Monday 25 April: Germany and France have undermined Nato’s stance against Russia

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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625 thoughts on “Monday 25 April: Germany and France have undermined Nato’s stance against Russia”

  3. Good Morning Folks

    Cloudy cold start here.
    Can’t imagine how they must be feeling in France.

      3. The BBC is deliriously so, having seen off the ‘far right’ Le Pen!

        ‘Morning, Oberst.

    2. 352168+ up ticks,

      Morning B3,
      They will feel a great deal warner shortly when the arson artist start going to town.
      We have it to come, the
      polling booth dictates it.

  4. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – The view seems to be taking hold that many people broke the Covid rules in minor ways that caused no risk to anyone. Therefore, it should be understandable, and forgivable, that politicians and civil servants who held gatherings at work might not have realised that what they were doing was against the regulations.

    Those politicians and civil servants are the ones who created the stupid rules. They could have issued guidance instead, which many argued for. They could have had less stringent rules. They could have allowed people to be with their dying relatives and attend their funerals, without significant risk. However, they seemed to take the view that the public could not be trusted and needed to be frightened into compliance.

    This is why it is important that those in Downing Street who broke the rules receive appropriate sanctions, including losing their jobs. Either they understood the rules and broke them, or they didn’t realise what they were enforcing on everyone else.

    Julian Gall
    Godalming, Surrey

    Precisely!

    1. There were no rules for gatherings of work colleagues as far as I was aware, we saw all sorts of stuff even videos made by NHS staff dancing about.
      Number 10 is slightly different because Boris was living and working in the same building.
      Unless he shut down government how could he not break the rules that were set for people in private dwellings?

    3. Morning all.

      So the rules were broken by the PM, Ministers, Joe Public and whoever else. To me, the crux of the matter is that they caused nos significant risk to anyone. NO SIGNIFICANT RISK TO ANYONE. Exactly. There was no need for the psychological warfare campaign waged on us except for the fact that it controlled everyone.

    4. A point that needs to be made over and over again lest people lose sight of the significance.

  5. SIR – We are all tired of this. As Mr Johnson appears to be the main Western supporter of Ukraine, let him remain so until the war has ended. Then get rid of him.

    There is one Conservative, now in the House of Lords, whose interviews and newspaper articles speak the common sense that this Government so sorely lacks.

    For God’s sake, get Lord Frost into government.

    Anna Boers
    London SW11

    Yes, I belive Lord Frost would be a very good prospect as PM. Will it happen? No, he or she will come from the usual tired old duds and lightweights.

    1. The whole damned lot from the Labour Party, Conservative Party, Lib/Dems, SNP, Greens and Oher Miscellaneous will unite under the mantra:

      Get Brexit Undone!

    2. More likely an appointee by the puppetmasters, NWO and the like. It won’t change for the better. It will get worse. I’ve gon for Lord Frost, said so before Xmas, but there would be no support. MPs do nothing , the Cabinet does nothing. thr civil service does no do whyt it is told, and has gone missing. Your average banana republic is in better form.

  6. Good Moaning.
    Spekkie article that might be good for those with low blood pressure. If it’s high, read something comforting about fluffy bunny wunnies.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/workshy-whitehall-why-cant-the-pm-get-his-civil-servants-back-to-work

    “The missing mandarins: why won’t civil servants go back to work?

    James Heale

    ‘Mother nature,’ says Boris Johnson, ‘does not like working from home.’ The Prime Minister wants workers to return to offices so they can have the ‘stimulus of exchange and competition’. His ministers are just as evangelical. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, says he favours ‘being able to interact directly’ with colleagues and Rishi Sunak has spoken about how young people need the office space to learn. The nation’s employers should, they say, get their staff back to their desks.

    Yet nine months since the end of lockdown and tumbleweed is still blowing through the corridors of power. When Jacob Rees-Mogg conducted an audit to see how many Whitehall desks were occupied on 4 April, it found the answer was just a quarter at the Education and the Work and Pensions departments. In the Foreign Office, it was less than a third. On average, almost half of Whitehall desks were empty. Steve Barclay, the cabinet officer minister, had promised that the government would ‘lead the way’ in returning to work from January – but if that is the case then civil servants are simply refusing to follow. No wonder Johnson now sees the army as the solution to any given domestic problem: soldiers report for duty in a way that he is unable to persuade civil servants to do.

    Civil service chiefs say the mandarins are back at work, but using ‘hybrid working’: two or three days in the office and the rest at home. Union bosses point to Johnson’s competing desire to ‘level up’ areas outside London to justify this. If 20,000 jobs are set to be moved out of the capital anyway, why bring existing staff back into SW1? And then there are the practicalities of office working. The size of the government estate has been shrunk by more than 30 per cent since 2010 as part of a policy to sell off Whitehall sites. Yet the civil service headcount has grown a quarter since 2016.

    Poor estate planning and the growth of the state under Johnson mean there are not enough desks to accommodate the army of bureaucrats if they did all come back. In a farcical example of short-term thinking, the Treasury still pays thousands to the Cabinet Office for use of extra office space, despite the fact just two in five staff showed up on the day of Rees-Mogg’s audit.

    The civil service is fighting hard to keep the idea that showing up for work need not be obligatory. Its trade union, First Division Association, dislikes ministers issuing orders at all, saying they should not be ‘interfering’. A poll showed (unsurprisingly) that 97 per cent of civil servants want to keep the option of working from home. It’s easy to see the attractions. People who previously worked full-time in Whitehall still receive their special salary boosts – known as ‘London weighting’ – worth around £4,000 to cover the costs of working and travelling in the city. Pay rises also do not distinguish between those who are returning to office and those who aren’t.

    It could be argued that it doesn’t matter where civil servants are as long as the work gets done. After all, look outside Whitehall: Deloitte, one of Britain’s biggest accountancy firms, has told staff they can decide for themselves how often they work from home and has closed 250,000 square feet of London office space. Official UK productivity figures actually recorded a rise last year, a figure highlighted by those who say that home working doesn’t hurt.

    But what works for accountants does not necessarily work for government departments where communication and accountability are crucial. Elizabeth Denham, then the £180,000-a-year Information Commissioner, decided after the first lockdown to pack up and do her job 4,500 miles away in her native British Columbia. (Her move was only belatedly discovered after – ironically – a Freedom of Information request showed she was working from a location within the Pacific Time Zone.) Since west Canada is eight hours behind the UK, such a decision had obvious consequences for the privacy watchdog’s working habits.

    Then there was the withdrawal from Kabul in August, when translators and others deemed at risk from the Taliban applied to Whitehall to be evacuated. During the crisis, the Foreign Office doggedly clung to a culture of eight-hour working days. Staff were urged not to work longer in case others felt pressured to do the same. Raphael Marshall, a Foreign Office desk officer involved in the evacuation, later revealed that emails with desperate messages from Afghans were either not opened or were just scanned without any details being logged in so ministers could say that they had been read.

    Nine months since the end of lockdown, tumbleweed is blowing through the corridors of power

    ‘Staffing shortages were exacerbated by some staff working from home,’ he said, ‘which hampered communication. This was on occasion significant in a context where policy was poorly defined and the situation unclear.’ Sir Philip Barton, the most senior Foreign Office civil servant, stayed on holiday throughout the worst of the crisis and only returned from his family’s Dordogne chateau 11 days after Kabul fell.

    The Afghan debacle reflects a story told by many younger officials: they are keen to come into the office, but are discouraged by more senior staff who seek to preserve the new work-from-home culture. As one puts it: ‘If someone in another department was ignoring my emails, I used to walk across Whitehall to go and speak to them face to face. Now they can simply hide behind their screen – it’s maddening.’ The Ukraine crisis has been a tacit admission of the importance of physical co-location: mandarins working on the British response have been told they need to be at their desks every day.

    Conscientious civil servants are aware of (and often outraged by) scams being pulled by less industrious colleagues, who use the near-absence of supervision to develop a culture of skiving, from ‘compressed working hours’ downwards. There are ‘development days’ off work and weekly wellbeing hours – paid for by the taxpayer – intended to nurture ‘mental and/or physical health’ on top of the daily lunch hour. One official working from home confesses that he often books a ‘meeting’ and then uses the time to go to the gym because no one senior checks on or disturbs him. Some of the online training for ‘mandatory professional development’ seems less than rigorous too. One caseworker boasts on LinkedIn of ‘doing some civil service learning courses’ while watching daytime TV.

    If there is no supervision across government agencies, then things can go badly wrong. It was recently revealed that for significant periods of the pandemic 3,400 civil servants at the DVLA (more than half the staff) had done no work on full pay. Months later, there were still almost 2,000 DVLA workers raking it in while not working.

    Blockages in one part of the system affect it elsewhere. One MP says that, at the end of last year, a quarter of all constituency correspondence was about driving-licence backlogs. Home working meant there were huge delays in processing paper-based applications. Passports, planning applications and HMRC rebates have all been affected.

    The prosecution backlog is perhaps the worst of all. ‘It’s so bad that if someone is raped today it will take two years before the perpetrator would be in court,’ says one minister. ‘The magistrates’ courts managed to carry on, but the criminal courts just downed tools. Justice delayed is justice denied – and we’re now denying justice on a mass scale.’ The most recent figures show that there were 58,000 cases outstanding in the Crown Court in the final quarter of last year, down just 2 per cent on the previous quarter.

    The asylum backlog could arguably have been cleared during lockdown, given the country’s emergency border closures. Instead, the number of people awaiting a decision doubled to 85,000. Home working has also been cited as a factor in the visa delays for Ukrainian refugees.

    Ultimately, civil servants themselves could lose out from Whitehall’s new working arrangements. ‘Previously we could at least learn at our desks from older colleagues about how a department works,’ says one younger official. ‘Now that ability has been much more curtailed.’

    The strengths of the civil service are supposedly its permanence, institutional knowledge and ability to produce ‘good all-rounders’. Hybrid working puts all that at risk. The Prime Minister now looks simply unable to control his government – incapable of reversing the effects of the ‘work from home’ orders he once imposed.”

    1. When Jacob Rees-Mogg conducted an audit to see how many Whitehall desks were occupied on 4 April, it found the answer was just a quarter at the Education and the Work and Pensions departments. In the Foreign Office, it was less than a third. On average, almost half of Whitehall desks were empty.

      Morning Anne. It is probably much worse than this. Reading between the lines the Vehicle Licencing Agency for one appears to have been abandoned by the staff. The entire system is breaking down.

    2. “‘If someone in another department was ignoring my emails, I used to walk across Whitehall to go and speak to them face to face. Now they can simply hide behind their screen – it’s maddening.’ ”
      It’s not just civil servants – I have a colleague who does this. I am sure that he sets his icon to “in a meeting” on purpose to avoid contact.

