Monday 22 May: Jeremy Hunt calls for optimism while his party drives voters to despair

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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511 thoughts on “Monday 22 May: Jeremy Hunt calls for optimism while his party drives voters to despair”

      1. Warum nicht jetzt? Ich bin missing mein daily joke. Lol. (Guten Morgen, btw.)

  3. Morning everyone. Notifications still down I notice. It has to be GCHQ. Low level harrasment!

  5. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Friday Comes Around Again

    This guy dies and finds himself in hell. He is wallowing in despair when he has his first meeting with a demon. “Why so glum?” the demon asks.

    “What do you think? I’m in hell!” the guy responds.
    “Hell’s not so bad. We actually have a lot of fun down here… you a Drinkin’ man?”

    “Sure, I love to drink.”
    “Well you’re gonna love Mondays then. On Mondays that’s all we do is drink. Whisky, tequila, Guinness… you name it!”
    “Gee that sounds great.”

    “You a smoker?”
    “You better believe it!”
    “All right! You’re gonna love Tuesdays. We get the finest cigars from all over the world and smoke our lungs out. If you get cancer no biggie you’re dead anyway!”
    “Wow…that’s awesome!”

    “I bet you like to gamble.”
    “Why yes, as a matter of fact I do.”
    “Wednesdays, you can gamble all you want. Craps, Blackjack, Roulette, Poker, Slots, whatever you want! Hey, do you like chicks?”

    “Are you kidding? I LOVE women! You don’t mean…”
    “That’s right! Thursday is orgy day. Help yourself to the finest pussy hell has to offer!”
    “Yowza! I never realised Hell was such a swingin’ place!”

    “Are you gay?”
    “No…”
    “Ooooh… then you’re gonna HATE Fridays!”

    1. Very good, Sir Jasper. I thought he was going to go through the entire week giving him more and more enjoyable items to look forward to, but telling him that on the final day (Sunday) – which was of course the day that the entire conversation took place – the Devil said that Sunday is the day when I always tell lies.

    2. Very good, Sir Jasper. I thought he was going to go through the entire week giving him more and more enjoyable items to look forward to, but telling him that on the final day (Sunday) – which was of course the day that the entire conversation took place – the Devil said that Sunday is the day when I always tell lies.

  6. How Putin could spark riots, blackouts and wipe billions from the economy by severing Britain’s undersea cables and pipelines. 22 may 2023.

    Picture the scenario: Far out of sight of land, in the remotest parts of the North Sea, a fleet of miniature submarines and frogmen slip unnoticed from the decks of Russian spy ships and make their way to the seabed.

    Here they find the arteries that keep the UK alive: Cables and pipes that carry everything from gas to electricity, banking data to military communications.
    It may seem far-fetched, but fears are growing that the Kremlin is preparing for just such an attack after Russian vessels were caught snooping on Britain’s shores earlier this year, with British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace warning on Thursday that Russia has ‘the intent and the ability’ to sabotage the West’s critical infrastructure.

    As the quote states this story has already been trailed once. The question is; is it more than that? Is it priming for a False Flag attack? It wouldn’t be a technical problem. The Americans have already carried out a similar operation by destroying the Baltic Pipeline. It would of course, with the subsequent propaganda, if carried out, bring on a direct Russia/NATO confrontation. Why would they do that?

    Well one wonders if the Ukies doing as well as the MSM tells us? I don’t usually comment on the day to day war since there is no way of knowing if what is reported is true, or more importantly, what is being left out. Still it seems to me that there are some difficulties. Zelensky has just denied the taking of Bakhmut to the worlds press, though it is perfectly apparent that the Russians have it. But more importantly, where is the much vaunted Ukie counter-attack? The rasputitsa is long over and the end of May is looming and nothing! Is the Ukie army fit for purpose, or has it suffered a moral collapse as the French did in WWI?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12098979/UK-faces-disastrous-scenario-Russia-cuts-vital-links-experts-warn.html

    1. The jury is still out as regards the sabotaging of Nordstream. I do not deny that the US has a motive, in that Germany’s reliance on Russia’s gas was unhelpful. It could equally be an act of spite by the Kremlin, burning its commercial bridges with the West, with nothing to lose as trade is transferred to China, India and Iran. The satellite observation of specialist Russian vessels capable of doing the deed in the vicinity at the time of the incident may be consequential, but are fairly damning.

      This evidence is similar to the shooting down of an airliner over the Donbas in 2014. The Kremlin blamed it on Maidan forces, but Ukraine did not have a cannon there capable of taking down an airliner at 30,000 feet at the time. A NATO satellite however did pick out an unmarked Russian missile launcher driving fully laiden into the region, an driving back without its payload a few hours after the airliner was brought down. The logical conclusion is that local pro-Russian terrorists had mistaken the airliner for a hostile Ukrainian fighter and brought it down.

      The problem is that the West can huff and puff as much as it likes about damnable Russian brutality, but what can it actually do about it, other than to contain it as much as possible? By any law of military conquest, Ukraine is going to have a mammoth task establishing a bridgehead over the Dnieper – the same river that protects most of their country from a full blown invasion – and retaking Crimea and the Donbas. The West might provide the weaponry required to safeguard Ukraine from Russian invasion, but would very probably resist any demands by Ukraine to mount an offensive on Russia itself, even though this may be the only way to stop the missiles being lobbed over the border.

      In the end, the only way to calm things down might be to appease Russia by conceding Crimea and the Donbas. However, the name Neville Chamberlain comes to mind the last time this sort of peacemaking was attempted.

      1. The jury is still out as regards the sabotaging of Nordstream.

        Really? The admissions of Biden, Victoria Nuland and the Polish Prime Minister count for nothing? The refusal of all the NATO members to press for a solution? The failure of the MSM to raise the matter?. The inescapable fact that its destruction aided the US politically, strategically and financially?

        Are you sure that it was the Japanese that bombed Pearl Harbour or the Germans sank the Lusitania?.

      2. ‘Morning, JM. I agree with you about alleged US involvement in the destruction of Nordstream. While they might just have had the necessary motivation I suspect that the truth will not emerge until perhaps years after the event. However, in the meantime my money is on Uncle Vlad…

        On a slightly different tack, have you seen today’s DT article on the development of the long-established Inertial Navigation System?

        “Imperial College working with Royal Navy on groundbreaking system to replace GPS on ships

        Academics have been using a ship to explore a quantum accelerometer, the UK’s first commercially viable quantum navigation system”

        It is encouraging to know that the very real prospect of the jamming or destruction of the GPS system is now being taken seriously. INS, admittedly a crude version of it, was originally fitted to the German V2 rockets. When von Braun and his engineers handed themselves over to the US at the end of WW2 they naturally took the technology with them, and it was developed further before use on the Apollo space programme. It was routinely fitted to commercial airliners thereafter using a triplicated system and I believe it is still installed as a backup to the much more sophisticated GPS.

        My only concern is the involvement of Imperial College…are they one of the universities that China has bought into? If so I wonder how long it will be before they get their hands on it??

    2. Oh heck. When will we see nuns wearing paratroopers’ boots crash landing in our cornfields?

  8. Jeremy Hunt calls for optimism while his party drives voters to despair

    I’m about as optimistic for our country under Hunt and Rishi’s leadership as I am about Disqus being fixed today

    1. Jeremy is a determined Remainer.

      He feels optimistic because he suspects that he’ll be appointed Gauleiter of the newly rejoined Britain

  9. Good morning, all. Grey, overcast and very strong wind – as forecast.

  10. Apparently another heatwave is forecast for the coming weeks,
    Perhaps it is all just another psyop to make us think the weather and climate is warming.

    Later in the year they will be saying that in 2023 there were more heatwaves forecast than in any previous year on record

    1. Exactly. They are throwing mud and hoping it sticks within our memory banks rather than the miserable spring we have to endure, and the constant chilly north easterlies blowing across East Anglia. I have just been out with dog into the garden and it is like winter out there, dull with the usual cold wind.

      1. I have been doing a lot of manual work in the garden and I haven’t got to the point where I am only wearing a tee shirt. It’s that and a pullover plus a fleece on some days. As BT mentioned yesterday, not only is the wind cold it’s drying out the ground. N, NNE, NE and ENE forecast today.

        2. Manage to get my arms slightly burnt playing golf last Thursday, I think that is the first time I’ve had my jumper off outside this year.

          1. I took my fleece off for a while yesterday but not for long. Still wearing a vest too.

          2. “Still wearing a vest too.”
            My mother’s shade will be glad to read that.
            She and I had the most humungous row over vest wearing. Some 60 years later, I can still see the abandoned garment flying out of my bedroom widow like a large, bleached bat.

      2. The chilly north easterly is blowing here as well. No sun now though it was bright earlier on.

  11. Good morning from Saxon Queen with blooded axe and marmalade sandwich in handbag .

    Yesterday we took a reasonably local RSPB coach trip ( a 10 hour day ) to a rewilding place In Sussex. They provide 16 miles of walks, have a camp site, safari trips and a horse box for tea.
    But they have no facilities for spending a penny . The Lady in the shop said there is one outside loo but it was only available for staff and the other loo on the camp site wasn’t available. Some of us waited outside the staff loos, where a staff member took pity before locking the loo – very pretty area but not suitable for a day’s visit . Men can find a quiet spot and a tree to spend a discreet penny but ladies cannot – They have been open for 2 years now and should provide loos .

    I see disqus is still broken, no new comments since Friday on our accounts can be seen . And notification box still not working nor the disqus blue lists. You have to come on the site or you’ll not see anything.
    I suppose doesn’t work weekends and as being in America, it’ll not be until the afternoon .

    1. You’re obviously missing the point- it’s rewilding, so you’re supposed to go in the bushes.

      1. So what you are saying is that Tarzan didn’t have a toilet pan? And that Jane had no drain?

      2. Ha ha. All very well when you are in your twenties. Not so much fun when you are 50+

          1. Your name gives your hardiness away. (I also spent a lot of time in Tanzania in 1995 and on-off until 2003).

    2. My mother told me of her cleaner in the 1980s, who was a full-blooded corblimey Cockney lady that could put Dick Van Dyke to shame. She came from a long line of petty criminals and least one of them were hanged. This cleaning lady was fairly straight, in that the worst thing she did was to read my sister’s boyfriend’s love letters, leading him to leave special messages to the lady. And never leave any washing-up to be done, for any she found ended up encrusted in washing soda.

      When she was young, there were street flower sellers who never wore knickers, only the floor-length dresses of the period. These ladies would pitch over a gully in the road, where they could pee unobserved whilst never leaving their spot.

    3. Good morning Ethel. Long time no see, or have I failed to pay attention? If you’ve been away giving those pesky Vikings the spanking they deserve then good for you. Besides, they would probably enjoy a rest from all that rape and pillage…

      May I ask where in Sussex your ‘rewilding’ visit took place?

  12. Good morning all. Feeling a bit better, but still as rough as a badger’s arsehole.
    Another bright, sunny start with 5°C outside, up from the 3½° at 04:00 when I came down to do mugs of tea for DT & self.

    So, it seem the UK is not alone with disrespectful black tw@s upsetting people “for a joke”:-
    https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1659661873170763778

    2. Morning BoB and all.
      As laughter is regarded as the best medicine…..
      Curious minds might wonder by what method you were able to determine the texture of a Badger’s nether regions?

          1. The contemporary composer Alma Deutscher (b.2005) recently lampooned this style as “noise” in her opera ‘The Emperor’s New Waltz’ (2023). She was taken apart by the German critics, who said she was like Hitler, who similarly disliked “decadent art”. Deutscher responding by suggesting that, being half-Jewish, many of her relatives were slaughtered under the Third Reich, and that Hitler also liked dogs – was the critic suggesting that everyone that likes dogs is like Hitler?

            I consider all music speaks a language and evokes feelings and emotions through melody, harmony, rhythm and cadence, which has its own language. All music, however alien it may sound, has a story to tell.

            For me, this piece is a nightmare of trepidation where there are moments of chaos where all is shattered briefly, but soon returns to its impending sense of doom. I do not find it comforting, but perhaps that is the composer’s intention?

    3. “We good, we good.” What sort of retarded, grunting, non-English is that?

      Twatter would not permit me to post that reply.

  13. A very good mega-signatory letter today:-

    Free speech at Oxford
    SIR – We are current students at the University of Oxford and, like the academics in the letter (May 17) before us, represent a range of different political beliefs, Left and Right.

    We wholeheartedly condemn the targeted harassment, bullying and threats that the committee of the Oxford Union have faced from an aggressive minority of students, because of their refusal to rescind an invitation to the philosopher and gender-critical feminist Professor Kathleen Stock. Such tactics are never acceptable for any cause. We thank the committee and the president for not giving in, and thus continuing to defend free speech.

    We are appalled to see the tarnishing of the reputation of the University of Oxford by the few individuals who seek to silence Professor Stock and punish the Union.

    The society was founded with the key aim of discussing ideas which some may find challenging, as was the university itself. It is not necessary to agree with Professor Stock’s views in order to recognise the dangerous precedent that would be set if “the last bastion of free speech” could not stand firm at this moment.

    Our belief is that there is much to gain from hearing opposing views on important topics, and furthermore we reject the notion that Professor Stock’s visit to the Union constitutes any real danger to members of the university or the public.

