Monday 19 February: It won’t just be Tory voters who express their despair at the general election

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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436 thoughts on “Monday 19 February: It won’t just be Tory voters who express their despair at the general election”

    1. Wordle 975 4/6

      Might have done it in three but got the wrong consonant so I made it in four:

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

      1. Similar attempt here – there were at least three possibilities and the correct one was my second guess!
        Wordle 975 4/6

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

      2. No mixed consonants so
        Wordle 975 3/6

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

  3. ‘Morning All

    Peter North (often quoted here) has been suspended from Twitter

    This is what got him………

    I suppose my answer to anyone who calls me “far right” is, give me a
    reason not to be. Why should consent to becoming an ethnic minority in
    my own country? Why should I consent to an alien religion spouting its
    bile? Why should I simply shrug off our cities turning into lawless
    multicultural slums? Why should I put up with MPs and councillors who
    care more about Gaza than hospital waiting lists and potholes?

    Why should I accept that immigration cheats have better housing support
    than my own countrymen? Why should I accept that machete weilding
    Somalis are just “part and parcel” of living in a big city? Why should I
    accept longer commutes, and more expensive, smaller housing?

    Why should I accept honour killings, FGM, acid attacks, inbreeding, forced
    marriage and child grooming? Why should I accept teachers being hounded
    out of their jobs? Why should I accept the intimidation of Jews? Why
    should I accept a political class who puts white British people last in
    any priorities?

    Why should I tolerate drag queen strip teases in
    front of kids? Why should I accept the sexualsiation of children under
    the LGBTQ flag? Why should I accept rapists in womens prisons? Why
    should I be compelled to describe a rapist with female pronouns? Why
    should I accept Pride flags replacing the Union flag on public
    buildings?

    Why should I accept harmful gender ideology and “white
    privilege” being preached by the state broadcaster? Why should I accept
    the debasement of every public institution? Why should I accept my own
    history being rewritten? Why should I pretend that primitive stone-age
    values are equal to my own? Why should I accept being smeared for
    defending the values of my own people?

    Why should I accept the
    funnelling money into foreign wars? Why should my money be used to prop
    up third world kleptocracies? Why should I accept the total abandonment
    of border controls? Why should I accept second class citizenship in my
    own country? Why should I bow to foreign courts and international
    treaties I had no say in?

    Why should I accept black junkys
    literally getting away with murder? Why should I accept that we can’t
    deport foreign criminals? Why should we be forced to house them? Why
    should we accept that prime real estate in the capital is given to the
    least productive immigrants? Why should I accept London becoming a
    foreign city? Why should I accept devolved regimes gaslighting me and
    politicising the public sphere?

    Why shouldn’t I be angry that war
    memorials and statues of our most accomplished leaders are threatened by
    mobs of foreigners and communist agitators? Why should I accept
    national museums and culture being made into regime propaganda weapons?

    Why should I accept ISIS flags on our city streets? Why should I tolerate
    Muslims chanting genocidal slogans being chanted on our streets? Why
    should I accept living under a decadent, ignorant virtue signalling
    regime that hates me for merely existing? Why should I tolerate any of
    this?
    And so say all of us!!

    2. A searing indictment of the political class in this Country. What Peter North recounts is true and hasn’t happened by mere chance. A more deliberate and evil plan to destroy a culture and its people cannot be imagined.

      When and by whom was the decision made on the destruction of the UK? At a time in the past somebody or a group became responsible for the inculcation of the idea into the PTB that the UK and its indigenous people were deserving of eradication as a united entity.

      Clearly, there’s no genuine political divide involved in the course of what has happened/is happening, it’s a joint enterprise over decades: the HoC appears to be nothing more than a theatre where the joint enterprise is played out. Where are/were the politicians who claim to really care for the Country and why didn’t they speak up? What ‘glue’ is it that keeps together the management of the demise of the UK?

      1. Korky, this will continue until the majority of the British people agree to rejoin the EU.

        It’s a quite deliberate action by British politicians

        1. I disagree, Janet. We will never, ever be given such a choice ever again. The intent is to do so much damage we’re given no option but to rechain to the hated EU.

          The state, having done nothing to take advantage of the Brexit vote and having deliberately left every law in place for this precise purpose will eagerly adopt such a position. The political class, smirking will say ‘Oh well, we tried’ and force us back in as they wallow in the gravy train.

      2. Blair and Neather ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’. And, of course, it stinks.

        Blair wanted a voting block. He’s got one. Well, had one. It’s now forming it’s own party.

    3. I’m not signed up to X so I hope someone can post it on there as one of the few bastions of free speech….

    4. Look here! None of that! DIVERSITY STRENGTH!!

      Keep repeating that until you get the message! You have no rights, you are simply there to pay for everything. Thee laws don’t apply to you. Diversity strength! is all that matters. Obey. Conform. Do not resist. diversity strength!

  4. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story

    SPEEDING

    A senior citizen out in West Texas drove his brand-new Corvette convertible out of the dealership.

    Taking off down the road, he floored it to 80 mph, enjoying the wind blowing through what little grey hair he had left. “Amazing,” he thought as he flew down I-40, pushing the pedal even more.

    Looking in his rear-view mirror, he saw a state trooper behind him, lights flashing and siren blaring. He floored it to 100 mph, then 110, then 120. Suddenly he thought, “What am I doing? I’m too old for this,” and pulled over to await the trooper’s arrival.

    Pulling in behind him, the trooper walked up to the Corvette, looked at his watch, and said, “Sir, my shift ends in 30 minutes. Today is Friday. If you can give me a reason for speeding that I’ve never heard before, I’ll let you go.”

    The old gentleman paused. Then he said, “Years ago, my wife ran off with a State trooper. I thought you were bringing her back.”

    “Have a good day” the trooper replied.

  5. Houthis could attack Britain’s underwater internet cables. 19 February 2024.

    Houthi rebels could attack Britain’s underwater internet cables, a new report has warned.

    The Iran-backed militia have conducted drone and missile attacks against ships in the Red Sea, disrupting global shipping, in response to the war in Gaza.

    A report by Policy Exchange has warned that the Houthis could “broaden” their response to the conflict by taking it “to the subsea domain” and targeting underwater cables.

    Isn’t this by the same people that told us last year that the Russians were going to do it?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/19/houthis-could-attack-britains-underwater-internet-cables/

  8. One for Willum

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/114a209484845c9748967d02d8925442266804da098d217fdc0be8c2aa49ba84.png

    Rest

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9f593ce4d7cd3691f9340d7612462179f503e5a6a6f3afa1549766de5bdd8cfc.jpg

    https://twitter.com/cosyposter/status/1759091599626125405?s=20

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8d02ea10db31c63fd5df7d0a2001a58fce266dba4a4c624909f5a8b00fe7cb82.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6674e8a154b70fbb18111e556fa9c13c45783949fa10bf0b5418f2c99516117c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e66c59c6b899e9e0239c666c4b8544e179cd69479262cebb9a16e6de80cfe90b.jpg

    Too true……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ca81815c3c3d811a0fcbe243e0ce7aecc8a4be63725d5336ca908184890b40d7.png

    1. We are at a tipping point – well, more a long slope. You can see this inn the frenzied grab governments are making for power, to legislate, to control anything, something and how much faster it slips away from them.

      They want to control currencies and we’ve bitcoin/blockchain.

      They want higher taxes and globalised tax controls, and so some countries just ignore them and money moves away from the nation state. They want to regulate the internet and VPNs arrive.

      They want to push agenda yet the people they imported to support them fight against it.

      They want more tax so bribe the lazy. They force exams, for their own benefit and people get thicker as they are not learning anything.

      They tax fuel to stop people driving (really just to soak tax) and unemployment soars.

      They tax work, they tax death, they tax buying and demand collapses and unemployment soars. So they desperately flail about for something, anything that can be taxed to continue their power grab and… tax heat and light and spin endless lies but this just drives industry away and makes people miserably poor, so big government is forced to spend more money buying votes mitigating the very problem it has caused: but! Because it’s vicious and spiteful it only helps one group while hammering another.

      All to cling on, wretchedly to the dwindling, increasingly unnecessary structures it replies upon to perpetuate it’s own irrelevance.

    2. I read yesterday that US interests are buying up farmland in Ukraine. I suppose that it’s easier to loot a country if all its young men are dead. What is happening there is an utter tragedy.

        2. That might be true if looking at cultivated arable land but Gates is a beginner when it comes to total land ownership. A number of US families own more than a million acres each and there are even a couple of Canadian families that own several million acres of land.
          Gates isn’t in the top ten,

      2. The billions of supposed aid to Ukraine are backed by loan guarantees. It follows that the loans will never be repaid and that the billions will be redeemed by the forfeiture of Ukrainian lands and property.

        As in the UK and USA the political elites and their sponsors, the globalist corporations and industrialists, are selling out their countrymen for theft of property and kickbacks.

  10. Good Morning, all

    Calling older people sweet or kind is a ‘damaging stereotype’, say campaigners

    Charity urges public to challenge people who use ‘patronising’ terms – but Esther Rantzen says it risks trivialising the problem of ageism

    Max Stephens and Blathnaid Corless
    18 February 2024 • 6:15pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/18/calling-older-people-sweet-kind-damaging-esther-rantzen/

    Generation Snowflake twaddle. Anyone risking calling me sweet and kind better watch out.

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

    Tom Clayton
    12 HRS AGO
    From their “charity” statement:That
    “The total employee benefits (including employer pension contributions and employer national insurance) of the key management personnel were £707,661 (2022: £733,562), which consisted of the Chief Executive, Director of Communications, Director of Operations and Finance, Director of Human Resources, Director of Programmes and Director of Strategy and Partnerships.”
    That sounds very “sweet”…………………For totally superfluous organisation. Why are we funding this stuff from our taxes?

    River Cartwright
    9 HRS AGO
    Reply to Tom Clayton
    There are a lot of directors who on average have pay packages of £100k each. It’s a racket

    1. Even small charities are a racket.

      How to extend your income:
      Set up a charidee for a cause broadly supported by the Common Purpose destructor lefties.
      Apply for grants from public or charitable trust fund money.
      Use part of grant for your chosen cause.
      Use rest of grant to subsidise your lifestyle, eg travelling (as long as you can show some business that can be described as being associated with the charidee), purchase of equipment to be used by the charidee, office space for use of charidee in your home etc.

      1. It’s not difficult to do the same as a company. It’s setting up as a company and genuinely wanting to actually ‘do’ that thing that big state makes hard.

        1. Agreed; but with a company you actually have to earn money but with your charidee you apply for government and foundation grants. Much easier.

    2. Have seen a couple of ads from the Trussell Trust on TV, yet another charidee. I’d never heard of them (food banks) so looked them up. Running this charidee are people being laid £60/70,000 and upwards. Tried to find out whether you and I fund it through HMG but could only find that it is an NGO, but not how much they’re given.

      I’d always thought charities were funded by charitable public donations. Nowadays it seems that most of them are part funded by HMG. Sorry, I mean you and me.

  11. Good morning all.
    A dull, overcast but currently dry start with 5°C outside.

    I wonder how many Work–from-home workers think of this?

    Stay-at-home workers
    SIR – There may be a sting in the tail for those working from home (Letters, February 14). More and more employers are calculating that remote working may be just as well done at less cost by outsourcing to staff abroad.

    A wise employee, where appropriate, should be at the workplace because in some cases absence may not make an employer’s heart grow fonder.

    David Saunders
    Sidmouth, Devon

    1. A stupid comment as it works both ways. It ignores that 1. This has already been on going and 2. That a remote worker can work anywhere they want to – in whichever country they choose.

      Conversely an employer can think ‘I’ve this expensive big office to pay for. We’re getting as much done working from home. Let’s save money and close the office.’ So he does. Then, because he has a cunning and canny wife, he decides to rearrange his UK company and set up in Lichtenstein, paying 3% tax.

      The world has changed.

      Yes, this can change as things scale and at some levels – public sector – inefficiency is rampant because it’s too big to actually achieve anything and what it does do no one wants but that’s the nature of massive bureaucracy and the type it attracts.

      1. Norwegian law has made the employers get all working from home to sign for it – as “home” becomes the workplace, thus covered by workplace HSE and insurances. Thus, there are requirements to desks, chairs, fire alarms, lighting, just as there are in the office.

        1. That’s fair enough. It’s a place of work, after all.

          The problem with WFHing is that managers hate it because they think unless they can see people, those people are not working. Workers like it for the opposite reason.

          The zeitgeist dislikes WFH because it has given already lazy people a free ride to do even less. The public sector likes WFH as there’s no need to pretend to fill the day.

  12. Army Reserve must expand by 100,000. David Davis 19 February 2024.

    Beyond this, the Government should be incentivising civilians to volunteer as reservists. Currently the recruitment process is desperately bureaucratic and slow. With the right policy, enrolling in the Reserve Forces should be a form of public service to be proud of. I am certainly proud of my service, and still meet my old contemporaries every year – the camaraderie is still there decades later.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Echo Fish.

    So what are we defending exactly? I ask that seriously, in simple form, there’s no point fighting a war away from home when children’s concerts, airports and Children’s hospitals and tube networks are subject to suicide bombings by people who seek to destroy our society.

    In the Cold War, there was freedom of speech, and there was the rule of law and order to protect the home front. It made it worth joining both the regulars and reserves as you could easily compare our lives to life in a Soviet occupation.

    In 14 years of Conservative Government there’s very little worth standing up for.

    Why would someone join up?

    To badly mangle JFK’s thoughts, we should ask what our Government will do to protect us and our families before it asks of us.

    No young straight patriotic white man wants to join the regulars, what makes Davis think that they would want to join the reserves?.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/18/army-reserve-must-expand-by-100000/

      1. True_Belle
        @True_Belle
        Life in the countryside can be very interesting , living here near the Dorset Jurassic coast .
        Been on Twitter since its birth . I am fed up with politicians !

