Monday 15 May: The Prime Minister lacks a vision for getting Britain back to work

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

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

505 thoughts on “Monday 15 May: The Prime Minister lacks a vision for getting Britain back to work”

    1. The west has a lot of work to do and PDQ. It’s no good sitting around being complacent, smiling and being nice to everyone. It’s exactly what drives these people on.

  2. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Lessons Learned

    One day, Veronica got her first period.

    Confused and frightened, she decided to ask her pal Johnny if he could figure out what was going on down there.

    So she pulled down her knickers and pointed to her crotch.

    Johnny became serious and said, “You know, I’m not a doctor, but it looks to me like someone just ripped your balls off!”

    …and a bonus.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJI2Ua4xhKs

    1. I’ve long said “Be prepared to suffer fools gladly, because the idiot you verbally abuse today might be promoted above you tomorrow.”

      1. Leo Varadkar’s boyfriend likens Coronation to Harry Potter

        Matt Barrett accused of embarrassing his country with string of joke social media posts during the ceremony to crown Charles III

        By India McTaggart, ROYAL CORRESPONDENT
        14 May 2023 • 7:42pm

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2428678881c3436701e949623fc60c6b0488d276c338f91d70fdbdf4162f48df.jpg
        Matt Barrett (right) attended the Coronation of King Charles as the partner of Leo Varadkar, the Irish premier
        *
        *
        *********************************************

        Paul Wusteman
        10 HRS AGO
        There are 3 points to be made here, in a sequence
        1. The first is the nature of Varadkar’s boyfriend, who accepts hospitality at a formal event (from which he could have stayed away) and then publicly attempts to ridicule his host, after being introduced to him. That is contemptible, an extraordinary breach of the ideas of courtesy that exist in civilised countries.
        2. The fact that Varadkar brought this type with him, has selected him and associates with him shows appalling crudeness and lack of judgment in Varadkar himself.
        3. The Irish selected Varadkar as their leader – that shows a contemptible lack of judgment in the Irish themselves for selecting such a person to lead and represent them.

        Charlie Farnes-Barnes
        11 HRS AGO
        One queen making comments about another queen. I wonder if his partner has a Black Rod?

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/05/14/leo-varadkar-boyfriend-likens-coronation-harry-potter/

  4. Good morning. 13C and cloudy on the Sussex coast.Driving to Eastbourne today via one of the best views in England over the Cuokmere Haven. grerat examples of Oxbow Lakes.

  6. Mornin all.
    Oh, the DT’s conceit that anyone expects Sunak to have a vision for Britain!
    He has a vision for whatever next job he has been promised. End of.

  8. Immigration – you ain’t seen nothing yet. Spiked. 15 May 2023.

    The campaigning think-tank Migration Watch estimate that if the 2022 figures are even half the forecast amount, this puts the UK on target for an increase in population of about nine million (equal to the population of London) in the next 20 years. The Office for National Statistics estimates – no one really knows to a certainty – that the population of Britain in 2020 was 67million. An increase of nine million – and I would be happy to bet on it being far more than that – takes us to the foothills of 80million and beyond in this tiny, overcrowded, semi-bankrupt country. Public services are already choked and hopelessly oversubscribed, property largely unaffordable to the next generation, rents extortionate and, as figures revealed last week, a record 7.3million people are waiting for routine operations in an overwhelmed NHS: the same health service for which the government wrecked the economy in order, so the flim-flam went, to prevent it from being overwhelmed.

    The only qualification I might make to this prognosis is that the whole thing will collapse utterly before we get to twenty years.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/immigration-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet/

      1. There is nowhere Nan. The Visegrad States are the best hope but even they are under enormous pressure.

  10. The Prime Minister lacks a vision for getting Britain back to work

    We he can’t see much from down there at his eye level, I suppose.

  11. More subsidy needed for the subsidence

    Large hole opens up above HS2 tunnel

    Campaigners say hole proves it’s ‘time to stop digging’ but HS2 say opening likely linked to ‘pre-existing ground conditions’

    By Catherine Lough
    14 May 2023 • 8:15pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/05/14/TELEMMGLPICT000335628881_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqGqsACZlHbE0dphyiTtkx51TmGTZwRSZcqbDiPNar8DA.jpeg?imwidth=680

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/14/large-hole-opens-up-above-hs2-tunnel/

    2. Last month, the chief executive of one of HS2’s biggest contractors said that the project needed a “major rethink”.

      Bob Pragada, head of the Fortune 500 engineering consultancy Jacobs, suggested Boris Johnson had failed to scrutinise data on travelling patterns and demand properly before he greenlit the controversial project. He said that it was time to pause and properly analyse this data before deciding which parts of the project should be prioritised.

      The call for more detailed analysis came after Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, announced last month that HS2 would be pared back and delayed to combat its soaring costs.

      A DfT spokesman said at the time: “HS2 continues to represent a crucial investment into our national infrastructure, levelling up communities right across our country, providing a net-zero alternative to car travel and domestic flights, increasing capacity on our rail network and training a skilled workforce for the UK’s future construction industry.”

      No further comment required…

  12. Morning, all Y’all.
    Sunny, threatened with thunder and lightning, very, very frightening… 🙂

  13. Good morning, all. Overcast here again and the forecast is for a dry but cool day. Grass needs the attention of the mower.

    Sunak lacks vision? I don’t think so, it’s just that his vision isn’t in accord with what the people want and expect from their government. Sunak’s adherence to the Net-Zero fallacy is one of the main drivers in his ‘vision’ and that one policy alone will cause complete mayhem within the UK’s economy, as it is designed to do, as energy becomes much more expensive and in some cases unavailable.
    For proof, the USA under Biden is following a similar path re energy and energy expert Dave Walsh does some explaining about what is going on in the States (from 4 minutes in).

    War Room – Dave Walsh on Energy

  14. Nick Green fails to realise that we no longer have a Prime Minister. That post has now superseded by one of Executive Manager for the United Kingdom, as appointed by the WEF.

    SIR – Rishi Sunak has steadied the ship after the Johnson and Truss eras. This is to his credit. Now, though, he needs to move the dial – for the sake of our nation and his party.

    To do so he must take some risks and act with vision and imagination. We left the EU in part because many saw it as a drag on the UK’s entrepreneurial energy and drive. Yet since the start of Covid, it is our own energy and drive that have stalled, with the country mired in a welfare mentality, state handouts and a loss of self-reliance and appetite for work. It should set alarm bells ringing when the likes of Revolut say the UK is no longer an attractive place to do business (report, May 8).

    Our Prime Minister needs a new mission and more urgency, and to ride the Civil Service hard on delivery so he can foster an economy attractive to investors and entrepreneurs across all sectors, in a country where defence is adequately provided, where infrastructure is properly maintained, and where tax rates are minimised. There is much more he needs to do, but these are among the basics on which, sadly, he is failing.

    Nick Green
    Devizes, Wiltshire

    1. I’m thinking that Nick Green requires a wake-up call. Sunak is the epitome of that quote from Ronald Reagan, viz., “I’m from the government…”

  15. Morning all 🙂😉
    Brighter start but so far noticeably colder than yesterday.
    It’s not just getting people back to work that matters Richie. Due so many government (polite) mistakes, I suspect many people have lost the will and motivation to live. They’ve seen what thousands of invaders can get for doing absolutely sweet FA. And are keen to follow suit.

    1. Nobody wants to comply with all the woke insanity if they go back to work, it’s very bad for the mental health of older people.

      1. I keep seeing programmes on TV about younger people suffering from ‘mental health issues’ they don’t get any sympathy from me. Bloody idiots taking advantage of recently invented excuses to be stupid in public.

  20. Ministers call for immigration and UK food prices to increase. 15 May 2023.

    Immigration and food prices must increase to solve the food crisis, ministers are to say at a summit.

    Rishi Sunak will be joined by ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as well as farmers and industry leaders at the meeting at No 10 on Tuesday.

    If you are in a hole. Keep digging!

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/15/ministers-call-for-immigration-and-uk-food-prices-to-increase

      1. Kick them all out that would be the best solution. If we stop feeding them they’ll steal.

    3. It’s alright for ‘king ministers, the ministry and the overall political classes, they’ll claim back any extra costs back on their expenses. Which in turn leads to rises in taxation. To pay for all these useless slime balls.

  21. Good morning all,

    Sunny start at the McPhee Ranch with some cloud building, wind back to the North, 9℃ with an unseasonal (again) forecast ‘high’ of 14℃.

    SWMBO’s better but in accordance with our custom of sharing everything she’s given it to me. Been awake since 3.00am with a sore throat and now that I’m up and about, aching legs and shoulders. No going fishing this week I think. Nor to the theatre tonight. I don’t hold out much hope that the box office will swap our tickets for a later performance if there are still seats available.

    Letters:

    SIR – That Lord Frost has launched his bid to become an MP (report, May 14) is the best news I’ve heard for ages. At last. We need him.

    Priscilla Hall
    Colchester, Essex

    Welcome though that is, Priscilla, he has to win the seat first. If he does, it is to be hoped that he makes it to the Cabinet toot sweet and to PM shortly thereafter. However, one swallow does not a summer make nor can you soar like an eagle when surrounded by turkeys.

    1. If you think that the dedicated Remainers in the HoC are going to let Lord Frost become a member

      of Cabinet then you are quite incredibly optimistic.

  23. Good morning all.

    We had rain during the night , which was very welcome

    The grass has seems to have grown overnight, Moh mowed the grass last Thursday.

    Breezy , blue sky and 10c.

    Moh must be optimistic because he is wearing his golf shorts for his game this morning , he would play everyday if he had a chance .

    1. I find 12-14℃ a tad cool for shorts notwithstanding the modern British habit, common among ‘posties’, of wearing them in the depths of winter, sometimes with just a T-shirt.

      Years ago when I was still an airline pilot I took a Santa Special up to Rovaniemi in the Arctic Circle. Prior to top of descent I went to the loo and put on my daughter’s ski thermals under my uniform. When I came out the cabin crew looked at me sideways and asked what I thought I was doing. My reply was along the lines of “if we have an emergency and have to evacuate the aircraft out on the runway either on landing or on take-off, I’ll survive. You won’t.” It was -23℃ with a 20-25 mph wind.

