Monday 24 June: Nigel Farage’s remarks on Ukraine have given Reform supporters pause

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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817 thoughts on “Monday 24 June: Nigel Farage’s remarks on Ukraine have given Reform supporters pause”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolk, today’s (recycled) story

    Practising Your Art

    There was a world-famous painter who, in the prime of her career, started losing her eyesight. Fearful that she might lose her life as a painter, she went to see the best eye surgeon in the world. After several weeks of delicate surgery and therapy, her eyesight was restored.

    The painter was so grateful that she decided to show her gratitude by repainting the doctor's office. Part of her work included painting a gigantic eye on one wall. When she had finished her work, she held a press conference to unveil her latest work of art: the doctor's office.

    During the press conference, one reporter noticed the eye on the wall, and asked the doctor, 'What was your first reaction upon seeing your newly painted office, especially that large eye on the wall?'

    To this, the eye doctor responded "I said to myself ‘Thank the Lord, I'm not a gynaecologist.’”

  6. er….no

    “SIR – Isn’t the fact that Nigel Farage appears to worship Donald Trump sufficient reason to withhold your vote from Reform?
    C D Gilliard Leeds, West Yorkshire”

    2. BTL Comment:-

      R.Spowart 29 min ago

      On the contrary, Mr. or Mrs. C D Gilliard, Nigel Farage's support for Donald Trump is even more reason to vote for him to clear out the rotten nest of vipers he have running our two countries.

      1. For some people it is anyone but Trump.
        They even prefer demented old perverts with connections to the Ukraine Mafia and China.

  7. my father’s reclusive cousin was big in the badger world though I’m more for hedgehogs myself. We found out over the weekend the cousin had died about a month ago although there are plenty more badger lovers who will take his crusade forward (unfortunately). I liked this letter:

    “Sir – – As a former wildlife unit field manager for Defra, I would argue that Andrew Sells’s letter (June 22) on badger vaccination misses some important points.
    Badgers dominate our wildlife when left unchecked. They eat hedgehogs, invertebrates and bird eggs, and raid beehives. They are top of the food chain and consume just about anything.
    Furthermore, they need to be vaccinated year on year for four years if this measure is to be effective. Unless they are microchipped to identify them, how will that ever be possible?
    When there is an imbalance in our wildlife, there is a price to pay. It is unfortunate that the badger, which wreaks havoc among our cattle and alpacas by spreading tuberculosis, is also one of our best-loved mammals. Paul Caruana
    Truro, Cornwall”

      2. Good morning Bob ,

        There is a well known pub near here used to serve badger meat during WW2 , either in ham form or as a roast , or even sausages .

        An elderly man who lives locally told me that fascinating fact.

    2. Paul Caruana has a connection to Defra does he. I wonder if Philip Duly has links to a government department. There must be some reason they both get half a dozen letters published every year.

          1. Caruana gets more letters published than Grizzly but i'm sure it's not that. :@)

    3. "Our alpacas"? WTF?

      The biggest question I have is: "What the hell are alpacas doing in the UK?" It is man, on every single occasion, who is directly responsible for destroying the balance of nature, and the importation of non-native species has a lot do do with that.

      Where I live, in the farmland of southern Sweden, there is a healthy population of both hedgehogs and badgers everywhere and there is no clamour to cull any of them for any reason. The biggest danger to the hedgehog here, as in most places, is traffic.

      Mankind destroys, then looks to place the blame for his destruction elsewhere.

      1. Alpacas arrive in the UK in the 19th century to be exhibited in zoos.
        People liked them and started buying them. It was found they made very good guardian animals for sheep flocks.
        You can also eat them. Very lean like venison.

  8. Good Morning Folks,

    Another sunny start to the day.

    I see the jackboot weather Nazis have issued a yellow weather warning just to politicise it.

    1. They needn’t have bothered! It’s cloudy here! Good morning again, folks!

      1. Possibly. Cry wolf too many times and people switch off. Except millennials of course. They are scared of everything.

  9. Nigel Farage’s remarks on Ukraine have given Reform supporters pause

    The truth really hurts the establishment, no wonder they hate Farage so much.
    Especially when ten years ago Farage predicted what will happen and then it happened.

  10. Good morning all.
    Another bright morning with a tad over 11°C on the yard thermometer.

  12. MoD releases video to dispel ‘myth that Nato provoked Putin’. 24 June 2024.

    The Ministry of Defence has released a video dispelling the “myth” that “Nato is aggressive and the enemy of Russia” after comments by Nigel Farage.

    The department shared a clip on social media that said it was a “fact” that Nato “has worked for peace, security and freedom” for 75 years while Russia was “aggressive”.

    The video came after Mr Farage, the Reform UK leader, told the BBC on Friday that the West had provoked Russia into invading Ukraine.

    It doesn’t help your case when you start off with a piece of misdirection. For one thing Farage did not say this and Nato is an alliance not a polity. He was talking primarily about its individual members and the EU.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/23/mod-releases-video-to-dispel-myth-that-nato-provoked-putin/

    1. Exxon, Goldman, KPMG & CIA.. also issued a similar statement, agreeing that it is a settled science.. even had a expurt to prove it.

      1. They are rattled. But the great unwashed are falling for it (see today’s Terriblegraph letters)

        1. I think rather some carefully chosen contributors were 'approached' for comment.

          After all, the 'parliamentary group for Ukraine?' Really? What do they do?

  13. 388840+ up ticks,

    Morning Each ,

    I personally rest assured after our warm spell yesterday that after a very intensive search of the local neighbourhood I came across
    NO pools of liquid containing shreds of elastic and atopped with hair of human.

    As laughter is considered to be a beneficial medicine then we, courtesy of the continued input of the majority voter creation , must be running well ahead of the worldwide pack and their odious, ludicrous input.

    The only global warming with ANY truth content in turning us into "pools on the pavement is NUCLEAR, and in reality that is getting closer daily.

    1. 12 of the 20 Rotherham councillors are still there. Can someone place them "under oath" and ask who was it that told them to keep quiet about the child rape gangs.

      As if that's ever going to happen. Social cohesion at any cost.

      1. Social cohesion for a specific sector of the "community". The rest can go hang.

      2. 388840+ up ticks,

        Morning KB,

        The “to high” cost is the victims,
        many in number are now suffering in adulthood.

      3. If there was any interest in 'community' the Left would not have been able to pour alien vermin into this country.

  16. A heatwave is coming – but don’t expect it to last. 24 June 2024.

    The potential mini-heatwave has led to emergency services issuing warnings with people urged to stay out of the water to avoid fatal cold water shock.

    The RNLI, the National Coastwatch Institution and emergency services across the UK warned that jumping into water to cool off on a hot day can trigger an involuntary gasp of breath that can lead to drowning.

    Accidentally inhaling just half a pint of water can be fatal, experts warned, and said the phenomenon could affect even the strongest and most confident swimmers.

    Project Fear.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/23/met-office-says-stay-out-of-the-sea-with-yellow-heat-alert/

    2. The RNLI is too busy running a taxi service from French beaches and supplying Islamic compliant swim wear to African women to talk sense any more AS. Like everything else it is run by woke fools who believe that they are far superior to the rest of us.

    4. “…The Met Office advises keeping out of the sun between 11am and 3pm when the UV ways are strongest, walking in the shade and wearing a hat.
      Britons were also warned to avoid physical exertion in the hottest parts of the day, avoid alcohol and carry water when travelling.
      During the hottest days, householders are advised to close curtains, avoid heat-generating appliances, and promote airflow through cross-ventilation and fans.
      Staying indoors is likely to be cooler than going out….”

      When did we all become simpletons? I can’t bear it.

        1. Which leads to them making the wrong decisions when they are not told what to do because they're so stupid they want someone else to take the blame for their incompetence.

          The first time an idiot woman complained her coffee was hot it should have been thrown out of court.

        2. My postie is a nice chap and friendly. He's young. He had to ask me how to get to my house! "Oh, you can go through the gate," he said! Then he wanted to know how he could deliver the letters. When I told him to just put them through the letterbox in the door, he asked whether it was on the right or the left! I told him he'd see it when he got there.

      2. When the mediocre take over, just as they have done, then we're all simpletons, because those people have no concept of self reliance or common sense. Half of them would probably need an assistant to help them dress themselves in the morning and that's without any of them having a proper infirmity.

    5. Staying out of the water might be advisable in some areas due to the quantity of sewage.

    6. Micro manage your life, that's the game. Sometimes I feel like wasting their time by writing in to the Beeb or the Met Office or the local council. I'd tell them I'm feeling very frightened by the recent extreme weather warning and could they provide me with an official helper to walk round with me all day.

      1. I imagine they'd find someone, but when they arrived would you really want them to be there?

        1. Only in order to provide the hapless sap in question with endless requests and meaningless tasks. It'd amuse me for an hour or two at least.

    7. The forecast is for 27 or 28 degrees tops – that is NOT a [expletive deleted] heatwave!!

      1. The Metro I've just seen has the headline: Met Office issues Risk of Death warning!

    8. As I live just about as far away from the sea as it's possible to get, I'm not too worried about staying out of the water. Anybody stupid enough to swim in the Severn deserves everything they get.

    1. Bright and clear on my bit of the South coast. Looks like it's going to be a scorcher.

      I'll get me watering can.

  18. People who vote Reform will get the opposite of what they want. Nick Timothy. 24 June 2024.

    Labour will hike taxes, open our borders and undermine our sovereignty. We must not let them ruin Britain.

    "Are there no stones in heaven but that serve for the thunder?" It is already destroyed. At least we will be rid of one gang of traitors.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

  19. Below is the GoFundMe page for the convicted axe-wielding thug drug dealer from Blackburn in West Lothian.. that's gone "missing" in Tenerife.
    The last picture of Jay shows him off his face at a rave gurning. His girl friend called Lucy says.. "hurry up and transfer £ cuz the Oswaldtwistle lot want their money by next Tuesday."
    https://www.gofundme.com/f/…

    1. Quite a few are donating so they should get the ransom money soon. His mother better hope he has been kidnapped. If he hasn't been he will have done a Mosley.

  20. Below is the GoFundMe page for the convicted axe-wielding thug drug dealer from Blackburn in West Lothian.. that's gone "missing" in Tenerife.
    The last picture of Jay shows him off his face at a rave gurning. His girl friend called Lucy says.. "hurry up and transfer £ cuz the Oswaldtwistle lot want their money by next Tuesday."
    https://www.gofundme.com/f/…

    1. Good riddance.
      No wonder volunteers are in short supply.
      Years ago, I had to attend parish council meetings – not as a member, fortunately!
      The meetings were dominated by a married couple who obsessed over rule books and nothing ever got done.

      1. Obviously very self important people. They probably did busybodying and curtain twitching in their spare time.

        1. And two complaints to plod! So 2 of the 7 little hitlers decided to complain! What a bunch of saddos!

          1. They have their own little kingdoms to defend. If someone like this young man takes the initiative they feel threatened and lash out.

            People trimming the verges outside their homes and filling potholes shows them to be the ineffectual people they pretend not to be.

      2. Thank goodness our parish council isn't like that. We usually get through the agenda and try our best to help out the community. The PCC, on the other hand …

    2. Morning Phizzee.

      I think the term Riparian rights is a term too loosely used and perhaps should be extended sometimes to public duty .. path clearing etc , it would cause an absolute roar of shock and horror , and probably could be too extreme , but why not?

      1. Good morning. I think locals should take more responsibility for their own patch. The chap who cleared the riverbed and bank served time in prison for all his efforts. The locals thanked him for stopping their houses flooding.
        As usual Defra came out with mealy mouthed nonsense.

        1. Yes , local government and quangos are full of mealy mouthed nonsense .

          We have FADED white lines on the road near the level crossing in the village .. We asked Highways to sort things out .. except our parish council has to pay for the work !

          Moh and I were furious because motorists just don't stop .

          I was also going to pay a visit to B + Q to get some stuff to fix a nasty pothole .. nah if I did that I would probably be imprisoned .

          1. Pot holes need to be hollowed out, the reason for the subsidence resolved and shored up then the pot hole filled.

            Annoyingly we keep using the same failed materials each time. The Swedes use far superior patching technology – heck, their road surfaces are simply made from a different material that is designed to shrink and expand and pass water through it.

      1. I think he has Downs Syndrome but apparently that label isn't inclusive enough.

    4. It was their pathetic petulant response that got me. What a nasty bunch they are. The parish is better off without them.

      1. They did show themselves up. I wonder if they recognise their failings now or that it is someone elses fault.

      2. Most BTL comments seem to agree – Oh dear – the statement on the Parish Council website! I had assumed they had resigned in shame and embarrassment, not in a petulant sulk as a protest. I pity any of the villagers who has one of this unpleasant bunch as a neighbour.

    5. All improvements have halted…. rubbish. There were none. It's a bunch of busy bodies wasting money on pet projects. They got uppity when someone did what they should have done and showed them up as the incompetent, useless fools they are.

  22. Good Moaning.

    Part of a long article in the DT. False dawn or an unstoppable momentum?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/24/why-woke-companies-turning-backs-on-hr-snake-oil/

    "Why even ‘woke’ companies are turning their backs on HR ‘snake oil’ sellers

    More bosses are pulling the handbrake on costly and inconclusive diversity initiatives

    Behind office doors, HR departments at some of Britain’s biggest businesses have recently been feeling defensive and on the backfoot.

    Increasingly laid at their doors is the blame for allowing toxic identity politics to enter the workplace, and wasting millions of pounds on pointless diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) schemes.

    Pointing the finger are belt-tightening senior leaders scrutinising their returns amid soaring wage bills, with some even feeling betrayed for being shepherded by HR into the vicious culture wars.

    Christoffer Ellehuus, chief executive of workplace training company MindGym, says: “A lot of them are blaming HR for not having reined it in and having had a much clearer business focus about what they were doing.”

    Fuelling this blame game are recent findings that Britain’s diversity drive is “counterproductive” despite businesses spending millions of pounds on ultimately ineffective workplace initiatives.

    It was the conclusion of an independent report commissioned by Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, that discovered popular so-called ESG (environmental, social and governance) practices had little to no tangible impact on boosting diversity or reducing prejudice.

    Ms Badenoch in March warned British companies against outsourcing or delegating to workplace training consultants with “potentially conflicting incentives” which are ultimately selling “snake oil”.

    She told The Times: “There are lots of people who just cook up stuff and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got a course. Why don’t you buy my course?’ […] They’ve been making money out of selling stuff that is not evidence-based.”

    Badenoch’s report is damning for HR departments who now face questions from their superiors about why they fell prey to so-called snake oil sellers in the first place.

    This includes decisions to roll out divisive training programmes in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, designed to spread awareness around unconscious bias, white privilege and gender pronouns.

    However, what were sold as quick fixes to create a fairer workplace – in online training sessions as short as 30 minutes – many have discovered to be little more than fashionable fads with damaging consequences. "

    2. No sympathy. Being 'progressive' was more important to them than making a profit. Which is an all-pervasive dictat which has sent our country spiralling down the plughole. So, a couple of feeble little canaries have begun to squawk. Let's hope the rest aren't too stupid to listen.

    3. I don't see anywhere an admission that gerrymandering selection to suit DIE rules has a deleterious effect on efficiency and productivity.

    1. WARNING!!! —- Lefties, New Elite & small children may find content distressing.

        1. Lefties are petty, small, stupid creatures who hate when they don't get their own way.

    2. Any advantage Brexit offers this country will never be taken up. The state refuses to. It simply wants to be chained to the EU and have all laws created there.

      1. Hello Wibbling ,

        There were signs/ arrows everywhere , and there were also over 300 competitors , some of the roads were closed then it was rural pathways ..

        We live close to the trailway, so the previous day he ran the course to test his running shoes, he has a variety of shoes for different terrains !

        I cannot believe the mileage he does , sometimes he will get up early and run before work , the blessing of beautiful countryside helps , though I do worry, but he has a Garmin tracker which I can follow on my laptop !