        Good comment TB. So many of us are fed up.

        We’ve met a number of politicians. In nearly every case they enter politics with the best of intentions.

        Yet after some years these intentions are completely distorted and destroyed.

        Look at the furious and malevolent attacks on Bridgen as a ready example.

        A careful analysis of why this nearly always happens is desperately needed.

    2. All my life, the destructors have won every social battle in Britain, resulting in a decadent mess of a country which they now want me to sacrifice my children to ‘defend.’
      No.

    3. In any case white males are, well, not wanted! It’s a bleak future for young men when theyre Trashed at every point and “need not apply”.

  15. We are too stupid to see the Dark Ages are back

    Quiet quitting is not just about jobs. We are also abandoning parenthood, religion and relationships

    TIM STANLEY
    18 February 2024 • 7:48pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/02/18/TELEMMGLPICT000276320115_17082855425550_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqyah24xujI4bAbg1jBqcGi61UDbDdk-JPjedL466dDsg.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Idleness goes meritocratic: It is not just the aristocracy who can be wastrels today

    This is a column about work, but I’m going to start with religion (atheists, bear with).

    A Telegraph analysis reveals that Church of England attendance has fallen by about 20 per cent since Covid. Some of that will be old folks dying off; some of it, people losing the habit. But it’s also an illustration of how we respond to cultural cues. By closing churches in the middle of the “Greatest Crisis Since the War”, Christian leaders sent the message that collective worship isn’t essential – and if it didn’t matter then, why would it matter now?

    The lesson of lockdown was that nothing – not your religion, your relationships, education or career – matters more than your health. Therefore, it’s no surprise that today, despite almost one million vacancies, more than nine million of us of working age are economically inactive, including two and a half million on a sickie.

    The state told us we could stay at home and be paid to do it, that any cost will be covered by the future taxpayer. What mug would choose to get a job?!

    There are very good reasons not to work. A lot of modern employment is insecure and badly paid. The failure to invest in state social care has compelled many to look after relatives.

    But while I’m sure the incoming Labour government has countless policies to fix these problems (tumbleweed blows across the page), what they’ll really struggle with is the changing shape of work – the rise of the click-based, content creating “non-job” – and the cultural perception that much of what we do is simply a waste of time.

    Britons once built ships. Now we work in HR and events management. I’m convinced that one reason why we adore the NHS is that it remains a rare locus of expertise and hard work, where people do something that matters.

    Yet even the doctors are on strike. This is the Dropout Generation. If we’re not getting what we want, we walk away – when we can be bothered.

    Academics have identified a curious phenomenon called quiet quitting, whereby employees stay in their job, they just do less of it, having neither the will to climb the ladder nor the energy to hop off.

    This is demonstrable – UK workers have lost 4.5 working days a year since Covid – and the term is being creatively applied to relationships (where the precarious nature of online dating reflects the gig economy for work).

    Britons are having less sex, marrying later – if at all – and putting off babies for good, causing populations to shrink. The replacement rate is circa 2.1 babies per woman; in South Korea it’s 0.78. The silver lining of civilisational collapse is we might finally see the end of K-pop.

    Once upon a time, the key unit in society was the family. Today it is the individual. The only principle we can agree matters is choice, though with the death of religion and philosophy, the range of choices that we can imagine has narrowed drastically, as culture and faith have been replaced by holiday photos and video games.

    I’m with the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre: we live in the new Dark Ages, we’re just too illiterate to realise how dumb we are. Harold Macmillan sat in the trenches reading Aeschylus. Rishi Sunak is a fan of Taylor Swift.

    The PM wills Britain to grow, but being the product of a bland corporate culture, cannot explain why we should make the effort. To make the most of one’s talents, perhaps; to contribute, to enjoy responsibility, to pass something on. Prevailing against such optimism, the stuff that gets us out of bed in the morning, the green movement glues roads to a halt and predicts there won’t even be a tomorrow to enjoy.

    In a culture saturated with despair, people sigh “I can’t cope!” Pharma companies say “You don’t have to”. And doctors write the prescription.

    Rather than ask why capitalism makes people mad or unwell, we invite citizens to drop out of it. Rather than encouraging partners to make a relationship work, we celebrate them for having the “courage to walk away”.

    And if you don’t want to brush your own kid’s teeth, says Labour, we’ll do it for them in school (that actually is a policy of theirs). Labour’s abandonment of proper socialism, that is sacrificing today for a better tomorrow, strikes a chord among an electorate that doubts society can remake itself and is gradually giving up on democracy.

    Polling suggests young people favour a dictatorship. I don’t think they’re dreaming of Stalin. Rather they regard politics as stupid, occasionally harmful, and they’d prefer it to go away.

    In a Deliveroo society where one doesn’t even cook the food one eats – let alone kill it and pluck it – we want stuff to be done for us, fast and anonymously. The ideal dictator would be a hard-working immigrant. “If you’ve enjoyed this military junta, please remember to leave a review.”

    My point is this: it’s tempting to see Covid as the Great Disruptor, an event of such unusual force that it shook society to its foundations, and that we only need to pass some bills and kick a few deadbeats off welfare to put things back. But that’s wrong. Lockdown went with the grain, confirming the slow death of vitality in British life, and sending the state in to take the place of the engaged citizen.

    We’ve been complaining about our work ethic for years. The baby glut has been a long-time coming. And Christianity has been ebbing away since the 1970s. We have a spiritual crisis, which is to say we’re a society without a motivating spirit.

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

    Solomon Wise
    11 HRS AGO
    We ditched our Judea-Christian values for ‘progressive liberalism ’. Those values underpinned the most successful society the world has ever known, unmatched by any other, be it art, science, literature, medicine, aviation, engineering etc etc.
    Now there’s no moral framework and society is falling apart, along with economic competence, accountability, responsibility and a lack of respect for others. Corruption and greed and idleness are the order of the day. Glad I saw the best of it.

    1. What a dreary column that is just doing the predator class’s work for them. No wonder Tim Stanley has a well paid cushy number at the Daily Telegraph.

      Church attendance did fall when traitor Welby ordered churches to close, but at Christmas 2023, there were signs that it was recovering. Also Stanley’s assertion that the family is dead and the individual is the unit of society reflects what they WANT to be true, rather than what actually is the case. They have gone a long way towards destroying families and Christianity, but they haven’t managed it yet – both are battered and bruised but resilient and still hanging on.

      We are not beaten yet, but if you listen to the likes of Shill Stanley, you’d lay down your arms and surrender now!

      1. The family is the bedrock of society. It creates everything good and worthwhile. The state, however, hates the nuclear white family. It hates it with such blind passion and fury that it has committed vast amounts of legislation, tax and vindictiveness solely to destroying it.

        1. They have targeted black families too with the same measures (you only have to look at the proportion of fatherless black children in the US in the 1950s compared to today), and they only don’t target Asian families yet in Britain because multi-culturalism is also a powerful weapon of destruction.

        2. For me, my tiny family is everything, followed by my three friends. I’d take a bullet for any of them, and how sad a society when people wouldn’t do so. Maybe explains the disintegration, or vice versa.

      2. Christmas 2023 surprised me. There were themed carol services every night at Barts in the week running up to Christmas and the people came and they kept on coming. There was difficulty finding room for them all. Many sat behind the pillars with a restricted view and some sat behind the apse, between the altar and the Lady Chapel, where they could ony listen. But still they listened. Every church in the City could have had their share but we seemed to attract way more than our share. The people are there and they want to come.

          1. Yes, very much so. Even Bishop Sarah doesn’t challenge that and Stephen Ebor invited himself to preach for us. They can’t deny the numbers.

          2. Just goes to show (in my view) that people prefer “proper” Christian church services to the happy clappy anything goes variety. I know I do. Nothing turns me off faster than undress and casual approaches to the liturgy.

    2. We’re having children later because the cost of doing so is so high and we need a career established first. Thus the problem there is tax.
      We are working less because there’s no point working more. Again, that’s because the effective real tax rate is 70%.
      Folk work in the gig economy – almost all foreigners – because it’s often an easy no questions asked lark to qualify for welfare.
      The Warqueen gave up her job because it simply wasn’t worth it. Increasingly candidates were poor quality – academically excellent but they wanted to go home at 4, or 3. If she hadn’t set out to avoid tax she’d have lost 370,000 to the state. Now she works a 3 day week, has 50 days holiday a year and is far happier.

      If you want less of something, tax it: business, workers, savings, investments, children, home ownership, you name it, the state destroys it. Of course people want the government to go away.

        1. As did my vast Norfolk skies, where I was born beside the River Yare at Buckenham Ferry.

          Such a wide-open space – you felt absolutely free.

          1. The emotional pull of some places is an interesting thing.
            Why should the East Anglian seascape affect me more than, say, the rugged Cornish coast? Is it ancestral memory? Did my forebears cross those seas?
            My aunt honeymooned in Aldeburgh; my dying mother’s last outing was to Shingle Street.
            Why does St. Petersburg, despite even using a different language and script, affect me more deeply than Paris? Despite the differences, I felt at home in St. Petersburg in a way that didn’t apply to Amsterdam.

          2. Agreed, Anne, for me the similarity is Singapore and the awful Paris. I don’t know St Petersburg but I’ll wager that Stockholm comes close. We were only interested in Kanaalstraat in Amsterdam when I was there on a Squadron P***-up in the 1960s.

          3. Good morning Anne

            Emotional pull.. could the air be the clue , fresh North Sea air ?

            Here on our coastline which you are familiar with , the sea has no pull, you cannot hear it lapping , swooshing , grating on gravel on hard sand… the rush of pleasure one feels when you hear the sea on the North East coast is different .

            I have never been to St Petersburg, but I get what you mean , because you have often talked about it .. the heavy gravitas of the architecture and the colours and Baltic feel / atmosphere … perhaps where your bloodline came from originally ?

          4. I am not onboard with this east coast worship, the mud flats of the Essex coast have no pull for me even though I was born just a few hundred yards from the coast.

          5. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? I felt very attuned to Russia when I visited, and fell in love with Buenos Aires despite not actually liking cities…

      1. The scallop sculpture is dedicated to Benjamin Britten and designed by Maggie Hamblin.

        When I was last in Aldeburgh it was sploshed with red paint by some oik who objected to it even though it is remote from the seafront.

  18. 38367+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    Monday 19 February: It won’t just be Tory voters who express their despair at the general election

    To vote for the lab/lib/con
    mass uncontrolled / politically controlled immigration / paedophile umbrella coalition is to give consent for the cartel to act on behalf of the voter.

    Their record
    on its three plus past decades alone is bad enough, to realise the past three years plus in the cold light of day, and what has taken place is, in my book, an act of treachery and hatred of fellow man and Country.

    MORE OF THE SAME IS NOT AN OPTION.

    To continue to support these governing political cartels in their long standing form is an act of imbecility, unsurpassed.

    1. If a government were required to gain more than 51% of the voting public’s support then we wouldn’t have had a government for decades.

      This is a good idea!

    1. Here is a cracking example of Bullshite Bingo, courtesy of Essex County Council Health’n’Safety dweebs.

      “I asked them, ‘why are you not going in the water?’ and they said that specific crews have different levels of training for different situations.

      “They were waiting for some specialist crews, because the water level was actually 4.5ft. And they were only allowed to go in at waist height.

      “They are classed as a ‘wading crew’, and because it’s higher than waist height their legislation and training doesn’t allow them to go in the water until the other crew, which are more specialised, are on the scene,” he said.”

      1. It’s the rules imposed by the ‘management’ twits sitting on their backsides in Head Office.

        1. Then the Union should challenge it on behalf of their members, who will all (if not already) be seen as useless cnuts who don’t do the job they are (well) paid to do.

      2. It seems plod has similar restrictions and cannot enter water deeper than 18 inches. Pussies – the lot of ’em.

    2. If we’re bribing them to buy British companies then aren’t we the defacto owners? The government does so love hiking wheel barrows of our money around.

  22. Falmouth has been selected as the most depressing place to live in the UK. Who knew it had a rapidly expanding university?

    Students are trying to cancel my bookshop for selling literature on slavery: Store owner reveals how ‘rude’ Gen Z-ers come in to ‘check’ if her collection is ‘racist’
    Tasha Berks, 58, has owned Bookmark in Falmouth for over twenty years

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/02/16/16/81363605-13092687-image-a-74_1708102756834.jpg

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13092687/Students-trying-cancel-bookshop-selling-literature-slavery-Store-owner-reveals-rude-Gen-Z-ers-come-check-collection-racist.html

    1. Good morning Citroen

      “One boy was taking photos of a book, I said, ‘I hope you’re not just going to buy that cheaper online’ but he said he was checking if it was racist.

      ‘The university has got too big, there are 7,000 students living in houses local people used to live in.

      ‘It’s a beautiful place and I can understand why they want to be here, but they don’t understand working class fishermen and that’s what this town was.

      ‘In the last three or four years most of the people we used to see all the time have left. I wish more locals would come into town and we would see old friends again, but they stay away” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13092687/Students-trying-cancel-bookshop-selling-literature-slavery-Store-owner-reveals-rude-Gen-Z-ers-come-check-collection-racist.html

      Those students should look into the history of Cornwall and Devon , don’t the ignorant little wusses understand that Barbary raiders snatched white people , in order to to sell them on as slaves to the Arabs?

      Bournemouth and Poole have been ruined by the new universities .

      Their blurb…

      Bournemouth is a lively, cosmopolitan town on the south coast of the UK, known for its sandy beach and relaxed atmosphere.

      With over 19,000 students (10% of the town’s population) and a large number of language schools, Bournemouth has a fun, international atmosphere. The town is home to vibrant nightlife, international cuisine, an array of watersports and a Championship football team, AFC Bournemouth.