    We recognise how difficult the situation must be for the Union and its officers. Alongside facing attempts to force them to obey demands through “moralistic browbeating and social censure”, the Union then faced threats to its financial model, as the Oxford Student Union (Oxford SU) sought to prevent it from holding a stall at future freshers’ fairs. While Oxford SU claimed that these are unrelated to Professor Stock’s talk, they are seen by many to be punishment for the Union standing by its decisions and principles. These actions against the Union were presented under the guise of false moralism.

    The Oxford Union is part of the city and the university’s heritage. While recognising it is an imperfect organisation, we value it because we value free speech. It is free speech we sign to defend, as the lifeblood of universities, learning and modern democracies. Those who aim to silence it do not speak for us.

    Paul Adams
    Trinity College
    and, according to BTL comments, near to another 125 persons

    1. There was actually a proper debate on this very topic back in 1976 at University College London. The Students Union at the time organised daily lunchtime debates, with the regulars arranged in their respective enclaves. At the front were the trendy progressives, behind them the Conservatives, and at the back the rugby club, who liked to heckle everybody.

      The subject of the day was whether the National Front should be given a platform to speak or be banned for their unacceptable political views. From the floor, I spoke against the motion to deplatform the National Front. I argued that however much I may disagree with much of what they stand for, they have the right to speak and be heard, and their opponents an equal right to dismantle their arguments with as much rhetorical skill as they can muster. It helps nobody, not least the opponents of the NF, to drive them underground to fester malcontent in the shadows.

      I believe the motion was carried though. Soon after, one of the Conservatives won the presidency of the Students Union under the slogan “Students, not Politics” discouraging all political discussion other than that directly affecting the welfare of students.

      1. From my experience, the SU fanatics were those who had neither the brains nor the self-discipline for Higher Education.

        2. They never came from a technical subject. Workload was too heavy for that kind of thing.

    1. Phew! Thank goodness she didn’t make a little pointy triangle at the end.
      We can’t have a naff Home Sec.

    3. What’s wrong with that? That’s the way I invariably hang my bog roll, and no amount of tut-tutting and eyebrow-raising from those who think they know better will stop me from continuing to do so.

    2. If Sunak follows, he will look like the follower which he is, and not a leader.

    3. Reality strikes, and strikes hard. Politicos do not like to admit to reality when it impinges on their ideological mindset (or their masters’ orders). Will the Sunak and Hunt axis come round to sound thinking on this issue? Sunak has U-turned so many times he doesn’t know which way is up but U-turning on Net Zero will be a hard pill to swallow.
      Could get interesting as: it’s a scam, they know it’s a scam, they know that many of us know it’s a scam and that many of us know that they’re running the scam.
      Starmer’s ULEZ ideas are an extension of the scam and the fact that he’s considering such a move shows that he’s not in touch with reality on this issue.

    4. Forever because he’s been mandated to do it by his overlords and we, the Sheeple, are lapping our destruction up with alacrity.

  16. 372509+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Dt,

    Tories receive biggest donation in over 20 years
    Writing in The Telegraph, Mohamed Mansour explains his reasons for giving ÂŁ5m to the Conservative Party

    His offer was found acceptable, beating the Chinese offer of
    25 yuan and a extra portion of mushrooms for highly damaged goods.

    The iories (ino) parties definition of “donation” as in this instance,
    can in reality be taken as party soul buying, inclusive of ALL the political rsoles currently within.

    1. 372509+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Being now it can be witnessed as a fully opened
      islamic type political umbrella will it alter the voting pattern or will as usual, the political lemmings continue to do as political lemmings do ?

      1. I would expect they do know that but one has to begin somewhere and try in the hope that it will lead to cracks in the dam with continuously applied pressure. If we don’t try we are lost, without hope.

    2. It’s been over here for a month now. Every day is sunny, blue skies, and a warm 22ÂşC.👍🏻😊☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

  20. Braverman is now suffering from Raab’s Disease – a condition brought on by civil servants out to get ministers they don’t like – because she is the ONLY MP who has had the guts to speak out about the endless invasion of illegals and call it that.

    Yesterday “No 10” said that the PM had “full confidence” in the Home Secretary. “Full confidence” is usually the kiss of death. And, sure, enough, today, Fishi Rishi says that he will ask his “ethics advisor” to look into her action over the speeding fine.

    So it looks like farewell Braverman.

    1. She was another who kept on saying that she’ll fix the immigration, but nothing ever happened. At all, it was business as usual.

        1. I am hoping that she will resign from the Conservative Party and take 100 disaffected MPs with her.

          This is her big chance! Will she take it?

      2. Ultimately, it depends on how supportive the Cabinet – particularly the Prime Minister – are towards a Secretary of State.
        We’ve not had a PM with principles for over 30 years.

        1. We have had liberal governments for 30 years, and sadly we are going to have a shock when we fall into the arms of a commie led by unions Labour government , same old , same old .

    2. I agree, Bill. Braverwoman was surely next on the snivel serpents’ hit list.

    1. It’s sickening to see.
      We drove home from our friends in Bucks yesterday evening and I couldn’t help but notice the more recent influences in diversity on the streets of Dunstable. Possibly those being accomodated fed and entertained in a chain hotel on the southern end of town.

      1. Litter graffiti, drugs, excrement? Groups of shady middle easterners hawking spit about, smoking continually, eyeing up children and women?

  22. I forgot to say goodmorning .. Good morning everyone .

    Bad sleep last night , aching hip.

    Dull and breezy, 12 c , birds are happy , and the blackbirds have demolished a pile of sliced apples I scattered on the front lawn .

  23. Morning all 🙂😉
    What happened to the weather, again?
    I don’t understand that ‘people’ or whatever they are in politics, don’t and can’t seem to understand the damage they cause due to their continuous damaging folly they suggest to themselves is in order and that they are ontop of any given situation.
    Because quite clearly between them all from the top down, they don’t have a clue.
    I watched part of Kuenssberg yesterday morning, I don’t like her at all, but none of the politicians she interviewed answered one single question she asked. They just bat the questions off the with practiced pointless rhetoric.

    1. It’s May, we’re moving from Winter to Spring so it’ll be unsettled for a bit.

      1. Yeah but,…… we only had the decent forecast for the whole week last evening.
        We were having a bit of a larrff the other day on how our parents and grandparents managegd to cope with out a weather forecast every hour. 🤭🤔

    1. You’d need a heart made of soya not to laugh!🤣❤️

    2. The state won’t give us a choice. It will be forced on us. I do have a suggestion though – civil servants and MPs are the first to use it and the public given the tools to manipulate it.

      Then we’ll see how quickly they dump it. After all, they don’t want their six figure salaries reduced to the value of pennies, do they?

    3. 372509+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Please check out comments regarding ” CASH use it or lose it.”

  27. G’day all,

    Light cloud over the McPhee demesne this morning with the wind in the East, temperature 11℃ rising to 19℃ in late afternoon as the cloud breaks up.

    I was plannng to go and bend a fly-rod today but I really had to drag myself out of the sack. SWMBO is the same. The symptoms of the ‘coof’ are gone but we are both still left with a deep fatigue which is getting in the way of resuming normal life. One day seems alright (yesterday – I got a lot done), the next I’m pole-axed again. I can’t remember the last time I (we) had something like this.

    Still we’ve always got the idiots in the Conservative party to keep us amused. They’re side-lining Braverman now because she spoke at the NatCon event in London (as did Mogg and Gove) and she appears to want to slow or stop the invasion. The speeding thing is just an excuse. That party so richly deserves what is coming its way. Opinion seems to be divided on whether or not it can be rescued. Some say it can’t and needs oblivion while others, like this chap, think it can be taken over and rebuilt in a genuine conservative image.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/how-we-could-make-use-of-the-wretched-tory-party/

    1. Good morning Fiscal and everyone.

      What coof? I have had some weird symptoms, like ‘flu, which just carry on and on and on, leaving me knackered. Rawther like the current government’s effect on the UK.

      1. Convid, call it what you will. We did tests which were both positive.

  29. My notifications are back on! Obviously the GCHQ numpty who turned them off has come back from his weekend and realised!

    1. Well – rise up – surround City Hall – burn it to the ground. DO SOMETHING instead of whinging…

      1. Good advice, but the concept of ‘the blob’ dates back at least to William Cobbett, who labelled it as ‘the thing’.

        Those in control have their own shops, and jets, and yachts. You could burn a
        1000 City Halls but yer Globalist is a will o’ the wisp, financially and
        otherwise.

    2. The social devastation and destruction that officious busybodies cause is evil.

      When I was a child and young man my parents lived in the Lymore Valley by Keyhaven near Milford-on-Sea. An aggressive and self-important military man from outside the village retired to the parish and managed to get elected onto the village council. He then managed to get double yellow lines painted on the main street passing through Milford.

      Before the yellow lines were there everyone parked on this road by the greengrocer (Mr Mogg) and the hardware shop (Mr Spreadbury) -shops which had been there for generations – and as well as being convenient for the shoppers the cluttered road ensured that through traffic could only move very slowly. Once the yellow lines were there the road was uncluttered and the traffic rushed through the village at dangerous speeds and, as predicted, Mogg’s and Spreadbury’s went out of business.

      Jake Thackray knew about this sort problem which was clearly just as bad in the North of England.

      https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Brigadier+Jake+youtube&oq=The+Brigadier+Jake+youtube&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160.13398j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:af3464e5,vid:xDm-kpe0wYA

    1. If Sunak gives in to the Blob and sacks Braverman then that should be the end of him.

      Let us hope to God that it is.

  32. I must away to the GPs to have yet another dressing change. Looks like e might have a shower of rain. NOT forecast but – if it happens – very welcome…

    Play nicely while I am gone.

  33. The best of Low Life: Jeremy Clarke remembered 21 May 2023, 6:03pm

    Jeremy Clarke, The Spectator’s Low Life columnist, died this morning at his home in France. He was 66. For 23 years, his column was, for many readers, the first page they turned to in the magazine. Here is a brief selection of the best of Low Life:

    On self-confidence
    30 March 2002: ‘Two Christmases ago, Sharon gave her Mum a self-help paperback called The Duty Trap. The book is aimed at people who persist in unhappy, one-sided relationships out of a misplaced sense of duty. On New Year’s Eve, says Sharon, her Mum finished the book, went upstairs, packed a suitcase and walked out. She went back to the farmer, now widowed, with whom she’d had the one love affair of her life. They are unbelievably happy, though their happiness is tinged with sadness that they left it so late.’

    On missing the point
    2 August 2003: ‘Rain has been falling continuously since we arrived, out of a sky so low that if I stood on the roof I could probably reach up and touch it. We’ve done nothing but sit in our luxuriously appointed caravan staring back at the passers-by and playing a few hands of pontoon in the evening. The boy and his half-brother, aged 13 and 12 respectively, have arrived at that stage of character development where they just sit or lie down for long periods with their mouths open, growing pustules.’

    On being caught out
    9 August 2003: ‘If I thought an account of my wrongdoing would send a small cloud across the magistrates’ cheerful countenances, I was mistaken. On the contrary, the magistrate on the left wing, whose head from his neck to the top of his bald pate was scarlet with high blood pressure, leaned in towards his chief and, shaking with suppressed laughter, whispered to him what I can only imagine was a very funny story.’

    On partying
    18 June 2005: ‘My friends told me that halfway through the ball they’d gone to look for me and found me unconscious outside, flat on my face on the lawn, next to the naked girl. Someone had taken off my shoes, arranged them neatly side by side and set fire to them.’

    On lower living
    20 August 2005: ‘Once you’ve been doing it for a while, it’s not easy to stop being a low life. There’s nothing people enjoy more than watching someone going to hell on a poker, and they rather resent it if that person suddenly decides he wants to get off. No one objects in principle to an idle, self-centred, addicted life, as long as it ends prematurely in lonely and squalid circumstances and everyone can read about it in the papers. Renege on the deal, like a footballer in mid-contract, and people feel cheated.’

    On drugs
    26 November 2005: ‘Trev washes up the coke and round goes the crack pipe, with Sharon carefully recording each turn at the crackpipe like a cricket scorer. And she’s right! When the crack’s used up, Trev’s somehow gained an extra three pipes on the rest of the field. And then the shouting and the recriminations begin again. I go out to the cold kitchen to sit with Trev’s anxious-looking labrador for a while, wishing I’d stayed in.’

    On Scientology
    25 November 2006: ‘The Church of Scientology have been bombarding my mobile with calls and messages. Each number that they called from I carefully logged in my phone book, so that whenever they rang me the word ‘Scientology’ came up on the screen and I knew not to answer it. But her ringing from a new number while I was returning to the sofa after a visit to the crackpipe had wrongfooted me.’

    On seaweed
    8 September 2007: ‘Her pubic hair was unbelievably profuse. It was a map of British India, roughly speaking, including what later became Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir, with parts of Burma, Tibet and Afghanistan added on. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.’

    On renting
    29 March 2008: ‘”Do you smoke?” Only when I’m drunk, I said. “You get drunk?” Of course I get drunk, I said — I’m a journalist. It’s expected of us. “I see,” she said, again finding the explanation perfectly satisfactory. “As long as you don’t smoke inside the cottage,” she said.’

    On hotels
    1 November 2008: ‘The bottom half of the bed was sodden. Further investigation told me that, although the sheets were soaked, the duvet and the suit trousers I’d slept in were perfectly dry. Strange.’

