Monday 13 May: Devolution has been an expensive failure with the Welsh electorate

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555 thoughts on “Monday 13 May: Devolution has been an expensive failure with the Welsh electorate

  1. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) Story

    THE PEARLY GATES

    A Muslim dies and by some error in his handling, ends up in heaven.

    He’s stopped at the Pearly Gates by St Peter who says:

    “Sorry, but we don’t allow Muslims into Heaven”.

    “What?” replies the Muslim, “and why not”?

    “Well, we just don’t! And that’s it… we’re short on Virgins”.

    The Muslim complains and carries on until St Peter gets fed up.

    “Well” says St Peter, “have you ever done anything good in your life”?

    “Ummm” the Muslim replies, “yes, the other day a lady stopped me on the street collecting for a children’s charity so I gave her ten pounds. Last week I donated ten pounds to the Cancer Society and a couple of weeks ago a tramp asked me if I could spare any money…so I gave him ten pounds too”!

    “Alrighty then”, says St Peter, “wait here and I’ll have a quick word with God”.

    Five minutes later St Peter returns and says to the Muslim. “Listen, I’ve spoken with God and he agrees with me.

    Here’s your 30 quid back… now bugger off!”

  2. Mass migration has eroded trust. A new citizenship law could restore it. 13 May 2024.

    In a remarkably short space of time Britain has become a radically diverse country. The last census, held three years ago, found ten million of the sixty million people living in England and Wales were born overseas. Of those, 4.2 million had arrived in the preceding ten years. Almost six million hold the citizenship of another country, but not Britain.

    No Citizenship Law can repair this fundamental betrayal since all it does is bureaucratise it. Citizenshop would become a matter of Civil Service administration, acting on the behest of Government. The link to the land and its traditions and beliefs would be lost. This would be a Society of emotionally rootless individuals devoid of any allegiance to anything outside their own interests. They would be members of sects and organisations of limited ambitions and power; almost invariably opposed to others. The vision here is that this divergence would be constrained by the Law. We can already see that this is not so. What will happen is that the whole will collapse into a vast chaos where all are opposed to all. Individual Freedom would vanish. The Age of Serfdom would become real since there would be no consensus to prevent it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/12/mass-migration-has-eroded-trust-we-need-a-citizenship-law/

    1. I was ritually ignored by my betters during the Covid era when I said that the most important Government department then was the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, with a priority for enhancing the morale of the nation in difficult times. It would require a thorough understanding what it is to be British, and a capacity to support this and to protect it from alien degradation or even fifth column undermining of it.

      What did we get from Nadine Dorries? Top priority for the privatisation of Channel 4. That, and a proliferation of “Pride”, BLM racism and Muslim sectarianism.

  3. This had always been wonderful site away from the weirdness on the general Internet,
    one day soon when a dear friend cannot feel embarrassed I shall tell you of a situation. Anyway good morning everyone from Audrey and I another bright and beautiful day .

  4. British soldiers have been warned Russian spies could target phone data

    British troops have been warned that the Kremlin could spy on their phones when they conduct military exercises near the country’s border.

    Thousands of British soldiers have been deployed to countries which border Russia to conduct major land and air assault exercises as part of Operation Steadfast Defender, Nato’s largest military exercise since the Cold War.

    Lieutenant Colonel Grant Brown warned troops in Estonia that Russian agents could carry out an “electronic collect” of data on their mobile phones, according to The Times.

    Of course they do. The UK used to listen in to German transmissions during WWII. We do it now to Russia. It is Standard Operating Procedure. The only surprise here is that Squaddies are allowed to use their own phones, something that one suspects, would rapidly vanish on the outbreak of hostilities. This is anti-Russian propaganda for the mentally retarded.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/12/british-soldiers-warned-about-russian-agents-spying-on-thei/

    1. What numpties would carry out sensitive military exercises on their mobile phones?

      That said, I was on a cultural exchange visit in Eastern Poland in 1979 working on archaeological digs for University of Lublin. Their professor, Jan Gurba, was a very accomplished mimic and could speak fluent Russian. He managed to get hold of some Soviet military walkie-talkies, and had the colonel on the other side off perfectly. Armed with this device and a pair of binoculars, and with the enthusiasm of a small boy with a train set, he liked to order the tanks on the other side up and down the border.

    2. I thought even the ISIS psychos learnt years ago not to phone Mum from their hideouts.

    3. Just tried pinching your last paragraph and posting it BTL and it got bounced!

      1. Morning Bob. The Telegraph is becomong increasingly sensitive to criticism.

    4. Special Forces are not encouraged to use social meeja; Lewis Carroll would have smiled (syllogisms).

    5. Special Forces are not encouraged to use social meeja; Lewis Carroll would have smiled (syllogisms).

  5. Good morning, chums. And thank you, Geoff, for today’s site.

    Wordle 1,059 4/6

    ⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜
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    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  6. 387376+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Then if this be so then Richard Inman ex genuine UKIP
    ( far right fruitcake ) are the words of a so far right truthsayer, will it find a listening ear, for the good of the nation, for ONCE.

    https://youtu.be/Xjb8CCabd7M?si=IWkPE0l08KHdnF2A

    Britain is safer in Tory hands as it faces ‘most dangerous’ five years, Sunak to warn
    PM launches general election campaign setting out his vision, and says ‘every aspect of our lives is going to change’

    1. 387376+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Richard Inman calling for a new party construct
      but first supporting the tory (ino) party at the next General Election, then aiming for 2029.

      Working on “the devil you know” concept I make him right, at least it would be a focal point for the indigenous decent peoples to work on.

    2. I understand that we, the people, need to be careful how we vote but asking candidates from the Tory, Labour, LibDem and Green parties where they stand on issues and expecting an answer that they will honour when they’re in power is a bit of a stretch. Once, no, many times bitten and all that!

      Reform is a bit of an unknown in this respect but as we have seen what the other main parties stand for e.g. mass immigration; turning a blind eye to two tier policing; incredibly disastrous Net Zero policies etc. they deserve a chance to either change politics for the better or fail by falling into the quagmire inhabited by the other parties. A chance to move towards a better life or a certainty to be crushed under the boot of globalism/Marxism from all of the other parties?

      1. 387376+ up ticks.

        Morning KtK,
        In this instance I believe Richard Inman to be on the ball right, start now on a new party build wilst using the current political treacherous trash in a devil you know mode.
        In my book farage proved his worthlessness in 2019 both
        brexit / reform were / are farage tainted.

        The truly missed chance due to being a threat to the coalition party was UKIP under Gerard Batten leadership 2018 / 19.

        The farage chap knows ALL about that.

        1. A new party build? Fine, if to the right of what is now known as centre, something I could support. Asking prospective candidates of the usual crowd to make a pledge to support certain policies is a waste of breath.

          Bar a few exceptions, for which I have sufficient fingers and toes to count them on, they’re either consummate liars or deliberately forgetful dimwits.

          1. Politicians have a cheek referring to this imaginary ‘centre’. Their centre is most certainly not the majority of the electorate’s Once again they manipulate language to dominate the narrative. We must take the chance with Reform.

    3. Yep, must be election time again. They’ve turned on the fear taps, I see. Whip the sheeple into the pen.

      1. 387376+ up ticks,

        Morning JG,
        Clever though, using their own creation, fear,as a vote winning tool.

        1. Yes, got to give them credit for something I suppose. Reminds me of Michael Palin hanging upside down in the Life of Brian, saying, “Marvellous people, the Romans. Marvellous people.”

    1. I stopped hating Mondays when I didn’t have to go to work on Mondays. I worked Tuesday to Friday for the last couple of years before I retired.

  7. Good morning, all. Another bright and sunny start to the day.

    This pretty much sums up what happened here in the UK. It’s impossible to argue against the co-ordinated approach of many governments. Governments conspired in the exaggeration of the impact of the “virus” and of the efficacy and safety of the “vaccines”.

    Now, according to that esteemed body known as the WHO, we have another threat approaching. Two Plandemics in four years is stretching things a bit but they’re desperate, and it shows.

    Stefan Homburg is a German retired professor of economics. He was the director of the Institute of Public Finance at the University of Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany until 2021. Outside academia he is best known for his controversial statements regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Wikipedia

    A little over 8 minutes, in German with sub-titles.

    https://twitter.com/lawrie_dr/status/1788498598390329469

  8. Good lord, just got distracted!
    Good morning all.
    Another sunny morning with a pleasant 9°C outside.
    Ground is a bit damp so we had a bit of rain last night, but no more thunder. Or if we did, I slept through it.

    1. I had a thought yesterday after watching part of the Antique Road Show.
      They advertised coming additions, one being Cromford Derbyshire.
      Get yer self on the telly Bob.

  9. Interesting.
    We’re flying to Wales on Wednesday, and have to register all manner of passport details with KLM, or we may be denied boarding.
    Fuck them, I’ll cross by dinghy. Welcome guaranteed, no passport or money required.

    1. Morning Oberst. This is a world in which the law abiding are persecuted and the guilty get off Scot Free!

    2. Looks like the sun may shine that day. Let us know when you are headed to Spoons or elsewhere. The Penarth pub is closing due to the cost of the lease being bumped. No change in my phone no.

      1. Will do.
        Looks like evening of Wednesday 15th is the only time we’ll be stationary in Penarth – Thursday, visit to Mother, Barclays Bank in Barry, then scooting off to Bideford.
        Can we do something Wednesday? After 19:00 or so.

        1. No problem. If you get squeezed for time just let us know. Otherwise, suggest a time and place when you are sorted.

        2. Good luck with Barclays – they were an absolute nightmare when I was trying to sort out my late mother’s estate!

          1. Urgh. 🙁
            They had Mothers documents in storage, then seem to have given up with document storage… but where are the documents? We emptied her house, looked at every bit of God-damned paper there are we packed it, and key items such as share certificates aren’t there – so, are they with Barclays? Who knows, they can’t even find any record of Mother ever having documents in storage!
            So, we’re taking the opportunity of a visit to Wales for a F-2-F with some kind of advisor, having exhaused the interweb nohelp Malaysian’s abilities to find anything – or even understand English.

          2. In her bank statements your mother would have been charged some sort of annual storage fee, have you checked? Barclays will know much, so that you know what figure to look for. Ditto the dividends should have arrived directly or via a stockbroker (or similar). Paper share certificates are gradually being withdrawn and the stock is then held via nominee accounts. Could I tactfully suggest that you should compile a file holding her bank statements (& credit card expenditure) for at least the last seven years? Anomalies are sometimes easier to spot over a long period. UK banks for a small charge will supply any missing statements. Share registrars such as Equiniti will also be able to help. Apologies if you already know this.

    3. Dinghy ? Of course and you’ll be treated to free accommodation food and all other facilities. Go for it.

      1. Norway-UK across the North Sea is a long trip by RIB. Shetland Bus long retired.

  10. Bannister and Co ‘show extreme exercise does not shorten lifespan’. 13 May 2024.

    “Extreme” exercise doesn’t reduce lifespan, according to research into the lives of sub four-minute milers.

    A study of the first 200 athletes to run a mile in under four minutes shows they outlive the general public by about five years.

    The study, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, included Britain’s Sir Roger Bannister who was the first to achieve the landmark feat.

    I should be OK then! Lol!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/09/bannister-and-co-show-extreme-exercise-doesnt-shorten-life/

  11. Devolution has been an expensive failure with the Welsh electorate

    Another EU / Globalist / Blair initiative failing badly as we all predicted.

    1. Its about to become more expensive as the Senedd has just voted to increase their numbers from 60 to 96. By waving the politicians magic wand, they have said that the change will be cost neutral as a result of better scrutiny of legislation. Yea… I’m sure it will.

    2. Quite so. The solution to Britain’s ills is very straightforward. Any politician who gets up and says, “Vote for me, I promise to systematically repeal every bit of constitutionally related legislation brought in by Tony Blair and undo every one of his so-called reforms,” gets my vote straight away.

      1. And may I add…..arrests Blair for treason and puts him in jail.
        And Camoron while they are at it.

  12. Morning all 🙂😊
    Not bad out side at least the sun is out, for now.
    What a disaster my sisters birthday lunch was yesterday. I won’t go into details. But we won’t be going there again. And for recompense we were allowed to leave with out any payment whatsoever.
    Devolution has been an expensive failure in Wales. Typically something else our political classes have effed up. I can’t remember or even think of anything they ever get right, or have done so.
    Perhaps they all use to be in the restaurant business !

    1. Sorry about the birthday lunch, Eddy. You described it a bit yesterday – sounds like any one of the events would have been tolerable, but the collection… at least you didn’t have to pay!

      1. Yes thanks Obs and we all had at least one large glass of wine each.
        The waiting staff were decent something had obviously gone wrong in the kitchen. They didn’t have a clue.
        But it was very busy. Many customers were out side under umbrellas as well.

    2. Oh dear – sorry to hear about the birthday lunch. Was it the meal or the company?

      1. I think the kitchen was out of its depth, there were an awful lot of customers inside and out in the gardens.
        Never mind we’re all still alive.
        My sister use to run her own business cooking and serving at dinner parties. Some of the guests were famous. And she served one or two London embassies.

        1. The catering business I used to work for had some high-class clients – eg Princess Anne….. it does make you see how the other class live, and also what’s good and what’s not.

          I bet your sister was a bit disappointed though.

          1. As the restaurant is local I expect they have been there previously as we had. But as I said they just seemed to be very busy and couldn’t cope. But sis knows how things should be.
            Perhaps the management will learn a lesson. 🤞

          2. Perhaps they’d had a kitchen disaster or too many of the staff had phoned in sick.

          3. We came to that conclusion on the kitchen. We ordered our four starters two came and then we called the waitress one more came 15 minutes later but one, mine was the same as BiL. Then another 10 minutes the fourth one arrived. That was only the beginning.

      1. Go on then. Put your money where your mouth is.

        For the record, I got 11. I knew the seventh chappie on the list would prove problematic for most.

        1. I found lines 1,2 and 4 straightforward.

          Line 3 is more tricky – Burt Lancaster is easy enough but If far right in line 3 is Gregory Peck it is not a very good photo – I thought it might be Spencer Tracy.