      The 10-kilometre long beach is a great place to relax in the sun, enjoy an evening barbecue or sip a beachside cocktail. You can also enjoy watersports such as surfing, kitesurfing, paddle boarding and jet-skiing, or join the many locals who run, cycle or skate along the seafront.

      The town centre shopping area has many places to enjoy a drink, plus cafés and restaurants including Brazilian, Chinese, Indian, Korean, Mexican, Thai and Vietnamese to name a few. There are also a number of international supermarkets selling a wide range of foods and other items.

      Near to Bournemouth, you’ll find the Jurassic Coast (a UNESCO World Heritage site), as well as the beautiful New Forest and historic places such as Stonehenge and Bath – with its famous Roman remains.

      Did you know?
      Bournemouth has an international airport, ferry connections to France from neighbouring Poole and is less than two hours by direct train from London.

      Cosmopolitan Never ever used to be … It used to be staid , smart and safe … Students are a modern plague of all times .

      1. They can’t even get the blurb right.
        AFC Bournemouth is a Premier League club and may well be one next season too.

  23. Good morning all,

    Golf morning ..mild , overcast and 10c so far .

    Yesterday morning… yes, Sunday morning early .. we all scrambled to get dressed and ready for the delivery of our dish washer replacement .

    8am..on the dot .. the van turned up from https://ao.com/ and 2 respectful chaps who had travelled from Exeter , extracted and dismantled our bust integrated 20 year old Neff dishwasher , then fitted the replacement , unscrewing the door etc and refitting the new one . All sorted by 8.45 am ..

    Moh and I were amazed and delighted with the prompt service from ao.com.

    If any of you are interested , do look at their web page , they are far superior to Curry’s or JL, and very competitively priced .

    2. Excellent!
      It’s 29c here and I’m catching up with a bit of Internet time.
      Glad you got the dishwasher sorted.
      Leopard watching last night and this morning.

        1. It’s terrible about the donkeys. People need their donkeys for transport etc. But the Chinese use them for something called Ejaou (spelling?) and their skins etc.

    3. Afternoon (almost Good Evening) Belle and all, been so busy I’ve only just dived in to Nottl land.

      Odd coincidence, I had a new washer/drier delivered by AO last Tuesday 13th February. The AO guys phoned me first thing in the morning to give me a 12:00 to 16:00hrs slot, then called again at 2:45 PM to say they would be arriving about 3:00 PM. They removed the 11-year-old machine, unboxed, installed, connected and tested the new one, all in 45 minutes. They MUST have shorter slots (e.g for delivering microwave ovens) as well as the big, heavy white goods.

      I asked them how many deliveries they are expected to do in a day. They said I was number 13 and they were doing 20 last Tuesday. I had just baked some Cinnamon Swirls (OK, from a kit) and gave them one each in a ziplock bag as they needed to crack on and probably didn’t have much time for refreshment. I asked where they were from, as their English was good. Martin was Russian, Ardit was Albanian. Second time I have used AO.

      1. Yes , the guys were brilliant , they also had about 12 items to deliver as far as Taunton then back down to Exeter .

        A friend recommended AO, and she was very happy with their service .. One of the guys was Indian , and an experienced fitter and the other was a Cornish lad , we offered them coffee and toast , and they thanked us but said they had stopped of for breakfast on the way to us .. Sunday.. 8am , amazing .!

    4. Afternoon (almost Good Evening) Belle and all, been so busy I’ve only just dived in to Nottl land.

      Odd coincidence, I had a new washer/drier delivered by AO last Tuesday 13th February. The AO guys phoned me first thing in the morning to give me a 12:00 to 16:00hrs slot, then called again at 2:45 PM to say they would be arriving about 3:00 PM. They removed the 11-year-old machine, unboxed, installed, connected and tested the new one, all in 45 minutes. They MUST have shorter slots (e.g for delivering microwave ovens) as well as the big, heavy white goods.

      I asked them how many deliveries they are expected to do in a day. They said I was number 13 and they were doing 20 last Tuesday. I had just baked some Cinnamon Swirls (OK, from a kit) and gave them one each in a ziplock bag as they needed to crack on and probably didn’t have much time for refreshment. I asked where they were from, as their English was good. Martin was Russian, Ardit was Albanian. Second time I have used AO.

    5. I have heard good things about AO.com, but hadn’t realised they also do installations. Worth remembering.

    1. I thought the UK government had just done RasPutin a favour by granting Ukrainian Refugees an extra 18months leave to stay in the UK – that should deprive Zelensky of a couple of thousand ‘willing’ army recruits for a further 18 months at least….

      1. If they remain here for four and a half years, there’s no way they will return to a bombed out country. They will also be close to the residency period for citizendhip.

        1. All the Ukies around here work hard. a pleasure to have them around.

          If only that could be said about our government’s favourite immigrants !

  25. It won’t just be Tory voters who express their despair at the general election

    None of the mainstream parties wants to move onto the centre ground for that would bring them into conflict with the supranational overlords

    1. I think of it as a desperate intent to force decline. The policies that would let the country grow are simple – and none of them involve a huge, obese government directing where money will be spent. These are antique ideologies from the 70’s. They failed then, they’ll fail today but the civil service still believes it knows best.

      The political class are no longer interested in annoying provincial politics as they’re looking for that next non-job with the UN, WHO, WEF or EU

  26. Good day all and the 77th,

    Light cloud overhead Castle McPhee this morning, wind in the West going North-West, 8-11℃, staying dry so garden work beckons.

    A quick glance through the letters and this caught my eye. No doubt Rosie Bucknall will be catching the eye of the 77th too, maybe even Tobias Ellwood’s.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5ad58675481efb5a33a63dcd2855cd50e0132060bf824015fa6fbc02003ed5bf.png

    It has ever been thus even if in different ways. The MoD steadfastly refuses to do the things that would ensure retention of expensively trained and experienced personnel, sorry, human resources.

    Why does anyone think that so many RAF, RN and Army pilots quit, as I did, to become airline pilots when the opportunity arises? It’s not just the long-term higher pay and better fringe benefits. I have even known former Group Captains and Wing Commanders who had good promotion expectations become first officers in an airliner cockpit.

    Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

    1. Moh did the same as you in the 1970s , resigned his commission , he was general list , and although he flew Seakings and Wasps etc in the RN , he joined a civilian helicopter company, one of the largest , and spent some time in Nigeria , then 16 years beyond the Shetlands .

      Many Fleet Air Arm pilots left the RN in the seventies , the government of the time did no one any favours .

      2. As my late father (RAF – victim of the Sandys axe) used to say: “They drag you in and they kick you out”

      3. A friend of mine from very many years ago called Mike Sharpe from Falmouth left the Fleet Air Arm and flew planes for the Shah of Oman before buying a pub in Crewkerne. He’s about my age (77) so I wonder if your husband knew him?

  27. Probably one of the DT’s better letters of recent times.

    “I read with interest your interview with the avuncular, media-friendly Sir John Curtice, and I note the evident certitude of his prognostications. However, venerating academics and pollsters as modern Nostradamuses is a grave mistake. Their groupthinking errors ahead of the 2016 referendum and various elections clearly misled politicians and media commentators. Sixty-two per cent of voters in Thursday’s by-elections didn’t bother to vote. I submit that this was mostly not due to idleness, but rather a simmering and widespread sense of betrayal. There is scarcely a voter in the country who hasn’t felt betrayed by our Government or Parliament at some point in the past decade, whether Leaver or Remainer, Labour or Conservative, or Irish, English or Scottish. Trust in politicians has completely gone. The next general election will be dominated by those few who have clean hands in these betrayals and, I suspect, the results will confound the polling industry – again.”

  28. Morning all 🙂😊
    The usual weather and we might have some rain later.
    What a shame our useless political classes can’t be shifted on to a system of performance related pay.
    Most of them would be destitute.

      1. I’ve just watching a program about the Normandy landings.
        If those guys had realised what was destined for our country they could have rightly walked away from boarding all those beach bound vessels.

    1. Don’t forget to shake your shoes and clothing , just in case , you know what I mean .

      So delighted for you , and am glad you are viewing some magnificent creatures .

  30. 38367+ up ticks,

    Every lab/lib/con vote cast is a welcoming gesture for the return of the dark times.

    We are too stupid to see the Dark Ages are back
    Quiet quitting is not just about jobs. We are also abandoning parenthood, religion and relationships

    Can this, in all honesty, be denied.

      2. Isn’t it strange how countries like Australia New Zealand and parts of Africa. And I suspect many other countries have a definitive for protecting their indigenous people.
        But not England. Anyone can turn up here and carry on in any particular manner they choose. Any white indigenous person complaining, would be found guilty of some sort of invented for purpose, crime.

        1. Scots 1st minister reported recently of saying that Scotland is too white.
          Did ALHAJI TAFAWA BALEWA, PRIME MINISTER OF NIGERIA, say a similar thing, that Nigeria is “too black”?

          1. He should have been reprimanded publicly.
            Why are these race branding divots here at all ?
            There is a new programme on TV coming up called Norwegian Fling.
            Scottish actor Martin Kempston and his mate.

      1. The media are still peddling the myth that there is a difference between the Labour and Conservative parties and that what their representatives say is what they intend to do and have the agency to do. People believe Big Brother and don’t use their own eyes and ears. Covid proved that. They’re still primitive souls who will believe in magic. Christianity should overrule The Science because we have evidence and no-one has ever proved that viral pathogens exist but the threat of magical doom terrified the masses.

        1. Yesterday several US and Canadian msm outlets were repeating the WHO scare mongering line about a possible future pandemic with causes unknown.

          No doubt there will be valid health scares in future years but everyone is going to ignore panicky health officials because it is just another scare.

          Like the boy that cried wolf too many times.

      2. 383697+ up ticks,

        Afternoon J JH

        I think that was uppermost on Rodins mind when creating ” The Thinker”.

  33. Training for the Army with an Islamist in our ranks. Anonymous. 19 February 2024.

    Yet in our section was a chap whom I will call ‘the man from the Maghreb’. His bed space was a few yards from mine. My first twinge of unease came at about 2am on the first night. Despite having been provided a room to pray in, the man from the Maghreb prayed at various times throughout the night in our shared quarters. Being at a British Army training establishment to be woken up not by a deranged corporal but instead muttered Arabic prayers in the dead of night is the kind of wake-up that is not easy to fall back asleep from.

    As our time at Catterick went on, concerns surrounding his behaviour grew, displaying as he did an unfriendly disposition and coming out with odd things. He did not speak to many people, but in the course of one conversation it emerged that the man from the Maghreb would under no circumstances fight for the United Kingdom if called upon to do so. ‘Then why are you here?’ came the obvious response. ‘I’ve got my reasons, that’s not for you to worry about,’ came the ominous reply.

    Well if you are an Islamist where better to get your training than in the UK Army? You learn about its structure and tactics. Get fit. Used to its weapons. Getting out is no problem when you are finished!

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/training-for-the-army-with-an-islamist-in-our-ranks/

    2. O perilous fyr, that in the bedstraw bredeth!
      O famulier foo, that his servyce bedeth!
      O servant traytour, false hoomly hewe,
      Lyk to the naddre in bosom sly untrewe,
      God shilde us alle from youre aqueyntaunce!

      (Chaucer: The Merchant’s Tale)

      We have always known that the most dangerous enemy is the one within: the fire in your bed, the malevolent servant in your home, the adder in your bosom.

      And we have learnt nothing from the Greeks who knew that their gift of a wooden horse would be welcomed by their enemies rather than seen as a grave danger by the stupidly naïf.

    1. If you think that is gross you should see the samples sent in by embalmers from the US & Uk demonstrated on Dr John Campbell’s You tube channel. I think it fair to say 99% of embalmers had bever seen such clots before 2020…

      Good morning Ogga and all…

    2. 38367+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      May one ask,
      Why do the governing cartel and supporters deem it necessary that we accommodate and feed internal ( phama. construct)
      aliens as well as giving five star treatment to external aliens.

    3. I know the person is dead now but its difficult to see how they could have lived with that obstructing the jugular.

      1. 383647+ up ticks,

        Morning KP,

        Maybe the growth rate of the alien has a telling effect , as in, the growth rate of an external alien in baby form is harmless tis only when they gain body mass…

        I am sure the politico / phama. department are working on a more
        acceptable addition.

  35. The reality of de-carbonising the Grid. Starmer wants to achieve the latter by 2030 and the result will be catastrophic, as the figures below testify.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ce7997c79b045d0ea9a6063ce0ad6c7bc49fc1208b80c0b0966d02fff5a2bb0d.png

    I’ve added spacing to make the facts clearer.

    Peak Supply from Fossil Fuels and Nuclear

    Remember that Labour have promised to decarbonise the grid by 2030, so I thought it would be helpful to see how much we rely upon reliable sources of power like fossil fuels and nuclear power now.

    I downloaded the supply and demand figures from Gridwatch for December 2023 and January 2024 to determine the peak supply from fossil fuel sources and from nuclear power during that period.

    There were eight occasions when supply from these sources exceeded 32GW.

    The peak supply from fossil fuels and nuclear came during the evening of December 1st, 2023, at 32.3GW.

    At that time, we were getting <1.5GW from wind, nothing from solar, 2.8GW from biomass, 0.8GW from hydro and a net 5.8GW from interconnectors.

    Since then, due to a fault on one of the nuclear power stations supply from nuclear has dropped from 4.8GW to 3.8GW.

    Starmer’s Labour, will, if they pursue their rhetoric create blackouts but we mustn’t forget that the Tories are responsible for crazy ‘green’ projects and as for the LibDums…

    Ideology, even one as flawed as Net Zero trumps facts and reality. Our politicos and their agents driving the project are stupid beyond measure and it would seem that no facts will shift their stance. Reality will hit home when regular blackouts anger the people sufficiently to bring them onto the streets. Only a revolution of sorts will cure this madness.