    On short relationships
    23 October 2010: ‘Discarded clothes were strewn all over the floor. I picked mine out and was wildly elated to find my wallet and phone intact. I dressed, then pulled on the curtain cord, revealing yet another miraculous October day. I thought about leaving a note saying it had been a wonderful relationship but it just wasn’t working out, but couldn’t find any paper.’

    On getting married
    8 January 2011: ‘Bed was fine. No complaints there. Well, there was one thing, actually. My kissing technique was rubbish. “No tongues!” she’d exclaim crossly, even when she was tied up.’

    On cancer
    13 July 2013: ‘It was here (to my profoundest regret afterwards) that I broke my promise to myself not to bore anyone with my news. Coming up on the train, I’d had a strong word with myself not to mention it at all costs. Vain hope. Sober I can be a model of modesty, propriety and restraint. Drunk: not so much. All too predictably there came a point in the evening when someone said, “How are you?” and I replied, “I’ve got fucking cancer.”’

    On hormones
    24 August 2013: ‘Golly my testicles are shrinking fast. At this rate,by Christmas they’ll be down to the size of garden peas. And I might have breasts on the way, too, it says on page 92 of the hormone injection contraindications leaflet. Fantastic! Just what I’ve always wanted.’

    On pot paranoia
    30 November 2013: ‘The delusions began; the usual delusions; my ordinary neuroses writ large, I think. An unshakeable conviction, for example, that these confident, consummate actors gathered here in the bar were operating on a higher plane of consciousness than I was, and that they knew something of crucial importance, perhaps about me, that I cannot imagine nor will ever be permitted to know.’

    On Mayfair
    7 December 2013: ‘I couldn’t believe it: 3 a.m. in the bohemian quarter of the greatest city on earth and you can’t get a reasonably priced drink anywhere? What was I supposed to do next? Go home? Boris! Are you listening! It’s an absolute disgrace!’

    On grandsons
    19 April 2014: ‘The young amateur boxers dash over to their father — their favourite punchbag — climb up on to his chair, and administer a damn good leathering. Their father cowers weakly in his chair as the blows rain down. “Good day at the office?” I ask him. He looks out at me between the blows and I get another one of those desperate looks.’

    On Pamplona
    7 June 2014: ‘The drama of the situation seemed only to relax her. She bent calmly and gracefully to her line, took it up her nose, then stood and inhaled deeply through her nostrils as though she were taking in the invigorating air on top of Beachy Head. The door by now was coming off its hinges, the thunder of the kicking deafening. Goodness knows how many people were out there, or what was the general point they were making.’

    On dancing
    8 November 2014: ‘In Soho we lost two of our party between quitting the taxi and entering the first club. One of these was last seen on the very doorstep. There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, we supposed. We lost another at the entrance to the second club, assessed correctly by a doorman as being too inebriated to be allowed in. Which now left three of us still dancing and chucking back vile concoctions of every hue. Then (it all went black, your honour) I met a woman in the street quite at random and I went off to a club with her. But when she took off her coat in this club and started dancing, she looked so well that she was immediately besieged by fervently attentive Italians, and I was rejected in favour of these younger, more upright suitors. Outside in the street, a busker was sawing the theme to The Godfather on his violin with such heart-rending emotion, I leant heavily against the railings and tears welled in my eyes and I let them fall.’

    Beautiful day
    24 October 2014: ‘But what do I know about art? I don’t even know what I like. And I was feeling so good, so alive, and so in love with London, that I mentally apologised to myself, God and the universe for slipping into judgmental nitwit mode again, and I headed on up the road towards the drumming and the tumults in Trafalgar Square.’

    My year of drugs
    31 December 2015: ‘I looked fondly, too, on the daily steroid pill called prednisolone, which I took to compensate for my knocked-out adrenal glands and which gives me a noticeable mental lift. A prednisolone pill is a tiny white roundel with the letters P and M stamped elegantly on it. What P and M stand for, I don’t know. Poor Me, perhaps.’

    On airport buses
    12 April 2017: ‘At the last stop before the terminal, carpark A, a documentary fat woman, with gothic lettering tattooed up the side of her white leg and a dotted line across her neck above the words “tear here”, clambered aboard wheezing heavily. She could only be of the English working class and proved it immediately by saying “Christ almighty” in a beautiful Lancashire accent as the bus lurched away from the stop and she had to put a hand on my shoulder to stop herself from falling. “Are you alright, dear?” I said, standing smartly so she could sit next to the Frenchman. She accepted gratefully and fell backwards into the seat, partially obscuring the Frenchman with a bare arm as thick as my thigh.’

    First day
    25 April 2020: ‘She reached down and slid open the bottom drawer of her desk, showing about 100 vodka miniatures. I nodded complicity. She emptied four into two plastic water cups. “Have you got anything to go with it?” I said, which wasn’t very Low Life-like of me. She reached down and pulled out the lower drawer of her neighbour’s desk and rummaged in it, emerging eventually with a medicine bottle of kaolin and morphine.’

    Communists and fascists
    30 May 2020: ‘”See that ugly customer over there,” I say: “bald head, slow-eyed, face of a Marseille gangster? That’s the head communist.” Generally speaking, the regular customers’ faces are prematurely creased and hardened by toil, anxiety and fags and slower to smile than those up the road at the fascist bar. Though whether only communists come here and only fascists go to the other is impossible to know.’

    On leaving lockdown
    3 July 2021: ‘I sat between Philippe and the detached French woman. She was quite old. She hadn’t yet got over the death of her lover, she told me, even though she’d passed away a decade before. After telling me this she rested her head against my chest as though exhausted by grief. Offered wine, she sprang to life and filled her glass dangerously close to the brim with red.

    I liked this woman and told her so. I also said something inane about how we might as well enjoy ourselves while we can. To express profound agreement she took my wrist, held it to her bosom, and looked deep into my soul with black featureless eyes. Then she turned her head away and slightly down and projectile vomited over the American woman’s bare right leg.’

    On the Platinum Jubilee
    4 June 2022: ‘I’ve often wondered whether Her Majesty the Queen glances through The Spectator from time to time. And if she does, I wonder whether her kindly eye lights on this column. And if it does, I wonder what she thinks of what she reads there.

    “Philip, there’s a man here writing about going to the Cheltenham Festival and messing his pents.” “Very easily done at Cheltenham, my dear. I’ve often wondered why nobody has written about it before.” Or, “Philip here’s that man again, the one who messed his pents at Cheltenham, assisting the ferret-judging at a country show. It’s frightfully interesting. The judge takes so long to judge each class, they drive a car into the tent so that he can judge them in the headlights.” “Does he mess his pents again?” “He doesn’t say.”

    On TikTok
    30 July 2022: ‘And I think: is this how it ends? Lying in bed watching TikTok videos? At the weekend I had planned a retreat in a nunnery. Three days of silent prayer and contemplation. But two of the nuns have caught Covid and the technical nun thought it best that we postponed. And at the weekend the tumour pain in my armpit, shoulder and shoulder blade intensified alarmingly. For the first time, the usual dose of the usual painkillers didn’t touch it. An escalation. I have always imagined that when it was time for me to die, I would make a serious effort to prepare myself. And now that the warning light is flashing, what do I do? I tap the TikTok app and there’s Bernard Manning saying, “A man walks into a pub with a crocodile under his arm.” Shoot me.’

    On Spectator readers
    10 December 2022: ‘If I’m honest with myself, I’ve never completely known or understood what I was doing, or supposed to be doing, every week when writing this column. I don’t have much of a grasp of English grammar for a start. Therefore I’ve always been careful not to take too much pleasure in praise; to accept it only as a courtesy of the heart, rather than its exact and fatal opposite, a vanity of the mind. But after reading three of four emails and letters a day for a month from strangers all over the world telling me how much they’ve enjoyed reading this column over the years, my head is now so pleasantly swollen I couldn’t get through the kitchen door and out on to the terrace even if I wanted to. (Thanks to all!)’

    On Catriona
    25 March 2023: ‘As I write, Catriona is coming and going, modelling outfits in the swing mirror. This afternoon we are getting married in the town hall in a brief civil ceremony conducted by the mayor. As I say, it’s all go. “Lovely, darling,” I tell her with perfect honesty as each new dress is paraded in front of me. “Beautiful.” And she is. Inside and out. I’m a lucky man. And today I’m a very happy one too.’

    On morphine
    15 April 2023: ‘I’m going downhill fast. The numb fingers of my left hand are barely strong enough to unscrew the cap from a tube of toothpaste. And the morphine dose occasionally still fails to mask the pain, which achieves an unsurmised, unimaginable, unsupportable level. It makes one wonder what role in nature that level of pain is supposed to be playing. “Treena,” I say. “I don’t think I want to live any more.” Then I swallow a big short-acting morphine dose and after half an hour the pain subsides slightly, and I have a sip of tea, and I can hear a choir of village children singing over at the school, and a soppy dove almost flies in through the open window, and life has interest once more.’

    On love
    6 May 2023: ‘When Marketa leaves, Treena supervises the cleaning of my gob. On the bed table she lays out a hand towel, a tooth mug with warm water in it, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste and three paper towels to spit into. She also places upon the table an anti-fungal mouthwash. Mouth fungus, apparently, is an inevitable side result of these cancer treatments. Unfortunately, by kissing her too frequently and too passionately, and vice versa, I have passed mine on to Catriona.

    But I’m sorry. Wouldn’t you kiss passionately, deeply and often the lady who loves you so much that she is willing to care for your each and every need, as Catriona does with mine, 24 hours a day, instead of packing me off to a hospice and letting them do it all? Yet this amazing woman does it and kisses me deeply and passionately, no matter what the consequences for her own health.

    When I read out that final paragraph to her just now, however, she says: “Early doors yet, as they used to say.”

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-best-of-low-life-jeremy-clarke-remembered/

      2. I’d say you have. It’s at a bit of a low ebb at the moment with a bit of a pinko editor (Fraser Nelson) but it’ll no doubt come roaring back at some stage to be the lacerating font of right-wing critique it was always known as.

      3. It’s worth paying for, Grizzly. A good conservative magazine and quite entertaining. But at the moment, as Fiscal says, got a problem called Fraser Nelson.

      4. Only on Low Life. I used to find Lloyd Evans’ reviews funny and I liked Aidan Hartley’s columns from Kenya. And Rod Liddle.

  34. Where is ‘new’ contributor, Dee Dubya, this morning? Has he gone for a fitting for a new avatar?🤣

  36. Now the woke Blob is coming for Braverman
    The Home Secretary dared to articulate Right-wing views – so she is going to be made an example of
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/22/now-the-woke-blob-is-coming-for-braverman/

    There is a tide in the affairs of men
    Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.

    This may be the moment when the Blob pushes its luck too far.

    If Sunak gives in – which he probably will because he is weak – and he gets rid of Suella Braverman she must immediately join the Reform Party and take as many conservative Conservatives as she can with her. This could either lead to an immediate general election or Sunak will have to form a coalition with Reform which will be able to hold his feet to the fire until the election next year!

    Grab you chance Ms Bravermman! If you don’ take this chance the Blob and the weak PM are giving you then your fortunes will be bound in shallows and in miseries. and you will lose your ventures.

  37. DT letters .

    “The Oxford Union is part of the city and the university’s heritage. While recognising it is an imperfect organisation, we value it because we value free speech. It is free speech we sign to defend, as the lifeblood of universities, learning and modern democracies. Those who aim to silence it do not speak for us.”

    Do they really believe in real values instead of Socialism ?

    Hurrah , hurrah for common sense , and I do hope the clamour for free speech grows .. and Wokeism dissolves as quickly as it grew.

  38. A worrying episode this morning – at 5.15 OH yelped and I wondered what was up. He seemed to have siezed up. I managed to help him to the loo and back and we dozed off. At 7.15 he was no better. I made the tea and coffee, fed Lily and let her out. Usually that’s his start to the day.

    He sat in bed reading for an hour or so.
    I suggested that it might ease off once he started to move about a bit and indeed it has.
    We’ll see what happens next.

      1. His back mainly. I told him to ring the surgery but he won’t. I blame it on the statin. He’s never had anything like it before.

        1. Statins are poison in my experience. Nearly destroyed my kidneys.
          Prescribe for the patient not by government diktat.

        2. I am now on rosuvastatin (Crestor) , my doctor changed mine from Lipitor last year.

          My body aches like mad , and hip and knee pain even worse .. I wake up and cannot believe the person I used to be is now feeling so achy and mind numbed .

          1. Stop taking the bloody things Belle. It’s your body not theirs.
            If you ate something you were told was good for you and it made you ill would you carry on eating it?

          2. Last year for three months I did Alf , then needed blood tests , and my cholesterol levels were quite high. Doctor was annoyed .

          3. Other doctors say cholesterol is a necessary part of one’s body and protective rather than damaging.

          4. My doctor, this year, told me it was no longer about cholesterol levels, mine was 3.6, it is now about ‘age and profile’ and I had a 50% chance of having a heart attack. I said to her “to put it another way I have a 50% chance of not having one”. She agreed but told me “She was obliged to ask me”. Part of her contract as decided by the faceless in hock to Big Pharma government.
            It’s similar to people continuing to have the experimental injections despite making them ill. Unbelievable.