          Of course my favourite was David Niven.

          1. I enjoyed watching David Niven in The Guns of Navarone only last week.

            Of course he wouldn’t have made that list as he wasn’t a Yank.

        2. An old friend of mine had the same surname, his son was a well known footballer. My friend has died and I rarely see his son nowadays.

    1. From Top Left:

      Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper, Tony Curtis
      Kirk Douglas, Clark Gable, Cary Grant
      ? , Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck,
      Frank Sinatra, Ray Milland?, John Wayne.

      Nearly all would be cancelled these days. Lancaster and Wayne certainly would.

      1. I got 10, but isn’t the one after Cary Grant possibly Danny Kaye? Looks familiar anyhow!

      2. Nope, change my last. Once I said Kaye it doesn’t look like him now.

    2. Too easy if you watch, or watched, proper films from the 1920s to the 1970s.

    3. Great quiz Grizzly. Worrying how quickly you forget a face. Actually had to dredge up from the depths who Marlon Brando and Cary Grant were!

        1. Never remember him young, although I’ve seen that pic a hundred times. Not as much presence as when he was older, I think.

    4. I would also remove Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis and replace them with Bob Mitchum and Richard Widmark.

      1. I would remove John Wayne (he couldn’t act, he just played himself) and replace him with Lee Marvin, Yul Brynner, Humphrey Bogart or Paul Newman.

        BTW Paul Newman’s best film (starring role) was as the world champion middleweight boxer, Rocky Graziano, in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956).

    5. Some of them look vaguely familiar but I think the last one is John Wayne. I’ve never been a film buff.

    6. Recognised about four or five faces, couldn’t remember any names without cheating. Only been to the flicks about six times in fifty years. Probably met ten thousand people in my life but have trouble remembering names. I carry two passports in case someone asks my name!

      1. They haven’t been on at the flicks for the last 50 years (not quite true I know).

    7. Didn’t get the first two. Who are they? Got the others except no. 7. Is it Gene Kelly?

      1. Marlon Brando Jr., Frank James Cooper, Bernard Schwartz.
        Issur Danielovitch, William Clark Gable, Archibald Alec Leach.
        William Franklin Beedle Jr., Burton Stephen Lancaster, Eldred Gregory Peck.
        Francis Albert Sinatra, James Maitland Stewart, Marion Michael Morrison.

    8. Didn’t get the first two. Who are they? Got the others except no. 7. Is it Gene Kelly?

  13. Good day all and happy Monday to the 77th troops,

    Cloiudy over McPhee Towers although there has been some blue from time to time. Wind South, 12℃ with 16℃ today’s forecast ‘high’. Rain tonight.

    Devolution has failed, end it. So say all of us. It seemed like a politicians’ job creation scheme but the real purpose was the break-up of the United Kingdom to make it easy for the EU to devour. With Cornwall granted its own assembly and England regionalised the job would have been done. We can see that now.

    Underneath the letters on the subject there is this one which deserves comment.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2aa9d580cf0d6fbe4c6086f75363f62557e2ad3050a4bc5e70678ef06304bb13.png

    Michael Bird doesn’t seem to be aware that political parties are utterly corrupted top-down organisations which get in the way of actual democracy. Perhaps that is their true purpose, to keep power confined to the ‘right types’ who alone understand the acceptable philospophies and should therefore be the ones to wield power – for our own good, you understand.

    He mentions manifestoes. The Great Party Manifesto Trick in which vague promises are made and/or a large collection of measures proposed. No-one can possibly be in favour of all of them but the voter cannot separate those he or she wishes to support from those he or she definitely does not want to see enacted. A vote for a party grants the assumption that all is supported and is very swiftly transformed into the ‘will of the people’ by the winning party. It is nothing of the sort.

    Members of Parliament are supposed to represent the views of ALL of their constituents, not just the party members and activists who worked for their election. If an MP finds that his or her party’s policies run counter to the interests of his or her constituents the most honourable thing would be to become independent as Andrew Bridgen has done albeit via the mistake of being briefly involved with Reclaim which he quickly realised is not a serious political party.

    Political Parties are long past their sell-by dates. They are the root of what has gone wrong. It is time to end them. All of them.

    1. Change the vote – so you vote for the party, who just happens to be represented by Mr X. When he goes, Mr Y takes over. As opposed to vote for Mr X who just happens to represent the conservatives this week, but may switch to labour next week.

      1. Vote for the suit. The suit in charge today is made by Sunak plc. Tomorrow your suit could be a Starmer or maybe a small change of tone in the weave would sir prefer a Hunt?

    2. I’m not sure Political parties have any money, they steal it from the British taxpayers. Who in their right mind would back any political party ?

    3. I commented on the odious Shaun Woodward on this forum last Thursday:

      At least Carswell and Reckless were elected as UKIP MPs.

      Remember that odious chap, Shuan Woodward, who was a Conservative MP who defected to Labour after marrying into the Sainsbury Family to augment his own personal wealth? He did not stand down because he knew he would lose the by-election if he did. The reward from Labour for this piece of filth was that he was then given a safe Labour seat in the subsequent election. I believe he now identifies as homosexual.

      I am afraid that Parliament is still full of lower quality, sub-standard people such as Woodward.

  14. Good morning all,

    Just a bit drizzly weather wise, 13c

    The golfer is golfing , and today is his birthday , 78yrs . Nothing special planned , we might have a proper celebration later in the year. I did investigate a trip in a Spitfire for him from Compton Abbas https://www.aerolegends.co.uk/locations/compton-abbas/

    Moh’s father used to build Spitfires from the RJ Mitchell factory in Woolston , during the war , his father moved around the country to other locations when the factory was bombed .

    Years ago in our early marriage , R’s father had a large hand made wooden wheelbarrow with a Spitfire wheel on the front which he had made himself , necessity is the mother of invention , one day a new metal wheel barrow appeared and I asked him where the old one had gone to, …. the rubbish tip .

    Rather similar to the barrage balloon material he used to cover his garden seedlings .

    Moh said , forget about the Spitfire flight idea , one of them flies over here , so the sound is enough , and of course Moh had been lucky enough to fly for a living until he was 58 , so golf is a priority and so are the huge utility bills that need paying !

  15. Early humans ‘were long-distance runners to hunt’

    The Daily Telegraph13 May 2024

    SCIENTISTS say they have uncovered more evidence that hunting may have helped humans become long-distance runners millions of years ago.

    Research shows the endurance pursuit of prey, chasing an animal at length on foot, was not as rare in hunter-gatherer societies as previously thought.

    Anthropologists said they found written accounts of pursuits that suggest long-distance running was seen as an efficient way to capture food animals such as wildebeest, deer, antelope and bison.

    The team said its findings challenge the view that lengthy pursuits of prey would have been physically costly.

    Eugene Morin, a professor in the department of anthropology at Trent University in Canada, and Bruce Winterhalder, professor of anthropology and ecology at the University of California, Davis, reviewed almost 400 cases including accounts from nomadic groups such as the Evenki people in Siberia, the Innu in Canada and the Apache in the US.

    The findings were published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

    It’s a bloody good job they did, or we would not be here now reading this. If our ancestors had remained in the trees, sucking on plums and nibbling on nuts, our species would have remained a prey item for fitter, faster, stronger and more intelligent carnivores.

    The upside is they would not have invented: politics, religion, corruption, greed, deceit, treachery, bombs, guns, poisons, chemicals masquerading as ‘food’, and many other negative values which devalue us as a life form.

    1. Addendum: When I mentioned, above, that our primeval ancestors might have remained “sucking on plums and nibbling on nuts”, in no way was I accusing Australopithecus of being some kind of sexual deviants.

    2. Addendum: When I mentioned, above, that our primeval ancestors might have remained “sucking on plums and nibbling on nuts”, in no way was I accusing Australopithecus of being some kind of sexual deviants.

    3. they found written accounts of pursuits that suggest long-distance running was seen as an efficient way to capture food animals such as wildebeest

      Spending time catching up with the gnus ain’t what it used to be.

  16. From the letters. I made a comment in PressReader along the lines of “Saving the environment-priceless”. Currently languishing red, i.e. more down votes than up votes. There are a couple of trolls on PressReader, like Nick Harmon and Carter on the Spectator, who appear to spend their lives attempting to wind people up. But no one bites. – i just roll my eyes and make a mental note that there are some extraordinarily stupid people in this country. Anyway, the letter. It does make me laugh given the Sunny Borough of Richmond upon Thame’s official excuse for implementing the 20 mph speed limit, which is that it would save us all from tyre pollution.

    “Sir – – Another reason why EV users are reverting to petrol cars (Business, May 9) may be electric vehicles’ voracious appetite for tyres.
    My small EV needed new rear tyres at only 7,500 miles. Neither the VW dealer nor the tyre supplier expressed any surprise or concern. Both stated the obvious, that “the car is rear-wheel drive and very heavy”. So were my two previous, much bigger, petrol cars, and I changed their rear tyres on average at 25,000 miles.
    I shall not buy another EV.“

    1. I saw an EV linked up to the charger in Cowcross Street in the City yesterday morning. That charger has been there quite a long time now and I pass that way frequently but that’s the first time I’ve seen it in use.

    1. Only the black guy fought back. Everyone else probably petrified of being accused of being racist.

    2. Love it.. knowing that the Progressive Liberal is slightly uncomfortable realising that the social experiment may need a little more time.

      Unfortunately for the prog-lib-tard, bayesian decision making process is hard-wired into our DNA. And for protection & survival we assign probabilities based on experience.
      You can almost sense each victim making mental notes.. “next time I interact with migrant for; sitting on a bus.. job.. housing.. relationship.. new bestie = run like bl**dy fcuk.”

    3. I don’t drink or eat in the street, but that piece of scum needs a good crack on the jaw.

    1. My reply on the thread…..”When did it become “normal” to use a test kit for every sniffle or infection?”

      1. And for a fraudulent test at that. I stopped sticking things up my nose when I was four years old. A hard, unripe, green blackcurrant persuaded me that this was not a good idea.

        1. I only tried it once, on one side only – a good friend who’d recently had surgery asked us round for a coffee morning, but could we take a test first. I did but one side only – it was clear so I didn’t lie and left it at that. I passed the rest of the kit onto my next door neighbour a few weeks later as she and her man were both ill over Christmas and new year.

          The only other time I was subjected to testing was the “Fit to Fly ” scam – a very cursory swipe of the throat – £70 please. My OH of course had many, due to various hospital procedures.

  17. In today’s The Conservative Woman there is an interesting article about the sinister Penny Mordaunt whose striking looks seem to have blinded and corrupted people’s judgement.

    Bad Penny’s taboo topics for MPs – you’ll never guess what they are

    An interesting point made in this article:

    This conspiracy theory is an alleged plan to replace the European white population with other ethnic groups. The Guardian and Mordaunt’s guide omit mention of the Austrian aristocrat Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who a hundred years ago foresaw Europe as a melting pot of black, brown and white people, leading to a ‘mongrel race’ of milky coffee complexion.

    Of course this is the exact point made in this 1969 song!

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/bad-pennys-taboo-topics-for-mps-youll-never-guess-what-they-are/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dcz-9Uzn8o

    1. Although i was in SA when it was released. I must admit that song made me wonder back then.
      I didn’t like the idea at all.

        1. Banal: true; prophetic: maybe.

          Census reveals new chapter in story of mixed-race Britain

          Migration Museum
          https://www.migrationmuseum.org › News
          Dec 7, 2022 — ‘White and Black Caribbean’ people remained the largest ‘Mixed’ population group – 513,042 people identified as such, up 20% from the 2011 …

          1. As someone on here mentioned yesterday; why do those of ‘mixed heritage’ (i.e. mulattoes) always trumpet the black half of their gene pool and never celebrate the white half?

          2. Of which the Duchess of Sussex is a good example.

            Apparently her cv when she started out as an ‘actress’ said that her ethnicity was white but it is now more fashionable to be black.

      1. At the time most of us probably thought that the song was a bit of a joke. Some of us have, possibly, grown up and can see that the cliché or aphorism ‘many a true word is spoken in jest’ is not wide of the mark!

  18. Civil servants oppose crime tables for migrants

    Ministers would present annual report of nationality, visa and asylum status of every offender convicted

    Charles Hymas, HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR • 12 May 2024 • 7:40pm

    Civil servants are trying to block plans for league tables of the migrant nationalities with the highest rates of crime.

    The proposal, backed by 40 Tory MPs as an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill, would require the crime rates of each nation’s migrants in England and Wales to be published annually. Ministers would present a report to Parliament each year detailing the nationality, visa status and asylum status of every offender convicted in English and Welsh courts in the previous 12 months.

    The move, first revealed by The Telegraph and led by former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, would mirror an approach by some US states and Denmark, where league tables show the crime rates of those from Kuwait, Tunisia, Lebanon and Somalia are far higher than those of Danish nationals. It is understood that Home Office ministers are in favour of the plan in principle as it would enable Government and law enforcement agencies to assess the scale of criminality in specific migrant populations.

    However, civil servants have advised that Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, is likely to rule the amendment is not “in scope” for the Bill. This means that it would be judged to be out of kilter with the thrust of the legislation which primarily aims to crack down on knife crime, drugs, anti-social behaviour and other crimes. There are also concerns within Whitehall that it has become a “Christmas Tree” bill, with multiple amendments potentially added to it including on decriminalising abortion and combating county lines gangs.

    Ministers are understood to be seeking to get the data published irrespective of whether there is legislation. “It can just be done. You don’t need legislation,” said a source. “It is actually mainly an operational issue. How do you collect the data and make sure it is reliable? There are all those considerations rather than legislative commitment going forward. Ministers like the idea. We want to work out how to do it.”

    The plan has been backed by MPs from all wings of the Conservative party from Right-wing former Commons leader Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg to Sir Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary, a One Nation Tory. Backers of the league table plan believe it will help the Government strengthen immigration policy on three fronts.

    First, they said it would allow the Home Office to tighten screening of visas from countries with nationals linked to higher crime rates in the UK. A similar approach could be taken to asylum applications. They also say it would enable the Home Office to focus deportations and returns agreements on those countries.

