Monday 14 November: The West must support Ukraine, not reward Putin’s brutal aggression

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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603 thoughts on “Monday 14 November: The West must support Ukraine, not reward Putin’s brutal aggression”

    1. What he said was correct, but he too is cosying up to the crowd. Note that he stated something like “Do they think the British public is stupid – oh, no, we’re not” so the audience applauded that. But you’r wrong, Theo, the British public (aka The Sheeple, © Winston Churchill) in fact are exactly that.

      1. It’s not so much that the British public are stupid, it’s more like they can’t be bothered to take note of what is happening.
        Willful ignorance rather than stupidity.

          1. Exactly how the extreme Marxists took control of so many Trades Unions in the ’50s & ’60s.
            The Rank & file only wanted to do their jobs and get on with life so they took little notice of what was happening until it was too late.

  2. Good morrow, Gentlefolk, today’s funny
    The Power of Prayer 2

    In a Tottenham church on Sunday morning a preacher said, “Anyone with ‘special needs’ who wants to be prayed over, please come forward in front of the altar.”

    With that, Leroy got in line, and when it was his turn, the Preacher asked, “Leroy, what do you want me to pray about for you?”

    Leroy replied, “Preacher, I need you to pray for help with my hearing.” The preacher put one of his fingers in Leroy’s ear, then he took his other hand and placed it on top of Leroy’s head; and then he prayed and prayed and eventually the whole congregation joined in with great enthusiasm.

    After a few minutes, the preacher removed his hands, stood back and asked, “Leroy, how is your hearing now?”

    Leroy answered, “I don’t know. It ain’t ’til Thursday.“

    1. It’s the constant lies that I can’t stand. This feeling of being in the audience of a play or a film when reading the news.

      This is the same mistake that all serial liars make – they think that just because you can’t disprove what they’re saying, that you must believe it.

      No. I knew as far back as 2008 that they were lying about the financial crisis. I just didn’t know what they were doing, and how it was going to play out. But I knew they were lying about it being fixed.

      1. Yes. I am just so tired of being lied to. I am tired of being treated as someone so thick that she can be readily manipulated.

  6. Five ways to prise open Vladimir Putin’s grip on the world economy. Rishi Sunak. 14 november 2022.

    As we recover from a pandemic that almost broke the world economy, every household on the planet is feeling the fallout from the war in Ukraine. Global food prices have been hit by Vladimir Putin’s attempts to choke off Ukrainian grain exports – two-thirds of which go to developing countries. Energy bills have skyrocketed thanks to Russia turning off the gas taps.

    An exercise in Alternate Reality. The pandemic was never a danger; it was the response to it that has plunged the World into recession. Vlad has not choked off Ukraine grain supplies, they proceed as normal against great provocation. It is the West that is sanctioning Russian Gas and Oil.

    Vlad, whatever his shortcomings, is a Russian Patriot, a word that is beyond the ken of Sunak, an unelected globalist puppet!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/11/13/rishi-sunak-will-not-let-vladimir-putin-hold-uks-economic-future/

    1. I’ve already made this comment BTL in the letters:

      Why Putin Invaded

      The first two letters, urging support for Ukraine and castigating Putin and Russia, obviously have no idea as to why Putin invaded Ukraine.

      It was Zelensky’s Azov Brigade, ruthlessly slaughtering over 14,000 Russian speakers in Donbass and other Eastern Ukrainian provinces, that made him feel that someone should endeavour to put a stop to this slaughter of his near neighbours by a despotic tyrant.

      The sad thing is that the US, the EU and NATO all joined in on Zelensky’s side.

      I take it they all agreed that the slaughter was a good thing!

      1. Can you point Tom Archer towards the events in the House of the Trades Unions in Odessa in 2014?

    2. The pandemic didn’t, governments did. No, the war in Ukraine is again, your fault for not getting fracking and building multiple diverse power generating systems like coal and nuclear for 20 years combined with rigging the market for energy. As for food, you keep hammering farmers with Left wing green legislation about rewilding, controlling fertilizer use and all other such twaddle. The problem isn’t anywhere else but in your own lap, Sunak. Your lies are tiresome.

      Stop blaming other people and events for problems of your own making.

      1. Morning Wibbles. It’s pretty obvious that the UK Government’s narrative over the next couple of years as we descend into the pit is to blame Vlad for their own mistakes.

  7. Now it’s a bit lighter, I can see how foggy it is outside. Still dead calm too, so I can’t imagine the Carsington Green Unicorn Fart Farm is producing much!

  9. More patrols promised as UK and France to sign Channel deal to curb migration. 14 November 2022.

    Rishi Sunak’s government has reached a deal with France to increase cooperation over asylum seekers and migrants using small boats to cross the Channel, with UK officers joining a beefed-up programme of French beach patrols.

    The arrangement, being signed on Monday morning, promises a 40% increase in the number of patrols to try to detect small boats about to make the voyage from France, with UK personnel taking part for the first time.

    It also includes extra investment in port infrastructure in France, the use of technology to detect crossing such as drones, and greater cross-Europe cooperation.

    An exercise in deception. The simplest of tasks made to look difficult!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/14/more-patrols-promised-as-uk-and-france-sign-channel-deal-to-curb-migration

      1. Presumably, as a rendezvous for the boats taking the returned illegals back to France – I hope.

    2. I cannot believe that the combined Intelligence Services of the UK and France do not know: 1) the source(s) of of the RIBs, 2) the delivery routes and 3) the facilities where the RIBs are being stored prior to delivery to the beaches and embarkation. Cut those links permanently and the problem goes away.
      Clearly, the collective will to do the obvious is lacking, for whatever reason(s), and all we have are convoluted, expensive and unworkable political non-solutions.

      1. They know all of those. The problem isn’t intelligence, it’s will. Our government is using the gimmigrants as revenge, the french are getting rid of a problem they couldn’t be bothered to deal with.

    3. It will achieve nothing. The state doesnt want it to, the french can’t be bothered.

      What will affect change is the immediate removal of all the gimmigrants. Middle of the Sahara would be suitable, or jam them into the home office with the staff and lock all the doors.

  10. 367751+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Monday 14 November: The West must support Ukraine, not reward Putin’s brutal aggression

    Complete SHITE of course the current United Kingdom, courtesy of the voting pattern for the coalition and lack of opposition has the Country tottering on crutches and soon to be taking to it’s death bed.

    A top RAM spokesman for the sheep commented “you surely cannot keep blaming us when it is quite clearly seen it be the peoples at fault”

      1. 367751+ up ticks,

        W,
        Why, I use links when I deem it necessary otherwise one only has to cast an eye about to personally view the plain to see mountain of shite we are suffering under.

  11. Morning, all. Dull, dank and misty here in N Essex.

    Now, the nutters want to ‘decolonise’ (whatever that means) mathematics by downgrading the status of rational knowledge.
    Some societies use/used knotted strings, and others, beads on strings for addition and some geometric operations. Could these devices be trusted for sending billion dollar space probes, humans to Mars etc? Asking for a friend who got as far as first steps in calculus before deciding maths beyond that point was also beyond his understanding.

    Daily Sceptic – Universities Told to ‘Decolonise’ Maths

    1. And this is the daft little millennial who was CEO of Alameda, FTX’s sister company with a dodgy logo that apparently looked very similar to the paedophile triangle.
      Propaganda has tried to convince us not to trust our instincts and to believe that anyone can be a CEO regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation yada yada.
      Nope. I am not convinced.
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dde106b098f07a0f1bea4c53d9b3b19c364f3b51144218910dd6e4dacd16c840.jpg

      1. Well, technically they can. There’s no issue there. All that matters is that when their company fails they pay the price.

        1. Yes, technically they can. I mean, who would have foreseen disaster when promoting this woman to be CEO?

          1. Noted, thanks. Russia Today, Epoch Times. Each one has their own agenda, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

            Financial data (not journalism!) still gives you the best and most accurate news. Follow the money explains most things.

    1. It’s ironic. Myths usually depict losing an eye as bringing enlightenment and knowledge, the loss representing wisdom.

      Thunberg remains ignorant and stupid. Worse, the press – dependent on energy and fuels – continue to support the brattish whelp.

          1. The photographers tell the celebs to pose that way. Who tells the photographers? I don’t know.

    1. Morning Oggy. This cash like most donations outside the country is being privately trousered!

    2. Morning Oggy. This cash like most donations outside the country is being privately trousered!

    3. It’s absurd. We need to stop paying the frogs to do what they’re already paid to do and not doing.

      The solution is simple: when they get in their boat and call for help, turn them back. If they refuse, destroy the boat.

  16. Britain has finally woken up to the scandal of illegal immigration. Douglas Murray. 14 November 2022.

    Polls show the public has rightfully lost patience over failures to use Brexit to take back control of our borders. A reckoning will follow.

    For years politicians in Westminster have hoped that the British public would not notice the growing migration crisis on our southern borders. They relied on the polls that showed immigration falling down the ranks of voter concerns after the 2016 Brexit vote. Because for years the public believed that Brexit would mean we would take back control of our own borders – something that Boris Johnson and other Brexiteers promised with some regularity.

    Well, it turned out that on the issue of illegal immigration, like so much of the post-Brexit era, consecutive Conservative governments wasted time. They could have done what I and others argued for throughout. Which was withdrawal from any and all European conventions and treaties – including the ECHR – which stopped us being allowed to repel people coming into our country illegally. Dominic Raab intermittently applied himself to this question, coming up with a hodge-podge prototype British bill of rights that didn’t survive its first encounter with Parliament.

    All the while the illegal immigration crisis grew. In 2018 the then home secretary Sajid Javid cut short his Christmas holidays to stare at the Channel and declare a national emergency over the arrival of a couple of hundred illegal migrants in the preceding months. Today a couple of hundred illegal migrants seem to cross the Channel every few hours.

    The British public has woken up to this fact. A new poll out this week shows that up to 16 per cent of the public would be interested in backing a new political party led by Nigel Farage to address the issue. It is hardly surprising. The Conservative Party has left a huge gap in its political armour. And if Farage doesn’t take advantage of it, then someone should. The Tories never do anything Right unless it is forced to.