      1. One our son’s school chums went into the civil service and remained in it throughout her ‘working’ life. She and now ex-husband ingested every form of illegal drug known to mankind on a regular basis. There is no way she would have been fit for productive work, or even capable of turning up for it, in the private sector.
        Now in her fifties, she is a physical wreck and taken early retirement.

      2. Yes, and that’s unprofessional and the person isn’t doing their job. If they need 5 mins then say so, but otherwise you’re there.

        I suppose the difference is if we don’t work, we don’t get paid. If they don’t work, they do. So bloody well change it!

        1. The guy is a very introverted software developer, so the whole lockdown thing is just encouraging him to break off contact with the world and normalising his personality traits.

        2. In 2020 our the income from our courses was reduced by 70% compared with 2019; last year our income from our courses was reduced by over 80% from 2019.

          No furlough or government help for the self-employed. We have savings so we have not starved – but we are going to have to sell our beloved boat, Mianda, as we can no longer afford the drain it makes on our resources.

    3. Thanks Anne. This makes depressing reading. The Snivel Serpents are taking the pi55 and no one in government seems particularly concerned. It is high time that the head of the civil service was dragged in and had his horoscope read to him!

    4. There’s a great deal of difference between working from home and being at home not working.

      If someone is not working while at home and they are not doing their job then sack them. If they can’t, enable them. It’s not sodding complicated. Our standard contract stipulates under place of work ‘whereever you want, as long as you get your work done’ (it’s legalese is better than that, but that’s the gist. I don’t care if a chap gets up at 10 and finishes at 3. Unless we have a particular need, and these are telegraphed at least 2 weeks in advance – you don’t need to be in the same place with the same people.

      On another window is a chum in Verona. I can see the hills behind him and the small fruit trees he’s got in his garden from his window. At the moment his cat is sat on his desk as he’s gone to get a coffee. We’re collaborating to get work done.

      1. We have worked from home since 1989 as we run our residential courses from home.

        We only stopped working from home when the politicians stopped us from doing so with their covid policies.

        We are now working from home once more and, until the next lockdown, things are beginning to pick up again.

    5. It would be a good start to stop the, roughly, £4,000 London Weighting for all government employees. Perhaps that would help to concentrate minds? Or, better still, do what Ronald Reagan did to the Air Traffic Controllers when they went on strike – sack the lot of them!

  7. SIR – Many critics of the new policy directed against illegal cross-Channel migration fail to see the main point.

    Once migrants discover that they will be sent on immediately for asylum processing elsewhere, the traffickers will quickly go out of business. Migrants are not stupid and will not throw away the large sums now demanded of them for the promised passage to England if England turns out not to be the final destination.

    In America, during the Clinton administration, the same policy worked in the Straits of Florida to halt the flow of Haitian boat people. It has also worked for Australia in this century, to eliminate illegal trafficking through Indonesia.

    Show that the traffickers can no longer deliver and boat departures from the Continent will quickly and spontaneously stop.

    Brunson McKinley
    Former Director General, International Organisation for Migration
    Geneva, Switzerland

    I would like to think that such a procedure would put off both migrant and trafficker, but given our lamentable performance in failing to deport most of those who have arrived so far, probably not.

      1. This statistic seems also to support the “Dixon of Dock Green” method of beat policing. The crime rate goes down dramatically if there is the likelihood of a stealth copper around the corner with a nose as to what precisely is going on at any time on his patch. Often, this is acquired through polite and non-crime related chat with locals, such as giving the time or helping old ladies across the road.

        It is not the sentence that puts off villains; it is the likelihood of being caught.

        This of course is catastrophic to the crime statistics as blinkered political advisers deem that the copper is not doing his job, so he is taken off the beat and set to work tackling online hate crimethink, or bundled into vans for exciting mass raids on dissidents or Cliff Richard.

        1. Yes, as with so many of the problems in our society, public services are crippled by government wanting to prove they’re useful.

          Some things you cannot measure.

    2. It’s got to work. The simplest and cheapest option is still not being taken and I don’t really know why not – nor do I care.

      Bluntly, tow them back to France, destroy the boat, make them swim.

  8. “Macron said that he is “not anymore a candidate of one camp.”
    …
    “Rage and discord must also be addressed, this will be my responsibility,” Macron said, admitting that some people voted for him only not to allow a political tilt to the right….
    In his relatively short, but emotional, speech Macron promised to “make France a great green country,” to work on strengthening the EU, to fight for gender equality and against social injustice, to support the economy, and to encourage investments and creativity.”

    What a great start on addressing the reasons why people voted against him!

  9. Macron’s appeal to unity succeeds but far right makes strong showing. 25 april 2022

    During the campaign, Macron conceded that if the French far right had risen to its highest ever levels in the presidential first round – with Le Pen and the newcomer TV pundit Éric Zemmour taking more than 30% – it was because he himself “had not managed to calm a certain anger”.

    I was interested to note that during the run up to this election the BBC always referred to Le Pen as being “Far-Right”. Now I am no expert on French politics but she has never conformed to my idea of what the “Far-Right” stands for. I think that what is happening here is that the entire spectrum of politics in Europe has been shifted to the left. This is partly to place people like Le Pen beyond the pale but also to accommodate the now Marxist Left.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/25/macrons-appeal-to-unity-succeeds-but-far-right-makes-strong-showing

    1. Every politician or party that isn’t part of the globalist cabal is labelled either far right or populist by the mainstream media

    2. Macron is far right the way he treats the people Pen is on the left what you read her manifesto.

    3. Every single outlet uses the term ‘Far Right’ to describe Le Pen, yet her policies are distinctly Left wing. It’s an obvious slur, as there is rarely ifever a mention of ‘Hard Left’. It’s slanderous.

      Newsflash kids. The majority of the country is ‘Far Right’ by your standards. None of us are Nazis or Stalinists!

  10. SIR – Recently a colleague of mine spoke to a senior member of Huntingdonshire District Council, and was astounded to be told that staff were only required to go into the office once every eight weeks.

    Further up the food chain, I had reason to walk into Cambridgeshire County Council’s £18 million New Shire Hall a couple of weeks ago, where I was met with an eerie silence. The sole receptionist informed me that no one actually worked there. When I asked why, I was told: “It’s policy.” There was no further explanation; I was simply referred to the website.

    Is this now standard for local government?

    Eppie Anderson
    Tansor, Northamptonshire

    SIR – It is no doubt correct that the private sector has embraced working from home, but I suspect it will quickly escape that embrace if it starts to affect profits or efficiency.

    Unlike those in the Civil Service, private employees have to deliver, or their employers cease to exist. For Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union representing civil servants, to accuse ministers of being Luddites while his members deliver such low levels of service is an affront to the public he claims to serve.

    Eddie Lodge
    Plymouth, Devon

    The fact that the public sector is doing its own thing, regardless of the appalling service that results, is one of the great scandals under the excuse of ‘Covid’. So far no one is accountable, and no one has read the riot act. Neither am I confident that J R-M’s recent involvement will be a great success.

  11. Good morning from a Mercian Queen, daughter of Alfred of Wessex ( with longbow and axe )

    A very grey/ dull and miserable day and rather cold for Spring .

    2. ‘Morning Ethel. You seem to have been reincarnated, but good to hear from you again all the same!

      PS Have you ditched the handbag?

      1. Good morning Hugh , Aha ! Still Æthelflæd, this is just the formal title.
        I’ve still got the handbag which contains the blooded axe and longbow – it’s even larger now 🙂 its good to hear from you and Nottl chums too .

  12. Good morning all from Wild Welsh Wales. Still sans laptop charger, so no more than 45min logging on at a time.

    A lovely day yesterday but still with that bitter wind. hopefully it looks a little less windy today.
    This is the place we’re stopping in:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9992405c0705325a18873673d4aa5057d89dd6ea62a3dbc45ab5042c56aa5fd8.jpg

    With views across the estuary:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ba4c88b9286aaf3d73e0affee4e36b5f946d9b7f18eccb8df7ecbb67f0fe43ab.jpg

      1. It is. It’s a most beautiful estuary when the weather is fine. And as well as Port Merion itself there is the other house Williams Ellis lived in to visit. The name escapes me!

      2. It is. It’s a most beautiful estuary when the weather is fine. And as well as Port Merion itself there is the other house the creator lived in to visit. The name escapes me!

    2. Even in Welsh Wales, BoB, there must be electrical shops where you can buy a duplicate lead for your laptop.

      1. If he’s missing the charger it may be tricky to get the right amps/volts ratio never mind the connection.

  13. Donald Trump has said the Queen should strip Harry and Megan of all their titles and he said Harry is whipped and controlled by that woman he’s married more then I’ve ever seen in my life and I’ve known a lot of women .

    2. I rather agree. He wanted a life outside of the public eye – so he said – and has pursued every opportunity to cash in on his title ever since.

      Without it he’s a nobody. Ex prince Harry goes for a walk with his ex Princess Me-again. Nah. Pathetic, narcissistic harpy, that woman.

    3. Wasn’t it Nick Clegg who boasted about the number of women he had slept with?

      I always thought that his wife, Miriam González Durántez, should have asserted her feminist credentials by boasting about how many men she had slept with and saying that this was a far higher number than her husband’s paltry ’30 or so’.

      1. Yes, I do believe you are correct. It did seem implausible and I’ve no idea how Nick Clegg found himself such a vivacious wife.

  14. Dozens of Bucha civilians were killed by metal darts from Russian artillery. 25 April 2022

    Dozens of civilians who died during the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian city of Bucha were killed by tiny metal arrows from shells of a type fired by Russian artillery, forensic doctors have said.

    Pathologists and coroners who are carrying out postmortems on bodies found in mass graves in the region north of Kyiv, where occupying Russian forces have been accused of atrocities, said they had found small metal darts, called fléchettes, embedded in people’s heads and chests.

    These people were simply killed by indirect artillery fire. So much for massacres and atrocities, When this business is over I expect to see pretty well all of these anti-Russian accusations fade away under forensic examination. They will be found to be purely one sided propaganda.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/24/dozens-bucha-civilians-killed-flechettes-metal-darts-russian-artillery

    1. The most damning anti-Russian accusation is that their artillery was in Bucha at all, and that there were bodies there at all, apart from the usual crop down to old age, Covid, etc.

      I am still waiting to hear confirmation from those Russian sources I am permitted to hear that there were no Russian soldiers or artillery across the sovereign border with Ukraine, and that this is all just a bad dream.

    3. The whole point (geddit?) is to cause incapacitating injury. Leads to demoralisation and clogging up the medical system, folowed later by death.

