coffee intake at an all-time high. Otherwise comfortable, thanks. Wandering vomiters have gone away, and replaced by a bloke who looks awful – grey face, sunken cheeks, rattling cough and bag of yellow by the bed.
        Home just gets better by the moment!
        But, on the plus side, there are a lot of fit, young, blonde girls in tight white trousers wandering about…

        1. “a bloke who looks awful – grey face, sunken cheeks, rattling cough and bag of yellow by the bed.”
          Hope that’s not a big mirror on the opposite wall.

      2. Registrar just told me they plan to wire me up tomorrow, and after a period of observation, then I can go home.
        Yaay!

          1. Hoping for a higher voltage (= more energy) than current unboosted situation.
            Hope for non- Lithium batteries – a fire in my chest seems somewhat, well, scorchy.

  47. Apparently with Lineker, as has found to be the case with quite a few aging ex-footballers, might have been heading too often and too far left for a number of years. And the effects of ball contact could be his problem.

    1. Gary Lineker admits he used to DUCK out of headers in training after suspecting it was dangerous… as England great backs Sportsmail’s campaign to introduce limits
      Ex-England star Gary Lineker backs Sportsmail’s campaign to tackle dementia
      Former striker reveals he stopped heading footballs in training due to concerns
      Nevertheless, Lineker still scored 15 of his 48 England goals with his head

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-8963611/Gary-Lineker-admits-used-DUCK-headers-training-suspecting-dangerous.html

        1. Whatever one may feel about Lineker, he is not a fool.
          He knew exactly how his 1930’s Germany comment would be interpreted and that’s what he intended.

  48. Veterans with Gulf War Syndrome uncover old letter that may allow class action lawsuit against MoD

    Lawyers have unearthed a letter sent by legal advisers for John Major’s Government pledging that no time limit was set on legal action

    Around 17,000 UK personnel – a third of the 51,000 who served – have suffered ailments including chronic fatigue, PTSD, joint pain, breathing
    problems, headaches, insomnia, mood swings and memory loss since being administered vaccines. Many have since died.

    Ms Meredith-Beckham said their assistance is helping contribute towards a growing body of evidence showing troops were wrongly administered with dangerous and in some cases unlicenced vaccines.

    Ring any bells? eg Convid

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/11/veterans-gulf-war-syndrome-uncover-old-letter-may-allow-class/

    1. The problem with all legal action is that the judiciary are corrupt. Bought and paid for and ideologically captured as with the rest of the establishment.

    2. The problem with all legal action is that the judiciary are corrupt. Bought and paid for and ideologically captured as with the rest of the establishment.

    3. I remember hearing about a former officer who died of stomach cancer aged 37 (or 39). Gulf War syndrome.

  49. A thought on the kinetic energy threads below.

    Electric vehicles are much heaver than their oil driven alternatives and accelerate much faster; not forgetting that they burn like runaway Roman candles.
    When most cars are EV (yeah yeah I know it’s pie in the sky) will that mean that crashes between them will be much, much more dangerous and that fatalities and very serious injuries will increase and net pollution will rise?

    1. Crashes will be far more difficult to clear away coz EVs cannot be moved other than by pick up truck.

      1. That’s one of their fundamental flaws. Imagine this: You’re an EV driver. You’re on a ‘smart’ (dumb) motorway. Your car suffers a sudden total power failure. It performs a sudden stop. No coasting a mile or so to the next refuge. What are your chances? Answers on a post-card, please.

      2. When the weather is very cold and there are multiple cases of EVs running out of battery power it could take several days to clear the blocked motorways and a devastating amount of people suffering from and dying of hypothermia.

    3. ‘When most cars are EV will that mean that crashes between them will be much, much more dangerous’: YES
      ‘and that fatalities and very serious injuries will increase’: YES
      ‘and net pollution will rise’: YES

      We have to understand that politicians know as well as we do that Carbon Dioxide is both necessary and desirable and that man-made global warming is a myth promoted by vested interests

      1. Honestly I’m not sure. Firstly because of modern safety systems – lane departure, automatic braking, collission detection and so on.