    Daily Sceptics

    1. Sorry to ruin this comment, but candles are made from a byproduct of the refining progress of hydrocarbons.

      For accuracy kindly delete the candles from the above picture .

  36. The border crisis has brought chaos to America. Spiked. 19 February 2024.

    Accommodating such large numbers of people, who arrive in such a disorganised way, stretches the resources of cities where the migrants land. For years, Democrats denounced Americans in border states like Texas as bigots for complaining about the disruption and strains that large-scale illegal migration can cause. But now, as migrants flock to Democrat-governed cities like New York and Chicago, that simplistic narrative has been upended. It turns out that the self-described ‘sanctuary cities’ are not very keen on migrants when they actually arrive. Democratic New York City mayor Eric Adams has said that incoming migrants ‘will destroy’ his city. His administration expects to spend $12 billion over the next three years on housing and feeding migrants. Naturally, this will force cuts in the budgets for schools, police, sanitation and other services. Many black Americans in particular are angry about the loss of public resources, creating a divide between these voters and the ‘progressive’ Democrats who claim to represent them.

    I think that we are a little behind the US here. It will probably be another two or three years before it gets as bad as this!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/19/the-border-crisis-has-brought-chaos-to-america/

  37. Good morning everyone,
    Meanwhile, in the utopia of Turdeauland, the sheer insanity gets worse.
    When oil and gas are fully banned in Canada, their people will die off a lot quicker in their winters than we will.
    “It is the belief system of a cult that wants to impose a massive supra-national programme of deindustrialisation, and still peddle the fantasy that we will magically stay warm, delicious food will be available at the press of an iPhone, and everyone will live in peace and harmony. It is the belief system of people who live in Imagine, one of the great John Lennon’s sillier songs.”
    https://dailysceptic.org/2024/02/18/senior-canadian-legislator-tables-bill-to-jail-people-who-speak-out-in-favour-of-fossil-fuels/#comments
    Now, for a day visiting my brother, giving him the usual gardening advice that he forgets about every year. Fun times.

  38. Nick Timothy walks into a buzz-saw from time to time. Serves him right.

    High energy costs are a choice – and an act of national self-harm

    Governments like to claim that globalisation means that our destiny is beyond their control. That’s wrong

    NICK TIMOTHY
    18 February 2024 • 8:09pm

    Steam rises from the coal-fired power plant near wind turbines in Niederaussem, Germany, as the sun rises on Nov. 2, 2022
    CREDIT: Michael Probst/AP
    Cruising up the Channel last week before docking in the Netherlands, was a Chinese vessel that carried 7,000 electric cars. All were manufactured in China, all will undercut rival products made in Europe, and all benefited from state subsidies and energy prices far lower than those in Britain.

    Nothing demonstrates better the absurdity of the myth of international free trade, the failure of the model of globalisation pursued by Western governments for more than two decades, and green policies that have driven industrial production from countries with higher environmental standards to those with little or none.

    In Britain, policy has deliberately increased the cost of energy. Yet expensive energy makes British goods less competitive. In foreign markets and at home, British companies lose out to foreign rivals, with cheaper inputs, lower labour market standards, and higher carbon emissions.

    Many consider this progress, but it will soon come to be seen as serious economic, social and geopolitical self-harm.

    Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Britain generally had the third most competitive industrial electricity costs of the G7 economies. But since then we have performed far worse. In the five years before Tony Blair became prime minister, our industrial electricity costs were around 9 per cent higher than the average of the advanced economies comprising the International Energy Agency. By 2010, they were nearly 23 per cent higher, and for the past five years have risen to 52 per cent higher.

    Most European countries have seen prices rise dramatically since Russia invaded Ukraine. But compare British prices with specific countries and the difference is shocking. Our industrial electricity prices are three times higher than in America and Canada.

    They are more than twice as high as in Korea and New Zealand. They are about twice as high as those in European countries – Finland, France and Sweden – with a strong nuclear energy sector, and much higher than those – like Germany and Poland – still using coal to generate power.

    In China, responsible for 53 per cent of global coal consumption, and where coal generates 61 per cent of electricity, industrial electricity prices are around a quarter of those in Britain. Add to this low Chinese labour costs and the enormous subsidies provided through cheap loans and steel, and it is clear that this is not free or fair trade at all. Meanwhile, emissions associated with imports to Britain from China have risen 62 per cent since the late 1990s.

    We can blame China for abusing the world trading system it joined almost a quarter of a century ago – and indeed the European Union is threatening to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles – but the real problem is with Western naivety.
    China was always going to flout the rules and use the system to its own advantage, and for years Western governments turned a blind eye as it did so: stealing industrial secrets, subsidising whole sectors and dumping surplus goods.

    These electric cars are really only a more visible example of what has been going on across industry for at least two decades. One result has been the empowerment of China – a strategic threat and a hostile state – to the extent that it openly backs Russia in Ukraine, undermines international institutions, such as the World Health Organisation, corrupts and sets debt traps for foreign governments, threatens Taiwan and even India, and talks up confrontation in the Pacific with America.

    Another result has been the enfeeblement of our own industry. Not all global free traders are content to watch China abuse the system in the way it does, but most are at best neutral in response to the decline of industrial production in Britain and elsewhere. Their response is to cite economic theory, and explain that “comparative advantage” means we should be relaxed about other countries dominating manufacturing, because we will dominate other sectors, such as financial and professional services.

    Nobody sane argues for national self-sufficiency, and trade does make us richer. But it is a simplification – and a case of putting theory before reality – to say we should not care about what is made or done where.

    The pandemic demonstrated the danger of stretched supply chains that include hostile states. But in slower, less visible fashion, the transfer of industry from Britain to the East has caused our trade deficit to widen further – with all the consequences that follow – our productivity problems to deepen and our regional disparities to worsen.

    It has also caused our labour market to bifurcate, with fewer mid-skilled, mid-paid jobs than before.

    Despite everything, Britain remains a stronger manufacturing force than many recognise. We are the eighth-biggest manufacturer in the world and investment is growing at the second-highest rate in the G7 since the introduction of the super-deduction tax nearly three years ago. But to really change our economy – to export more, improve productivity, rebalance across regions and sectors, and increase the number of good, well-paid jobs – we need to do more.

    This must mean reform right across the economy. The super-deduction is an example of how tax reform can aid rebalancing, but there is so much more to do.

    British industrial strategy cannot involve the fiscal firepower provided by American subsidies, but it can focus investment, join up decision-making, and protect strategic industries. It can reshape supply chains and move first with regulatory frameworks for developing industries in life sciences and tech. It can invest in secure energy through new nuclear and our own oil and gas.

    And it can reform post-18 education to provide the technical education and training the country – and millions of our people – need to thrive.

    But we must also overcome our greatest blind spots. We do need to reduce our dependence on foreign fossil fuels – not least because we should not rely on autocracies for energy – but policy must never run ahead of technology, and our net-zero targets are simply unrealistic and self-destructive.

    And so too must we get real about trade. It is time to junk the dogma about globalisation and free trade and return to the real world. Unless we do so, economic decline and political instability awaits.

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

    Overtaxed Unrepresented
    13 HRS AGO
    Well Mr Timothy, it’s your ex-boss Mayhem that foisted Net Zero upon us – the greatest act of economic self harm in UK history.
    Are you proud of yourselves?

    Paul H Wilson
    13 HRS AGO
    We have the North Sea oil,not to mention fracking and coal in abundant quantities. Furthermore,not every foreign country that produces oil is run by “despots”. We have embarked on a course of Green lunacy and are paying the price for it.The Tories will play a political price also.

    W FLETCHER
    13 HRS AGO
    Reply to Paul H Wilson
    Just you wait and see how things will get once we have Ed Miliband in charge of Energy. It really is terrifying

  39. You don’t know what you are missing. Radio 4 Daily Service: Theme: Tarry Awhile – Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent book (written by Dr Selina Stone) – Tarrying in the darkness – with London Community Gospel Choir:
    https://d15v4l58k2n80w.cloudfront.net/file/1396975600/52287894327/width=1280/height=720/format=-1/fit=crop/crop=0x290+5619×3159/rev=2/t=432970/e=never/k=983f2c8d/125.jpg

    Dr Selina Stone:
    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HdI4vXXkQGI/maxresdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCIAKENAF8quKqQMa8AEB-AH-CYAC0AWKAgwIABABGGUgXihYMA8=&rs=AOn4CLCz6rRIAAvBd9bxivlkshu0queoBA

      1. I don’t think we’ve burnt an Archbishop of Canterbury at the stake since Thomas Cranmer in 1556. Just wondering…?

        2. I reminded a friend at church that the stake pit was just outside the gatehouse at St Barts. He said, “Yes, the Church of England hasn’t been the same since we stopped burning our bishops”.

    1. Amazing. The Democrats have really over-reached themselves. You don’t need to be a Trump fan to know he is being persecuted.

      1. I wish we, the UK, had the gumption to fight back against the establishment. We seem to be the most spineless people in the English speaking world. Oppressed and abused by tyrants and mediocracies who get away with it, as our rights are being seriously eroded, but we do absolutely nothing about it. It is humiliating that even the Canadians fight back when we, the motherland of the Anglo-Saxon world are so supine.

  43. SKILLS FOR SENIORS

    The ability to speak several languages is an asset, but the ability to keep your mouth shut in any language is priceless.
    Be decisive. Right or wrong, make a decision. The road is paved with flat possums who couldn’t make a decision.
    Happiness is not having to set the alarm clock.
    When I get a headache, I take two aspirin and keep away from children just like the bottle says.
    Just once, I want the prompt for username and password to say, “Close enough.”
    Becoming an adult is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
    If you see me talking to myself, just move along. I’m self-employed. We’re having a meeting. Also, where would you get a nicer guy to talk to.
    “Your call is very important to us. Please enjoy this 40-minute flute solo”.
    Does anyone else have a plastic bag full of plastic bags, or is it just me?
    I hate it when I can’t figure out how to operate the iPad and my tech support guy is asleep. He’s 5 and it’s past his bedtime.
    Today’s 3-year-olds can switch on laptops and open their favourite apps. When I was 3, I ate mud.
    So, you drive across town to a gym to walk on a treadmill?
    I didn’t make it to the gym today. That makes five years in a row.
    I decided to stop calling the bathroom “John” and renamed it the “Jim”. I feel so much better saying I went to the Jim this morning.
    Old age is coming at a really bad time.
    If God wanted me to touch my toes, He would’ve put them on my knees.
    Last year I joined a support group for procrastinators. We haven’t met yet.
    Why do I have to press one for English when you’re just going to transfer me to someone I can’t understand anyway?
    Now, I’m wondering . . . did I send this to you, did you send it to me or have I only seen one copy?

    The Commandments for Seniors……
    You don’t need anger management. You need people to stop pissing you off.
    Your people skills are just fine. It’s your tolerance for idiots that needs work.
    “On time” is, when you get there.
    Even duct tape can’t fix stupid – but it sure does muffle the sound.
    It would be wonderful if we could put ourselves in the dryer for ten minutes, then come out wrinkle-free…and three sizes smaller.
    Lately, you’ve noticed people your age are so much older than you.

    1. Some very good ones in the list. One which rang a bell for me was:

      If God wanted me to touch my toes, He would’ve put them on my knees.

      One of the signs of an excellent wife is that she is happy to help you put on your socks.

    2. We have several plastic bags for plastic bags… and I agree about the alarm clock. As for those the same age as me… 🙁

      1. How are you this evening? So sorry for your sad loss but Oscar had good times in the last months with you as his friend and he as your friend.

        I agree with no alarm clock.

  44. Visiting Step-son last week, there was a worker replacing an outer door that had been damaged in a fire in one of the ground floor flats. He’d removed the old door frame, made of a mahogany type wood, so I scrounged the bits as firewood.
    I’ve just been de-screwing and removing some plastic fittings ready for sawing up. No need to stack it, it’s already well seasoned.

  45. Tory Party under Boris Johnson could regain votes of ‘lost Conservatives’
    Former prime minister is only candidate to outperform Rishi Sunak against Labour’s Keir Starmer in new poll
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/18/general-election-conservative-tory-boris-johnson-leadership/

    Forgive the cliché but if Conservative voters think that Boris Johnson is the answer then they have no idea of what the question is.

    BTL

    One of the signs of rigor mortis is that a body may continue to twitch for some time.
    We know the Conservative Party is dead but I do wish its corpse would stop twitching.

    1. Lord Greensill wasn’t the answer either, but that didn’t stop SunHat from bringing the appalling little oik back! “Whatever you decide I will do my best to deliver it”??? Count the lies in this clip – you’ll need both hands and might need to take your socks off!

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w87GNWJHtFM

      1. Unlike the Lady of Shallott David Cameron has not got an attractive face, it reminds me of what the honest and truthful Kent said:

        ’tis my occupation to be plain:
        I have seen better faces in my time
        Than stands on any shoulder that I see
        Before me at this instant.

        [King Lear]

        However one might make a comparison with Helen of Troy who had a lovely face which inspired the launching of a thousand ships; Cameron’s pudding like face might inspire the launch a thousand rubber dinghies.

        1. Sorry, I didn’t spot your post Corim. But I think I get marks for the appropriateness of the choice of painting!

    1. And we’re all descended from primitive primates, it’s just that some appear to have evolved more than others.

    2. They aren’t Chinese for starters. They are South East Asian, most of them hill people from Thailand, Burma, and India. Ethnically different from the Thai’s and Burmese themselves but still of Asian origin and most definitely without a drop of black blood in them. They look like they are, most likely, Nagas, a catchall expression for ethnically diverse tribes in that region.