      Sitting watching the passengers for the return flight walk from the terminal to the aircraft I was astonished to see two blokes in shorts and T-shirts! What do these people have for brains?

      1. I’m often intrigued by the mix of clothing you see, when one half is almost certainly inappropriate for the conditions – duvet jacket and shorts being a favourite!

      2. The thing is , Moh hates the cold , I irritate him because I am a windows open person .

        Before he left this morning , I declared my surprise that he wasn’t wrapped up warmly.

        When he was a flyer, he had goon suits and suitable thermal protection .

        Retirement brings on warmer clothing choices . He has always been cord trouser person , during the winter months , thermal under wear as well.

        11c and very breezy now

        PS, Are you going down with flu ?

        1. Could be. Headache, mild sore throat, shivery, acheing neck, shoulders and limbs. General lassitude but not running a temperature. I had a bout this time last year which was like nothing I’d ever had before. Temp nearly 39℃, sweats, VERY sore throat which suddenly cleared up after 3 -4 days. I usually get rid of this sort of thing (and colds) within 2-3 days but I think it’ll depend now on what damage has been done to my immune system by two AZ jibby-jabs.

          I remember goon suits and the one-piece zipped under garment – very cosy. Almost too cosy.

          1. Do you take vitamin D3 Fiscal? and vitamin C is good too. I think we both had the dreaded covid in January 2020 and I started to take Vit D the following autumn. I have had some dreadful colds etc, over the years as has everyone else but since 2020 I’ve had nothing except a VERY sore throat last August (which didn’t develop into anything) and was after I’d stopped taking vitamins for the summer. I think they’ve kept me well – I had the two AZ jabs as I had a trip to Kenya booked (it was postponed twice) but have had no boosters and won’t be having any more jabs for anything if I can avoid them.

          2. I did but SWMBO stopped me because she insisted there was something in the pill which was affecting my complexion and mood and she didn’t like it. She’s not called SWMBO for nothing. Generally I eat enough fresh fruit, veg and oily fish coupled with sunshine in the summer to get enough C and D. I don’t eat any processed, adulterated products of the food industry.

            Me neither on jabs. Not one. No flu’, shingles, or anything else. Not now.

          3. I succumbed to the propaganda and had the flu jab in 2020. Also had the shingles one as shingles is nasty and I don’t want to get it again. I won’t be bothering with any more. I’ve had many for travel as I expect you did, but I don’t want any more.

            I’ve also had second thoughts about the childhood vaccine regime – it’s been stepped up in recent years since my boys were young, and there are vastly more than when I was a child. I had whooping cough, measles, chicken pox and mumps (nasty at 25) and I think those diseases, although they can be fatal in some cases, were never going to kill me and they have made my immune system stronger.

          4. Do you take vitamin D3 Fiscal? and vitamin C is good too. I think we both had the dreaded covid in January 2020 and I started to take Vit D the following autumn. I have had some dreadful colds etc, over the years as has everyone else but since 2020 I’ve had nothing except a VERY sore throat last August (which didn’t develop into anything) and was after I’d stopped taking vitamins for the summer. I think they’ve kept me well – I had the two AZ jabs as I had a trip to Kenya booked (it was postponed twice) but have had no boosters and won’t be having any more jabs for anything if I can avoid them.

    2. I find 12-14℃ a tad cool for shorts notwithstanding the modern British habit, common among ‘posties’, of wearing them in the depths of winter, sometimes with just a T-shirt.

      Years ago when I was still an airline pilot I took a Santa Special up to Rovaniemi in the Arctic Circle. Prior to top of descent I went to the loo and put on my daughter’s ski thermals under my uniform. When I came out the cabin crew looked at me sideways and asked what I thought I was doing. My reply was along the lines of “if we have an emergency and have to evacuate the aircraft out on the runway either on landing or on take-off, I’ll survive. You won’t.” It was -23℃ with a 20-25 mph wind.

      Sitting watching the passengers for the return flight walk from the terminal to the aircraft I was astonished to see two blokes in shorts and T-shirts! What do these people have for brains?

  24. The bully Gove says this.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/05/14/michael-gove-house-building-targets-planning-powers/

    Michael Gove has threatened to strip planning approval powers from the Peak District National Park Authority and nine councils in a bid to speed up house building.

    The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary wrote letters to the bodies’ chief executives after they were found to be repeatedly falling short of targets for making decisions on planning applications.

    Mr Gove warned that decision-making powers would be removed and given to the UK-wide Planning Inspectorate unless tangible improvements were seen by June.

    Such a move would likely result in more building applications being approved, given that the Planning Inspectorate is a centralised body with no ties to specific areas.

    The nine councils targeted beyond the Peak District by Mr Gove were Calderdale, Cotswold, Epsom & Ewell, Guildford, Hinkley & Bosworth, Pendle, Portsmouth, Vale of White Horse and Waverley.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/05/14/michael-gove-house-building-targets-planning-powers/

    William Bradley
    9 MIN AGO
    This man ruins every department he touches. Just look at agriculture, Defra and farm payments. The dog’s breakfast he introduced then left is nothing short of disastrous. The schemes, all complicated and designed to confuse are grossly underfunded and only suitable for marginal land or farms. Yes, we need to fund diversification but we need sustainable food production, now more than any period since WW2.
    Farmer uptake of the schemes is disastrously low, Defra have gone silent on how they’re going to fix it and Coffey appears to have no idea at all.

    John Bickley
    21 MIN AGO
    The elephant in the room is that 5 million people are on out of work benefits. The government could force many of these people to do more work by reducing them.
    The government could stop encouraging young people to go to second rate universities to do third rate degrees, and thereby incurring massive debts. Most of the youngsters going to University would be financially better off leaving school at 16>18 and getting into the workplace.
    The indigenous population is not producing enough children and unless they do so then immigration will continue to be high. EDITED

    1. And two more letters that confirm that everything thing politicians come into contact with they eff it up and big time.
      Building new homes for people who don’t want to work is stupid. Once the ground has been turned over it will never recover.
      Gove is the ultimate sinner he’s a pathetic pathological liar. And should lock up in solitary confinement.

    2. Utterly disgusting that a minister would pour concrete over our country just to fractionally resolve an issue entirely of their own making.

      It’s as if they made a list of everything they should do, and then did the precise opposite.

    3. The one thing that is consistent in replies to requests for what people want at a local level is “NO MORE HOUSING”.

  25. 371298+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Rishi Sunak latest news: Britain to send Ukraine hundreds of missiles and attack drones

    So to all intents & purposes we are at war with Russia, will mandatory conscription for the indigenous only be on the cards
    if so, decent peoples MUST insist ALL the majority voters be sent to the front as they are a danger in the rear (behind decent peoples backs)

    We could very well be in line for getting up close & personal with
    nuclear reactors in a very dangerous form, and from the fallout would bring about more odious damage in one hit than the lab/lib/con/current ukip coalition have achieved in 40 years.

    1. Good morning Ogga 1

      The time is drawing nearer when we might be jolted by an enormous bang.

      What on earth is Sunak doing. We are a target once again .

        1. I was saying today that my ROC post was a hole in the ground in a field in the middle of nowhere; I doubt I could have got there in 3 minutes anyway!

    2. Sending arms, even our useless ones, is pointless without the engineering and training to use them. If we want to start a war with a supplier of energy we’re reliant upon because of our own government’s myopic stupidity we’re even more completely stupid than even I thought.

          2. Except he was called Read! I got confused and read it incorrectly! 😱

    2. They want to move the grave to accommodate gimmigrants.

      Just read that again, slowly and realise who the state prefers.

      Get rid of the sodding gimmigrants. Don’t even let them into the country. If they get uppity, if they won’t turn, back,, shoot them. Get rid of the ones here.

      1. This will be one of the major reasons for a revolution and a civil war.

        ‘Twil make Kristallnacht look like a picnic.

    3. The old black and white (whoops) film The Dambusters was on TV last week. In that they change the labs name to Trigger from the original.

    4. If Guy Gibson’s dog had been a pale coloured labrador called Honky or Gammon would it have caused the same outrage?

  28. UK pledges hundreds of new attack drones to Ukraine ahead of Zelenskyy-Sunak summit. 15 May 2023.

    The Ukrainian president will meet Mr Sunak at Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat, for “substantive negotiations” over military aid.

    The government said Mr Sunak will confirm today the further provision of hundreds of air defence missiles and further unmanned aerial systems, including hundreds of new long-range attack drones with a range of over 200km.

    Mr Sunak said it was a “crucial moment” in Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s invasion, adding: “We must not let them down.”

    It’s pretty obvious that we are now at war with Russia. We may not have any boots on the ground but for all practical purposes that is where we are. What’s Vlad going to do? That is the million dollar question. Retreat is surely out of the question. Even if he personally survived there is no reason to believe that a NATO armed Ukraine would stop at the Crimea. Russia itself would be in danger. Whoever became its leader would face the exact same problem. I’m obviously not the President of Russia (contrary to some assertions on the Spectator threads) and lack his intelligence resources and options but I think that were I he, I would go nuclear.

    https://news.sky.com/story/ukraines-president-volodymyr-zelenskyy-arrives-in-uk-for-substantive-negotiations-with-rishi-sunak-12881273

      1. War has always been the way out when governments have got themselves into a complete shambles. But, now fragmented, there is no patriotism left to support it…

      2. War has always been the way out when governments have got themselves into a complete shambles. But, now fragmented, there is no patriotism left to support it…

    2. More utter lunacy. It’s looking more and more like the “this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper” model is seriously flawed – bang seems unavoidable.

  29. 371298+ up ticks,

    Dt,

    Large hole opens up above HS2 tunnel
    Campaigners say hole proves it’s ‘time to stop digging’ but HS2 say opening likely linked to ‘pre-existing ground conditions’

    Truth be told,
    Revealing a large cache of tax payers monies awaiting divvy up by the scammers,

    The HS2 scam is set to run longer than the Mousetrap.