          5. Studies have shown that any resulting increase in life was about three days. I think I might forgo those extra three days at the end of life and just not take statins.

          6. Now you come to mention it I think I heard a doctor on TV say that.
            It just makes me think that our government is pouring ourmoney down the throat of Big Pharma without much benefit to us, the Guinea pigs.
            I think Bill Gates is now our, de facto, health minister and pockets eye watering sums money at our expense. A pox on all his investments.

          7. Exactly – 12 years ago my doctor told me I had a 10 per cent chance of having a stroke or heart attack in the next 10 years so I told him that means I have 90% chance of not having a stroke or heart attack, and that those odds were good enough for me.

            Edit: it’s all about a) Doctors being paid for everyone they get on statins b) big pharma profits and c) govt i.e. MPs personal investments in big pharma.

            All the time our health or otherwise is being milked for cash return.

          8. You’ve more than survived thise 10 years – I wonder what odds he’d give now.

          9. Did you ask him for the reading? I bet he didn’t volunteer it did he.

          10. Hi Belle
            I’ve just recalled that, last August, I had a (first) annual blood pressure review where I was made to wear a plastic mask before seeing the HCA. Which, guess what, put my blood pressure way up. Consequently I was prescribed another tablet (can’t remember what) in addition to Ramipril.

            So I took this extra tablet but after a while I felt so bloody awful. As that was the only difference in my lifestyle I thought I’d stop taking it. Did that for a few weeks then took my BP at home. It was fine. So I’ve stopped taking the extra one completely.

            Do please think about being told to take this or that. And if the doctor gets annoyed that’s his problem not yours. He has no right to get annoyed. Don’t forget that GPs get paid for all the patients on their list not for the number they see! .
            Edit: BP not BO (I hope!).

          11. You may have thought it was fine but what did Alf_the_Great think of your BO?

            };-O

            Sorry, open goal, irresistible.

          13. Same thing happened to me. I was on Ramipril and they added Lercanipidine. I felt terrible so stopped taking it. I could feel my heart beating in my ears and the back of my throat. A Locum sent me to A&E with a suspected heart attack. Eight hours of waiting then an ECG. No heart attack. Bloody waste of time.

          14. You’ve just jogged my memory, the addition was Amlodipine. How’s things with you Phizzee? Hope you’re OK.

          15. Okay thanks. I have to have another blood test then a prostate examination prior to testerone treatment.

            I was also disgnosed with gynaecomastia which made my left breast very sore.

            It’s never bloody ending. I haven’t had a month in years when i haven’t been under the doctor for something or other.

            On the bright side i do feel okay. Must remain positive.

            Had dinner with Hertslass and her husband the other day. It was her Birthday so i pushed the boat out. Champagne and a beautiful silk scarf from Aspinals. YOLO.

          16. Glad you feel ok Phizzee. Don’t let the buggers get you down.
            How lovely you were out with Hertslass and husband, what a fabulous boat you have! Which champers did you choose? Alf used to sell Perrier Jouet, Mumm and Heidseick Monopole.

          19. Indeed you did, Pip. The evening, the food, the company and the lovely pressie were unbeatable!

          20. Morning all.

            At the risk of being repetitive “your” body may not be “yours” for much longer. If HMG signs up to the International Health Regulations amendments on 25/05/2023 (2 days time) the WHO will have complete medical control over your health. Whatever the WHO says – scamdemic – goes. The go ahead means that it will be legally binding for all signatories to follow WHO orders,I.E., lockdowns, masks, social distancing, more experimental jabs etc. etc.

          21. So we got out (sic) of an undemocratic Union with other European nations (where we were given a fig leaf of democracy) just for our sovereignty to be gifted away by our Government to a supra-national organisation over which we have not even nominal authority? Sounds about right.

          23. I keep away from the surgery – they tried to call me in for jabs, and also blood pressure monitoring. i ignore them. I’ll go if I need to but not for things they have targets and extra pay for.

          24. Be careful. MOH was on statins and it ruined his sleep and concentration.

            He gave up statins for the sake of other road users. His doctor told him that he would die within two years.

            Now, some eight years later, he is fit and healthy.

            As doctors are paid to prescribe statins, don’t believe everything you’re told about them.

          25. Ditto poppiesdad. This was 20 years ago. After three weeks he couldn’t negotiate his way across Cambridge in the car, his mental map had left him. His joints ached. I recalled something I had read in the DT (thank you, Dr James LeFanu) and googled it to make sure. The side effects were concerning. He stopped taking them there and then; he was fortunate, after a couple of days or so the symptoms left him. He hasn’t touched a statin since and he will be 82 next month, still gardening and active.

          26. My doctor told me that taking Crestor was like having neat Domestos running through your veins!! We had this conversation because he was trying to get me to take Pravastatin 12 years ago. I didn’t. I don’t belong to the govt nor the nhs, I belong to me.

          28. Try turmeric capsules.
            I also seriously think you need to have a chat with your GP.

  40. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Some very sensible, reasonable (in my view) posts about the ‘bleks only’ theatre production:

    Colin Harrow
    2 HRS AGO
    A London theatre is seeking to provide black people with “a safe place” that is “free from the white gaze” to see a play that explores 300 years of African American history.
    Well if people of colour really want a “safe space” maybe they should take note of the following figures.
    Although African Americans make up just 13% of the total population of the US, 2019 Department of Justice figures show they commit 50% of the the country’s homicides and over 80% of their victims are other African Americans.
    In the UK Greater London Authority where this theatre, The Theatre Royal Stratford East is situated, figures from February 2022 state that despite making up 13% of London’s population, black Londoners account for 61% of knife murders in the capital with 45% of their victims being from the same ethnic community.
    It would therefore certainly appear from these recorded statistics that black people are a darn sight safer if they remain within “the white gaze” rather than staying exclusively within their own community where they are far more likely to be attacked or murdered..
    ( I apologise for having posted these figures previously but it does seem apt to repeat them given the reference to “safe” places for people of colour in this story.)

    Colin Harrow
    1 HR AGO
    This is one of the really weird, genuinely racist interpretations of ethnicity J. It’s always the black heritage that is emphasised. Barak Obama had a white mother but he’s always lauded as “he first black President of the US.”
    Then of course there is Markle whose mother Doria was herself of mixed heritage so she is only ane quarter coloured. But that didn’t stop the race lobby claiming her as one of the most powerful “black” women in the UK after she married Harry.
    There are so many others. From mixed race composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor – white mother, black father – who was of course referred to as the “bl*ck or African Mahler” although he’d never set foot on that continent.
    However surely the most fantastic claim of colour made by the race industry was that of Queen Charlotte. played in the recent “Bridgerton” TV production as George III’s consort by an actress of colour and described as the UK’s “first t black royal?”
    Eat your heard out Meghan!
    The fact that this title was “justified” by the claim that Charlotte’s ancestry stretched back 500 years through a branch of the Portuguese royal family who was supposed to have have married someone of Moorish extraction hasn’t stopped her being listed by the race lobby as “one of the 100 Great Black Britons.”
    It seems the race lobby’s obsession with colour is no different from that of knuckle-dragging white suremacists,

    * * * *

    Bravo, Mr Harrow! I hope the DT can resist the urge to remove all such comments again. The censors’ pen should have no place in this once-great paper.

    2. Perhaps some of them should go to African countries on a six month tour, muck in and help out. And they might realise how lucky they all are and just maybe stop all their incessant moaning. History is history it’s something we all have to live with.

      1. I’m still waiting for the millions of whinging ex-slaves (++++ removed) to rush back to their ancestral lands and help out. Obviously, no evil, white colonial technology must be used to achieve this paradise on earth.

        1. It didn’t take long for South Africa to revert to being a third world country. Nor Zimbabwe.

          2. A friend’s elderly sister lives in a Gated Community in SA. He told me that didn’t stop her husband being shot by a native intruder. They now live with gates within the house that are locked each night lest someone else breaks in…..

    3. It was O’Bummer’s white mother and her white parents who brought him up and made sure he had a good education.
      His father boogied off back to Kenya.

    4. It was O’Bummer’s white mother and her white parents who brought him up and made sure he had a good education.
      His father boogied off back to Kenya.

    5. But the moors weren’t Black. They are still around, they are todays Moroccans, Algerian’s, Libyans and Tunisians. Most of them could easily be mistaken as Italians or Spaniards. Are they Black?

  41. Today there are five anti-Tory government letters. Of these I thought this was the best:

    SIR – Jeremy Hunt should consider whether the “declinism” to which he refers is, in fact, legitimate despair at the disastrous lockdown, housing, immigration, energy and tax-and-spend policies that the Government has pursued for years while pandering to minority woke opinion.

    He says that, like “all Conservative governments”, the Tories are taking the “tough decisions necessary to put the economy back on track”. Such measures normally follow a Labour government – but this time the economy has gone off the rails under the watch of a socialist government masquerading as Conservative one.

    Tim Coles
    Carlton, Bedfordshire

    How I wish that this would make a scrap of difference before its lemming-like destruction at the next GE…

    1. Excellent Tim Coles, but you forgot to mention illegal with immigration and interfering in Ukraine.

    2. “ … the “tough decisions necessary to put the economy back on track”. The Cons have used the wrong track measurements!

    2. It was their fifth wedding anniversary and she refused the traditional gift, so he went elsewhere?

  44. Bluss – it is cold out. A howling gale. Horrible. Not a chance of gardening. The radar says the rain will be here at 1 pm – but, I fear it will just miss us – and rain about two miles away. Dagnabbit.

    New dressing applied – appointment next Tuesday. There is another sodding bank holiday on Monday. The surgery gives the MR a stock of dressings and gauze.

  46. After 114 years, the Girl Guides have finally lost their way
    Girlguiding has played a huge part in many lives, but it’s struggling to stay relevant
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/after-114-years-the-girl-guides-have-finally-lost-their-way/

    How many Nottlers were cubs, boy scouts, brownies or girl guides?

    When I arrived at St Christopher’s at the age of 8 I joined the cubs – not because I wanted to but because I had to. At the age of 11 I became a boy scout and when I went to Blundell’s as soon as I was 14 I became a member of the CCF – and again it was compulsory and I had no choice.

    Like many of my generation we were not enthusiastic and grumbled about tedious square bashing and having to clean our belts and spats for the weekly parade. At 16 I was able to transfer from the army section and join the naval section which was more fun. We went to BRNC Dartmouth and sailed whalers on Field Days and messed about in collapsible boats on the Tiverton Canal and were delighted when we managed to hole and sink one to the dismay of the master in charge of us who had seen distinguished service in WW2 as a naval officer.

    Although I have a rebellious spirit, am not keen on being bossed about and was not a keen member of regimental organisations I still think that they probably do young boys and girls more good than harm.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/49aac05b6bacce79e15a9e74159d43795b6917637538bb04d3571f0cc6ce12eb.jpg

    3. I wasn’t but both my boys were in the Scouts and had a lot of fun on camps etc.

    5. Over her the Girl Guides have renamed their youth branch. Apparently Brownies was felt to be racist and excluded some youngsters.

      1. They’ve dropped the ‘Girl’ part too. They’ve gone ‘woke’ so no wonder they’ve lost their way.

    1. Doesn’t look too appetising. Think I’ll stick to my normal diet. Eat what I want but limit the carbs a bit.

      1. It is very appetising and extremely delicious and nourishing.

        Especially the exquisite cheese, Jules!👍🏻

        1. Double Yuk! I don’t care for watermelon much, either. Nor Salami. Yellow pepper’s alright mixed with other things……. I don’t eat those grassy weeds. The almonds look more like peanuts. I prefer them whole, with their skins on.

          Each to his/her own! enjoy your lunch!

        2. Double Yuk! I don’t care for watermelon much, either. Nor Salami. Yellow pepper’s alright mixed with other things……. I don’t eat those grassy weeds. The almonds look more like peanuts. I prefer them whole, with their skins on.

          Each to his/her own! enjoy your lunch!

    3. We ate last for supper yesterday evening , a prawn and cold poached salmon supper , with salad , radishes, cucumber and a baked potato each , then for pud , poached plums and custard . Punnets of plums are so cheap at the moment and are nutritious and satisfying , good for the bowels .

      1. I wait till there are English plums – especially Victorias – as I don’t care for those round ones from wherever. I’d skip the baked potato – we had roast lamb, roasted peppers and courgette, carrots and some small new spuds – I had about half a one as I’m right off spuds at the moment.

      2. Margaret, carbohydrates, in the form of potatoes, bread, pasta, pastry, rice, flour, etc are simply another form of sugar and not part of a natural diet. Anyone who wishes to lose weight and/or who has diabetes should never eat any of these things.

  48. Russia may have put sleeper explosives on Britain’s offshore wind farms to knock out power in a conflict. 22 May 2023.

    Russia may have already put sleeper explosives on critical infrastructure in Britain’s North Sea, the former head of the Royal Navy has warned.

    Admiral Lord West warned offshore windfarms and undersea cables are at risk of attack as fears grow that Putin could wipe out the UK’s power supply and cut off its telecommunications infrastructure.

    ‘There’s a risk as soon as you put critical infrastructure on the seabed,’ the former Royal Navy chief said, adding that the Kremlin ‘may have already put down sleeper explosives’.