    “We cannot hope to fix our immigration system without understanding the problem. The national debate on legal and illegal migration is hindered by a lack of data on the fiscal, economic and societal impacts of migration,” said Mr Jenrick.

    “There is mounting concern that the UK is importing crime, particularly violent crime, sexual assaults and drug production. We need to have transparency so the public knows what’s happening and policy can be formulated accordingly.”

    The Danish Government’s data on migrant crimes enables researchers to compile league tables showing which nations have the highest conviction rate relative to Danish nationals.

    Japanese, US, Australian, Austrian, Argentinian and Indian citizens have the lowest rates at half those of Danes, while more than 40 nations have higher conviction rates for violent crime.

    Denmark has some of the toughest immigration policies in Europe and has been seeking to work with other EU countries to deport migrants to a third country outside the bloc where their asylum claims would be processed.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/12/civil-servants-oppose-crime-tables-for-migrants/

    1. Just something else that they have knowingly effed up and are now trying to cover up. They are an absolutely useless waste of space time and taxpayers money.

    2. Patrick Christys at GB News has been trying hard to get this information out into the public domain for over a couple or weeks but the snivel serpents are clearly determined that it should be suppressed. Why?

      (I don’t think you need to be very intelligent to be able to work out why – the truth has become mis or disinformation when it reveals what the Whitehall wants to remain hidden)

  19. Today’s stinker:
    Wordle 1,059 5/6

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

  20. Watch: Gary Lineker appears to call Oct 7 attacks ‘the Hamas thing’

    Critics claim ‘tone-deaf’ presenter is minimising worst anti-Semitic atrocity since the Holocaust

    Albert Tait • 12 May 2024 • 8:38pm

    Gary Lineker has been accused of “tone-deaf” comments after he appeared to refer to the Oct 7 attacks as “the Hamas thing”.

    The Match of the Day presenter made the remarks on the British-American broadcaster Mehdi Hasan’s Mehdi Unfiltered programme. Speaking about the war in Gaza, he said: “I can’t think of anything that I’ve seen worse in my lifetime. The constant images of children losing their lives day in, day out.

    “Now obviously we all know Oct 7 happened, and the Hamas thing, but the minute you raise your voice against what they’re now doing there, you get accused of being a supporter of Hamas.”

    More than 1,100 people died in the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7, and more than 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Air and artillery strikes carried out by the Israeli military in response have killed more than 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

    The comments by Lineker, 63, were criticised as minimising the Oct 7 atrocities.

    A spokesman for the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) said: “Gary Lineker is not a lone heroic voice: he is one of a mob offering up one-sided, tone-deaf interventions on social media. It has not escaped anyone’s notice that, despite his clear interest in the topic and social media habit, he has barely commented on the worst anti-Semitic atrocity since the Holocaust on Oct 7 – ‘the Hamas thing’, as he has now reluctantly referred to it in passing.”

    A representative for Lineker refused to comment when approached by The Telegraph.

    The CAA has also claimed that the presenter breached BBC impartiality guidelines. The podcast on which he made the comments is not affiliated with the BBC, and is produced by Mr Lineker’s own company, Goalhanger Podcasts.

    “Far from being silenced, Mr Lineker’s stance has become so normalised – and the voice of the mob of which he is a part has grown so loud – that the BBC is desensitised to it and regularly ignores the clear breaches of its impartiality guidelines that these interventions represent,” the CAA spokesman said.

    The BBC has been approached for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/12/lineker-appears-to-call-oct-7-attacks-the-hamas-thing/

    Hmm. Better people than Lineker have put their feet in their mouths with a clumsy or lazy phrase. I’d be more concerned about him appearing on a programme hosted by Mehdi Hasan, who once described non-Muslims as cattle and homosexuals as paedophiles and sexual deviants. However, he’s since apologised. So that’s alright…

    On Question Time, will someone please ask Mehdi Hasan about his views on infidels?

    1. Has Starmer indicated to the globalists that he does want to be a “war time Prime Minister”?

    2. This dovetails with Belle’s post later yesterday evening of UN soldiers-in-waiting for the heralded next ‘pandemic’ and its attendant lockdowns whilst our boys are shipped off to Ukraine.

      1. Yes, it it just a distraction with our young being the ultimate sacrifice so the ruling thugs can control us?

    1. The avowed intention of the modern-day British politician is twofold:

      1. Increase their own wealth, power-base and status as much as they can get away with.
      2. Decrease the wealth, influence and living standards of everyone else.

      Until this cancer is cut out, it will only get worse.

      1. Grizzly, we don’t think that the politicians care about no. 2 the slightest.

        It’s of no importance to them, whichever way it goes.

      2. Shame none of our army general’s with an armed regiment don’t get into parliament and Whitehall and clear the places out.

  21. British man arrested for fake one-star restaurant reviews in Thailand. 14May 2024.

    But Alexander was not apprehended by the Central Investigation Bureau until last week, having fled to Bangkok. He has now been taken back to Phuket for prosecution, and denies any wrongdoing.

    “The suspect was handed over to the inquiry officer of Sakhu Police Station for further legal action,” said Jomparit Kaewreung, a police major from the crime suppression division. “During the interrogation, he has denied the charges.”

    Thailand has extremely strict anti-defamation laws, with any complaints deemed to impair a person or institution’s reputation considered a criminal offence. In court, it is also the duty of the defendant to prove that their statements were true – rather than the duty of the prosecution to prove them false.

    Serves him right!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/13/british-man-arrested-fake-restaurant-reviews-thailand/

    1. Phuket is such a good name but is it pronounced as with Hyancinth Bucket?

    2. Given that people are different, with different tastes what one may like the other may dislike. If you don’t like somewhere, don’t go back.

  22. Hi to all Nottlers 😊 Can’t stay around, have a hospital appointment, have 5 of the bloody things this month. But I posted a video of how to understand German without knowing the language by following a few simple words which some NOTTLERS were enthused by. I mentioned that there was a video about doing the same thing for French. Found it so here it is.

    Everyone have a good day although the weather has changed somewhat!

    How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BGaA3PC9tQ

    1. Oh that’s easy.

      To speak frog: eh hoh, eh hoh, eh hoh. eh hoh ehoh ehoh.

      Folk laugh and no doubt with go on about the academy francy, but in reality it just comes down to ‘eh hoh ehoh ehohh.’

  23. I am off – a funeral at 1 pm. Odd time. When I first arrived here in 1984 I made the error ro turning up (as one does for a service) with five minutes to spare. Not a seat to be had…. Lesson learned.

    Back later.

    1. Caroline is playing at yet another funeral this afternoon.

      (Church organists in her church are not paid – they do it out of parish commitment.)

    2. People up here rush to funerals so they can get a seat at the back. The Weefrees leave the coffin outside

    1. Why is ‘mother’s’ a posessive rather than a plural?

      And yes, Markle has no shape. She’s not an attractive woman.

      1. Do you remember the Dudley Moore film with Bo Derek as the girl who rated a perfect 10?

        In those days politically incorrect young men (so they tell me) rated the girls they saw and fantasised about on a 1 – 10 scale for their beddability.

        I should imagine that if Bo Derek rated a 10 and Miriam Margolyes rated a 0 then Migraine would have been well under 5.

    1. She seems to be a rather patronising middle-aged woman who is trying to tell the Nigerians how lucky they are that she has declared herself to be one of them.

      Maybe the indigenous people should get their own back on her by declaring that she should become Queen of Nigeria – and Harry the Prince Consort – on the condition that they live permanently in Abuja and renounce all their other titles.

      1. Nigeria is too nice for them. I think they should try their luck in the Central African Republic or North Korea.

  24. The Assyrian monarchs of the imperial period commissioned thousands of inscriptions, many of them long and detailed. But studying these “autohagiographies” of sorts can only reveal so much. To grasp the enormous power the kings held, and the fear their demands instilled in their own officials, it is more instructive to look instead at some of the terse cuneiform letters they wrote. In one of them, Sargon II orders the governor of Ashur—not an unimportant man in the hierarchy of the state—to send seven hundred bales of straw and seven hundred bundles of reeds to Dur-Sharrukin. He declares that the materials must be at hand by the first day of the month of Kislimu, and then continues, “Should even one day pass by, you will die.” The statement conveys with somewhat shocking aphoristic brevity that in imperial Assyria, deadlines set by the king were quite literally what the term implies.

    Another letter is even more graphic. In it, Sargon asks the addressees to bring cavalry horses to a collection point by a specific time, only to add, “Whoever is late will be impaled in his own house, and his sons and daughters too will be slaughtered.”

    Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire (p. 139). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

    Obviously the functioning of the Civil Service in Ancient Assyria was far more impressive than our own. I cannot but feel that we have lost something in the interim that has not been made up by technology. .

      1. What’s that white thing attached to her hat. She’s lost in thought, somewhat melancholy.

    1. I see a young lady with a fancy hat first, then an old woman with a big nose!

  25. The Nigerian women who complained that Megain is unsuitably dressed are quite correct. Why did Megain not seek advice on what would be acceptable to her hosts and plan her wardrobe accordingly?

  26. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
    And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

    Sennacherib didn’t fare too well but Lord Byron gives us a good example of anapestic feet.

      1. di-di-dah di-di-dah di-di-da di-di-dah

        And do you remember the dummy keyboard on Face The Music where Joseph Cooper played a piano and all you heard was the noise of his fingers on the keys. Joyce Grenfell and Robin Ray had to say what music they thought it was.

        And can you tell me which music played by Bert Kaempfert maily used the amphibrach rhythm with the final foot an iamb?

        did-dah-di di-dah-di di-dah-di di-dah-di di-dah-di di-dah-di di-dah-di di-dah

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee224773795009c718d5b91fc07ea7916496752c6acc7345da6e2459b1414c54.png

  27. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8l9YsGfQ9Q

    For a ‘major speech’ he managed to say absolutely nothing – again.

    I don’t know if he’s so scripted he can’t acknowledge the truth or if he is so blinkered he genuinely thinks whta he’s doing is good. In either case, the man is deranged.

    He blithers on about how awful authoritarian regimes are and ignores that he wants to ban gas and petrol. He proclaims we’re a low tax economy – ignoring that 70% of the cost of a good is tax.

    He witters on about how ‘green’ we are while ignoring ocean plastic (we could repeal the WEEE nonsense but we don’t), the thousands of tons of concrete poured into the sea bed, the burning of vast fields of trees in Canada. Sewage is pumped into rivers because the environment agency refuses to diverge from EU law.

    He bangs on about how much he has done to reduce inflation when it’s nothing to do with him, but ignore the direct force he had on prices rising in the first place – fuel, energy and tax (the first two being the latter).

    I don’t know Sunak. By all accounts he’s a decent man yet he is blatantly lying. His every action has been the exact opposite of what should have been done. He doesn’t act. He delegates – but not to another actor; to officialdom.

    This country has suffered the enemy within controlling it. Every single thing is worse – and will get even worse under Labour. Why? Because the Tories refuse, adamantly; to be conservatives.

  28. 387376+ up ticks,

    You gotta hand it to old sunat audacity,audacity & more audacity
    he takes it to the extreme, he works in collusion with the other
    members of the coalition to further the WEF / NWO cause, then after waging a terror campaign against the peoples of these Isles, inclusive of his own weak minded party members, he is now saying we must ALL work for “his man”

    The black comedy aspect of it all is, he is right.

    1. The bottom building is obviously much nicer. All Brutalist buildings should be dynamited with their apologists inside.

    2. Hector is wrong on the old but right on the new. It’s a terrible, muddled pastiche with its stepped gables, neo-Tudor windows and Disney conical turrets.

      1. I hate the label pastiche being applied to buildings. By that token Castle Howard, Blenheim Palace and indeed all 18th century buildings would be pastiche, drawing as they for their inspiration, on the architecture of the Classical world.

  29. Here.. Belgium NiuesBlad, the equivalent of Daily Mail leads with “Local residents shocked..”

    Shocked, I tell you shocked. Shocked, the same wordie used by Sunak, Merkel & Macron when bodies get smeared against concert hall walls, and when surprise grooming reveals itself across UK.

    https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20240510_94084328
    A teenage girl who was gang-raped by up to a dozen Somali children aged 11 to 16

    When does “shocked” become “not shocking at all?” 100? 1000?

  30. Here.. Belgium NiuesBlad, the equivalent of Daily Mail leads with “Local residents shocked..”

    Shocked, I tell you shocked. Shocked, the same wordie used by Sunak, Merkel & Macron when bodies get smeared against concert hall walls, and when surprise grooming reveals itself across UK.

    https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20240510_94084328
    A teenage girl who was gang-raped by up to a dozen Somali children aged 11 to 16

    When does “shocked” become “not shocking at all?” 100? 1000?

    1. Give that dog a bone! And then breed from it. Good to see a dog with the right instincts.

      1. Turns out it wasn’t insects or rodents gnawing through the cabling here. It was Oscar. He’s been going at the kevlar and since scratched at the steel pipe I put in. An Alsatian has a much stronger bite than a Newfie.

    2. If he’d broken skin the dog would be destroyed. That’s the world we live in.

      Frankly, it’d be far easier to shoot the sodding black waster. One round to the back of the head. Problem solved. Sends a message to the next one.

  31. Back from funeral. 13th century church packed. A half-minute tolling bell. Only shame was that the various people who spoke were inaudible (and that wasn’t just me and my deafness). Why on earth do they not speak up?

    Odd, too, some men’s choice of clothing. I’d never dream of going to a funeral in shorts or shirtsleeves or without a tie. The women present were much more formally attired.

    Good old boy, was Mel. Salt of the earth.

    1. At my Dad’s funeral some of my cousins turned up in jog pants and trainers.

        1. I always wear a dark suit and a black tie — I have been known to wear very pale blue shirt.

        2. At my mother’s funeral I got a few askew looks from some of the mourners when I gave the eulogy wearing a cream suit with a lilac shirt and tie.

          I looked everyone in the eye and told them that I was not wearing black, since my mum hated the colour, would never wear it, and always complained, “Black’s for funerals. But I don’t want it worn at mine!”