  49. Good morning. I see that TCW wish to moderate my response to a piece there which does seem to me consistent with the persistent effort there to urge a cure to our sadly failed parliamentary government, once the pride of British constitutional development:

    The question is how long it will take for us all to understand that the existing regime works only long-term for those who wish us ill, and stop
    giving the enemy our energy with wasted talk. Do not vote for any of the flavours of manure on offer. It is time to rid humanity of the
    globalist threat by concerted action worldwide, and this will come let us hope soon.

    I would respectfully suggest:

    * Do not read or listen to any of the whore legacy media but search information widely and rely on no other final judgement but your own.

    * Accept that we all have to die sometime, and consider the possibility, very real to me at least, that there are worse things than dying, among which slavery and the murder of our loved ones and the permanent genetic pollution of the species figure large. All are in the crosshairs of the Filth.

    1. The chap filming should not have argued with the daft bint – merely taken her number and reported her to that Giant of Policing Cur Mark my Words Rowley.

      1. Answer a question for me. In the UK if the police invade your home in this manner are you allowed to use force to get them out?

        2. As he had not committed a crime he should have asked her to leave his premises. If she didn’t she was trespassing, a criminal offence. Then take her number and report her.
          You’d probably have to issue a private summons as the perlice and CPS would no doubt refuse to.

          1. In the US police invading a home have literally been shot dead without the home owner suffering any punishment.

      2. Don’t come out? Are you joking? Yet again a two tier policing effort. The muslim need to go, and Lefty plod with them.

    3. In my day my Mum would sow my name label into my collar, not spray it over the front of my clothes, and certainly not in red.

    4. I am sorry to say that I think this clip does the cause of peace and humanity no credit whatever. Where is this guy in the T shirt when it comes to the fact of the murder of thousands of our people by Midazolam and the 20 million deaths from the jab world-wide? A young officious police officer dealing with a mouthy demonstrator, and doing so fairly reasonably. She got him back in his house which was where she wanted him, away from the marchers – so what? It would be great if police officers were not needed at all but this clip does not move that ambition forward an inch.
      Finally the sooner we all understand that the disgusting events in Gaza and Ukraine, and the outrages world-wide, are the direct creation of the globalists, the sooner we will realize that marches and yahboo between groups so manipulated actually pays for the evil and imperils us.

      1. What “disgusting events in Gaza”? Are you referring to the Israeli desire to root out people who are no better than NAZIS. In fact, as Douglas Murrey has said, worse than NAZIS, who had sufficient sense of guilt they tried to hide their crimes against the Jews rather than exult in them as Hamas has done.

          1. Yes, on your heart. The bleeding liberal who thinks that appeasing killers is somehow compassionate. Never mind the victims, we must have sympathy for the fictitious native of Gaza who have no history in that part of the world even though you would like to think that.

          2. If you’re as ignorant of everything else as you are of my opinions you should watch out for the furniture…..but maybe hitting your bonce on it has already caused you damage…..impenetrable indeed.

  52. Inevitable

    Labour vows to ‘eliminate’ fox hunting

    Shadow environment secretary Steve Reed promises to close ‘loopholes’ in the ban to prevent hounds killing pets or livestock

    Amy Gibbons, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    19 February 2024 • 10:30am

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/02/19/TELEMMGLPICT000128175412_17083380483450_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf_4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Under the Hunting Act it is illegal to hunt wild animals with dogs CREDIT: LUKE MACGREGOR/ALAMY
    Labour has vowed to eliminate fox hunting within its first five years in power, claiming there is not a majority in “any part of the country” that wants to see it continue.

    Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, said the party would close “loopholes” in the existing ban that allow some types of hunting to go on, claiming it would prevent hounds killing pets or livestock.

    Labour has already vowed to toughen the Hunting Act, including banning trail hunting – where dogs follow a pre-laid scent rather than a wild animal.

    It has been urged to abandon the plans by country campaigners, who warned the party to end its “running attack on rural communities”.
    *
    *
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/19/labour-party-vows-to-eliminate-fox-hunting/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey

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

    Peter Hearn
    1 HR AGO
    In the same spirit of prioritising animal welfare, will Labour ban Halal slaughter?

    Matthew West
    1 HR AGO
    Reply to Peter Hearn – view message
    Why single out halal? Kosher uses the same method.

    Peter Hearn
    1 HR AGO
    Reply to Matthew West
    Labour won’t have any problem banning anything Kosher.

    %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

    From The Grimes

    Jeremy Clarkson: the eco mob should go after golfers not hunters

    ‘Golf is a lot worse for the environment than pheasant shooting. Its courses are just filled with sandpits and people who think Donald Trump is a snappy dresser’

    Sunday February 18 2024, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F194458a5-5f4a-4bf9-b95e-e35875a705ce.jpg?crop=1600%2C900%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    As I write, the longest month of the year is drawing to a close. It’s January 43rd and, outside, I can hear the area’s chins smoking the last of the low hens, and the ribald banter of the country folk as they enjoy their beaters’ days. What I’m trying to say is: it’s the end of the shooting season.

    Normally this is a time for everyone with a pair of tweed shorts to oil their heat and be grumpy until the middle of August, when it’s possible to head north to waste some grouse. But I wonder. Is the time coming when we put our guns away for the very last time?

    Shooting is such an easy target for Sir Starmer and I feel sure he will raise the issue, much like Mr Blair did with foxhunting, whenever he needs to distract the electorate from an awkward moment. You mark my words: if the economy tanks or he misses an immigration target or one of his backbenchers throws some paint at a statue of Winston Churchill, he’ll pop up out of nowhere and say, “I think we need to stop people from shooting pheasants.”

    And immediately every BLT+ student, academic, human resources enthusiast and vegetablist will run amok in London, smashing windows in St James’s and burning tweed to show their support. And how will the shooting fraternity respond to the chanting and the lawlessness? By saying very little because, on the face of it, rearing birds so that they can be shot for sport is fairly hard to defend.

    I’ll try my best, though. Golf is worse for the environment. To run a shoot you need to be at one with nature; you need to nurture it and allow it to do its thing. And you need woods and hedges and crops where not just the pheasants but also songbirds can hide and thrive. Golf courses, on the other hand, are just filled with emerald green splodges, some sandpits and people who think Donald Trump is a snappy dresser. So if I wanted to ban something to help the environment, I’d go after golf.
    *
    *
    *

    1. Foxes kill lambs and chickens. They are not cuddly Mr Foxy Loxy so beloved of people who never see them in their proper habitat (i e not in an urban setting). Foxes are shot (and wounded), gassed and poisoned (both indiscriminate) because numbers need to be controlled. Why the lunatics should want to ban drag hunting and trail hunting (both following a trail laid earlier in the day and not a live quarry) has no valid justification. The Hunting Act did absolutely nothing for animal welfare, but then it was never intended to do that. It was pure class envy (and not even right at that as all sorts of people follow hounds).

  53. Alexei Navalny was killed by Novichok, his widow claims. 19 February 2024

    Alexei Navalny’s widow has claimed he was killed by Novichok as she pledged to continue his work.

    Yulia Navalnaya accused the Russian authorities of blocking the family from seeing his body in order to allow traces of the nerve agent to disappear from his system.

    She knows this how?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/02/19/alexei-navalny-mother-lyudmila-refused-access-body-morgue/

      2. It was Biden did it!

        After his aids had tucked him into bed for the night, fearless Joe cast off his cloak of geriatric ineptitude and flew over to Siberia to administer the fatal blow. His daytime sleepiness is really down to the challenges of his nocturnal escapades.

        Well it’s as believable as some of the conspiracy theories that will be spread.

    3. Can the likes of Cameron or any of the other useful idiots give any coherent reason why Putin, who is clear-headed, should have wanted Alexei Navalny dead?

  56. Miracle’ Mom Wakes from 5-Year Coma

    As Jennifer Flewellen, of Niles, Michigan, lay motionless in a hospital bed last year, stuck in a nearly five-year coma caused by a car crash, her mother Peggy Means told her a joke. Then the impossible happened: Flewellen, 41, laughed.

    Our politicians have been in a coma for more than 20 years and there is no sign of them every recovering.

    2. 383697+ up ticks,

      Afternoon P,
      m
      One of our political overseeing turnips made the peoples laugh so they made him PM, they ain’t laughing now.

  57. SteerpikeSteerpike
    Former Clegg aide: let babies vote, seriously
    19 February 2024, 8:12am

    The Liberal Democrats has long been home to some of Britain’s most unorthodox political thinking. But even Mr S was surprised by the radical suggestion of one former top aide on how to address intergenerational inequality. Speaking on the Times Radio election podcast, former Nick Clegg advisor Polly Mackenzie gave her thoughts on what constitutional reforms would benefit the country. One such initiative would be to, er, give babies the vote. The punchlines write themselves. Mackenzie told her fellow podcasters Lords Finkelstein and Mandelson that:

    I’m just going to say something that you probably will all think I’m joking but I’m deadly serious which is that I think people should get votes from birth. I think there is no good reason to disenfranchise the under-18s at all and I would be happy to hold that vote in proxy until their child is, say, 10… There’s about 11 million people who can’t vote because they’re under 18 and that skews what the democratic system represents. The democratic system is literally only capable of representing the views of the over-18s and the views of the over-18s about young people. And actually I think that a radical suggestion that anyone who is a citizen of this country should be entitled to be represented in the demographic balance of where the votes lie would be transformative. Sure, some people would vote just the way their parents voted and lots of people vote the way their wife votes or the way that their husband votes. And lots of people are stupid and lots of people are old and lots of people are lazy. We actually don’t hand out votes on the basis of how clever you are or any kind of test of intellectual capability. Why should we not give a vote to people under 18?

    It was left to Lord Finkelstein to gently note the likely consequences of giving ten million more dependents the vote – namely that it would heighten the risk of bankrupting the state. But perhaps it’s the only way some Lib Dems think they can actually win power…

    https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1758149746596671780?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1758149746596671780%7Ctwgr%5E892b60fbc15f2aca367add727a0256d7d46aea7f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2Farticle%2Fformer-clegg-aide-let-babies-vote-seriously%2F

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

    Marcus Preston
    5 hours ago
    Her comment “lots of people are stupid….” could be said to include her. If this is the standard of intelligence in the current political set up, then no wonder we are in the state we are. Even for a LibDem it is extraordinary.

    steve3005
    4 hours ago
    So there I was, changing the baby’s nappy and I thought I would ask who the baby wanted to vote for. Ga ga went the baby – ah, I thought a vote for the Liberal Democrats it is then!

      1. Makes sense to them. Youth are inclined to vote for the altruistic socialist world so why not pamper them. A few more years of woke education indoctrination in primary school and theere will never be another right leaning government elected.

    2. Her comment “lots of people are stupid….” could be said to include her.

      COULD!!! what do you mean could?

    3. Wait a minute, wait a minute – what about votes for the 250,000 aborted babies every year…..?

  58. Well here is the Harvey of all Rabbit Holes.

    It’s an hour long video during which the interviewee M. Benz talks with out notes but with deep knowledge about the Trans-Atlantic controls on Democracy. It sort of explains why our politicians appear to be useless / helpless. Frankly I’m surprised Me Benz is still alive….

    https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays

    2. Mr Benz describes the guys and gals manufacturing your chains and gags (and I don’t mean puns)!

  60. Here is an obituary to take your breath away:

    Nicola Trahan MBE,

    In June 1940, after the fall of France and at Churchill’s bidding, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was set up “to co-ordinate, inspire, control and assist the nationals of the oppressed countries who must themselves be the direct participants” in sabotage and subversion. Or, as the new prime minister put it, to “set Europe ablaze”.

    Nicola Trahan was only 13 and at school in France when the Germans invaded, but on rejoining her parents in England she told them that she wanted to help the war effort, just as soon as she was old enough to drive an ambulance. Churchill had set no age limit for SOE operatives, but women were not to be employed in the field. However, in part because of the activities of the American Virginia Hall in occupied France, where she had helped set up escape lines for allied airmen, in 1942 Churchill gave approval for women to be sent to Europe as couriers, as they were considered less conspicuous to the Gestapo than men. Then the following year, with the Allies’ invasion of occupied Europe at last in prospect, women were sent as full “agents” — wireless operators and organisers, trained in use of weapons and unarmed combat. The search for suitable French-speaking women was at once broadened.

    Nicole (anglicised, “Nicola”) Pauline Marie Trahan was born in the Pas de Calais in 1926, the only child of André Trahan, a businessman of indeterminate interests and perhaps a little Scots blood, and Jeanne Marie (née Bourzes), an English teacher. Some time later, the family moved to England, living in Cheshire and Lancashire. There was a Trahan connection with Liverpool via the former French colony of Acadia in North America, originally a Huguenot settlement, and Nicole Trahan’s parents appear not to have been Catholic. “Trahan” was associated with silk-workers who drew out the thread from the cocoons, a Huguenot occupation, from the verb traire: “to draw or stretch”. But so much of Nicola Trahan’s early life and time with SOE remains enigmatic.

    Significantly, perhaps, she was educated at Le Collège-Lycée Cévenol International, in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, département of Haute-Loire, south-central France. The school had been founded just two years before the German invasion by André Trocme and Pastor Edouard Theis, both pacifists, and was shaped from the outset by the region’s historic resistance to political and religious persecution. The commune of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon would save many hundreds of Jews when the collaborative Vichy government ordered their round-up on the orders of the German authorities in Paris. Nicola Trahan appears to have been thoroughly steeped in the school’s ethos.

    At school in England, probably on the Fylde coast, she continued to pester her parents about helping the French resistance. Eventually they gave in and, by some means not recorded, but which says much about how effective SOE recruitment was, while still only 15 she was interviewed by a “Major Tom” in Manchester. Bilingual, young and knowing the country, she was evidently ideal courier material.