    Really, who in their right minds wants to reach the Saudi capital
    15 minutes sooner than needs be.

    1. No one, but HS2 – TEN-T, TENS, is an EU project. That’s why it’s not being cancelled.

  30. I heard some idiot on Radio 4 declaring that the UK, and the EU in general, should not just supply Ukraine with long-range missiles, attack aircraft and endless ammunition, but get personally involved in the ‘war’ against Russia, and not stop until Ukraine is incorporated into NATO and the EU. I didn’t get his name but he had an upper-class English accent. I do hope he gets driven to the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris by a drugged up chogie as soon as possible. War with Russia! The man’s an idiot.

    Володимир Зеленський – The muppet being used by the Yanks to front the war against Russia and the latest boyfriend of Macron and Sunak. It will be remembered as the name of the 21st Century Armageddon – if there are any survivors.

  31. ‘Morning All

    Roll up,roll up grab your diabetes and obesity in a box,roll up!!

    https://twitter.com/drdeborahmd/status/1657379625465696257?s=21&t=IVCTaRCZus3QATp2l8PWSw

    Rest of the medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6c1a3977abb543f28b6c05e5b804d89bb37d218855fad89d681f58faa2aff93f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/018cf1e587ff792e4c0d8d32978f85aa3b32a692bcadd824624a1b3a5106766d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/80084e8988d7946f6d976ddb02060a061f43a8c020e86b30eee11c199dee630c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/239d21e9c9b3095c541669c266b747397a8685d7fdca663f440c802c0c75b512.gif

    1. On the cereal – that’s up to the parents. Junior has a bowl of fruit with yoghurt and porridge. Frankly, considering how appalling far too many parents are (and this is directly linked to their working status) a cereal is the least of our worries.

      1. When my children were young and at school , and when Moh was away, I used to give the boys a cooked breakfast and a banana!

        Usually a boiled egg and toast , grilled fish fingers and bacon , or porridge, grilled tomatoes and scrambled egg .

        Fish fingers and bacon was by far the most popular brekkie..to do food to start the day, school meals had started to deteriorate in quality , and the boys were always ravenous .

        1. We seldom had/have a cooked breakfast but I wouldn’t give them so much sugar. I never bought them sweets, mainly because their paternal grandmother filled them up with them and made them hyper. If we ever caught the bus back up the hill when I collected them from the infant school, the first thing most parents did was pack them with sweets – they tried to make me do the same. I knew then – nearly 50 years ago that sugar did them no good at all.

          I believe I am healthy because I limit my sugar intake to very little, apart from fruit. My husband loves sweet things……. his health has taken a tumble in the last few years.

          1. I do agree with you, Mohs parents gave the boys some awful stuff, and anything with orange colouring used to set them off.

            I also limit my sweet tooth .. We haven’t had a bag of sugar in the house for years.

            I keep a large bar of Galaxy in the fridge , a small square as a treat , and a little bit for Moh if his diabetes makes him wobbly.

            I have a fuller figure now than I had when I was younger .. in contrast to my SA siblings who are always beach ready .

          2. I’m certainly not beach-ready! But I’m not overweight either. If I feel a bit flabby I cut down on carbs and that works.
            J loves sweet things though and eats jam, marmalade – I do make him some proper marmalade each year in January. That’s the only time I buy sugar.

            He makes cakes and puddings – I might have a small taste but really I’d rather go without. He never puts on weight – but now he has all these heart problems.
            He was told recently after a blood test that he was borderline pre-diabetic. He could reverse that if he cut down the sweet stuff but I guess it’s his only pleasure these days! I think it’s a throwback to a wartime childhood.

    2. Another set of spot on glimpses of how daft our life styles have become.
      I particularly like number four.

    3. People pay to put cremated human remains in pyrotechnic rockets and then blast them into the sky. It is a concept that works well, provided that you do not first post the ashes to a relative, cunningly mislabelled as dog biscuits, because it is unlawful to send (all the) ashes via the Royal Mail. But the fireworks were good. Edit: 50 grammes maximum in the post.

    1. Our local is not on the list. They must be making a fortune with all the oldies living in the area. I usually place a repeat in the letter box of our GP surgery and within 3 working days the prescription is ready for collection.

      1. I used to do that, but then the surgery closed. Now I have to email my request to Shropshire POD.

      2. I order my repeat prescription online and my nominated pharmacy delivers it within 48 hours.

        1. I phone up a Ripley number, go through the requirements and it’s usually ready to pick up next day.

    2. Lloyds have a lot in the list. OH switched last year from Lloyds near here to a small branch of Boots, which was equidistant and usually has his meds ready on time. His father was a pharmacist as well as optician – he continued working in to his 70s.

  34. 271298+ up ticks,

    May one say,
    The way things are shaping up the global warming brigade could very well be proved right only, in an unintended manner.

    One nuclear response hitting the United Kingdom arms dump
    could trigger a world encompassing reaction giving a great many of us rosy cheeks for a while, then we melt.

  35. It’s still a bit chilly out there! Especially in the shade.
    Just re-coiled two of my Tirfor stops, the 10m and one of the 20m, and had to put my gloves on. In for a mug of tea before I coil up the other 20m one.

    A bit of madness to amuse/appall everyone:-

    American Trans Activist Sues Japanese Government To Recognize Self-Declared Gender Identity, “Lesbian” Marriage

    An American man who identifies as a “transgender lesbian” is seeking to have his marriage recognized as one of the first lesbian marriages in Japan, where same-sex marriages have not yet been legalized. Elin McCready, 49, whose birth name is Eric, also has a history which involves harassing the owner of a lesbian club for denying him admission to a women-only event.

    In 2021, while living as a resident of Japan, McCready and his spouse, Midori Morita, filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government arguing that their refusal to acknowledge his marriage as a lesbian union was unconstitutional. Japan does not currently have self-identification policies, and requires males who identify as transgender to have gone through genital surgeries and hormone treatment prior to being reclassified as the opposite sex on legal documents.

    Read more at:-
    https://reduxx.info/american-trans-activist-sues-japanese-government-to-recognize-self-declared-gender-identity-lesbian-marriage/

    https://reduxx.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Untitled-design-4-1-1392×783.jpg

    1. Just put my sheets out despite a shower a couple of minutes ago. I am a gambler at heart.

    2. I hope they cut his b*lls off and stitch them to his forehead. in case he changes his mind about transitioning, then send him/her to Saudi Arabia for a well deserved holiday for all the trouble he/she has been put through.

        1. Actually, I think it is far more appropriate to refer to them by their proper sex. Nothing annoys them more than you insisting on reality and refusing to play around with their fantasies.

    3. I hope they cut his b*lls off and stitch them to his forehead. in case he changes his mind about transitioning, then send him/her to Saudi Arabia for a well deserved holiday for all the trouble he/she has been put through.

  36. Re the Ukrainian PM here in the UK.

    There was a lot of heavy helicopter activity here late afternoon , yesterday.. unusual for a Sunday afternoon .. I expect he was here visiting the Ukrainians under training .

    1. “Re the Ukrainian PM Usurper here in the UK.”

      Fixed it for you, Maggie.

    1. A correction.
      Rishi Sunak is NOT the UK Prime Minister because we no longer have a Prime Minister.
      In reality, he is the Executive Manager of UK Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the World Economic Forum.

    2. A Pathetic display of absolute and utter fakery.
      We have got enough problems with out getting fully involved with some one else’s war.

      1. A non-English illegitimate Prime Minister that the rank and file Conservatives did not vote for, with an illegitimate President of a country that lost its own legitimate President in a violent coup. Two usurpers with no regard for the welfare of their people. The dregs of politics and humanity. Psychopaths willing to kill thousands if not millions.

        2. As I posted elsewhere, Rishi Sunak is NOT the UK Prime Minister because we no longer have a Prime Minister.
          In reality, he is the Executive Manager of UK Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the World Economic Forum.

    9. How often did Winston Churchill hug anybody, let alone another man, in public?
      Words fail me. Does Sunak reckon that being PM in a country at war is the greatest ambition one can have? If so, he’s a dangerous, deluded idiot, and the sooner he gets offed, the better.

    10. How often did Winston Churchill hug anybody, let alone another man, in public?
      Words fail me. Does Sunak reckon that being PM in a country at war is the greatest ambition one can have? If so, he’s a dangerous, deluded idiot, and the sooner he gets offed, the better.

  40. Hallo all! Something is wrong here in West Sussex, I think it is called ‘sun’, whatever it is it’s quite pleasurable. Can’t last. Checked forecast and it’s back to rain at 1 o’ clock, thank god!

  41. Thanks for all the replies about what to do with this on a box hedge:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/acf9539a91561446eee74790c8561f24f7bbc9fd0464311bdb92575d409b3ab4.jpg

    The box bush did look as though it had got box blight which cannot be composted but on discovery of this one lots more seemed to been having eating the foliage.

    It’s the box hedge caterpillar which has invaded the UK within the last ten years and hundreds of them have been quetly muching away at the box hedge keaves.

    All the foliage has been cut off the hedge and placed in the green bin. Most of the caterpillers have been picked off and destroyed but a remaining few are scaling down their spun threads in an attempt to escape:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f83dbf4c8f3cae945661b5798bd244fb1a7286b747f910f9c1bd1219af7c7901.jpg

    The RHS are monitoring the spread

    1. You’d better let them know where it’s got to then. I hope you can save your hedge.

      1. I shall be filing a report on their web site today when I have collected the data they require.

  42. Sunak compares Zelensky to Churchill as leaders meet at Chequers

    Sunak promises Zelensky hundreds of drones and missiles
    The UK has pledged further support to Ukraine as leaders arrive at Chequers
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/05/15/zelensky-uk-visit-uk-deliver-drones-missiles-ukraine1/

    God help us all.

    Have Schwab and Gates instructed Sunak to make Britain the main target for Putin’s long range missiles?

    Putin will probably manage to get hold of the Storm Shadow missiles Britain promised to sent to the Ukraine last week he will relish the irony of sending them back!