    2. As a sometimes sufferer from hayfever, your wonderful first power really started my nose twitching, Maggie.

    3. That's amazing 55? I was going to post that the vid would be a good memento, as well. He's still making memories like that.

  25. Good morning, all. Clear blue sky all around. Must get the washing going.

    Doubts have been cast about the spread of the SARS-CoV-02 "virus" across the World. Analysis has indicated that there were 'hotspots' around the World that appeared synchronously.

    Professor Denis Rancourt:

    https://x.com/USMortality/status/1667408437712650240

    Dr David Martin:

    In 2002, a university in North Carolina initiated a study to develop an "infectious replication defective," which Martin interpreted as "a weapon to target individuals, but not have collateral damage."


    Infectious replication defective = unable to be passed from person to person. If true, the masking mandates were unnecessary and merely another 'control' feature to discover how malleable the people are when frightened.

    Was the pathogen ("virus") deliberately spread and how could this be done. Well, it has been done before and by the USA authorities:

    https://x.com/DrDMartinWorld/status/1803440569160552459

    Pandemic or Plandemic? Data analysis and research indicates the latter. It's looking more and more likely that the "virus" (pathogen) was released to get the "vaccine" (that doesn't do what is not on the drug packet insert 🙄)into the population.

    Fear the WHO bearing panaceas for their declared "pandemics".

    Source article:

    The Standard

  26. Utterly undemocratic – Supreme Court blocks oil site
    https://www.conservativewom…

    Glib and Oily Mandelson told us smugly that we are now living in the post democratic age which enables politicians to use extra-parliamentary organisations such as the WHO, the UN, NATO and barely accountable domestic quangos and courts to make decisions.

    The concept of separation of powers – legislative, executive and judicial – no longer mean anything.

    BTL

    When people began to get wise and worried about the implications in the drafting of human rights legislation Blair assured us that these drafts had no more significance than a copy of the Beano.

    You did not need to be Eagle eyed to see that this scheme was a Dandy and a Topper plan by Blair not only to curtail our lives but also to provide his wife with very lucrative work. Comic for Blair that he got away with treating us like children; tragic for us that he did.

    3. Good post. Yes, I think she is just as culpable as her husband. Joint dictatorship and it is still in action.

  27. Utterly undemocratic – Supreme Court blocks oil site
    https://www.conservativewom…

    Glib and Oily Mandelson told us smugly that we are now living in the post democratic age which enables politicians to use extra-parliamentary organisations such as the WHO, the UN, NATO and barely accountable domestic quangos and courts to make decisions.

    The concept of separation of powers – legislative, executive and judicial – no longer means anything.

    BTL

    When people began to get wise and worried about the implications in the drafting of human rights legislation Blair assured us that these drafts had no more significance than a copy of the Beano.

    You did not need to be Eagle eyed to see that this scheme was a Dandy and a Topper plan by Blair not only to curtail our lives but also to provide his wife with very lucrative work. Comic for Blair that he got away with treating us like children; tragic for us that he did.

  28. My letters are never accepted , but if I transmit enough brain messages to the DT throng , eventually someone thinks exactly the same as me and sends off a letter ..

    Below is so true , very few insects , very few moths at night and where are the bees , ladybirds , butterflies ..

    SIR – This year there appear to be far fewer swallows and swifts in the skies.

    Their absence has been particularly noticeable in our part of London. However, we also recently spent a few days in Dorset and Wiltshire, and while these birds were present, their numbers were certainly lower – even though there seemed to be plenty of food available. I wonder whether others have found this to be the case.

    Jeremy Roberts
    London SW13

    SIR – It seems the cold, wet spring has harmed the bee population. My lavender hedge is usually visited by hundreds of bees. This year not one has been seen.

    Thomas Bowler
    Northampton

    Muggy feel to the weather today 15c.so far .

    1. Not so many over here in Co Antrim as past years. Have a pair of swallows in the potting shed and house Martin's in the eaves at both ends of the house. Swift boxes remain empty.

    2. Here in Poland, quite a few shallows…. butterflies …. and loads of spiteful like houseflies ( more aggressive than in England) … no mosquitoes as yet.

      1. Take one empty 1 litre water bottle. Cut it in half. To the bottom half add water, honey or syrup and some sugar. Mix to half way up. Take the top of the bottle and remove the cap. Put the top half into the bottom half with a gap between what was the top of the bottle and the liquid. Place your home made flying bug trap in the garden. The mozzies and flies will go there and leave you alone.

    3. Morning, Maggie. Our two nest boxes were not occupied this year and we have considerably fewer birds on our feeders.

        1. Click on the Upvote button (Thumbs up) a second time, Delboy and your upvote will disappear.

          1. Every time I try to put the cursor over the 🤙 it is covered by the list of upvoters.

    4. To be fair the flying conditions have not been ideal for butterflies up to now. They like neither overcast wet with cold, nor bright hot sun, preferring a lightly overcast. It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few days with the "extreme weather" and all 🤔. The other thing is that most of the British species are flyers in Mid to late June to September. On the plus side I've seen more reports of swallowtails on the Broads this year, too.

    5. Good morning True_Belle, I too share your concerns about our wildlife. I live in a village on the Midland mainline, (between Kettering and Wigston in Leicestershire) which Network Rail have been electrifying for the past 2 years or more. The amount of wild foliage, berries etc, just on this small stretch that has been lost to cabling, excavating etc is unbelievable. No one has suggested replanting or ‘re-wilding’ any of this land – so far.

      Multiply this by the entire length of of the line (St Pancras to Sheffield), not to mention the HS2 debacle, and it is little wonder that our birds, bees, insects, small rodents and other wildlife that have lost their habitat, are struggling. There is nothing lovelier than pottering in the garden and having a robin going over the ground you have just dug, fluttering so close you could almost touch him, it would be awful to imagine a countryside where this small pleasure is lost to future generations.

      I am not a religious person, but the following lines always comes to mind:
      “The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth.
      One is nearer to god in a garden, than anywhere else on earth”.

      1. There needs to be made space and suitable environment for all of God's creatures, large and small, dry, feathered or slimy.

    6. I thought the sun was coming out earlier but it changed its mind – very overcast here and muggy. I've got a load of bedding in the wash so I hope it will all dry.

      1. Snap , me too .

        Son’s running gear , masses of it, golf kit clothes and another load , bedding , I hope it will dry .

        Car temp said 27c.

        1. Dear Mrs General Dogsbody. You should have told them you wouldn't be available and for them to do their own laundry.
          Why on earth are you washing his running kit?

    7. Plenty of moths round here and judging by the susurration, there were plenty of bees in the undergrowth when I took Kadi for a walk before it became too hot.

  30. Glad to hear from Nigel Farage that he intends to Carter-Ruck the Daily Mail …. 100 years on from the infamous Zinoviev letter.

    I reckon Nigel Farage is showing that Social Media can now be way more effective than the quiet and neglected newspaper stands.

      1. I agree with More info required: I would like more info about Farage's actions re the DM.

        The Zinoviev letter was a forged document published and sensationalised by the British Daily Mail newspaper four days before the 1924 United Kingdom general election, which was held on 29 October.

        Basically it was part of a dirty tricks campaign against the Labour Party saying it had been infiltrated by communists.

        The MSM and the PTB will do everything they can to smear Farage but they are beginning to learn that he can strike back.

        1. The irony being, that, certainly post WWII, that was the truth, especially the unions.

        2. Oh well I had never heard of that letter so that is interesting. My history stopped at the Bad Ems telegram🙂

  31. Just posting a selection of comments .. I am sure you all agree with them

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/24/rivers-south-pollution-contamination-dangerous/

    Oldfashioned Commonsense
    55 MIN AGO
    If people would cease the global warming mantra. And clean up the land the rivers and oceans, we would be on a better path.
    Global warming is a false concept being forced upon the masses by the elitists as a control mechanism. It affects our way of life not theirs.
    A filthy environment from muck and rubbish also affects our life, but that we could and should do something about.
    Never confuse the two.

    Reply by Charles King.

    CK

    Charles King
    40 MIN AGO
    Oh – I just said that. Spot on. E.g Bangkok is sinking and the NutZeros are blaming global warming but it's due to the pollution and destruction of the the mangrove swamps around the city plus unfettered building without commensurate development of associated services..

    Comment by Robert JONES.

    RJ

    Robert JONES
    57 MIN AGO
    It is the same here in Devon where the River Otter is in stress as a result of pollution and groundwater abstraction. There are no mains sewers down the valley so like elsewhere the river acts as an open sewer

    Comment by Jane Hannam.

    JH

    Jane Hannam
    1 HR AGO
    We need to stop all the net zero nonsense now and start doing something about cleaning up our rivers and surrounding sea dirty water is a greater danger to us than the so called climate crises every will be!

    Comment by John Avons.

    JA

    John Avons
    1 HR AGO
    Now fill your kettle and just imagine where that water might have come from ?

    Comment by High Time.

    HT

    High Time
    1 HR AGO
    And still our masters allow the population to grow by more than a million every year.

    Reply by Osprey Jones.

    OJ

    Osprey Jones
    46 MIN AGO
    Sir David Attenborough stated that the biggest problem facing the planet is overpopulation. Here is just another example of the consequences.
    The politicians are quick enough to let people in . Why won't they give automatic deportation for all criminals given custodial sentences?

    1. Why don't we just keep the dross out? Why don't we stop paying the wasters to breed and solve the litter and population problem in one go?

      Look at the litter – it's always the same sort of thing. You won't find a bottle of Merlot and an M&S salad there. It's junk food, eaten by junk people who don't care about a place because they're paid to live there.

    2. Since Sir Dave is 98, how does he justify the last 28 years of his life as a non-productive mouth?
      (Looking at it from a biological point of view.)

    3. Since Sir Dave is 98, how does he justify the last 28 years of his life as a non-productive mouth?
      (Looking at it from a biological point of view.)

  32. Good morning, chums, and Thank You, Geoff, for today's site. I was away for Friday, Saturday and Sunday and only got back in the early hours of Monday morning. So, what with a long lie-in today, this post is rather late. I hope to be back to normal tomorrow. Enjoy the predicted sunny days!

    Wordle 1,101 4/6

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      1. Yes, I did, Sue Mac, celebrating the 30th anniversary of my taking this life-changing course in July of 1994 called More To Life. It is still a most powerful agent for change.

    2. Good morning
      Wordle 1,101 4/6

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  33. Mr Staples expresses his dislike for the attached lids to plastic bottles in today's DT letters:

    SIR – I recently drew blood on a sharp projecting piece of plastic on the top of a soft drink bottle. It appears big manufacturers are following EU regulations that require bottle tops to be tethered, in order to reduce littering (Magazine, June 22). But such tops get in the way of pouring and drinking. Are any British manufacturers willing to take advantage of Brexit freedoms in this case?

    Michael Staples

    I commented on this matter in the Nottlers' forum a few weeks ago. The point, I supposed, of these nasty umbilical things is to reduce littering but as far as I am concerned I now always cut off the plastic ring from the bottle neck and cut this off from the screw top. As I always used to put the lid on the plastic bottle when throwing it away I an now causing rather more separate pieces of plastic litter than before.

    This absurd practice which plastic bottle makers are compelled to follow has nothing to do with the environment. Thee nasty, meddlesome, small-minded little regulators have the power to annoy and infuriate us and they will always take every opportunity to do so.

      1. On the plus side the other half had a bottle of water with a tether yesterday but it was designed in such a way that it clicked back against the side of the bottle. She didn't realise this and was complaining bitterly about the top poking her lip all the time when the 8-years old granddaughter came over, then without a word clicked it in place before returning to her book. Hilarious 😆

        1. I have had similar experiences, James. I get my own back…other week showed a video of Bowie/Red Shoes…met with total silence then the request to see again….

        2. It’s the same with come drinks cans! The tab sits under the rim so it doesn’t get up your nose! Amazing what you learn!

          1. That’s right, but embarrassing too when you learn it that way. We had to laugh. It was a nice change given that designers these days seem all too often to be drawn from the ranks of those who’ve just finished “colouring in” at school or something.

            I’m particularly useless with some things too, no matter how well designed. I was once shown how you’re supposed to open one of those tetra shaped sandwich packs so that it makes a perfect holder for them. Very elegant. I still end up tearing them! Then again I seldom eat bought sandwiches so no loss.

          2. I’d like to give a shout-out to the Catsan cat litter manufacturers! You gently pull the little tab forward and, just like magic the bag opens with no tearing – every time!
            My Dad used to rage at packaging, particularly cling-film holders! He said he’d be as well being buried in the bluddy stuff, as a coffin! Unfortunately, we couldn’t manage that for him, as he’s in a cemetery on a hillside in the north of Athens!

          3. Cling film holders… nightmare. Don’t cheapskate on thinner wrap, either. You waste more than you use by far.

      2. It should annoy us to the point where we throw away plastic bottles in places where they will cause the most annoyance. Whenever one visits an official office to make enquiries about tax, planning applications, driving licences and other matters one should come armed with plastic bottles which one can drop on the floor as one leaves or smear them in soap and put them on the lavatory floor.

        How else are we going to get rid of these things? Any suggestions?

      3. It's symbolic (!) of the petty hitlers who micromanage our lives but are incapable of actually running a peaceful and coherent society.

      4. Aren't tethered tops counter productive as well as annoying?
        The top is made from a different plastic from the bottle so wouldn't they need to be separated for recycling? That's why I've never understood why some people attach the lid to an emty milk carton, or metal lids onto empty jam jars before throwing it away

        1. An explanation can be found in an article in yesterday's Times:
          "The lids and bottles are made from different types of plastic — but that’s no problem for modern recycling equipment, says Andrew Dove, professor of sustainable polymer chemistry at Birmingham University. “The bottles are relatively easy to sort: they are made of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which is easily detected using infrared spectroscopy scanners.” They’re then shredded, caps and all, and the plastics — which are different densities — separated in a flotation tank."
          https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/the-real-reason-your-soft-drink-has-that-annoying-new-bottle-top-l8n79bldw

          1. "…infrared spectroscopy scanners…"

            As used in sorting glass for recycling, hence the disappearance of green, brown and clear bins at recycling sites.

          3. It might depend on who does your recycling for your local council. Where I am, all glass, tins and hard plastic packaging of whatever sort (bottles, trays, etc) all goes in one big bin.

    2. May I remind you that to refer to our next Prime Minister as a "nasty, meddlesome, small-minded little regulator" is very disrespectful.

        1. I'm getting a bit befuddled KJ. Rastus was referring to Starmer wasn't he? Might have been…

          1. Starmer’s a permanently bad joke, as we’ll find out soon enough. Saw you mentioned butterfly/bee shortages? Like it or not, it is definitely Climate Change (clue: it’s not static never has been never will be)…when I moved to current place late 90’s was fairly grey everywhere…now, greenery abounds, every plant…CO2 is a good thing, but unfortunately some lifeforms haven’t caught up yet…they’ll be moving north and others take their place. But what do I know, merely an observer of what’s around me, no scientist 🙂 You’re not the only one befuddled, my permanent state post-vaccine.

          2. I’ve always watched butterflies. I report to the Garden Butterfly watch every year on an app.

            They are a lot more resilient than people think. A Black Hairstreak turned up in Cambs two days ago and they’re supposed to be nearly extinct. Yes it’s climate that governs, but not the anthropogenic variety.

          3. I used to do the same, sorry to report not seen a single one this year yet. Thought I saw a male Orange Tip, but flew off and too far away to be certain. Number of moths turning up, I’m not so good on those, the ones I’ve see are dead so quite good for identification if not much else. Agree re anthropogenic variety 🙂

          4. I have seen more brimstones than usual, but they’re an all year round flyer. Where I’ve seen less than usual is common blues, gatekeepers and peacocks. Doesn’t surprise me as it’s wet.