    After her 16th birthday — still probably against the rules, but the SOE was never known for playing by any rulebook — she began parachute training at RAF Ringway (now Manchester airport). Years later she recalled having no fear of it, and supposed it was because she was so young. Almost as hazardous was practising emplaning and deplaning at night with the RAF’s Westland Lysander, the short take-off and land aircraft used for clandestine missions to improvised airstrips in France. On landing, the Lysander’s engine was never stopped, the propeller kept feathering and the wheels kept rolling. The pilot could not risk hanging around.

    Not long after parachute training, in late 1943 — probably the first week in December, with the full moon on the 11th — Nicola Trahan, codename “Teddy”, was sent on her first operational mission. The insertion was by Lysander from RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire, the most secretive of all the RAF stations, home to 138 and 161 Special Duties Squadrons (nicknamed the “Moon squadrons”). The landing strip was near Valençay, between Poitiers and Orléans, on the northwestern edge of the Maquis’s (French resistance) “Wrestler” operational area. “Wrestler” had originally been just inside Vichy France’s unoccupied zone, but in November 1942 German and Italian troops had taken direct military control of the whole of metropolitan France. While enemy troops may have been thin on the ground, their radio monitoring and intercept was extensive, and they frequently had the co-operation of the French gendarmerie.

    In later years Nicola had no recall of what exactly she carried — and perhaps never fully knew at the time — but typically it was codebooks, messages too long and complex for sending by Morse, and money. She was on the ground for two weeks, the preferred system — a week either side of the full moon for safe insertion and extraction — and home in time for her 17th birthday.

    Her second mission came some six weeks later. Having spent several weeks at home in Blackpool “on holiday, unpaid”, she or her parents received a telephone call for “Teddy”. Later that day, in a pattern to be repeated several more times during the war, she met her contact at the given place — a street corner, or outside a public house not too far from home — and then that evening was collected by a vehicle at another rendezvous. The long journey to “an airfield” followed, not knowing it was Tempsford until after the war, all road signs having been removed in 1940.

    The pilots called SOE operatives “Joes”, male and female alike. “When we parachuted agents into the field we never, or only rarely, knew who they were,” Air Chief Marshal Sir Lewis Hodges, who flew both pickup and airdrop missions as a squadron leader at Tempsford, said years later. “We perhaps knew their codenames but that was all.” The agents were brought to Tempsford “at the last moment from a special holding unit, a country house in the vicinity, and they were brought on to the airfield with as much secrecy as possible”.

    It was at the “country house” that Nicola would receive her briefing and whatever messages and packages she was to take to France, before being kitted up and thoroughly checked to ensure that her clothing and accessories were entirely French.

    The insertion for her second mission was by parachute, probably by the Handley Page Halifax bombers of 138 Squadron, modified to provide a parachute hatch called the “Joe hole”. She had no recollection of aircraft types beyond the Lysander, nor of the exact circumstances of the drops. “We sometimes dropped agents in the dark period with no moon, and these were often what we call blind drops,” said Hodges. “There was no reception committee on the ground and this method had security advantages, but there was always the risk of injury in the parachute landings.”

    “Teddy” dropped near Champagnole, some 250 miles east of the Wrestler area and close to the Swiss frontier, where she was involved in the smuggling of Jews into Switzerland.

    Two further insertions followed, but things changed after D-Day, when the allies married up with the Maquis on the ground. Nicola became more actively involved in sabotage and offensive action, and on at least one occasion used her Sten (submachine) gun to effect.

    In the recommendation for her Croix de Guerre (with palm), the commander of the North Indre sector (the Wrestler area) wrote that Nicole Trahan “joined the secret army then the North Indre Maquis, carrying out numerous dangerous missions. Despite very dense enemy occupation, [she] provided regular twice-daily liaison between two command posts. Notably distinguished herself at Valençay from 20 to 30 August 1944 by bringing valuable information, which she gathered at the heart of enemy operations, to her commander.”

    She would also be awarded the Médaille de la Reconnaissance Française, the now discontinued honour instituted in 1917 to recognise the French government’s gratitude to those who, without legal or military obligation, had come to the aid of the nation.

    After the war — of which in all she spoke very little, and then only in old age with the inevitable loss of precision — her story becomes even more opaque. Her SOE “P” (personnel) file in the National Archives at Kew has not yet been found, which is not unusual, due to postwar weeding and a fire at SOE headquarters in 1945. What she did in the aftermath of Libération is unknown. At some stage she studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, but gave it up because, as she said in so many words, philosophy does not cure toothache. She returned to England and trained as a nurse in Manchester, working subsequently in Cheshire and for three years at the American hospital at Neuilly near Paris. In 1958 she joined SSAFA — the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Families Association — as a health visitor in Germany, Belgium and Hong Kong for 30 years, and for which she was appointed MBE in 1989. She never married, and when it came time to put down roots said “it had to be in army country after such a long relationship with the services”. She chose Orcheston, the most tucked-away village on Salisbury Plain.

    As a civilian, with no uniform to wear, “parachute wings” had been superfluous. In 2017 they were finally presented to her, at the Army Air Museum at Middle Wallop in Hampshire, by the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, a former commanding officer of 22 SAS.

    Nicola Trahan MBE, SOE courier and military social worker, was born on December 21, 1926. She died on January 18, 2024, aged 97

    1. MBE for her efforts and many like her; yet gongs galore and huge pensions for useless parasites.
      How times and values have changed.

      2. The MBE was for her work long after 1945. Only the French gave her any gongs for her war work.

        One BTL comment: “My 16 year old niece can’t find the laundry basket with a map and torch.”

        1. 30 years work.

          A member of HG’s family received a croix de guerre but just “being there” medals from the British.
          Strange world

        2. Just as with Bletchley they kept quiet and didn’t expect public recognition. I hope it was reflected in their pensions.

          1. Don’t get me started on pensions…..we had a letter to day telling us our pensions have been increased by five pounds a week. Meanwhile the usual idiots are dishing out 8 million a week to support people who have never done a productive days work in their collective and invasive lives.

    2. IIRC the ‘fire’ at the SOE offices was an attempt, or series of attempts, to destroy a lot of unwanted paperwork.

        1. SOE was cancelled abruptly in 1945. Some of the players were then offered jobs elsewhere. I wonder.

    3. “home in time for her 17th birthday” – what a lass! An agent on enemy territory, and not even an adult. I’m glad she saw the positive end to the war.
      Respect!

    5. Sadly we will not see again such magnificent people, as our country sinks into mediocrity for ever. Or so it seems. “And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth…”

      1. 38367+ up ticks,

        Afternoon S,
        Good thinking but, the lab/lib/con / coalition/ current supporters / voters would not hear of it.

  62. Apparently the Canadian overlords are holding workshops on the rule of law for Indian Government officials. It is supposedly an attempt to repair the split with India after Trudeau accused the Indian government of collusion in the murder of a Sikh nationalist in Vancouver.

    You can just imagine the topics – using the emergency act to suppress demonstrations, successful ethics violations, free drugs for drug addicts, dismantling a once thriving country, the list goes on and on.

    1. I was confused there for a moment. These are Indians from India not Canadian Indians? Surely the British Raj taught India the rule of law. We actually believed in it ourselves back then.

    2. Of course, if they’d never been there in the first place, none of this would have happened. But ‘Muh, diversity…’

  63. One of my colleagues has got herself into the Daily Mail. She got no joy of her local council so took the story to the Mail and they were interested. Mind, I see they’ve not covered the issue of cottages in her row being used to house migrants, which is causing misery and then some.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13088115/Londons-remaining-railway-cottages-say-historic-idyll-wrecked-HS2-intimidated-relentless-developers-trying-box-skyscrapers.html

    1. Suspicion arises from Putin having been a WEF “Young Global Leader” but there does appear to have been a falling out between him and his former mentors. It’s disappointing to see Russia allied with the Chinese, South Africa, Turkey and the Arabs but to some extent “the West” has driven that agenda by leaving Russia no other means of remaining solvent?

      2. No other means than selling to other customers its amazing natural resources I think describes it better – though one notes additionally that a massive NG pipe across Ukraine to the EU has been running without a pause right through the war and is paid up by the EU custmers who are busy blackguarding the supplier!

  66. 38367+ up ticks,

    I’d spoil my ballot if I was voting in Rochdale, says ‘ashamed’ Wes Streeting
    Shadow health secretary apologises to supporters in Greater Manchester town after party suspended candidate in anti-Semitism row

    Didn’t his party have a great number of umbrella holders regarding paedophilia in rochdale, rotherham, etc,
    Lest we want to forget.

    A forerunner to the tory (ino) party continuation, that took the Country to greater depths of depravity

    My candidate, an additive to the polling paper
    Countrywide is “Daisy the Cow” patriotic, beneficial to all, health wise, strong backing from multi dairy herds, and very pro farmer.

  67. It’s taken just five years for Ursula von der Leyen to destroy Europe’s economy

    The EU is now slipping back into recession as much of the rest of the world steams ahead

    MATTHEW LYNN
    19 February 2024 • 4:29pm

    She steered the continent through the pandemic. She has massively increased the powers of the European Commission. And she has led a response to the challenges of climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and competition from China.

    Ursula von der Leyen might well have convinced herself of the strength of her record when she launched her bid for five more years as President of the Commission on Monday. There’s a problem, however. She has been a disaster for the European economy. Over the last five years, she has launched a ruinously expensive round of borrowing as well as a green strategy that will de-industrialise the continent, all while imposing round after round of growth-destroying regulations. On Von der Leyen’s watch, the EU has fallen decisively behind the rest of the world – and there is little hope of it recovering during a second term.

    In many ways, Von der Leyen has been the most significant EU Commission President since Jacques Delors, the father of the single currency and the single market, back in the 1980s. The comical Jacques Santer, another of her predecessors, left little mark. The same was true of José Manuel Barroso and Romano Prodi.

    But over the last five years, Von Der Leyen has overseen the final departure of the UK from the bloc; taken control of healthcare policy during the pandemic; launched the EU’s first major round of borrowing; introduced a climate change strategy; and vastly increased the power of the Brussels machine over industrial policy. It is quite a list.

    The trouble is that Von der Leyen has also been a disaster for Europe’s economy. Europe’s performance, just like that of the UK, had been slipping for a decade or more, but it was over the last five years that the gap with the United States, and China, became more and more painfully obvious. By the end of last year, US GDP was 8.2pc higher than its 2019 level. For the eurozone, output was only 3pc higher.

    Major economies such as France, only up by 1.8pc over five years, and Germany, with just a 0.1pc increase, performed even more poorly. Sure, Europe was hit by the pandemic. But so was every other country in the world. The EU is now slipping back into recession as much of the rest of the world steams ahead.

    Von der Leyen’s catastrophic mis-management of the Commission is one of the major reasons for that. There have been three big problems. First, she has massively increased the amount the Commission borrows, launching a 700 billion euro Covid Recovery Fund, and issuing its own bonds for the first time.

    This was meant to mark the start of a fiscal union to match the EU’s monetary union, and finally rescue the economies of countries such as Italy, which received large chunks of the cash.

    Three years later, it is clear that it has done nothing to accelerate growth, that huge amounts of money have been wasted on vanity projects, and that it has failed to drag Italy out of its near-permanent recession (it grew by just 0.6pc last year, with 0.7 per cent forecast for 2024). The borrowed money still has to be repaid somehow, but there is little to show for it.

    Next, Von der Leyen launched a massively expensive “Green New Deal” that was designed to turn the continent into a global leader in combating climate change as well as make its industries far more competitive against their main rivals.

    It included a carbon border tax that looked suspiciously like disguised protectionism, and vast subsidies to take a global lead in alternative energies.

    And yet, the results have been dismal. Europe’s once world-beating auto industry is getting wiped out because it can’t compete with cheaper Chinese models, the continent is dependent on Chinese imports of equipment for wind and solar power, industry has been decimated by soaring costs, and it has been out-competed by better designed and bigger subsidies offered by President Biden in the US.

    At the same time, the “farm to fork” strategy that Von der Leyen launched in 2020, restricting the use of pesticides along with dozens of environmental targets for agriculture, has proved ruinously expensive, triggering a wave of protests in France, Spain, and Germany, as furious farmers take to the streets.

    Finally, all the extra powers the EU has accumulated for itself over the last five years have mainly been used to destroy innovation, and micro-manage the bloc’s way to economic irrelevance. The mandarins in Brussels boast about being a “regulatory superpower”, as if it were pen-pushers and law-makers instead of entrepreneurs and businesses that created new wealth.

    Take Artificial Intelligence, the most exciting industry in the world right now, and one where Europe could be a world leader.

    The absurdly cumbersome AI Act from the EU imposes huge costs that will crush start-ups and deter investment – even President Macron in France, hardly a free-marketeer, criticised it in public – killing off a new industry before it has even had a chance to establish itself. The result? China and the US will dominate the sector, and the EU, as in the rest of the tech industry, will be nowhere.

    Just like the UK, the EU desperately needs to grow faster. It is falling behind in key industries, Europe’s welfare states are increasingly unaffordable, and its mountains of debt keep on growing. Its share of the global economy has fallen from around 30pc 20 years ago to 15pc now. But there is little chance of faster growth under five more years of Von der Leyen’s inept leadership. Instead it will simply decline into greater and greater irrelevance.

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

    Eric Lamb
    3 MIN AGO
    She was disastrous defence secretary so Germany sent her to Brussels like we sent Kinnock, Mandelson etc . Thank God for Brexit although Sunak is still signing up to EU legislation. Pity we couldn’t send him to Brussels as well!

    1. Excellent. And not before time, either! Fingers crossed it turns into something much bigger.

      1. You can be sure that a half-wit from the loony quarter of the environmental camp will announce in all seriousness that such a demo shows that UK farmers are not fit to be trusted with the land. They must be licensed and ordered to carry out the instructions of HMG. Moonbat will be up there. On Countryfile last year, he said: “Livestock farming is one of the most damaging industries on Earth. It’s morally wrong.”