    1. We have enough problems here without fighting someone else’s war. It’s nothing to do with us and we should have kept out of it. Providing homes for evacuated women and children should have been the end of it. We don’t have an armed force big enough to donate all our supplies of weaponry away.

    2. Richie needs to remember this one before he’s sucked in and spat out “This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless … we arise again and take our stand for freedom.”

      1. 374298+ up ticks,

        Afternoon RE,
        Sad to say the only rise you are likely to see currently is from the party before Country brigade, is for them to rise off their arses and go out the gate.

        1. I hope I live long enough to see the back of all these useless lying greedy bustards in our parliament. But I rather doubt it.
          The biggest problem is there are never enough other candidates to vote for.

    3. Doctor Kelly’s body was found on 18 July 2003, a day after he had gone for a walk near his home. He had been exposed as the source of the report alleging that the government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, presented as central to the case for war, had been “sexed up”. The Hutton inquiry found he had killed himself, though there has been no inquest into his death.

      Has this current crisis been “sexed” up , and will our destruction be inevitable ?

    4. Although Mr Sunak’s family has its origins in the Punjab, it is ironic that he should compare President Zelensky with Winston S Churchill, who was partially responsible for the famine in Bengal during 1943 – 1944.

      1. Churchill had next to nothing to do with the Bengal famine. That’s pure anti-Churchill Guardianista crap.

        1. Indeed, the blame must be put on Indian grain merchants hording for profit. In fact if you read about that period in Bengal you will find that almost everything including the government bureaucracy were almost entirely Indian. There were very few British there.

          1. Well said. British rule in India was very hands-off as most Indians were ruled at state level. If the famine was restricted to Bengal, why couldn’t the other Indian states help out?

    5. 371298+ up ticks,

      Afternoon R,

      I really do class sunak and ilk as with limited root length 15 minute politico’s.

  43. Sunak compares Zelensky to Churchill as leaders meet at Chequers

    Sunak promises Zelensky hundreds of drones and missiles
    The UK has pledged further support to Ukraine as leaders arrive at Chequers
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/05/15/zelensky-uk-visit-uk-deliver-drones-missiles-ukraine1/

    God help us all.

    Have Schwab and Gates instructed Sunak to make Britain the main target for Putin’s long range missiles?

    Putin will probably manage to get hold of the Storm Shadow Britain sent to the Ukraine last week he will relish the irony of sending them back!

  44. Found this article in the Telegraph today interesting because, yesterday I was contemplating the poem ‘The Second Coming’ by Yates: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot holds; etc. And I was wondering whether it was because we have now lost an ethic common to us all in the UK, Christianity. So here is the article in todays Telegraph that I find pertinent to my topic of contemplation yesterday. Anyone got other suggestions of the constructive sort for the preservation of the UK?

    What Britain now needs is its own version of Christian Democracy
    National conservatism seeks to reclaim our cultural heritage, but offers no economic solutions

    ne of the oddities of the Conservative Party is that it is often not very conservative, while many of its politicians – some by conviction, some just desperate to appear modern – insist that they are liberals, of one sort or another.

    After a confusing 13 years in power – in which we have seen austerity, a spending splurge, a tax-cutting experiment, and a return to something like austerity, not to mention five different prime ministers and the back and forth of the Brexit wars – the Tories are starting to debate who they are and what they need to be.

    Many of the “Children of Dave” – the socially liberal, technocratic Cameroons who dominate ministerial office – lament the culture war and regret that voters care so much about immigration. The Boris Johnson disciples – forgetful of the circumstances of his departure – met this weekend to celebrate their deity and make the case for “party democracy”. The libertarian right – somewhat quieter after the disaster of the Truss premiership – still insist we need to slash the state and cut taxes.

    This week, a conference gathers to probe another scheme. “National Conservatism” is the idea of the Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony, and it has caught on among factions of the Republican party in America. Inspired in part by old conservative thinkers in Britain like Richard Hooker and Edmund Burke – but only in part – the “NatCon” mission is one of restoration: “of traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties in the countries we love”, the NatCon statement of principles says, which “have been progressively undermined and overthrown”.
    While it is an error to think of conservatism as opposition or reluctance to change, as thinkers from Burke on have shown, a sense of loss can be powerful among those of a conservative disposition. If, in Michael Oakeshott’s words, to be a conservative “is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant”, it is obvious that conservatives are more likely to mourn the past than progressives.

    This sense of the past can be a positive force in the present, since it allows conservatives to understand the importance of identity, institutions, language, culture and organic change. But it can also present a risk. For while the NatCons are right to worry about the decline of national institutions and the weakening of national culture and government by globalisation, temptations to bring back what has long gone – or may never have existed – can lead conservatives to the wrong conclusions.

    The role of religion looms large in the NatCon agenda. The statement of principles says, “No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment … where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honoured by the state and other institutions both public and private.”

    This is a proposal with complex consequences. Western countries, including Britain, are grounded in Christianity in ways that are rarely understood. Western philosophy is shaped by Christian teaching about the dignity of the individual, love and forgiveness, and the need for humility in the strong and generosity to the weak. As the historian Tom Holland argues, we can see conflicts within Christian thought, and between Christian sects, in the philosophical and political conflicts of today.

    Christianity is an indisputable part of who we are, and conservatives should respect the Church as an institution and the value of Christian teaching. Yet there is no single, clear Christian “moral vision” when it comes to public policy, as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s forays into politics suggest. With church attendance falling and minority religions growing, Britain faces a challenge in how to manage the tensions – which on occasion have grown violent – of the coexistence of different faiths. Making our polity more religious than it is, when we already have an established Church, is unlikely to succeed.

    The core insight of the NatCons is about the significance of the nation. Our national identities are not, as some thinkers insist, a modern creation, made possible by the technologies of past centuries and vehicles for modern ideas like liberalism and socialism. They are organic and ancient, and formed through shared geography, language, custom and history. Our national identity allows us to recognise familiarity in strangers, and makes possible the solidarity we need to make sacrifices for one another in the pursuit of the common good.

    Though not defeated, that identity, and the associated means by which we order and govern ourselves, is under pressure. The global trade system, which has enriched Western minorities and allowed China to become dangerously powerful, has undermined the working and middle classes at home. Adherence to international treaties written in times gone by is rendering border control impossible. Mass immigration on a scale that was unthinkable even a few years ago will change our country forever. Ultra-liberals on Left and Right see the nation as a platform upon which anybody in the world should be free to live – the Left for its ideological commitment to cosmopolitanism, the Right for the supply of cheap labour.

    Where the NatCons fall short is that their commitment to the restoration of national community appears to rest on the cultural and geopolitical side of the policy, and not the economic. But to restore the national, and the solidarity and good citizenship that comes with it, and to defend our culture and revitalise our society, we also need a different approach to the economy.

    That choice is not, as is often caricatured, between more economic liberalism and social democracy. A third model – a British equivalent of German or Dutch Christian Democracy, in which the state plays a strategic role in the economy, workers are protected, and struggling regions are helped to achieve market-led growth – is what we need. In other words a truly conservative – and not liberal – political economy, that addresses, in the pursuit of national community, the very serious economic, social and cultural challenges we face.

    By way of a ps. To refresh peoples memory of the Poem
    The Second Coming
    W. B. Yeats – 1865-1939

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again; but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

  45. Mongo goes through his recertification as a therapy dog today. As he has been especially stubborn recently I imagine he won’t get it.

    I sometimes wonder – when he paws at the high vis jacket when i bring it to him, his not being entirely happy if he *wants* to do it. He’s had ‘friends’ die in the hospice. People he is used to who aren’t there any more. The beds he wags his tail to go to have another little kid in them and while he’s friendly enough there’s a ‘where’s Annie?’ expression.

    We dismiss that they have feelings and don’t really think at that level but I’m not so sure.

    1. The dogs who came into the library to be read to in Doggy Tales were all therapy dogs and very sensitive. Sweet and calm with the kids and the kids adored them. Of course, dogs don’t judge.
      The one time a selective mute girl read a whole short story to Clancy, a Golden, it brought tears to my eyes. Her teacher wept when I told her because she’d never heard the girl’s voice. Clancy got an extra biscuit that day!

        1. They can be amazing and annoying little blighters. I couldn’t have done any other job.

    2. Oh, yes, they do.
      Big Cat was distraught a couple of summers ago when Little Cat vanished for a couple of days (we guessed he was locked in somewhere). He was delighted when Little returned. Clear expressions of emotion. Just refer to the Facebook video posted a few days ago of a mother dog being reunited with her puppies – and seemed to be missing one, she became quite anxious.
      I’ve heard that it’s a good idea, when one of a set of animal frinds dies, the others should be introduced to the body, so that they can understand what’s happened.

      1. Harry whines when Dolly is at the groomers. I know he misses her. They definitely have emotions.

    3. They know if there’s someone missing. One of my neighbours used to breed English setters. She says she always regrets not taking the survivor to see his partner being put down so that he knew he was gone. The survivor pined and was always looking for his lost chum.

  46. Leo Varadkar’s partner likens Coronation to Harry Potter
    Matt Barrett accused of embarrassing his country with string of joke social media posts during the ceremony to crown Charles III
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/05/14/leo-varadkar-boyfriend-likens-coronation-harry-potter/

    They are planning to make a new gay transgender version of J.K. Rowland’s works in the Republic of Ireland – Danielle Radcliffe will take the role of Harriet Potter and Enema Watson will provide the sex interest.

    1. The recent slew of Left wing, woke cinema and TV, let alone commercials have shown folk just don’t want that nonsense.

      1. The last film we saw at the cinema was Downton Abbey. We also used to go for the live-stream operas from Covent Garden. Not interested in films at all and watch very little telly. Commercials get whizzed through quickly if we’re watching the Yorkshire vet series.

        1. I saw that, although not at a cinema. My local town put it on as entertainment in a “warm space”. My rates also paid for tea and biscuits.

      2. This is fake news invented by me as a silly joke – but in the last few years rather a lot of things branded by the MSM and the PTB as fake news, misinformation or disinformation have turned out to be true so who knows it might come to pass!