          I told them that I was honouring her wishes by wearing her favourite colour, lilac.

          1. That was good of you but they probably thought you were a cruise ship lounge singer.

          2. My two huge lilac shrubs are now in flower. One is lilac (purple), the other is white.

      1. Could have been worse..
        Extraordinary footage shows armed men running amok at a cemetery and disrupting funeral..
        Violence and mayhem as warring men fight with hammers, axes and knives in Morriston cemetery..

        March 2023 Pykeys, nuff said.

      2. Even worse is the playing of popular songs which are meant to signify the life of the deceased. “My Way”, “I will Survive” being the worst I have heard.

        1. At one Funeral where MiL was a steward one of the songs chosen was: ‘Return to Sender’…..

        2. I want ‘We didn’t start the fire’ and to be cremated. My sister laughed at that.

      3. Yanks wear sunglasses and stand holding a hand over their heart. They haven’t a clue how pretentious and silly that looks.

    2. I don’t think people could be more scruffy. What a mess people are. No idea of the finer points of life, they must be bone idle and lazy.

    3. I went to my father’s in my combat trousers and a t shirt.

      Mainly because my suit was in Soton and I was in Suffolk and you simply won’t find anything that fits me that doesn’t need to be ordered in.

      I wasn’t especially happy at my attire, but hey, Dad was dead. I don’t imagine he cared.

      What I do regret is not knowing enough about the service and protocols, nor being with it enough to ask. It was the first funeral I’d gone to and was completely unexpected and there was a mass of things to do to keep the house going and pay people. Half the pepper corn tenants were sent letters for their expulsion by accident when the will dictated that the deeds were to transfer to them. We didn’t even know which solicitor was handling things or who the executor was. All the way through mother fell apart entirely and being on countless drugs was insensible so my sister and I picked it all up.

      On top of that my brother suddenly finds he hasn’t got a Dad, so what’s now happening at 2pm on Tuesday’s and why hasn’t Dad called him? I left the Warqueen with Wiggy who sort of managed as Junior fed him but he was barely toilet trained himself at the time but she didn’t know what to do as I’d taken the big car to go get my brother and…. it was chaos as we shuttled people, dogs and extended family around in vehicles on 400-500 mile both ways trips dealing with ***ing moron bank IVR and endless hassle and frustration from useless government departments that said ‘we’ve quite a backlog in the mortuary, you know…’

      I swear I could comfortably have broken that sodding smug Indian’s arm if he said ‘I need to speak to the account holder’ once more.

      1. Eviction, not expulsion. As one of them is a fellow with learning disabilities and a very low IQ he had a breakdown which had social services on to us for abuse. That was a delight trying to explain it was all a damned mistake and that no, he wasn’t being made to leave his home he was being given it, for free, and yes, the cleaner lady would still visit and yes, Mrs Carol would still help him with his meals and no, we didn’t want any money (he tried to give us £5 for goodness sake) and yes, it was his. Yes, the trust would sort everything out.

        Then the sodding solicitor sent us the bill for his time for attending the screw up he’d caused. Thankfully my sister took over that one as I’d have killed him. (it is the one and only time the Warqueen has intervened. She physically pulled me away and bless her, I snarled at her but she took it all in stride and calmed me down. I was ready to kill the useless stain on the spot.)

    4. We went to a local friend’s funeral last summer, his lovely wife told us not to dress too formally he had mentioned that before he passed away. Large crowd informally but smartly attired attendees..Good old boy Mike. They were both inteviewd on TV news a couple of years ago.
      Problem with old churches there’s too much room for the sound to travel upwards.

  32. Finished cleaning and tidying the garden room. Got rid of all the crud that gathers over Winter. Put the legs on the refectory table.

    Party season is open !

      1. It was a garage. I dismantled that and left the concrete base. Built a pergola over it. Laid fake grass and put out garden furniture.

        My shed is 7.5 metre by 3.5 metre. One half is the office looking like the bridge of the Enterprise and the other side is tools and workbench looking like a scrapyard.

  33. German MPs call for 70km Nato air defence zone around Ukraine. 13 May 2023.

    A cross-party group of German MPs has called for a 70km Nato air defence zone to be set up over Ukraine to protect it against Russian missile and drone attacks.

    Top members of the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, as well the coalition members Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens, have discussed setting up a safe zone around Ukraine’s borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, modelled on the Western alliance which intercepted Iran’s recent assault on Israel.

    Shouldn’t be long now! End of World. Courtesy of the most stupid people who have held power in the West in the last thousand years,

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/13/german-mps-call-70km-nato-air-defence-zone-around-ukraine/

    1. One of our own well known and retired general’s mention right at the start of all this unnecessary nonsense that Ukraine were trying to be included in the NATO policy and area. But because of their ongoing arguments with their neighbours it was not acceptable for them to do so.
      The once popular general’s explanation didn’t seem to fit in with the bbcs adgenda. He’s not been seen on TV since.

  34. German MPs call for 70km Nato air defence zone around Ukraine. 13 May 2023.

    A cross-party group of German MPs has called for a 70km Nato air defence zone to be set up over Ukraine to protect it against Russian missile and drone attacks.

    Top members of the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, as well the coalition members Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens, have discussed setting up a safe zone around Ukraine’s borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, modelled on the Western alliance which intercepted Iran’s recent assault on Israel.

    Shouldn’t be long now! End of World. Courtesy of the most stupid people who have held power in the West in the last thousand years,

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/13/german-mps-call-70km-nato-air-defence-zone-around-ukraine/

  35. Look on the very, very bright side Minty. If it does kick off it’ll certainly be over before Christmas!

  36. Afternoon all. Don’t know if it’s been mentioned today but you might be interested in what Labour has planned. Possible revaluation of properties, including using satellites and Land Registry records. So if you have a big house, a big garden, double glazing, extensions, a conservatory, live in an area of food schooling and good transport links – guess what, your Council tax will be zooming up in no time.

    Sounds like something to look forward to, huh.

    1. My word what ever next will all those idiots in Wastemonster come up with?
      Perhaps they should check out the vegetable crop in Whitehall.

    2. No matter that you have probably paid over the odds and good money for those assets.

      1. And save money and save the bloody planet that they’re always carping on about.
        Council tax is already scaled by size of house.

      2. And save money and save the bloody planet that they’re always carping on about.
        Council tax is already scaled by size of house.

    3. Labour will hike every tax going.
      The economy will further stagnate.
      Green taxes will massively increase
      Authoritarian regulation with proliferate
      Debt will continue to sky rocket
      Socialism will be enforced.
      Markets will keep grinding but ever more debt and waste and pointlessness will be lumbered on them
      Business will be showered with moronic stupid things like auditing ‘gender pay’ – oh, that’s the sodding tories, so no difference there
      All sorts of tax allowances will be withdrawn or reduced creating fewer purchases
      Unemployment will soar
      Inflation will rise
      Interest rates will be suppressed to allow the state to borrow, but mortgages will remain high (how they’ll do that I don’t know)
      Tax allowances will remain frozen for 5 more years.
      NI reduction reversed ‘for da nhs’
      Massive immigration will continue but the real figures will be hidden and access to them revoked for ‘national interest’.

      We’ll be pushed to the IMF within 3 years and then they will say ‘do this, oh, and you have to rechain to the EU and adopt the EURO, but as a digital currency controlled by the ECB.’

      And the state will get it’s way.

  37. Interesting visit to hospital this morning for Pre-op assessment.
    Too tall for the measure they had on the wall and they took my figure. Weighed me fully clothed and it was 112.6kg. I asked what allowance for clothing and HCA said we’ll round it UP to 113. NO I said when I weighed myself last week, naked, I weight 111kg. They took my figure.
    Then came the interesting bit, my BP. Chatting to me all the time arm resting on my knee and the HCA said that’s high do you suffer from ‘white coat syndrome’? Yes I said as you were talking to me all the time and my arm was pointing down. Why do you not follow the BHF guidelines as recommended on the NHS website? The reading was 178/87. I asked them to let me sit quietly for 5 minutes, have my arm supported on a table and the result will be much lower. They did as I instructed and the result was 135/85, they said excellent. I then had to have nasal and groin swabs for MRSA. vw was with me and asked how often they had these swabs? They don’t have them! As MRSA is a hospital acquired infection you would have thought they would.
    Anyway I’m due an angiogram on 7th June, the reason for this visit. 🤞

    Edit arm added to make sense.

      1. Thanks Eddy. It’s day surgery and I think it’s actually called a procedure. I was shown a balloon and a stent and they’re much smaller than I imagined. It sounds quite straightforward and not too dissimilar to the atrial ablation I had 10 years ago. The only difference is that I’m 10 years older 😂.

    1. Good luck with it.

      When i had mine all went well right up until the moment i thought someone had set fire to my sphincter. :@)

      1. I don’t think they’re going anywhere near that as they’re going in via the wrist but I’ll bear it in mind.😉

          1. Actually it was a CT scan not an angio. I did have the balloon thing for my legs.

    2. I hope all goes well for you. Interesting difference in the blood pressure readings.

    3. After my TIA 12 years ago Caroline bought a gauge with an inflatable ring to place round the arm so she could keep an eye on me. It’s rather less comfortable than the one at my GP’s surgery because it’s bit too tight when blown up

      1. Mine was extremely tight when it read 178/87 but not so when it was taken properly and read 135/85. That’s 2 hospitals I’ve had to tell nurses they don’t take the BP properly. The nurses at my GP surgery always do according to BHF recommendations.

  38. Devolution was another of Tony Blairs crazy ideas – he was a megalomaniac.

    Good afternoon from Audrey and I . A hazy day, I’ll have another word with the sun God . I hope you’re all in fine fettle.

      1. Hello * holds out gloved hand * btw I didn’t feel the dog yesterday- the yellow labrador and I spoke of rabbits, trees , squirrels and postmen .

      1. Yes, and hence Prescott wanted a NE region but it was voted against in a referendum. One of the reasons the EU said that England could not have a regional assembly was that Scotland and Wales could be classified as regions but England was to big to be a region and would have to be broken down into several different regions.

        Once the UK left the EU there was absolutely no reason why England should not have its own assembly if it wanted one.

        My view was that there should not be a proliferation of politicians and that England should kick Welsh, Scottish, and Northern Irish MPs out of Westminster after Wednesday’s session so that these MPS could go home and double up as MPs in their different assemblies while English MPs stayed put in Westminster. This would cut down on the excessive number of politicians and no new buildings would be needed’

        Alternatively the regional assemblies could all be scrapped.

      1. I was going to leave that observation to Grizzly who polices the grammar which sloppy old English teachers such as myself leave alone as they prefer to talk about literature.

        1. How can Grizzly “police anyone’s grammar”.

          He didn’t go to Grammar School.

          1. I thought that if dentists such as Peddy the Viking could drill grammar into Nottlers it would be well within the scope of a multi-talented polymath to police the occasional pronoun offence.

          2. Ah – but what are his preferred pronouns? One can’t be too careful these days.

        2. I thought I would jump in Peddy-style. I do find basic errors like that one grating.

  39. Chap stopped me in Tesco and remarked that I was scruffily dressed and my t shirt had multiple stains on it. Yes, I was buying washing pods but still. To be fair, he was wearing a nice jacket and tie, with very well kept white hair.

    I pointed at each stain – big dog. Bigger dog, small boy.

    What sort of a twerp goes shopping wearing a ruddy tie?

    1. Maybe he was going shopping before or after going somewhere where a tie was required. That aside though, I have never understood how some people think they have some kind of God-given right to comment negatively on others, especially strangers.

    1. You get all sorts. I am continually perplexed when a little woman decides to walk in to me or why someone leaves a trolley directly in my path after looking straight at me. I imagine he thought he could, or perhaps should say something. I was in a mess.

    2. You’d be amazed. Many years ago I was in a New York salon having my hair and nails done when a very self-important NY matron looked over and said loudly “No-one uses that colour nail polish these days”, to which I retorted “And no-one should be rude enough to say so, much less to a complete stranger”. You could have heard a pin drop! The girl doing my nails kept her head down and whispered to me, “No-one ever talks to her like that” to which I whispered back, “Well if they did she might not be so rude.” The girl smiled and carried on doing my nails 🙂

          1. Dubliners have been mooning New Yorkers…among other things,

            Portal connecting New York to Dublin visitors use the futuristic sculpture for offensive jibes.

            Portal connecting New York to Dublin visitors use the futuristic sculpture for offensive jibes

            Art project connects people in two cities with a real time video feed
            But it didn’t take long for some to hijack the project’s wholesome intentions
            Irish pranksters mooned New Yorkers and displayed 9/11 photos on their phones

            By Nic White and Nikki Main For Dailymail.Com

            Published: 07:08, 13 May 2024 | Updated: 08:36, 13 May 2024

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            Irish pranksters are using the ‘portal’ between Manhattan and Dublin to troll New Yorkers with 9/11 videos and nudity.

            The futuristic sculpture forms a 24/7 virtual bridge that livestreams life from across the Atlantic.

            The New York City Portal is in front of the Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue and Dublin’s on O’Connell Street in front of the GPO and the Spire.

            When The Portal was activated on May 8, crowds from both countries gathered around with signs saying ‘Hello from New York’ and ‘Welcome to Dublin.’

            But it didn’t take long for those with a different sense of humor to hijack the project’s wholesome intentions.
            Irish pranksters are using the ‘portal’ between Manhattan and Dublin to troll New Yorkers with 9/11 videos and nudity

            Irish pranksters are using the ‘portal’ between Manhattan and Dublin to troll New Yorkers with 9/11 videos and nudity
            One Irishman switched the view to a video of the World Trade Center towers burning and billowing with black smoke during the 9/11 attack

            One Irishman switched the view to a video of the World Trade Center towers burning and billowing with black smoke during the 9/11 attack
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            Social media is flooded with videos of hooligans baring their bottoms to transatlantic strangers – or much worse.

            The usual view of people waving from the historic Irish capital was interrupted within hours of the portal opening by a closeup of a man’s phone.