    They’re milking this ridiculous story for all it’s worth. If they really believe that there are charges laid on these installations then why isn’t someone out there disarming them?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12109873/Russia-sleeper-explosives-Britains-offshore-wind-farms-ex-head-Royal-Navy-warns.html

    1. Admiral “Lord” West was a useless naval officer and is a new Liebour arse-licker.

      3. I do remember him saying the illegal boat invaders should be towed back to France and the dinghies scuppered. However he was silenced because I could never find it again.

    2. With regard to power. Putin has kept all his promises that he made with the West prior to the Ukrainian war. It is the West that has broken its promises to Russia. The thing about the wind farms is yet more propaganda by a dishonest cabal of bad faith politicians in the West busily trying to distract people from their own incompetence. I wouldn’t put it past them to blow up a couple of turbines themselves and blame it on Russia. Just as the American tried to blame Russia for blowing up its own pipeline to the West.

    3. Given how much (or little) power windfarms produce, would it really be a knockout blow?

  49. Morning all, just, I see there’s 20 minutes until noon. Nothing special to report, although I will no doubt find something as the day goes on. But in the mean time. I like to watch one of these in the evening before bed because they are somewhat uplifting instead of being negative. Negativity seems to be incessant nowadays. I suppose because it is easier than building. Much harder to be constructive than take a swipe at something and bring it down, it takes little effort.
    Die besten Videos (Teil 113) || ✪ Stern DuTube
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUnUKbuaqcg&t=5s

  51. Today it is reported that Mohamed Mansour, of Egyptian origin, donated ÂŁ5 million to the Conservative Party.

    Per the DT: Mr Mansour recalled how his “life changed overnight” when Gamel Abdel Nasser, the former Egyptian president, seized his family’s land, homes and assets because he did not believe property rights should stand in the way of his socialist creed.

    It reminds me of the result of socialism in Egypt of which I have seen a great deal over the years. (My travel records show that I have landed in Cairo Airport 287 times).

    I visited Egypt several times during Nasser’s presidency and saw what he was doing and the aftermath in later years.

    Among other things, he sequestered large amounts of farm land and distributed it in small plots to the poor. Result: the poor became poorer, the population burgeoned and there was a significant reduction in productivity. One only needs to take the train from Cairo to Alexandria and look out of the window to see the result after all this time. There are endless small plots of land, one with melons, the next with cabbages, the next with bananas, etc. The people eke out a living as best they can. They have as many children as possible because they can’t afford to pay labourers – they have a donkey if they are lucky (yes – even now). The crops are harvested by hand because they can’t afford machinery. There is no coordination so that, if many of them worked together to grow one crop, they might be able to harvest it with machines, as would have been the case with the previous owners.

    My firm’s office in Cairo used to be headed by a very good friend. He and his family were wealthy and educated in the UK. He had all his property sequestered except for a modest flat in Cairo. Among the property that he lost was a commercial fruit orchard that employed 200 people in the Fayoum Oasis. The orchard soon failed because there was no one to manage it properly and 200 people lost their jobs. President Mubarak, to his credit, started to restore property to its original owners in the 1980s. My friend got his orchard back which he immediately set about restoring. Guess what? It soon employed 200 people again!

    Nasser’s other nationalisation measures resulted in the government owning over 50% of all Egyptian businesses, most of which failed because there were no trained people to run them.

    One fine example was the Ahram Beverages Company which produced wine and beer and which was natonalised by Nasser. The wine became worse than vinegar and the beer had all sorts of particles floating in it (I still remember some of the headaches it produced)! They sometimes had to make it out of rice because they ran out of wheat or barley In 1997 it was privatised again and it soon changed from a failed enterprise, propped up by the government, to the most profitable company in Egypt! (The company was later bought by Heineken).

    The centre of Cairo was rich with many historic buildings dating from the 1860s and then Nasser brought in rent controls which cut down rental values and immortalised rental contracts. This had a devastating effect on Egypt’s buildings which no longer generated revenue that owners could invest in maintaining them. Neither did the largely impoverished tenants undertake this responsibility; no law obliged them to do so. As other old buildings in Egypt, those in Cairo’s downtown have suffered tremendously on account of many decades of gross neglect.

    A complete restoration was ordered by President Sisi which has been funded by the private sector, It has already transformed the downtown area of Cairo dramatically and restored much of its original beauty.

    This is a lesson for some of the dinosaurs in the Labour Party!

    1. Good to hear from you, Squest. Your posts are always interesting – especially to those of us with some memory of living in Egypt.

    2. But some of us peasants would rather starve on our own land than toil for the Mansours and Hindujas of the world.

  52. Dr John Campbell’s take on Sunak’s decision to invest taxpayer money in Moderna MRNA LNP ‘universal’ vaccine research. The taxpayer funded facility will be based at Harwell Oxfordshire.

    Sunak has links with Moderna from its initial investment partners and founding and presumably retains a financial interest in the company, whose only product is the discredited Covid vaccine.

    As John Campbell opines it is worrying that an untested product is being promoted by our government. The whole affair stinks.

    https://rumble.com/v2p54r4-experimental-influenza-vaccine.html

    1. Must be influence and money behind moderna. Trudeau has announced a big grant to moderna in an effort to get vaccines manufactured locally.

    2. How deeply depressing. As Dr Campbell says, why commit to buying an(other) experimental jab without the proper research being carried out first? How can HMG get away with this?

  53. Four weeks or so to Midsummer’s Day. Just lit the stove…….{:ÂŹ((

    Sodding global warming.

    1. UK heatwave: Hottest day of year so far heralds six warm weeks
      Andrew Ellson
      Monday May 22 2023, 12.01am, The Times
      Weather
      People enjoy the warm weather in Cambridge with a punt down the River Cam over the weekend

      Britain is set for the warmest day of the year so far this week as high pressure builds from the Azores, with temperatures set to be above average for the next month and a half.

      After cool Arctic winds capped temperatures in the teens for most of last week, the Met Office forecasted highs in the low to mid-twenties this week.

      It predicted that most of the UK will enjoy warm and sunny weather for much of the week, though it will feel slightly warmer in the south than the north. Aside from a risk of the odd shower across Scotland and Northern Ireland courtesy of the tail end of some weather fronts there would be very little rain in the week ahead, it added.

      Rachel Ayers, a senior meteorologist at the Met Office, said: “The warm weather . . . is due to high pressure bringing fine and bright weather across the UK and with the high-pressure system currently centred to the west of the UK, air is not being dragged across the UK from the Continent.

      “It is likely we will see a new warmest day of the year so far this week as we go into the last full week of meteorological spring.

      “Temperatures could peak in the low to mid-twenties by Thursday across southwest/western England or eastern Wales. However, with onshore breezes, especially along eastern coasts, it will feel cooler here.”

      The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reported that warmer-than-average temperature are the most likely outcome for England each week for the next six weeks.

      Aidan McGivern, of the Met Office, said on Twitter: “Consistent signal for above-average temperatures at least into the start of June.”

      https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hottest-day-of-year-so-far-heralds-six-warm-weeks-for-britain-pddpbcc8c

      2. Low to mid-twenties is hardly a heatwave. The narrative is beginning to reek of desperation.

        1. The Met Office (and BBC) forecasts have been good this week. It’s the media headline writers who are usually at fault. One of the worst has been the Daily Express, which has given us plenty of examples of absurd exaggerations in recent years.

        2. Anything to scream climate change. They’ve got to. if they stop screaming, people will stop hearing the lies and eventually forget about it.

        3. Considering how cold it’s been, the “hottest day of the year so far” isn’t saying much!

  54. OMG.. 😱

    Moment Muslim activists storm Birmingham cinema screening of Bollywood film ‘The Kerala Story’ that has sparked violent clashes in India over claims it ‘destroys religious harmony’ and is Islamophobic
    Opponents say the film is Hindu nationalist ‘propaganda’ and Islamophobic
    By ELLY BLAKE

    This is the moment Muslim activists storm a screening of a controversial Bollywood film that has sparked violent clashes in India amid claims it destroys ‘religious harmony’.

    A group of protesters led by Shakeel Afsar, a Kashmiri independence activist, disrupted the screening of the The Kerala Story on Friday at a Cineworld cinema in Birmingham.

    A 10-minute film uploaded to the British Muslim news website 5Pillars showed Mr Afsar, 35, with a group of demonstrators seen entering the cinema and causing the film to be paused.

    PUBLISHED: 10:47, 22 May 2023 | UPDATED: 11:46, 22 May 2023

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12110263/Moment-Muslim-activists-storm-Birmingham-cinema-screening-Bollywood-film-Kerala-Story.html

    More Info

    Why is The Kerala Story causing controversy?
    Bollywood movie The Kerala Story depicts Hindu and Christian women lured to join the Islamic State.

    However the fictional drama has caused outrage in India, with some rejecting its claim that ‘more than 30,000 women have disappeared after being recruited by ISIS’ in the southern Indian state.

    The film has been promoted by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) including in tweets by India’s prime minister Narendra Modi – who praised the film and said it attempted to ‘expose the consequences of terrorism in a society’.

    But opponents say the film is Hindu nationalist ‘propaganda’ and have accused it of perpetuating Islamophobia.

    Others have debunked its claim in the trailer that 32,000 women have been recruited, saying it is baseless and inaccurate – it was later removed from the film.

    In India, it has proved highly controversial – with the state of West Bengal banning it from cinemas, while two BJP-ruled states Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh cut the price of tickets to see it.

    Violent clashes over the film have proved deadly after a 40-year-old man died in Maharashtra.

    The two rival sides are said to have pelted each other with stones and destroyed cars, according to officials.

    1. If they want to fight, they should all eff off back to India or Pakistan and do it there.

    2. There is a myth that Hinduism = pacifism. A misnomer created mainly by the influence of Mahatma Gandhi in the West. The reality is that Gandhi was more influenced by Leo Tolstoy’s philosophy. Gandhi’s use of Ahimsa is not traditionally Hindu at all. Ahimsa is the central concept of Buddhism in terms of action in the world. The Indian intellectual all knew this during the period when India was going toward Independence. It is why the Buddhist Emperor Asoka symbol is on the Indian flag. Nehru and others rather hoped that India could be persuaded to become Buddhist because it was completely compatible, philosophically, with the modern world since it transcends all cultures more thoroughly than Christianity can do.It would have done away with the Caste system and pushed India, far more efficiently, into the world than Hinduism.

      Traditional Hinduism, on the other hand, is a warlike exclusivist religion. The Bhagavad Gita is a dialogue, after all, between a warrior and his charioteer. All that the Bhartiya Janata are doing is reverting to proper Hinduism by throwing off the false Hinduism of Gandhi et al. They are not therefore promoting ‘Hindu Nationalist Propaganda’. They are Nationalists who recognize that proper Hinduism and proper Indian culture are synonymous and that Islam is an invader in the sub continent that continues its dubious tactics in order to make Islam triumphant. Islam has no right to complain now that the shoe is on the other foot. They have persecuted the Indians in the most horrific ways. Muslim rulers, for example, would hold competitions with each other in how many Hindus they could slaughter in a given time period.

      The complaints about the film by Muslims are not because the film is propaganda but because it is an accurate depiction of Islam, something that Muslims everywhere do not like publicised because they practice deceit and anything that opposes that is an offence to their corrupt philosophy.

      1. I recall that militant hindoos caused a British film to be banned in West London – because they thought it “dissed” their religion.

      2. It used to be said as proof of his pacifist credentials that Gandhi read the Sermon on the Mount every day but even if true, that only highlights the dangers of taking a text like that out of context.

    3. Correction:-

      Why is The Kerala Story causing controversy?
      Bollywood movie The Kerala Story depicts Hindu and Christian women lured raped and forced to join the Islamic State.

    4. Correction:-

      Why is The Kerala Story causing controversy?
      Bollywood movie The Kerala Story depicts Hindu and Christian women lured raped and forced to join the Islamic State.

    5. To be fair, one difference between Islam and Hinduism is that as a human being every Muslim is equal before Allah, although there may be different levels of devotion; the Hindus operate a pecking order.

  56. OT – Morrisons are running the “25% off” six bottles of selected wine. No signs outside the store – just called in to check. Make the most of it!

      1. My point was that there was nothing outside Morrisons to indicate the price reduction…. In the last, there has been a large banner..

    4. I’ve heard the expression “front bottom”, but that takes it to a new level.

      1. Of course she/he/it might have been shop lifting and pinched some bags of flour

    2. The height restriction is clearly visible – why do they need to tell everyone?

      1. The buses sometimes have to take an unfamiliar route. The drivers are thick.

        1. If they can’t read how are they allowed to drive a bus. By law a driver must know the height of their vehicle

          3. I didn’t know that law existed (bet I’m not alone) and I certainly didn’t know the height of our Kodiaq.

          5. I know the height of my vehicle (the motorhome), but I have no idea what it is in metric!

        2. GPS can tell them of height restrictions, and even plot a route taking that into consideration.

      2. People are stupider today than they were yesterday. They will be even stupider tomorrow.

    2. The ‘deprived’ have as much access to the public parks as the ‘prived’ (sic) do, as do non whites.

      1. I suspect that the variables 1 Km and/or 12 minutes walk were selected specifically to avoid bordering on larger parks for Notting Dale and to ensure that Queen’s Gate hit a big one.
        I do not trust these people an inch.