    What could they do? They could ensure that British naval vessels stop assisting the people smuggling networks. At present our coastguard and others meet the boats that the gangs send out, greet the people mid-way and then bring them safely into Britain, where all of them will stay even if they commit further crimes. It is an exact replay of the mistakes the EU made which led to the migration crisis of 2015, a crisis I watched unfold first-hand and described in The Strange Death of Europe.

    Watching the same mistakes play out here at home is tragic, and wholly avoidable. The previous Home Secretary, Priti Patel, nobly attempted to solve the dilemma by copying what our allies in Australia did a decade ago when they faced similar illegal flotillas. The Australians put the illegal migrants onto neutral territory where their claims could be very slowly processed. Among much else this proved a terrific deterrent. Today Australia does not have an illegal migration problem.

    But when Patel announced her plan to offshore law-breakers to Rwanda, all hell broke loose among the liberal commentariat and grandstanding MPs of all parties. “I don’t want to live in a country which treats people like this”, they wailed. The Rwanda plan consisted of flying people who had broken our laws to a hotel in Rwanda with a swimming pool. If that is regarded as the height of barbarism these days then I would love to know what the lap of luxury might be.

    The Patel plan was foiled because the rest of the government had failed to do what needed to be done on a legal level to stop so-called “human rights campaigners” effectively dictating UK immigration policy. All that is needed is withdrawal from the ECHR, the replacement of it with an almost precise replica of the rights afforded in it (so as not to overly spook the centrists) with minute alterations to the wording on illegal migration.

    Yet this is a medium-term fix. The answer in the short term is to stop the boats. And to do this there are already existing laws. The thousands of Albanians who have broken into our country in the past year have already broken the law. All can be returned to Albania and should be. Albania is a safe country. To get here the migrants have come through safe country after safe country. So we should charter flights and fly them back – to a man. And it is, incidentally, almost all men.

    Do that and there will be a reason to vote Conservative again. Fail to do it, and the party deserves everything that will be coming to them.

    I couldn’t hope to better it, since Douglas is a much better writer than myself so I’ve put up the entire article. If I had a reservation, it would be that he fails to point out that this is not mere Dereliction of Duty by the Traitors in Westminster but deliberate deception and a betrayal of the British People and the country’s sovereignty.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/14/britain-has-finally-woken-scandal-illegal-immigration/

    1. yeah yeah, they are so angry they will vote Labour next time, and that will teach the Tories a lesson!
      We may have been here before.

    2. “All that is needed is withdrawal from the ECHR, the replacement of it with an almost precise replica of the rights afforded in it…”

      I don’t think so!

      1. Withdrawal not only from the ECHR but the ECJ as well and repeal the Human Rights act.

        No wobbly legs for the shysters to stand upon, in their troughing at legal aid, to stop deportations.

        1. We could keep legal aid but have the lawyer and their criminal applying deported and having to apply remotely, in the local currency exchange rate and only by post.

          How many letters could go missing?

      2. Repeal of the equalities act, HRA, withdrawal from the ECHR, migration pact, race relations. Get rid of them all and we might start recovering as a country.

        There’s an irony that the more the state forced agenda on us, the more intolerant and divided we have become.

      3. We’ve got Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus (well, we had until the European Arrest Warrant) and the Bill of Rights. That was more than the continentals had.

    3. 367751+ up ticks,

      They will even go as far as stamping their collective feet in the polling booth.

      Mindset of electorate majority voter, referendum victory,
      job done, straight back to supporting / voting for the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella / pro eu coalition.

      The electorate voted in a SHITE EXTENSION for another six years to date, with an open ended short future.

      Polls show the public has rightfully lost patience over failures to use Brexit to take back control of our borders. A reckoning will follow.

      1. Ogga, you’ve got to stop blaming the public. No, stop it. No, don’t blame them, they’re told what to think. They are not educated enough to look past the propaganda and think because it’s painful. It’s hard. Responsibility is achingly difficult and most people want to throw it away to be told what to think. They like their ignorance.

        In all your posts you never present what *should* be done to recover this country.

        1. You don’t need education to think for yourself – in fact evidence suggests that those without formal qualifications are rather better at it than the products of universities these days.
          Even if ogga stops blaming them, they will not escape their punishment for abrogating their responsibility to think for themselves.

          The quickest solution to fix Britain now would be a benevolent dictatorship, and we have zero chance of getting that.
          Realistically, our best chance is to win the inevitable civil war.
          We are Harold’s army at Hastings, that’s the problem.
          Kipling pointed out that the English only ever achieved anything when they had the ruthless Normans pushing them – and we’ve lost that now.

          1. Yet the failure of the public to act is also destroying the lives of decent people who see through the tosh.

          3. I agree – I don’t mean intelligent or educated in the academic sense, more an awareness that they’re just being lied to and really understand that they’re being lied to.

        2. 367751+ up ticks,

          Morning W,

          “In all your posts you never present what *should* be done to recover this country.”

          In ALL my post as a long term member of UKIP up until the final treachery in 2019.
          All my post ended with a call to join UKIP, strongly suspecting what we were about to receive.

          That was met by the herd returning to the treacherous comforting arms of the odious lab/lib/con pro eu coalition party.

          I see the present 650 politico’s as a collective Madam Syns & the electorate majority begging, gimmy MORE whip.

          1. They are more like abuse victims, gaslighted by their abusers and believing that there is no better life.
            But as you say, you and others have been trying to tell them for years.

            It is one of the hardest things to persuade an abuse victim to leave.

    4. I don’t think it’s a case of Britain has, more that the state has. Andrew Leak was the first actor to oppose government and they set about destroying him brutally. Big fat state is now desperate and beginning to realise more people will turn on them and that with the police no longer being respected or feared people don’t care any more.

      But, what will really happen is a con they’ll pretend to do something while hiding the facts and attacking anyone opposing them and making the problem far worse.

    5. Morning Minty,
      Words just words written by our Lame Stream Media who can just detect the anger rising in the country.
      When they make it the leading headline in their publications day after day then I will start to believe they are really concerned.
      Until then I think we are being fed a bone to keep us quiet.
      The media are part of the problem along with those in Westminster.

    6. The trouble with Douglas is that, excellent mind and writing style though he has, he still hasn’t realised that this is all deliberate. I do hope he gets there soon – we could do with him.

    1. But, as big government will tell you, the deaths are unexplained. There’s no link – and never will be – between the covid vaccine and people with no co-morbidities dying suddenly. None.

      Of course, in 30 years when all those involved are safe from prosecution it will be hinted that perhaps the vaccine wasn’t especially useful and did cause deaths in the population – but not now. The state won’t permit it.

      1. Important is to spread the word about the sudden deaths to normies, far too many of whom are unaware and continue to take the death jabs.
        We need them to question the narrative, in preparation for the next time.

      2. Certainly nobody in the public spotlight i.e. not a single one of the 650 members of Parliament or Lords were effected by the ‘vaccines’.
        But as I suggested a few days ago, my theory is the jab was designed to disturb and influence existing health issues. I had three friends who died. But all had prior health problems. But were probably jab as most of us were. And one friend who out of the blue had a heart attack and then a serious stroke that led to his death.
        But people are reluctant to ask or discuss anything that might highlight suspicion.

        1. That’s the thing though, if anyone over fifty dies, one looks like an idiot for questioning whether it was the jab that did it.
          Two of my daughter’s teachers died – both in their sixties, both smokers. Totally expected, everyone says.
          But all I can say is that I have NEVER in my own school career or in the twenty or so years that my children were in school, seen a teacher dying on the job, let alone two in one year.

          1. And still no one on the political field.
            Not even any of those who should have retired years ago.

    2. Died Suddenly is a film from the Stew Peters’ stable. Due to air on 21/11/2022.

      Died Suddenly

      Stew Peters isn’t as subtle as Del Bigtree, the former’s presentation is more that of a hard hitting ‘shock jock’ but he is getting his message across to his audience.

      You may find these videos featuring Dr Jane Ruby from Peters’ stable interesting:

      Dr Ardis was Wrong
      Dr Ardis & Mike Adams

      Edit: Dr Ardis and Mike Adams link amended.

    1. The entire black looting mob fiasco was a failure of policing. Same as plod choosing to ignore the green fanatics. It’s all about promoting thoes the state favours and punishing those who step out of line.

  21. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2f91734cf86fc1ac39cae22b88904d584f51ff549ef55aaa210eb96a4311f3ad.jpg
    .
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8fcaf3a004fc99be2be35f385a32ac7fed04e035f8e895d587230806d3a5d3db.jpg
    .
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0fc03056e89a83f39469c15d9362602ef40c772e9493e745d3d3ab8df43ebc18.jpg
    .
    Meanwhile in Qatar, a group of Indian guest workers seems to be having fun with their new assignment…
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/yuf1g2/breaking_news_qatar_has_to_hire_now_foreign_guest/

    1. I’m hoping the whole of this football session will be a total disaster.
      Arabs have never played football. And there was no reason to hold this in their country. And I don’t think India has a football team.

    1. The gang members are all Somalian but come from a specific area with its own dialect of Bravanese and were assisted in court by the only interpreter in the country.

      They knew enough English to be able to fill in the forms and abuse the system.

    2. FFS what is wrong with this stupid government. And still they are letting this scum into our country. And now our own honest hard working members of society (our own sons and daughters) are out there again today paying for all these scroungers who have arrived to take advantage of what is/was once deemed to have been kindness.
      STOP IT NOW !

      1. 367751+ up ticks,

        Morning PM,
        Yet via a pen they can / have poisoned
        a nation, the terrifying thing is they have a following.

    4. That is why I couldn’t watch it this year.
      There is already one Allan in hospital; we don’t need the other taken to A&E with a television jammed on the end of her foot.

  25. Police hunt man after woman in 20s sexually assaulted on London bus. 14 November 2022.

    Police are investigating after a woman was sexually assaulted at a London bus stop and again while on the bus by the same man.