            First it displayed ‘RIP Popsmoke’, referring to American rapper Bashar Barakah Jackson, who was gunned down in a home invasion on February 19, 2020.

            Five men stormed Jackson’s house in Los Angeles demanding jewelry and shot him, three times with a Beretta M92 when he tried to fight them.

            The Irishman then switched the view to a video of the World Trade Center towers burning and billowing with black smoke during the 9/11 attack.

            Another video showed a woman being dragged away from the portal by police after grinding against the screen.
            Another video showed a woman being dragged away from the portal by police after grinding against the screen

            Another video showed a woman being dragged away from the portal by police after grinding against the screen

            ‘Basically she was there for about 20mins very drunk and was slapping and grinding against the portal before guards stepped in,’ the person who filmed it explained.

            Less extreme was an Irishman who waved at the dozens of Americans on the other side, before turning around and mooning them.

            Another man held up a swastika on his phone, and plenty of middle fingers were exchanged on both sides.

            The displays will operate through until autumn, but an official end date has not been announced.

            ‘Portals are an invitation to meet people above borders and differences and to experience our world as it really is – united and one,’ said Benediktas Gylys, a Lithuanian artist and founder of The Portal.
            Lord Mayor of Dublin Daithí De Róiste unveiled the portal in Dublin (pictured), showing off people in New York City

            Lord Mayor of Dublin Daithí De Róiste unveiled the portal in Dublin (pictured), showing off people in New York City
            The Portal offers an unfiltered live stream view from O’Connell Street in Dublin to the Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan

            The Portal offers an unfiltered live stream view from O’Connell Street in Dublin to the Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan

            ‘The livestream provides a window between distant locations, allowing people to meet outside of their social circles and cultures, transcend geographical boundaries, and embrace the beauty of global interconnectedness.’

            Lord Mayor of Dublin Daithí De Róiste unveiled the portal in Dublin that included a performance by The Liberties Majorettes as a nod to New York.

            In the coming months, the two cities will share scheduled programming to celebrate New York Design Week and other cultural performances that have not been released yet.

            ‘Two amazing global cities, connected in real-time and space,’ New York City Chief Public Realm Officer Ya-Ting Liu said, adding: ‘That is something you do not see every day!’

            ‘We are so excited to have the portal as a public interactive art installation, showcasing the vibrancy of our city streets and providing a new point for human connection between New Yorkers and Dubliners.
            The Portal was first created in 2021 by Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys who also primarily funded them. Pictured: The Dublin portal before it was unveiled today

            The Portal was first created in 2021 by Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys who also primarily funded them. Pictured: The Dublin portal before it was unveiled today

            The Portal was first revealed in 2021 by the Benefiktas Gylys Foundation, a non-profit that works to unify nations and has already set up similar portals in Lithuania and Poland.

            ‘One of my key aims as Lord Mayor is to make the city more inclusive,’ said De Róiste, who announced that Dublin’s portal will also connect to the other Portal locations starting in July.

            ‘I would encourage Dubliners and visitors to the city to come and interact with the sculpture and extend an Irish welcome and kindness to cities all over the world.’

            The Portal presents a new kind of sculptural art that uses science and technology to connect people from around the world and is a major focus for the Simons Foundation.

            It worked alongside Dublin, Flatiron NoMad, NYC DOT Art, portals.org and the EU Capital of Smart Tourism to bring The Portal to life.
            De Róiste announced that Dublin’s portal will also connect to the other Portal locations in Poland and Lithuania starting in July.

            De Róiste announced that Dublin’s portal will also connect to the other Portal locations in Poland and Lithuania starting in July.
            Gylys first thought of the portal in 2016 when a spiritual experience led him to view the planet through a different lens and he developed the need to ‘counter polarizing ideas’ and find a way for people from different cultures to communicate

            Gylys first thought of the portal in 2016 when a spiritual experience led him to view the planet through a different lens and he developed the need to ‘counter polarizing ideas’ and find a way for people from different cultures to communicate

            ‘Public spaces are what make New York City so vibrant and exciting,’ said David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation.

            ‘From music to art, the use of public spaces amplifies the collective voice of our city. We’re committed to ensuring that science and technology continue to be part of that voice.’

            Gylys first thought of the concept in 2016 when a spiritual experience led him to view the planet through a different lens and he developed the need to ‘counter polarizing ideas’ and find a way for people from different cultures to communicate.

            He provided the majority of the funds needed to build the first two portals in collaboration with a team from VilniusTech University in Lithuania.

            The first two portals opened in May 2021 in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius and in the Polish city, Lublin.

  40. If all goes well then the optimist always wins. If not the optimist will still look forward .

  41. I read today the the EUs new entry requirements are likely to be introduced in November. These are ones that treat anyone (but particularly from Britain) like a potential criminal. What’s the betting that with impeccable timing they will become effective about a week before the UK’s General Election. The resulting chaos that’s bound to ensue. Will inflame the EU loving media to fever pitch so that that nice Mr Starmmer has no option but to declare that when Elected as PM he will enter into mutually beneficial negotiations with the EU ….

  42. Just in case you are feeling relaxed, MOH offers this from The Energy Brief:

    Energy-Brief Today May 13, 2024
    Driving Markets Today: Good morning my good friends. This
    morning’s markets, at least in pre-market trading look like a repeat of
    last week’s trade. A slight uptick in crude oil & the products early, will
    probably level on either side. The fundamentals have gone flat, with
    the Administration’s abandoning support, after their “Iron Clad”
    pledge for Israel. Analysts are now asking if there are new alliances
    that will affect our markets? It appears so. Additionally this morning,
    there is a story out of the E.U., that they have approved a much more
    strict set of emission rules for heavy-duty vehicles. This follows the
    very same rules set forth here in the U.S. There are growing concerns
    over how far will these green initiatives go and how far back will they
    push the world’s economies! Recent numbers, out of China has them
    aggressively increasing their purchases of coal and natural gas as China
    represents one of the world’s worse records for air quality. They are
    growing their influence around the world economically and feeding
    the blood-thirst for EV’s. We need to stop and ask this question. “What
    if China keeps hoarding coal, oil and natural gas to keep their
    economic engines primed. They corner the market on materials for EV
    batteries and wind turbine blades and became the world’s largest
    supplier of EV’s.” Does this sound like how China is supporting the
    world drug crisis (Fentanyl). They supply the poison that kills our
    people and then what remains becomes part of China. We better
    wake up to this possibility. A vacuum of opposition to China is
    allowing this scenario to develop all over the world.

    Are you feeling relaxed now?

  43. Answers to Hollywood’s Golden Dozen (1958) quiz (earlier today).

    Marlon Brando Jr., Frank James Cooper, Bernard Schwartz.

    Issur Danielovitch, William Clark Gable, Archibald Alec Leach.

    William Franklin Beedle Jr., Burton Stephen Lancaster, Eldred Gregory Peck.

    Francis Albert Sinatra, James Maitland Stewart, Marion Michael Morrison.

    1. John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison on May 26, 1907, at 224 South Second Street in Winterset, Iowa. The local paper, Winterset Madisonian, reported on page 4 of the edition of May 30, 1907, that Wayne weighed 13 lb (around 6 kg) at birth. Wayne claimed his middle name was soon changed from Robert to Michael when his parents decided to name their next son Robert, but extensive research has found no such legal change, although it might have been changed informally or the documentation may have been lost. Wayne’s legal name apparently remained Marion Robert Morrison his entire life although to this day his original name is almost always referred to as Marion Michael Morrison.

  44. Answers to Hollywood’s Golden Dozen (1958) quiz (earlier today).

    Marlon Brando Jr., Frank James Cooper, Bernard Schwartz.

    Issur Danielovitch, William Clark Gable, Archibald Alec Leach.

    William Franklin Beedle Jr., Burton Stephen Lancaster, Eldred Gregory Peck.

    Francis Albert Sinatra, James Maitland Stewart, Marion Michael Morrison.

  45. OT – my day was – marginally – brightened by this concluding paragraph to an article in The Grimes 100 years ago today – reporting the arrival of the King and Queen of Rumania:

    “The King led the King of Rumania down the line of officials, presenting each to him in turn, and Queen Mary did the like for Queen Marie, who was now carrying a beautiful bouquet of flowers. When the presentations were done, the Sovereigns were conducted out of the station by Lord Granard, Master of the Horse, to the state carriages, which waited under a sky of flags.”

    I thought that “sky of flags” was just beautiful!

    1. Recalls to me the final line of W.B. Yeats’s poem:

      When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
      And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
      And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
      Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

      How many loved your moments of glad grace,
      And loved your beauty with love false or true,
      But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
      And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

      And bending down beside the glowing bars,
      Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
      And paced upon the mountains overhead
      And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

      1. I always get this mixed up with Ronsard. I suppose the sentiments are different, but I don’t know:

        Quand vous serez bien vieille

        Pierre de Ronsard

        Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,

        Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,

        Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :

        Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.

        Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,

        Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,

        Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille réveillant,

        Bénissant votre nom de louange immortelle.

        Je serai sous la terre et fantôme sans os :

        Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos :

        Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,

        Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dédain.

        Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :

        Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.

        Pierre de Ronsard, Sonnets pour Hélène, 1578

  46. Fat Pang, as he was affectionately known, aka the last Hong Kong governor Lord Chris Patten calls Cameron’s ‘golden era’ of UK-China ties as pathetic.

    Lord Chris Patten agreed with the need to have a relationship with China but said “the idea that you can only do this on your knees I find demeaning and ludicrous”.

    and yet the arch-Remianiac was quite happy to encourage remainiac Theresa May to grovel on her knees for a bowl of thin gruel.. and didn’t find it demeaning nor ludicrous.
    Still doesn’t.

          1. Good afternoons Jules

            See below.

            I’m way ahead of you
            [Tom Lehrer – Oedipus Rex]

            Plagiarise
            Let no one else’s work evade your eyes
            Remember why the good lord made your y eyes
            So don’t shade your eyes
            Just plagiarise, plagiarise, plagiarise.

            [Tom Lehrer – Lobachevsky]

            Our son, Henry, tried to convince a group of students on a French course with us that every time a person in the group spoke in English a little panda perished. He put a little notice up on the notice board : SOS PANDAS

          2. Attempts were made to outlaw plagiarism between 1346–1353 and again between 1665–1666.

            I can’t report on the success though.

    1. I think Grizzly is going to offer irony detection courses for Nottlers.

  47. A pinch of Par Four?

    Wordle 1,059 4/6
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨🟨🟨
    🟨🟩⬜🟩🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Birdie today.
      Wordle 1,059 3/6

      ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

        1. Par for me.

          Wordle 1,059 4/6

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

      1. Wordle 1,059 4/6

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

      2. Nice one, I wasnt really sure about this word but it was the only one that fitted! Boring Par Four….

        Wordle 1,059 4/6

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

  48. I have been following Marcus Wareing in Provence on iplayer. I cook one of the dishes he does a day. Hake with a Provencal sauce the other day which was very nice. Today is Bouillabaisse. Which is handy as i had a bit of that sauce left over so added it to the base.

    Garlic festival time in Provence (in the program) and of course the French being what they are celebrate it with a festival. And an aioli making competition which Marcus will enter but lose to a grand-mère.

  49. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: First councils charge you to park outside your house, now Labour want to tax you for sitting in your garden
    By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN FOR THE DAILY MAIL

    PUBLISHED: 17:08, 13 May 2024 | UPDATED: 17:12, 13 May 2024

    I cannot access the Mail paywall

    1. The ESC key trick works.

      First councils charge you to park outside your house, now Labour want to tax you for sitting in your garden

      By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN FOR THE DAILY MAIL, 17:08, 13 May 2024

      Oh, what a lovely weekend. Hottest temperatures of the year, at least until the heavens opened on Sunday in some parts. (That’ll be the climate change they keep banging on about.) Time to hose down the patio furniture, pop open a nice bottle of pinot noir and chuck some steaks on the barbie.

      Or was that just me?

      Nope, didn’t think so. For the first time this year, the sun had got his hat on and we were able to enjoy our back gardens. Those of us who are lucky enough to have one, of course. Better make the most of it while you can, though. This time next year, our early summer peace and quiet may be shattered by the sound of drones buzzing overhead.

      Don’t panic. The Russians aren’t planning to launch a first strike against us just yet, despite Call Me Dave doing his level best to antagonise the Kremlin. For now, Putin is preoccupied with Ukraine. And, fortunately, Iran’s rockets can’t reach London any time soon. Then again, they probably don’t need to, what with tens of thousands of pro-Hamas foot soldiers marching through the streets every weekend and occupying university campuses.

      These particular drones will be home-grown. They are Labour’s eyes-in-the-sky and they’re heading your way.

      Already the Labour government in Wales is deploying satellites to spy on homeowners suspected of having large gardens, so they can be hit with higher council tax bills. Who could have imagined when the Welsh people voted half-heartedly for devolution that they would be subjected to Star Wars-style snooping aimed at measuring their herbaceous borders?

      Aerial surveillance is just part of a widespread revaluation of property values designed to rake in more money. Council tax bands and rates are to be raised in line with ‘property wealth’. Google Earth and Street View technology will be used to assess the width and height of houses and gardens, checking for home improvements such as conservatories and loft extensions, so that owners can then be taxed accordingly. Ordnance Survey details and Land Registry files will be scoured to investigate ‘plot size’, purchase price and current value.

      Families who live in areas considered to have good schools and with lower-than-average crime rates will also have to pay more, under plans drawn up by the Toytown Senedd in Cardiff. Lovely, tidy, smashing.

      Wales is the test bed for similar revaluation techniques which will be rolled out across the rest of Britain. Labour’s local government minister Jim McMahon is promising a UK-wide council tax revaluation programme. Naturally, however, this side of an election, Keir Starmer says Labour has ‘no plans’ to extend the scheme.

      But whenever any politician starts talking about having ‘no plans’ it’s time to count the spoons. ‘No plans’ always means they are almost certainly going to do it. Labour has declined categorically to rule it out. Starmer is on record as saying the Welsh government is a ‘blueprint’ for what Labour intends to do ‘across the UK’.

      What, like a blanket 20mph speed limit, appalling educational outcomes and even longer waiting lists than the NHS in England? Can’t wait.