        However, you’re right that if the battery pack is breached then we get runaway fires that can’t be put out easily.

        Rastus, politicians don’t care about the environment. Green is only about scamming people for tax. If they took it seriously a whole raft of changes would be made to house building, gardens – for growing vegetables… you name it.

        1. They wouldn’t be building on green fields, ripping up hedgerows and felling trees if they were serious, not to mention not increasing the population by importing hostiles.

    4. ‘When most cars are EV will that mean that crashes between them will be much, much more dangerous’: YES
      ‘and that fatalities and very serious injuries will increase’: YES
      ‘and net pollution will rise’: YES

      We have to understand that politicians know as well as we do that Carbon Dioxide is both necessary and desirable and that man-made global warming is a myth promoted by vested interests

    2. SWMBO thought she heard one a couple of weeks ago. ‘Nah, it’s a pigeon’, I said, ‘too early’. She wouldn’t have it.

    3. SWMBO thought she heard one a couple of weeks ago. ‘Nah, it’s a pigeon’, I said, ‘too early’. She wouldn’t have it.

      1. Would have been improved (hell, everything is better, except gin) with a good dollop of Tabasco.

      1. No.
        Salty crackers ‘n honey to finish. Brie would be better, but that hasn’t been invented in Norwegian health service yet.

          2. I asked earlier if you had any news about progress. I have been out for three hours shovelling shit – so am possibly behind your news.

          3. Just had briefing by surgeon. Pacemaker to be set in front of left shoulder, 2 wires passed into heart & screwed in place (!) by their wee corkscrew ends, then coupled to the control & battery box, all under local anaesthetic (ARGH!). 1 day observation, then home. Pacemaker will detect a delayed / missed beat, and stimulate one if necessary. Follow-up after 6 weeks or so, then every year. Keep away from getting fingers in high voltage, such as short circuiting a welding machine… didn’t have plans for that anyway, so no loss there.
            Couple days off to recover, then nose returned to grindstone.

          4. That’s remarkable – and very encouraging. Just think, under the local anaesthetic, you can give NoTTLers a running commentary!! Blow by blow, as it were.

            Had this happened 50 years ago, we’d be having a whip round for a wreath.

            KBO. And I really WOULD urge you to keep away from ladders….

          5. I didn’t even have a local when they did my angioplasty.

            It was fascinating to watch the TV images as they shoved this camera on a rope up my arm. I was told off for moving my head to get a better view and definitely, no talking allowed.

          6. Argh! Requested full anaesthetic, told to get stuffed. I HATE operation stuff as the worst thing possible, even worse when it’s me.

      1. Perhaps they know that British patients prefer shyte food! Locals get caviar, champagne, smoked salmon etc etc

  52. Britain’s civil service blob never learns from its own success. 13 March 2023.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1d44300148ab45d8bb1c49c6402465aa1587253bbd538fc4e897230e70742b79.png

    And as Europe squabbled in recrimination, we had that very unusual feeling that, for once, the machinery of British state had got its act together.

    But as Bingham’s own brutal account of her time leading the Taskforce makes clear, its success happened in spite of, and not because of conventional Whitehall practice. And today, our “Rolls Royce civil service” is quietly ensuring it can never happen again.

    The VTF’s achievements are remarkable and worth recounting. No successful coronavirus vaccine had ever been produced before, and as Bingham herself writes, they weren’t hopeful.

    Brought to you from the Telegraph’s very own Twilight Zone!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/13/britains-civil-service-blob-never-learns-success/

    1. No successful coronavirus vaccine has had ever been produced before

      Are these Telegraph journalists isolated from what’s actually happening around them?

    2. How was the vaccine our greaatest achievement – or is he implying vaccinations generally?

      Why won’t the civil service learn? Because it doesn’t think it’s done anything wrong. In fact, more likely, it assumes others were wrong for not doing as it said, and that’s the problem.