    4. Same as the so called massacre of the people in the steel plant in Mariupol. The Russians are not attacking it but have surrounded it. Putin gave orders days ago that it not be attacked due to the civilians. The hope is that the Ukrainian troops will surrender due to lack of food and water. However, the troops that are holed up in there are the remnants the Azov Neo-Nazis, Mariupol was their headquarters. My fear is that they will murder the civilians as they have done elsewhere, using them as human shields, for instance. These are people, as one might expect, with no sense of decency or morality but dangerous fanatics. But I notice, today, that the MSM is still pretending that the Russians are bombarding the plant mercilessly.

    1. Good morning person who I knew when he had a big mountain gorilla avatar ( going back 14 years.. another place ). What’ s with mentioning your ůpvoťes above every post.. might you forget them.

      1. 352168+ up ticks,

        Morning LOTL,

        They, whoever, started trimming the numbers remember ? so I tallied up mine ongoing, many just accepted the manipulation as they do with their politics.

          2. I’m confused. There is more than one ogga persona? If so which is the real one? The ogga that posts on here seems to be a perfectly reasonable person.

          1. 352168+ up ticks,

            Afternoon N,

            They, whoever, clipped 30000 of off my total so I just tallied up my own from
            the outset I was NOT just going to accept it as many obviously did.

          2. They really don’t matter, ogga – why does it matter so much to you? I can’t remember how many I had but it’s been zero for over two years now.

          3. 352168+ up ticks,

            Evening N,
            As with a great many things “They really don’t matter, ogga” just accept the manipulation as many did, all these little things shows eventually in the most odious manner, for example the current United Kingdom.

          5. 352168+ up ticks,
            N,
            This I have known for decades as a long term member of the genuine UKIP up until the treachery dealt out to Gerard Batten.
            What I learnt long ago was many things of importance especially if beneficial to the United Kingdom were given short shift when handled by the lab/lib/con coalition.

      3. Are you talking about the one called Johnny something (I forget his surname), who was a prolific commentator on the old DT forum for years?

          1. I think his surname began with a ‘W’ but I’m struggling to think what it was.

    2. And the day we can call them mentally ill is when this whole nonsense ends. Stop promoting them, stop embracing them, look on them as a patient needing help with a condition. No, you’re not ‘gender dysphoric’, you’re escaping pain.

      1. 352168+ up ticks,

        Morning W,
        I just know you meant to say bullies, an I could not agree more.

    4. My OH is out on the tennis court today – playing ‘ladies doubles’ – he’s the honorary lady and they are good players.

    1. In the case of Logan his mother had a baby with John Cole, a man with many previous convictions including an attack on a child. Such great father material! Logan was now in the way – the pair even talked about putting him in care but realised this would risk their new baby being put in care also, so that idea was scrapped. Instead, Cole and Williamson killed Logan.

      In addition, the taxpayer was funding this. The mother was epileptic and received £1,500 a month in disability benefits as she was deemed unable to work or drive. She was given a two-bedroom council flat in Bridgend which she did not have to pay rent on. The new ‘partner’ Cole also didn’t work, I suspect because most employers will not hire a man with dozens of convictions including one for violence. Anyway, this is modern Britain – have to get on the train and all that.

      It would be interesting to know how many of these people Social Security has funded over the years.

      1. ‘Timothy Winters’

        Timothy Winters comes to school
        With eyes as wide as a football-pool,
        Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
        A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

        His belly is white, his neck is dark,
        And his hair is an exclamation-mark.
        His clothes are enough to scare a crow
        And through his britches the blue winds blow.

        When teacher talks he won’t hear a word
        And he shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,
        He licks the pattern off his plate
        And he’s not even heard of the Welfare State.

        Timothy Winters has bloody feet
        And he lives in a house on Suez Street,
        He sleeps in a sack on the kithen floor
        And they say there aren’t boys like him anymore.

        Old Man Winters likes his beer
        And his missus ran off with a bombardier,
        Grandma sits in the grate with a gin
        And Timothy’s dosed with an aspirin.

        The welfare Worker lies awake
        But the law’s as tricky as a ten-foot snake,
        So Timothy Winters drinks his cup
        And slowly goes on growing up.

        At Morning Prayers the Master helves
        for children less fortunate than ourselves,
        And the loudest response in the room is when
        Timothy Winters roars “Amen!”

        So come one angel, come on ten
        Timothy Winters says “Amen
        Amen amen amen amen.”
        Timothy Winters, Lord. Amen

        Charles Causley

        1. Good Morning Beautiful Veracity

          This poem was very much in fashion when I did my PGCE at Southampton University in the 1970s

        3. There was a boy like him at my primary school – Billy Pimble was his name. Very dirty and smelly but actually quite a nice boy. Mick Pimble was a bit younger, and just as smelly.

      3. “It would be interesting to know how many of these people Social Security the taxpayer has funded over the years.”

    2. Besides all the other things this government has destroyed because of the insane covid policies, they also have blood on their hands.
      People have always been cruel to children and murdered them but far too much of this occurred during these lock downs because too many agencies were not doing their jobs. Kids weren’t in school where a teacher might well have noticed something.
      My heart breaks for these poor vulnerable little guys…and these are the ones we know about! How many more have slipped through the cracks?

      1. Not to detract from this youngsters plight but the lockdown imposed by the politicians/snivel serpents and their communist ‘scientists’ was an abuser’s charter.

        I don’t suppose there will ever be reliable figures for the victims of domestic abuse over the past two years.

        1. It makes me angry when stuff like this is reported in the papers and they are surprised! Child abuse and murder, domestic abuse, rising obesity, the disruption of education – the list is endless and all because the government panicked over a ‘flu variant.
          Those people in Westminster are a disgrace and should be shamed.

  20. 352168+ up ticks,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    9h
    Macron’s win is a victory for the Globalists. With France disintigrating around them a majority of the French voted for it to continue.

    A Le Pen win would have offered hope for all patriotic Eurpeans. The French have voted to continue to be replaced in their own country, & for their churches to continue to burn down around them.

    We in the United Kingdom are following the same self destruct course via the polling booth.

    https://gettr.com/post/p16xmpv168e

    1. Why is Marine Le Pen always described as Far Right when all her economic policies are Far Left?

      2. Because ‘far right’ is another of the bbc’s bogeymen with which to manipulate the population.

        1. Everyone uses it. It doesn’t describe the politics but the MSMs hatred of the party.

        2. The BBC = one set of ethics/standards, one seeded brain, one monotonous voice, one out let………… One finger one switch and off.

      3. She’s a socialist nationalist but they don’t say that as it might get her more votes.

    2. I walked past a poster at the weekend advocating voting Welsh Labour. My first thought was, “they’ve effed up your economy, your health service and your education system, yet you want more of the same? You’re nuts!”

  21. Good morning, everyone. Walked the dog in the forest this morning. A beautiful experience. Bright sunshine and a forest full of birdsong. The deciduous trees, mainly Silver Birch, have all greened up and the first fern shoots are appearing. Who would want to live anywhere but England?

    2. Good morning DB

      It certainly is a lovely morning .

      Have you heard a cuckoo yet and did you see any Hawfinches high up in the pine trees .

        1. Good morning, Janet. We were just saying the same yesterday. The earliest we have seen them is 3 April in the past.

        3. A pair of swallows suddenly appeared over our garden fro a few days.. then vanished .. perhaps the sparrow hawk had them .

          People fill in their garden ponds , back gardens are developed , barns are converted into twee holiday lets , and Council planners forget about our bird life .

          1. Article in the local news here at the weekend where a road has had huge kerbstones installed, and these are blocking the Salamanders route to their pond. They get stopped at this great stone cliff – and are then squashed by passing cars. Council, who was advised to not do so before installing these curbstones, wringing their hands “Oh! But what can we do??” wail wail.
            Meanwhile, the poor little buggers get squashed.

      2. No cuckoo yet. This time last year our feeders were covered with bluetits etc. Also one of them was using one of our nesting boxes. they have all gone somewhere else.

        1. We have a new bluetit nesting box (Xmas pressie from our n-d-n) and it has a camera in – over the last few days the bluetit has now laid seven eggs – we hope she will be able to feed them all! The timing is crucial to coincide with the little green caterpillars.

        2. I’ve seen a bluetit on my bird feeder. Perhaps it’s a forerunner and they’ll all come to me? 🙂

      3. I’ve had hawfinches on my feeders all winter; as well as bramblings, siskins, goldfinches and a dozen other species.

          1. Shite Machines – even by goose standards.
            “There’s A Loose Goose Aboot This Hoose.”

    4. Me Del, beautiful scenery, soaring sea eagles, Red Kites, dolphins, whales, otters, deer……….

  22. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5094dd632ab46173e1eacee1bdbd1b99bd379bded5097c8725767adf8e1b2a1e.png What? A car driver being given points on his driving licence for crossing over the lane markers? Here in Sweden drivers are pathologically incapable of keeping to their own side of the road. It would appear they have no tuition showing them how to do so. I can never go out for a drive without encountering some idiot Swede driving towards me on my side of the road then swerving away when he/she wakes up! Sometimes it is impossible to overtake a slow-moving vehicle since they insist on taking up the whole road. And those few that do remain in their own lane are incapable of keeping to the right: road-hogging seems to be a national pastime.

    2. It would have still been close if the car was inside the lane marker, why are cyclists going down the middle of the road?

      1. Possibly because some cretin re-wrote the Highway Code and told cyclists to ride in the middle of their lane?

      2. They need to be 1·5 metres away from that double illegally-parked car (on a pavement, and on a single yellow line) in case the cretin who parked it there opens the door without looking; as such twats are wont to do.

        1. I’d have risked that rather than a head on collision with a car coming the other way

        2. Good morning former PC Grizzly, and everyone.
          If it wasn’t safe to pass the stationary car the cyclists should have waited until the road was clear. I haven’t bothered to search for the video clip on yer tube, but if anyone finds it,the link would be appreciated.

          1. My thoughts too. Why does the oncoming car have to watch out for cyclists swerving out to overtake a parked car?
            I recently had a similar situation where a cyclists who was travelling faster than my car, deliberately cycled within a metre of my car. How am I supposed to avoid such idiots?

          2. No cyclist in the photo is “swerving out”. They are taking a natural line to avoid the idiot in the car parked on the pavement, as the Highway Code has always advised.

            If the imbecile in the oncoming car had not swerved over the centre white line (it is glaringly clear that he has done in the photograph) then there would be no danger to anyone.

          3. The cyclist would still be too close to the car for safety. He should have waited to overtake the parked car until there was no oncoming traffic.

          4. Utter rubbish. The cyclist is behaving and riding impeccably. Why are so many motorists hell-bent on finding fault with cyclists even when there is none? And how many of those same motorists are so obsessed with themselves that they consider illegal (and dangerous) parking an OK thing to do? There are only two idiots on that piece of road, and they are the drivers of the two cars shown; both should be given a driving ban.