    Officers have released an image of a man they wish to identify in connection with the incident, which took place at around 2am on Saturday 23 July.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/25d6927d76193d77649b025d989688cb8f5196b797538c2378ef81467773fa5f.jpg

    Surprise. Surprise.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/sexual-assault-lordship-lane-bus-london-b2224449.html

    2. Oh but he doesn’t realise that assault isn’t accepted here – after all it is where he comes from, if the woman is kuffar. So that will be accepted by any of our Blair-imposed judges and he will get off with a tap on the wrist.

    3. Two crimes reported in the Wail. Neither permitting comments. Both rapes. Both black perpetrators.

  27. Geoff, I detect that Big State is getting fed up with people and sites like ours that tell the truth.

    Do we have a back-up plan for when NTTL is banned?

    1. ‘Legal but harmful’. Oppression writ large. It really is time the entire state edifice were torn down.

    1. Good morning, Belle, and everyone. 8c here in S. Cambs, a stone’s throw from the border with Herts, Beds and Essex. It is also very misty, verging on fog, but there is a lightness with it that hints at the appearance of the sun later.

        2. It has never got properly light all day, N. That early promise of sunshine was not fulfilled. It got mistier and foggier and the atmosphere heavier, as the day progressed. I know Cambs is fen, but we are on the southern side of the only hill in Cambridgeshire, the most easterly wing of the Chiltern outcrop and as such we are really geographically part of north Hertfordshire, but the Cambs county boundary continues for another three miles south. Our postal code is CB, the next village along (Orwell), still in Cambs, has a postal code of SG and this puts up their insurance costs. The weather can change dramatically ‘going up the hill’ or rather going down the other side, it can be foggy on one side and not the other. I once drove ‘splat’ into a violent rainstorm at the top of the hill – no warning – it was like having a buckets of water hurled at me thereafter.

          1. The sunshine didn’t come to anything much here – soon clouded over again. Then in the afternoon, just as I was about to walk down the hill to the mobile post office, the heavens opened and we had a downpour. I took the car instead. It got dark very early too.

          2. I had to switch the light on to read at 14.30 it was so dull. Warm, though – 16.5 degrees C again when I took the dogs out.

    1. I was chatting with a friend yesterday and we reached the conclusion that the average MP will be taking home more in ‘expenses’ each year than a retired person on the basic state pension is paid, between their retirement date and their last breath.
      An average of life in retirement, 18 years. Equals around 136,000 pounds. That’s probably closer to the reason they want us all jabbed and out of the way.
      And those family members who we leave behind are suffering the tax burden whilst the government and the plotters walk away with thousands.

      1. A knighthood for the next politician with the honest chutzpah to stand alongside the Jolly Roger.

        1. With this lot it’d be the pakistani flag, isis flag, albania flag – anything but the Union banner.

    3. How the [beeeep] can stand there while criminals are put up in hotels while servicemen sit in doorways, while the MoD swells despite incompetence and running down the military is beyond me. They lie habitually. Nothing they say has any value and should be ignored.

  32. Army families suing the Ministry of Defence over the squalor of their living quarters are being issued with “bullying” ultimatums to drop the claims or face having their pay docked to cover the legal costs.

    Documents obtained by the Guardian suggest the threat of further financial pain amid a deepening cost of living crisis is being exploited by government lawyers to keep compensation cases out of court.

    Hundreds of military families are understood to be looking to legal redress at a time when the service family accommodation (SFA) system has been overwhelmed with complaints.

    The MoD has not been turning up to defend legal claims already lodged, made on the grounds that the government has failed to provide safe and well maintained homes.

    “When service families have to resort to court to get basic repairs done, it confirms deep failings with service accommodation. Yet ministers have no proper plan to fix the problems.”

    Mark Francois, a former Tory armed forces minister, said: “Ministers must clearly intervene urgently, to sort this dreadful mess out.”

    Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence select committee, said: “All service personnel and their families deserve a proper standard of accommodation.

    “When not on operations this is where those in uniform spend their time and it is where the family call home. Increasingly it is the constraints and pressures on family life that tip the balance in obliging serving personnel to exit the military.”

    A whistleblower said the MoD was seeking to “bully” service personnel but that a growing number of service personnel were preparing to take legal action in the face of a failure of the MoD to ensure their homes were of a decent standard.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/13/army-families-suing-mod-for-poor-housing-told-to-drop-claims-or-have-pay-docked?CMP=share_btn_tw

    1. I have delivered and canvassed round the local army estates. The state provided accommodation is appalling; the attitude behind it stinks. You can almost hear the lips curling in Whitehall.

      2. You mean they don’t have their own homes tucked away in the country? How extraordinary. All the orficers I know have at least one country house, doncha know.

    2. Perhaps they could be moved to 4* hotels, all expenses paid, while the problems with their accommodation are sorted out? /sarc

    3. They were not too good in the early 70s when we lived in Warminster and Tidworth, but I would hope they have improved somewhat since then. We lived in a little terraced house (24 in each row) and it was very basic. I brought my new-born son home there after 10 days of misery in Tidworth MH. We survived. He’ll be 52 early next month.

        1. My first home with the ex was a lttle cottage near Andover, which was owned by an elderly LtCol. The kitchen was a bit basic with just a Baby Belling to (attempt to) cook on but otherwise it was quite nice. He charged us £16 per month in cash. We had good neighbours next door, an elderly couple.

      2. Where in Tidworth?
        During ’77/’78 I was up in Perham Down with my 1st wife in the older quarters, ’40s or ’50s built, backing on to Perham Down ranges.
        Large living room, with single glazed iron framed windows at front and back that allowed a gale to blow through the room and a single gas fire for heating.

        The newer quarters, beside the Ludgershall Road, were built in the ’60s and not only had a forced air central heating system, but some MPBW Civil Servant decided it was worth saving a couple of hundred quid per quarter by deleting the requirement for double glazing so they cost the occupants a fortune to heat.

        Apparently, DOE (PSA) later had to spend a couple of thousand per quarter fitting the double glazing they ought to have had from the start.

        1. We spent a year or so in the little terraced house in Mooltan, part of Bazaar Road. We were number 23 in the block of 24. All the blocks in that road matched the barracks as well. The ex was based at Aliwal barracks at the other end of the road. The hospital was in Delhi barracks. They were arranged in alphabetical order along that road, and the Lucknow barracks were just along from Mooltan. You’ll recognise the names of course from a previous adventure in Afghanistan.

          We then got a move to a more modern block of flats – Malmesbury House. The stairs were very unsafe for toddlers as there was a child-sized gap between the stairs and the wall. The clothes lines were on the roof. My toddler nearly committed suicide while I was up there hanging out the washing, having put him in his cot for a rest. A neighbour shouted up from down below that my child was on the window sill, opening and shutting the window – I managed to run downstairs and grab him before he fell out. That was the end of sleeping in the cot.

          We left there in November 1972 and went to stay with my Mum until the flat we’d got a tenancy for was ready for us. I spent that Christmas in bed with flu. Mum’s living conditions were no better than the MQs – damp and dank.

          Double glazing?? You’re ‘avin’ a giraffe!

    4. If they’re being threatened with legal action, it makes one think that there is substance to their claims.

  33. Interesting thesis

    https://www.takimag.com/article/rise-of-the-spiteful-mutants/

    I have a sneaking suspicion that there might well be a lot of Nottlers who will agree with large parts of this article, whilst questioning others, here’s a taster, taken slightly out of context:

    As evolutionary psychologist Ed Dutton points out, some of these defects result in spiteful mutants.
    Spiteful mutants are the men in dresses demanding everyone pretend they are some third sex rather than a lunatic. These are the feminists who make war on the normal sexual relations of society. The people policing speech online and inflicting Diversity, Equity & Inclusion programs are spiteful mutants. These are the human defects slowly making life impossible in Western countries.
    Professor Dutton points out that we used to have social mechanisms for minimizing the impact of human defects. The death penalty is the extreme example, but social pressure reduced mating opportunities. The scold’s bridle was used to control what we now call feminists. Of course, most of what we think of as feminists were called witches in the past and properly burned at the stake.
    Because we have systematically dismantled these mechanisms for minimizing the impact of human defects, we are now being overrun by them. Western societies are becoming unbearable due to the spiteful mutants. They have infected every aspect of society to the point where things are starting to break down. Even basic things like elections are proving impossible due to these mutants.

    The forces that increased the stock of human capital in Europe are now in reverse. Instead of reducing the proportion of defective people, social forces are now increasing their numbers. Like the inflection point in 1500, when European progress suddenly turned upward, we are approaching an inflection point where things suddenly turn much worse. This will not end well.

    1. Witches were learned women, not feminists. On Saturday, I was at an introductory course in herbal medicine, and at least three of the women there would have been in danger of being burned as witches in the past – they had a huge knowledge of and interest in herbal medicine.
      The modern equivalent would probably be punishment for threatening big pharma.

      Apart from that, “spiteful mutant” absolutely describes a certain mentality.

      1. I think the author was using that example to make a point, not condoning the burning of women.

        I’ve long thought that many “witches” were just what you describe and whose fate was often determined by people in the mainstream church who could not accept that something other than God could do the inexplicable unless the explanation was “magic”

        1. Don’t blame the Church. Society is inherently misogynistic. If you don’t fit to a stereotype of what they expect a woman to be, you’re dangerous.
          Hence all the curbs on dangerous womanhood in the slamic world.
          It is logical, because if women sleep around, they produce babies, who then don’t thrive, because they grow up in poverty without a father (even benefits don’t mitigate this much). Therefore the society dies.
          So women’s sexuality is something dangerous for the survival of the tribe, which must be curbed.
          Women can also be a bit crazy at different times in their lives.
          Even today, if you’re not married, you’re often viewed as a threat or a bit crazy.

          1. I think the Church/Religion was a prime motivator and I believe in many cultures it remains so.

          2. The church was the prime authority in society on social matters. But the inherent need to punish women who step out of line is far deeper and more universal than any religion.