        1. Perhaps the blicks don’t like parks ‘cos there’s none of their own kind to stab.

  61. Despite the cold – I am going outside. I may be some time.

    Toodles – should I not return.

      1. Nice here- sunny and warm if rather breezy.
        All the herbs are now out the front which makes sitting outside very scented.

  66. Americans do not have shops, they have ‘stores’. They don’t have back gardens, they have back ‘yards’.

    I wonder, when they get back from a ‘storing’ expedition and their ‘storing-bags’ are full; do they relax in the ‘yard’ doing a spot of ‘yarding’?

    1. My neighbour was an American fighter pilot who flew from Bentwaters in Suffolk.
      He went to one of our local garden centres and asked if they could sod his back yard! 🤔

    4. Apparently the word garden and yard are cognate. I know this because I listen to Kevin Stroud’s wonderful “The History of English” podcast. And because I love you all i have just spent half an hour looking for the episode. He also provides transcripts for his podcasts. This is from episode 137: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/HOE-Transcript-Episode137.pdf

      “ That word *gher passed into the Germanic languages as something like *gard, and it then passed into the Old English language of the Anglo-Saxons. As we saw in the earlier episodes of the podcast, the hard ‘G’ sound at the beginning of many Old English words shifted to a softer ‘Y’ sound. So within Old English, that word evolved from *gard to yard.
      Now back on the continent, the Franks spoke a Germanic dialect that was closely related to Old English. And the Franks retained that hard ‘G’ sound at the front of the word. That Frankish version of the word passed into the northern French dialects as gardin, which later passed into Middle English in the 1200s as our modern word garden. So garden and yard are ultimately derived from the same Germanic root. Garden has the original hard ‘G’ sound preserved by the Franks, and yard has the softer ‘Y’ sound used by the Anglo-Saxons. But both words originally referred to an area enclosed by a fence or barrier.
      I should note that those words have evolved within modern British English, and today, American English and British English use those words in slightly different ways. In American English, a yard is the open area surrounding a house, and a garden is an smaller enclosed area – usually within a yard or adjacent to a yard. Within British English, the word garden generally refers to the open area surrounding a house – what Americans would call a yard. And in British English, the word yard tends to refer to either a paved area or an area used for some type of commercial activity like a shipyard, or junkyard or lumberyard. Again, those are broad generalizations, but when I use the word garden in this episode, I’m using the word in its more traditional sense as an enclosed area where plants are grown and cultivated.
      So the English words yard and garden are both derived from the same Germanic root word. Modern German also inherited that word, and it produced the German word Garten with the same general meaning. English has borrowed that word in the term kindergarten – literally a ‘child’s garden.’
      The same Germanic root word also passed into the Norse language of the Vikings. There the word became garðr, and that word passed into the Danelaw region of England as the word garth. Again, it meant an enclosed garden. It isn’t very common in modern standard English, but it can still be found in some regional dialects around England, especially in the north of England.

      1. (Contd)
        So via the Germanic languages, this old Indo-European root gave us yard from the Anglo- Saxons, garden from the Franks, and garth from the Vikings. That root also passed into Russian where it produced the word grad meaning ‘a group of houses enclosed in a wall or other fortification.’ So there, it came to mean a town or city, and it’s still a common suffix in Russian place names like the old Soviet-era names Leningrad and Stalingrad.
        That root also passed into Latin. But in Latin, the initial sound shifted to an ‘H’ sound. We’ve encountered that Latin sound change before. You might remember from an earlier episode that the words guest and host are cognate. Guest is the native English version and host is the Latin version. The Indo-European ‘G’ sound shifted to an ‘H’ sound in Latin. Well, the same thing happened here, and where the early Germanic language had *gard, Latin had hort or hortus, again meaning an enclosed garden. That Latin root gave us the word horticulture.
        As I noted, gardens offered a degree of refuge and privacy. And in large manors, the host would meet with guests in the garden. In Latin, that produced a new word combing the Latin prefix com meaning ‘with’ and that word hortus meaning ‘garden.’ This particular combination can still be found in the word cohort, literally a person who joins you in the garden. But that term was slurred within French to simply court, which came to mean the people gathered around the king. The king’s advisors and attendants became known as his court.
        The word court was one of the earliest French words to be borrowed into English after the Norman Conquest, and within English, the word was often combined with its English cousin – the word yard. That produced the word courtyard to describe an enclosed area near or adjacent to a house.
        So all of that means that yard, garden, garth, horticulture, cohort, court and courtyard are all cognate. They all derive from the same Indo-European root word meaning ‘to enclose.

        1. Thank you. I am not being sarcastic when I say I really did find that interesting.
          And very logical when explained like that.

      2. Thanks for that, MIR, it makes interesting reading. Here in Sweden, the word for garden is trädgĂĽrd [pron: “tread-gord”]. Since svensk is also a Germanic language, I would suggest that the gĂĽrd part of the word is from the same root.

  67. Can you believe it, the Met police holiday fund is being dipped into again. Portuguese police are to search a reservoir for Madeline McCann and our poor hard pressed Met officers will have to go and watch.

    What contacts do the McCanns have I wonder?

      1. Who knows, I believed Armstrong at the time, not realising quite how powerful he was in the background.
        As far as I’m aware Cavendish has been clean.

        1. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Look at the “snow-white” Cur Bradley Wiggins…..

          1. They get tested so much since Armstrong that any violations are likely to be due to drugs used for other than performance enhancement, unless you believe that hay-fever tablets or inhalers count as such.

          2. Quite honestly, I don’t know what to believe about sport (most sports) these days.

          3. Agreed on that.
            When a bloke who isn’t nearly good enough to compete with his peers can pretend to be a woman and then be selected for national honours there is something seriously wrong with sport as a whole.

          5. Quite.
            It might be nice if EVERY sports journalist was required to take an unequivocal position on the matter.
            Until the trans bullies are faced down women’s sport will deteriorate and become marginalised

          6. Not even national honours. The cyclist in America “won”(sic) / “earned” a lot of money.

          7. The best way to deal with it is in the hands of the women.
            Line up at the start and then ALL refuse to compete.
            The message will get through very quickly.

          10. Racehorses are clean (they get regularly drug tested – and so do jockeys, but they get caught out).

    1. I would have thought that a lefty Labour politician would be more comfortable sitting in Economy with the plebs.

      What’s that you say? Something about Champagne Socialists?

      1. If she is working, preparing for the event that she is attending, surely it is better that she’s in business?
        I agree re attitudes.

        But let’s look at the reality: if she was in power she would probably be flying either in a private jet or in first. I VERY much doubt that the Conservative chancellor travels in economy.

        2. Rachel Reeves in the Standard
          The whole thing smells of a set-up (or a cock-up).

          1. According to BA’s website there WAS a BA2273 flight from Gatwick to JFK on 21st May. But the first image of the ticket has already been doctored as the GATE number, (normally printed in heavy black type for folk with poor vision and thus able to be read at a glance by staff), is blank, like the equally- heavy-type BOARD AT field. Also blurred out is the elaborate barcode to the left.

          2. If her seat really WAS numbered 2K, it is INVARIABLY a ‘right-hand-side’ (starboard) seat, and in the photo she appears to be sitting next to a port side window (unless she has managed to swivel her Business Class seat around)..Oops! I’ve just blown up the seating image and her feet WOULD have been pointing towards the tail. Sorreee!
          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f3e07693b2fd3ffa4fc635a34c62e508e5501485fd89644f3044344bb809bcb9.jpg

          So I can’t say I believe any of it, and I don’t blame her (or her PA who probably booked it) for travelling Business, as the Economy and Premium Economy seats are nothing to write home about. On April 17th this year I spent 17 and a half hours sitting in a BA ‘Premium Economy’ seat from Tokyo to Heathrow, though that was on a Boeing 787-10 series, a much newer aeroplane.

          1. When I was working, my company invariably flew me business class on short haul and first on long haul.

            Unfortunately HG suffers from DVTs so now we fly premium economy long haul, as the best we can afford, economy doesn’t give enough leg room for her; and she’s only little. How taller people cope on long-haul is a mystery to me.

  70. James Clarke
    A tribute to my brother, Jeremy Clarke
    22 May 2023, 2:50pm

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Screenshot-2023-05-22-at-14.46.19.png
    Jeremy and James on Dartmoor

    My big brother Jeremy Clarke, or ‘Jum’ as he is affectionately known by me and my sister, was the most voracious reader of books you’ll probably ever meet. He will be known to most of you as a writer – The Spectator’s Low Life columnist – but to me he was a reader. He had hundreds upon hundreds of books and had read them all at least twice.

    He read standing up, sitting cross-legged in a chair, lying on his bed through the the night or throughout the day, with brief pauses for mundane physical necessities such as eating a meal or making a cup of tea or going to the toilet. I think he could even go a long time without those things if it was a good book. I suppose it’s what enabled him to write so well.

    He rarely referenced the books he had read but you knew they were packed into every carefully constructed sentence. Yep, he was a reader all right. His favourite writer was Thomas Hardy and his favourite poem, The Self-Unseeing. It suited his melancholy streak.

    Jeremy also wrote from experience. If he hadn’t been anywhere or done anything, he often found it difficult to write a column. He read people and places; expressions on faces. He wrote with brutal honesty; sometimes too much so.

    He lived for a time with our mother in a big old house that faced the sea in the South Hams of Devon. Despite all the large, bright rooms, he chose a cramped bedroom with a dirty, opaque skylight and a small window overlooking the walled back garden. It was dark and uninviting, but he liked it that way. Jeremy didn’t like anything ostentatious or showy – and perhaps he thought the sea view might have distracted him from reading.

    He used a separate room for writing. His writing desk was an old Ercol table that used to be the family dining table. He had three or four old typewriters and you could sometimes hear him bashing out his daily journal on one of them. He wrote every day – I don’t know what – then locked it away in a drawer. I just heard him write it. He would bash on that old typewriter, then pause, mutter something to himself, then let out one of those low hiccoughing laughs of his at something that had amused him, then carry on bashing it with two fingers.

    He was a complicated character, my brother, but I loved him. Given our age difference he had been more like a dad to me than my father, who was always away working. When I was young, we played intricate battles of soldiers on landscapes made of papier-mâché that we had built together and we fired matchsticks out of mini spring-loaded canons at one another’s armies.

    He once shot me in the knee with an air gun whilst aiming at a tin dog bowl I held over my head. I still have the scar.

    Another time he worked in a chemical factory and bought some of the chemicals home. I don’t know what he wanted them for but he spilled them in the garage and dad was really mad. The garage always smelled of rotten eggs after that.

    He didn’t get on with our father. I remember one time, Jum turned up on the doorstep after several months away wearing green and red feather earrings and had a fight with dad. I don’t know what made them both so mad but I had to break it up. They really didn’t get on.

    He was always kind to me though. As adults, whenever I visited mum’s house, mum would ask me to take him out for a walk with the dogs. He was sometimes depressed or in a funny mood and mum would whisper it quietly with a pained expression. He always seemed to enjoy a walk once I’d prised him out of his room and we would talk a lot.

    We both loved dogs and West Ham and we appreciated the local countryside and sea views. I provided the dogs; the coast path and beach near to mum’s house provided the views. Sometimes we would meet and walk on Dartmoor together too.

    Then we both got prostate cancer – him first – then me. And now he’s gone

    I just read The Catcher in the Rye as I’d never read it before. I expect my brother had read it at least twice, though I don’t remember seeing it among his hundreds of books. Jeremy reminds me of the kid in the book: I think it’s the way that he doesn’t easily fit in with the usual conventions and thinks most people are in some way ‘phoney’. He wouldn’t use that word but he would probably say he was phoney too if we had the chance to talk about it.

    He would just do things for the hell of it and went a bit mad when he had a drink. He had a good sense of humour though and we always had a laugh together. I think it was one of his heroes, Churchill who said ‘Never trust a man who has not a single redeeming vice’ and on that basis my brother was entirely trustworthy. You just had to be careful sometimes as he was extremely sensitive.

    Mum always said something about a girl breaking his heart when he was young but I’m not sure it’s that. Not only that, I mean. He had a dreadful memory and always forgot things: train tickets, passports, anything important. He forgot to get on trains and forgot to get off them. He left things on planes and on trains and in the back of taxis.

    ‘Awww I’m such an idiot!’ he would say.

    His mind was always somewhere other than where it was meant to be. But he remembered the funniest details and knew how to make you laugh. He remembered to laugh at himself; that’s the blessing and curse of the writer, I think.

    We both have a Christian faith; Mum’s influence, I suppose. But we each came to it in our own way. You couldn’t say he was a Christian because he somehow inherited it. You couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do – especially something he thought false or pretentious. He went up to the front of one of those Billy Graham concerts in the ‘70s and gave his heart to Jesus.

    We rarely talked about faith, but when we did it was funny. He once told me that when one of his grammar school teachers earnestly mentioned that he was a humanist, young Jeremy laughed right in his face.

    I don’t know if he meant that he found the concept of humanism patently absurd or the word funny in itself; or that it was like a terrier that announced it had disavowed its nature and had given up chasing rabbits. And you just knew that dog was going to chase and kill a rabbit as soon as it saw one. I don’t know, maybe all of them, but we laughed like drains.

    I can’t believe he managed to write his weekly column for The Spectator, even on his deathbed. He kept his mind and sense of humour to the very end.