      Anyway, this is exactly the kind of council tax revaluation which Labour intended to introduce the last time it was in office. Under Gordon Brown, council taxes were about to go through the roof – quite literally in the case of loft extensions. In 2007, the then Labour government started recruiting an army of 4,000 Licensed Home Inspectors with the powers to enter your property for valuation purposes.

      They would be able to check whether you had installed a new kitchen or bathroom, and poke around in your airing cupboard to discover whether the lagging on your tank was up to snuff. Any and all improvements would add to your council tax bill. They were even planning to tax energy-saving double glazing and cavity wall insulation.

      Granite worktop? Check. Waste disposal? Check. Whirlpool bath? Power shower? Check, check. Got to be worth screwing them for an extra £500 a year at least. Build an extension because you’ve got a growing family but can’t afford to move house? You’ll get clobbered anyway.

      As in Wales today, a larger-than-normal garden would also cost you more. So would Ground Force-style decking and an outdoor pizza oven. And double-glazing is back on the hit list, too. The most outrageous plan was to slap higher taxes on those living in a quiet area with a ‘pleasant view’, such as overlooking a park or golf course.

      That’ll teach the greedy, rich bastards.

      Official guidelines instructed inspectors to record ‘convenience to local services, such as bus routes, shops and local communities’ and note ‘special benefits’ such as ‘an enclosed garden, patio and conservatory’. Talk about the naked politics of resentment, a shameless money-grab aimed at Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James and all those who have striven to build a better life for themselves.

      It was a dagger to the heart of Middle England, drawn up in the days when it could be relied upon to vote Tory. What could be more anti-British than punishing people with a decent-sized garden? Not that it would bother the wealthy Labour luvvies in Starmer’s fashionable inner London postcodes such as Camden and Islington, where even a £3 million terraced house comes with a postage stamp sized backyard and no ‘view’ worth taxing. On a clear day, you can see the rough sleepers in the doorway of the local crack-house.

      This outrageous tax raid and intrusion of privacy was stymied by the incoming Conservative-led coalition — but not before it was live-tested in Northern Ireland, where some people found they were facing council tax bills of up to £6,000 a year.

      With a Labour landslide now in prospect, you can be guaranteed that the plans are being dusted off again. And this time, the technology is much further advanced. Thanks to Google, every house in the country is now viewable on the internet. Who needs an army of inspectors trampling over back lawns with a theodolite and a tape measure. All they need to do now is scramble a 633 Squadron of drones equipped with hi-tech, hi-def cameras.

      You might want to invest in an air rifle in case the drones get too close. Or, come to think of it, a ground-to-air missile launcher. Bandits at twelve’o’clock! Penalising people for improving their homes is right up there with the Window Tax, which was abolished in 1851. Are we now going to see bricked-up conservatories, like 19th Century windows, as homeowners seek to avoid crippling tax bills?

      Councils are already charging you a small fortune to park outside your own home, double if you drive a diesel. Now Labour wants to make you pay to sunbathe in your own back garden. If you thought that taxes were astronomical under the Tories, b-b-baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

      As The Beatles once put it:

      If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat,
      If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat…
      Here comes the sun, and here comes the taxman. Vote Labour!

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13412553/RICHARD-LITLEJOHN-councils-charge-park-outside-house-Labour-want-tax-sitting-garden.html

      1. Littlejohn himself is avoiding a call to arms. Take a page out of the recent Irish rebellion about migrant hostels. Burn them. Then the council offices. Give fair warning of course….unlike our newest arrivals who slash rape and bomb as much as they like.

    2. The ESC key trick works.

      First councils charge you to park outside your house, now Labour want to tax you for sitting in your garden

      By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN FOR THE DAILY MAIL, 17:08, 13 May 2024

      Oh, what a lovely weekend. Hottest temperatures of the year, at least until the heavens opened on Sunday in some parts. (That’ll be the climate change they keep banging on about.) Time to hose down the patio furniture, pop open a nice bottle of pinot noir and chuck some steaks on the barbie.

      Or was that just me?

      Nope, didn’t think so. For the first time this year, the sun had got his hat on and we were able to enjoy our back gardens. Those of us who are lucky enough to have one, of course. Better make the most of it while you can, though. This time next year, our early summer peace and quiet may be shattered by the sound of drones buzzing overhead.

      Don’t panic. The Russians aren’t planning to launch a first strike against us just yet, despite Call Me Dave doing his level best to antagonise the Kremlin. For now, Putin is preoccupied with Ukraine. And, fortunately, Iran’s rockets can’t reach London any time soon. Then again, they probably don’t need to, what with tens of thousands of pro-Hamas foot soldiers marching through the streets every weekend and occupying university campuses.

      These particular drones will be home-grown. They are Labour’s eyes-in-the-sky and they’re heading your way.

      Already the Labour government in Wales is deploying satellites to spy on homeowners suspected of having large gardens, so they can be hit with higher council tax bills. Who could have imagined when the Welsh people voted half-heartedly for devolution that they would be subjected to Star Wars-style snooping aimed at measuring their herbaceous borders?

      Aerial surveillance is just part of a widespread revaluation of property values designed to rake in more money. Council tax bands and rates are to be raised in line with ‘property wealth’. Google Earth and Street View technology will be used to assess the width and height of houses and gardens, checking for home improvements such as conservatories and loft extensions, so that owners can then be taxed accordingly. Ordnance Survey details and Land Registry files will be scoured to investigate ‘plot size’, purchase price and current value.

      Families who live in areas considered to have good schools and with lower-than-average crime rates will also have to pay more, under plans drawn up by the Toytown Senedd in Cardiff. Lovely, tidy, smashing.

      Wales is the test bed for similar revaluation techniques which will be rolled out across the rest of Britain. Labour’s local government minister Jim McMahon is promising a UK-wide council tax revaluation programme. Naturally, however, this side of an election, Keir Starmer says Labour has ‘no plans’ to extend the scheme.

      But whenever any politician starts talking about having ‘no plans’ it’s time to count the spoons. ‘No plans’ always means they are almost certainly going to do it. Labour has declined categorically to rule it out. Starmer is on record as saying the Welsh government is a ‘blueprint’ for what Labour intends to do ‘across the UK’.

      What, like a blanket 20mph speed limit, appalling educational outcomes and even longer waiting lists than the NHS in England? Can’t wait.

      Anyway, this is exactly the kind of council tax revaluation which Labour intended to introduce the last time it was in office. Under Gordon Brown, council taxes were about to go through the roof – quite literally in the case of loft extensions. In 2007, the then Labour government started recruiting an army of 4,000 Licensed Home Inspectors with the powers to enter your property for valuation purposes.

      They would be able to check whether you had installed a new kitchen or bathroom, and poke around in your airing cupboard to discover whether the lagging on your tank was up to snuff. Any and all improvements would add to your council tax bill. They were even planning to tax energy-saving double glazing and cavity wall insulation.

      Granite worktop? Check. Waste disposal? Check. Whirlpool bath? Power shower? Check, check. Got to be worth screwing them for an extra £500 a year at least. Build an extension because you’ve got a growing family but can’t afford to move house? You’ll get clobbered anyway.

      As in Wales today, a larger-than-normal garden would also cost you more. So would Ground Force-style decking and an outdoor pizza oven. And double-glazing is back on the hit list, too. The most outrageous plan was to slap higher taxes on those living in a quiet area with a ‘pleasant view’, such as overlooking a park or golf course.

      That’ll teach the greedy, rich bastards.

      Official guidelines instructed inspectors to record ‘convenience to local services, such as bus routes, shops and local communities’ and note ‘special benefits’ such as ‘an enclosed garden, patio and conservatory’. Talk about the naked politics of resentment, a shameless money-grab aimed at Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James and all those who have striven to build a better life for themselves.

      It was a dagger to the heart of Middle England, drawn up in the days when it could be relied upon to vote Tory. What could be more anti-British than punishing people with a decent-sized garden? Not that it would bother the wealthy Labour luvvies in Starmer’s fashionable inner London postcodes such as Camden and Islington, where even a £3 million terraced house comes with a postage stamp sized backyard and no ‘view’ worth taxing. On a clear day, you can see the rough sleepers in the doorway of the local crack-house.

      This outrageous tax raid and intrusion of privacy was stymied by the incoming Conservative-led coalition — but not before it was live-tested in Northern Ireland, where some people found they were facing council tax bills of up to £6,000 a year.

      With a Labour landslide now in prospect, you can be guaranteed that the plans are being dusted off again. And this time, the technology is much further advanced. Thanks to Google, every house in the country is now viewable on the internet. Who needs an army of inspectors trampling over back lawns with a theodolite and a tape measure. All they need to do now is scramble a 633 Squadron of drones equipped with hi-tech, hi-def cameras.

      You might want to invest in an air rifle in case the drones get too close. Or, come to think of it, a ground-to-air missile launcher. Bandits at twelve’o’clock! Penalising people for improving their homes is right up there with the Window Tax, which was abolished in 1851. Are we now going to see bricked-up conservatories, like 19th Century windows, as homeowners seek to avoid crippling tax bills?

      Councils are already charging you a small fortune to park outside your own home, double if you drive a diesel. Now Labour wants to make you pay to sunbathe in your own back garden. If you thought that taxes were astronomical under the Tories, b-b-baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

      As The Beatles once put it:

      If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat,
      If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat…
      Here comes the sun, and here comes the taxman. Vote Labour!

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13412553/RICHARD-LITLEJOHN-councils-charge-park-outside-house-Labour-want-tax-sitting-garden.html

  50. Briefly waltzes in, good evening from Audrey and Me !
    I briefly placed a peg on my nose and nearly ventured into my Speccie reply box ( of which I rarely do ) I don’t respond but there was an article ‘ Obesity is at the heart of the sick note crisis ‘ . Yes indeed, you see so many obsese people waddling around – ready name meals nuked in the microwave, couch potatoes and a lack of exercise and then feeling too unwell for work. Covid and lockdown also encouraged people to become permanent victims, well enough to eat on the sofa and get chronic indigestion but too ill to work .

    1. It seems about 50% of hospital staff are at least clinically and maybe morbidly obese.

      1. I saw a student nurse last year where no possible uniform would fit. It had clearly been stitched together badly from at least three or four uniforms. She was sweet though and i felt sorry for her but what can you do…

    2. Good evening Me ! :@)
      What they are, are lazy fat bastards with a poor attitude. They should not be pandered to. They should be told to go back to work. And sort themselves out. All this ‘oh i am a victim of circumstance’ is bollocks.
      Anyone who works for themselves or a boss like Charlie Mullins knows they are taking the piss.
      Pls excuse profane language.

      1. Good evening Pip, if I maybe so bold and call you so, it suits you 😉
        Ah yes, a victim of circumstances, eternal victim, no sense of responsibility. Indeed so I agree with what you say and shall forgive the profane language- there is also no naughty step here.

    3. As a chap I once knew observed: “There were no fat people in Belsen…..”

  51. Re Eurovision.
    Back in the 1990s I switched on the TV in the middle of an amazing Eurovision act. One of the best ever, way above the dreary norm. It was clear that the group would be a success, although the lyrics weren’t up to much. Yes, you guessed, it was Riverdance.

      1. There are numerous Riverdance tours in 2024:

        Many cities in GB
        50 Cities in USA
        25 Cities in China
        Most European capitals
        Russia
        India
        Argentina
        Brazil
        Japan
        Australia
        and etc . . .

        1. I have never understood why watching clothes’ pegs on the march is entertaining.

          1. Philistines never understand – and are rarely entertained – or entertaining!

    1. “On April 30, 1994, the Eurovision Song Contest introduced the seven-minute Irish dance performance Riverdance, starring Michael Flatley and Jean Butler, to the world. This intermission performance in Dublin changed Irish dance forever.”

    2. It wasn’t “the middle of an amazing Eurovision act”, tim5165.

      It was a an ‘Interim Entertainment’ laid on by the host city, Dublin, in April 1994.

      It became an ‘overnight sensation’ and still rolls on – internationally – many moons later.

      1. After a few minutes I became aware that Ireland and a certain Mr Michael Flatley had trumped the whole Europrop shebang, but my initial feeling was of amazement.

  52. Signing off fr today. Funeral – always something to make one ponder. A bit of gardening. Now time to have cauliflower cheese and a glass of medicine.

    Tomorrow winter returns – so have a spiffing evening admiring the sun while you can.

    A demain.

      1. Steamy/sweaty/toasty here, Ndovu. Pouring with tropical strength rain, once again, but at least its not cold any more.

    1. I’m sure they do know, Jules but no one appears to have the wit to say to them ‘you’re fat and it’s not good for you’! Nowadays it seems to be just another ‘lifestyle choice’ with no consequences. And they don’t have mirrors, either!

      1. You would be committing a hate crime if you did. Hospital consultants in cardio, diabetes etc are forbidden to tell fat staff that they are fat and a drain on the NHS.

        1. Aren’t they paid enough to ignore such stupid diktats? For the greater good, and all that? And what is wrong with telling the truth? They can’t all be thyroidal or whatever?

    2. I am a believer in the human body having a second brain. The amount of connections in our lower body and stomach area match to some extent synapses in the brain.
      The Ultra Processed Food is designed to bypass this brain so people who eat this processed corporate crap can’t stop.

      1. And of course, for men, there is that troublesome third brain that also dwells in the nether regions. exercising total control over their actions and reactions without warning or mitigation.

        1. Hormones. And worse is when men take too many supplements and become aggressive to everyone and his dog.

  53. Yet again a judge undermines parliament and British sovereignty. in ruling that the UK government’s Illegal Migration Act should not apply in Northern Ireland because , of course, they breach human rights laws.

    The judge at NI’s High Court said the law breaches the Windsor Framework, the Sunak inspired revised post-Brexit deal agreed between the UK and EU last year. Justice Humphreys also declared parts of the act to be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights – an ultimate sanction from a UK court which sends unworkable legislation back to UK Parliament to be rethought.

    So we are still being ruled by the EU, and our government colludes in it while pretending to make laws that reinforce our sovereignty. They are doing the same with the UN and the corrupt WHO.