          3. My mother always said that I would have been burned at the stake in ages past. There were a couple of times in the last few years when I felt the tickle of flames at my heels…

          4. “Even today, if you’re not married, you’re often viewed as a threat or a bit crazy”
            Or even as an ‘opportunity’, when still fertile.

          5. “Even today, if you’re not married, you’re often viewed as a threat or a bit crazy.”

            Once again, agreed, BB2. been there, suffered two divorces as a result.

    2. There must always be a place in English society for the harmless eccentric – someone so daft, it makes one chuckle at the absurdity of someone’s passion and the lengths they will take to pursue it, but crucially, poses no threat to anyone, not least to those with passions of their own.

      I came across a delightful lady who spent the 5th November in London. Rather than blowing up Parliament (which many feel is all it deserves), she took her kit off and painted her body in feathers and paraded up and down Parliament Square in support of providing nesting places for swifts. The same lady once allowed a baby bird to nest all summer in her beautiful waist-length hair after it had been kicked out of the nest and abandoned by its flock.

      She may have been promoting a book and had perfectly respectable business reasons for acting as she did, but I prefer to think of her as a lovable English loony that makes me proud of where I live.

    3. What bothers me most is that rather than simply saying ‘OK, whatever’ to the trans lobby suddenly we’re forced to not only accept them, but to pander to them. That rejection is what the Left hate so much as until we’re forced to accept, we have control over our lives and thoughts. The Left can’t tolerate that.

      The power to say that 2 + 2 = 4, or that a man in a dress remains a man – is fundamental. Everything stems from that. (With apologies to Orwell).

    4. Oops “Even basic things like elections are proving impossible…”

      I read that as erections first off, but then again…

  34. Good moaning.
    Sunny and crisp.
    Housework day on steroids today. Dawn and I will be packing pictures and all round tut. (With a bit of judicious pruning.)
    Good chum is visiting MB this morning which gives me a day to get work done and – I hope – shake off a voice that sounds like I smoke 80 a day.

    1. Good morning Anne,

      Wow , I can imagine the activity.. be careful .
      When is removal day.

      Hope the NHS are nurturing your dearly beloved to a satisfactory state of wellness.

    3. Morning, Anne.

      What a pity I’m so far away at the moment. Were I nearer, I’d be rolling up my sleeves to help you pack, and making fun of your voice.

      Best wishes to the MB.

    4. When I used to get to the Dalriada sessions in Portobello there was one lad who sounded like he not only smoked 80 a day, but gargled with a mixture of sulphuric acid and broken glass, but, for the Bluesy type songs he sang, his voice was perfect.

      Sadly, the Dalriada became a victim of the Wuhan shut down.

  35. No-frills Christmas
    SIR – A few years ago, my partner and I decided to spend a maximum of £10 on Christmas presents for each other (Letters, November 12). I bought him the Telegraph book of unpublished letters (one of mine was in it and he had to hunt for it). He took delightful photographs of my two grandsons and put them in matching frames bought in a local charity shop. Neither of these lovely presents cost the earth and both still give pleasure today.

    Jean Bryant
    Deepcut, Surrey

    My goodness ,I have just had a Eureka moment … I had no idea there was such a book , Telegraph book on unpublished letters ..

    I have written dozens of letters to the DT for many many years, it would be a real treat to know if one of my letters managed to be included.

    1. Morning T-B – I seem to remember that you were told if they were publishing your letter in the book. Mine never appeared.
      The books tended to be half price soon after on sale.

    3. 2 letters from 2011 as a taster :
      Sir – for me Roy Hodgson will be deemed to have been a successful England manager if he can teach Wayne Rooney the words of the National Anthem.
      Colin Bridge

      Sir What most disappointed and outraged me upon learning of Erlc Joyce’s brawl in a House of Common’s bar was that it was not shown on the otherwise dreary and tiresome Parliamentary channel.
      Nicky Samengo-Turner

    1. They won’t give us a choice. Heck, when we moved off the god standard our currency was doomed. Were we given a choice then? When Osborne printed billions to debase the currency? When Brown stole our pensions? When Brown set about allowing banks to overlend and then bought out RBS? When Hunt will announce his destructive agenda to ram us back into the EU? They never give us a choice. They just do, regardless.

      1. All the indications are that they will bring the digital stuff in side by side at first.
        In Venezuela, nobody uses the CBDC unless they have to, eg to pay for a driving licence.
        But they have the possibility to use US dollars, at least for now.
        If people don’t accept the CBDC, it will fail, maybe in ways we don’t yet know about.
        For example, if you’re on benefits, you may not have a choice because your income comes directly from the government. But what about the owners of blocks of flats, or estates? What about the holders of shares? Will they be happy getting their income in CBDCs? I don’t think so!
        Meanwhile, some stuff for barter, and the local connections to use it, is perhaps not a bad idea.
        It doesn’t have to be a 100% solution – anything that pushes back even in small ways, is better than nothing.

        1. At the moment we may as well *have* a digital currency. The money in our accounts is just a number. It means nothing and has value only because of a shared fiction.

          1. But the bank balance or the value of investments, while it can go up or down is still our own. It appears the danger with this new type of digital money is that the state can just confiscate it or dole out rewards for compliance.

          2. No, please do not fall for this fallacy.
            In the current situation, you have the option to withdraw your currency as cash.
            This ensures the good behaviour of the banks – they cannot charge you negative interest, they cannot charge you if you spend the money on stuff they don’t agree with (although some institutions have made efforts in this direction).

            What you mean is that the currency is unbacked by commodities, I think. But a CBDC that was gold-backed would be just as toxic for us as one that wasn’t.

      2. Those are mostly in the past wibbling.

        The future consists of the determined attempts by the Quislings to push us back into the EU.

        ….and it will be really determined !!

        1. Brilliant illustrations of what TPTBhave done though. And we all know what they intend to do. I don’t see how it can be stopped. We all need to use fewer cards and go back to money. But cards are convenient …

      1. and that number with their hands out for a nice house, free money and an easy life on the back of the three people in the UK who still work for a living.

      2. Pack them into containers, ship them back to africa. Leave the containers even though they’re worth more than the contents.

        1. …and a more immediate problem:

          Assuming 2000 patients to the average GP, then the NHS should have hired an additional 21 GPs

          just to deal with the incomers.

          Has the NHS done so?

          3. They can always find room for more. Doctors and Nurses are not necessary any more, as we’re all scheduled to die under the WEF Great Reset.

  39. You don’t know what you are missing – Black Lives Matter religious broadcast on Radio 4 – Bongos and drums with organ music and tribal chants. Aren’t we lucky to have such diversity!

  40. When I was taking out money at NatWest this morning there was a poster saying that no other bank would take their debit card. I know they intend to change cards for another card name so the change must be imminent.
    I was defrauded from my NatWest debit card over one year ago when someone used my card details to buy on-line goods worth just over £200 at 3 shops. My card had never been out of my control at any time. I informed the NatWest Fraud squad with the details and after 3 letters to NatWest I have not had a reply. I have been with the NatWest for 60 years since they were the Westminster bank.

    1. Someone, somehow got hold of my card details and used them fraudulently in January 2019. Barclays fraud team were onto it like a shot – and the money was eventually refunded to my account. They cancelled my card and sent a new one very promptly.

      1. Crikey. Santander had an automated message call my telephone twice over Christmas some years ago. I assumed both were spam calls.

        In May their security people rang me up about potentially fraudulent transactions in … December.

        At that point I left them. If they don’t take security seriously enough to have a human being contact you then how do they treat my money?

        1. They seem to have become more sophisticated over the years. In 2010 I had a few days off work and made some purchases – plants, a coach ticket, plane ticket, etc. Following that I had some weird automated phone calls which I assumed were spam. They then froze my account till I contacted them and told them all those purchases were mine, with my own money.
          However, in the 2019 incident, they were onto the fraud before I was and sent a text to my phone. I logged into my bank account and could see the fraudulent items – three meals at a Just Eat in London, within a few minutes of each other. I then called the fraud team on the Barclays number and they got things sorted very quickly.

    1. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday dismissed a news agency report (Associated Press) that he had been taken to hospital with a heart condition, scolding Western journalists for what he cast as false reporting.

        1. Nice film on TV of him sitting on his verandah in Bali enjoying the weather.

          He looked healthy.

  42. Just barrowed eight loads of dead wood converted into logs. A month’s worth. And that means I have walked 1,600 yards!! Lovely sunny morning, now.

  43. Funny Old World

    The Welsh used to have a fiery answer to those that they considered invaders taking their houses…

    https://i2-prod.walesonline.co.uk/incoming/article22353156.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_MeibionGlyndwrPwllheli.jpg

    Heaven forfend……….

    A hotel in a quiet Welsh village with just 400 residents is being
    rammed full of some 200 migrants, at a cost of £6.8 million to British
    taxpayers.

    The 106-room Hilton Garden Inn in Dolgarrog, a sleepy
    community in the Snowdonia National Park, has been booked all the way to
    Spring 2023 — a “short-term solution” to the ever-worsening boat
    migrants crisis in the English Channel, according to Britain’s
    incompetent Home Office…)
    Be a shame if history started repeating itself…….

    1. Without my usual hyperbole and anger, this is the danger. If the state doesn’t get on with removing these criminals then people will take more aggressive action.

      1. In the early 70s an architect I use to carry out lot of work for in London asked me if I would like to go to Wales and fix up his holiday cottage. I mentioned to his partner that the Welsh were burning cottages owned by outsiders. But she reminded me of his German name………
        I still didn’t go.

      2. In the early 70s an architect I use to carry out lot of work for in London asked me if I would like to go to Wales and fix up his holiday cottage. I mentioned to his partner that the Welsh were burning cottages owned by outsiders. But she reminded me of his German name………
        I still didn’t go.