        2. Mr Moonbat missed out the adjective ‘intensive’, as in ‘intensive livestock farming’; it’s a moot point whether that qualifies as farming, or as an industrial process.

          1. This is what he said:
            “What we’re looking at here is one of the most damaging industries on Earth, the keeping of ruminant livestock, cattle and sheep. They’re extremely damaging for several reasons, and only one of those reasons is methane. They also produce nitrous oxide, which is another powerful greenhouse gas. But far greater than those impacts is their ecological and carbon opportunity costs i.e. the cost of what you’re not doing because those cattle and sheep are grazing on your land. In the short term, they could be wild ecosystems, which store more carbon than the grazing systems currently in use.”

            At about 27 minutes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001nq4k/countryfile-flower-farming

          2. Just think! You could be building hundreds of houses, cutting down the trees and grubbing up the hedgerows instead of grazing sheep. That’s what’s happening round here.

  69. A mean Par Four!

    Wordle 975 4/6
    ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. I got it in four on both phone and work laptop but not via the same route!

      Wordle 975 4/6

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

  70. Try marching along Whitehall chanting “England for the English…” and see what happsens.

    Mass immigration is bringing a European-style populist revolt to Ireland

    Republican voters are turning against Sinn Fein as they reject the party’s open borders stance

    MICHAEL MURPHY
    19 February 2024 • 2:49pm

    https://youtu.be/llAnoLFUgHM

    Ireland’s anti-immigration backlash has spiralled into country-wide unrest. Protests, arson attacks and hardening anti-immigration views have transfused Irish politics with a fervour not seen since the Troubles.

    I went to Ireland to make a documentary for The Telegraph to find out what Irish people make of the growing strife.

    I started my journey in Dublin, where hundreds of people turned out for an anti-immigration march. Amid a sea of Irish tricolour flags, protestors chanted “get them out” about the government over its support for mass migration – which many felt was conferring already sparse housing and public services to foreigners, to the detriment of Irish citizens. One woman said she was scared to leave the house because of the amount of “unvetted male people” who’ve arrived in Ireland in recent years.

    The Irish government were not the only villains of the event – much ire was directed at “higher powers’’, variously the European Union and the World Economic Forum. Leo Varadkar’s trip to Davos last month when anti-immigration protests across the country reached a high-point no doubt did little to disabuse them of the impression that his priorities lie elsewhere. Some gripes were flagrantly conspiratorial: Mr Varadkar’s government, not known for its Anglophilia, was accused multiple times of being in thrall to King Charles.

    Demonstrators also belted “Ireland is for the Irish” and other slogans which would usually be the preserve of the republicans of Sinn Fein. But the party’s support for mass migration has alienated their Irish nationalist base, with many at the march branding them “traitors”.

    To find out more about where the anger is coming from, I travelled to Roscrea, a sleepy town in County Tipperary, where locals have been protesting for three weeks outside of the town’s only hotel – closed down last month after the government struck a deal with its owner to house more than 160 asylum seekers there. Mary-Claire Doran, a Roscrea resident, told me the town had been transformed by an influx of around 1,000 refugees in recent years, swelling the town’s population of 5,000 by 20 per cent.

    Unlike in recent years in Britain and continental Europe, immigration has never been a dominant issue in Irish politics ahead of an election. But the surge in asylum seekers arriving in Ireland has catapulted it to voters’ number one concern, with most of the Irish public now in favour of tougher immigration controls, according to recent polls.

    I discussed the political fallout with Ben Scallan, a journalist for Gript, a media startup that has become a formidable challenger to the progressive orthodoxy espoused by the Irish government. “I think the Irish government is primarily concerned with appearing to be a modern European country,” Ben said. “They admire their European colleagues; they admire Scandinavian countries like Sweden which are progressive and very trendy.”

    Ben said he was baffled that the Irish government was repeating the blunders of its European neighbours by ramping up mass migration, with little consideration for the dissenting views of the Irish public. “It seems like having seen the failure of that policy in countries like Sweden, Germany and France, they want to replicate it for some reason that I don’t really understand.”

    Protests against the government’s immigration policy have been mostly peaceful, but some have turned violent – including in Dublin last year where riots broke out after three young children and a woman were stabbed, allegedly by a man of Algerian origin. There has also been a spate of more than a dozen arson attacks in Ireland over the past year on migrant facilities and venues wrongly thought to be housing migrants.

    The Irish state last year accepted more refugees than it could accommodate, forcing the government to offer asylum applicants tents and sleeping bags as they arrived in Dublin. Since the Russian invasion, nearly 100,000 Ukrainians have also been offered sanctuary in Ireland. I spoke to one Ukrainian refugee outside of an asylum processing centre in Dublin, who told me that despite sleeping rough in Ireland, he was nonetheless grateful for refuge from Vladamir Putin’s forces in Ukraine.

    The number of asylum seekers arriving into Ireland has shot up to more than 26,000 over the past two years, the highest annual figures on record, and a growth of nearly 200 per cent from 2019. Last year, most asylum seekers arriving in Ireland came from Nigeria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Georgia.

    There are some TDs who have spoken out against “unsustainable” levels of immigration in the Irish parliament. Six of them have formed a loose coalition called the Rural Independent Group. I sat down with one of their members, Carol Nolan, to hear their side of the story. “I have never seen the feeling as strong on the issue of immigration as it is now,” Ms Nolan said. “I do feel that people will protest at the ballot box and I do feel that if the government doesn’t change direction quickly…that they will be punished.”

    Ms Nolan said she felt anti-EU sentiment was being stoked by the government’s immigration policy. “There is a lot of frustration over the EU dictating everything a country should do – the numbers they should take in and so forth. So there is definitely frustration over that dictatorship as some people see it.”

    Leo Varadkar’s government says it can tackle the problems around immigration with better messaging and tougher laws to censor what it deems as “hate speech”. But the Irish public say their concerns are legitimate – a view which is becoming harder to ignore as it gains political momentum. It’s beginning to look like the Irish government’s vision of an Ireland which looks more like its European neighbours is coming true – a multicultural country, ripe for a populist revolt.

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

    David Thomas
    2 HRS AGO
    Leo Varadkar’s government says it can tackle the problems around immigration with better messaging and tougher laws to censor what it deems as “hate speech”.
    And herein lies the biggest problem, we know better than you, so suck it up. Peoples legitimate concerns trampled underfoot or worse still subjected to ill thought out laws. Nobody in Europe outside the political elites wants these invading hordes but they just don’t seem to get it. They will before much longer though, trouble looms large.

    Steven McFarland
    42 MIN AGO
    Reply to David Thomas – view message
    Too right, especially in Ireland which is not exactly unaccustomed to angry mobs, burning buildings, petrol bomb riots, and selective (and sometimes indiscriminate) murder. I suspect that the Irish will eventually show us the way.

    1. Leo Varadkar’s government says it can tackle the problems around immigration with better messaging

      massaging of the truth, more like.

  72. I hope Conway is OK, after taking Oscar for the last ride to the vet. That’s something that’s very hard to do, however necessary.
    I haven’t seen anything from him today – not surprising, given the situation, I suppose.

    2. He has been on my mind today, my daughter’s Golden Retriever took his final ride to the vet on Friday….

      1. Uff! That’s hard, so it is. Sympathy to your daughter.
        I remember well the day we took Magnificat to the vet for the last time. I wasn’t strong enough to stay as he went under, but he tried to hook me as we left. Poor old cat.

        1. It doesn’t get any easier, does it? It brought Lottl (Ann) to mind with her love of Goldies….

      1. Hi Conway.
        So many condolences. But one thing to hold on to – how much positivity you brought to Oscar since you took him on. How much happier he was as a direct result of your love and care. Don’t forget that. You’re a good person, and there’s precious few who fill that category.

        1. Thanks. I like to think he was a happy dog while he was with me (after the initial breaking in process, at least).

      2. ‘They’ have to bring climate change into everything, and a necessary culling with c/c as the excuse paves the way for perhaps a non-necessary culling of other species.

    5. Is there nothing or any aspect of our normal lives that these shits in Parliament will not seek to interfere with?

      We should be drilling for oil and gas and fracking to make our individual lives easier via cheaper energy costs.

      We should be exploiting our abundant coal reserves ditto.

      If the idiots continue with the policies of the freak Miliband and Cur Ed Davey we will be reading by candlelight and cooking on wood fires in the fields.

      We are led by cretins. I hope and trust that no sensible person will vote for any of these shits from Lib Lab Con or Green parties in the coming elections.

  74. That’s me gone. Useful tidying in the garden – which is VERY wet.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

    3. As if they didn’t have more urgent, important and pressing things to do. They are, frankly, a nasty lot.

    3. Out of the strong came forth sweetness. No wonder they wanted to get rid of it; it’s a Biblical reference (Judges).

  78. Cathedral apologises as transgender activist eulogised at funeral as ‘mother of all whores’

    Mourners in fishnet stockings and miniskirts dance in aisles at St Patrick’s in Manhattan at service for former sex worker

    Benedict Smith
    19 February 2024 • 2:32pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/en-us/news/2024/02/19/TELEMMGLPICT000367194673_17083491380410_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqKIEBCRKzG5U9aakvDJv0qZR8jVMg8Xgv2r4Gbyp8yTk.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Guests at the funeral of Cecilia Gentili, a transgender community activist, at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City CREDIT: STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY IMAGES

    A New York cathedral has apologised for holding a “sacrilegious” funeral for a transgender activist eulogised as the “mother of all whores”.

    St Patrick’s, a 19th-century cathedral in Manhattan known as “America’s parish church”, said it held a Mass of reparation to atone for “scandalous behaviour” at the service for Cecilia Gentili.

    Clips of the live-streamed funeral, where mourners clad in fishnet stockings and miniskirts danced in the aisles, drew condemnation from Catholic groups after going viral.

    The church later claimed it had been misled into hosting a funeral for Gentili, a 52-year-old former sex worker from Argentina, known locally for championing trans rights and people with Aids.

    “Thanks to so many who have let us know they share our outrage over the scandalous behaviour at a funeral here at St Patrick’s Cathedral earlier this week,” the Rev Enrique Salvo said on behalf of the Archdiocese of New York on Saturday.

    “The Cathedral only knew that family and friends were requesting a funeral Mass for a Catholic, and had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way,” he continued.

    “That such a scandal occurred at ‘America’s Parish Church’ makes it worse.

    “That it took place as Lent was beginning, the annual forty-day struggle with the forces of sin and darkness, is a potent reminder of how much we need the prayer, reparation, repentance, grace, and mercy to which this holy season invites us.”

    Pews were packed with mourners, many of them transgender, who cheered as they were led in prayers for transgender rights and access to sex-change surgery.

    Mass cards and a photo placed near the altar showed Gentili with a halo, surrounded by the Spanish words for “transvestite”, “whore”, “blessed” and “mother” above the text of a psalm.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/en-us/news/2024/02/19/TELEMMGLPICT000367194652_17083498635420_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqjYeQRtCUmaNTl9ge3Skvf4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=960
    Pews were packed with mourners, many transgender, who cheered as they were led in prayers for transgender rights and access to sex-change surgery

    The New York Post reports that one eulogist, wearing a sleeveless top and cowboy hat, paid tribute to “this great whore, St Cecelia, mother of all whores”.

    “Today we say we will see you soon and that you will give us the strength, the courage to continue your legacy, to continue the challenges ahead,” they added.

    The speech was met with a standing ovation by the hundreds of people in attendance, but prompted criticism from religious groups when it was posted online.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/en-us/news/2024/02/19/TELEMMGLPICT000367171504_17083501050790_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwZ-noePaJta23NuHfKFFEj8.jpeg?imwidth=960
    Gentili, a 52-year-old former sex worker from Argentina, was known locally for championing trans rights CREDIT: BEBETO MATTHEWS/AP

    Rev Nicholas Gregoris, a founder of the Priestly Society of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, said the service was a “deplorable desecration of America’s most famous Catholic Church”.

    Gentili’s family have hit back at criticisms of the funeral, accusing the Archdiocese of New York of “hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred”.

    “The only deception present at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is that it claims to be a welcoming place for all,” they added.

    In the Catholic tradition, a mass of reparation is held as an act of compensation, making amends for one’s own sins or the sins of others against God.

        1. I assume there is no unemployment benefit, so everyone must have a means of earning even if it’s crime. The 0.8 are probably about to shuffle off this mortal coil.

    2. And the UK’s is nearer 3.8%.
      Methinks there is something odd here.

      The reason is that it rose 0.8% to nearer 5.
      Headlines, don’tcha lurve ’em?

    1. CIA propaganda. The EU are now promoting his non-entity ex-wife as a replacement.

      Navalny was of no significance in Russian politics but merely a useful tool of the collective west in their pretence that serious opposition to Putin exists in Russia (Navalny was funded by the west). It does not.

  82. Taking an early bath, good night folks.
    Have been watching bbc 4, the elephant 🐘 herds and the problems they face in Kenya.
    It’s a tough life for the big yuns.

  83. Evening, all. Oscar passed away peacefully just after 10 am this morning. I am more broken up about it than I expected to be.

    5. Oh no. I am so sorry. He had the best life possible once he met you, and I was glad for him. He had the person he loved and trusted with him to the end.

      Sending huge hugs x

      1. I slept downstairs with him last night and he lay on my feet across my sleeping bag. At least he wasn’t alone and he knew he was cared for.

    6. Sad to know Connors but perhaps he’s in a better place. So sad for your loss after all the effort you put into him but he was a better dog.