            The other point is that when the eggs were being laid some while back it was very heavy rain in a lot of the country and it’s likely they didn’t stick to the vegetation so were washed away. I’d think that’s directly responsible for the temporary drop and little to do with overall climate change. In parts of the country where food crops have been destroyed well maybe but even then you’d have to denude the environment check of a lot, I reckon.

          5. Not seen any all three, and I usually do. Agree that wet weather doesn’t help eggs, although they need a certain amount of moisture. We had regular downpours, flooded parts of fields/roads. Lots of other insects don’t seem troubled, although not seen any of the dreaded clegs as yet….

      4. May I remind you that to refer to our next Prime Minister as a "nasty, meddlesome, small-minded little regulator" is very disrespectful.

        1. I’m a great fan of proofreading and paraphrasing. I did rather waste a few words there didn’t I. Very untidy.

    3. The only ones I buy are the Innocent orange juice ones which only quite recently changed to a flip top lid instead of a screw cap. OH was quite baffled by the first one, and they are quite hard to lever off. I don't drink the stuff but he does.

    4. Good Morning Rastus – the thing that annoys me is that you cannot refill the Sarson’s vinegar bottle anymore. It no longer has a screw off shaker top. My Mum did this for years, along with most chip shops and local cafés, refilling with cheaper own brand vinegar.

        1. Hi Ndovu , yes for year’s until it was dropped and the plastic shaker top got broken 😢

      2. You could just buy a vinegar bottle and fill that. Better than putting a Sarsons bottle on the table which is a bit infra dig…like putting the milk bottle on the table instead of using a jug.

  34. Well, don’t let it happen again….can’t have that sort of thing here…🤣🙄

        1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

          The horror of airports
          There is not a single redeeming feature

          Comments Share 24 June 2024, 4:59am
          You really have to force yourself to love flying. Sitting on the tarmac for an hour and a half with an air conditioning unit that won’t turn off and two babies locked in a battle of who can scream the loudest is not in my ‘Top 10 Days Well Spent For Zak’. But the plane is an experience. Though commercial air travel has been a possibility since 1914 – some argue earlier in the case of airships – we still go through that shudder of glee (or fright) when the plane does the impossible and leaves the ground. For all of the pitfalls of flying, the miracle of air travel means there’s always something endearing about planes.

          The world doesn’t make sense here. Drinking a pint of lager with a Nando’s at 3.50 a.m. is perfectly normal
          This does not apply to airports. Airports have no excuse. An airport is a Westfield with fewer knives. An airport does not need to go anywhere, to fly 40,000 ft in the sky with temperatures below -50°C. The airport is like the aeroplane’s lame younger brother. There is nothing good about an airport. Name one thing. And don’t say duty free or I’ll start rocking and beat myself over the head with one of those grotesquely large Toblerone bars.

          You can rank British airports as much as you like, but they’re all the same. Horrible. That said, Luton Airport will always come in last place because it is a bungalow and reminds me of a documentary I watched about Chernobyl when I was ten.

          I believe that the airport is designed to ruin your holiday so that you’ll book another one to make up for how bad the last trip was. It begins with the getting there. I tend to travel to the airport in the seedy hours of the morning. This is not because I like waking up in the dead of night with an upset tummy and all the focus of a toddler after a packet of discontinued blue Smarties. It is because I am cheap and Ryanair likes to send you to places before the nightclubs close. I recognise that this is counterproductive. The trains are never running and I always end up booking an Uber with a driver who tells me the coach would have been cheaper (he’s getting a two-star review and no tip).

          I only ever travel with a carry-on bag. I don’t bother with checked luggage. I think I might have a Christian Bale on the set of Terminator Salvation level meltdown if I did. This means my first port of call is security. Security staff need a lesson in efficiency. They’ll spend half an hour chewing gum and throwing all of your personal items onto their dirty metal table just to find your haemorrhoid cream (it’s 101ml). It’s also one of the slowest processes known to Man. Forty-five minutes can feel like 45 hours as you shuffle behind a family of six shouting about grandad’s whereabouts.

          After security you must run the gauntlet that is the aforementioned duty free. Duty free is a real head thumper. I actually feel sorry for the staff who work there. I’m sure back in the glory days of air travel – 1973: the year David Cassidy flew to Heathrow Airport – duty free was somewhat glamorous. Now it’s all about flapping soggy strips of card in bleary-eyed, teary-eyed faces to the brain-altering loop of Jess Glynne’s ‘Hold My Hand’. I’ve learnt that the best way to deal with duty free is to blink a lot and mumble gibberish as fast as you can. This should create the illusion of insanity and the salespeople will leave you alone. Just make sure the security don’t see you or you’ll be dragged off to a barren room behind W.H. Smith’s and beaten for information.

          Most popular
          James Kirkup
          J.K. Rowling’s glorious refusal to be kind

          The terminal is the sunken place – it ranks higher than Sartre’s Huis clos on my list of most existentially upsetting things. The world doesn’t make sense here. Drinking a pint of lager with a Nando’s at 3.50 a.m. is perfectly normal. Sleeping on the ice sheet ground with all of your possessions on display is fine. Buying Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret with no intention of reading it is par for the course. I hate it here, though a small part of me loves the theatre. Everyone is equal in the terminal. Hugh Grant could be sat in the Stansted Burger King and few would care. A huge cross section of society is kettled into a circular arena, forced to make the choice between Jamie’s Italian (hasn’t that gone bust?) or a dank Joe and the Juice. The answer is always Wetherspoons.

          When the pilot finally turns up three hours after your departure time, the gate will open. Then it’s another wait while the priority passes are scanned. By this point, you’d be happy to fly in the hold with the dogs just to leave this modern Gomorrah behind.

          The late A.A. Gill wrote a brilliant piece about picking his daughter up from the airport when she was 19. In it, he wrote about watching two sisters run towards each other and break down in tears. ‘Without words, you knew that a parent had died,’ he wrote. I don’t like airports. I think I’ve made that pretty clear. But there is nowhere else on earth that captures life’s briefness. Arrivals. Duty free. Departures.

          1. It's people who travel on aeroplanes with babies that make flying an even more unpleasant experience than the queues and security.

          2. What are you supposed to do with your baby? Hang it out the window on a rope? Put in a basket in the hold? Babies are difficult, but we all started there.

          4. Not everyone flies to holiday resorts. I flew to Minneapolis when I was a baby because my parents were on their way to my father’s home after four years in England. My grandchildren fly back and forth between LA and Madrid since they were babies. My son works in both places. Yes you might choose Cornwall over Benidorm but for many of us life is more complicated than that.
            And bearing in mind we all started small, it’s only fair that babies be looked after I suppose.

          5. I hope you and they didn't scream the place down then. I am thankful that I no longer fly. The older I get, the crabbier and less tolerant I have become.

          6. I flew from New York to Manchester when I was four and apparently kept the whole plane awake. Even the pilot I’m told came to tell me I was a naughty boy and should let my mother sleep. I only remember that everyone thought I was cute. I am told I that was not the case. I try to keep this in mind when I get grumpy about kids.

          7. I am, like Grizz, child-free. I suppose if you have some of your own, you're used to it. I prefer a quiet life, particularly when I'm cooped up for hours in an aircraft with no escape.

  36. I won't say "I told you so" ……. From ConHome.
    I must admit that I didn't realise the rot went back to William Hague. But then he did have a sinecure at McKinsey.

    Our party’s ultra-centralised campaign machine is failing. A future leader must repair CCHQ – or replace it.

    Henry HillJune 24, 2024

    I cannot now remember where I read this (all tips gratefully received), but one of my favourite descriptions of the historic Conservative Party was something along the lines of “six hundred social clubs that dabble in politics”.

    This was an apt description of the party not just in its post-war pomp, when it counted well over a million members, but in some sense right up until 1998, when William Hague gutted its democratic structure in the wake of the electoral rout the previous year.

    John Strafford, chairman of the Campaign for Conservative Democracy, wrote on this site a couple of years ago about how the old voluntary architecture – elected officers, floor motions for debate, and so on – were dismantled by CCHQ, the centralisation covered by the invention of a membership vote on the party leader:

    “All the lines of communication between the Parliamentary Party and the ordinary membership of the Party were eliminated. CCHQ wanted control so that they could control the MPs.”

    One part, in particular, stands out in light of the news coming out of the campaign trail:

    “Selection of parliamentary candidates is controlled centrally, and the Party Board can take control of any Constituency Association which does not toe the line – and has done so. Basically, the Conservative Party is now a self-perpetuating oligarchy.”

    This process of centralisation, abetted by the rollout of modern technology, seems to have reached its denouement at this election, (if it did not before). Iain Dale reports that CCHQ is resorting to grossly heavy-handed tactics to try and force candidates and activists to abandon their own battles to prop up Cabinet ministers:

    “I have heard of three candidates in Tory held seats with majorities of between four and six thousand, who have been ordered to shut down their campaigns and redeploy themselves to help cabinet ministers with majorities in excess of 20,000. And if they refuse, their computer logins to the party systems are cancelled and they’re told they won’t remain on the candidates list after the election.”

    This isn’t just a Tory problem; Michael Crick reports that similar measures are being reported on the Labour side too. But Sir Keir Starmer is about to secure a landslide victory, which isn’t the sort of thing that tends to prompt big reviews of your party machinery.

    The state of CCHQ, on the other hand, is or at least ought to be a prominent issue in any Conservative leadership contest. It is rare to find any campaigner with a good word to say about it, and it is a pale reflection of the old Central Office.

    Subjecting it to a measure of democratic control, as Strafford suggests, would seem an effective way to a) ensure that Schumpeter’s Gale blows at least occasionally through the dusty tombs of the party bureaucracy and b) try to invest CCHQ with more respect for the independent interests of the party as an institution, rather than just serving as the leader’s enforcer.

    Unfortunately, it is a very rare candidate who is, upon actually winning power, prepared to loosen their grip on the party machinery and candidate selection process.

    And in Hague and CCHQ’s defence, it seems very unlikely the Party would ever have made it to 2024 without some kind of centrally-vetted candidates list; the media environment, and journalists’ and public expectations of how parties operate, is simply very different today, and with the membership so attenuated and modern society much less prone to joining things, the gulf between members (of any party) and the wider public is wider too.

    Nonetheless, it is clearly possible to survive and even thrive in the Current Year with a party at least somewhat more institutionally hale than today’s Conservative Party – Labour is the proof of it.

    CCHQ, on the other hand, has spent the past month alienating first many people on the candidates list (which should be its reservoir of the most loyal troops) and now activists up and down the country, enraged not just by the tactics Dale writes about but more broadly by lethargy and incompetence.

    One candidate, by no means a disgruntled right-winger of the Andrea Jenkyns school, told me a couple of weeks ago that they were going to start ignoring CCHQ’s demands for central approval of all their literature, because the green light was taking so long to come that it was hamstringing their campaign. Another said they were worried their central mailing wouldn’t hit people’s doormats until after postal voting had opened.

    Whoever succeeds Rishi Sunak, something has to change about how our party is run. There needs to be a better compromise between a necessary bare minimum of central control, and the prerogatives of members, associations, and the national voluntary party. Anyone standing to replace Rishi Sunak should be quizzed thoroughly on whether, and how, they will repair CCHQ – or replace it."

  37. White fluffy clouds in a cluster . . .
    Wordle 1,101 4/6

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    1. Still had more choices.

      Wordle 1,101 X/6

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  38. I didn't see it or I would have removed it if it was offensive. Will now have a look.

  39. I am sorry for your loss Richard III. Also that Citroen felt the need for rudeness.

    We don't want anyone to leave under a cloud and now notified i am sure the Mods will deal with it.

    One solution would be to become a Mod yourself. We don't really have enough to monitor all posts 24/7.

    1. I disagree, the last thing we need is moderators who would threaten to leave in a huff if someone posted something offensive about them and had the power to remove comments let alone to be able to ban their enemies.

      I was intrigued by the reference just now and must assume the comment has already been removed as I could not find a series of posts that would have elicited such a reaction from most Nottle regulars.

      1. Some people are more sensitive than others. I wish Richard had said something yesterday instead of leaving the offending post but I have now removed it.

        1. Indeed.
          But for that matter, I’ve been on the receiving end of posts from the complainant regarding certain issues that I have regarded as extremely unpleasant.

          I take the view that it’s their opinion, so I should respect it, not try to get it removed and certainly not threaten to march off if nothing is done.
          I may be wrong, but my recollection is that the individual in question has “form” for going in this manner and then returning.

      2. It was rude but if you had made those comments to me i would have laughed and then responded in kind.
        Becoming a Mod might make one consider more deeply what is being said rather than taking offense.
        Also answering a rude post which has offended in a calm and rational way makes the original poster look worse.
        As Jules said some people are a little more sensitive and that must be born in mind.

        1. There is a difference between friendly teasing and nastiness. For example I must admit I do tease Stig for not rebelling against the PTB rather more – I think he needs a good dose of cynicism.

          Indeed, that sort of teasing is often called friendly and cheerful chaffing.

          There used to be a woman on the forum who was involved with farm animals who went in for abuse. I was often the victim of her uncomplimentary comments.. Can anyone remember her name?

          2. Yes – thank you.

            She certainly was a provocateuse and I was not the only one on the forum whom she abused! I ended up by ignoring what she wrote and not responding.

          4. I think she was bi-polar. She certainly went from reasonable to harridan at the drop of a hat.

          6. Geoff banned me once but as a good Christian he allowed me back when i said i was sorry and promised to behave.
            I spent my six months in purgatory BTL at the Guardian until the Angel StorminaDcup came and rescued me.

          7. I liked her – she was straightforward and direct. Once adjusted to her style, she was fine.

          8. Offensiveness which is not witty, clever and true is boorish and, sadly, often the sign of a defective mind and personality.

          9. She was only offensive to those who responded angrily to her posts. Otherwise, I'd say she was robust. Could even have been from Yorkshire!

          11. Not necessarily. She had a go at me when I disagreed with her pontifications. I wasn't angry.

          12. Perhaps you missed her tirades against Rastus and also William Stanier. She upset me more than once as well.

          14. Yes – thank you.

            She certainly was a provocateuse and I was not the only one on the forum whom she abused! I ended up by ignoring what she wrote and not responding.

          16. I didn’t bother saving any of them but I do remember one in particular as it was the day I went to a friend’s memorial service. She was obsessed with Rastus though.

  40. I have now deleted that offensive remark and I'm sorry I didn't see it yesterday.

  41. Please stay with us, Richard. Your erudite and interesting comments would be much missed.

  43. For the hard of hearing, Labour voters, Lefties, or those that just can't be bothered to vote (as 500+ hairy a r sed fighting aged men arrive every day by dinghy).

    Still a chance to view & witness the 7th October Hamas feast at the Israeli Embassy. Forty years worth of Go-Pro bodycam footage merged with CCTV, with painful audio from mobile phone telecons.
    At least the Nasties had to get drunk to carry out their duties.. no need for Lefties new besties. They could do it all day long everyday.. in fact they have been since 622 AD.

    Gentle reminder. Farage is the only politico warning you in the UK.. and that makes him, according to Paul Mason "respected journalist", as; KKK, Putin schill, Far right, wife beater, gennycider nasty.

    1. Mason is nasty piece of work. For him, 'England has no identity' and lockdown protestors were almost fascists. He produced that appalling anti-Brexit video in which a cartoon crowd shout "Johnson, we're ****ing for you", giving it an airing on Newsnight with Kirsty Wark discussing it as though it was a seminal piece of 21st art. And a few days after Emma Raducanu won the US Open tennis in 2021, there was this:

      "This is the child of Romanian and Chinese migrants, born in Canada, who's chosen Britain, who is now the global emblem of Britain in the world… [in research] for the book I've just written about the far right, I've repeatedly met people in this country who want to put people like Emma Raducanu into a van and escort them to Dover."