        1. I still advocate packing them into a shipping container and treating it as we do our recycled waste.

          (That’d be the plastic that we ship to Africa to allow us to pretend we don’t generate as much as we do to suit EU policy; which African then chucks in the sea for us to have to clear up again.)

        4. I’ve always maintained, George, that those who have destroyed their papers and refuse to name their country of origin, they should be given the choice to own up and if not they should be herded onto a fast naval cutter, taken to a beach in Somalia and dumped wearing just their underpants (if they have them, otherwise naked) at midnight. That’s it, end of problem.

          1. I would have thought, Tom, that a C-130 Hercules (or three) would get them to Somaliland much quicker than a fast naval cutter would do.

          2. You can cram more on a naval cutter and land by a Somali Beach. I suppose a C130 wouldn’t need to land, open the back door and chuck ’em out.

            I was trying to be decent about it.

          3. And as it arrives over the drop zone, open the back and do a sharp nose up!
            Sorry NtN, didn’t see your post below – great minds think alike.

    2. Please correct me if I’m wrong here (my naïveté sometimes runs away with me), but if the EU were genuine about their raison d’être being to safeguard their constituent states and populations; surely they would mount a solid defence against outsiders wanting to invade their territory?

      1. The EU’s defence against outsiders wanting to invade their territory is to send them all to the UK.

      1. Have you seen the ‘nationality’ of the current England team? Why would they not go to a country that reminds them of home and practices the same moral proclivities?

    2. Southgate and the England team will be too busy bending their knees to take any notice of the request from the family of Lauren Patterson.

  46. Another British icon that was sold to the Chinese , why heaven only knows ..

    Tucked away in a wardrobe are Moh’s old RN uniforms .. superb cloth ..for formal occassions . His suits date from 1964, when they were real quality, and there they remain , but what to do with them is a different matter .

    Mike Ashley swoops for troubled Savile Row icon Gieves & Hawkes whose suits have been worn by Churchill and Prince William but faced closure after 250 years when its Chinese owner went bust
    Billionaire Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group reportedly close to a deal to rescue the troubled Savile Row tailors
    The London fashion icon is being sold following the collapse of Hong Kong-based owners, Trinity Limited
    The historic brand has cut cloth for the likes of Princess Diana, Prince William, King Charles and Ed Sheeran

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11425057/Mike-Ashley-save-troubled-Savile-Row-icon-Gieves-Hawkes-collapse-251-years.html

    1. And by the way, the FTX collapse was triggered by Binance wanting to sell all their FTX tokens at once. In other words, the Binance boss pulled them down on purpose.
      Earlier this year, I was reading up on crypto stuff, and it was said that before the end of 2022, Bitcoin would go under 10K, would stay low for a couple of years, and will then go to the moon in 2025.
      Bitcoin fell 20% this week, and is currently under 17K.

    1. I believe all sailors are inordinately fond of broth, that’s why there are so many brothels in naval ports – must be all that hard-tack they consume.

      2. My mother was describing a landscape in Cornwall which had a chapel on the hill. She was prone to use the occasional Dogberryism or malapropism and the word she was searching for was bethel. However she described the view as one having a sweet little brothel on the hill

  50. Here’s an email I received this morning which would seem to illustrate the decline in teaching of the English language. I had to read it several times to glean that it seems to mean an offer of some used items.

    “Good morning,
    I hope you are well.
    Our team in the places are doing a project each month based on our values here.
    One action we wanna do is reduce our waste.
    So I wanted to get
    in touch with you and also any projects out there. So any furniture that
    anyone needs or wants if they could let us know then if this item crops
    up we know we can let you guys know. We
    often have electrical goods which we skip but could be used a fixed up.
    I know you have
    contacts so I thought ill let you know, I will some charities and school
    around the stroud area to see if there interested.
    Thanks”

      2. This person (with the androgenous name of Jordan) has a job title of “Places coordinator”, and he/she/it works for Ecotrickery.

      1. “...the English language is still a fine vehicle for expressing a viewpoint.”

        If used, spoken and written correctly, Richard.

    5. I have a photography website and get lots of those, telling me they can improve my site positioning on Google search.
      They are usually full of gobbledygook.

    1. It good to find out at last the government has noticed and that it is now registered as a crisis. Its only taken about three years.
      But apart from shoveling more taxpayers money into France. WTF is our government going to do about this mess ?

      1. 367751+ up ticks,

        Afternoon RE,
        ALL the time it is being recognised as “our government” and seeing as it has been getting away with it for at least three plus decades not a bloody lot Eddie.
        westminster palace political outlook ALL those that count politically are getting a fair share, the UK herd are restless but controllable, everything is sweet.

    1. Korky, that’s not the worst.
      They were funding “research” that purported to show that Ivermectin doesn’t work, AND they were funding research into “the next generation of coronavirus vaccinations” (= the next coronavirus probably!!).

      It’s just emerged that they were one of the largest buyers of Tether as well. Tether is a crypto that is supposed to be linked 1:1 to the US dollar, and some have speculated that it will morph into the American CBDC. However, it has been dogged by persistent rumours that it doesn’t own enough dollars to back the Tether tokens that it has sold.
      https://twitter.com/wmiddelkoop/status/1592133621007147010
      If this is correct, it may bring Tether down.

      This may be the black swan event that brings the whole fiat financial structure crashing down. That was predicted for January 2023 – I guess one thing after another will fall. Apparently Credit Suisse is tottering on the brink again, despite allegedly being rescued by the Americans a few weeks ago.

  53. To cheer us up (or not). My comment btl on PressReader was very rude.

    “– It was interesting to contrast the Comment pieces by Kate Andrews (“Lord Wolfson is right. Britain needs low-skilled foreign workers”, November 11) and Fraser Nelson (“With millions on benefits, we don’t need mass migration to boost GDP”, November 11) on the low-skilled migrant worker debate.
    Mr Nelson’s point about getting those on benefits back to work is admirable and progress should be made, but it is also idealistic. In hospitality, we are crying out for workers from the Continent, who see being in service as a vocation rather than something you do until you get a “proper job”. That cultural divide will not be bridged, regardless of what is in the Autumn Statement. Ms Andrews and Lord Wolfson are absolutely correct. We need migrant workers now more than ever to energise the ailing hospitality sector.”

  54. Pensions tax raid will ‘irreparably damage’ NHS, doctors warn
    Senior doctors retire early to avoid hefty tax bills
    Lauren Almeida : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/pensions-retirement/news/pensions-tax-raid-will-irreparably-damage-nhs-doctors-warn/

    I am becoming more and more convinced that Hunt and Sunak are malignly determined to destroy everything in Britain. So much devastation cannot be just an accident.

    BTL

    The government does not do joined up thinking.

    My nephew, a talented GP, retired at the age of 58 because he worked out that, after George Osborne’s raid on pensions, he would be worse off if he continued to work and contribute to his pension scheme.

    The NHS lost a great number of very competent doctors in their late 50s at a time when doctors were in short supply and now the financially illiterate chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is about to repeat the same mistake as Osborne made.

    2. Mr Sunak could do a runner and live anywhere on the planet that welcomes the megawealthy; Mr Hunt has a Chinese wife, so he could scrape an existence in the PRC.

    3. Well aren’t the doctors lucky that their pensions lasted as ling as Osborne. The private sector ones were ruined by Brown in 1997.

      But I don’t worry, because the public sector ones are OK and won’t be touched.

      1. Pension apartheid is indefensible.

        Without the private sector who would provide the tax revenue to pay public sector pensions?

        Having been the governor of the Northern Sudan my father received an extremely good civil service pension which helped pay for my two sisters’ public school fees, my public school fees and university studies and, when he died, continued to pay an excellent pension for his widow, my mother. But throughout his working life he had received a far lower income than his contemporaries in the private sector and his brothers who were doctors.

        Now those in the public sector expect a higher salary as well as a pension beyond the dreams of avarice for someone in the private sector.

        1. I’m grateful for my CS pension, which after 21 years and a paid for extra year, amounted to just over a quarter of my salary. But that salary was on the low side for the job I did. We were always sold the pension as ‘deferred pay’ as our pay was lower than could be obtained in the private sector.

          1. Which was true until Brown increased public sector wages. Look at what CEOs of local councils earn. And tell me they deserve it.

          2. They always did ‘earn’ far more than us lowly employees of the DWP. It was always one of the lower-earning departments. My salary as a team leader EO at the time I retired was about £24,000.

    4. After Brown attacked pensions, we left the Uk permanently.
      Dr shouldn’t retire, just move to the US or somewhere else, and keep doctoring.

  55. Just a thought.

    Kick all of the illegal immigrants onto the streets and do not allow them any benefits whatsoever, unless they can show exactly who they are and where they have come from.

    Do not provide them with anything except the home addresses of all MPs and non-hereditary peers plus the relevant charities and the senior management of those charities.
    Allow them to go and beg from their own kind.
    One reason they leave France Italy etc and head to the UK is that the UK is far too generous. If the French can leave them in “jungle camps”, so should we. A harsh winter will have them queuing to leave and we should pay for their tickets “home”
    They tend to hate us anyway, whatever we give them, so it won’t make any difference

  57. Oh ho, look at this

    Government ‘has overspent the foreign aid budget by £1billion because it has spent so much on asylum seekers’ arriving in the UK including from Ukraine and in small boats crossing the Channel
    Foreign aid spending is currently capped at 0.5 per cent of GDP – some £11bn
    But spending will be 5.5 per cent of GDP this year due to housing people in UK
    Money spent housing Channel migrants and refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan
    By DAVID WILCOCK, DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE

    PUBLISHED: 13:04, 14 November 2022 | UPDATED: 13:32, 14 November 2022

    Ministers have broken their own cap on foreign aid spending by a billion pounds because so much cash is being ploughed into helping asylum seekers in the UK, it emerged today.

    Foreign aid spending is currently capped at 0.5 per cent of GDP – some £11bn – having been reduced from 0.7 per cent by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor.

    But money being spent housing Channel migrants, plus refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan, means that the spending will be 5.5 per cent of GDP this year, the BBC reported.