          5. If I were in the position of the cyclist, and I were driving a car, there is no way I wouldn’t stop and wait for the oncoming vehicle. Sure, the cyclist is a smaller “vehicle” but he also needs a larger gap between him and the cars, so the safe thing to do would be to stop.
            It brings nothing to start blaming other road users in this situation – one just has to think how to avoid contributing to the danger.

          6. Have you not studied and assimilated that photograph properly? The road ahead for those cyclists is clear and there is sufficient room between the illegally parked car and the centre white line for them to proceed safely and unhindered. There is absolutely no need for them to stop and wait. Wait for what? The danger being caused to the cyclists comes from two motorists, both of whom are breaking the law. That point is glaringly clear to anyone seeing the photograph. Sufficiently so to be able to secure prosecutions for both drivers in any court.

          7. The car went over the centre line, it’s true, but had it been just on the correct side of the centre line (only a few centimetres), it would still have been too close for safety to the cyclist, who should have WAITED because he did not have right of way.

          8. You are trying to tell me that a cyclist, who is on his own side of the road, that has no other traffic on it, has to give up his right of way to an oncoming car that has illegally moved over into the cyclist’s lane? Are you really being serious? You would be laughed out of court for that.

          9. No, I’m saying that when overtaking a parked vehicle, it is normal for the overtaking vehicle to give way to the oncoming vehicle.
            The principle here is whether the cyclist is responsible if he deliberately cycles too close to a car. We’ve heard a lot about car drivers being fined for within a certain distance of a cyclist, but logically it follows that a cyclist should also be fined if he deliberately drives too close to a moving car.

          10. A fair point but perhaps the motorist was moving out to overtake a bicycle in front of him, just off to photo right, whilst failing to notice the oncoming cyclist was almost on the dividing line.

            Not arguing your point, merely pointing out that photographs can lie.

          11. Good morning, Tim. “Former PC Grizzly” used to take positive action against selfish wankers who park their cars on pavements. He has seen, on more than one occasion, women pushing prams being obliged to venture into the road in a steam of traffic in order to get around the car blocking their free passage on a pavement. He also saw infirm elderly couples being similarly inconvenienced and endangered.

            If he’d had his way, such offending vehicles would be towed away to a crusher.

          12. Good morning, Tim. “Former PC Grizzly” used to take positive action against selfish wankers who park their cars on pavements. He has seen, on more than one occasion, women pushing prams being obliged to venture into the road in a steam of traffic in order to get around the car blocking their free passage on a pavement. He also saw infirm elderly couples being similarly inconvenienced and endangered.

            If he’d had his way, such offending vehicles would be towed away to a crusher.

    3. If you look closely you can see that the Peugeot is being driven by a baby panda bear!

    4. …and, from my experience, George, there’s not so much traffic on Swedish roads.

    6. Only this morning the resident radio and TV agent provocateur/ inciter Vine, was spouting the glories of the penny farthing Bicycle. yesterday was Penny farthing day in London. zzzzzzzz. He went on to predict that in ten years time thousands of people will be ridding these ridiculous and very dangerous unstable contraptions around Britain.
      I think most people in the UK now might agree that it’s time cyclists paid for a public liability insurance cover as they seem to be incapable of avoiding trouble.

      1. Double bloody bogey 6!
        Wordle 310 6/6

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

    1. America’s Founders understood clearly that private property is not only the foundation of prosperity but also the foundation of every right we have, including the right to be free. While justly criticizing Russia’s unprovoked aggression, the free press and media of the Western world should not forget to highlight that any systematic trampling of property rights can only come at great moral and economic cost to itself in the long term.

      Cromwell understood this as well. Hence his refusal to have anything to do with the Levellers or the seizure of Private Property!

    1. To be fair. That is far more likely to be cellophane which is not a plastic but is commonly used with food products.

    1. Funny, but how does wearing a Johnny “destroy” the next generation? Would the clown who invented this meme wish every human to breed unlimited offspring?

  29. A few weeks ago , when I was shopping in one of the supermarkets I visit.

    I witnessed a rather bad situation .. with what anyone one would call a rough family.. bad attitude to 3 small children .

    Shopping and budgetting is a nightmare which requires some concentration .. so I do feel sorry for everyone who shops these days.. I need my eyes testing , have an appointment late May.. , but I bung most fresh stuff into the basket .. we don’t drink these days so that cuts down on the bill.

    Anyway the family I saw had real problems , youngsters had a particular wail .. the type of wail that lonely hungry dogs have . Parents/ partners or who ever they were , short tempered yelling types , no gentleness, young children just being dragged around the store .. male filling up the trolley with booze , and junk food .

    The woman looked like a thin spikey tattooed breeding machine … one who drops her new born babies with ease , a production unit.. so slim and fecund .. probably men run around to get to her like bees to honey … mean looking high eyebrowed thin little face ..

    Am I being judgmental … She didn’t look like mothering material , and those wailing children , oh dear .

    1. Yes, very similar to my experience . Yes shopping isn’t a very pleasant experience In supermarkets ( since mine, we tend to have the groceries delivered most of the time ) .
      As you say, people running wild with no respect and some of the mothers don’t look remotely like mothering material . Are you not able to set up grocery deliveries.. Waitrose and Ocado ( which are separate now ) are both very good ,

    2. Below might help them if they can read.
      But have you noticed that we now get Grapes from Africa and India, tomatoes from Morocco green veg from Spain butternut squash from Argentina !!
      How green is all this Boros ?
      We did once see garlic bulbs from china until we found out how they fertilised their plants. That went in the recycle bin.
      I grow our own now.
      https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/asda-and-morrisons-drop-prices-to-help-struggling-shoppers/ar-AAWyHbn?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=cbf1ff7ccdd94c3e9b7a261c54b53691

  30. Hmmm

    “A fire has erupted at a key Russian oil depot and a second

    military site near the Ukrainian border, Russian authorities said early

    Monday.

    Social media accounts based in Russia’s Bryansk region shared footage of what they described as explosions and a fire

    at the Transneft-Druzhba depot. The state-run oil export company’s

    subsidiary runs one of the world’s longest oil pipelines from Russia to

    Europe.”

    Oh Well,what could possibly go wrong……….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb9c1db952cb91519f55bcc2abc8aa59c36178cf23003e8e232d663927d32484.jpg

  32. Awhile ago I came across a situation that distressed me, I didn’t know whether it was my imagination or otherwise- but it made me feel uncomfortable and worried about a little boy .

    I was in Sainsburys, it was quiet early one morning, there was a woman ( presumably the little boys mother) who was grabbing the little boy by the wrist and calling him bad and stupid.
    The little boy kept staring at me with a sad look on his face – he was looking at me whenever he saw me. The mother didn’t know I was near but as soon as she spotted me, she started being nice to the little boy and smiling at him- he still didnt look happy .
    It might have been my imagination- she might have been a busy harassed mother and he was being naughty. But with some of the awful things you read in the papers – it makes you more aware but also sadly less trusting .

    1. I had an identical experience , please see my comment 26minutes ago .

      Shopping and mingling with people are very stressful experiences .. and always have been .

    2. That would have been my reaction; especially when she turned all nice when she knew you were looking.
      How well do you know any of the staff at the shop?

      1. That’s what I thought when she turned all nice, if she continued telling him off after giving me ‘ a mind you’re own business ‘ look then I’d have just thought her a harnessed mother . The little boy had a sadness about him. No I didn’t know anyone who works in the shop, it wasn’t local.

    1. As discussed in Brave New World…
      the ultimate destruction of the family and power for the world government.

      They can play Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab on a loop to the developing babies, telling them that injections are good and they will own nothing and be happy.

      1. “The family is the enemy of the state and the state will never realise its potential fully until the family is totally destroyed.”

        [Friedrich Engels]

        A good word for an artificial womb could be a Schwab – it has a certain ring to it!

  35. Italy is officially becoming the first country to start rationing energy after cutting their supply of Russian gas and oil.

    From next month, until at least March 2023, public buildings across the nation will be banned from running air conditioning at lower than 25 degrees, or heating higher than 19 degrees.

    The plan, termed “Operation Thermostat” in the press, is being sold as a way for ordinary people to show “solidarity” with the people of Ukraine, with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi saying:

    Do we want to have peace or do we want to have the air conditioning on?”

    https://off-guardian.org/2022/04/22/operation-thermostat-energy-rationing-the-pivot-from-ukraine-to-climate/

    1. Along with vaxx mandates and experimental social credit systems. Italy is just the first to fall.

        1. That’s very interesting, thank you. I’ll try to persuade the owner to dig and see if we can find any bulbs. The house is rather isolated, which would tend to protect the plants from this kind of invasion, but it is definitely a possibility.

    3. All public buildings should be kept at 21 degrees, to allow the publicly-funded IT systems to work at their optimum temps. The human workers – or at least those snivel serpents who actually attend their workplace – can wear a jumper if feeling cool.

    4. All public buildings should be kept at 21 degrees, to allow the publicly-funded IT systems to work at their optimum temps. The human workers – or at least those snivel serpents who actually attend their workplace – can wear a jumper if feeling cool.

  36. Thanks to Alf for the heads up- today is world penguin day. Any fish will be gratefully accepted 😉

    1. I was going to make stock for a paella but i can let you have a fish head. It’s not too smelly.

        1. I treated myself to a kilo of langoustines. £20. Only need to use 3 or 4 plus the mixed bag of seafood. The shells should make a good stock.

          Not over keen on salmon unless it’s teriyaki style.

          1. I’ll look around for them. Had totally forgotten that they existed. I’m sure there are many things I have forgotten but are still around. Used to love those little cardboard barrels of sherbet with a liquorice stick in them. But I haven’t seen those anywhere.

          3. That’s them! Not made anymore. I did find a recipe on how to make that type of sherbet though.

    4. Don’t for get these little Beauties
      https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=qO%2blpsqV&id=7BEEF0700E5E5D21CD08941ED3C18679B457CD55&thid=OIP.qO-lpsqVcPNPiQsZefelPgHaEx&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fi.pinimg.com%2foriginals%2fe3%2fa7%2f0e%2fe3a70e3b7499ecffa34d639bfbc0e97a.jpg&cdnurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR.a8efa5a6ca9570f34f890b1979f7a53e%3frik%3dVc1XtHmGwdMelA%26pid%3dImgRaw%26r%3d0&exph=1667&expw=2586&q=little+penguins+phillip+island+australia&simid=608048531970352098&FORM=IRPRST&ck=B08ECBB37D2723134770A4D63FA8C1AC&selectedIndex=0

      1. I wasn’t able to answer this question from you because reply was locked. But, you asked: “… do you really think that our oceans and forests are in good nick.”

        Here is an answer to the forest problem. Things are improving
        https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/state-of-the-worlds-forests
        I would also suggest that you go to You Tube, type in, reclaiming the worlds forests, and see what comes up. I think you will be surprised.