  47. Dust if You Must
    by Pam Ayres

    Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better
    to paint a picture or write a letter,
    bake a cake or plant a seed,
    ponder the difference between want and need?

    Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
    with rivers to swim and mountains to climb,
    music to hear and books to read,
    friends to cherish and life to lead.

    Dust if you must, but the world’s out there
    with the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair,
    a flutter of snow, a shower of rain.
    This day will not come round again.

    Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
    old age will come and it’s not always kind.
    And when you go- and go you must-
    you, yourself, will make more dust.

    Copyright ©:

    Where does all the dust come from .. the fields I think..

    1. I can relate to that – dusting and housework generally are pretty low on my list.

    2. Dust is dead bits of you. House dust is a
      mix of sloughed-off skin cells, hair, clothing fibers, bacteria, dust
      mites, bits of dead bugs, soil particles, pollen.

      2. And it gets trapped in the snot inside your nose and turned into crusty bogeys.

    3. A slattern housewife, the spouse of an acquaintance of my father, discovered that her husband had written with his finger, in the thick dust on the sideboard, the words “Dirty bugger, Gert.”

      Shamelessly she wrote underneath that “Piss off, Bill.”

      2. One could always clean it onesself, if one felt so strongly about the dust.

      3. “You need a squirt of dirt, Gert.”

        I seem to remember this line from a TV comedy show some years ago when the theme was that we were becoming obsessively concerned with cleanliness.

    1. Look at me! Here I am, being decisive and striding across a field! Oh look, a helicopter! It’s big and scary. I am big and scary! Ah, a war general. I will shake his hand. See me shaking his hand? How how close we are, a family of nations? I am a good leader! You can trusts me to be a strong leader supporting our friends!

      Sod off, Sunak you egotistical bag of wind.

      1. And he’s just compared Zelensky to Churchill!! Gawd! Give me strength!

      2. 371298+ up ticks,

        Afternoon TB.
        Then I wish a red patriotic squirrel happens along and rips their rollocks off, wee dicks inclusive for his nut collection.

    1. This is why they’ve all got to go. Muslims are utterly incompatible with the UK.

    4. Never shopped there. Never will now. Time for a campaign on their doorsteps?

      1. Not happy with the Halal. But I think all of them do it now. I think that Sainsbury might not, but I’m not sure.

  50. The British applauded Margaret Thatcher when she intervened in the Falklands. The reason she was applauded was because she was defending British people who did not want to be overrun by Argentina.

    Sunak clearly thinks he will gain the same sort of popular support in the Ukraine but he has made grave miscalculations which could be fatal.

    There are certain key differences – the Ukrainians are not British; Ukraine has the reputation of being the most corrupt country in Europe; and the Ukraine regime is guilty of killing 14,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbass region.

    The tipping point was when Putin invaded the Ukraine and put himself ‘in the wrong’. This would not have occurred had Trump been president but Sunak is making a grave and very dangerous misjudgement in banking on Zelensky boosting his popularity with the British voting public in the way that Thatcher did.

    1. Why didn’t the world go bonkers in 2014 when Russia took over the Crimean peninsular?

        1. And it was never legitimately Ukrainian, ever. As I have pointed out before. Khrushchev, when he handed it over to Ukraine broke Soviet Law but it was left because 1. He was a dictator and you don’t cross dictators 2. It was an empty fraternal gesture and all that cods wallop that the Soviets liked to do. He did it to please his Mama, a Ukrainian.

      2. The faux-liberal Western establishment did. However, the referendum had international independent oversight, very high voter turnout and a result overwhelmingly in favour of returning to Russian rule. Historically Russia and Turkey are the legitimate claimants (reference the Crimean War) and the Turks have declined to assert their claim this time. Not in their best interests.

    1. These are Shia Muslims morning the death of Ali at the battle of Karbala. It is the event that split Islam into its two major branches, Shia and Sunni. Shia Muslims believe that Ali, the grandson of Mohammad was the rightful leader of the Muslim community.
      Shia is the religion of Iran. The Ayatollahs have done a good job there. Having lived under a true Islamic regime since 1979, less than one third of Iranians now call themselves Muslims. The fastest growing religion in Iran, is underground Christianity. People are also turning to the old religion Zoroastrianism. However there are difficulties there because the Zoroastrians believe you must be born a Zoroastrian in order to be one.

      “Can you convert to Zoroastrianism? The official answer, which is given by the Parsi priestly hierarchy in Bombay, and supported by a large number of traditional Zoroastrians, is NO. In order to be a Zoroastrian, you must be born of two Zoroastrian parents. One is not enough! No children of mixed marriages are officially Zoroastrian. In practice, however, the children of Zoroastrian fathers and non-Z. mothers are sometimes given admission to the faith – but not the children of Zoroastrian mothers and non-Z. fathers. Zoroastrian identity descends through the father’s line, …”
      https://cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/iranian/Zarathushtrian/conversion_to_zoroastrianism.htm

      I suppose a new Zoroastrian movement could come about but it seems to me that it would be wiser for the original Zoroastrians to accept newcomers since their numbers are dwindling. And a religion that produced Freddy Mercury is obviously a good thing to live by!

      1. Odd how fundamentalist religion, in fundamentalist countries tends to whittle away where fundamentalist religion, in tolerant, liberal countries tends to become ever more fundamentalist.

        1. Their degenerate and retrograde mission is to take northern Europe back more than 1000 years.
          I’m not sure we have enough caves to store all their child slaves in.

        2. What disillusioned the Iranians was the shear cruelty of the Islamic regime, Sharia Law etc, They had been fed, as are most Muslims, an idea that Islam is good. The reality once the tyrants were in control was the equivalent of the monster taking its benign mask off for the awful reality underneath. That is what did it. If you remember the two teenage boys who were hanged from cranes for being ‘homosexual’ that shocked Iranians as much as it shocked Westerners, if not more because of traditional Persian attitudes which were quite liberal and, of course, they were children.

          1. The recent demonstrations by women who dislike having to wear the hijab are telling as well.

    2. We’ve already given in to Islam.

      Supine Sunak has happily gone back on his commitment to scrap all EU laws in Britain but the future which faces my children and their children will be truly horrific when Sharia Law has fully replaced British Law.

      1. It can never replace English Common Law, Natural Law or God’s Law. Everything in Sharia is unlawful in this land.

          2. That should not be permitted. EU ‘law’is not law, it is legislation passed by unelected bureaucrats.

          3. Indeed, but such was our serfdom (and I see little to indicate we’ve been freed) that Westminster gave it precedence. Another good reason to have voted LEAVE.

          4. I believe the precedence was not Westminster’s to give. That’s the problem we have to resolve. Parliament is not soveriegn. The people are.

          5. In theory, but, as the last decade or so has shown, not in practice. I agree that needs to change.

  52. Anyone think it is a possibility that a true Conservative movement, that would be successful in the polls, will coalesce around Lord Frost?

        1. Because he is as much of a turncoat as any of the others.

          See Richard’s comment about how he failed over Brexit talks.

    3. It’s possible but how likely is it? It will need the Tories to split.

      1. Unless they split they are finished.

        JRM has revealed his true spinelessness in not resigning from the Conservative Party taking a splinter group with him to either the Reform Party, the Reclaim Party, UKIP or the Heritage Party or to a new, proper, conservative Conservative Party.

        For some time I have been saying on this forum that I would like Lord Frost to be the leader of the Conservative Party.

        But even he has an Achilles heel. On the eve of the disastrous Brexit agreement Johnson and Gove, both devious traitors, arrived in Brussels and compelled Frost to climb down on the two points on which he had been adamant: not to give way on fishing waters and not to separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom. The consequence of this is that we still have EU fishing boats ravaging our fishing waters and the odious Northern Ireland Protocol has lost its Article 16 with the Windsor Sell Out which has no escape clause and will prove to be even worse.

        Why, oh why did Frost not stand up to Johnson and Gove? He behaved like Lady Macbeth’s cat in the adage letting “I dare not wait upon I would!” when he should have threatened to resign.

        1. He was clearly overruled. He stayed to do what he could but eventually did resign as we know.

    4. It’s possible but how likely is it? It will need the Tories to split.

      1. Negotiator with the EU for Brexit and a good man as far as I can see.

    6. There are two problems:

      * Conservatives are utterly disillusioned with the current socialists lading to huge disengagement

      * Any attempt at reversing that is destroyed by the Left wing state, terrified it will be exposed for what it is.

    7. Our local MP is in trouble a whole page (2) in this weeks Herts Advertiser for allegedly making a lot of money on the side and charging the tax payers (in expenses) 3,250 per month for I think a flat he supposedly is staying in so he doesn’t have to make the 20 minute Thames link journey into London each day. Not that he seems to spend a lot of time in Westminster as far as I can make out.
      Accordingly he says he hasn’t broken any rules.

  53. Is it me or have things changed? Being the same age as Charles I cannot remember any open displays of affection from my parents. Apart from a peck on the cheek even my mother, after not seeing me for some 12 years, simply shook my hands. I would not have expected anything more than that. Open displays of affection were simply not on.
    Are children now dribbled over like they are in American families?

    Quote from Daily Express article. “The Monarch is said to have a loving, but detached relationship with Prince William of Wales and Harry, the Duke of Sussex.”

    1. Much can depend on the parent. The Warqueen isn’t one to hug all the time but I don’t mind giving Junior a hug when he’s needed it, nor carrying him about on my shoulders.

    2. The only time my parents touched me was to administer a beating. My dad liked to use his belt. My Mother liked to slap. One day after she had fractured her wrist she went to slap me and cried out in pain. I laughed.

      1. That’s unbelievably sad, P. Why have children if you don’t like them? Bastards.

        1. I can’t imagine what it must have been like in such large families in the early 1900s My mother was one of 5 children 3 girls and two boys. My Father was one of 6 boys. His mother died long before I was born, I only saw his father a few times.
          But my own parents were great, they always made sure we had what we needed, but not always what we wanted. Both my sisters and myself always helped out with the chores, some cooking, gardening and housework. Sixpence a week pocket money and enough for bus fares to Saturday Morning Pictures and an ice cream. My elder sister and I had bicycles aged about 12 and used them to get to school and back every day.