    The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), which controls the foreign aid budget, has been forced to accept the extra cost incurred by the Home Office.

    Last month it was revealed the UK is now spending more of its international development budget at home than in poor developing countries because of the cost of housing refugees.

    It came as Rishi Sunak today refused to guarantee that Channel migrant numbers will come down despite the UK handing over £63million a year under a new deal.

    The PM dodged any firm promises as he hailed ‘progress’ with Home Secretary Suella Braverman sealing a pact that will see a 40 per cent boost in the number of officers patrolling beaches.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11425873/Government-overspent-foreign-aid-budget-1billion-money-spent-asylum-seekers.html

    1. This is just a money laundering scheme for landlords and whoever provides migrant settlement services.

    2. It’s pretty obvious that is why the government has decided to rip off everyone they can. Not of course people who live in the UK without having made any contributions to the economy.
      Everything they come into contact with they eff it up and big time.
      Now is the time to stop all foreign aid. They’ve all moved here.

  58. I see that the woman who (allegedly) set off the bomb in Istanbul yesterday stupidly did not also blow herself up. She is under arrest.
    I imagine the Turkish police are as rainbow and kneeling as the Metropolitan Perlice Farce.

  59. What an encouraging headline from the Daily Telegraph at the moment!

    Rishi Sunak ‘confident’ UK-France migrant deal will cut Channel crossings but not ‘overnight’

    No, of course not overnight. How about in ten years time?

    Why is this pathetic government so totally incapable of resolving the problem.

    2. The government wants to appear to be doing something about the illegal immigrants. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work (it won’t) – the can is being kicked down the road.

    3. “Why is this pathetic government so totally incapable of resolving the problem.” – because, as explained ad nauseam, they WANT the gimmegrants. So, they won’t stop it.

  60. I think it is about time the MSM told us the truth about the dastardly dangerous regime in Albania – as well as the covert civil war – from which, quite understandably tens of thousands of fit young men are fleeing….. And about the horrible, cruel regimes in Germany and France…..

    1. “I think it is about time the MSM told us the truth about the dastardly dangerous regime in Albania …”
      I think thats correcterer, Bill.

    2. …and….and…. leaving their wives and children behind them to hold the fort and repel all borders (boarders?) – their men are so brave to hasten off and pave the way…

      1. They were all smiles when shown on TV, more especially Old Joe, he thinks he’s just got out of bed.

  63. Par 4 today

    Wordle 513 4/6

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

    3. #MeToo – Par Four.

      Wordle 513 4/6
      ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩
      🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  64. Chinese officials speak out in unprecedented criticism of Russia on eve of G20. 14 November 2022.

    Vladimir Putin ‘did not tell Xi Jinping truth’ about Ukraine invasion, say Chinese officials.

    Officials in China have expressed their displeasure at Russia’s actions in Ukraine, including Vladimir Putin’s non-disclosure of his plans to invade, and condemned the “irresponsibility” of suggested nuclear threats ahead of the G20 summit in Indonesia.

    Mr Putin did not tell his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping “the truth”, reported the Financial Times citing a Chinese official, who said that the two leaders had hailed a “no limits” alliance between Moscow and Beijing when they met just 20 days before the Kremlin launched its invasion on Ukraine in February.

    This is what passes for reporting nowadays. A mish-mash of rumours and innuendo by unnamed sources. There is absolutely no guide as to who this “official” is. He could be (assuming that he actually exists) head of Panda operations for all we know.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/putin-ukraine-g20-russia-xi-jinping-biden-b2224506.html

    1. Millions of families are skipping meals to survive the cost of living crisis. With the price of essential products soaring, supermarkets have a crucial role to play to help us all.

      Is this true? How do we know? Walking around the UK one might be forgiven for thinking that a little abstinence wouldn’t go amiss!

          1. A new retail park has opened , well almost , nr the Sainsbury I sometimes use .. the first thing to be built was a MacDonalds and Costa.
            It appears to be VERY VERY popular.

          2. Not to me Belle. I have to confess that I have never eaten at one of these Monuments to Gluttony!

          4. Beefburgers or Hamburgers, as they are called in these establishments for some obscure reason, are made out of Cow’s tongues!

          5. Beefburgers or Hamburgers, as they are called in these establishments for some obscure reason, are made out of Cow’s tongues!

          6. Beefburgers or Hamburgers, as they are called in these establishments for some obscure reason, are made out of Cow’s tongues!

      2. How do we know they aren’t skipping meals to pay for Sky, branded trainers, ciggies and the like?

  66. Muslim cops label counter terrorism policing ‘Islamophobic’
    National Association of Muslim Police want the term ‘Islamist’ dropped from counter terrorism policing

    Counter-terrorism policing has been labelled Islamophobic by the National Association of Muslim Police. And it is now calling for the scrapping of the term ‘Islamist’ after claiming it unfairly stigmatises Islam.

    Alex Gent, Chairman of NAMP, also says Islamophobia remains an issue in wider UK policing. The group cited cases where Muslim officers had been referred to Prevent wrongly by their own colleagues after religious pilgrimages or following conversions to the religion.

    NAMP is now publicly calling for an update of policing and counter terrorism terminology, with Islamist replaced by ‘anti-western extremism’ or something similar. It has also raised concerns about the disproportionate number of Muslims being referred to the counter terrorism programme – with the West Midlands among the highest.

    The group says it has previously raised concerns over the use of ‘Islamist’ and ‘Islamism’ with police chiefs and politicians, including recently with former Home Secretary Priti Patel. But it has now gone public after no agreement to drop the words.

    One former Muslim officer with West Midlands Police told BirminghamLive: “The use of the world Islamist to describe radicalisation or terrorism is feeding into the wrong agenda and is very offensive and insensitive. This was raised in West Midlands Police years ago and it fell on deaf ears.

    “The majority of the Muslim members in West Midlands Police and nationally (in police) completely disagree with the terminology (Islamist) because it tarnishes the entire Muslim community, by saying ‘you’re attached to terrorism, your ideaology is attached to terrorism’. It marginalises the Muslim community.

    “Muslims officers and staff within the force internally try to get this message across about the terminology and try to work with the organisation to say ‘you need to take this into consideration’.

    “West Midlands Police use the term ‘Islamist’ and it upsets the internal Muslim staff and the wider community. The use of the word in the context of a negative connotation with terrorism is the bit that’s upsetting.”

    Mr Gent said senior police officers and politicians have persisted with the idea that terms like ‘Islamist’ and ‘Islamism’ are different from Islamic. But he said: “If it’s got the word Islam in it, all people think about when they hear the term Islamist extremism is Islam.

    “I said to them, ‘You can contextualise it as much as you like, people attach that stigma to it.’

    “What we’re saying is, you don’t see that with any other faiths. In Northern Ireland where you have dissident republicans and loyalists, the Police Service don’t stigmatise religions by referring to Catholics and Protestants. The religion is kept separate from the political conflict.”

    https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/muslim-cops-label-counter-terrorism-25508438?fr=operanews

    Me thinks they moan too much .. I wonder how Indian Hindu officers feel?

        2. This happened 20 odd years ago.
          I very nice chap I use to play golf with, was a senior officer at an east London police station. One day out of the blue (scuz the pun) a memo was sent around the police station stating. You are No longer allowed to Call Sargent White Chalky.
          Not that Sargent white actually minded the humour. But the dopey (yes, it’s been going on that long) wokey’s in charge didn’t like it, because he was black. But didn’t care.
          This and probably other such incidents, led to the senior officer taking early retirement.

      1. It’s just the Same old story, everywhere they go, they cause as much trouble as they possibly can.

      2. One could use the term : Mussulman derived from Ottoman Turkish (and earlier Persian) mosalmu.

    4. I wonder how Mr Gent (if that is his real name – rather than Mr Effendi) would respond to the evidence that a substantial majority of “peaceful” slammers felt that the London and Paris (and other) bombings were perfectly justified….

    5. Surely police officers of any religious connection would know where to go if they don’t like something. Off is the operative word.
      Perhaps this more than underlines the problems we are having with our police farce in this country. All this ongoing and seemingly pre planned agitation, ensures there is no dedicated consistency in upholding the law.

        1. Not the biggest so far, but one of the most obvious mistakes this country has ever made. Welcome, Welcome……..all.

    6. So we’re not to use the words ‘Islamist’ and ‘Islamism’ because it upsets Muslims. Do they not think that the terror attacks perpetrated by Muslims over the last 20 years, not to mention the rape gangs, might upset the rest of the British population?

    7. Next the National Association of Muslim Police will be saying that no Muslims should be arrested for any offence, as it is Islamophobic.

    10. Marginalises the muslim community. Would that be the 70% entirely welfare dependent, the terrorists, the ones screaming abuse at Jewish children, the ones screaming to free Palestine or the lot with placards saying ‘behead those who insult islam?’ – and it’s a barbaric, savage religion, consider yourself insulted.Then there’s the ones who had a teacher sacked for pointing out the truth.

      Muslims have a very, very, VERY long way to go before they’re not considered damaging and poisonous. A start would be to take out a subscription to Charlie Hebdo and put it in your windows, asking for the mohammid issues first.

    11. Why have we got a National Association of Muslim Police? Have we got a National Association of Christian Police?

          8. You folks all have such lovely homes, organised, clean, no clutter. I look around ours and it’s a bomb site.

      1. Thank you. The Carpenter who hung them previously didn’t bother. As it really is just a shed I’ll risk it!

        2. That’s probably because the door was internal.
          Try and Make sure it stays dry.
          My record on price work was 16 fire checks in one day, 3 hinges each.

          1. Thanks for the advice. I may yet get another pair of hinges!

            Your record is very impressive!

  69. I wrote to my MP last week on the subject of a ban on the import of hunting trophies. She has replied and hopefully she will vote for the ban on 25th November when the bill is up for a second reading. To give her her due, she has replied to several of my emails and doesn’t appear to use the copy and paste generic replies that so many other MPs use.