        But it seems to be a human trait that successes are not publicised or are not news, only relentless negativity take centre stage. It is lazy journalism. Journalism in the service of sensationalism.

        With regard to the worlds seas, things are not good. When it comes to the West and to most of the world fishing behaviour and preservation has improved. There are things like this going on https://theoceancleanup.com/
        and this
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfTHWLEXpSc

        However. I would say the major problem with regards to the oceans is China who’s fishing policy, if you can call it a policy, is to go almost anywhere in the world and fish a certain area until there is nothing left but devastation. They even invade protected marine sanctuaries and destroy them. https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-chinas-expanding-fishing-fleet-is-depleting-worlds-oceans. Until the Chinese behaviour is firmly dealt with the seas will continue to deteriorate. Frankly, I think that whenever a Chinese fishing fleet invades, the policy should be to sink them out of hand.

        1. There is an old Fleet Street Adage, Johnathan, to the effect that good news doesn’t sell papers.

          3. It is unhappily all to true. There are so many achievements that have been made but you wouldn’t think so. Instead people are taught we are on the edge of disaster which is not the case at all.

  39. Here we go again:
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10748097/WHO-1-child-died-mystery-liver-disease-outbreak.html

    One hepatitis-stricken child has DIED and 17 have needed liver transplants because of mysterious spate of cases first spotted in the UK, WHO says
    169 cases of ‘acute hepatitis of unknown origin’ have been recorded worldwide
    The World Health Organization did not say which country the death occurred in
    At least 114 cases have been found in Britain and up to 11 were in the US

    I found that the Q&A was slightly disturbing

  40. 352168+ up ticks,

    For people who want REAL change and for those that must admit in supporting / voting lab/lib/con they have done enough to make a basket case of England / GB.
    In the last four decades via the polling booth the electorate are guilty of STARK child neglect,long term cover up of rape & abuse,
    guilty ongoing of the child suffering mentally in adulthood.

    The electorate are STILL backing the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella coalition, ongoing.

    https://gettr.com/user/AMDWaters

    1. Did anyone ask why civilians are holed up in a steel works. Wouldnt be the place I would run to if the Rissians invaded.

      1. The Azov Battalion, who are the Ukrainian military holed up there, have a long tradition of using civilians as human shields, bargaining chips etc. After all they are Nazi’s and learnt their tactics from the masters. When the Russians created safe passage from other places for civilians to escape, the Azov battalion, simply shot at those trying to flee in order to blame the Russians. There are also videos of them taking photos of people trying to leave on buses and telling them that if they left, once the Ukrainians had won, they would be executed as traitors. The Azov are the lowest of the low, really terrorists, it is an insult to ordinary military men to dignify then as soldiers. They even threaten the ordinary soldiers of the Ukrainian army in order to get their way. They are also the ones caught knee capping prisoners and then shooting them in the genitals. Evil people.

  42. Four people found stabbed to death in horror in Bermondsey. 25 April 2022.

    Three women and a man were found stabbed to death in their family home in south east London early on Monday.

    Neighbours described waking up to a “bloodbath” and “scenes of carnage” in Bermondsey.

    Police were called to reports of a disturbance at a three-bedroom terraced house on Delaford Road about 1.40am..

    Everyday Life (and Death) in modern England.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/southwark-bermondsey-stabbing-delaford-road-london-police-b996048.html

    1. This is an odd one as while the suspect is not named, pointing at the usuals, they usually go for public events with lots of people to kill. Black kids tend to stab each other, rather than families.

      Dear life. What have I become.

        1. Southwark Cathedral, St. Mary Overie, was my school church when I was at grammar school. That was where the disaster with Benjamin Britten’s 150th psalm occurred;-)

          2. It’s a nice building and old. Borough Market has been jazzed up but I think the George Inn is still the same. Haven’t been back there for years. All same vicinity.

          3. Worked at Palace House, just round the corner, in the late 1990s.
            Remember fondly the Market Porter pub, and their bacon sandwiches for Friday lunch, with a few pints of Pride to wash them down.

      2. Interesting that Sadik Khan promptly sent a tweet in sympathy.

        He usually only does that for his co-religionists………….but maybe this is an exception?.

    2. “A man has been arrested.”

      This very graphic and detailed description of the man leaves nothing to the imagination.

  44. Sadiq reveals his priorities for lawless London. 25 April 2022.

    It’s not just The Smiths who warned of panic on the streets of London. The capital’s crime rate isn’t doing terribly well these days with five stabbings, a shooting and an acid attack all in the past week. Indeed, 2021 was a record year for teenage homicides in the great metropolis. Even former boxing champion Amir Khan has now claimed the capital is ‘a very dangerous place to visit’ after being mugged of his £70,000 watch, telling Sadiq Khan to ‘pull his finger out’ over the issue.

    Fortunately, it seems that the city’s beloved mayor has indeed finally listened. For this morning Sadiq published his advice to wannabe crime busters on the streets of London, tweeting that ‘violence against women and girls starts with words’ and ordering the capital’s youths to cut a series of ‘sexist phrases’ out of ‘your vocabulary.’ Among the list of offending words include – gasp – the label ‘drama queen’ and – shock – the use of the word ‘crazy’ to describe a former partner.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3f7207622f9a9d0657490a619f25ee6007bcc8d10ca0412c2dba6c19ce1d4d61.png

    “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!”

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sadiq-reveals-his-priorities-for-lawless-london

    2. That man is completely out of touch and mad to boot. Nothing to do with drugs or knives of course…

    3. Pak muslims treat their women as chattels and white women as easy meat. Start with them Khan.

  45. Amusing analysis:

    Regime-ology is an evolving field where people try to understand what is happening inside the ruling regime of the Global American Empire. Given that the regime is a black box, we must analyze the signals that come from various regime media organs in order to get a picture of what is happening inside. Regime-ology is an emerging set of methodologies for analyzing elite media and behavior.

    One bit of good news for those working in regime-ology is the Global American Empire believes it needs crisis in order to maintain itself. It goes around the world smashing things up so that a crisis ensues and the empire can respond. Because it is a big, complicated world and the managerial class is also big and complicated, it means lots of signaling from the various media nodes of the regime. We have lots of data.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/the-fog-of-regime-ology/

    The final paragraph:

    Of course, the fact that regime-ology exists speaks to the problems within the liberal democracies of the West. If they were liberal and democratic, debate would be in the open and everyone’s position would be clear. What the use of regime-ology in analyzing the war in Ukraine reveals is that the real crisis is not in the Donbas but in the capital of every Western power. The West has become that which it claims to oppose.

    My emphasis.

    1. I think so – he said last night that he’d be going today and back here on Saturday.

        1. Phizzz, what was the name of that ointment you suggested as pain relief; I can’t remember. I am going to call GP soon as we have go to Boots tomorrow for a prescription for MH.
          I will fill people in later but I want to see if he can phone a scrip through so I can get it tomorrow.

          2. Thank you. I have phoned the GP and asked for something and am hoping it will be phoned through asap.

          4. Thank you very much. I am still calming down after my phone call to the hospital.
            Sod this bloody government to hell.

          6. Excuse my butting in, was it Lanacane Lotle? I seem to remember someone mentioning it as an analgesic a few days ago

  49. What is the point of insurance when insurance companies put more effort into avoiding helping than they do into helping?

    They’ve said as the floor wasn’t damaged under their policy, they’re not interested.

    Now going to get a builder in to look at the problem. I often wonder if I shouldn’t just blow the place up. Do I walk away from it entirely and say ‘stuff it’, accept only getting 10% on what we paid or spend what could be a money pit of costs on fixing the problems for someone else so I can sell it?

    While the warqueen earns a lot, we’re not exactly especially sensible. She has two cars, I’ve my little one. Mongo’s not cheap and the stabling for the Mare isn’t peanuts. Maybe my decision to sell up at cost was stupid. Maybe we should have sorted the roof earlier. It’s just a blasted money pit, and throwing what could be £20K on somewhere we want to sell – but probably *won’t sellf* if we don’t do the work seems pointless.

    I do networks,fibre, network penetration, not joists and frames and flooring yet I feel I’ve let my family down by having bugger all practical skills. Part of the issue is we bought this place thinking we’d be grand fixer uppers, wearing dungarees and weilding a paintbrush but in reality she’s happy in Channel (or whatever it’s called) and once it gets beyond Ikea I’m useless.

    1. That’s a right bugger, that is.
      We could spend a fortune on Mother’s place to make it desirable, but I doubt we’d get it back, and TBH, the place may well be bought by a developer for demolition and turning into a block of flats. Money wasted.
      I guess you need to see if paying for a fix will bring in more money than selling as-is.
      Also, try an Ombudsman. Dispute (means diving into small print) the insurance company’s decision. At worst, you’ll use a load of their management time and cost them a few squids. Bastards!
      Nil illegitimi carborundum…

      1. A lot of people now buy rather unloved houses fairly cheaply and “flip” them. Do them all up, new kitchen etc and then sell again for a larger amount.

        1. Yes. I have seen that in my street. Though the bungalow has been improved, the price goes up £40,000.

    1. Was the lack of migrants crossing the channel due to the French keeping them there to vote for Macron.

    2. There was a cold, north-east wind blowing – or maybe they don’t fancy being sent to Rwanda?

  51. Cricket, but not as we knew it:
    The 2022 Wisden is possibly the most depressing since the edition of 1917, which carried the list of cricketers who had died on the Somme, and in the other appalling battles of the previous year.

    The misery the new edition inspires is twofold: the recognition of the truly dismal state of English cricket, and of the idiocy of many who run it; and the editor’s obsession with signalling the Wisden brand’s virtue about the offensive treatment of non-white people by some unpleasant white ones and, to a lesser extent, the profile of women in the game.

    Lawrence Booth, Wisden’s editor, has form on political grandstanding. Last year he demonstrated poor judgment by endorsing the stunt of ‘taking the knee’ before matches. It was a misjudgment not because there is anything wrong-headed about abhorring racism; but it was naïve not to realise that Black Lives Matter, whose signature gesture is ‘taking the knee’, is in Britain a mainly anarchist organisation committed to the overthrow of capitalism. Manipulative (and often white) extremists exploit the vulnerability of ethnic minorities to make political points that, unlike anti-racism, are thoroughly offensive to most people. I deplore having to write about such things in a cricket column, but if Wisden must continue obsessing with politics, a cricket columnist cannot ignore the ramifications.

    We are spared a repeat of that advice. However, Booth not only mentions the racism controversy, triggered by the former Yorkshire player Azeem Rafiq’s experiences with his county, in his Editor’s Notes: he has also commissioned a separate article by Rafiq himself, whose testimony one must take at face value; there is another article on what happened at Yorkshire, which makes many of the same points; and the self-flagellation continues in an article about rebel tours to South Africa in the apartheid era (though this at least does allow some players involved to defend themselves) and an article by Charles Barr, a distinguished film historian, about Philip Larkin’s interest in cricket. This inevitably carries health warnings about the poet’s unlovely views about black people.