      3. I’m truly sorry that you and sirjasper had to put up with such childhoods. It should be a period in one’s life that you look back on with happiness. Unfortunately it seems that a great many people remember cruelty. One wonders why some parents are like that because it is regrettably not unusual.

        1. Thank you JR but i left all that behind years ago. I left home at 16 and made a life for myself without them. When i returned to the area the family (i have 6 older siblings) were generally positive but after a while the old ways resurfaced. Eventually i cut all contact with them and my mental health has never been better.

    3. My mother was into big hugs and kisses but my father would just greet me with something along the lines of hello Susie, are you alright? He’d quiz me about whether I feed myself. His way of showing concern.

    4. …and being 4 years older, I too cannot remember any shew of affection from my parents, other than beatings from my father (1895 – 1955) and a one time hug from my Mama (1903 – 1980) when I was particularly fraught in my twenties.

      It has to do with their own upbringing in the late Victorian and early 20th century.

      1. Mirrors my experience as a child. They never told me or my sister they loved us though I knew they did. My gran did though. It stopped with me. My daughter and grand-daughter are showered with love.

          1. Three of my four died before I was born.

            One of the things which saddens me is that my wife and my two sons never knew my father who died 4 years before I met Caroline.

      2. You may not use the archaic form of show, i.e. ‘shew’, as a noun, Tom. It was only used as a verb.

        Unless, of course, you are being ironic!

        1. Good afternoon, Grizzly

          Of course some English teachers have to be policemen policing school rules just as some policemen have to be grammarians policing the posts of people on this forum!

          1. Thank you, Richard. I was taught the difference between show and shew by my Mama in quite early years.

        2. Which is how I was using it. I thought you knew and loved English, as I do.

    5. A loving but detached relaationship with Hatry? That is stretching the point a bit.

    6. The chap I was sitting next to at lunch today taught Harry at Shawbury. He said it’s all his fault Harry’s turned out as he has; he had to tell him off on several occasions 🙂

      1. If Harry’s local pub landlord had turfed out all the underage drinkers might have helped.

      1. What is it called when a clown gives a Nun a piggy back ?
        Virgin on the ridiculous.

          1. SorryIdidn’trealizeitwasajoke.Butit’sagoodideatohaveanextraonhand.

  55. Excitement beckons – a trip to the Tip, then B&Q and then the GPs to have my dressing changed. What larks, eh?

    Back later on. Play nicely,

  56. Germany’s Greens punished in polls over plans to ban gas heating
    Junior partner in Olaf Scholz’s coalition wants to base all new heating systems on 65 per cent renewable power starting next year

    By
    Jorg Luyken
    IN BERLIN
    15 May 2023 • 1:00pm

  57. When our politicians and do-gooders tell us that opening our borders to mass immigration will help the poor of the World, it’s clear that they haven’t thought about the problem as this man has done. Or they have, and they know that their reasons for encouraging mass immigration are bogus and have nothing to do with the welfare of the World’s poor.

    https://twitter.com/TiceRichard/status/1657769466682384385

    1. Nail on the head – now lets deport all the immigrants back where they came from so we can help them

    1. I don’t believe it – as you say we don’t have F16s – the yanks might train them

    3. I see that the moron Sunak has decided to give the “most corrupt nation in Europe” a pile more long range missiles and drones. Just who gave the idiot a mandate to start WWIII, and why isn’t Parliament reining him in [I suspect that’s rhetorical – they’re all virtue signalling morons with no grasp of history or the realities of international politics].

    1. In 2017 married Mrs Moseley started up a romance with a refugee after she promoted her charity’s no sex with migrants policy.

      She had a relationship with Tunisian migrant Mohamed Bajjar, a fact which was reportedly well known among both migrants and volunteers.

      It was claimed at the time that she ended her relationship with 27-year-old Bajjar after fearing that he had conned her out of thousands of pounds, The Sun claimed.

      Friends of Mrs Moseley claimed that Bajjar had threatened to tell her husband of the affair and send him photos of the couple while they were together.

      Lol!

      1. Conned her out of thousands of pounds. Now, if you expand that to all the gimmigrants and welfare, the bill is many, many billions.

      2. Are people really that stupid. I give money to people who i think might need it. I would never give money to someone who asked for it !

      3. Doesn’t the silly tart know that the prostitute is the one who asks for the money?

        Or perhaps this parasite’s skill, so needed by Britain, is gigoloing

  65. Patrick West
    Let’s stop pretending the culture wars aren’t real
    15 May 2023, 8:55am

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Screenshot-2023-05-15-at-11.52.41.png

    Are the culture wars real? Some assume that they’re an imaginary affair, or, at best, a distraction from the real, pressing bread-and-butter concerns of today. As Matthew Syed put it in the Sunday Times yesterday:

    ‘The culture wars…may be seen not as genuine debates but as a form of Freudian displacement. The woke and anti-woke need each other to engage in piffling spats as a diversion from realities they both find too psychologically threatening to confront.’

    We are familiar with this line of thinking, both from left and right. The culture wars about race and gender are irrelevant and ‘piffling’, so some say. It’s all fuss and nonsense.

    Many on the left decry with airy disdain that complaints of ‘cancellation’ and ‘wokery’ are just antediluvian grunts of conservatives who don’t like, or don’t understand, the modern world – with its new, strange manners concerning matters race and gender. Then there are the shopkeeper-type conservatives, who think the culture wars are all a silly hoo-ha about pronouns, toilet usage, dramas about Cleopatra and the Royal Family as seen on TV. They scold that we should be properly concerned with material materials: the cost of living, inflation, mortgage payments, industrial disputes, the future of the Conservative party.

    Both conclusions, from the complacent left and bean-counting right, are based on misapprehensions. They derive from a double falsehood. The culture wars are really taking place, whether the left likes or not. And the culture wars are a bread-and-butter issue, whether the right likes or not.

    The consequences of wokery are having a tangible effect in the USA – which always heralds what is to come – where withdrawal for support and funding of the police has grown at a time of rising crime in Los Angeles, San Francisco and even now New York (the Big Apple a few years ago being the beacon of how to solve crime).

    Calls to defund the police are the most obvious consequence of this pernicious ideology taking hold. Its advance in the UK has been obvious, and as insidious as it has been invidious. For years now we have seen people lose their jobs, been silenced, or been investigated by the police for saying something ‘inappropriate’ online. We live now in a culture of not only censorship, but self-censorship, in which people are terrified to speak their minds on a day-to-day basis.

    This is the culture wars in very real action, in which the powerless and poor are penalised. It’s not just academics or writers who have been put at jeopardy. It’s all of us who are petrified to speak our minds on an every-day basis, for fear of the repercussions that may way come via our employer. We are now our own self-censors. The unsent tweet is the signifier of our age.

    Some of us can deal with the social stigma that comes with voicing unfashionable out-of-season opinions on race and gender and immigration, but very few of us can afford to declare these unfashionable opinions. And ‘afford’ is the key word here. The likes of J.K. Rowling, Irvine Welsh and Tom Hanks have the privilege to speak as they like, because they can literally afford to do so. It matters nothing to them any threat of cancellation or of being fired.

    The rest of us live in material and financial fear of what might happen if we make public what we think. We live in acquiescence and silence. The likes of me just go along with the fact that to be white, male and straight can now cast you at a disadvantage. We are damned and assumed to be privileged and guilty. Even TV adverts seek to make us invisible.

    Wokery is an unspoken force – as are the most dangerous and coercive ideologies. As the French philosopher Michel Foucault observed in ‘Discipline and Punish’ (1975), the most pernicious and malevolent forces in an oppressive society are not the obvious ones – manifest Orwell-style in Big Brother statism – but the unspoken truisms and mores we unthinkingly imbibe, assume and propagate silently. People even assume that what the social media giants digest as news is neutral. It isn’t. They all have their agendas, and it is these day invariably liberal-left.

    Wokery is an invisible force of the nature Foucault wrote about: an invisible, silent mind-virus. That’s why people sit back and conclude that it doesn’t exist, or it is a hard-right fantasy. It’s also why some conservatives conclude that it’s all side-show from that which really matters.

    It isn’t. The culture wars are real and they happening. They have a very, real tangible effect on how we live from day to day.

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

    An0nymousBosch
    3 hours ago
    Ten years ago, the idea that NHS maternity wards might ban the words “woman” and “mother” would have seemed laughable.

    Now it’s happened. With no parliamentary vote, no accountability for the faceless NHS bureaucrats who took that decision, and a supposedly right-wing Tory government in Downing Street.

    The idea that net immigration might hit a million a year – equivalent to two Sheffields – would have seemed astonishing. Yet voila.

    The Left has worked out that they don’t need to win elections. They just need to insinuate their activists into public institutions, particularly the BBC, and go from there.

    Septic Sceptic
    3 hours ago edited
    We may have a (fake) Tory government in power for now but the left are in full control of the entire public sector. This is why so much of it doesn’t work properly, is now largely self-serving and is completely focussed on wokery. When Labour win the GE next year then things will go from bad to worse.

    1. I have a bad back from time to time.

      I have found a new bone cracker who takes his inspiration from the picture of the rack you show in this post.

      A couple of sessions a couple of weeks ago seem to have done my back a lot of good.

      1. Does he get dressed up in suitable robes when administering your deserved punishment?

  66. The Tories are on course for a shattering defeat. 15 May 2023.

    Today and for the next few two days a “National Conservative” Conference (NatCon) will be taking place in London, attended by several Conservative Party leading lights, including Michael Gove. Over a week ago, on May 4, the Conservatives suffered a disastrous defeat in the local elections, losing even more than their deliberately pessimistic prediction of a thousand seats.

    Gove is obviously acting as a Mole and Informer here.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/15/the-tories-are-on-course-for-a-shattering-defeat/

    2. Good afternoon Minty

      Here is a BTL from Percival Wrattstrangler under this article which you have posted:

      I cannot understand the fact that John Redwood, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Mark Francois, Bill Cash and the other members of the ERG seem to be completely blind to the fact that the Conservative Party is no longer committed to Brexit and that Brexit will be swept away after the general election by Starmer with or without the backing of the Lib/Dems and the SNP.