        1. Another one , not any more .. I had 2 other avatars years ago.. Usawme and Oh Johnny.. ( Alter ego avatars on very old DT days when we could comment and put up photos etc .. I used them on here for a while .. but I got in a total muddle using all three )

          I became too outrageous on the old DT with the other avatars.. and there were some horrible Labour trolls here there and everywhere , quite unpleasant .

      4. Yes – and John had a kiss from an elephant when we visited the Nairobi orphanage a few years ago.

    2. Canada is setting the same fiscal example as a drunk would toa whisky cabinet. Japan has been in debt for decades and limps on with crushing taxes. It’s saving grace is it’s an ethnostate rather than polluted with feckless criminals.

      As for the global crisis – it’s caused by the same thing, regardless of country – government is spending too much, taxing too much. Cut taxes, shred the state.

    3. If this is true then the government must be removed immediately. A complete no confidence vote and abolition.

      The gimmigrants must be expelled, not housed, and certainly not in a hospital – unless it’s the morgue or incinerator.

      1. It’s hotel accommodation normally booked for foreign nurses whilst they get their UK qualifications.

        1. Then it’s for nurses, not for criminals.

          I take your point that maybe the accommodation isn’t being used, but the taxpayer provides for a service, not to house illegal immigrants who should be deported.

          1. With you on this one, Wibbling.
            Let’s hope it stirs up enough fuss to cause government horrendous embarrasement, and to do something to halt the invasion. And giving the French money won’t make a jot of difference.

  73. 367751+ up ticks,

    Could one ask their MP / local area kapo when we are told to vacate our living premises what the baggage allowance will be

      2. 367751+ up ticks,

        G,
        MP’s / kapo ?

        My post is singular,

        A kapo is a governing factor when all
        shortly is revealed, & yes they have been known to favour music ( orchestras ) in the past.

        1. I’m sure you don’t mean to make the term trivial, but a Kapo was unfortunately someone who thought they could only survive by becoming part of the oppressive system that controlled a concentration camp, such a Bergen-Belsen.

          1. The illustration indicates a double sharpening of all five strings – a ‘stop’ in effect. Nothing to do with Nazi politics.

      4. The Kapo (a prisoner who collaborated) was used by the Schutzstaffel guards to supervise forced labour or carry out administrative tasks in concentration camps.

    2. ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ you’ll be ok, just bring essentials and board the train.
      Ps.
      Read ‘If This Is a Man’ a memoir by Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi.

    2. In days of old when knights were bold and toilets weren’t invented. They wiped their rrs on tufts of grass and walked away contented.

  79. 367751+ up ticks,

    Keep up the voting pattern a while longer the consequences will be,

    Coming to your hamlet,village,town,city shorty as the plague spreads from hotel, to guest house, to holiday camps,

    Dt,
    Taliban leader orders judges to enforce sharia law with public executions and amputations
    Hibatullah Akhundzada wants punishments including stoning and floggings, despite promises to rule more moderately

  80. Anyone watching the women’s rugby? I’m sure one of the NZ players is a bloke. Built like a brick sh kite house so she/he is!

    1. Seeing the road, I can’t imagine my parents, even in quieter 1950s, allowing us to ride on such major roads at the age of five.

      3. PS
        The video isn’t clear, but I think that the bike has a stabiliser, which suggests the child can’t really ride the bicycle with full control.

      4. My mother never let me ride on the roads in the 50s. I didn’t have a bike after that. She actually got knocked off her bike in 1960 and never rode one again.

    3. This morning the wireless was on whilst Jeremy Vine was playing his violin for the Ukraine. A gentleman caller started mentioning the Russian side of the story and he was promptly cut off. Not right to mention politics said Mr Vine!

  82. Report from the battlefront.
    MB still incarcerated and being filled with oxygen and anti-Bs. Picking up, but still not exactly at his fizziest. As his head clears, he realises that it was merely his bay, rather than the whole ward that was evacuated; so only 6 people discommoded. Today, there were just a couple of ‘iffy’ ones, though our grandson, while visiting MB, nearly jumped out of his skin when one of them shouted out.
    There is obviously a problem on that ward – probably because people suffering with breathing problems tend to panic – add dementia or psychosis to the mix and you have the perfect recipe for trouble.
    There was a demented woman trying to break down the doors to get onto the male ward while I was there. Again, multiple staff were diverted from their proper job to try to ‘reason’ with her. This behaviour so obviously a frequent event, you would think that there would be antipsychotic drugs kept on the ward ready to be administered – one confirmatory call from a doctor should be enough. The actual psychiatric unit itself is only across the carpark.

    1. A word to the wise:
      Please check and double check that he is being given adequate fluids and food.
      When I was in a similar situation that aspect wasn’t monitored as closely as it should have been.
      I suffered near kidney failure and dehydration, my urine could have been used by Trudeau to blackface himself.

      2. While not wishing to go into details – oh, all right if you insist – he was actually using one of those cardboard thingies as I arrived.
        He certainly didn’t look dehydrated and I think he is now on the ball enough to drink properly. There was a jug and glass within easy reach.
        But I will certainly be keeping a beady eye.

        1. I keep peeing even when I am not drinking enough.

          Premier League kidneys, amateur league bladder!

    2. Sounds like the sooner you get the poor lad home, the better. Nobody needs that kind of crap, especially when poorly.

      1. I doubt they’ll let him out until he’s finished his mega course of anti-Bs. Thursday was mentioned a couple of days back.

    3. Oh dear, don’t patients have charts at the end of their beds any longer re liquid input especially so that because your best beloved has pneumonia , he needs fluids to keep temp down and kidneys clear and confusion at bay?

      It must be hell on the bed blocking medical wards .. really and truly, with raddled elderlies in various stages of dementia .

      1. Seemingly no, as each time you see a doctor they ask you the same questions you’ve already answered.

  83. And buffoons still think Islam is a religion worth allowing into the UK…

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11425583/Afghan-supreme-leader-orders-enforcement-Islamic-law.html

    Taliban adopts full Sharia law in Afghanistan: Judges are ordered by Islamist group’s leader to enforce stonings, floggings and limb amputations
    Leader has ordered executions, stonings and amputations to become part of law
    The new rules renege on a previous promise from the Taliban to become ‘softer’
    Several recent public floggings have already reportedly taken place

    BUT, BUT, BUT

    Do you know something? There are times when I suspect Britain might be a better place if such punishments were meted out to our own thieves, rapists and fraudsters.

      1. A lot better thank you.
        My ankle has eased off quite a lot but my knee is still a bit unsteady. Mind you, my right knee has been a bit unsteady for a few years now!

    2. My guess is that among the innocent Albanians there will also be Daesh, GRU Spetznaz, Chechnyans, allsorts.

    3. My guess is that among the innocent Albanians there will also be Daesh, GRU Spetznaz, Chechnyans, allsorts.

      1. I recall Albanians robbing a home on an offshore island off the coast and slitting the throats of the British owners. I was shocked. i was even more shocked to learn that they were muslims and muslims were handy with a knife, with hindsight the most shocking aspect was the fact that this was mentioned at all (the being handy with a knife was omitted by the msm, but the rest was there) like it was a daily occurrence. This was just north of Corfu, it was many years ago.

    5. Yes.

      Edit. Start defending your homestead. By that I mean making it secure. Really secure. Whilst you still have time. Who knows when this may blow up. Cans of Deep Heat spray may come in useful…. hair spray, insect spray, anything like that.

      1. When we lived overseas , we were advised to use the pump sprays of Flit insect spray, because most rooms had a pump spray handy

        https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184933887293?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=184933887293&targetid=1278724506460&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=1006680&poi=&campaignid=9446017636&mkgroupid=125619933787&rlsatarget=pla-1278724506460&abcId=578896&merchantid=115584534&gclid=CjwKCAiA68ebBhB-EiwALVC-Nro1H6C2umthklNUyOYTXiQwIbXmnyrph2ErHoguUb5lBu46OflOjBoCBL8QAvD_BwE

  86. I’m switching off now. Our lovely girls are taking a beating from the Kiwi team.
    Their two heavy (night club bouncers) weights are doing some damage 12 and 24.

  87. I think my turd-o-meter is now broken beyond all repair:

    EXCLUSIVE: ‘A bewildering choice!’ RFK Jr. is ‘baffled’ by his family’s decision to honor Prince Harry and Meghan with prestigious human rights award in NYC… as tickets for glitzy December gala go on sale for up to $1 MILLION
    Harry and Meghan will be honored at the annual Ripple of Hope gala on Dec 6
    They are among ‘laureates’ of this year’s award and share it with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
    Some say it’s ‘blatantly ludicrous’ that they should be honored when their Archewell foundation is so new
    The award is given by RFK Human Rights, set up in honor of Bobby Kennedy and run predominantly by his daughter, Kerry Kennedy
    RFK Jr., Kerry’s brother, tells DailyMail.com Harry and Meghan are a ‘bewildering choice’
    He however thinks it’s an ‘encouraging step up’ from Anthony Fauci in 2020
    Tickets to the event are being sold from $2,500 to $1million

    The article shows how bizarre life has become.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11427021/RFK-Jr-baffled-Harry-Meghan-receiving-humanitarian-award-Kennedy-charity.html

    There isn’t a sanitary towel big enough to even start covering a fraction of these

    five letter word beginning with “c” and ending with “s”

  89. In an age of short-term memory, remembrance is more important than ever

    Collective commemoration tells us who we are and creates the societal solidarity that gives democracy meaning

    ROBERT TOMBS • 12 November 2022 • 6:15pm

    What societies remember, and how they remember, is a fundamental part of what they are. The French philosopher Ernest Renan (an inescapable reference on this subject) thought that memory was the very substance of a national community.

    In a celebrated lecture, “What is a nation?”, given at the Sorbonne in 1882, he reflected on what held people together in modern democratic nations – still a fairly new form of social organisation and not, he thought, eternal.

    They were based not on the dictates of race, language, religion or geography, nor merely on material interests, but on “the desire to live together”, which fed on “a rich legacy of memories” of shared disaster and suffering as well as of shared triumph. Memories created the “social capital” that was “essential to being a people”, for on them was based the “solidarity” that made democracy meaningful.