    But overkill really sets in with Booth’s decision to print an abridgment of the annual MCC Cowdrey Spirit of Cricket lecture, given last November by Stephen Fry. Fry is a gifted and likeable man, with a genuine love of cricket; but this lecture is not his finest intellectual achievement. He knows, and uses, every trick of the evangelist’s trade to hammer home his point about the evil of racism; after weltering in self-deprecation about his unfitness to give this lecture, he takes the classic advocate’s approach of dehumanising the enemy he is attacking while regarding the argument he is advancing as beyond criticism. Talking about the Rafiq controversy he calls it one of those “unsavoury scandals” that creates a “choking miasma”, with Yorkshire exuding a “mephitic stink” that was smelt around the world.

    Fry has endured mental health problems, for which any compassionate person should accord him sympathy; and he mentions how he suffered bullying at school, but used his superior wit to defeat his tormentors. Thus he claims an understanding of the misery and alienation felt by players – Rafiq and other victims of racism – abused and insulted by team-mates, and left to twist in the wind by those who should have protected them. As a homosexual man, Fry said he felt that “manly cricket and the manly world of manly men” didn’t accept people such as him. But the law changed to allow Fry equal rights, including getting married; and cricket has changed, too. Fry loathes conservatism in cricket, even when it can hurt nobody: he mocks one of the few constituencies of people still allowed to be ridiculed with impunity, saying that “white balls and black sightscreens threatened the sanity of Telegraph readers everywhere.” He is zealously up-to-date with all the new language, dropping “batters” and the ludicrous “men’s Ashes” into his remarks, and ridiculing those who would attack him for being “woke”.

    Wisden must be careful. All sane people – which includes Telegraph readers – will abhor any player at any level being treated by team-mates or officials in a manner different from every other player. Similarly, anyone who loves cricket would want the women’s game to be encouraged.

    However, the overkill on the race controversy represents a determination to instruct Wisden’s readers about their thought and their behaviour. Most people do not require such re-education; but sport will always attract its share of less educated, immature and insensitive men whose overload of testosterone will make them less susceptible to reason and control, now and for evermore. One was Rafiq himself, who has owned up to youthful anti-semitism and who, to his credit, has apologised. Fry is entitled to disdain ‘manliness’, and to use excessively colourful language to ridicule the way cricket has been run, but need not expect many to agree with him, or to feel the need to do so. He can regard the Gentlemen v Players fixture as a cause of shame, which shows an interesting grasp of historical context; but if he thinks he can excise male aggression, in all its unpleasant manifestations, from competitive sport, he is unduly optimistic.

    A rather smug photograph shows those present at Fry’s lecture giving him a standing ovation. It must have sounded better than it reads, which is as a personal testament and not a serious insight into a troubled game. Had Booth dealt more concisely with the Yorkshire controversy he might have made his important point about common decency far more effectively. He might, also, have found room – as used to be the case – for articles outside the obituaries pages for two conspicuous England greats who died last year: Ray Illingworth and Ted Dexter. But both were white, neither was female, one was a toff and the other guiltier of an even more shocking sin: he was a Yorkshireman. The perspective is awry, and anti-historical, and many readers won’t like it.

    To be fair to Booth he is alert to how Test and championship cricket are being wrecked by stupid, venal administrators; but it is a pity he has concentrated on political matters and not on how, or if, serious cricket could be saved. Less and less Test cricket is being played; we are in the era, for most countries, of the two-Test series. It may not be long before English crowds have to get used to something similar.

    If Booth remains editor he might like to devote extensive space next year to debating how to save serious cricket, which it is clear (from remarks this year) the Almanack believes is under existential threat. For now, Wisden seems to be doing its bit to drive away traditional cricket lovers – not because such people are inevitably racist or sexist, but precisely because they aren’t; and are sick of being lectured as if they were by a book where the balance between politics and play has been seriously disturbed.

    With luck, the Almanack is just going through a rather unfortunate phase. It is a shame the same cannot be said about cricket.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2022/04/25/wisden-has-turned-depressingly-woke-political-pamphlet/

    1. That makes my four Feel Better, sweetie … x
      Wordle 310 4/6

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

      2. Again, getting the first, second and fourth letters on the second attempt does not mean that you are going to guess the others successfully.
        Wordle 310 5/6

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

    3. I took all six to get it today. Are we all looking for the same word or does wordle choose them randomly?

  53. Politics latest news: Sir Lindsay Hoyle calls meeting with Mail on Sunday editor over ‘demeaning’ Angela Rayner story
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/25/boris-johnson-angela-rayner-partygate-fines-brexit-ukraine-news/

    I will do such things—
    What they are, yet I know not, but they shall be
    The terrors of the earth!”

    This is a quotation from ‘King Lear’ where the poor old king is completely impotent and does not know what to do with his two foul daughters, Goneril and Regan.

    Boris Johnson seems to have become totally impotent so this choice of quotation was very appropriate.

    1. You’d think that a woman who occupies a front-bench seat would dress more appropriately than a slit front dress.

      1. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath made an apt observation which could be applied to this woman.

        Cheap and shoddy goods that come to market are deemed to be of little value.

        (A paraphrase I am afraid – I shall look up the precise quotation when I come across my copy of the Canterbury Tales)

        1. I have observed that my French friends pronounce that City with a heavy emphasis on the second syllable. Takes one a second or two t work it out..!

          1. Wrong emphasis can be confusing. It took me a while to work our what was meant by aripotTERRE. It was only when a wizard was mentioned that the name clicked!

  55. Hello again; no letter today so called the hospital. As it’s “not urgent” , my skin thingy, it could be up to 6 months before I get an appointment. The woman I spoke to has left a message for someone to call me back tomorrow. I called my GP and asked if he could get a prescription phoned to Boots tomorrow as we are already going to collect one for MH. Seems like it may happen- already had a text from GP and I phoned the surgery again to say my phone was not on internet so asked her to tell him that I am currently on no medications at all. ( Well, apart from Pinot.)
    So they want me to wait for 6 months in constant pain because it’s not urgent. Words fail me. It will drive me even more nuts than I already am.
    Sorry that this is so rambling but I am in despair. The pain is ever present but it’s not urgent.
    Sod this bloody government.
    Thanks to Phizzee for responding about the ointment which I will ask about in Boots.
    This penguin might get a bit sozzled tonight.

    1. Can you go private, Ann? Whilst it’s expensive, to be quit pain is worth almost anything. At least, to get the process moving… six months is just bollox – be better to go to DR Congo and get it dealt with!
      KBO!

        1. Why should you…?
          I’ve been paying into the NHS since I was sweet sixteen believing it was there when needed.

          I want my money back!

          5. He’s been very kind today in finding the name of that ointment today so I can ask in Boots. Don’t faint- I said nice things about Phizzee.

          9. I recall going to a pharmacie in 1973 and asking, in French, for a treatment for “piles” I elaborated. The lady enquired – gently – why I had batteries up my arse.

          10. That reminds me of a village function when I said I was very old: “plus ancien” and the locals heard it as “plus enceinte”.

            Much laughter, tears rolling down the cheeks of the women present and it put us very firmly into the community when I laughed as they explained!

          11. And the spoonerific announcer, when talking about how many people lived in Agde, who mentioned ‘le copulation du Pape’ 🙂

    3. https://www.ceoemail.com/uk-nhs-chiefs.php

      Lottie, Alf has used the above link and found it very useful to contact the CEO of the hospital Trust direct. It may help, if you feel like putting in a complaint. You’ll find your email will filter down to a certain level but it will certainly be better than starting at the bottom and hoping it will rise to the top.

      We have realised you must be proactive about your health worries and conditions otherwise you are just ignored. Good luck. Hope it’s of help.

    4. At least there’s a chance you might get something done. It’s been over a year since my SIJ became such a problem and there is currently no prospect of getting anything sorted.

  57. HAPPY HOUR – NoTTlers Welcome to:

    The Wonderful World of WORDLE Wannabes.

    Brave New Wordle – for atlas addicts
    Planetary War-dle – for Jedi wordsmiths
    Lordle of the Rings – for Members of the Fellowship of the Lingo

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/37512fa7694fbf62a96285bcf01fb8032bca1f2e4818fb7ed3a563a62e42f7e0.jpg

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10748709/From-Taylor-Swift-lyrics-Star-Wars-trivia-welcome-Wonderful-world-Wordle-wannabes.html

    1. One has to ask why is it, if they are so incompetent, they were so successful in Syria? So yes, it is obviously propaganda just like the massacres that the Ukrainians allege the Russians have been committing against the civilian population and which have been dismissed by the UN because there is no evidence.

      1. Can’t find the wreckage of planes and tanks apparently shot down/up; no bodies of soldiers… it’s all crap.

  59. Well – that was the shortest holiday on record. Two hours from door back to door.

    Our cunning plan of saving £320 each for a cab to LHR and the risks of BA cancelling etc etc – all came to bugger all.

    We arrived at Norwich, boarding passes in hand paid the daft Airport Development Fee and prepared to remove shoes and belts etc – to be told that there was “a problem” by Security..

    Indeed there was – is. There is industrial action at Schiphol – so no flight from Norwich; no onward flight tomorrow; and even if there WAS, no certainty of return flights…..

    So two hours from leaving full of the joys etc – we are back home. And starting the laborious process of getting refunds etc…

    1. Really sorry Bill that’s a bummer to the start of a holiday. Two hours and kaput!

    3. What a lot of BS. So sad for you and the MR. No doubt Gus and Pickles are thrilled.

    6. Oh no! Is giving in to BA direct from LHR an option? Would that mean starting all over with the paperwork?

      1. No guarantee that we could get to LHR (one needs to allow 4 hours); no guarantee of space on a BA flight; no certainty that the return KLM flights on Friday would take off.

        And yes, the EU PLF would need to be redone….

        The MR is in tears…

          2. I’m so sorry about your misery, Bill. I can’t imagine how you must both be feeling having waited so long for a well earned break. Give MR a big hug and open a nice bottle – then rail against the world! Thinking of you both.

        1. We feel for you – we are going to try to get to Turkey on May 9th – probably for the last time as we are planning to sell Mianda. A necessary misery

          1. One of those life-changing moments.
            Just a thought.
            Sell on the internet and deliver her yourselves as the last hurrah.

          2. Sell it three times on the internet and come out with a nice profit… (Just say you are a refugee)…..

    8. Sorry to hear that, BT. It’s not even a SNAFU as the situation isn’t close to what we once knew as normal.

      1. Cancelled the Rome one – hoping they will not apply the full charge “cancellation fee”.
        Schiphol hotel cancelled without fuss.
        Money wasted on pre-bought tickets for Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli on Wed and the Forum on Thursday….
        Waiting for the MR to attack KLM and get refund PLUS €250 compo per person………….I’ll bet they will wriggle out of that.