      And least if JRM and co break away from the main Conservative Party now they can start to build a new Conservative Party which is conservative. Whatever they do the Conservatives are likely to be wiped out but if they do nothing the Conservative Party will lose and nothing will have been achieved.

    3. If Sunak and the comedian Zalenskyy continue to provoke the Bear, the next UK General Election could be drastically affected by incoming nuclear missiles . . .

      BTW, how can Britain train Ukrainians to be combat-ready pilots? We don’t have any F-16s; their preferred fighter aircraft.

  67. Afternoon, all. Just dipping in as I’ve got a PCC meeting tonight. Should be interesting; I expect sparks to fly as the rectorette tries to browbeat us into submission in line with her views. It will probably be my penultimate meeting as a PCC member as I’ll almost certainly resign after the EAPCM called for next Sunday after the service. As for the headline, the PM doesn’t feel he needs a vision for getting Britain back to work as his brief is to wreck the economy and society’s cohesiveness. Getting us back to work would put a spanner in the works and stymie those objectives.

    1. Good luck! I’ve done long and argumentative PCC meetings but not for many a year. We have our annual parochial church meeting after the service next Sunday too. Aside from the serving team, which keeps me out of mischief, I’m no longer interested in putting myself forward for other jobs. I know the line about not attributing to malice what can be explained by incompetence but I agree, this wrecking crew are definitely malicious.

      1. This is an extraordinary APCM because the rectorette called one for Palm Sunday (despite being asked to reschedule it to a less important liturgical day). The accounts weren’t ready, haven’t been approved and there is a row over the minutes (the rectorette thinks they show her in a bad light, but the consensus is that they are a true record). We’re having the regular PCC meeting a week late because of the Bank Holiday. The rectorette will accuse us of “bullying” because we will try to get her to answer questions and not fob us off.

        1. Good luck with that Connors. I too have been a member of a PCC and, as Lay Chairman, raised £30,000 to help with the installation of a kitchen and toilet to cater for the many visitors we had to our little 12th century church, way out in the sticks of rural Suffolk. I gave up when it became too much.

    3. Rishi Sunak is NOT the UK Prime Minister because we no longer have a Prime Minister.
      In reality, he is the Executive Manager of UK Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the World Economic Forum.

      1. I liked the final sentence;
        “Which particular pliable, nonsentient, inanimate object constitutionally incapable of saying no would you most like to have sex with? According to Gallup polls, the most popular answer is Paris Hilton.”

          4. Barge has reverse gear but i want to go forward through said lock…..

            82 year old chap (retired Civil Engineer) also waiting to go through the lock told me 2 years ago that he and his son (plus chartered safety boat) crossed the Channel back to Blighty from Belgium and into the Thames. The crossing took 24 hours! And I thought I was nuts going up the Bristol Channel to Sharpness in a Force 4 headwind….

    2. To ‘FaceTime’ her vagina she would have needed a speculum. She was merely filming her VULVA.

      Why are the modern-dim too stupid to be able to tell their arse from their elbow, FFS?

  70. How about this then ?

    Princess Diana’s cheeky side revealed in humorous sexual innuendo greeting cards she sent to the King of Greece – which are expected to sell for up to £5,000 at auction
    The cards are up for sale at the Dominic Winter Auctioneers auction house
    Buyers are expected to pay between £3,000 and £5,000 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12084505/Princess-Diana-cheeky-revealed-sexual-innuendo-greeting-cards.html

    Very risque.. She might have been having it off with the King of Greece .

    1. Apparently she was a royal groupie and also had an affair with Juan Carlos of Spain.

  71. Wild West Britain: Gang of motorbike-riding arsonists torch 13 cars during late-night rampage in quaint market town leaving locals terrified – as cops hunting thugs investigate if targeted vehicles are linked
    Wimborne in Dorset was besieged by the thugs going from street to street
    They poured fuel on one car after another before setting them ablaze

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12085011/Wild-West-Britain-Gang-motorbike-riding-arsonists-torch-13-cars-late-night-rampage.html

    3. Good afternoon Maggie

      Sorry – posted this clip from the DM before seeing yours.

      This is not that far from Wool.

      And of course who knows what the motor cycle club at Canford School gets up to?

    4. ….Wimborne…… in Dorset?! Were the thugs of the recently imported type? It will be thatched roofs next.

  72. Par 4 here

    Wordle 695 4/6

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

    1. Par Four; me too!

      Wordle 695 4/6
      ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
      ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Another five for me. Some unlucky choices.

        Wordle 695 5/6

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

    2. Double bogie, but I did do it at 1am this morning.
      Wordle 695 6/6

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

      1. Wordle should be engaged in with Elevenses – and reported at wine o’ clock, 5 pm 🙂

  73. Par 4 here

    Wordle 695 4/6

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

  74. Signing off for today. Suddenly lost hearing in my right ear. Very strange sensation – sort of internal echo – and the external feeling is like you get when you go swimming and you ears fill with water. I am waiting (not very hopefully) for that happy thing to happen and the sound come back.

    And on that jolly note – and after a very cold afternoon, I’ll wish you all a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

    1. How dreadful, Bill! Hope the sound comes back quickly… Dare I suggest you try and see an ENT specialist asap? Sudden loss of hearing is considered pretty serious.

      I get the internal echo thing quite often as I have tinnitus and it is, indeed, a very strange sensation.

      1. In BT’s case, the echo sound is of cogs whirring as the brain gets slowly into gear…

          3. I have had none of those – yet. I look forward too seeing how I feel in the morning.

          4. Don’t get up too fast, and if you do think you are about to throw a wobbly, fall back onto the bed.

      2. Thank you, Caroline. Nice to have a comment from someone who understands.

        In England, seeing ANY medical specialist “ASAP” is a sort of fantasy….. I’ll leave it for a day or so and then ask around.

    2. I presume you’ve tried to “equalise” by holding your nose and “popping” your ears?

      A word to the wise:
      If it doesn’t resolve soon, be very careful when getting up that you don’t fall, particularly after sleeping.

      Avoid ladders…

      1. Almost there. Very sensible nurse (a “proper” nurse) though she is about 5 stone overweight.

    5. Sorry to hear that, Bill. My hearing went AWOL last week and I have wasted countless hours on the interwebby/phone today trying to find someone to give me an ear job. Tomorrow morning in Swindon seems to be the best bet. Hate Swindon; always get lost. But it beats trying to listen through one’s nostrils or elsewhere.

      1. I had a foretaste about 10 years go – when the same thing happened. I saw an ENT bloke within a few days (remember how it used to be??) and expected him to say, “Take two of these twice a day for a fortnight, and all will be well.” Instead, the bastard said, “You are now deaf – and it will get much worse”. And he was right.

        Tried hearing aids – NBG. If one is in a one-to-one sitch, as long as the other person speak CLEARLY = OK. Ish. In a crowded room – nightmare.

        Old age is a very unpleasant thing. Why did no one warn us in the 1950s?

        1. I’ve had the crowded room thing for years – especially bistros and the like, where there’s no sound-deadening, and so the sound levels are high and very sharp. Absolutely no chance of hearing conversation. I hope yours doesn’t get worse, BIll, that’s not fun – not funny.

          1. The thing on my face is affecting my hearing in right ear and also my balance. I received my stick because of my arthritic right knee but now I need it more for the balance issue. I find it very frustrating although I can see occasions when my stick will come in handy….like when I see the sodding consultant!! Delay, delay- envy of the world- my arse.

        2. Agree about one-to-one being OK especially when one can see their mouth moving, assuming they’re not talking complete rubbish. Crowded room with a low ceiling is an impossible nightmare. Even worse for my 6′ 6″ father who used to resort to reciting long passages of Tennyson if he couldn’t understand what people were saying. He was very and embarrassingly rude, even to the Bishop of Southwell. I miss him.

        3. I seem to have mild tinnitus. I can ignore it. But, rather more worrying, I seem to be able to ‘hear’ WiFi. I can definitely hear my cheap Chinese-sourced ‘smart’ LED light bulbs, but – even if I cut the power completely, I can hear a low-level noise, similar to the old Dial-up’ modem, albeit much reduced.. I struggle in crowded rooms with much chatter. But I put this down to my mis-spent youth, running discos and the like. Though we always worked on the basis of ‘lots of speakers, rather than lots of volume’. Maybe ‘loud organs’ are what did it?

          1. So the Boss has ‘loud organs’…quite fascinating…I’m sure that there are many here who would like to hear more.

          2. I wish, Michael. I currently play two pipe organs. For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll leave out the two digital pianos in the smaller churches.

            Puttenham has a Wm Hill organ dating from 1881. Despite being overhauled during the pandemic, it still has issues. Possibly because i has two radiators beneath it. Organ tuning is sensitive to temperature.

            Seale’s organ is a 1930’s instrument by J W Walker. Another major English organ builder, they were based in Brandon, Suffolk, when I was Organist and Choirmaster in the parish church of that East Anglian town.

            They quoted for an overhaul of the Brandon organ, a year or so before I arrived. We couldn’t afford them. Same applied to Puttenham, many years later.

    6. Possibly a surprisingly large lump of wax?

      Specsavers offer microsuction for about £50, and your money back if they cannot extract any.

  75. Wild West Britain: Gang of motorbike-riding arsonists torch 13 cars during late-night rampage in quaint market town leaving locals terrified – as cops hunting thugs investigate if targeted vehicles are linked

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12085011/Wild-West-Britain-Gang-motorbike-riding-arsonists-torch-13-cars-late-night-rampage.html

    Does Maggiebelle know anything about this – Wimborne Minster is not far from her?

    And another story in the DM

    Warning to parents as man ‘tries to kidnap boy from primary school’: Police say he’s also targeted secondary age pupils
    The alleged incident ‘took place on Thursday at a school in Witham, Essex’
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12085295/Warning-man-tried-kidnap-boy-primary-school-Essex.html

    Keep an out for this chap but they won’t give you any physical description of him. Any suggestions as to why they won’t?