      Broadcasting House, Radio 4, 12/09/21, still available to listen to at about 57:30:
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000zljk

      And more. Tim Stanley in the DT:
      I was reminded of Paul Mason's verdict on the 2019 general election: a "victory of the old over the young", he tweeted gracefully, of "racists over people of colour, selfishness over the planet".

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/10/shouldnt-shock-left-wing-media-people-vote-tory/

      1. Remember Jayne Eyre and Rochester's mad wife?

        The villain of the piece was a chap called Mason!

          1. No – Richard Mason, the brother who duped Rochester into marrying his sister, a mad and violent woman who turned arsonist.

            When Christo was at Gresham's a teacher told him that insanity was a justification for divorce. This was certainly not the case when Charlotte Bronte wrote her novel Jane Eyre as our ever didactic son pointed out to his teacher.

      2. Love it when Matty Taylor (aka @angrybootneck) trolls Mason on X..

        Communists despise the armed forces, my whole life you shitbags have taunted soldiers and mocked them as being ignorant and stupid. You don't like our nation or the working classes you are simply obsessed with power.

      3. Love it when Matty Taylor (aka @angrybootneck) trolls Mason on X..

        Communists despise the armed forces, my whole life you shitbags have taunted soldiers and mocked them as being ignorant and stupid. You don't like our nation or the working classes you are simply obsessed with power.

  44. I have had the same happen to me ( not on here). I just carried on regardless.

      1. I understand why people have a diferent opinion to me. They never understand my position, so I mark them down as ignorant and narrow.

  45. I didn't see the offending post but your point about the rules for this site is well made. A Mod has now deleted the post in question so I do hope you will be satisfied and will stay with us.

  46. My local District Council (Lib) heads up it communications with " ENVIRONMENT FIRST".
    I cross it out and write "PEOPLE FIRST." These council types make me sick.

      1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

        Let’s take no lectures from Emma Thompson on the climate
        Comments Share 24 June 2024, 10:29am
        The actors are out in force again, speaking politics. Only days after Brian Cox appeared on the BBC bemoaning that Brexit is reducing our GDP by 4 per cent, this weekend Dame Emma Thompson led thousands at a Restore Nature Now march in London. The protest was designed to draw attention to the plight of nature and the climate, and was attended by charities, businesses and direct action groups.

        Actors at their worst are a notoriously shallow and vain lot
        During the march, the national treasure, millionaire and jet-setter Thompson was asked if she supported Just Stop Oil, days after the group had vandalised Stonehenge. ‘I think I support anyone who fights this extraordinary battle,’ she replied. ‘We cannot take any more oil out of the ground. I mean, there’s much argument about it. And I know there’s a lot of very complicated economic arguments about it.’

        Yes, it’s very complicated. This is especially why we shouldn’t defer to the likes of Thompson on such matters. Actors at their worst are a notoriously shallow and vain lot, and not widely esteemed for their consistency on matters cerebral. Thompson is a tireless and tiresome campaigner on climate matters, who most infamously was spotted taking a flight to New York in 2019, seated in her personal booth in the luxury cabin of a British Airways jet, merely days after backing climate protests in London, and previously exhorting: ‘We should all fly less.’

        As for that convert to Scottish independence, his glorious cinematic performances notwithstanding, Brian Cox’s claim of a 4 per cent shrinkage in GDP was based on a prediction made years back. Since the referendum, the UK economy has grown faster than Germany, Italy, and Japan and at a similar rate to France

        It would seem appropriate that this year of heightened political temperature and tempers, what with a wave of elections in the EU, the UK and the USA now underway, and the slew of actors making interventions – Dame Judi Dench also came out in support for Restore Nature Now – should also be the same year that the film Team America: World Police celebrates its twentieth anniversary.

        This movie, featuring a cast of marionettes in homage to the oeuvre of Gerry Anderson, particularly Thunderbirds, was a satire on many things: the USA’s thoughtless foreign policy, sloganeering patriotism, the crassness of Hollywood films themselves. But like all good satire, in which those of all political persuasions are up for ridicule, it took an unforgettable swipe at vain, vacuous Hollywood actors, who believed, in the words of one marionette: ‘as actors, it is our responsibility to read the newspapers, and then say what we read on television like it’s our own opinion.’

        In the film, for all the well-intentioned efforts of the eponymous, blundering Team America to rid the world of terrorists and dictators, they were forever thwarted by the efforts of the Film Actors Guild, headed by Alec Baldwin, George Clooney and Matt Damon. This cabal was beholden to childlike liberal-left ideology, and so blinded by anti-Western antipathy that one of their number, the marionette in the form of Sean Penn, spoke up to say: ‘Last year I went to Iraq. Before Team America showed up, it was a happy place. They had flowering meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate, where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles.’ Such was their naivety that the Film Actors Guild even ended up fighting on the side of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il.

        Back to real life: witness the carry-on of Stephen Fry this year, who was absolutely shocked to discover that London’s exclusive Garrick Club, of which he is a long-term member, also had a long-standing rule against female membership. Fry, a former president of the Marylebone Cricket Club, also protested recently that the same institution was ‘stinking of privilege and classism’. And then we had Robert De Niro, who last month launched a tirade against Donald Trump.

        De Niro, Cox, Fry, Dench, Thompson: these are all figures many of us revered and still revere for the professions which made their name, and in which they still excel. But why do they do it? Why must they make fools of themselves by spouting sometimes hypocritical and ill-informed political views?

        Their carry-on is, alas, intrinsic to who they are. Actors are given to narcissism and shallowness, to public utterances that expose their vacuity and vanity. Their job is to pretend to be someone else, to pretend to be someone they are not, to have emotions that they do not have. These sweet, insecure souls love to be the centre of attention – literally. And if that involves tapping into causes that makes them appear all the more caring and compassionate, all the better for them.

        1. Luvvies. Don't you just love 'em. Hitchcock had the right idea: cattle, all of them.

          The only luvvie who ever said anything useful in any volume was a chap known as William Shakespeare. It's been downhill ever since.

        2. They make fools of themselves beccause the wealth and adulation they receive convinces them of their own importance and superiority. I remembeer my father uttering the line, "I used to think actors must be intelligent". This would be in the 60s when the luvvies first began appearing at political protests, a la Hanoi Jane, plus a slew of sex scandals. The illusion was shattered.

        3. Yes, it’s very complicated.

          Is it?

          At the detail level, undoubtedly but draw back from the detail and the consequences of stopping the use of oil are quite simple: it means the end of civilisation as we know it.

          Do these air-head luvvies believe that they will be exempt from the repercussions of what they are so ignorantly advocating?

    2. Spot on as usual. The best goal to aim for from a Labour government will be to successfully keep him and his apparatchiks firmly out of the working class and all its business. It'll be a graft, but I think we can manage it!

    3. Can we restart the Clarkson for PM campaign and could he then make James May his science advisor?

  50. Heavy interview but crucial material IMHO. Among other things I did not know this about the Labour manifesto:

    The European Union Defence Pact which the Labour Party, according to their manifesto, intends to sign the UK up to. The Pact will give the unelected European Commission full control of the British Army, Royal Air Force, Royal Navy, MI5, MI6, GCHQ, and access to the Five Eyes and our local police forces.

    https://open.substack.com/p…

    1. They've probably been told, behind the scenes, that that would be a prerequisite for re-joining the EU.
      I wonder what the other members of "five eyes" think of that.

    2. We know the drill. Kneelalot's fooling no one.

      A. It's helpful to Britain to "work with" the EU on [perm any subject from many]; B. It does mean that in order to get access to all the undoubted benefits Britain will have to hand over some small administrative and decision-making matters.

      A deliberately well oiled slippery slope. As a great man once said, "he must think we're all retards".

    1. What no one seems to be saying is who is doing the raping and addressing that problem.

      1. I'm not watching. It's bound to involve spikes or blades. And i know that has already been done. So she just copied an idea.

    1. How did a dead baby manage to have grandchildren? I've never seen one of those cages.

        1. Judging by the replies, she has. Someone claims to have fed this sentence into a LLM (AI) who saw nothing wrong with it.

      2. I read down the comments to see if anyone had picked up on that mistake. Grand parents are in direct line of descent: a grand -uncle, perhaps?

    3. Never seen one, nor even heard of these. Sounds like an eatern European idea to me.

    4. We lived at ground level when I was little. Also, my grandparents lived long enough to beget my parents. One of the perils of toddling around the garden was that our cat loved to hide in the bushes and leap out and scratch my legs. One of my brothers used to torment the animal by dumping baby food on its head so I gues it learned to dislike children.

    5. I think putting the little ones out on the balcony in cages is perfectly acceptable. Remember they climb everywhere.

    6. When I lived in a flat in De Vere Gardens early seventies the owner had a similar cage for his precious fluffy cat. The cage was pushed through the bottom sash.

      1. Is that the De Vere Gardens just off Kensington High Street? I used to walk past there every day on my way to/from school. Mind you, I left school in 1971 so I doubt our paths would have crossed.

        1. Yes De Vere Gardens is just off Kensington Gore and is the street to the left of the old De Vere Hotel when viewed from Kensington Gardens.

          My landlord was a lovely man who ran a small kiosk in Exhibition Road around the corner from Alfred Place where my Architect’s office was situated (My desk on the first floor, above a Lyon’s Tea House) overlooked South Kensington Station Arcade.

          He was a gay man and his boyfriend , a younger man, worked in Kensington High Street for a large store the name of which eludes me momentarily. We are talking of the days of BIBA, Derry and Toms etc.,

          The cat in question was a pedigree long haired and very snooty. It loved to accompany me to the bathroom where it perched itself imperiously on a cabinet and inhaled the scented fumes from my bathtub.

          One day the cat, called Peter, appeared in the bathroom bearing the same imperious facial expression except that a visit to the vet that day had caused Peter to be shorn of all of its fur excepting its head. The poor bugger did not realise that it now appeared as like a shrunken skinny lion. I believe it was a result of some skin condition diagnosis and involved poor Peter having to sit in some chemical solution in a bath as its treatment,

          1. Oh my! keeping Peter in the bath must have been difficult! De Vere garden is (or was, I haven’t been there for ages) an attractive, light street. I knew a barrister who owned one of the houses there, large rooms, plenty of space.

  53. We're being lied to about the 'benefits' of the Single Market

    The EU is a low growth zone. Closer alignment won't boost our GDP, whatever Labour might claim

    JOHN REDWOOD • 24 June 2024 • 8:56am

    The UK establishment is attracted to the EU single market like a mouse to a mousetrap. They will never understand how damaging it has been. They fail to grasp that it is not so much a market as a way of grabbing power and exercising control. Labour's belief that if they align us more closely with the EU we will grow faster is the opposite of what will happen. The EU is a low growth zone. EU per capita GDP is now just half that of the US. They watch the US grow much faster while killing too much enterprise and innovation that could change things.

    The UK economy grew by two thirds in the two decades before 1972 when we joined the EEC and its common market. Our growth dropped down to a half in the two decades that followed. In 1992 the EU claimed to have completed its single market construction. In the two decades that followed that event our growth fell further. You will search in vain for a growth burst from either 1972 or 1992. Indeed we entered a nasty recession in 1974 after joining, though not mainly caused by the EEC. In 1991-2 we had another nasty recession, directly caused by the EU's deeply damaging Exchange Rate Mechanism.

    In the 1970s, the UK under Labour and Conservative governments lost a large amount of manufacturing, unable to deal with the shock of the ending of tariffs on European trade. We plunged into a prolonged balance of trade deficit with the EEC/EU, who liberalised trade in goods where they were strong but failed to open up their service sectors where we are strong.

    Today, the single market is an ever-growing complexity of rules and laws. It makes innovation difficult, laying down how things should be done and made. It is costly and off-putting for small businesses. It backs large European companies that look to the EU to protect them from overseas competition and from home market smaller disrupters. The EU has just watched as the US has given birth to the dominant companies of the digital revolution. The EU tries to regulate them, while needing to use their software, mobiles, searches, chips and apps to do so.

    Adding more laws from the EU to our law codes, or borrowing more money with them for EU led subsidy programmes will not boost our growth today any more than it did from 1972 to 2016.

    As single market minister, I remember the two lies they wanted me to spread. The first was that around 300 laws would be required to complete it. Yet they have carried on with excessive lawmaking ever since. The second was it would boost growth. Instead, UK and EU growth fell further.

    Labour needs a growth strategy that would work. That means fewer restrictions, more incentive for enterprise, and working with great US corporations more as they currently control the future.

    Labour live a contradiction on growth and the EU. They claim to oppose austerity economics. The origin of this approach is the EU Treaty which requires members to keep state debt below 60 per cent of GDP and to keep annual borrowing below 3 per cent. The UK's current economic rules which Rachel Reeves wishes to strengthen are a version of seeking to get state debt falling by year five and controlling annual deficits. I am no cheerleader for a public spending-led borrowing binge of the kind both main parties backed over Covid, but I do think our current regime is anti-growth. The OBR often insists on tax rises based on a forecast of large numbers in five years' time that are likely to be wrong.

    A growth strategy needs a control framework that comprises the 2 per cent inflation target and a growth target. It will need lower tax rates, which in due course will generate more revenue from growth.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/24/were-being-lied-to-about-single-market-benefits/

    1. I am sure that is why Redwood was sent to Wales to get him out of the way. The last thing the cabinet wanted was someone who knew what was going on and couldn't be bribed to keep quiet.

  54. Good day one an all, I thought I’d give a quick update on my situation.. I’m going home on Thursday , an event that seemed impossible only 6 months ago. After much physio, good nursing and care I am able to shuffle around a bit on a big boys zimmer and have every confidence that my mobility will continue to improve. The decision to go home was more than influenced by a letter at the beginning of this month from the NHS stating that as the beastliness astern was now defeated there was no further need for nursing so funding for the care would end on the 28th but I would be quite welcome to stay as long as I wished for a mere £6000ish a month, I declined. My home has been temporarily adapted to receive me thanks to Mediquip and I am assured that the District nurses are lined up to do what is necessary . I know the District Nurses here from my wife’s workplace and they all waddle and probably have their own gravitational field.
    It’s been an interesting time here in the care home , not least in that I’ve seen 3 prime ministers and a tory majority of 80 likely to go to an historical low, I can still technically ask for repeat prescriptions for liquid Oromorph that I needed in the early days, it’s going to be tempting not to.

    1. Good news that you can return to your own home. I hope your carers are as good as my uncle's, because if they are you will go from strength to strength.

      Good luck and good to see you here again.

      1. The carers here at the home started off as superb but over the time I've been here the brightest and best have left and been replaced by mostly sub-saharan/Caribbean girls with just adequate training and very little in the way of inter-personal skills. This is a BUPA home.

        1. His carers are Caribbean, They are middle aged, and one would be extremely fortunate to find better.
          Luck of the draw I guess.

          2. They have to start somewhere, I'm sure they'll improve over time.

            Caring for much older people, particularly if it involves intimate assistance, takes a lot of getting used to, on both sides.
            I spent my gap year as a carer in a sheltered housing nursing home.

        2. Perhaps as you stabilised and improved they felt you didn't need such a high level of care. Those young ones do need to learn.

    3. So pleased to see your post and that you are improving and hopeful of further improvement! All good! The scotties (have I got this right?) will be delighted to have you home! Do keep popping in to post.

        1. So glad you are back on the planet Datz, didn't you say you had a couple of Scottie dogs a while back?

          Be careful and keep as cheerful as poss .

    6. You must be delighted, Datz, even if a little apprehensive.
      I hope you settle back in well.

    7. You must be delighted, Datz, even if a little apprehensive.
      I hope you settle back in well.

    8. Good to hear I hope it all goes well from now on.
      I remember the ozzie PM back when he and his wife were flying around the world selecting expensive and valuable items for their own version of the 'white house'.
      Melcombe Frazier was heard to say with a certain amount of gusto.
      "Life wasn't meant to be easy".
      And for most of us it never has been.
      KBO Datz.