    12. I’m so sorry to read that. You deserved your break after all the hassles of lockdown.

    15. Oh no…….so sorry to hear that when you’d been looking forward to a few days in Rome!

      I hope you can rearrange for another date.

    17. So disappointing. You must both be feeling as flat as the proverbial shrove Tuesday offering. At times like this one has to be philosophical, it wasn’t meant to be. Que sera, sera. A door closes, another opens. But for this evening, medicine (large) is the requirement.

    18. How absolutely rotten. Very sorry to hear it. Hope you have better luck next time.

    20. Sorry to hear that, Bill. What a pain. Console yourself with the thought that you could have been held up for days in Terminal 5 at LHR and BA could have bumped you to boot.

        1. I think my Learned Friend may have a point, there.

          Though Cap d’Ail has the wealthiest population in the Sarf of France.

          1. Le Pen might cost them as individuals but do you suspect that they know what Macron will cost France and don’t like what he wants?

  61. “I’m ready to listen to the people, says Emmanuel Macron after election victory”

    Well, Toy Boy – what the f*ck have you been doing over the last FIVE years?

    1. “I’m ready to listen to the people, says Emmanuel Macron after election victory, but if they think I’ll act accordingly, they are as stupid as I think they are”
      ” err, let me correct that. I’m still President, they are even stupider than I thought they were.”

      1. Want a larf? Apparently Mélenchon thinks that his “far-left” party (a description NEVER applied by the UK MSM) will romp home in the June Assemblée elections and that he will be Prime Minister.

    2. I read that Le Pen was ahead by a quarter of a million votes a half hour before Macron was declared the winner.

      Dinesh D’Souza has released a trailer for his new film ‘2000 Mules’ which shows another of the means, apart from Dominion tallying machines, by which Biden was enabled to steal 10 million votes in the 2020 election. Mules were paid large sums to stuff the ‘innovative’ Ballot Drop-Boxes in the early hours.

      I suspect Macron was up to similar tricks. He is truly the most repulsive of men and a globalist stooge like our own ghastly Fataturk.

      1. It is not that easy in yer France. They are old fashioned enough still to have people counting bits of paper. Postal votes are virtually unknown.

        I was disappointed but think it is a north-south divide – the “Red Wall” at the Loire, if you like.

  62. That’s me, folks, for this gut-wrenching day. I spent the drive to Narridge thinking about about a nice Dutch meal this evening – a huge Mercure hotel breakfast (free – or, rather, in the room price because we are OAPs) – and supper tomorrow in our fave resto in Trastevere…… Plus a wander round the Capitoline tomorrow arvo.

    Funny thing this morning. G & P have only been left alone at the house once. So they are not used to suitcases and all that holiday stuff. But – we couldn’t find Gus – after breakfast. I assumed he had gone back out. Nope – he was asleep next to the cases on the spare bed, lying on the clothes I was going to change into for the trip. He never goes in there. Is that spooky or spooky??

    Anyway – have a jolly evening. And thanks for your sympathetic messages.

    A demain (unfortunately…{:¬(((…)

    1. Cats always know when you’re planning to leave them and go somewhere. At least you hadn’t put them in a cattery.

    4. Dear Bill

      I am shocked , really shocked and saddened to read about your collapsed holiday plans .

      Please relax this evening , try to unwind now and assess the situation in the morning .

      Virtual hugs to both of you .

      Your pusscats probably know more than you think… prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr x

  64. Watch and listen to this awful creature, with an MD after his name, admit that the mRNA gene therapies do not meet the minimal efficacy limit for being used but still insists that children receive the jab for their well-being. He must know that myocarditis can and does follow jabs, along with other side-effects. What, exactly, is driving him to make these outrageous suggestions when the science proves the serums are useless and he agrees with that fact?
    The following few seconds of Trudeau are vomit inducing. Steve Bannon and Naomi Wolf destroy the MD’s stance.

    Steve Bannon’s War Room with Naomi Wolf

  66. China’s latest Covid lunacy will soon be felt around the world

    Two years after the pandemic took a grip, the economic consequences of trying to stop it are far from over

    TELEGRAPH VIEW • 25 April 2022 • 6:00am

    The ongoing madness that underpins China’s zero-Covid strategy continues to wreak havoc in the People’s Republic and will soon be felt around the world.

    The weeks-long lockdowns of Shanghai and Shenzhen, two of the world’s largest cities, financial centres and ports, will have a knock-on effect on the global economy, already reeling from the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    The latter has hit commodity supplies, threatening food shortages in countries that rely on grain shipment from Ukraine. China is the world’s biggest exporter of consumer and tech goods which are either not being produced or will be stuck as supply lines seize up.

    For the people trapped in their homes, as officials in hazmat suits patrol the streets to arrest anyone who transgresses the lockdown, things are bad. Food is running out, children are taken away to hostels, entire apartment blocks are evacuated for fumigation – all in the name of eradicating a virus that is now more infectious than ever.

    China’s vaccine programme, especially among the elderly, is far behind the West’s – largely because the regime promised to “defeat Covid” but can’t. It is trapped in a spiral where to change policy now is to appear weak, which is anathema to totalitarian governments.

    The wider ramifications are still to be felt. One in five container ships remain stuck at ports worldwide, with 30 per cent of the backlog coming from China. Controls in Shenzhen have been lifted but if they remain in Shanghai for much longer the supply chain impact will be considerable.

    This will inevitably have an effect on costs and prices just at a time when inflation is at its highest rate for many years and people are already feeling a cost-of-living crunch. Two years after the pandemic took a grip, the economic consequences of trying to stop it are far from over.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/04/25/chinas-latest-covid-lunacy-will-soon-felt-around-world/

    It’ll certainly be felt around the world if governments take their lead from the Chinese as they did two years ago. As for tech goods stuck in ports – that’s more likely to create a public outcry in nations hooked on their mobiles.

    1. The principal opposition to the Dear Leader staying in office for life just happens to be based in Shanghai. The brutal and inhuman treatment of the population of Shanghai is deliberate and most likely a message to that opposition: “we are in control and can do what we like”.

      1. Exactly, it’s not about disease control. How could it be when China has long had cases of pneumonic plague which, unlike covid, really IS deadly yet has never responded with any such drastic action.

        1. My handbag has “Radley, London” stamped on the outside. You have to dig well down inside to find “Made in China”. The deception is widespread.

          1. I wanted to buy a suit of armour. Yep, you’ve guessed it there was a chink in the armour…

  67. China’s latest Covid lunacy will soon be felt around the world

    Two years after the pandemic took a grip, the economic consequences of trying to stop it are far from over

    TELEGRAPH VIEW • 25 April 2022 • 6:00am

    The ongoing madness that underpins China’s zero-Covid strategy continues to wreak havoc in the People’s Republic and will soon be felt around the world.

    The weeks-long lockdowns of Shanghai and Shenzhen, two of the world’s largest cities, financial centres and ports, will have a knock-on effect on the global economy, already reeling from the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    The latter has hit commodity supplies, threatening food shortages in countries that rely on grain shipment from Ukraine. China is the world’s biggest exporter of consumer and tech goods which are either not being produced or will be stuck as supply lines seize up.

    For the people trapped in their homes, as officials in hazmat suits patrol the streets to arrest anyone who transgresses the lockdown, things are bad. Food is running out, children are taken away to hostels, entire apartment blocks are evacuated for fumigation – all in the name of eradicating a virus that is now more infectious than ever.

    China’s vaccine programme, especially among the elderly, is far behind the West’s – largely because the regime promised to “defeat Covid” but can’t. It is trapped in a spiral where to change policy now is to appear weak, which is anathema to totalitarian governments.

    The wider ramifications are still to be felt. One in five container ships remain stuck at ports worldwide, with 30 per cent of the backlog coming from China. Controls in Shenzhen have been lifted but if they remain in Shanghai for much longer the supply chain impact will be considerable.

    This will inevitably have an effect on costs and prices just at a time when inflation is at its highest rate for many years and people are already feeling a cost-of-living crunch. Two years after the pandemic took a grip, the economic consequences of trying to stop it are far from over.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/04/25/chinas-latest-covid-lunacy-will-soon-felt-around-world/

    It’ll certainly be felt around the world if governments take their lead from the Chinese as they did two years ago. As for tech goods stuck in ports – that’s more likely to create a public outcry in nations hooked on their mobiles.

      1. Grandmother, 64, killed in London bloodbath: Cancer-suffering NHS worker is found stabbed to death alongside two women and a man at £600,000 home – as cops quiz suspect in his 20s on suspicion of murder
        Dolet Hill was one of four people found dead at a house in Bermondsey, South East London this morning
        Met Police detectives were called at 1.40am, forced entry and found four people with fatal stab injuries
        One man in his 20s has been arrested on suspicion of murder and taken to a police station in South London
        Local resident said that at around 1.30am they heard a woman ‘screaming for about five minutes

        2. Why the hell do they have to say the value of their home? It’s a tiny terraced house in a poor area of London – vastly overpriced.

          1. A lot of the girls who went to my grammar school came from Bermondsey. The primary school they’d come from excelled in music and, even though it was far more built up than where I lived, they were better at sports. And they were white.

          4. Tommy Steele bought a grand house in Petersham near Richmond on Thames with the money made from his initial success.

            When I worked in Richmond I was told that the house had been owned previously by the owner of Peek Freans (?) biscuit makers and his mother had at some point cleaned for them.

        3. Why the hell do they have to say the value of their home? It’s a tiny terraced house in a poor area of London – vastly overpriced.

        4. Drugs. Don’t Care In The Community. Normal Cultural Practises……
          Bound to be an A* Student/ Someone who kept himself to himself/Always said ‘good morning’ in the mix.

    2. World MSM have reported the perpetrator as ‘indescribable’ …

      “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”

      [John Heywood (c. 1497 – c. 1580) was an English writer known for his plays, poems, and collection of proverbs. According to the ‘Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings’ this proverb “There are none so blind as those who will not see” has been traced back to John Heywood in 1546.]

  71. Utterly off topic.
    Life is certainly still worth living.
    I’ve just patrolled the estate. No sounds whatsoever except birds singing. And there are lots of them competing for centre stage, a positive cacophony.
    There are orchids everywhere, the other wildflowers of Spring are almost fighting to impress and it’s warm and late evening sunny.
    Why did we move here? For evenings like this.

    3. I hear you, I am still looking for orchids in our woods, not sure if I would recognise a wild one, lots of small white daisies, the tree blossoms have been wonderful this Spring, especially the red buds. Our first year surprised us with wild morel mushrooms which were delightful, but none since. I suspect the clearing for the house site disturbed them.