  54. Brendan O’Neill in the Spekkie.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/jk-rowling-is-no-bully/#comments-container

    “JK Rowling is no bully

    13 May 2024, 3:46pm

    I see JK Rowling is being cruel again. Her nasty streak is off its leash. She’s bullying random people and engaging in ‘unedifying’ behaviour. What monstrous utterance has she issued this time? What fresh bigotry has spewed from her tweeting fingers? Brace yourselves: she called a man a man.

    Yes, hold the front page: a woman has accurately described a member of the male sex. I’m old enough to remember when a public figure had to crack a racist joke or say something nice about Hitler in order to hit the headlines. Now they just have to use the word ‘bloke’ about a bloke.

    Rowling is actually pushing back against cruelty

    It was over the weekend that Rowling committed her blasphemy. She was responding to the news that Lucy Clark, a man who identifies as a woman, has become ‘the first trans manager in the top five divisions of English women’s football’. With epic pithiness, Rowling tweeted: ‘When I was young all the football managers were straight, white, middle-aged blokes, so it’s fantastic to see how much things have changed.’

    There it was, the B-word – bloke. The noun that must never be spoken in the presence of a ‘trans woman’. The unutterable truth of biology. Rowling compounded her moral error with a follow-up tweet in response to the Daily Mail. Rowling is in hot water for comparing Lucy Clark to a ‘straight, white, middle-aged bloke’, cried the Mail. ‘I didn’t compare him to one. He IS one’, shot back Rowling.

    It didn’t take long for the digital mob’s thousand fingers of judgement to point Rowling’s way. She was denounced as mean, branded a bigot. ‘You’re punching down’, said every midwit with a web connection. Rowling, who’s clearly had enough of all this bilge, fired back: ‘Calling a man a man is not “bullying” or “punching down”. Crossdressing straight men are currently one of the most pandered-to demographics in existence, and women are under no obligation to applaud the people caricaturing us.’

    Preach, JK. It isn’t cruel to accurately describe the world and its contents. Truth isn’t bigotry. The right to tell the truth is essential to the healthy functioning of public life. A society that forbids truth-telling, on the basis that it might hurt someone’s feelings, is a society that has abandoned reason for delusion, sacrificed science to sensitivity. To elevate a minority’s emotional needs over the majority’s liberty of observation, our fundamental right to describe what we see, is to chip away at the very foundations of Enlightened society.

    Even one-time sympathisers with Rowling and her valiant crusade for women’s sex-based rights have been tut-tutting at her of late. Debbie Hayton, in these pages, accused her of ‘unedifying’ behaviour. Elon Musk recently tweeted at her: ‘While I heartily agree with your points regarding sex / gender, may I suggest also posting interesting and positive content on other matters.’ It rather brought to mind those boors of old who would say to women: ‘Smile, love, it might never happen!’

    Here’s what is most infuriating about the shrill denunciation of Rowling as ‘cruel’: she’s actually pushing back against cruelty. Tell me, what’s more ‘cruel’: JK Rowling calling a man a man or government policies that permit men to waltz into women-only spaces? Rowling saying the word ‘bloke’ or blokes stripping off in a women’s changing room? Rowling using a phrase like ‘crossdressing straight men’ or crossdressing straight men invading women’s sports and taking their medals?

    In my view, what’s really ‘cruel’ is depriving young women of sporting glory. And risking allowing biological males to mingle in rape-crisis centres. And putting literal rapists in women’s prisons. That last one is literally cruel – it is the very definition of a ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ to force female criminals to live with male sex offenders. And you want us to lose sleep over Rowling’s firmly worded rejection of such lunatic developments? Listen, if you are more outraged by a woman’s tone of voice as she criticises society’s betrayal of women than you are by the betrayal of women itself, then the problem isn’t Rowling: it’s you.

    This is always the way with the culture war. The elites shove all shades of authoritarian nonsense down our throats, from men in women’s spaces to the rebranding of British history as one crime against humanity after another. Yet it is those who stand up and say ‘Hold on, what’s going on here?’ who are damned as mad, obsessed ‘culture warriors’.

    Apparently the elites’ ceaseless culture war on decency and common sense is just normal politics, whereas our resistance to such dangerous bunkum is hysteria, bigotry, cruelty, etc etc. This is exactly what’s happening with Rowling. ‘Why are you so obsessed with this issue?’, ask the people who’ve obsessively been dismantling her rights and every other woman’s rights for the past 10 years.

    Rowling isn’t an ‘extremist’ – on the contrary, she’s countering the extremism of those who wish to erase entirely the distinction between men and women. She isn’t ‘punching down’ – she’s punching up against an ideology that puts men’s feelings ahead of women’s rights and which has the backing of virtually every wing of the elite. She’s not a bigot, she’s fighting bigotry – the bigotry that says women must give up their privacy and dignity and which defames any woman who says ‘No’ as a transphobe, a TERF, a harridan unfit for polite society.

    Bullies calling their victims bullies – it’s the slipperiest trick of the new left.”

    1. Worth emphasising: “It isn’t cruel to accurately describe the world and its contents. Truth isn’t bigotry. The right to tell the truth is essential to the healthy functioning of public life. A society that forbids truth-telling, on the basis that it might hurt someone’s feelings, is a society that has abandoned reason for delusion, sacrificed science to sensitivity. To elevate a minority’s emotional needs over the majority’s liberty of observation, our fundamental right to describe what we see, is to chip away at the very foundations of Enlightened society.”

    2. All this confusion as to who is of what sex, and who is not, has left me very worried and confused!

      I have to check carefully every morning to see if I’ve developed — overnight — a front bum!

  55. My word our media are as deviously thick as our political idiots. They don’t seem to want face the facts regarding the NHS being under massive ongoing pressures. It’s because between them all our ‘fur king’ idiots have allowed about 4 million people into our country who have never paid a single penny into the system nor are ever likely to, despite all the children veing born they have created and their rights to walk into any medical centre in the county and expect treatment. Over worked under paid medics and nurses are moving into the private sector.
    But our political idiots don’t notice because the same private treatment is always available at short notice for them. On their expenses. Paid for by the hard up tax payer’s.
    Something else that they have effed up and big time.

        1. Yes. unofficial estimates are that the population of the UK is nearer 90 million people. Which means that well over 20 million are undocumented, if true.

    1. I saw an African family when I was on holiday – every one of them was wearing specs. They probably had free eye tests and subsidised glasses.

      1. When one of my niece’s worked as a physiotherapist in a London hospital. A man flew from Lagos to his selected A&E he sat down, fell off his chair rolled around ‘in agony’ on the floor, was admitted to hospital, successfully treated over four weeks for his stomach problems.
        Got out of bed got dressed and walked out. And that was over 30 years ago.

  56. I had lunch somewhere today and it was bizarre, very much like Fawlty Towers.
    It was half empty, they didn’t really want me there. They didn’t want to be open for lunch. The menu had a steak for £ 80 etc . I ordered soup and bread- got the most filthy look. An hour passed, it didn’t arrive- I asked – it arrived but without the bread – 10 mins later the bread arrived – they slammed it on the table. At least Fawlty Towers was funny , the modern young people serving were lazy and rude. I shan’t grace them with my enchanting presence again, I thought to myself as I walzed out with aplomb.

    1. £80? Surely you exaggerate? (Who would pay that?)

      I know that there are some very churlish individuals in the hospitality sector, but there are also some truly lovely ones and it does seem, increasingly, to be turning around here in the Welsh Marches. I don’t want to seem too optimistic (heaven forfend) but the present day youth in these parts seems to be pioneering a return to good cheer and good manners.

    2. Can you name them please. That’s the only way to prevent others being cheated.

    3. Since I think you live somewhere nearby, could you name them so I don’t waste my money.
      (Possibly, it will be somewhere I know and have already put on the black list.)

    1. I thought your abusive insults to me were in abeyance. I am glad to see you back on form.

      My 7 inch penis would come as a shock to you when i ram it up your wrinkly bottom…without lubrication. I might even sprinkle chilli powder on it.

      1. Are you STILL using that old dildo?
        I would have thought you had worn it out, sitting on it.

  57. The law of unintended consequences may return to bite NATO very badly.

    Russia’s army has GROWN since launching invasion despite suffering huge troops losses and is ‘learning how to defeat the West on Ukrainian battlefields’, top US general warns

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13412805/Russias-army-GROWN-launching-invasion-suffering-huge-troops-losses-learning-defeat-West-Ukrainian-battlefield.html

    The top military brass warned that Moscow’s forces have also ‘modernised, learning the lessons from fighting in Ukraine which is going to be a problem for us in the West because Ukraine is using Western equipment, they are using Western techniques.

    ‘Russia’s learning how to defeat that, and I think we need to be ready in the near-term,’ he said.

    1. I dont buy that, Sos, Russia is grinding down Ukraine based upon a massive numerical advantage in weapons generally, and artillery shells specifically.
      If the West doesnt up the ante in terms of supply of munitions Ukraine will fall in the next few months – and then what?
      In the highly scary scenario that Nato gets directly involved, it is obvious Russia will be obliterated in terms of direct battlefield engagement, leaving them with only a nuclear scenario to retaliate/save face.
      Best of luck everybody……

      1. As I said to Minty earlier if it does kick off, look on the very, very bright side – it will all be over by Christmas (and there’ll be no worries about the Turkey being under cooked!!!).

          1. Indeed. I’ve given up worrying as I’m well within the total slaughter range of numerous MoD establishments…. 🙁

          2. I suppose we all should pray that we are in the instant vaporisation epicenter. I certainly do.

      2. It still comes down to the Law of Unintended Consequences.
        If the West hadn’t interfered across Europe near Russia, and particularly in Ukraine, it would not have come to this.
        The USA has been manipulating NATO and the EU using pressure and proxy conflicts.
        The Russians aren’t stupid, they will have observed Ukraine’s tactics and use of weapons supplied and noted strengths and weaknesses and will prepare accordingly.
        The worst case scenario being Armageddon.

        1. Dont disagree, there’s just a horrible inevitability about what is developing – it needs a major initiative in terms of an innovative peace deal to de-escalate the situation….

  58. Time to end the dominance of DEI

    The intervention from Esther McVey is welcome, but why has it taken so long?

    TELEGRAPH VIEW • 13 May 2024 • 6:00am

    Esther McVey, who has the unofficial title of Minister for Common Sense, has lived up to her name by proposing a crackdown on “woke” spending. She wrote in the Telegraph that the Civil Service will not be allowed to hire any new staff dedicated to promoting diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI).

    The aim is to end the “back-door politicisation” of Whitehall. Managers will be forbidden from hiring third-party DEI contractors and officials whose jobs are currently focused solely on diversity will be transferred into HR teams and given broader remits.

    Ms McVey, a Cabinet office minister, says the public sector must not become a “pointless job creation scheme for the politically correct”. The amount of staff time devoted to diversity and inclusion schemes was a “major concern”.

    Her words and intent will be welcomed by all but a handful of zealot campaigners who have managed to hijack this issue.

    But they raise a host of questions. Why has this been allowed to develop on the Conservative Party’s watch over the past 14 years? Why, too, is it restricted to new recruits? Those currently in DEI posts will continue to demand subservience to woke nostrums otherwise they will be doing themselves out of a job.

    The problem with these appointments is that they are self-perpetuating. Once such units are established they have a vested interest in survival. As the minister said: “We have some employees in the public sector whose only role is to ensure that departments are meeting diversity targets.” This should never have been allowed to happen. Is this what people expect their taxes to be spent on?

    Ms McVey’s proscription should not stop at Whitehall, either. What about the rest of the public sector, which is equally infected, or the corporate world, also in thrall to this pernicious doctrine? The tide is finally being pushed back but it has taken a long time, arguably too long.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/05/13/time-to-end-the-dominance-of-dei/

    No mention of the root of the problem, the 2010 Equality Act.

    1. “Ms McVey’s proscription should not stop at Whitehall, either. What about the rest of the public sector, which is equally infected, or the corporate world, also in thrall to this pernicious doctrine? The tide is finally being pushed back but it has taken a long time, arguably too long.”

      I admire Ms McVey; she should be given the power and opportunity to destroy ‘Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI).

    2. That’s her on the way out then, common sense not allowed and she might become a leadership threat.

      At the other extreme – Canadian universities, at the direction of the federal Liberal government and the research granting agencies for which it’s responsible, have made race- and sex- based discrimination a matter of everyday business. And they don’t seem to have a plan to pare it back. There are apparently several research chairs vacant but suitable white male applicants cannot be considered for the position.

  59. 7″ dick? Do you know how I make mine 7″ – I fold it in half…..

    With all due apologies to the good God-fearing people on here who shouldnt have to put up with this smut-fest……

    1. The regulars here are not shocked. Quite a few are Churchy. They also have a sense of humour even if what is said doesn’t make them laugh. Your joke works. Eurovision style debauchery doesn’t. Unless your name is Sosraboc.

      1. Who keeps giving you down-votes?
        I people down vote they should at least have the courtesy to say why.

        1. I will see when i log off or refresh but sometimes people do it accidentally. Depends on keys and device.

          Other than outright physical violence which i have in the past suffered (from some family and the odd lowlife from SomersTown who was feted in a BBC documentary) i don’t give a hoot about people being miffed.

        2. It was Elsie, with the brolly, in the library.

          NB: I have also been randomly downvoted on here (specifically by a certain inawhile). I prefer to think that it is the Nottler’s habit of typing whilst wearing thick gloves, or mittens, that causes this.

          1. I would like to upvote you and downvote you at the same time while the murder is committed while i am on a sun lounger in a different country.

          2. In which case I will assume it was fat finger.
            For some reason the whos don’t register

          1. When i was at a Nottler lunch i said to Geoff and others that what i thought might be an amusing or funny post was when i was giggling/sniggering as i typed it.

            Probably gives much too much insight into my personality. And i am probably not as funny as i think i am.

            However….As i am not allowed to smoke drugs and drink to excess with or without Katie Price or Stormy Daniels at your gite….you are officially invited to a drinks and canape party at my slum bungalow.
            I know logistics aren’t good but six Nottlers including the Boss are coming.