  54. The Beeb asks: “How did the University of East Anglia end up facing a £30m deficit?”

    Anyone for Hockey Sticks?

    1. I don’t “trust the data of authoritarian governments”. The authoritarian governments that imposed lockdown also lied about Covid data.

  56. Beeboid boss with eschury voice caves in to crisp seller.

    I’d say they serve each other well.

    1. The Crisp manufacturers are always looking for suggestions for new flavours. I suggest:

      Dun up like a kipper!

    2. The Crisp manufacturers are always looking for suggestions for new flavours. I suggest:

      Dun up like a kipper!

  57. Gary Lineker issues defiant statement with no apology
    The Match of the Day presenter said it had been a ‘surreal’ few days after Twitter row over impartiality
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/13/gary-lineker-statement-twitter-bbc-row/

    The cynic in me thinks that Lineker knows upon which side his bread is buttered. I wonder if he would get the same amount of money out of a broadcaster which has to balance the books more rigidly than the BBC which relies on compulsory handouts from a public which does not nessarily share his opinions? If he could then off he should go to that broadcaster.

    BTL Percival Wrattstrangler

    Garry Lineker should head a campaign to defund the BBC by abolishing the Licence fee. The BBC could then find other was of funding itself and become the Independent Broadcasting Corporation which could express whatever political bias it liked and Lineker would then be free to say what he feels he must say.

    I wonder why Lineker is not on record as saying that he thinks the licence fee should be abolished?

    3. Why on eath should anyone be forced to have a licence to watch an openly left wing tv channel. They have broken their charter andthe TV must stop.

  59. A nice, calm and respectable lady went into the pharmacy, walked up to the
    pharmacist, looked straight into his eyes, and said, “I’d like to buy some
    cyanide.”
    The pharmacist asked, “Why in the world do you need cyanide?”
    The lady replied, “I need it to poison my husband.”
    The pharmacist’s eyes got big and he explained, “Lord have mercy! I can’t
    give you cyanide to kill your husband, that’s against the law!
    I’ll lose my license! They’ll throw both of us in jail! All kinds of bad
    things will happen. Absolutely not! You CANNOT have any cyanide!”
    The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in
    bed with the pharmacist’s wife.
    The pharmacist looked at the picture and said, “You didn’t tell me you had
    a prescription.”

  60. While pausing in the shit shovelling, I noticed that one of the waterbutts was leaning. The slabs on which it was placed 15 years ago had subsided.

    Butt full – 200 litres. What to do (apart from pouring it down the drain). Brainwave. I put it all in the well! Merely 20 cans to fill and carry fifty yards….. Still – job done. Butt cleaned out and slabs levelled. I remembered that I had a bag of sand The MR most impressed…!

    4. 200 litres is 200kg! That’s bally heavy, even ignoring the weight of the butt itself.

      Don’t have that leaning against a wall.

  61. Would “Apprentice medics” be better than Junior Doctors. They should never take the title of doctor until they have understood the ethical obligations of being one.

    1. I used to know a guy with a PhD who insisted on being addressed as a doctor and a mutual friend who was a GP and found it amusing. I remember very well that she said, “Of course strictly speaking, I’m a bachelor of medicine”.

        1. I sent Bill an SAE with my return address titling me a Lord. I’m definitely pomous…

      3. In the 1960s I knew a bloke who was a PhD – industrial chemist.

        We used to larf at his “Doctor” title.

        He had the last larf. He bought a house. At that time it took at least six months to get a telephone. He rang up from the office. Was given that info – was asked for his name: “Doctor Bloggs”. “Oh, in that case Doctor, what time tomorrow would suit you?”

      4. I once went on a date with a German who insisted upon being addressed as “Professor Doktor Doktor X”. Needless to say, there wasn’t a secind date.