    10. Arund these canadian parts release from hospital is based on one factor – is there anyone in more need of the bed?
      £6,000 a month is only about £200 a day, that's quite a bargain nowadays. You can barely pay for a week at claridges for that much.

      Your record of changes in the PMship looks like it will continue.

    13. Wow! so good to see you've made such progress and are ready to go home! How long has it been?
      Best of luck and continue to improve over the coming months.
      Keep us in the loop with your progress.

      1. 20 long months, I was not very well at the beginning and was not given long to live so I self medicated with liquorice allsorts and boiled sweets, not listed in the British Pharmacopoeia but seemed to work nevertheless.

        1. You’ve confounded them all! Best of luck once you’re home and things will be easier…….. but mind those doggies don’t jump up on you!

    14. Wonderful, Datz and great to see you back! Wishing you a hassle free trip home and best wishes for the future! Look forward to seeing more of you (if you know what I mean!)

    15. Great news, Datz! There's no place like home (especially when they are charging you a fortune not to be in it!).

  55. Ukraine suspected of Atacms strike on Russian space control centre in Crimea. 24 June 2024.

    Huge fires have been recorded by Nasa satellites at the scene of a suspected Ukrainian Atacms strike on a Russian-controlled space control centre in Crimea.

    The strike is believed to have hit the NIP-16 space communications complex, which houses a collection of large deep space tracking radars. A locally-sourced video appeared to show the site in flames, while residents told local media that ambulances were dispatched to the scene.

    Since the Ukies do not possess the resources to carry out the reconnaissance for these strikes one assumes that the US are using their satellites to supply the information. I don’t think that I would be far amiss if I were to say also, that it is more than likely their military personnel who are the operators of the Atacms launchers. This of course is de facto but not de jure war.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/24/copy-of-ukraine-russia-war-latest-news/

  56. Princess Anne is in hospital after suffering 'minor injuries and concussion' following incident on Gatcombe Park estate

    I hope she recovers quickly.
    That family is getting more than its share of problems at the moment.
    Perhaps a certain witch is sticking pins in dolls?

      1. Not sure, from some reports it appears she was shoved while walking it.
        It must have been exceptional if she had fallen off.

  58. Afternoon all 😊🙂
    After the early arrival at the orthopaedic Wing of snorbens hospital. I'm back home by 12:30.
    job done by the senior consultant with a confident outlook.
    Thanks for all your kinds thoughts.
    I'm not sure if I understand the rigged up fuss by the media about any remarks regarding the Ukraine. It's becoming pretty obvious that it's been fashioned by the US and it's all now gone terribly wrong. It reminds me of other parts of the world where their interference was dreadfully misguided.

  59. Afternoon all 😊🙂
    After the early arrival at the orthopaedic Wing of snorbens hospital. I'm back home by 12:30.
    job done by the senior consultant with a confident outlook.
    Thanks for all your kinds thoughts.
    I'm not sure if I understand the rigged up fuss by the media about any remarks regarding the Ukraine. It's becoming pretty obvious that it's been fashioned by the US and it's all now gone terribly wrong. It reminds me of other parts of the world where their interference was dreadfully misguided.

    1. The leaders of Western countries and their top ‘think-tanks’ (FA, CSIS) have recently stepped up the rhetoric regarding our country and are obviously set on the military defeat of Russia. NATO participation in combat operations is not only coming into the open but the military escalation is being ramped up by leaps and bounds, i.e. supplies of ever more lethal types of weapons to Ukraine are gaining scale, the US and other countries of the West have decided to shift military activities deeper into the territory of Russia, and active preparations are underway for sending a contingent from NATO and its member states to Ukraine.

      They are not far amiss there.

    2. The leaders of Western countries and their top ‘think-tanks’ (FA, CSIS) have recently stepped up the rhetoric regarding our country and are obviously set on the military defeat of Russia. NATO participation in combat operations is not only coming into the open but the military escalation is being ramped up by leaps and bounds, i.e. supplies of ever more lethal types of weapons to Ukraine are gaining scale, the US and other countries of the West have decided to shift military activities deeper into the territory of Russia, and active preparations are underway for sending a contingent from NATO and its member states to Ukraine.

      They are not far amiss there.

    1. The leaders of Western countries and their top ‘think-tanks’ (FA, CSIS) have recently stepped up the rhetoric regarding our country and are obviously set on the military defeat of Russia. NATO participation in combat operations is not only coming into the open but the military escalation is being ramped up by leaps and bounds, i.e. supplies of ever more lethal types of weapons to Ukraine are gaining scale, the US and other countries of the West have decided to shift military activities deeper into the territory of Russia, and active preparations are underway for sending a contingent from NATO and its member states to Ukraine.

      They are not far amiss there.

    1. Exellent. It's impressive how he ca speak so well without notes. Event the anti-Fargistes have to admit he's the best orator.

      1. He is, without doubt, the finest British orator since Winston Churchill.

        1. Didn't Boris Johnson want that crown? Shame Johnson was just a fraud. He could have been a contender if he didn't waffle and huff so much.

          1. You do not have to agree or approve of a good orator – indeed despicable Hitler was a fine orator but a repulsive human being; Johnson is a bumbling incoherent idiot who has none of Farage's fluency, sincerity, common sense and passion.

    2. Farage is certainly getting attention over here in Canada.

      Nothing positive of course, praise is saved for that lefty pretender

          1. Yes i had that for a while. Just removed adblock and reloaded and removed and reloaded. Seemed to work. I think it gave up. Or it might have been an update to adblockplus.

      4. I get round the paywall by 'sharing' the article.
        I then read it in my email.
        I think some very clever NOTTLer put me onto the trick, though I think it only works with Safari.

          1. I use it with no problems. But if it's something you really want to read you can pause Adblock.

  67. This painful garbage comes from a site called readingwest.co.uk, which appears to give local news. I was curious to see who the election candidates are. This is the profile for the Reform candidate – I'm pretty sure she didn't have much input…

    NEWS
    Kate Bosley – Reform UK
    Published 5 days ago on June 19, 2024By admin

    Born and raised in Reading, Berkshire, Kate Bosley has deep roots in the local area. With extensive experience in the automotive industry across the United Kingdom, they have had the opportunity to work with various retail car dealerships and some of the world’s most renowned car manufacturers.

    Their career began at a young age as an administrator and progressed through roles in corporate areas, business-to-business, and Motability accounts. Eventually, they found their niche in compliance, focusing on departmental policies and procedures. This role emphasized ISO-based policies, maintaining high standards in HR, health and safety, insurance, facilities, fire and security, and general management. Collaborating with luxury and bespoke car manufacturers, they helped develop industry-leading practices across the UK and Europe.

    Transitioning to an independent auditor for various car manufacturers, they contributed to the development of best practices to safeguard customers, employees, and brands. They also served as a board member for Citizens Advice Reading, considering it an honor and a privilege.

    (it goes on, but you get the gist)

      1. Or perhaps they asked her her pronouns and she declined to reply so they assumed ‘they/them’?

        1. We are not party to any such information for our Reform candidate (Monmouthshire). That seems a decentish bloke – what is he up against?

          1. He studied economics, is an ex banker who now has medical qualifications.
            Michael Mosley studied PPE at Oxford, became a banker then left to go to medical school.
            Front Line writer (Rachel ??) studied PPE, joined Channel 4 then threw it all up to go to medical school.

            The first is now going into politics, the second and third went back into the media.
            All I’m saying is that it’s a great coincidence that three people chose this very unusual career path.
            Oxford is a very competitive place, you don’t just get a traineeship at Channel 4, the competition for such places is huge and you have to demonstrate enormous commitment, same with banking. There are people there would would trample their dying granny in stiletto heels to get those jobs on graduation (and that’s just the men).
            It’s therefore extremely odd to throw such a job up shortly after gaining it to go back to university for six years. In my personal experience, the people who went on to a second degree were deeply unhappy during their first degree because they realised they’d studied the wrong subject.

          2. Thank you. So you're not convinced, on balance? Who else do you have to choose from?

          3. Not my constituency. Apparently the Con is a nice chap. Don’t know how I would vote if I lived there!
            Probably hold my nose and vote for the Reform ex banker for a slower demolition of Britain. I rather doubt he would be against mandatory vaccination though.

          4. It is very much my problem here, BB2. Our sitting Conservative MP is both conservative and a good bloke. We know nothing of the Reform candidate, and he is not keen to enlighten us – it almost seems as if he is hiding. So I will probably vote for Top Cat and run the risk that that will seem an endorsement of the disgraceful behaviour of his party.

            Labour is, anyway, set to win. How I dread it – this is Wales.

          5. Might be worth trying to suss out whether Reform has any momentum. Difficult choice, I agree. If nobody has a chance of catching Labour, then you could vote for an Independent if there’s a good one.

          7. The only party that has any hope, here, of defeating labour is the Conservative party. So i will probably vote for DD, unless there is some earth shattering revelation form the Reform guy.

          8. I had the Labour and the Reform leaflets this morning. The Reform one was Nigel and Tice and nothing about the candidate other than his name (which I knew anyway because I'd looked up who was standing). The policies are those I want so I suppose I'm just going to have to vote for that and hope the candidate is reasonable. He didn't get invited to the "meet the candidates" hustings – just like the last time Churches Together only invited the main parties.

          9. Not necessarily. I did a second BA degree (in Fine Art) after I retired. I was happy enough with my first choice of Russian language.

          10. You didn’t leave a job that people fight to get into after a short time and join a six year course without an income though.

    3. "They" are trying to make "they" the default pronoun as part of the mass emasculation/defeminisation that is essential to the Long March

          2. Oooh! Funny how the meeja aren’t mentioning his murky record! I’m sorry he’s missing but I fear it may be his fate.

          3. MB and I have two possible scenarios in mind.
            Three if you count him doing what Phil described as a Mosley.

          4. MB and I have two possible scenarios in mind.
            Three if you count him doing what Phil described as a Mosley.

          5. MB and I have two possible scenarios in mind.
            Three if you count him doing what Phil described as a Mosley.

    3. Not having heard of him, had a look at his details online. One of his albums is called 'Resurrection'. Will he achieve it?

  69. BBC News at One

    Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has just said that having looked at the manifestos of the two main parties there is no realistic appreciation of the fiscal reality that the UK finds itself in.

    In my mind he would no doubt suggest an election song as a duet sung by the two leaders of the main parties, headlining at Glasto, with the song "Things can only get Worser!"

  70. Well, would you believe this .. popped down to our local shop which has a post office outlet , I needed to put a stamp on a card .. a first class stamp .. I nearly collapsed .. the price of one first class stamp is £1.35.

    If I were a politician , I would be campaigning for a decrease in the cost of sending mail .

    Why should we pay for the mess that the PO has made of everything , I mean they can go zero carbon with their new electric delivery vans , but why should jolly occasions be ruined be ruined by the cost of posting a postcard or celebration card .

    1. Ouch. My head is still set to 2019 prices, but that's five years ago and a lot of money printing since then!

        2. I bought one of those at a Cub jumble sale when I was about eight. I had no money for ink so used boot polish on the inkpad. It was not a success…

    3. We were in S, Devon last week (Sidmouth to be precise). We bought an icecream each from a kiosk, two scoops each on a cornet. Poppiesdad physically recoiled when asked for payment – £10!! I must admit it is ages since we have bought an ice-cream, I think he was expecting change from a fiver! The following day (cold and wintry with the strongest wind ever) we were in Lyme Regis on the search for a crab sandwich. Two sandwich-style baguettes and one slice of Victoria sponge…. £24.

      Got to dash, I am on grandchild duty…. I may be comatose by the end of the afternoon.

      1. Royal Highland Show – 1 cappuccino and 2 bits of traybake – £10! 😬

          3. Some venues don't allow food or drink. I read the other day some woman had some biscuits and crisps or similar confiscated at the gate but she noticed flares going off in the football stands.

          4. The Lidl pavilion! Steak, burger, cheese, quiche, pizza, strawberries, ice cream, empire biscuits, chocolate, tablet and more! Very free!

          9. Erm…Only if it Tutti…….fruiti..

            blushes…and whipped cream.

            turns beetroot red….

            And and and and and maraschino cherries…..argghhh.

            Just stop ! I'll do anything you say, Mistress !!!

        2. Church fete on Saturday – mug of coffee and a home made cake (rocky road) =£3.00. Wales it was.

      2. Hello PM,

        Yes , go and do your bit with grandchild , but my goodness treats are now pure luxury .

        I wrote to the DT talking about the price of food , shrinking Wagon Wheel chocolate biscuits , Weetabix etc .The price of ice cream cornets £3.50 each some are £4.

        We used to go down the road to Lulworth for a nice walk and an ice cream , I queued up behind a family of 6 who wanted different flavours .. and I could not believe the bill for the family was over £20 .

        It is easier to take a flask of tea or a cool bag with cold drinks .. I really do despair .

    4. The price of the stamp is set by Royal Mail – the Post Office and Royal Mail were split some years ago.

    5. Was having a chat to the woman behind the counter when I was shopping this afternoon and she said that she no longer sent stuff to her relatives in Australia because it cost more to send it than the items had cost.

        1. I think that was what she settled for, but the gist of the complaint was the cost of postage 🙂 I have to own up as I started it because I bought a birthday card for one of my Swedish friends and mentioned it cost more than the card to send it.

        1. Scorchio here – very clear sky & no cloud. Awning now out to help beer stay cool!

      2. FYI
        Junction improvement programme – M25 junction 10 and A3 Wisley interchange
        M25 full weekend closure – 12 to 15 July
        National Highways is closing the M25 between junction 10 at Wisley and junction 11 at Chertsey from 9pm Friday 12 July to 6am Monday 15 July. Please visit the National Highways website for more information and diversion routes.

    3. Delightful !
      You need to start training quite soon. How to put up grandma's sunlounger. How to mix a Pimms cup properly etc.

      1. From the Telegraph

        We’re being lied to about the ‘benefits’ of the Single Market
        The EU is a low growth zone. Closer alignment won’t boost our GDP, whatever Labour might claim

        John Redwood24 June 2024 • 8:56am
        The UK establishment is attracted to the EU single market like a mouse to a mousetrap. They will never understand how damaging it has been. They fail to grasp that it is not so much a market as a way of grabbing power and exercising control. Labour’s belief that if they align us more closely with the EU we will grow faster is the opposite of what will happen. The EU is a low growth zone. EU per capita GDP is now just half that of the US. They watch the US grow much faster while killing too much enterprise and innovation that could change things.

        The UK economy grew by two thirds in the two decades before 1972 when we joined the EEC and its common market. Our growth dropped down to a half in the two decades that followed. In 1992 the EU claimed to have completed its single market construction. In the two decades that followed that event our growth fell further. You will search in vain for a growth burst from either 1972 or 1992. Indeed we entered a nasty recession in 1974 after joining, though not mainly caused by the EEC. In 1991-2 we had another nasty recession, directly caused by the EU’s deeply damaging Exchange Rate Mechanism.

        In the 1970s, the UK under Labour and Conservative governments lost a large amount of manufacturing, unable to deal with the shock of the ending of tariffs on European trade. We plunged into a prolonged balance of trade deficit with the EEC/EU, who liberalised trade in goods where they were strong but failed to open up their service sectors where we are strong.

        Today, the single market is an ever growing complexity of rules and laws. It makes innovation difficult, laying down how things should be done and made. It is costly and off-putting for small businesses. It backs large European companies that look to the EU to protect them from overseas competition and from home market smaller disrupters. The EU has just watched as the US has given birth to the dominant companies of the digital revolution. The EU tries to regulate them, while needing to use their software, mobiles, searches, chips and apps to do so.

        Adding more laws from the EU to our law codes, or borrowing more money with them for EU led subsidy programmes will not boost our growth today any more than it did from 1972 to 2016.