          5. This bit of leafy Surrey seems to be ‘pikey central’. It’s more noticeable from the train than from the road.

            But we seem to rub along with little difficulty. It was more of an issue when the lead was stripped from the church roof. But I don’t think they were local.

    1. No one will rise up. They have neither the brains nor the balls to do so. Tut-tutting is the only noise of dissent you will hear and most of that is on social media.

      The Frogs often get lambasted as ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’, but when the government piss them off, they get off their arses and demonstrate, loudly, violently and with stamina. Funny how the national characteristics of the British and the French have swapped places since the end of WWII.

      1. There was always “mustn’t grumble” running through the British character.

    1. Did you know that chewing on daisy stalks tastes like carrot?
      Not a lot of people know that!

      1. No, I didn’t know that! I think I’ll pass on that though. Local dogs, you see….!

      2. Chinese whispers:
        Did you know that Daisy likes chewing on tasty carrot stalks?
        Matelot people know that!

        I’ll get me sou’wester.

    2. Nothing humble about the common daisy. They are one of the most beautiful flowers you will ever see.👍🏻😊

  80. Who are the Tory MPs who have criticised the Home Secretary for her speech on immigration? Well, one of them is the trade minister, Nigel Huddleston, who told Times Radio “…every now and again we also need more people to come into the country, but the key thing is to have control…in the long term, we need immigration to come down because that’s what has been causing some challenges in local areas for a long period of time…”

    Not 500,000 a year! The horticulture industry is mentioned again but the shortfall there is in the low tens of thousands. It’s an industry whose recent growth was short-sightedly built on cheap labour. Now it’s struggling.

    If, during the 90s, a Tory spokesman has said what Nigel Huddleston has or if a company owner or business leader had said shamelessly that cheap imported labour was good for profits and, by implication ‘to hell with the lazy British’, many Tories and most of the Labour party would have been outraged. Now they’re silent.

    The opening minutes of Ms Braverman’s speech to the conference organised by a US-based right-wing group were interrupted by heckles from two Extinction Rebellion protestors. The environmental group said it was seeking to disrupt “the increasingly dangerous rhetoric from senior political figures” and likened Ms Braverman’s policies to “fascist ideology”.

    ‘Anyone else?’ said the home secretary after the two protestors had been removed adding: “It is audition day for the shadow cabinet.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65593353

    As for ER, would they describe as a ‘fascist’ any householder who repelled a trespasser or burglar?

    The madness will end only when widespread violence breaks out…but then everyone loses.

    1. There could have been a much cheaper alternative to importing foreigners – legal and illegal.

      1. Pay more family allowance or whatever it’s called these days
      2. Cut welfare payments.

      The two combined would save a lot of money although of course it’s too late now to increase the birth rate.

  81. Who are the Tory MPs who have criticised the Home Secretary for her speech on immigration? Well, one of them is the trade minister, Nigel Huddleston, who told Times Radio “…every now and again we also need more people to come into the country, but the key thing is to have control…in the long term, we need immigration to come down because that’s what has been causing some challenges in local areas for a long period of time…”

    Not 500,000 a year! The horticulture industry is mentioned again but the shortfall there is in the low tens of thousands. It’s an industry whose recent growth was short-sightedly built on cheap labour. Now it’s struggling.

    If, during the 90s, a Tory spokesman has said what Nigel Huddleston has or if a company owner or business leader had said shamelessly that cheap imported labour was good for profits and, by implication ‘to hell with the lazy British’, many Tories and most of the Labour party would have been outraged. Now they’re silent.

    The opening minutes of Ms Braverman’s speech to the conference organised by a US-based right-wing group were interrupted by heckles from two Extinction Rebellion protestors. The environmental group said it was seeking to disrupt “the increasingly dangerous rhetoric from senior political figures” and likened Ms Braverman’s policies to “fascist ideology“.

    ‘Anyone else?’ said the home secretary after the two protestors had been removed adding: “It is audition day for the shadow cabinet.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65593353

    As for ER, would they describe as a ‘fascist’ any householder who repelled a trespasser or burglar?

    The madness will end only when widespread violence breaks out…but then everyone loses.

  85. Tim Stanley was not impressed…

    Eurovision settles it. We had to leave the EU

    The Continent has gone to ruin. Saturday night’s music was awful – and confirms all my prejudices

    …Songs of Eurovision past were sweet enough that they could be played by a string quartet at a wedding, whereas they use this rubbish to force hostage-takers to surrender…

    …After enduring an hour of pounding bass – the kind of noise that, if you heard it in a neighbour’s garden you’d telephone the council – I felt like I was going to have a heart attack…

    …this happens to be a very bad moment in cultural history, and we’ll no more be humming Loreen’s songs in 30 years’ time than we will the drone of a vacuum cleaner that they so eerily resemble. The rise of AI will make things worse, eliminating humanity and beauty completely…

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/14/eurovision-settles-it-we-had-to-leave-the-eu/

    1. Do people really have nothing better to do with their time than to sit and gawp at the execrable Eurovomit Noise Fest?

      1. I hope Mr Stanley was paid well above the going rate for enduring it.

      2. Apparently. It’s inexplicable. Me? Not so much. My TV is two or three metres from the aerial socket. It connects to WiFi, happily. In the absence of a TV licence, that’s good. So anything I watch is ‘catch up’. I made an exception last Saturday, and watched the Coronation, via GB News. David Starkey and Nigel Farage made a superb commentary team.

        1. Agreed- that’s the way we watched it. I like David Starkey and he is one of the few that knows his history and will admit it if he makes a mistake.

          1. I hadn’t planned to watch it at all. But I asked Alexa to play Radio Three, and the introductory music was streaming happily. Fifteen minutes before the service, R3 stopped. I realised that I needed a less biased commentary, and GB News rose splendidly to the occasion.

          2. Yes, they did a good job. And I thought the Coronation was just right. Some have moaned about the part Camilla’s family played in the ceremony; again it was right as there are so many blended families nowadays. Many on here are in 2nd or more marriages and many have children of their own and stepchildren.
            It was fine by the Lake household as we are 2nd marriages and have children/ child from each but no children together. ( Would be a miracle at the age we married!)

    1. Someone pulled the plug?

      Are you stuck there at the moment? I could be there in about 15 or so minutes and give you a square meal and a comfortable bed for the night. Telephone if you need help!

      1. Thanks Michael. No I’m not stuck there I’ve abandoned ship and have gone home waiting for the repairs to be carried out. Spent the day gardening in the sunshine….

  89. Time for a zed. Hope all Y’all sleep the deep and restful sleep of the righteous, and we’ll meet again tomorrow, D.V.

    1. Explosive, but many of us have been extremely suspicious since it all first started.
      But Who is going to bring these bastards to justice on this.

      1. That’s the point, Eddy. Many on here, including me, have refused the so-called vaccines, as we know it’s not been through the correct stages.to ‘quote’, ascertain its veracity.

  91. I’m off to bed.
    A bit of a busy day getting a bit of sorting out of the storage containers and another 6 bags of soil filled & carted up to the Folly.
    Tomorrow I’ll probably do a bit more wall building.

    G’night all.

      1. Bob’s building has so many names now! No matter, I am sure it will be visible from space.

  92. If hadn’t dozed off during Digging For Britain I’d have been tucked up by now.
    I must avoid the 10 o’clock news.
    So it’s good night from me.

  94. OK, Troops, I’m soon off to bed so I must say Goodnight and God bless, Gentlefolks until we meet again in the mornings’ light.

    Love you all and big hugs to you.

    2. Ha, that was another joke that nature played upon me. It’s now 04:48 and I’m still wide awake. See you all later before I retire for more zeds before my beer arrives.

  95. Mum, Dad, my daughter and niece had a splendid afternoon at the Palace. Weather was good and I was able to drop them off and pick them up without any trouble. The two girls looked absolutely gorgeous and my Mum and Dad scrubbed up very well too. My sister-in-law treated us all to a nice dinner in Richmond. A lovely (albeit long) day all round. Will try and catch up on today’s news tomorrow.

      1. I will try and upload letter. But i may not be technologically literate enough!

  96. We are playing our music game and the subject is places. We have had outer space- Saturn by Holst right now. I have played some various pieces but will end with Eric Coates’ Knightsbridge March and then bed.
    So will wish you good sleep tonight.

  99. Hola amigos! Well, as I expected it was a long and difficult PCC meeting. We got no answers to questions and the Archdeacon who was there said “lessons will be learned”. We all know what that means! I don’t see the problem being resolved any time soon, unfortunately.

  103. So our little Sunak freak has donated depleted uranium missiles, costing many millions to prepare, to the Zelensky mafia. The Russians have accordingly struck the ammunition depot containing our gift, destroying the missiles but releasing Gamma radiation.

    We have such clever people running our government, so clever in fact that they are prepared to pollute vast areas of formerly productive land in Ukraine, simply because it might fall into Russian control. And these stupid idiots simultaneously dictate their Green Agenda to us.

    We must be mad to accept this nonsense.

    2. I can’t bring myself to call him prime minister.
      But he’s no different from many other idiots we seem to end up with as leaders of a political party. We’ve had almost 30 years of it. How and why does this keep happening. Our culture and social structure and any trace of common sense is rapidly going down the proverbial drain.

      1. We no longer have a Prime Minister in the UK.
        In reality, Rishi Sunak is the Executive Manager of UK Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the World Economic Forum.

    3. …they are prepared to pollute vast areas of formerly productive land in Ukraine

      ‘Salting the earth’ by one means or another?

      Salting the earth is literally a war crime. Anything that scorches the earth so that nothing can grow is defined as a crime against humanity by the Geneva Conventions.

      Sunak and his coterie are blockheads of the first order and IMO do not have a patriotic bone in their bodies.

  104. 04:18 – Birds are singing, the sky is light and it’s 5°C out there.

    What a happy day.

  105. 05:22, no point in going to the charpoy now, let’s wait and see what and when Geoff brings us a brand new day.

Comments are closed.