    2. There was a group of them (eight, I counted) this morning outside the entrance to Colchester General Hospital; listlessly waving placards and being ignored.
      Life carried on as normal; usual number of people milling back and forth, every department seemed to be open, vans, cars, taxies and buses shuttling back and forth …..
      The inevitable camera woman turned up. I assume Look East will make it appear as if the place was closed down.

    2. Veeery interesting indeed. In the light of what we now understand about the true nature of Uncle Sam there is a certain plausibility about the idea that they did it.

  64. First Republic shares crash after Silicon Valley Bank collapse. 13 March 2023.

    Shares in First Republic Bank have fallen 60pc in pre-market trading as the US lender tried to calm any concerns about its liquidity following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.

    The bank said late on Sunday that it has more than $70bn in unused liquidity to fund its operations under agreements with the US Federal Reserve and JP Morgan.

    However, traders have rushed to sell First Republic’s shares following the announcement, as regional banks come under pressure following the collapse of SVB on Friday.

    In a sign of how fast the crisis in the sector has spread, regulators announced that New York-based Signature Bank had also failed and was being seized on Sunday.

    Ooops!”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/13/silicon-valley-bank-news-latest-budget-ftse-100-markets-economy/

    1. Regional community banks and credit unions have been very popular in the US because they’re supposedly more ethical but they’re not part of the Swift system so most of the small banks themselves have accounts with the big internationals in order to receive foreign transfers. Have the small banks proved not to be ethical in their dealings after all or have the big internationals taken revenge, or a combination of both?

  66. From the noise that the blowing wind is making, I think my So Lah panels may change into Wind Turbines

  67. Wow Aramco the Saudi state owned oil giant massive record profits of 191 billion dollars.
    I wonder what their gross carbon footprint is.
    In real unadulterated terms ?

      2. I met with the Chief Engineer of Saudi Aramco several times – a very straightforward Lady who wore normal Western clothing to our meetings (but I’d bet her dress cost more than my car). With chauffeured limo, naturally.

  68. Who is who? My guess:
    1. Robin Hood 2. Snake/Satan – Garden of Eden 3 & 4. Adam and Eve 5.Isaac Newton 6. Snow White 7. Steve Jobs 8. Evil Queen/Witch 9. Don’t know 10. William Tell 11. Son of William Tell?

    https://scontent-cdg4-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/331738222_571072921442750_3164732563008389083_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5cd70e&_nc_ohc=1HVfe6KtczkAX_7gV3v&_nc_ht=scontent-cdg4-2.xx&oh=00_AfCH2VGl3UbspFyYcMPU8-7s5gGN5f0jNlz2l2KVaf6LoQ&oe=6414AB69

    1. 7. Is not Steve Jobs. It is Billy Goats who always used Apple computers upon which to write his inferior software.

      There used to be an interview on YouTube in which Jobs and Goats spoke about their respective careers. Goats was once employed by Jobs before he left to set up his own company. In the video it showed the staff at Microsoft all using Apple computers, to the mirth of Jobs and the embarrassment of Goats. Goats sheepishly admitted that he used Apple computers “because they are the best.” That video has been removed from YouTube.

        1. Yes, it looks like Gates but why would he want an apple? Jobs – real name should have been (son of) Abdulfattah Jandali, founder of Apple computers, nearly always wore black clothing.

        2. Yes, it looks like Gates but why would he want an apple? Jobs – real name should have been (son of) Abdulfattah Jandali, founder of Apple computers, nearly always wore black clothing.

      3. Grizz, Microsoft was incorporated before Apple; Bill Gates was born 8 months after Steve Jobs. Both Bill and Steve were fortunate to have befriended slightly older tech guys who could help them (messrs Allen and Wozniak, and then others).
        Bill and Steve did co-operate in the early days, because one was selling software and the other was selling hardware combined with software. Microsoft currently employs some 221,000 people whereas Apple has about 164,000 employees.