        As single market minister, I remember the two lies they wanted me to spread. The first was that around 300 laws would be required to complete it. Yet they have carried on with excessive lawmaking ever since. The second was it would boost growth. Instead, UK and EU growth fell further.

        Labour needs a growth strategy that would work. That means fewer restrictions, more incentive for enterprise, and working with great US corporations more as they currently control the future.

        Labour live a contradiction on growth and the EU. They claim to oppose austerity economics. The origin of this approach is the EU Treaty which requires members to keep state debt below 60 per cent of GDP and to keep annual borrowing below 3 per cent. The UK’s current economic rules which Rachel Reeves wishes to strengthen are a version of seeking to get state debt falling by year five and controlling annual deficits. I am no cheerleader for a public spending-led borrowing binge of the kind both main parties backed over Covid, but I do think our current regime is anti growth. The OBR often insists on tax rises based on a forecast of large numbers in five years time that are likely to be wrong.

        A growth strategy needs a control framework that comprises the 2 per cent inflation target and a growth target. It will need lower tax rates, which in due course will generate more revenue from growth.

        1. Too much regulation = low flexibility, driven by snivel serpents = low/no growth.
          Economics 101.

        2. I wonder that despite the many facts that betray it the neo-Marxism that has polluted our MPs overall seems to be ignored with the implied assumption here that there is still an underlying intent to do things right. It seems clear to me that the underlying intent is quite the opposite. Giving control of our military and police and security to the EU Commission as proposed is just an example.

  73. I understand all too well that the media are out to get Conservatives or any other "Far Right" organisation, but this does seems to be a hostage to fortune. Shouldn't a senior MP be a little more aware of either of the spirit of the law or the spirit of it? Or at least be more aware of the "optics".

    "Jeremy Hunt has deleted a social media post showing a photograph of his wife’s postal ballot after claims it broke the law."

      1. It showed her voting according to the instruction of her lord and master (as if we believe that a member of the CCP would do that)

    2. Safely tucked away on my laptop.
      The Conservatives should use that. No words needed.

  75. Death toll in Russian gun rampage climbs to 20 including priest as MP tries to blame the West for atrocity in Dagestan region known for Islamist attacks – despite father of shooters admitting sons had 'extremist ideas',

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13561977/Death-toll-Russian-terror-attack-climbs-16-including-cops-priest-throat-slit-gunmen-torched-synagogues-church-rampage-Dagestan-region-six-attackers-killed.html.

    Wether or not the West is involved it is still Islam. They weren't setting fire to mosques. They were setting fire to Jewish places of worship and orthodox churches.
    When will the West wake up to the fact that the Gates of Vienna have not just fallen but we are putting them up in hotels at taxpayer expense.

    1. Photo caption: Father Nikolai Kotelnikov, who served more than 40 years at the synagogue…

          1. It has become worse now they have outsourced the majority of the catering. Soldiers were posting pictures of their food. Fried eggs that had been cooked several days before and the undersides covered in mould.
            The top brass soon put a stop to that. They didn't bother to improve the food though.

          3. They feed soldiers?
            Canada sent soldiers to Latvia without making any arrangements to feed them, they were supposed to just eat at local restaurants and claim back the expenses. Needless to say, expense claim payments were delayed by months.

            Don worry though Trudeau just blew about $220,000 on VVIP dining arrangements for his trip to *India.

          5. I much preferred the old system where food charges were stopped from take home pay. Though I might only go to the mess a few times a week (I had my own microwave and a fridge), I still prefered this arrangement. This meant the chefs had lots of ration credit and the choice was always excellent, often outstanding.
            I hate the old clichés about Army chefs – I was a great fan. Thankfully, I left before Pay As you Dine came in.

  78. An elderly American rear-ended a guy driving an expensive European sports car. Enraged, the guy hops out and confronts the old man. He yells,
    "Look what you did to my car! You're going to give me $10,000 right now or I'm going to beat you to a pulp!"
    "Oh my…" the old man said nervously. "I don't have that kind of money. Let me call my son.” he said with hope. “He trains dolphins and he will know what to do."
    "Dolphins!" the other driver huffed, while rolling his eyes.
    The old man pulled out his phone, dialed his son, and just as his son answered, the irate man snatched the phone away from the old man.
    "So, YOU'RE a dolphin trainer, huh?” The irate man yelled, “Well, your old man here just rear-ended my car and I need TEN GRAND right now, or I'm going to beat you AND your old man to a pulp!"
    "I'll be there in 10 minutes." says the voice calmly on the other end.
    Exactly 10 minutes later, a Jeep pulls up and a guy hops out and proceeds to pulverize the bully, leaving him in a heap on the side of the road. When he finished, he walked over to his father and said,
    "For the last time dad, I train Seals… Navy Seals. NOT dolphins!”

          1. There was a particularly perverse episode of Family Guy some years ago where Meg had a boyfriend and "Sex-in-the-ear" featured.

  82. Burning sense of injustice for Scotland as they exit Euro 2024 to 100th-minute Hungary winner D Torygaff

    Argentinian referee Facundo Tello, under instructions from Brussels. Scotland not in the EU and sent troops to Falkland Isles. They forget nothing those t***s.

    Obvious 'innit?

    1. Maybe, but the EU doesn't like Hungary much either. Perhaps they will hamstring them next. Sounds like Eurovision. Lots of shenanigans.

    2. The Scots have never lost an opportunity to go on about 'the hand of God' – Diego Maradona of Argentina (little fat cheat) knocking England out of the World Cup in 1986. It's ironic, then, that it was an Argentinian referee who knocked the Scots out of the 2024 European Championship by not giving an obvious penalty for Scotland.

      1. Damned horse named after that won at Ascot on the last day. Effing footy fanatics presenting the racing were ecstatic.

      1. 'They' will make it difficult for you to get a supply. It will be taxed heavily to pay for the 'morality police' who will drag you out of your house and publicly show you to be a denier of climate change. Then burn you on your own wood pile.

        2. I have enough wood growing and cut to last me the rest of my life and the next one

    4. I am guessing that the 23 billion that numbnuts has given to the car companies to persuade them to build EV batteries in Canada is not such a good deal after all.

      As if Honda and VW need the money!

  85. Russia is crumbling from within

    The war in Ukraine is sowing internal discord within the Russian Federation. The Kremlin cannot deflect such tensions forever

    SAMUEL RAMANI • 24 June 2024 • 3:29pm

    On Sunday evening, the North Caucasus region of Dagestan was rocked by a series of brutal terrorist attacks. Gunmen opened fire in a synagogue in Derbent, graphically slit the throat of Russian Orthodox priest Father Nikolay, and attacked Jewish and Christian houses of worship in Dagestan's largest city Makhachkala. These brutal crimes claimed the lives of at least 15 people, including police officers.

    The Kremlin's reaction to these terrorist attacks was – as one might predict – fiercely conspiratorial. The narrative that "outside forces" were promoting inter-ethnic and religious discord within Russia circulated. Dagestani State Duma Deputy Abulkhakim Gadzhiev explicitly accused Ukraine and NATO's intelligence agencies of perpetrating the attack.

    These conspiracies were wholly predictable, but deflected blame from the ultimate culprit: President Vladimir Putin's brutal war against Ukraine.

    Since the Russian military levelled Chechnya's capital Grozny in response to the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings, Putin has framed himself as a decisive leader against the threat of Islamist terrorism. This narrative undergirded Putin's legacy of restoring order in Russia after the 1990s transition-era organised crime wave and separatist wars. Putin's social compact, which traded personal freedom for security, kept him in power even as oil prices plunged, and an economic malaise ensued.

    Over the past year, this cardinal feature of Putin's legacy has disintegrated in spectacular fashion. Exactly twelve months ago today, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin's ultranationalist legion occupied Rostov-on-Don and rapidly marched towards Moscow. The Kremlin decapitated this challenge by negotiating Prigozhin's stand-down and almost certainly assassinating him. But the old threat of Islamist terrorism merely took its place.

    The Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), which is headquartered in Afghanistan and Pakistan, carried out the March 2024 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow that killed 145 people. Now terrorists from ISIS's North Caucasus branch Wilayat Kavkaz have likely carried out the latest harrowing attacks in Dagestan.

    Why has the Ukraine War smashed the illusion of security in Russia?

    Putin's thirst for totalitarian control has distracted the FSB from its counter-terrorism responsibilities and reduced its efficiency as a security organ. As Russian troops rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, the FSB became preoccupied with running "filtration camps" to test the loyalties of Ukrainians in the occupied territories. After Russia's humiliating defeats in Kharkiv and Kherson in late 2022, Putin tasked the FSB with intensified crackdowns on foreign intelligence agencies and traitors.

    To prove the point, a vocal minority of Russians decried the FSB's redirection of focus. After the Crocus City attack, Russian journalist Kirill Martynov scathingly criticised the FSB for focusing on "LGBT extremists" and dismissing warnings from Western intelligence agencies that an attack was imminent. Russian opposition activist Ivan Zhdanov claimed that the FSB's obsession with surveilling Russians and punishing anti-war dissidents destroyed its effectiveness. The Russian state media, naturally, deflected from these criticisms by redirecting public anger towards Ukraine. This allowed the FSB leadership to weather the storm of its repeated intelligence failures and remain intact.

    The FSB's abdication of responsibility has coincided with the worsening of grievances in Russia's under-privileged ethnic minority regions. Dagestan is one of the worst victims of the Ukraine War's unequal burdens. By early May 2022, Dagestan had the highest casualty rate of any Russian region. Independent investigations revealed that at least 130 Dagestanis had perished. By April 2023, that figure had risen to at least 806 and the families of Dagestani men who died in the field struggled to secure compensation from the Kremlin.

    Dagestan's creation of the Caspi "volunteer battalion," which mobilised men over the age of 40, ensures that conscription rates vastly outstrip those in Moscow and St. Petersburg. These steep casualty rates have coincided with a worsening economic crisis in Dagestan. Due to the dominance of oligarchic clans, 70 per cent of Dagestan's budget comes from Russian federal subsidies. This is the highest figure of any Russian region.

    While the Dagestani authorities claim that fighting in Ukraine is good for Russia's future, many desperate young men do not agree. In a viral September 2022 video, one Dagestani man resisting mobilisation declared "We don't even have a present. What future are you talking about?" As repression silenced the 2,000-strong legion of anti-mobilisation protesters in Dagestan, the appeal of political violence, radicalisation, and terrorism, has grown.

    After the latest terrorist attacks, introspection is the appropriate response for the Kremlin. In Putin's Russia, however, introspection is sadly punishable by prison and death. Deflection reigns supreme. But for how much longer?

    Samuel Ramani is an Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford, specialising in international relations

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/24/russia-is-crumbling-from-within/

    While this is an anti-Putin piece, it makes an important point. How long can one man keep the lid on it all? Dagestan is only a small part of Russia but if other regions start protesting, Putin will find himself fighting wars on more fronts inside Russia, even before considerations of the threat from outside. And that's where this article fails, as it effectively blames Putin for the Moscow and Dagestan terrorist attacks. Dagestan is 80+% Muslim; to the south is Azerbaijan, then Iran. On the other side of the Caspian Sea are Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. In other words, to the south and to the east are safe routes to Russia for ISIS-K terrorists from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    It's only just beginning…

    1. Anything ending in "-stan", it seems. See Londonistan, Lutonistan, Rotherhamistan, etc..

  86. A 4-wheel Bogey Five?

    Wordle 1,101 5/6
    ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
    🟨🟨⬜🟩🟩
    🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Hitching a ride behind after too many options
      Wordle 1,101 X/6

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

    2. It were a bit of a b^mmer

      Wordle 1,101 5/6

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

    3. And me. I felt so certain that my fourth guess was much more likely than the answer!

      Wordle 1,101 5/6

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

    4. Lucky guess par for me!

      Wordle 1,101 4/6

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

    5. Huh!

      Wordle 1,101 X/6

      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩

  87. Yep, I hold to my view that these things are going to be the next big "pile-on" for the NHS.

    I know it's another could be.

    Tattoos may cause blood cancer: Inkings – no matter how big – could be linked to tumours years later.

    1. In the new study, researchers at Lund University in Sweden found that those with tattoos had a 21 per cent increased risk of lymphoma compared with those without. The theory is that tattoos trigger low-grade inflammation, a known pre-cursor to cancer, but this is the first study to make a connection with tattoos.

        1. At the moment casual, but I think that in due course it will be established as causal.

          3. Life is a terminal illness – le soleil de nos jours pa^lit de's son aurore as the poet had it.

    2. Don’t worry, the Enn Haitch Ess will get it sorted out for you. No need to worry about personal accountability.

    1. When Islam finally makes its big play in the UK, I look forward to the response from those who accuse Farage of appeasement.

    2. When Islam finally makes its big play in the UK, what will be the response from those who accuse Farage of appeasement?

    3. I thought it funny when they polled popular names and mohammed wasn't in the top ten. I was even more surprised not to see Fatima or Aliya…Strange that…………………………

      1. They were , though, Phizzee, if you took into account the different spelling. Mohammed, Mahomet and so forth were No 1 and have been for some years

    4. I looked at my old home town and the top boys name is Teddy.

      seriously deranged are those Essex types

      2. Apparently Daisy and Oliver are currently the most popular names for babies in York. In 1955 Susan was definitely the most popular girls name. I was never in a class at school with fewer then six.

          1. The problem here is that clowns insist on squeezing it to see if it's ripe and then choosing ones they haven't squeezed.
            I've been enjoying some of the best cherries in years, huge, very flavoursome and ripe to perfection, same with nectarines, which I generally prefer to peaches.

          2. I definately prefer nectarines. The fuzzy skin of a peach is a little offputting.

  90. Farage's views on Putin aren't just wrong, they're weird

    The Reform leader has urged us not to 'poke the Russian bear with a stick', but what is one supposed to do when the bear advances unpoked?

    CHARLES MOORE • 24 June 2024 • 5:25pm

    Nigel Farage is right to say he is consistent. He argued for placating Vladimir Putin during Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, blaming the European Union. He did the same during Putin's invasion of all Ukraine in February 2022. He does the same now. This consistency has no virtue, however, because its premise was always false.

    It flies in the face of the fact that Putin's version of history is, like Hitler's in the 1930s, a fiction designed to justify aggression. This column is no fan of European Union foreign policy, but it is not the EU's fault that Putin broke the post-Cold War agreement which Russia made with the West to grant independence to Ukraine in return for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons.

    Can Mr Farage identify a single moment, after Putin reopened this issue, when he offered good-faith negotiations? He has said the West should not "poke the Russian bear with a stick", but what is one supposed to do when the bear, unpoked, lumbers forward, seeking whom it may devour?

    I am curious to know why Mr Farage is making this electoral play now. Is he slightly crazed by his desire to eclipse Ukraine's most active defender, Boris Johnson, or by his adulation of Donald Trump or by the dream of winning an imagined Munich Peace Prize? I find his intervention surprising because Mr Farage likes popularity. There is little sign that waving the white flag to tyrants is popular with British voters.

    Polling by Crosby Textor, conducted shortly before the general election was called, shows consistently high British support for Ukraine in the war, with 80 per cent rating Putin least favourably of all world leaders (President Zelensky being the only world leader rated favourably by most), whereas Mr Farage thinks the Russian autocrat miles ahead of our leaders.

    The poll broke down people's views by party allegiance and by dividing "Intended Conservatives" from "Conservative defectors". The views are very similar across party. It is true that the Tory defectors are somewhat more sceptical about the war in Ukraine than the party loyalists but, even so, most support both Ukraine and the present Government's policy on the subject.

    The Farage defeatist clarion call from Clacton to Kyiv feels silly, perhaps worse than silly.
    ______________________________________________________________________________________

    Ivan's tale: From investment banker to frontline fighter

    I was in Ukraine last week, at a conference in the port of Odessa. In its margins, I met a youngish Crimean-born man called Ivan. Despite being a US-educated investment banker – the poor usually bear the brunt of war – he volunteered in February 2022. He applied for the elite 10 Mountain Assault Brigade ("I thought I could be their finance dude, but I became an infantryman"). After two weeks of exiguous training "with only half a clip of ammo", he was sent to Bakhmut, which was to fall to the Russians in May 2023 after 10 months of ferocious fighting.