    He died in the little cave house in France that he shared with his wife Catriona. If he could write another column, he’d probably write about how they rolled a big stone over the entrance of the cave and that was the end of that.

    In the words of another of our favourite writers, PG Wodehouse: ‘Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.’

    Our memories of my brother, Jeremy Clarke (Clarice, Jel, Jum) will be as different as the many soups we have all tasted in a thousand restaurants. On one thing I think we can agree: he wasn’t phoney at all.

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-tribute-to-my-brother-jeremy-clarke/

  71. Wotcha, NoTTLers, I couldn’t resist showing all of this, because it is so true of what is being done to us by racist hypocrites like Adjoa Andoh, who should shut up and b*gger off, IMO. From Takimag.

    The Balcony Scene, Steven Tucker

    I didn’t watch King Charles III’s coronation because, with its much-trailed emphasis on “diversity,” I knew it wasn’t really aimed at me but at the likes of Adjoa Andoh, the black actress best known for anachronistically playing Lady Danbury on the dire Netflix fancy-dress soap opera Bridgerton, to whom my country now so clearly belongs.

    Acting as a TV pundit, Andoh perceptively spotted that, when waving regally from the Buckingham Palace balcony, none of the Royal Family looked especially like they really belonged in Wakanda, not Windsor: “We have gone from the rich diversity of the [preceding ceremony in Westminster] Abbey to a terribly white balcony. I am very struck by that.”

    Andoh’s comments prompted more viewer complaints than anything else on British TV this year, even Bridgerton and that bizarre Channel 4 thing where adults deliberately expose their genitalia to schoolchildren yet somehow don’t get arrested for it. The furor led her to quickly apologize: “I didn’t mean to upset anybody,” she pleaded. To be honest, I actually believe her—because even a cursory examination of Andoh’s previous opinions on racial and identity-based issues reveal her to inhabit a hermetic left-wing bubble in which such statements receive no discernible pushback whatsoever, no matter how egregiously stupid and self-contradictory they may be.

    “Far from universalizing Shakespeare, whenever she reads him, all Andoh seems to see in his characters are mirrors.”
    All the World’s a Stage, and We Are Merely Victims. Andoh is of mixed white English and black Ghanaian origin, her journalist father having fled to Britain following a crackdown on the press by the black-led postcolonial government in his homeland. Being the only black girl in the all-white village where her parents settled, she seems to have been teased and never to have gotten over the fact.

    Speaking on a podcast prior to the coronation, Lady Danbury explained how it was not her job simply to say other people’s words out loud without falling over or bumping into any furniture, but to challenge viewers’ preexisting racial preconceptions “through a corset and a stately pile”—i.e., to produce leftist agitprop, not genuine art.

    Apparently, all Britain’s “great discoveries” in science and culture were funded by the slave trade, meaning, in a roundabout way, everything this once-white nation had ever achieved was ultimately down to black people like her—or that was how I understood her words. According to Andoh herself, “We need to lose those [racial] lenses that make us not see the person [behind their skin color] and that’s really what I’m interested in [in] all the work I do.” And that is why she pointed at the Royal Family and said they were too white; because she never, ever, sees skin color.

    Despite telling the podcast host she wasn’t interested in race, Andoh then demanded Britain’s entire national curriculum be overhauled to tell children how white people’s wealth was based on the historical exploitation of black slaves—yet was not pulled up on this blatant inconsistency.

    Upstart Crow
    Andoh, who sometimes plays white men as well as white women, perhaps because gender is just a racist white cisheteropatriarchal construct, is continually boasting of how, when choosing which parts to play, she cares only about their internal character, not their petty external appearances: “One of the things I think reduces who we are as human beings are the value judgments that are placed on what I call this ‘fleshy’ overcoat, which is your genitalia and melanin. Not interested, don’t care.” She has a funny way of showing it.

    Andoh made these comments whilst promoting a new 2019 version of Shakespeare’s Richard II she directed and starred in, whose entire cast consisted of “women of color”—i.e., people chosen to fill their assigned roles explicitly on account of their genitals and these organs’ associated melanin content. Not only actresses, but also the entire production’s designers, composers, publicists, etc., were all non-white females. Seemingly, this does not contravene British employment law (or if it does, nobody is non-subaltern enough to actually prosecute her for it).

    Even though Richard II is a play of royal intrigue set in pre-Tudor times, Andoh perceived it was really about contemporary issues like Brexit, Donald Trump, immigration, and the fact that a large number of non-whiteys had not long since died in a tower-block blaze in London. Although the play was previously thought by literary scholars to be about white English aristocratic power blocs of old, Andoh knew otherwise, observing that both black and white people engaged in rites of ancestor worship, as if you “Go to Buckingham Palace, there will be portraits of Lord Blah of Blah, Blah and Lady Ding Ding of Dududa.” Could a white man honestly speak dismissively of “King Nig-Nog of Bongo-Bongo Land” and expect to escape with his head?

    Andoh could. She is “bored of having to say…‘I’m a black woman and you won’t let me do that,’” but it appears she is allowed to do or say whatever she likes by an ever-indulgent theater land. It was marvelous “to be in a room with all these wonderful women” from her cast and collectively “weep” together, she said, “because there is not a woman who is not here [in Britain] because at some point somebody from this country went overseas, colonized, raped, killed, and pillaged some of our ancestors.”

    Except you, evidently, because by your own admission your dad came over here seeking sanctuary after some black Ghanaians had threatened to persecute him in his own country after the evil white men had all upped sticks and left the place.
     (needless to say, my emphasis).

    Still, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth…” and all that, eh?

    Unstable Lies the Head Which Wears the Crown
    Andoh genuinely doesn’t seem to see the contradictions in her own words, perhaps because it is now deemed impolite to point such things out to black people. “I am interested in you as a human being beyond your melanin and your genitalia,” Andoh has said, which sounds like the most autistic chat-up line ever used in Addis Ababa. The only reason she cast nobody but women with non-white vaginas in Richard II, therefore, was as “a thought experiment into the universality of humanity.”

    By “giving everyone the same signifiers,” Andoh was essentially “saying we’ve all got the same signifiers, so there are no signifiers,” allowing her to just “tell the story.” But you could have achieved precisely the same effect simply by casting the play entirely with white people, as was traditional, no? Rather than revealing “the universality of humanity,” she does the reverse. If Shakespeare really does speak to all humanity, as is so often said, then why does Andoh seemingly think non-whites will be unable to relate to his words themselves unless they are all spoken by black people?

    Also, I do note that Andoh has a paid sideline in providing voice-overs to books whose main on-the-page characters are all black females, like Half a Yellow Sun, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. If skin color is so unimportant, why do talking-book companies feel compelled to hire a black woman to say these things out loud, when by definition listeners at home can’t see who’s reading them? I think we all know the answer to that, and it has little to do with “the universality of humanity.”

    A Grievance, a Grievance, My Kingdom for a Grievance!
    “Determined to play a villain,” Andoh has also recently acted as Richard III, Shakespeare’s hunchbacked, child-murdering super-bastard, having self-identified with the role during childhood, when she was bullied for being black, much as Dick the Shit’s inner character was deformed by public disgust with his external bodily one during infancy in the play. Some identitarians may say this represents her stealing a role from a disabled actor, but Andoh disagrees: “I wanted to take the prism of what my [own] body’s othering has been, which is race.”

    Far from universalizing Shakespeare, whenever she reads him, all Andoh seems to see in his characters are mirrors, slight variants of Caliban Andoh herself. And she wants her audience to see the Andoh in their own souls, too, namely by perceiving themselves as a perpetual victim also: “When people see [Richard III] I want them to reflect on those times when they felt they’ve been in spaces where they’ve been shunned, othered, or not given the space to just exist as a human being.”

    One such space for me is the propagandistic public-subsidized theater these days, where I continually feel “othered” by seeing morally superior, left-wing black women usurp the rightful role of white English kings—so, congratulations, Adjoa, you have made me into a victim after all!

    “What happens to a human being if all their life they’re told they’re evil and wrong?” Andoh asked of Richard III. Try asking a white person that these days. A more interesting question might be, what happens if, as is increasingly the case with black people, “all their life they’re told they’re wonderful and right”? The answer is, they start acting like Adjoa Andoh.

    Being on Bridgerton, Andoh appears to genuinely believe the Afrocentrist lie that Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, was a black woman. Perhaps this was why she pointed at the Buckingham Palace balcony and deemed it to be so “terribly white”: Fact and fiction have by now become so confused within her nutshell of a mind that she expected to see herself up there waving at the crowds instead of King Charles.

    After all, she’s used to being allowed to play whatever other white royal role she likes, isn’t she? The white European royal she most reminds me of is Marie Antoinette.

    2. What utter crap. I wouldn’t go and see anything that stupid woman is in or watch it on TV.

      1. Neither would I, but why was she asked to commentate on the Coronation anyway, by ITV? Because she is a woke, black racist. And of course THEIR opinions on a tradition in this country that goes back over 1000 years are SO important, aren’t they?

    1. Yes we know – but our Civil Service and successive Governments(who are both so fully infiltrated by leftards, paid WEF shills, and immigrants and their offspring – legal or otherwise) that we have been rendered helpless. Plus the wokeism and the dumbing down which has been most successfully practised by the media of every ilk.

    2. If it’s illiteracy in missing a comma on can’t, yes.

      The state forced them on us. The easiest way to be rid of them is to stop paying welfare.

    3. And ‘they’ say that English don’t like picking fruit. That’s a mere bagatelle in comparison.
      What’s wrong with this stupid country? It’s not what our parents and grandparents fought for. It’s got to stop.

    4. 372509+ up ticks,

      Evening TB,

      I gave the same alert some time ago also suggesting joining the dots of all those muslim types that have been awarded power, the outline resembles a giant mosque.

  75. How about this…..
    I had to go to Wickes today to buy some spray oil, WD40, Weed killer and an interior door lining aka frame. I left the trolley at the end of one of the isles and a guy came around the end with a load of chipboard flooring his trolley and politely asked me to back mine up as he was struggling to get round.
    Well we could hardly believe it, it was ‘Big Al’ a giant I worked with about 20 years ago.
    Hello how are you he said ? Hello to you and don’t ask, but I told him anyway. Blimey he said I’ve got Afib as well but not quite as bad as you it seems.
    We found we had also been to the same cardiology department at the same hospital. And treated with the same unprofessional indifference it seems. By the same person and his secretary. Except Al referred to him as royalty, King useless he called him. Totally agreed.
    But after he’d had enough of it and getting nowhere he went to Watford A&E and is now being looked after by a decent lady doctor.
    We both compared notes and it appeared that both of us had, had the same covid jabs, around the same time. But refused boosters. Which no doubt whatsoever had started off our current problems.

    1. Well my OH had two primary jabs and one booster. He reached the age of 78 in good health, fit and active, then the prostate problems started, that was sorted (though he still has the prostate cancer but at least it’s under control) then the heart problems last October. So three jabs in 2021.

      1. No jabs here, still fitted with pacemaker due to poor rhythm. It’s been an issue all my life, even SWMBO won’t dance with me… 🙁

        1. She did mention that when we last waltz together. 🤗🕺💃

      2. We had both had the AZ jabs. I very much doubt if the truth will ever be known.
        But so many people that I know or have heard of who have developed previously unsuspected illnesses. It’s seems our imune systems have been seriously undermine.

        1. That’s what we had, to our everlasting regret, no boosters but other issues after the jabs. God only knows what was in the stuff.
          And yet, in fairness, many people have had no side effects or health related issues.
          It does occur to me that maybe some were given a placebo and others the real thing….doesn’t matter, we will never know the truth.

          1. I’ve always suspected our political classes in public were jabbed with harmless clear liquid.
            Taking the side effect ratios in to consideration I would have thought at the very least, including the Lords, there would have been at least 50 badly effected.

  76. Bogey Five today.

    Wordle 702 5/6
    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
    🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Par 4 for me. Getting the first and fourth in the right place sufficiently narrowed the options.

      Wordle 702 4/6

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

      1. Same here, Sue.

        Wordle 702 4/6

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

    3. Same here

      Wordle 702 5/6

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

  77. That’s me for this cold, winter’d say. Stove going – did do some gardening wearing several layers, muffler and gloves. More of the same tomorrow and forever, apparently.

    Have a spiffing evening watching the seventeenth semi-final of “Uni Chal” (as it will soon be know, because the full title has connotations of slavery and white supremacy.

    A demain.

    1. And most universities of any note will be full to the chinks with bames…

    2. I eventually braved the cold wind and spent a couple of hours shovelling compost into large pots for the tomato plants. Finished planting up the hanging baskets. Now sitting down with a cuppa.

      1. One wonders what type of baby-making-womb-for-hire would agree to such an arrangement.

        Assuming they really knew where the child would end up.

  79. Re earlier posts regarding transexuals in sport.

    Everyone who thinks it should be permitted should answer two questions:
    (And to be fair I’ll pose the questions at the world rather than the local or collegiate level)

    1) How many women transitioning to men are ranked in the top hundred in the world for their sporting event?
    2) How many men transitioning to women are ranked in the top hundred in the world for their sporting event?

    Unless the figures are as close to identical as makes little difference it should be prevented.