    7. That’s both sad and good news.
      His last moments were with you and at peace.
      How is Kadi taking it?

      1. He was there at the end. I tried to make sure he knew Oscar had gone, but he didn’t seem very interested. He spent the afternoon sporadically barking as though he was telling me Oscar was outside waiting to come in. He is now in full possession of Oscar’s fleecy rug, so maybe he’s appreciating being an only dog. Only time will tell. I’m meeting up with a friend from art college tomorrow and I’m going to take Kadi with me (if the venue proves not to be dog friendly, we’ll have to find somewhere else) as I’m not sure how he’ll react to being left alone all morning. I’ll try introducing short periods and see how it goes.

        2. I have only recently found out that it is preferable for a surviving pet to either be present at the end or to have some contact with their old ‘ friend.’ Apparently, it helps them to accept the absence in the ensuing days, regardless of whether or not they appear to notice.

          1. When I have had two dogs I have always ensured the survivor was there to know that his pal had gone. Charlie (my previous terrier, who lived to be nearly 17 and a half) wasn’t in the least bit bothered. He sniffed his pal, then looked out of the window and wanted to know if we’d got a biscuit for him. As soon as he came home, he got in the middle of the bed they used to share, lay on his back and took up the whole space. You could almost hear him saying, “it’s all MINE, now!”. He also became a completely different dog once he was a singleton. No more attempts to start WW3 when he saw another dog. People wondered what I had done to him!

          2. When our beloved Sinbad was laid on the kitchen table prior to being euthanised by our vet our lovely 23 year old cat Paris jumped up onto the table we think to see what was going on but more likely to say goodbye.

            Animals are often more sensitive and observant than humans which is why we form such close bonds with them.

          3. I’m sure Kadi knew that Oscar was unwell. After Oscar was forbidden to climb stairs and had to sleep downstairs, the first thing Kadi did when we came down in the morning was to rush across and see if Oscar was still okay.

    11. So sorry Connors, it always hits much harder than we expect, especially when we think we have prepared ourselves….take care and hugs for Kadi.

    13. You did your best for Oscar in the short time you befriended him .

      That dog trusted and loved you eventually.

      Your patience and kindness to the grumpy natured chap was well rewarded , and I for one , enjoyed reading about your daily dealings with your pet .

      We will all grieve on your behalf .. Poor Oscar, but I am so pleased he was with you until the gentle end of his life xxx

    14. Such a sad day for you, Conway. You made Oscars life so good in his later years, and he loved and trusted you. All your love and care was worth everything to him, and at the end you were there. Sending love to you and Kadi.

    15. I am very sorry to hear this news. Oscar was an important part of your life, however short the time he had being cared for by you.
      I hope that knowing what a difference you made to him will be of some comfort.

    16. Very sorry to hear this. I’m not a pet person, but understand completely that dogs are vey much part of the family.

      1. Oscar was such a challenge and it was so rewarding when he came round. There was just so little time to enjoy that.

    17. My sincere condolences Conners.

      We lost our beloved Sinbad in similar circumstances but were able to put him to sleep at home with our vet and assistant doing the necessary as Carol fed him treats. He had a brain tumour causing fits but was treated successfully by the specialists at Dick White Referrals in Six Mile Bottom near Newmarket.

      Sinbad bravely recovered for a year or so on medications but eventually lost the use of his rear legs and could not respond to further treatment.

      Again, Carol and I empathise with you at such a sad loss of a beloved dog.

      1. Thank you, corim. The vet thought Oscar had a tumour in his neck, which was causing his lack of co-ordination and eventual loss of the use of his legs.

    21. So sorry, Conway. Poor old Oscar! You did wonders for him and gave him the love and security that he needed. The last few years have not been particularly kind to you.

      1. I met up with an old friend from art college today and as we were catching up I realised that in the last three years I have lost my dog of 17.5 years, my spouse and another dog.

    22. You gave Oscar such love and care and made his life immeasurably better and happier. I’m so sorry about your loss.

  85. Britain has raised a generation of anti-Semites. It might be too late to fix

    The poisonous fruits of this educational and moral madness have become impossible to ignore – and Jews are paying the price

    ZOE STRIMPEL • 17 February 2024 • 4:00pm

    It’s not a new phenomenon, young people screaming righteous virtue while fomenting noxious beliefs that are anything but virtuous. In the 1930s, student enthusiasm for Nazism in German universities was essential fuel for the National Socialist movement. In Marburg, the local Nazi student organisation was obsessed with fighting Judaism and “Jewish finance capital”, while, as historians have shown, radical “Folkism” was a major trend among Germany’s students and graduates in the years leading up to Hitler’s reich.

    A few decades later, the 1968 student protests in Germany would bequeath the Red Army Faction, aka the Baader–Meinhof Gang of “anti-fascist” terrorists who, in the name of the “anti-imperialist struggle”, committed murder and bombings. Other militant Left-wing groups, such as the Tuparamos in West Berlin, displayed an explicit hatred of Israel and Jews.

    We are seeing echoes of a similar pattern in Britain now. The last few months point to a real risk of gross, potentially violent, anti-Semitism, becoming normalised on streets, campuses and beyond.

    The young across the West now stand out as the most “anti-Israel” cohort. According to polling by YouGov in America last October, just days after Hamas’s pogroms, more people aged 18-29 sympathised with the Palestinians than the Israelis, while over 65s supported the Israelis by a margin of 65 to 6 per cent.

    It wasn’t the only whopper. In December’s Harvard/Harris poll, 67 per cent of young Americans responded in the affirmative to the statement, albeit one that polling experts have condemned for its lack of clarity, that Jews “as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors”.

    Meanwhile, according to December polling data, a third of 18- to 24-year-olds in the UK (alongside a sobering 30 per cent of all adults) agreed with the statement “Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews” – an important part of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.

    This is all happening while that very generation yell their iron-fisted progressivism, which they insist is moral virtue at every turn. They preach “intersectionality”, a philosophy which allows them to itemise oppressions – and which, for some, has become a tool with which to vilify Jews. Increasingly, these problematic attitudes are part of a ready-made package of beliefs.

    For the young are also environmentally obsessed, so they chuck paint at artistic masterpieces and block roads and ambulances rushing to hospital. They struggle to get on the housing ladder so they hate “neoliberalism”, “occupy” public buildings and streets and protest against “capital”. And boy do they deplore racism, which is why they vandalise statues of “dead white men” and industrialists, tear down others, insist that material they dislike should be banned from university reading lists and demand that buildings be renamed. Their virtuous struggle requires fighting a sprawling enemy: imperialism, climate change, racism, transphobia, Islamophobia, capitalism, Americanism.

    Yet since October 7, the anti-Israel element of this package has become, and remained, the centrepiece. As we have seen at our own universities in recent months, Jews associated with Israel risk being cancelled or de-platformed, and some have been left to feel physically threatened.

    A Jewish chaplain at Leeds University was forced into hiding on police advice after it was discovered he had been an Israel Defence Force reservist. Pro-Palestinian protesters at Birmingham University were seen holding a “Zionists off our campus” banner and allegedly chanted “death to Zionists”. A Jewish student at Brunel University told the Jewish Chronicle that a Palestinian woman told her: “I’m an extremist, I’m proud of it, I don’t think your people should be alive.”

    This nasty generational trend is the result of two obvious things. One is the tendency for young people to swing Left. The second is more particular to our times: the failure of Holocaust education, as woke intimidation and official cowardice make teaching about the unique horror of the genocide of Jews in Europe less and less politically appealing.

    The idea among some appears to be that “too much” Holocaust education risks block out learning about the suffering of other groups – especially those who endured slavery in the Americas. This is misguided. But it is the fear of offending other communities within schools that is most concerning.

    It must never be considered detrimental to “community relations” to teach about the suffering of Jews. Yet as far back as 2007, it was reported in The Guardian that schools had begun to avoid Holocaust education “because they are concerned about causing offence to Muslim pupils or challenging ‘charged’ versions of history which children have been taught at home”, citing a research conducted for the then government. To highlight just one shocking example, a history department in a northern city had avoided selecting the Holocaust as a GCSE topic for fear of confronting “anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial”.

    Since the present pogrom begun on October 7th, the poisonous fruits of this educational and moral madness have become impossible to ignore – and Jews the West over are paying the terrifying price.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/17/britain-raised-generation-of-anti-semites-too-late-to-fix/

    1. The hatred of Jews in the UK increases in direct proportion to the growth of Islam in the UK; the non-Muslim UK population needs to wake up to the fact that Christians will be next, followed by everyone else.

  86. Parents of six-month-old baby girl have birth certificate returned ‘ripped and with the word Israel scribbled out’ as Home Secretary James Cleverly orders officials to investigate ‘urgently’
    Campaign Against Antisemitism is now asking the Home Office to investigate.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13101567/Parents-six-month-baby-girl-birth-certificate-returned-ripped-word-Israel-scribbled-Home-Secretary-James-Cleverly-orders-officials-investigate.html

    1. The Home Office has long been infiltrated by Muslims just as moreorless every other Institution or Department of State has also been subverted by their malign influence.

      We are in very real trouble as a Nation.

      Merkel in Germany deliberately opened the doors to an invasion of Muslims from here, there and everywhere. Her aim was to destabilise the German society and return it to a sort of Nazi regime where political opposition is silenced either by heavy fines or else imprisonment.

      Expect more of this reversion to statist authoritarian compulsion in the weeks to come.

      Of course the vile proponents of the “Palestinian cause” some of the most ignorant youth in several generations, churned out from the supposed New Universities will go after and target our Jewish brothers and sisters. It was ever thus when the ghastly mix of Muslims and Nazis gain a foothold.

      2. Corimmobile, Angela Merkal told the world that Germany would give a warm welcome to all immigrants, then shortly afterwards told the EU that all members of the EU had to accept their “fair share” of those immigrants. What a hypocrite.

    2. Is she a Masticator of the Axminster?
      Or haven’t the Sapphic Mafia QUITE taken over yet with the Army like they have with the Police?

    4. I’d like opto see her try to command a battalion of five hundred Toms all of the same rank.

  89. And with the end of Shostakovich’s 4th Symphony, that’s me off to bed.
    G’night all.

  91. “Scientists grow world’s first artificial human testicles….” (Daily Mail). So, the saying “Grow a pair” may well be possible.

    1. That’s not surprising as I know you had become very attached to him.
      We have never had pets, save guinea pigs and a rabbit when the children were young. Ee were born and brought up in flats in the centre of London and pets were not allowed. I’m fascinated by how many on this forum have pets. We are very comfortable with our children, both now in their 50s, and grandchildren who are 19, 20 and 22 and all st university.
      Anyway we’re thinking of you and your sad loss.

  95. 393647+ up ticks,

    Bloody pathetic,

    Lord Cameron tours Falkland Islands after Argentina’s leader calls for handover
    The Foreign Secretary’s trip is a high-profile demonstration that the islands are ‘part of the British family’ amid calls for talks

  96. Goodnight all. Thank you for your kind words, good wishes and condolences. They are very much appreciated.

    2. That’s generally the least we NottLers will do for each other in times of trouble, and I speak from experience

    3. Sorry to hear your news, Conway. It’s always hard but time helps. His final times contained love and safety.

      1. I took some co-codamol. That always knocks me out. One of the advantages of giving up alcohol for Lent 🙂

    1. I do hope so.
      I think the court cases are proving to be counter productive. Many Americans are waking up to the corruption of their legal system and do not like it.

      1. That’s how I see it, Bob.
        And the scribbled-on birth certificate will hopefully have the same effect in the UK, as regards the takeover by Islamists.

    1. A perspective on Putin – from Blue Tara (tarableu@substack)

      Clear eyes required
      Russia stands for natural values against the Filth, but Putin is a ruthless autocrat who will brook no opposition and may well be a globalist member.

      With its own terrible experiences of the communist era, Russia and its leader understand the need for natural values and the value truth even in propaganda. This is Putin on the woke insanity:

      “The only thing that I want to say now is that their prescriptions are not new at all. It may come as a surprise to some people but Russia has been there already. After the 1917 revolution the Bolsheviks, relying on the dogmas of Marks and Engels also said that they would change existing ways and customs, – and not just political and economic ones, but the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society. The destruction of age-old values, religion and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family. We had that too. Encouragement to inform on loved ones. All this was proclaimed progress and, by the way, was widely supported around the world. Back then it was quite fashionable.”

      Same as today. By the way the Bolsheviks were absolutely intolerant of opinions other than theirs. Putin continues:

      “This, I believe, should call to mind some of what we are witnessing now looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries. We are amazed to see domestic practices which we, fortunately, have left – I hope – in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity when the works of the great authors of the past such as Shakespeare are no longer taught at schools or universities because their ideas are believed to be backward. The classics are declared backward, ignorant of the importance of gender and race. In Hollywood memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what colour or gender should be in a movie This is even worse than the agitprop department of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

      For those of us under threat from the globalist Filth, of whom wokeism is a dismal regimental offshoot, such clear understanding is a breath of fresh air in the fetid miasma spread among us since 2020 and leading up to it. The moral turpitude of Western politics that has forced the Ukraine conflict by its cynical failure to implement the Minsk Accords puts Russia firmly in the right of the dispute, and had the Minsk Accords been implemented that would have been, or should have been, the end to the matter. All of which tends to make those of us who wish to destroy globalism tend to think of Russia as a natural ally.

      And that would perhaps be an error.

      I hope that with time we may develop better relations with Russia, but for the moment we can certainly not be at all sure that Putin is not part of the globalist drive, just as the Chinese regime certainly is. It has been suggested, (and I have no way of knowing any more than readers of this will), that the intent is to develop the Dystopian World going forward structured upon Asian cultures and specifically the Chinese culture, and the cliche perception is that such culture is more susceptible to iron discipline autocracy than the spoiled brats of the West. That puts the West into the crosshairs. Russian press frequently says Europe is finished these days, and while that may be objectively possible it also seems to be well accepted there.

      In the meantime my enemy’s enemy is my friend…..but I must not mistake the nature of the Putin phenomenon.

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