    In its first combat deployment there, Ivan's company found themselves surrounded. For 10 days, they fought all day and all night, their positions shelled non-stop for the last three. Typically, in a position of 10 men, two would be shooting, a couple more passing the ammunition and the other six crouching, "paralysed with fear".

    Such fear is not rebuked by comrades – "Everyone understands" – but it must be overcome to survive. "If you refuse an order, you become cannon fodder." Ivan was one of these terrified six at first, depending utterly on a veteran sergeant of the Crimean invasion, the period during which Mr Farage was first publicly arguing that Russia should be appeased. "I'm going to f—ing kill you unless you start shooting!", the sergeant shouted. At first, Ivan jumped up, "Somali-style", shooting wildly into the air. After a bit, he learnt to be useful.

    The assault brigade's opponents were the Wagner group, divided between mercenary veterans of the Afghan, Syrian and Chechen campaigns and prison inmates released with Russian promises of pardon and money. The latter were often without bullet-proof vests and overloaded with ammunition and grenades. They would charge and be killed in huge quantities. The mercenaries would then advance, using their dead comrades as cover and raiding their corpses for their kit.

    In the face of such assaults, those defending Ivan's unit's flank ran away. After six days of being ordered via Starlink that they must do "just one more day", he and his comrades were told to break out. They managed to slip through the woods undetected, but came under heavy fire as they fled in the pick-up that came for them on the other side. None was injured. "In 15 minutes, we were in a place where you could sit safely and play the guitar."

    Ivan was resting in just such a place when a vehicle arrived so loaded with dead and wounded that its floor was slopping with blood. His order was to "get into that pick-up and go where it will take you". He said the anticipation of what would happen on that journey was "the worst fear". He served for seven months in Bakhmut, without home leave. He was concussed four times, in the end so severely that he was discharged. He still cannot cope with noisy rooms and sometimes gets disoriented walking downstairs. Now he runs a defence acquisition company with an R&D centre in Ukraine, manufacturing in the Baltics and a holding company in Britain.

    Ivan's account, though striking, is just one of thousands in this war. I juxtapose it with Mr Farage's view because the contrast is instructive.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/24/farage-views-on-putin-wrong-and-weird/

    What happened in February 2014, Charlie?

    2. Charles Moore is an apologist for the corrupt globalist western elites.

      Anecdotal asides are irrelevant to the historical facts which have driven Russia to this current point.

      2. I'm not in agreement with that, although disappointed with CM, who up until recently has been an object of adoration for me. Don't know what's happened to him. but something clearly has. Elevation to the Lords has corrupted him?

  92. Farage said in his bus speech that he would only take Britain to war as a last resort.

    That's it, we're f'ked, he's taking us to war

  93. "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

    In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
    – Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

    2. I stopped reading newspapers around the time The Independent was first published and I read it and discovered that it was full of fantasy left wing crap and was anything but independent. It took much longer to wean myself off glossy magazines.

      The gaslighting going on now extends to online searches. Unless you know the site address you’re looking for. There was a time, I remember clearly, when Wiki stated truthfully that Ukraine is a soviet construct. Now apparently it’s always been there and had its golden age in the 17th century, when in reality that region was then part of the Polish Lithuanian Union.

    2. Is this a situation where a big word such as diametrically might be useful?

  95. Supreme Court Justice Lord Leggatt >>> ''Downstream'' Anomaly Alert! >>>

    Amusing how Lord Leggatt is so enthusiastic about ''downstream'' considerations relating to green issues but not enthusiastic about ''downstream'' considerations in relating to medical matters…..

    ''doctors do not owe a duty of care to members of the family of their patients to prevent them from harm caused by negligent treatment of the patient.'' Lord Leggatt.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

    So what's the reason for the difference? If it's yes for green ''downstream'', it must be yes for medical ''downstream'' and everything else.

    Is it possible that Lord Leggatt was persuaded by George Soros' pet, Lord Adair Turner, or is he being illogical with his own logic?

  96. Wow, Spanish police are really on the ball.
    "As it emerges", FFS it's been commented on on Nottle almost from the off, although, to be fair, I've not seen any commentary about it in the MSM.
    EXCLUSIVE Spanish police searching for Jay Slater, 19, investigate if his background is 'relevant' to his disappearance as it emerges Brit was involved in machete and golf club attack that left teenager, 17, fighting for his life in 2021

  98. "Nigel Farage’s remarks on Ukraine have given Reform supporters pause."

    Bollocks.

    2. Word on the street is that the Tories, Labour and the Intelligence services are having a joint pile in on Farage. Looks as if he's over the target, where he was in 2014. He's showing that he is consistent and not a bendy toy like the terrible twins, Sunak and Starmer.

    3. Yes – pause to reflect on how often he is proved to be right and how often his political opponents and the MSM are completely muddle-headed and wrong.

  99. Interesting little video on Twitt…try entering each year up to 2030 separately into Google, you get rather different results…
    https://x.com/ReturnOfKappy…

    edit: I tried the same test on Yandex, which I think is a russian search engine – only 2029 showed asteroids, all other years were happy little images.
    Google is ghastly.

      1. It disappoints, Conway, all the time (NB I have no idea why the italics. Disqus is acting very strangely.

        1. Probably italics have been switched on and not off. Try clicking on the Italic symbol (bottom of comments box) and see if they get turned off.

  100. Farage’s views on Putin aren’t just wrong, they’re weird
    The Reform leader has urged us not to ‘poke the Russian bear with a stick’, but what is one supposed to do when the bear advances unpoked?
    Charles Moore: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/24/farage-views-on-putin-wrong-and-weird/

    The vast majority of BTL comments say that Charles Moore can no longer be relied upon to give a clear and dispassionate view on political matters. That he should jump on the MSM line with such enthusiastic alacrity is extremely depressing.


    BTL

    The DT have a thought police whose job is to scrutinise what people say here – for example I once put up a point of view which got to 20 likes in under 2 minutes. But this comment did not agree with the DT line.

    When I looked in again after an hour or so expecting to see my comment near the top of the 'Most Liked' List it had not risen above 24 likes.
    I am afraid that the DT censors the comments we make if we don't say what they want us to say!

    I do hope the Comments editors will have the courage to pass on the feelings expressed by his erstwhile enthusiastic readers.

    And of course Daniel Hannan seems to have eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner. (Hemlock Hannan should be his new soubriquet!)

    I hope the DT editors will point out to Messrs Moore and Hannan that they have lost a considerable amount of good will.

    1. Imagine a BBC QT containing a similarly selected audience, but of the right instead of their usual lefties, with Farage, Young, Clarkson and Lammy as the panellists.

    2. "I do hope the Comments editors will have the courage to pass on the feelings expressed by his erstwhile enthusiastic readers."

      Rather, "the Comments editors will have the courage to pass piss on the feelings expressed by his erstwhile enthusiastic readers."

  101. Evening, all. Been scorchio here. I gave up gardening because it was so hot and lay on the chaise longue sipping a Pimms. RIP Jim Meads, photographer extraordinaire. He was 93, I believe. I have one of his books (They Still Meet At Eleven).

    Was buttonholed by one of my fellow dog walkers this morning who wanted to talk politics (and mainly express his dislike of Labour and the LDs). I get the feeling he's favouring Reform. He didn't mention Nigel and the Ukraine, so I suspect that it's had no impact whatsoever in the real world. All he said about NF was that he was a great orator. There's hope yet.

    1. That is funny. But I know quite a few vaccinated people who don’t look like douchebags. Some do though.

    3. Instead of sticking his finger up his arse, he should drink a few pints of real ale. That will get him going.

        1. Going to a wedding in Aug at the brewery. I had better take some clean underpants.

    6. My friend Gordon is too embarrassed to ask the question, so I will for him.
      "If he picks his nose and eats the bogie does this break the fast?"
      Peace be upon me, Tony.

      1. You wish you could unread. These are the kind of details that preoccupy dogmatists. Coming to a constituency near you, soon

  104. -https://scontent.flhr10-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/448936711_1026334108850953_7833226341963723416_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s600x600&_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=vEBVk_80WT8Q7kNvgGTM_UD&_nc_ht=scontent.flhr10-2.fna&oh=00_AYBCeuU7kGFX6yE1PMQAzFRCwfwUl5cAvnZuQ6DKN_5e-w&oe=667F9D0B

      1. I loved him! I remember my grandmother going to see him at Newcastle City Hall!

    3. That's a very odd picture: Ernie Wise, the Southgate person and Andrw Previn. Que pasa?

        1. Well, that’s not the word I’d use for him! I have several which are much more ruderer!

      2. Mr Preview, I am playing all the right notes. Just not necessarily in the right order. Morecambe and Wise.

          2. The humble village choir I directed 25 years ago had a certain former internationally-acclaimed operatic soprano in its midst. As a frequent collaborator with Mr Preview, she happened to be present in the studio when the sketch was recorded for radio.

          4. Frankly, although she tried, it was difficult to achieve any sort of balance between Sheila Armstrong (for it was she) and the 'umble hammer chewers, myself included. But at Christmas, unleashed on the Willcocks descants, she was a joy to behold.

          5. We had a "proper" soprano in the choir at Christmas.
            Her voice, and the acoustics, combined to ruin almost every carol for me.
            Her solo was a screeeeech to my untutored ear

          6. I've certainly experienced more than a few of those. Sheila didn't screech, but at a rehearsal for a Diocesan Choirs Festival in Guildford Cathedral, with around 300 voices, Andrew Millington spotted the opera singer.

          7. Voices are a constant surprise to me.
            We attended a parish singalong, where various singers combined for folk songs to high opera.
            A huge bloke, tall and big, stood up and produced the most surprising voice that I think I have ever heard.
            He was a counter tenor. The shock of the high notes from such a big man and the sheer perfection was mind-boggling.

          9. #MeToo – ever since I first heard Alfred Deller.
            I loved James Bowman and especially Andreas Scholl.

          10. I like Philippe Jaroussky but I think his voice has coarsened as he's got older.

          11. If you sing in a choir you have to hold back and blend in – support the others – unless you are the solo. This holds true in every walk of life

          12. Blimey! I've heard of (and heard) Sheila Armstrong – she was a superstar! – all due respect Geoff, but what was she doing with your lot?

          14. 🙂 Actually, sos, the CofE is a great leveller. I'm from working class roots. Mum was a shorthand typist at the Metal Box Company, progressing in widowhood via school meals to Tea Lady at John Laing's Carlisle office. Dad was originally a scaffolder, but became one of the earliest Safety Officers. Had he not been wiped out in a RTA, the likelihood was that he would have been the next Safety Big Cheese, necessitating a move to The Smoke. Perhaps I dodged a bullet there.

            But in the church I have rubbed shoulders with Bishops, High Sheriffs, Lords and Deputy Lieutenants, and more. I declined to play the piano at a reception for the then Countess of Wessex. My repertoire is exclusively church music – Phizzee please note – and hymns wouldn't have gone down well.

            I've met some serious musicians, and nurtured one. Perhaps my proudest achievement is that I was able to steer the shy teenager who wanted to "have a go on the organ" into a Diocesan Organist Training Scheme, lessons with a truly great organist, and a spell as Organ Scholar at Trinity, London. AFter several years singing with Voces8, he's now director of Music at two significant London churches.

            At the other end of the scale, I played for Sam Tarry's wedding…

          15. It may be a cliché, but life really is what you make of it.
            But one has to get the lucky breaks to make more.

          16. I agree, to a point. I don't consider myself particularly lucky. I could post a litany of shonet. But I have a strong sense that someone – something – is looking after me. Perhaps 50+ years of working for the church played a part? I was a late first-time buyer at absolutely the worst possible time. Redundancy, repossession, and eventual bankruptcy followed. Yet I've somehow managed to live rent-free in two church properties, and even now, I've managed to secure the tenancy of a retirement bungalow in leafy Surrey, the rent being so low that the new landllord's payment agent assumed that my monthly rent was in fact weekly, and proposed to charge me on thet basis…

          17. Sometimes, when life throws things at you, it’s a good idea to catch them rather than duck?

          20. She retired from professional singing, and – living in Hindhead – joined the local church choir. Lovely lady, think she's still around. Doubt she's still in the choir, though, since the church is now in the grip of the happy-clappy evangelicals. The splendid organ is no longer maintained, apparently.

          21. Why man,pet she’s from Ash’n’ton! Fabulous voice and sang some great Geordie folk songs, including my school song, The Keel Row!

          24. Me too. Sheila is or was President of the Kathleen Ferrier Society. KF was noted for an early performance at the Carlisle and District Music Festival. I had a fleeting involvement with the Festival, via a school choir. That, and helping to extract a harpsichord from the back of un Ranault Seize…

          30. It's wryly amusing that, when he died recently, despite his glittering career in music as a composer, principal conductor of the LSO and Royal Philharmonic, and winner of multiple Academy Awards, the only thing that was shown on tv was this sketch!
            He seemed a decent bloke, I would hope he would have seen the funny side…..

          2. Pretty sure I replied earlier, Mr T…the old disappearing message trick….asked if you'd been here all night (geddit?)

    1. It was, too. Lovely day, lovely company, lovely dog show and nice food that didn't break the bank.

  106. When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

    Peter Hitchens, 11 June 2024 11:06 AM

    I address this to all those who think they can risk enabling the election of a Labour government at the coming election.

    Something that is right at one time can be wrong at another time. Here's an example I am always haunted by a scene in Sartre's 'Roads to Freedom' set in 1939 Paris, as war approaches. One character notes that the women of France are discouraging their men from fighting Hitler. He asks why people always get things the wrong way round. I cannot lay my hand on the passage just now, but it runs roughly like this: 'In 1914, when the women of Paris should have lain down on the railway tracks to stop their men going to the front, they cheered them off to their deaths. Now, when they should be urging them on to the troop trains, they call for peace'.

    You may not agree with the sentiments about 1914 (though I do, regarding that war as the end of European civilisation). But the point is that, to a thinking person, the answer to the problem before you cannot always be the same. Circumstances alter cases. Or, as Maynard Keynes is supposed to have snapped when chided for shifting his position: 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?'

    And in 2010, and for many years before, the problem was this: The Conservative Party was the target of a putsch, led by the fake right-winger Michael Howard (actually pretty liberal). The aim of this putsch was to rip all remaining conservative fixtures and fittings out of the Tory Party and to make it conform to the revolutionary changes made in this country by the 1997 Blair-Campbell government. I produced explicit evidence that such a process (driven by the Blairites) was under way in my book 'The Cameron Delusion'.

    If almost anybody in positions of influence had read that book this country would now be in a very different position, but they didn't. All kinds of events, some external and some internal, not least Mrs Theresa May's public description of the Tories as 'the Nasty Party' and the Murdoch Press's furious 'dead parrot' attack on William Hague when he sought to steer a conservative course, increased the pressure.

    Blairites sought to turn the 2001 election into a referendum on the future of the Tory Party, in which it would be so bludgeoned and defeated that it would abandon any hopes of reversing the slow-motion putsch of the first four Blair-Campbell year and almost succeeded. The process culminated with a media-led coup against Iain Duncan Smith in 2003. In the following seven years, the Tory Party was systematically Blairised. This intensified after the 2005 election (again a media coup) of David Cameron as leader. I had begun to note and attack this process in 2003, and sought in a debate in London in October 2006 and elsewhere to argue that the Tory Party had ceased to be conservative.

    I still believe that, had any of the members of the conservative commentariat (including some who now tend in the Reform direction) joined me in my attack, Cameron could have been so badly defeated in the 2010 election that the Tory Party would have split and collapsed, making room for a new, properly conservative formation which could easily have swept aside Gordon Brown at the next election.