            I invited Bill Thomas but he couldn’t hear me !

          2. Very kind of you and if logistics ever permitted I would take you up on it.
            And I might even behave..
            But if it came to pass, don’t put any money on my good behaviour.

          3. I know you would be civil. I have read your reviews.

            For me…from a personal/selfish aspect i wanted to meet folks on here which is why i promote lunches and soiree… I am so glad i met in person like Ashes who even serenaded me. Tine who makes me laugh and feel love. The Boss who teaches me restraint without even trying. These are attributes of Nottlers you don’t get over the garden fence.

          4. I suspect that most regulars would be good folk with whom to share a pint or a glass.
            I’ve only met one, and he was good value.

          5. I love ’em to bits.

            Bloody hell !!! I have invited the stock broker belt. Must improve the locks….

    1. You make it so tempting. I saw this article in the DT this AM but could not read it for the reasons you highlight. Why are they doing this, Obersl?

  60. I certainly hope so.
    I hope it has finished by the US elections, but if not, I think Trump is a far better bet to end it without Armageddon, than ever Biden is.

    More than enough young men and civilians have already been put through the meat grinders.

  61. Queen Greta has exposed the truth about the green movement

    There is a reason, beyond bandwagon-jumping, why climate zealots are raging against Israel. They feel revulsion at capitalism and modernity

    BRENDAN O’NEILL • 12 May 2024 • 5:32pm

    So, Greta Thunberg has a new cause. She’s found a new crusade to throw her weight behind. Forget saving the planet – now she wants to save Palestine.

    Yes, the pint-sized prophetess of doom has swapped raging against industrialism for raging against Israel. Mother Nature will just have to wait – her erstwhile valiant defender is busy fixing the Middle East now.

    Yesterday, Greta was snapped at the protest in Malmo, Sweden against Israel’s inclusion in the Eurovision Song Contest.

    She looked the part. She had a keffiyeh draped over her shoulders and a smug look on her face: the two must-haves of every puffed-up bourgeois activist who gets off on fuming against Israel.

    The keffiyeh really has become the uniform of the self-righteous. Go into a hip coffee shop or overpriced Soho burger joint and I guarantee you’ll see a Gen Z’er decked out in the Palestinian scarf.

    Whatever happened to the sin of “cultural appropriation”? Not long ago, the right-on raged against white dudes who wear their hair in dreadlocks and white women who don kimonos. “Stop stealing other people’s culture!”, they’d yell. Yet now they themselves spend their days in Arab attire.

    That image of Greta in Malmo, looking very satisfied with herself, summed up the role the keffiyeh plays in the life of the 21st-century activist. Keffiyeh-wearing is less about drawing attention to the plight of the Palestinians than drawing attention to you. “Look at me in my Arab garb, aren’t I good and hyper socially aware?” That’s the needy cry of these hipster appropriators.

    Yet beneath their radical chic, darker sentiments lurk. Their boilerplate hatred for Israel can have horrible consequences. So while young Greta was signalling her virtue on the streets of Malmo, another young woman was holed up in her hotel room for fear of mob assault.

    It was Eden Golan, the Israeli-Russian 20-year-old who sang for Israel in the Eurovision finals in Malmo.

    Golan’s inclusion in Eurovision sickened the anti-Israel protesters. Israel, they said, must be given the boot over its “genocide in Gaza” – their juvenile and historically illiterate term for Israel’s war against Hamas.

    A mob even swarmed around the hotel Ms Golan was staying in. She received death threats. Things were so bad that she was warned not to leave her room. She was given a 24-hour security detail.

    Is this really “progressive activism”? It looks more like bullying to me. The bullying of a young woman by a baying mob of Israel-bashers.

    How galling that Greta should have been in the thick of such a regressive protest. This is someone who has spoken out about her own experiences of bullying. Who has said that women in the public eye get too much flak.

    Yet now she preens at a protest that has had the consequence, intentional or otherwise, of filling a young woman with such dread that she has essentially become a prisoner in her own hotel.

    We might call this woke privilege. Because Greta subscribes to chattering-class correct-think on every issue – climate change, transgenderism, Israel – she is granted the freedom to go about her business as she sees fit.

    Ms Golan, on the other hand, is denied such basic liberty. Her national heritage, her devotion to her homeland, marks her out as morally suspect. And thus she must hide. “Shame!”, protesters shouted, as if she were a modern-day witch deserving of a dunking.

    It is tempting to see Greta’s conversion from the climate-change cult to the anti-Israel religion as just bandwagon-jumping.

    Perhaps her saviour complex, her burning sense of virtue, just needs a new outlet. So, like others of her generation, she ditches climate and trans and all the rest and moves on to “Palestine solidarity”. That’s the issue on which you can really make moral waves these days.

    But I think there’s something else going on, too. The truth is that climate activism and anti-Israel agitation are very comfy bedfellows. There are even some creepy commonalities between green agitation and Israel’s greatest ideological foe: radical Islam.

    Both, at root, represent a disgust with modernity. Both the privileged Western weepers over industrial society and the Islamist haters of Israel share an aversion to the modern world, to progress, to Enlightenment itself.

    Hence we can even have a situation where Muslim activists who yell “Allahu Akbar” can be elected as councillors for the Green Party.

    The upper-middle class recycling obsessive in Hampstead might seem a million miles from the bearded radical who publicly sings the praises of Allah – but they share an instinctive revulsion for capitalist society. One sees it as a crime against Mother Nature, the other as an affront to Muhammad.

    To both sides, Israel is the pinnacle of the modernity they hate. A young, confident, entrepreneurial nation that rendered the desert a land of plenty? Boo. Hiss. Cast its people from our social circles.

    So it makes sense that Greta has temporarily ditched Gaia for Gaza. For this crisis, too, furnishes her with an opportunity to advertise her pious rejection of the modern world.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/12/queen-greta-has-exposed-the-truth-about-the-green-movement/

        1. You’d think so, wouldn’t you – but Michael Gove, for one, was slavering.

          1. The way the camera caught him and others was lascivious. Champing. Dog like.

    1. I remain at a loss as to why an over privileged under educated upper middle-class brat is given such press exposure and political credence.

  62. Husband was in Cornwall at his parents over the weekend and is on his way back. He has just called to say Plod pulled him over on the M3 (near Basingstoke) under the grounds he “didn’t look old enough to be driving the van.” He literally turned 50 two weeks ago.

    Is it legal to pull people over for spurious reasons like that?

    Plod then inspected every inch of the van and determined one of the tyres was just below the legal limit and has issued hubby with 3 points and a fine.

    My husband maintains our vehicles meticulously. And is a super careful driver who never speeds or undertakes (I cannot confess to being quite so beatific).

    Well, Plod, aka jumped up little Hitlers. Bring it on.

    1. A word to the wise.
      Change the tyre asap, other plodders will be looking to up their penalties issued so they can show how successful they are at solving crimes..

    2. Obviously hubby is not tanned enough and looked as if he’d not give Plod any aggro.

    3. Get the allegedly offending tyre checked by a MoT inspector, and if it is ‘legal’ appeal the fixed penalty. The penalty is not a ‘fine’; fines come from courts of law. Think of it not for hubby’s sake, but for all the other motorists on the M3. IIRC a minimum 1.5 mm over 75% of the tyre tread.

    4. Get the allegedly offending tyre checked by a MoT inspector, and if it is ‘legal’ appeal the fixed penalty. The penalty is not a ‘fine’; fines come from courts of law. Think of it not for hubby’s sake, but for all the other motorists on the M3. IIRC a minimum 1.5 mm over 75% of the tyre tread.

    1. If they haven’t pulled over enough drivers and issued them with tickets they will have a grumpy sergeant or inspector so they find a ‘legit’ excuse to pull you over and then inspect your vehicle, eventually they will find one with something wrong.

      1. It has always been my belief that they are obliged to fill a daily quota although this is always denied.

        1. Plod apparently demands to know our “ethnicity” – bring told “I prefer not to say” (aka none of your business) is now unacceptable.

          Hubby said when he set off again he saw Plod pulling someone else over. Maybe they looked at him a bit funny, or were walking on the cracks in the pavement.

      2. It has always been my belief that they are obliged to fill a daily quota although this is always denied.

  63. I’ve just been reading a review of Aston Martin’s new Vantage sports car. The good news is that its dimensions are such that it will fit in my garage. The bad news is at £165k it won’t fit into my bank account!

    1. The seats fold back far enough for you to sleep in relative comfort and you can keep a primus in the boot for cooking.
      Sell the house.

  64. Christians are now the most despised minority in Britain

    The hounding of David Campanale is merely the latest incident showing Britain’s rejection of its Christian heritage

    TOM HARRIS • 13 May 2024 • 3:06pm

    It’s ironic, not to mention entertaining, that the very people who most enthusiastically embraced multiculturalism are the same people having the most difficulty navigating its consequences.

    The Liberal Democrats, for example, have tied themselves in knots, and even provoked a formal complaint to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, over local activists’ decision to remove David Campanale as its parliamentary candidate in Sutton and Cheam. His crime? He is a Christian. Worse than that: he is a Christian who actually believes in biblical teaching – an unforgivable sin for the Lib Dems.

    Campanale is not the first to have suffered at the hands of illiberal members of his party. In 2019, former Labour MP, Rob Flello, was chosen as the LibDem candidate for as its parliamentary candidate for Stoke-on-Trent South, which he had represented as a Labour MP between 2005 and 2017. Within 36 hours he was deselected, his socially conservative views as a committed Roman Catholic having come to light.

    Tim Farron, who made it all the way to the leadership of the Lib Dems, was hounded by the media – and resigned shortly after polling day – because he was an evangelical Christian. In Scotland, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes has been criticised by many, including newspaper columnists and SNP activists, for belonging to the Free Presbyterian Church. As with Campanale, Flello and Farron, Forbes’s crime is not in being a Christian per se, but in being an evangelical Christian and publicly stating that she accepts Biblical teaching.

    But religious intolerance is not equally applied across the Left. When Mothin Ali won a council seat in Leeds as a Green Party candidate, he shouted “Allahu Akbar!”, proclaimed his victory a “win for the people of Gaza”, then described critics of this outburst as Islamophobic. It later emerged that he had claimed Israel had “control” of the mainstream media and had recorded himself chanting “from the river to the sea” at a pro-Gaza rally.

    No one doubts that Councillor Ali sincerely believes in the teachings of Islam, yet no one has suggested that that faith’s condemnation of homosexuality should prevent him from representing the most Left wing – indeed, most “progressive” – party in the country.

    The simple fact is that the Left is only capable of tolerating politicians who are “tick-box” Christians. Sir Ed Davey, the leader of their party, presents no problems for the party because he doesn’t wear his religion on his sleeve. He is not a God-botherer in the same way that Campanale, Farron and Forbes are. He keeps his faith to himself. To do otherwise, to state that you actually believe in Jesus Christ as your personal saviour – well, that’s just unacceptable, isn’t it?

    Muslim candidates and elected representatives, meanwhile, need make no excuses for their personal faith. To criticise a Muslim, or any other minority, for the illiberal tenets of their faith would be prejudicial. But Christians? They’re fair game.

    Part of the paradox is that, this being a Christian country, at least culturally and historically, we are more familiar with Christianity and therefore feel free to criticise it. But Islam remains, to most people, a mysterious faith about which we know little. Criticism of Islam just feels, well… wrong, somehow.

    Therein lies the hypocrisy. If we are a truly multicultural, diverse nation, then everyone is equal, no adherents of any religion should enjoy any advantages, political or otherwise. All faiths are subject to criticism – that is part of the social contract between a state and its people in any secular, liberal democracy.

    Here in the UK we know that’s not the case, yet our politicians and political parties refuse to address it. It would be unthinkable that the police would be called in to make a grovelling apology to the Christian community had a schoolboy kicked a copy of the Bible along the floor in a school dining hall. The prospect of a teacher being forced into hiding for fear of his life because he showed cartoons of Jesus to his class is a scenario so absurd as to be positively humorous.

    Double standards are nothing new to the world of politics. But when our political establishment discriminates against Christians while failing to apply the same standards to other religions, something very serious has gone wrong with our democracy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/13/david-campanale-christianity-british-politics/

    1. Criticism of Islam just feels, well… wrong, somehow.

      No, Tom Harris. The fact is that criticism of Islam will result in millions of Muslims demanding that the critic should be beheaded. Criticism of Christianity will bring no such threat, which is why the critics feel safe in doing so.

      1. It’s the difference between “turn the other cheek” and “the meek shall inherit the earth” and “kill the kuffar” and “behead the unbeliever”.

      2. He’s making the point that that is how many people see it as much as expressing a personal opinion. It is, of course, still wrong. There is an alarmingly high proportion of the population who, though critical of the scale of immigration, see criticism of the culture of the immigrant as criticism of the immigrant himself. These people will, for instance, normally condemn the Catholic church but will check themselves if they are in the company of, say, Poles.

    2. I expect a few old churches might be set alight (electrical faults) quite soon. Maybe this is what I might take for the authorities to react properly and firmly against the imported hate.

  65. Evening, all. Well, summer was nice while it lasted; we are back to rainy and cool again today. Devolution has not just been expensive, but disastrous for the UK as a whole and the dependent parts.

    1. Rats. Looking at tomorrow’s forecast, I have no excuse to give the ironing another swerve.

      1. Anti crease function does my ironing for me. The only thing i ever iron is a shirt when going out.

    1. Is this a late entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, Johnny? I can’t understand the commentary nor read the signs. Lol.

  66. It seems that the Turks now claim that the period of Ottoman rule from 1517 to 1917 was a glorious 400 years of peace in the Holy Land. Sorry, “Palestine”. I thought they actually named the whole region Syria and did acknowledge the Jews as native but as for their benevolence…yeah, right. I suppose Mohammedan peace isn’t what I call peace. Historical illiteracy is trending.

  67. The end of another sunny day. Good Night, chums, sleep well and see you all tomorrow.

      1. Our middle son and his family were travelling to Mawgan Porth it rained for two hours of their journey.

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

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