    4. Correct answer: 1. Robin Hood William Tell 2. Snake/Satan – Garden of Eden 3 & 4. Adam and Eve 5.Isaac Newton 6. Snow White 7. Steve Jobs Bill Gates 8. Evil Queen/Witch 9. Don’t know Helen of Troy10. William Tell Paris 11. Son of William Tell.

  69. Oberst style joke !

    Changed the ringtone on my alarm to the hokey cokey.

    Took me 20-minutes to get out of bed.

    No ! You get your coat !

    3. I expect she’s been busy speaking to the bosses of Aramco about their global carbon footprint……..and massive profits.

    1. Census Form:

      Occupation of Mother ———————– (If Nun write None!)

  76. ALDI. Tomatoes ETC.

    The discounter is the latest to lift all buying restrictions following Lidl making a similar announcement on Friday .

  79. “Whiteness,” crow the article’s authors, “is in its death throes,” sustained only by “the continuation of deficit narratives” that promote the alleged untruth that people in majority-white nations like Canada live in, um, majority-white nations like Canada. Instead, “Correctly describing the Global Majority as such, disrupts this narrative and moves racialized people from the margins to the center.” The ultimate aim appears to be to instill a form of false consciousness in white people so that they come to wildly underestimate their own numbers in their own countries, and become imprisoned inside a real-life mental version of Google’s fake art-gallery.
    Disturbingly, this Big Brother tactic can work. A 2022 article by novelist Lionel Shriver in the London Times revealed that, due to systematic overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in the U.S. media, the average American believes 42 percent of their fellow countrymen are black, whereas the true figure is only 12 percent. Even more unbelievable, the average black American questioned believed they were in the majority of the U.S. population, supposedly making up 52 percent of it. A similar survey in the U.K. found respondents guessed Britain’s own population was 20 percent black—the true figure then being 3 percent. Big Sister Campbell-Stephens must have been delighted.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/big-black-brotha-is-watching-you/

    My one consolation is that after the whites are consumed the Muslims, the Chinese and the Indians will be far less tolerant of Negroid peoples and Africans and African Americans/Europeans will discover what real prejudice is.

          2. We are having a rerun of the roast chicken, spuds, veg and stuffing. The stuffing, which was very nice, did cause certain after effects;-))
            Tomorrow will make stock and then curry- and so it goes….

          4. Gravy good too with all the pan juices. I’m looking forward to the curry; I think I make a good one and we haven’t had one for ages. I think my husband is able to cope right now!

          5. Is that a request? I am sure the horsepiddle staff have a range of gases on offer….

      1. I did ask the hospital authorities to confiscate the book. I should have written in Norwegian….

        Vær så snill å ta bort hans fordømte bok

        1. Vær så snill og ta bort denne fordømte boken hans.
          There, fixed it for you.

          2. Which is why we ended up using Principal Engineers as translators a while ago. Google couldn’t handle the technical or legal language, neither could the human ones – they were OK with Ibsen, just didn’t have the knowledge to deal with the technical & legal-ese.

          3. I looked at the technical translation option when I did the Institute of Linguists Final Diploma. In the end, I decided to do the long essay (1500 words).

  81. The pound has gained a little against the US dollar today. Currently 1.22 but it dropped to 1.18 a week ago. When I first went there in 1970, it was 2.4 so one cent equalled one penny.

  82. About 4 tons of shite shifted. One ton to be distributed tomorrow among the roses and the potager. Just had a two miles walk to loosen my stiff old body. It is still a howling (literally) gale outside. Most unpleasant. Though very mild.

  83. I’ve just been putting the waste bin out for collection. And a saw a large Bee. I think its timing is wrong.

    2. It’s Brexit’s fault. If you old white fascists hadn’t voted to leave the great and glorious…

      1. Beeing reasonable, we do have some cherry blossom at the bottom of the garden.
        But it was buzzing around the Wigealia. Only buds so far.
        How dare it !
        But thanks for that Gary. 🤭😉

        1. Coming past Allestree roundabout yesterday on the TransPeak bus, I noted a blackthorn in full blossom.

    1. The TV series, House of Cards has Ian Richardson touring such a scene. In that, ‘da evul Torwees!’ have made people so poor they cannot afford energy, so are bypassing the safeties.