    Memories of war are not of course the only memories that nations retain, but they are the most dramatic and often the most powerful.

    This weekend is when our own national community celebrates with particular solemnity one of its greatest shared memories in a formal act of “Remembrance”. The monarch leads the nation in a symbolic gesture: the laying of a wreath on a cenotaph. This gesture has become almost universal. Whenever there is some painful event that a community wishes to share in – “solidarity”, in Renan’s word – we lay flowers, whether on the sites of natural bereavement, accidents or even crimes.

    On Remembrance Sunday, we collectively lay flowers, through our representatives, on a stone symbol of death in war, the greatest shared bereavement of modern times.

    This is far from being the only way to remember, or even a widely shared one. Our French allies, and our former Russian allies, celebrate the end of the World Wars with triumphal military parades. Even though their human losses were greater than ours, they celebrate victory, rather than mourn loss: France’s Unknown Warrior rests beneath Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe.

    I have often wondered why there is this difference. Perhaps because both France and Russia seemed to be facing national extinction, with the enemy on their soil: so victory meant survival. Our danger was less, and so the lives lost in “some corner of a foreign field” outweighed the eventual triumph.

    Whatever the reason, our greatest national act of memory has always been one of deep and shared grief. Rudyard Kipling, whose son had been killed, expressed it movingly in his poem “London Stone”:

    When you come to London Town,
    (Grieving–grieving!)
    Bring your flowers and lay them down
    At the place of grieving!

    For the narrator, the only thing that helped was that “our neighbour’s standing there, grieving as we’re grieving”.

    When the Cenotaph was unveiled, the line of mourners stretched for seven miles. That a ceremony that began more than a century ago still has the power to move us is remarkable. We are now further from the First World War than the people of that time were from Waterloo, and as far as I know, there were no ceremonies of remembrance for the Napoleonic Wars.

    Thomas Hardy, in his novel The Trumpet Major, recalled only a few “casual relics”, such as bullet holes in a barn door, as visible testament to that deadly struggle. In pre-democratic days, ordinary soldiers were not remembered outside their families. Their names were not carved on memorials. That had changed by 1914-18. But official records and monuments would not on their own guarantee a common memory unless people responded.

    Yet, there may no longer be anyone living who can recall any who died in the First World War, and few with personal memories of the Second. Of course, poignant memories can long linger in families. I remember being told as a child that my beloved aunt had learned of the death of her only son at Salerno when a neighbour brought her the official telegram as she was standing in a queue for her ration. Though this still brings tears to my eyes, what keeps Remembrance Day alive is not fading individual memory. Indeed, the ceremony did seem to be losing significance a generation ago.

    But since then, collectively, we have renewed it with memories of more recent conflicts and losses still painfully felt: in the Falklands, Ireland, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

    No longer simply remembrance of the men of the trenches who did not live to see the Armistice, it has become a time to remember and mourn all whose lives were lost in war. The red poppy has taken on a significance far beyond Flanders Fields, most recently being used to pay tribute to a former British soldier killed fighting for Ukraine.

    Recent events show that many people in this country – I would like to think most people – feel a deep need to share the common memory that Renan and Kipling in different ways evoked.

    The late Queen’s funeral showed the desire felt by so many to be part of that sharing, and channelling it is a fundamental function of monarchy. It creates a unity transcending the social, political, economic and cultural differences natural to all societies.

    For some people – a minority, I hope, but certainly not a negligible one – it is the differences that are real, and the unity that is factitious. Hence, the nation is an illusion, and the monarchy a fraud.

    The sources of this view are several. They include the old Marxist emphasis on class conflict as the fundamental reality; the recent emergence of “identity politics” based on combining and mobilising minority grievances; and the gentler sentiments of those happy to imagine themselves “citizens of everywhere”.

    These views conflict deeply with each other, but all contribute to the feeling famously described by George Orwell as being less ashamed to be caught stealing from a poor-box than standing up for the national anthem.

    Those who reject a nation necessarily reject, and try to dissolve, its shared memories. They quite often succeed to some degree, as memory is fragile.

    The 1960s musical Oh What a Lovely War aimed, no doubt sincerely, to commemorate those whose lives were lost through a satirical caricature of the waste and futility of the First World War. But, at the same time, it inevitably trivialised what had been at stake, and made those who fought and died into deluded victims.

    That view has never entirely faded. The Second World War is less easy to debunk, but Britain’s indispensable part in it has often been understated both by Left and Right. Today’s attempt to undermine national memory is more comprehensive. It claims that our history is overwhelmingly one of exploitation, slavery, violence and racism. It wants us to pay “reparations”. There is little or nothing positive in the picture to balance the negative. Even the struggle against fascism is dismissed – because, some assert, the British Empire was worse than the Nazis.

    So absurd is this version of the past that it might seem tempting simply to laugh it off. But, whether in its full version or to some extent diluted, it has secured a foothold in many of our national institutions. Schools, museums, universities and parts of 
the mass media are propagating it to some degree.

    Many of its proponents are doubtless convinced that they are doing a public service in trying to destroy relics of “colonialism” – a term now applied to every aspect of mainstream culture, from music to mathematics, from gardening to philosophy. History is the front line of this “culture war”: if the idea can be sufficiently spread that our past is fundamentally evil, then every aspect of our culture, society and political system becomes vulnerable, and our solidarity a fake.

    Fortunately, this divisive version of the past has many weaknesses. As well as factual inaccuracy, these include self-righteousness, for it is based on a claim to moral superiority; ungenerosity, for it systematically ascribes the worst motives to those it disapproves of; and lack of humanity in refusing to understand or empathise with people in the past.

    Thus, it dehumanises past generations and seeks to separate us from them.

    Most people, however, do not share these depressing ambitions. The stream of humanity who queued to pay respects to the Queen, and the long line marching past the Cenotaph, embody a wish to live as part of a community that includes both the dead and the living. “We will remember them” is a deeply human instinct.

    Robert Tombs is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/12/age-short-term-memory-remembrance-important-ever1/

  90. Police force is ‘running out of vegan meals’ because they arrested so many Just Stop Oil protesters during M25 protest
    Essex Police is ‘running out of vegan meals’ following Just Stop Oil protests
    The group brought chaos to the M25 and a police motorcyclist was thrown
    The force went on to arrest and charge 17 activists with the disruption
    By IZZY LYONS FOR THE DAILY MAIL

    PUBLISHED: 20:11, 14 November 2022 | UPDATED: 20:25, 14 November 2022 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11427223/Police-force-running-vegan-meals-arresting-Just-Stop-Oil-protesters.html

  92. Two of England’s largest Tory-run local authorities have warned the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, that they will be forced to declare bankruptcy within the next few months because of the unprecedented financial crisis enveloping both councils.

    The leaders of Kent and Hampshire county councils said even “drastic cuts” to current services would not be enough to patch up the huge holes in their budgets created by soaring inflation and rising pressures in adult and children’s social care.

    In a strongly worded joint letter to Sunak, Kent leader, Roger Gough, and Hampshire leader, Rob Humby, said while they recognised the difficult national economic circumstances, “we cannot sit by and let two great counties sleepwalk into a financial disaster”. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/14/two-tory-run-councils-warns-pm-of-possible-bankruptcy

    1. Shropshire is heading that way. It can’t produce a balanced budget. Bet no diversity managers will go, though.

    2. I think the very large fan running in the background has some very unpleasant stuff heading it’s way. And with that turd for the day I wish you all a very good night and the sweetest of dreams….!

    3. The collapse is in train. Its going to be a rough ride for many. I see the crypto crash is going to affect markets soon.

    4. When councils were composed of well meaning local folk and finances kept in order by a Town Clerk, usually a solicitor, where properties were taxed according to a rateable value, we had no such problems.

      Heseltine came up with the Council Tax where Thatcher’s Poll Tax was fairer but defeated by lefties.

      Gordon Brown wished the country to be run by Freemasons lodged in ever expanding council offices. Those Masons could manage a piss up in a brewery but not a lot else, apart from grifting and lining their own pockets and ensuring the bulk of the Council Tax was diverted into funding their pensions.

    5. It occurs to me that these two council leaders may have been asked to create some ‘ammunition’ for the Chancellor to enable him to ‘justify’ a forecast massive rise in council tax later this week.

      Good morning to you who are now awake….

  93. Evening, all. Just back from a PCC meeting. As for the headline, the “West” (and particularly us) should stay out of the Ukraine.

      1. I imagine our money was funnelled by Zelensky through the recently bankrupted Bitcoin mafiosi to fund Joe Biden’s mid term elections fraud.

        I always believed that Zelensky is a puppet of the WEF/UN/WHO and the Soros, Gates, Blair, Obama, Clinton, Biden cabal of purely evil politicos.

        Our current politicians are also bought and as corrupt and evil as those now fully exposed as such in America.

  94. 367751+ up ticks,

    Musing on Christmas gifts and since it is now illegal to buy granny / granddad matching 12 bore shotguns why not a nice spray say one with a peppery/ spicy scent keep them in various rooms & even the garden area
    keep a couple of small cans of spray paint one of white to touch up black fascias & a black one to touch up white fascias.

    The political overseers are trying their upmost to eliminate you leaving you no option but to be your own safety man also protectors of your nearest & dearest ( plus peoples that owe you money)

    New rules can be adhered to , personal choice, two metre personal space

    if entered by a politico, take that as an act of aggression, wear a mask only to fool ID parades or maybe a mini skirted burka to upset & confuse the enemas.

  96. Just looked at the Telegraph.
    No actual news, just lots of fluff and opinion pieces. No wonder I can read it free of charge, nobody would pay for that sub-Sunday magazine drivel.

      1. I’d settle for a news source that stuck to reporting the facts and not spinning them or omitting them if they don’t fit the narrative, Tom. Right-wing could only be a bonus.
        Morning, BTW. (Manners, Timothy)

Comments are closed.