  80. 372509+ up ticks,

    That starmer bloke is a caution, him and his party are taking on a mighty big job there tackling mental health, where will he start
    one wonders maybe with his own parties supporters / members / voters.

    If his party has the same success with mental health issues as the party under anthony charlie lynton ( the bog man) leadership on building up PIE numbers then kneel will be on a winner.

    No matter how hard sunak tries, and he really is trying,will he ever match the blitzkrieg triggered by the bog man and live to glorify
    in the fallout.

  82. Seems that, on Thursday, we are getting the USS Gerald Ford, a 333metre long US aircraft carrier, up the Oslofjord. Its the ship’s first voyage away from the USA. ‘kin’ enormous, so it is – I hope they avoid going aground as did the Royal Navy a few years ago, or you’ll hear the screams of laughter from where you are.

    1. Given Gerald Ford’s habitual falling over, I would suggest that the ship running aground is almost inevitable.

      1. The Congressman/President who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time?

      2. Indeed.
        It will be so hemmed-in by the sides of the fjord that it won’t be in much of a position to defend itself if the Russians decide to revenge themselves on it.

  84. When I came back to the car in the public carpark this afternoon, I see someone was impressed by my driving skills.
    There was a note on the windscreen that said “Parking – fine”
    So that was nice!

        1. TC.
          He was pulled over on the motorway by the police. Can I help you offcer?
          I’m sorry to tell you sir but we’ve been told over the radio that someone calling her self your wife fell out of your car, 10 miles back……
          Oh that goodness for that offcer I thought I’d gone deaf.

  85. Wife: Can you stop yawning when I’m talking to you?
    Husband: I’m not yawning, I’m trying to say something.

    3. These are all strange statements. When someone says ‘trust only me’ they show they are the last person you should trust.

      However, the pandemic exposed the mendacity and spite, let alone stupidity of far too many people. Ignorance, fear and desperation to be told what to do abound. That’s the saddest thing.

  87. Utterly off topic
    A bizarre view.
    I’m watching clouds being blown down the valley beneath our home. We’re only about 400 feet above sea level, so the clouds must be around the 300 mark..
    Very strange indeed.
    The temperatures here today have been very varied and we’ve had tremendous downpours as well as lots of thunder and lightning. It’s calmed down and the clouds are the outcome.

    2. When the Left talk about disinformation they mean anything they have not told you to think.It’s not the truth, it’s propaganda. That is why they create these ‘fact checkers’ in the first place. Minitrue writ large.

      “It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”

      “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”

      “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

      https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/281832.Joseph_Goebbels

      The Left never change. They change the words, but their intent is always power over others.

    4. The ‘conspiracy theory movement’ and the ‘alternative media’? Their connection with ‘far-right figures’? The utter arrogance and conceit!

      Who was inspired by whom when the words “We are your only source of truth” were uttered?

      Bloody hell…

        1. I shall relate this…some time ago I was chatting to a lady older than I in the supermarket while we trying to see which eggs looked OK. This was in the supposed egg shortage. We had a couple of chuckles and I asked how wicked her sense of humour was. Very wicked was the reply.
          I told her exactly what you have posted above and she creased up. I am going to remember that, she said and walked off chortling.

    8. This stooge should watch the Clare Craig tweet put up by ogga1. In that compilation video the repetitive use of the same phrases across all media, politicians, medical institutions etc. wasn’t coincidental: they had to have been issued and mandated and the morons took it at face value and complied. I doubt that any of the people who recited this tripe incessantly have the self-awareness to be embarrassed by their actions. Just another day at the office.

    3. Mr Cavan said: “My anxiety levels are going through the roof.”

      Diddums. Don’t go to the wrong part of town or you might be thrown off one.

  91. I’m knackered again so am going to do myself an augmented Hot Lemon and go to bed.
    G’night all

  92. We’re spooked today………picture fell off the wall, landed on the socket where the lamp was plugged in…….. now OH can’t find his jumper……. not to mention his back problem this morning……

    1. I’ll bet his back problem found him, though. :-((
      Not fun. Hope he gets some pain relief.

      1. He’s ok, but it feels bruised and is stiff when he gets up from sitting. He’s now found his

        jumper where he left it in the kitchen. Lily won’t come in because I spooked her when I went out to water the oleander. Swifts are sitting on their eggs though, which is good.

    2. Funny as in odd, how things can happen like that. Hope your husband is OK soonest.

      1. Thankyou….he’s looking at the swifts sitting on their eggs. Two eggs each in box 3 & box 5, but none in box 14 yet. Other birds – starlings, great tits, blue tits & sparrows are all nesting or feeding young. Cameras make it interesting to watch them but can be stressful when things go wrong. I’ve warned him off going up the ladder at the end of the season to clean the boxes out. They will have to do it themselves.

    3. For backs, see if you can lie on the floor (or a hard surface), bend your knees and put your feet on the floor. Then push gently downward. It should push your back into the floor, allowing the spine to realign.

      I won’t say it’s fool proof, but when I broke mine that helped a bit. I sympathise though, as when my spine cracked it was agony.

        1. I get those. I reckon it’s stress and sitting in an office chair at a desk (the source of the stress).
          We have a hard mattress with a attress pad on it, and lying on your back in bed whilst the muscles slowly unwind can be agony.
          #sympathy.

  93. We’re spooked today………picture fell off the wall, landed on the socket where the lamp was plugged in…….. now OH can’t find his jumper……. not to mention his back problem this morning……

  94. Evening, all. Yay! Notifications are back! It’s been a pleasant day here; I’ve been doing a bit of weeding, not that I can do much at the moment. I’ve finally bitten the bullet and engaged a gardener who’s prepared to tackle the wilderness that currently occupies my plot. I probably should have done it earlier, but having broken my ribs has finally concentrated my mind that I need to get help. I can’t even pick the mower up to move it, let alone pull and push it. The lawns are meadows; so much so that even Oscar disappears when he walks on them!

    1. Have I missed something? How/when did you break your ribs? Did you fall off the horse?

      2. Alas, yes. Most uncharacteristically, Coolio turned into a bucking bronco as I got on him two weeks ago. Result I ended up on the floor with a couple of busted ribs. He is not well (and neither am I, come to that!).

        1. I have been thrown twice from a horse… the second time was the last time I climbed on a horse. Lovely animals but I now prefer to keep to keep my distance.

    2. Never be ashamed of asking for help, Connrs. Sounds like you’ve always done your bit and more.

      1. I always said that if I had to get someone in to do my garden it would be the beginning of the end. Hopefully, it’s only a temporary blip.

    3. Top bloke. My young cousin lives in the same village as him – he heard she was a bit hard up and gave her a house to live in.

  97. A friend of ours was pulled over by the police and the officer said we stopped you sir because we suspected that you have been drinking. What makes you think that offcer?
    Well you were driving quite slowly and weaving from side to side. Would you mind blowing in this sir. Test over and negative, driver…..I have never been known to drink and drive. Officers….can you explain why you were driving in such a strange way sir. Yes officer I was trying to avoid all the effing pot holes.

    1. It seems to me that since all the safe places the victorians built to house and keep the public safe from all the suspected idiots. Have been bulldozed and housing estate have been built over the land.
      It’s been a perfect opportunity for for those of the same or similar frame of mind to re-introduce the madness that existed getting on now for 200 years ago. The government need to take a fresh look at the supplied infrastructure they are providing with all these new building projects.
      Typically our government are going to stuff this one up as well and get caught out over and over again.

    2. It would take more than a few nails to seal the coffin of the globalist shills infesting our Parliament. A stake through the heart would be a better and more effective remedy.

      I have arrived at the conclusion that all of the political ‘leaders’ in the collective west along with many opposition leaders ie. Keir Starmer in the UK, are globalist elite puppets. We see proof every day. They have no connection or empathy with the electorate they presume to serve and seize every opportunity to fly off to some distant jamboree to rub shoulders with each other. Thus we see the love-ins as in Hiroshima at the G7 where they are all so comfortable in each others company.

      The true giveaway is the collective West’s blind support for the stand-up comedian and dolt Zelensky in the bomb site we once called Ukraine. This phoney war has already cost billions and been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of mortal souls.

      No matter, the UK can dispose of its useless missiles, the EU can dispose of its out of date armaments including much vaunted F16 fighters, over 50 years old and past their sell-by date, mechanistically ancient tanks and sundry other materiel which the US arms industry wish to see replaced with the sale of its stealth fighters and bombers.

      The fact that Sunak, Rutte, Macron von der Leyen, Biden and Scholz (plus recent recruit Moroni, another WEF shill posing as something other) are happy to contribute to this insane destruction tells you everything you need to know about these vile opportunistic creatures, none of whom give a flying fuck about human life and dignity.

        1. I try but often feel that I am talking at a brick wall of casual ignorance. Keep up your own good work.

          There is nothing whatever objectionable at the reposition of careful thought.

          If I might give a comparison, from my own discipline as an Architect born thankfully in Bath.

          Bath works as a beautiful and cohesive city for the simple reason that every C18 architect, from the great Woods down
          through the succeeding ranks, respected the height and scale of subsequent developments.

          They all constrained the height of their buildings, used the same small palette of materials, complied with a consistent proportion of windows to wall surfaces and respected their
          neighbouring buildings. Nobody sought to be different or ‘iconic’ as the modernist abberation have done. They all sought a safe place in the harmony of a great urban city development, whether constructing artisan dwellings or else the grand crescents and squares.

          There you have it. The control of the ambition and individual ego and a more general subservience to the integrity of the whole is a prerequisite.

          Folk could glean a lot from observance of our more successful urban developments. The principles of course extend to other matters including those of governance of our State.

        2. I try but often feel that I am talking at a brick wall of casual ignorance. Keep up your own good work.

          There is nothing whatever objectionable at the reposition of careful thought.

          If I might give a comparison, from my own discipline as an Architect born thankfully in Bath.

          Bath works as a beautiful and cohesive city for the simple reason that every C18 architect, from the great Woods down through the succeeding ranks, respected the height and scale of subsequent developments.

          They all constrained the height of their buildings, used the same small palette of materials, complied with a consistent proportion of windows to wall surfaces and respected their neighbouring buildings. Nobody sought to be different or ‘iconic’ as the modernist abberation have done. They all sought a safe place in the harmony of a great urban city development, whether constructing artisan dwellings or else the grand crescents and squares.

          There you have it. The control of the ambition and individual ego and a more general subservience to the integrity of the whole.

          Folk could glean a lot from
          Observance of our more successful urban developments. The principles of course extend to other matters including those of governance of our State.

      2. A Flying f***? Is this the same as a fling on the wing or a screw in the blue?

  103. I notice a lot of bad press for Bill Gates in the past week. There is the Epstein connection viz. 36 ‘meals’ on the Island, the sexual relationship with a Greta Thunberg lookalike Russian Bridge player which Epstein is reported to have exploited and the more historic case of Gates’ IT man receiving a mere 90 days for trafficking thousands of child pornography images from a computer on Gates’ property (supposedly using gmail). Some think the IT employee was the fall guy for Gates himself.

    There are rumours that the bad press and obvious shiftiness and dishonesty of Gates’ performances to camera are making those globalists above him say “enough is enough”. Gates along with Soros and Schwab must rank as one of the most hated persons on the planet.

    1. But I am sure that Charles lll, the Idiot King, has complete trust and confidence in Bill Gates and Georges Soros as he has in Klaus Schwab and the WEF.

  105. Goodnight and God bless, Gentlefolk. I’ve found out, by reading the teeny-tiny-small print that I should take two. We’ll see.

    Bis morgan, fruh, freunden.

  108. The world’s most miserable countries revealed
    The annual index produced by US professor uses primarily economic conditions
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/05/22/zimbabwe-ukraine-russia-uk-most-miserable-countries/

    The 20 most miserable countries in the world :

    1. Zimbabwe
    2.Venezuela
    3.Syria
    4.Lebanon
    5. Sudan
    6.Argentina
    7.Yemen
    8.Ukraine
    9.Cuba
    10.Turkey
    11.Sri Lanka
    12.Haiti
    13.Angola
    14.Tonga
    15.Ghana
    16.South Africa
    17.Suriname
    18.Bosnia and Herzegovina
    19.Iran
    20.Rwanda

    BTL

    My cousin was a very successful farmer in Zimbabwe. He saw that the country he loved and where he was born would need an educated and competent black population to continue its prosperity and so he made sure that the brightest black people working on his farm were properly trained and sent to university or agricultural college so that they could take over when he left.

    His hopes were thwarted when Mugabe had him thrown off his farm. Those who had been trained to farm were killed, the farm workers and their families were sacked and kicked out of their homes and the my cousin’s farm was given to friends of Mugabe who knew nothing about farming. Within five years the farm no longer produced anything at all and the land returned to wilderness as it had been in before it was farmed.

    Those interested in this might like to read “All for Nothing?” by C.G. Tracey which can be bought at outlets such as Amazon.

    1. They aren’t going to stop til Britain, Canada, the US, Oz and NZ are on that list. And “Europe” (sic). The sheeple are chasing them to get them as fast as possible.

      Edit. I am surprised at Argentina’s position on the list.

    2. They are doing the same thing to farmers in the Netherlands, by the sound of it.

          1. Not at all, I may have dozed, but as usual at this time, I’d love to go back and catch some zeds but I’ve to try for a quacks appt at 08:00.

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