      Decades later, it is a fanatic green agenda that is making energy unaffordable by a desperately socialist government.

      1. Just wait until my husband has finished his chicken and stuffing, sprouts and steamed spinach…..there could well be an explosion on the south coast!

  85. Effin’ Double Bogey today!

    Wordle 632 6/6
    🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
    🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
    ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩
    ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩
    ⬜🟨🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Not much better. There were two possibles and of course I chose the wrong one.

      Wordle 632 5/6

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

    2. A birdie here.
      Wordle 632 3/6

      🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  87. One for M.Thomas.

    Six regulars plus me turned up to play a strange variation of Chicago Bridge. Strange in that whenever a player became dummy they upped to join the other table to enable the three there to begin bidding. Difficult to judge but I suspect the average age was 83+. Seems to me this particular club is doomed in the not too distant future….

    1. 83 is not old.

      Chicago is weird. I tried to understand it but failed miserably. Give me good old rubber bridge, any day. Trumps Chicago…

  88. So have the floodgates opened with Gary’s return, can people that appear on the BBC now criticise climate change and the pandemic lockdowns, while having a go at Biden for stealing the election and face no censure?

  89. Weird… the nurses have all kinds of digital measuring things, blood pressure, temperature, blood oxygen, pulse, that they wheel around on a little stand – all very high-tech, but then she writes the answers down on a scruffy piece of paper to be typed into a computer sometime later – with all the errors likely with all that manual work.
    She should have a QR reader for the QR code on the wristband, and a “Transfer” button that transmits the data to the computer via the wireless network that’s here. Save time & errors. System could also return a BEEP! if a reading is significantly different to last time, so it could be taken again in case there was a measurement error.

    1. Gosh – even the failing NHS has a computer on the same sort of trolley into which the nurses type info immediately.

      You could offer some professional advice. For a fee. Beer, perhaps?

    2. Earlier you said that they were wearing tight white trousers and were not displeasing to the eye, which means that you were getting better; why on earth worry about things that go beep when some of those nurses may be feeling lonely and sad, and might like to improve their english?

    3. If I hear a beep, I assume the washing’s finished or the Crockpot is on strike.

        1. I loathe animal shows of any kind. Degrading to the animals (who have no say in the matter) and just a vehicle for exhibitionists to show off.

          40 years ago (when I was “famous”), I was asked to judge a cat show in Birmingham. A national event.

          Cages – furnished to look like little sitting rooms (curtains, carpets, miniature standard lamps) – with very nice cats but simply VILE owners.

          As I was “the celebrity” I was asked to judge the nicest looking cat – there were no prizes or medals or rosettes. Just a bit of fun. So I thought. I selected a very handsome grey cat. And was heckled by “losing” owners and followed to the carpark with some shouting, “We’ve got your registration number and we know where you live.”

          Unbelievable.

          2. Crazed teacher friend shows her dogs at Crufts, and the bitchiness (intended) is truly amazing – and it’s all by the women. Behaviour like you wrote seems to be quite usual, that and dressing provocatively in the extreme (Crazed friend, if you ever watch Crufts, is the short frumpy one with oversized shoes, definitely not provocatively dressed).

          3. Same in showing horses. Lots of sour grapes if their horse didn’t get pulled in (called to the front to be in the rosettes).

    1. Someone’ll win, and it’s never the public. I always remember Brown preventing the transfer of money out of a collapsing bank – to protect the bank, stuff the account holders. They could lose everything, but the bank couldn’t collapse.

      All to protect his meddling.

  92. Right, I’m off. They didn’t ask me to present Macho of the Day.

    A very good day today. Loads of useful garden work done. Dreadfully gales but very mild.

    Tomorrow – COLD again for 2½ days – then milder. Typical March one might say. We plan to go to the Garden Centre and take advantage of (slight) price reductions in compost.