    Brown, remember, was isolated, exhausted, deserted by the Blairites (who in many cases obviously hoped for a Cameron victory). He was in no position to restart the Blair-Campbell revolution and was on several issues, especially the European single currency, to the right of Cameron. His position in 2010 was totally unlike that of Starmer. Sir Kier is not merely a dogmatic zealot ludicrously mistaken for a 'moderate' by some. His party is not burned out or exhausted, but filled with a seething red-hot desire for major action. After 14 years in opposition, has many radical plans and the energy to pursue them vigorously in the first 18 months in office.

    The country in 2010 was also nothing like as far down the road of revolution as it has travelled in the last 14 years. Many conservatives in the world of politics, media, law and culture have died or retired. Every institution in the nation has been subject to the Long March of the Left. The schools and universities have produced huge numbers of young men and women entirely reconciled to the Blairite new order. Hardly anyone knows what conservatism is, and many think it is Liz Truss, that grim joke figure, or Nigel Farage, the man who wants to decriminalise marijuana and is a fierce economic liberal.

    From what could we now fashion a new conservative movement? If we had the will and the opportunity, where is the human material? Meanwhile, Starmer, unlike Brown 2010, will not be easy to remove. By enfranchising 16-year-olds and (I strongly suspect), EU citizens living in this country, an idea he has openly espoused but currently claims to have dropped, he will make himself hard to shift. If he succeeds, his planned constitutional change will make it extraordinarily hard for anyone to undo his actions

    You won't be lending the country to Starmer if you help him win on July 4. You will be giving it to him for the foreseeable future. That would be a terrible mistake. A vote is not an emotional spasm by which you affect to 'punish' politicians who will nor more feel your displeasure than a rhinoceros feels a feather on its hide. A vote is not an act of passing self-indulgence, cast for momentary pleasure at the discomfiture of arrival. A vote is a practical act with measurable consequences which may last for decades, or for as long as you shall live. On this occasion, if your vote can play a part in defeating Starmer, then you should sue it for that end, whoever else it might benefit.

    I hardly need add that opinion polls are often wrong, have recently been wrong in India, Australia and Norway, and that no proper human, with a mind and will, lets himself or herself be swayed by what a crowd is doing or in this case may be doing. The responsibility is yours alone.

    https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/

    1. When the FACTS change? If they're facts, surely they're facts and not subject to change, unlike opinions and propaganda.

    2. So who do we vote for Peter? Not the CONservatives. Or Liebour. Or the non-Lib non-Dems. Or the Watermelons. Or the Scotch Narzi Party. Or Plaid Cymru god help us. So who then Peter? Who?

    3. When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

      That is a (popular) mis-quotation of Keynes.

      Keynes did say:

      The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.

      And so say all of us!

      3. Where is Pretty Polly? The parrot always has impossible theories to explain what used t o be considered just coincidence

        3. She was here yesterday or maybe the day before so she has not succumbed to avian flu or anything similar.

      4. The Ukrainian war is designed so that when it's over every gimmegrant in the EU can be deported to repopulate and rebuild the country?

  110. Just checked and it appears she's still with us! What a great story you have there, such a shame about the church though!

    1. My very dear friends mother was a soprano with the Savoy operetta company. She latterly sang with Gateshead Amateur Operatics who put on a show every year in the Town Hall. I’ve seen a lot of operetta!

      1. At school I was dragooned into a performance of HMS Pinafore – enough to put me off for life…..

        2. There was a very good performance of that at St Fagans not so long ago, choreographed by a very good friend. it is great fun if well done

        3. I was lucky, I was set up to be Little Buttercup, fortunately my voice broke during rehearsals

  113. Dude in a dress has just been awarded $35,000 compensation because a ladies salon declined a request to give him the equivalent of a brazilian wax job on his willie and accoutrements.

    The legal system in Ontario is certainly leading the way somewhere.

      1. There are a few legal shenanigans over what a trannie can be called. I doubt that this is the first time someone has received money for such a horrible slight.

        It seems like it could be a money maker. Just borrow a dress, go into some womens salon and demand a tranny ball waxing. Instant money.

    2. An "accidental" removal of the dangledash,

      " my Lud, he moved when I was using my cut-throat razor on the final touches for a smooth finish.
      The razor was so sharp that neither he nor I realised he was now a she."

    4. What kind of masochist wants a Brazilian wax removal of scrotal hair? i shudder. Although 'equivalent' might allow for other methods of hair removal. Neither cough nor sneeze is my advice.

      1. "What kind of masochist wants a Brazilian wax removal of scrotal hair?"

        A masochistic one?

        1. Like the masochist who loves a cold shower in the morning, so he has a hot one 🙂

  115. For once (and likely only) time I don't share your pov……I could listen to her all day……

    2. Yes – I don't know why, but I wouldn't. And I do realise that it is a fantastic voice.

      1. Each to her own, opopanax 🙂 I remember reading a famous ENT chap once examined her tonsils, said back of her throat was so wide could have fitted an apple there….possibly just another urban myth…:-D

        1. Just don't enjoy her voice, KJ. Don't enjoy Katherine Jenkins, either, which is a similar register (though not so unusual) – yet I am in awe of counter tenors who operate in the same range. I think I love the purity of the male voice in that register. As I really do prefer the treble voice over the soprano in most cases.

          2. she was pushed down our throats at (Girls' Grammar) school and we had to pretend to like her but I just didn't and still don't

          3. I’m no Jenkins fan, either. Just something in Ferrier’s way of conveying emotion. My memory is shot compared to what it once was, I once really liked a counter tenor, just can’t bring name to mind right now…probably recall as soon as I press Post. Sopranos generally no, remember that at least!

          9. NB I could post loads of other stuff from this singer, whose voice I really love. I love the silver in it apart from anything else

          10. Thanks opopanax (good morning btw)…cheered me up, lost my glasses but fortunately not my hearing.:-))

  116. They're not impossible. They're mixed (which is my argument with her) – a mixture of the truth with some really over the top fantasy. I have the same problem with the Tara Blue chap, who is, for example, a Jew hater, something i will not and do not tolerate

  118. I do recall a quite recent case where some women were sued for refusing to wax "her balls and penis" area by a massive bloke claiming to be female. I think these were tiny Vietnamese immigrant women providing waxing services to the gentry, as it were.

    1. Well, I didnt exactly volunteer – the shame was compounded by the fact that, at an all boys school , and at an age before my voice had broken, I ended up as one of Sir Joseph Porter’s (KCB) ‘his sisters and his cousins and his aunts’………

    1. If they keep shooting themselves in the foot they may well not fill a booth at a costa for their next caucus meeting.

    2. Not quite a Trump Rally but impressive nonetheless.

      We have a Reform event at Sturmer Hall near here at the end of the month. I am hoping to attend but various other obstacles might prevent my attendance. Reform are very strong in North Essex and Braintree. Fingers crossed.

  122. I should've have learnt by now not to trust anyone online, even those who've I've been friends with for several years, I never realised how gullible and trusting I am until today. How easily I can be toyed with and managed, I am very hurt. I have learnt a lesson even if several years too late. I will not trust anyone again unless I know them in actual life . Please don't respond to this, thank you . Good night x

    1. I know you said not to respond, and you don't know me in real life, but I'm sending a big hug anway x

    2. What is the matter? Who has done what and what can we do to help? I echo ashes below that, even though you ask for no response, all here are on your side

    3. People can be spiteful and cause hurt. It is an unwavering fact of life but in compensation on this site many here will offer support and well wishes.

      Most of us are sensitive to the feelings of others especially those perhaps less robust than some others of us are and we are always human.

      Just take care and keep posting your delightful posts.

  124. Winston S. Churchill > Quotes > Quotable Quote

    Winston S. Churchill
    “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries
    .     Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

    The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

    Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
    ― Winston Churchill, The River War

    1. Now Christianity is being destroyed from within by those appointed to head it. When we pray for Welby, my personal prayers are that he will actually become a Christian.

      1. I pray that the wet, woke, welby will retire, and some person of faith will take over.

      3. At All Saints Fulham intercessions were a stream of consciousness affair but at Barts they’re scripted and include a line asking God to enlighten Bishop Sarah, which always makes me smile.

        1. We pray for our bishops as well, but it's left to God to decide what to do with them 🙂

        2. I recall visiting Exeter Cathedral a decade or so past and had to listen to the Dean urging us to pray for every frigging Archbishop, Bishop and every frigging Royal. At the end of the diatribe I turned to my wife and asked “what about the rest of us?”

          During a long career I have worked on several cathedrals, many churches and chapels including Lambeth Palace Chapel and associated church properties.

          I have to say that in my experience some of the most venal and narcissistic persons I have come into contact with were high up in the church hierarchy. The single exception was Robert Runcie. The rest were horrible arrogant and extremely stupid people.

        3. I recall visiting Exeter Cathedral a decade or so past and had to listen to the Dean urging us to pray for every frigging Archbishop, Bishop and every frigging Royal. At the end of the diatribe I turned to my wife and asked “what about the rest of us?”

          During a long career I have worked on several cathedrals, many churches and chapels including Lambeth Palace Chapel and associated church properties.

          I have to say that in my experience some of the most venal and narcissistic persons I have come into contact with were high up in the church hierarchy. The single exception was Robert Runcie. The rest were horrible arrogant and extremely stupid people.

      1. MM,

        Thank you so much for that link on the Sudan .

        I have a book , or rather a journal written by an English Army officer who was a ‘scout ‘, mapping the likely route the Mahdi and his frenzied mob would make before the siege of Omdurman / Khartoum .

        When my father died , I brought a whole pile of books of his back to the UK . I haven’t a clue what to do with them .

        1. Get a good looking bookcase, and store them there, Belle. Maybe, if such things still exist, a bookcase of a similar age to the books? Then, enjoy the sight of them, read them occasionally (so they don't feel unwnted) and reflect over the memories they bring.

          1. Might visit that lake thing today that you posted a link for , please repost the link because I cannot find it on line .

            Moh is playing golf in Salisbury later , so i might have time to myself to do a few things .

            I hope you feel better soon , don’t worry about things , please.

      1. And just imagine, it's up to England to thrash Slovenia, by three goals minimum..

          2. I sometimes feel the same way but, annoyingly, allow myself to be swept along by my sons and grandson – who clearly have not yet experienced sufficient crushing disappointment to give up on the whole thing!

          3. I have the same feelings about the hockey mania that has overtaken Canada this past few weeks. Hopefully it will be over tonight and they can get down to the post mortem.
            The best / only good thing about this hockey thing that is going on is that they have managed to get Shania Twain to do a bity of a motivational sing song before the match. I could watch her sing for hours.

            At least with football you can see the ball whereas the little puck thingy is all but invisible to the British eye.

          8. Me too, Alec. If I don't score any points at all, am I likely to enter the finals and be the winner?

        2. From the BBC website:
          England, France and the Netherlands have all gone through to the last 16 tonight without playing.
          All three are guaranteed at least third spot in their groups and have four points so cannot go out.
          Anyone finishing third on a better record than three points and a -3 goal difference will go into the knockout stages.

      1. Post finished prematurely – can't remember the pearls of wisdom that have been lost.

  128. Not being heavy here , and it is rather late , but have any of you read the wonderful travel books by Patrick Leigh Fermor or John Hillaby ..

    PLF travelled extensively through Europe ..

    We are here now looking at a different Europe to the Europe / Eurasia that those wonderful writers experienced years ago .

    https://coldspur.com/reviews/homage-to-ruthenia/

    This is a long read , but fascinating , and when you have read all the history of the Carpathian region and beyond , you will probably think the same as me , there are so many unresolved territorial issues .. and of course Putin will carry on pushing .

    3. I came across them relatively late (about five years ago; so, in another life), and fell hard for Paddy. His erudition made me realise how short-changed, relatively speaking, I had been in my education. I longed to accompany him on his grand adventure, and found the world he described shockingly different from modérn times.

      I shall have a shufti at your link later. Thank you!

  129. BBC's Springwatch has just been giving us the sights and sounds of the season without narration, explanation, lecture, doomsaying, campaigning or fearmongering. It's just the sound of birdsong, insects, water and air. Television has rarely been this soothing.

    1. I suppose that is her version of reality. She has Farage/Reform/Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    2. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      Farage goes on the attack after Ukraine criticism
      Comments Share 24 June 2024, 1:56pm
      Foreign policy hasn’t featured much in this election – until now. Over the weekend, Nigel Farage’s suggestion that the West was partially to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine produced an avalanche of cross-party criticism. Both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak labelled his comments ‘disgraceful’, while the Mail on Sunday claimed a member of president Zelensky’s staff had suggested Farage was infected with the ‘virus of Putinism’. Rather than back down, the Reform leader has opted to reprise the pugilists’ playbook and counterpunch with fire.

      Speaking to supporters at Maidstone this lunchtime, he told them he would ‘never, ever defend’ Vladimir Putin before insisting he would take ‘no lectures’ from either the Tories or Labour on matters of foreign affairs and defence. In an act of political judo, he used the Russia row to turn his opponents’ attacks on themselves. Declaring that there had been ‘almost no debate’ on these policy areas, he attacked the Tories for cutting the armed forces since 2010 and claimed that Keir Starmer and David Lammy would sign Britain up to a common European defence pact. He added that there was ‘no doubt that the world is in a more dangerous place right now than it has been at any point since the Cuban missile crisis over 60 years ago’.

      Broadening his assault, he lambasted the invasions of both Iraq and Libya, suggesting that the latter intervention was responsible for both Isis and the subsequent Mediterranean migration crisis. The rest of the speech focused thereafter on domestic issues, all around a shared theme: the utter incompetence and venality of Britain’s political class. Labour, he suggested, ‘will prove to be, if it is possible, even more incompetent than the Conservatives have been.’ The Tories, meanwhile, now seem to ‘resemble something of an organised betting ring’ who are using the Russia row as a ‘useful distraction’ from their election woes.

      The most interesting sub-plot though was Farage’s comments about Boris Johnson. Three days ago, he was suggesting that he could work with the former premier if he repented for his migration and net-zero policies. ‘I like his personality. The more I’ve heard of him I like’, he said on Friday. Yet following Johnson’s condemnation of Farage’s Russia remarks, the Reform leader’s tone has changed. Standing in front of a giant newspaper front page which criticised Boris Johnson’s remarks on Ukraine in 2016, (when he claimed EU policies had inflamed tensions in the region) Farage suggested Johnson was a hypocrite and ought to be known as ‘the worst Prime Minister of modern times’ and the man who ‘betrayed an 80-seat majority.’ That ought to end talk of any kind of post-election pact between the two men.

    3. I’ve always disliked this woman since long before her fling with Boris. She used to write in the Spectator about her Italian conquests.
      Historias de coño as they say in Spanish.
      She’s the conservative answer to Polly Toynbee, narcissistic, not bright,spoilt, another example of nepotism.

    4. What an astonishingly poisonous and conceited piece of writing – and hypocritical, for the faults she claims to see in Farage she possesses herself many times over.

      "Mr Farage brings out the worst. Perhaps this is because much of his creed plays on fear."

      If this well-off, well-connected 'society' creature does not understand why the ancestral British are so angry and, yes, fearful about the level of migration, she has no understanding of how successful countries work – because she has no understanding of human society even as she tells us that she lives 'in an area where there are as many immigrants as British natives'. I bet she doesn't mix with them – unless they're well-off Oxbridge types.

      1. There is a difference between a Harvard-educated American immigrant and a muslim from Pakistan. Not all immigrants are the same.

      1. Thank you Elsie. Another year, another dollar as they say but I am missing the dollar under our present useless government. They just take from me, poor retiree as I am.

      2. Thank you Elsie. Another year, another dollar as they say but I am missing the dollar under our present useless government. They just take from me, poor retiree as I am.

    1. 'Morning, Geoff and thank you for all the effort you have put in to keep us all rolling along. Well done!

Comments are closed.