    And Gus and Pickles demand a new packet of “Friskies” – crunchy treaty things – that’s their name in France, so will have to drop into Tesco.

    Have a very jolly evening

    A demain – in the snow…!

    1. Started off fine this morningg but we’ve had outbreaks of heavy rains. Didn’t go outside.

  93. After a weekend of certain death, pain and suffering (manflu) I found myself browsing the interwebs and bought Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Annointed. It’s a discussion systematically presented of everything we talk about. A clear detailing of the abuse of statistics, of truth, the abandonment of the scientific method in favour of deceitful presentation, the hubris and ego of agenda driven parties – the whole works, in Sowell’s calm, rational and easy to read presentation.

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/046508995X

    Other sellers are available (please use them).

  94. Enormous iceberg the size of Greater LONDON has broken off Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf – and could wreak HAVOC for shipping vessels as it begins to break up into smaller chunks

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11854467/Iceberg-size-Greater-London-broken-Antarcticas-Brunt-Ice-Shelf.html

    I hadn’t appreciated how busy the shipping lanes were in that part of the world /sarc

    Presumably if it’s down to glowballs warming the ice will melt quickly.
    AND
    London will be flooded

      1. Don’t even think about it! Khan would if he could, and when no money came from it he’d hike it even higher.

    7. Get the gin and tonic on the go.

      But, but, hang on, when ice sits in water it displaces its own volume.
      That’s why our glasses of iced drinks don’t spill over. Even if left alone.
      Has anyone told the Dopey Wokies ?

  95. Scotland could ditch monarchy within five years of leaving UK, claims Humza Yousaf

    The SNP leadership hopeful wants the country to consider replacing the King with an elected head of state and ‘not be shy about it’

    By Daniel Sanderson, SCOTTISH CORRESPONDENT
    13 March 2023 • 2:02pm

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

    Peter Beninger
    3 HRS AGO
    Welcome them into the country, propel them to the very top ranks with positive discrimination, and within one generation they are in a position, and promising, to destroy the country that gave them everything. I wonder if there is a lesson to be learned here… probably not.

      1. Scotland’s Longannet power station demolition – watch video as chimney comes crashing down
        Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon called the event “symbolic” in the path to net zero emissions.

        Thursday 9 December 2021 14:26, UK sky news logo
        Watch Live

        That is her legacy: the reversal of the industrial revolution in Scotland.

        Long may she rot!

        1. You also get net zero emissions when you’ve no industry. No indsutry means no money. No money means the government can’t pay the 60% welfare dependent people in Scotland which means… mass slaughter.

          Net zero will make other attempts at communism look like children’s parties.

        3. Scotland’s Longannet power station demolition – watch video as chimney comes crashing down
          Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon called the event “symbolic” in the path to net zero emissions.

          Thursday 9 December 2021 14:26, UK

          Help!

          I can’t find the pic.

      2. Yet Abu Hamsa is desperate to become first minister where he will push a deeply racist agenda.

        I wouldn’t mind, but when the bill comes he points to the British whitey to pay for it.

  96. Scotland could ditch monarchy within five years of leaving UK, claims Humza Yousaf

    The SNP leadership hopeful wants the country to consider replacing the King with an elected head of state and ‘not be shy about it’

    By Daniel Sanderson, SCOTTISH CORRESPONDENT
    13 March 2023 • 2:02pm

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

    Peter Beninger
    3 HRS AGO
    Welcome them into the country, propel them to the very top ranks with positive discrimination, and within one generation they are in a position, and promising, to destroy the country that gave them everything. I wonder if there is a lesson to be learned here… probably not.

  97. So tell me Mr Lineker, if the British people should pay for all the asylum seekers through their taxes, why are you seeking to minimise rather than maximise the amount of tax you pay?
    Perhaps you’re a hypocrite.

    2. What part of: “Burying the body of someone you have murdered in your own garden is perhaps not the best idea” are you failing to assimilate?

  99. Ped posted a cartoon earlier captioned “Who ordered the apple?” and invited us to identify the characters depicted. It just so happens that the cartoonist, Marco De Angelis, posted a reply on Facebook with the answer. Here goes.

    Marco De Angelis
    Here is the explanation. The waiter is …only a waiter serving the apple. The witch is the queen who gives the (poisoned) apple to Snow White. The man with the computer is Bill Gates, of course, because he hates the Apple, but strongly need “to eat” it (instead Steve Jobs who already has his …apple). The blond couple are Paris and Helen of Troy ,who have their fate tied to the apple (please read the mythological legend). Ok for Wilhelm Tell and his son (with the crossbow), the snake, Adam, Eve, Newton and Snow White.

    In reply to one who suggested it ought to be Aphrodite rather than Helen of Troy, this was his response.

    Marina Marcouli
    Marco De Angelis don’t you think it should have been Paris and goddess Aphrodite to whom he gave the apple?

    Marco De Angelis
    Marina Marcouli Yes, I thought about it, Aphrodite would be fine too…😉but I prefer Helen, because Aphrodite had promised Paris the love of Helen (if Paris had assigned the apple to the goddess), so the fate of the two lovers is linked to the apple. And so at the table they are all human, apart from the snake …😁

    https://www.facebook.com/africartoons/posts/who-ordered-the-applecartoon-by-marco-de-angelis/2802096646484249/

  101. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11855143/Paedophile-Gary-Glitter-sent-prison-just-month-release-jail.html?ito=push-notification&ci=iRfO4s1TRo&cri=cSo9tfhRSC&si=xYJ0MlrMyMmf&ai=11855143

    Disgraced paedophile Gary Glitter is sent back to prison just a month after release from jail – after shamed pop star was caught ‘trying to access the Dark Web on his phone’
    He was reportedly spotted on camera inside a bail hostel where he was ‘asking how to avoid detection when web browsing’ on a mobile phone
    Glitter was ‘trying to find The Onion’ which is a term for the infamous online realm the Dark Web, used by paedophiles as it is hard to trace

    4. Between being a few hours behind, and generally dancing until dawn, I probably shan’t catch you before your upgrade, so I shall wish you all the best now x

  108. Not a happy bunny – Went to the chemists this afternoon to get some medicine for bronchitis, cough, streaming nose. Parked up at home and forgot to turn lights off. Tried to restart tonight with spare battery – fierce heat started fire in engine compartment. Not lot of damage (I think) but hard to tell as it is hissing it down here. First time since Covid lock-down I have been trapped at home. Sleep tight!

      1. Been ill for about three weeks. Had to stop kissing the frogs in the local bars. The men were most disappointed! 🙂

        3. If it is the same virus wot I had, it is worse than ‘flu and a lot worse than chinavirus. And yet, nothing about it in the MSM.

          1. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is allowed to be worse than the covid coronavirus as far as the media is concerned.

            I had the bad winter virus bug that was circulating around, terrible sore throat for four or five days, then a bad cough for a week or so followed by the worst miserable head cold ever. In total it took 6-8 weeks to clear it. And boxes and boxes of tissues.

    2. What a shame, what a pity, never mind, old troop.. Just be careful next time around.

  110. Good evening, everyone. Been very wet here today. I expect the next doom and gloom will be the amount of flooding!

      1. No, I’ll watch it on TV. I don’t like huge crowds, besides which you actually see more on TV. My horse’s entry has not been confirmed, so he’ll go straight to Aintree now, all being well.

    2. Gusty winds here and not just my husband. I nearly got blown over outside the supermarket today. The cab driver had to grab my arm.

  113. Goodnight Y’all. Am weary and in some pain so going to bed, hopefully to sleep.
    Good luck to Paul and hope Ped feels better – and anyone else here in discomfort.
    See you tomorrow.

  114. Goodnight, all. Have just had to relight the Rayburn, but that went well, so I’m off to bed.

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