      1. I look out for the fairly distinctive leaf shapes and mark the spots with twigs and then avoid mowing.
        Often I’m wrong, but over the years we’ve gone from 3 or 4 to well over twenty varieties, so it’s worth doing.
        There certainly appears to be a symbiotic relationship between the orchids and the various funghi we get here.
        Here’s an excellent link for you.
        https://northamericanorchidcenter.org/

          1. It’s great when one gets a new one appearing. The seeds/spores are so fine that if there are any in the area there is a good chance you may get some blown in on the wind, it’s almost certain that’s how ours appeared.
            Encourage funghi, don’t be disappointed if you don’t spot many orchids, we’ve been at it 15 years now and if you do get new ones let them die down naturally to spread more seeds.

            Wild Orchids of North America, by William Petrie, you can probably get it second hand.
            Wild Orchids of the North Eastern United States: A Field Guide, Brown and Folsom, also probably available second hand.

            What you may find is that the technical differences are very difficult to spot when you compare what you find with what you see in the books, but it’s fun.

    4. We had a holiday in the Cévennes mid-May, a few years ago. The wild flowers were wonderful, especially the orchids.

      1. The first time I heard a nightingale was on the Canal de Bourgogne in 1981 on a boating holiday. Unforgettable!

        1. Hearing the nightingales is one of the (many) things I miss from our years in France. Such a full-throated stream of musical notes, always preceded by a whistle of feeeeeee – feeeeeeee – feeeeeeeee – feeeeeeeeeeeee! – and then the song would commence, unmistakeable and wonderful.

  72. Night NoTTlers…x

    Overall not a bad day….bit of gardening, shopping and thankfully no
    cancelled holidays….

    Arrivederci.

    3. This is quite a commonplace occurrence. Certain women adopt a weird fixation on convicted murderers in gaol. I think there may be a name for the syndrome that affects them.

  75. Well it looks as though we won’t be doing a talk to a local pre-school group about hedgehogs…….. not only do they want photo id but they want us to wear a mask…….. no way.

    Don’t they realise they not only not work but have done untold psychological damage to young children who have only seen people wearing the damned things?

    3. Barmy. I happened to thumb through a copy of the Radio Times earlier. Every article appeared to ooze Woke. It is no wonder the brain washing is so complete.

      The past was a far better country.

  76. Not everyone’s Cup of Char but an interesting take from J Ward on M.Macron’s win:

    “The Turnout for Round Two of the Presidentielle was 26%. Little Manny won with 58% of the vote – or 15% of the total voting franchise.

    Six voters out of seven didn’t particularly want Macron as President. And only just over one in ten voters especially did want LePen in that role.

    Trust me as a psephologist: this election wasn’t rigged. It died through lack of real choice.

    Politics today presents unconvincing strategies developed by ideologues wildly out of touch with sensible electors. It’s why real, informed democracy is withering.”

      1. “John Ward is very old, fed up, tired and ill at ease.” J Ward. (& prone to make mistakes apparently

  77. I’ve my WWI poetry course tomorrow, rather sad really as they died so young, but beautiful.
    I am then cooking a Lamb klefiko recipe that Mr Viking posted to me last year.

    Good night and sweet dreams.

    1. It’sgood to see you posting more than just one post in a few weeks……..hope the course and the lamb turn out well.

      1. Thank you, i find the course very moving, they all died so young.
        Hopefully the lamb will be okay.

  78. OH has been shouting at the telly for the last hour! Thank goodness Trump has just won through. He doesn’t like Robertson, though.

    1. Mine too- he’s watching on his computer and I am watching a Neil Oliver ancient history thing on I-Player. Bed soon though.

        1. Check out his Podcasts on You Tube; he’s up to 13 now but start at the beginning…I love them but I love that stuff anyway.

          1. Duh, I can’t believe I said start at the beginning….please understand that I have had a rotten day and am in considerable pain;-)

          3. I’ve been watching his GB news monologues and usually agree with what he says – but I only ever watched one or two of his ‘coast’ programmes and none of the history ones.

          5. I’ve been watching his GB news monologues and usually agree with what he says – but I only ever watched one or two of his ‘coast’ programmes and none of the history ones.

  79. Apologies if this has already been posted.

    Ousting the Prime Minister for being in the vicinity of a cake? That’s just nuts

    When the PM said there had been “no parties”, and that “rules were followed at all times,” he was telling the truth as he knew it

    DANIEL HANNAN • 23 April 2022 • 5:00pm

    If Boris Johnson really has lied to Parliament, he will have to go. Ministers can get away with many misdeeds – drunkenness, fornication, witchcraft, folk dancing – but they cannot intentionally mislead the House of Commons. It is one of those unwritten yet unshakeable rules on which our system rests.

    But there is so far no evidence – none – that the PM lied. When he stood at the Despatch Box and declared that there had been “no parties”, and that “whatever happened, the guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times,” he was telling the truth as he knew it.

    It may in fact be the case that the rules were followed, despite what the Clouseaus at the Met now claim. Under the 1984 Public Health (Control of Disease) Act, Crown property, including Downing Street, is exempt from restrictions. The PM has sensibly refused to defend himself on these grounds, knowing it would look like special pleading. But it is at least arguable, on a narrow point of law, that the lockdown did not apply to Number 10.

    That point may be arguable. What is not is that it never occurred to the PM that being presented with a cake by staff between meetings might be considered “a party”. Neither, at the time, did it occur to anyone else. I write that with certainty because, far from being furtive, Downing Street immediately briefed an account to the press.

    “Boris Johnson celebrated his 56th birthday yesterday with a small gathering in the cabinet room”, reported the next day’s Times. “Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and a group of aides sang him Happy Birthday before they tucked into a Union Jack cake.” Does that sound to you like some sort of illicit speakeasy? Did anyone, on reading it, suggest that rules had been broken? Did Labour MPs demand a police investigation?

    Of course not, because no one thought it remotely wrong for key workers to socialise while at their places of work. Throughout the lockdown, nurses were uploading TikTok routines, celebrating birthdays and generally trying to make our hospitals cheerier. No one called their gatherings improper, and for good reason.

    The rules against meeting people outside our bubbles were intended to slow the spread of a virus, not to dictate the behaviour of people who were already under the same roof.

    Small wonder the PM told the Commons that, to the best of his knowledge, there had been no parties. A party is a festive congregation of invited guests, not a break in the office day. The only Downing Street event we know of that looks remotely like a party in the customary sense of the word took place while Johnson was 60 miles away.

    There may, of course, be further revelations. But remember that, when Johnson told MPs that the rules had been followed, he must have known that everything that had happened in No10 would come out. If it was a lie, it was the stupidest lie since an Amalekite falsely claimed to have killed King Saul, and was put to death on the spot for his pains.

    Sir Keir Starmer knows all this. As a lawyer, he understands the difference between social gatherings and people who were legally working together. But Labour has chosen to go low, making a series of false equivalences between tragic cases where people could not see dying relatives, and key workers at their offices.

    Until shortly before the PM’s birthday, hospital visits and social calls were largely banned. Those rules applied as much to the Prime Minister, who was isolated during his own bout of Covid, and who could not visit his mother (who died soon afterwards), as to anyone else. There is no suggestion that he flouted them.

    The valid comparison is with what others did while at work. And here, plainly, there really is one rule for Boris and one for everyone else – but in precisely the opposite way from what is usually meant. It is unthinkable, literally unthinkable, that the police would issue penalties to nurses who shared birthday cakes – let alone that they would open an investigation two years later.

    For the record, I opposed the lockdown. I thought the rules that split families were inhuman. But Starmer did not. He wanted them tightened, and wrongly predicted disaster every time they were eased.

    Which is why many voters now find his crocodile tears off-putting. The latest opinion poll, as I write, puts the Conservatives six points behind Labour – an extraordinarily good showing for an incumbent party at this stage in a Parliament.

    Yet Starmer has also tapped into the prissy populism that has been ascendant since the lockdowns, the sense that people in public life should not be allowed any frivolity. No one objects to Downing Street staff working together, having lunch together, or breaking for tea at the same time. But throw in alcohol or cake and it’s suddenly scandalous.

    Boris was elected as a disruptor, a Falstaff, a man with little time for niceties – attributes which allowed him to break the deadlock in the Commons, deliver Brexit and win the vaccines race. But the pandemic has changed the national mood. To switch plays, Boris finds himself stranded as a Toby Belch in a nation suddenly full of Malvolios. “Dost thou think that because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” Sadly, it seems, a lot of us do.

    I understand why Labour MPs want him gone. They remember how he took his party from 8.8 per cent of the vote at the 2019 European election to 42.4 per cent just seven months later.

    But what of the Conservative MPs who will decide his fate? Some, of course, never liked him in the first place, some have not got over the 2016 referendum and some feel overlooked or underpromoted. But these groups are still in the minority: only nine of 358 Conservative MPs have called openly for a leadership challenge.

    Most MPs approach the question more hard-headedly. They are getting some local flak over the allegations, and they expect to see a gruesome result at the coming council elections, where they are defending a high base. But they will shrug these things off provided they see a government doing things of which they approve.

    Which brings us to the heart of Johnson’s problem. Conservative MPs have long been asking what the point of an 80-seat majority is when their policies are barely distinguishable from Labour’s.

    They were prepared to make allowances during the pandemic, but the pandemic does not explain the nationalisation of social care, the determination to plough ahead with HS2, the green levies or the reluctance to deregulate.

    This week, to pluck a random example, it was announced that companies should give at least 40 per cent of board seats to women. There was a time when Conservatives saw the hiring policies of corporations as a matter for shareholders, not governments.

    I complained often on this page about Johnson’s determination to spend money as if Britain still had the half trillion pounds it burned through during the lockdowns. But, in February, things began to change. A new Downing Street policy team was put in place, determined to make use of each of the hundred-odd weeks left in this Parliament. It made itself felt almost at once.

    Over the past two months, the fracking moratorium has been lifted and Channel 4 marked for privatisation. Britain is set to become the first Western state to sign a trade agreement with India – which will in time become a larger market than the EU. Jacob Rees-Mogg is culling EU regulations.

    Two years on, we are finally exercising some of our Brexit freedoms. We are admitting more workers from Commonwealth countries, but cracking down on illicit entrants.

    The Rwanda plan is a workable solution to the Channel boats crisis. After all, an asylum seeker is trying to get out of a particular country, not in to a particular country. There are even signs that, following two years of EU obstreperousness, we will act unilaterally to correct the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    You might not like these things, of course. You might want to vote for someone else. That is your right. But, precisely for that reason, MPs should think long and hard before usurping it. Losing a war, abandoning core principles or, come to that, deceiving Parliament – all these things might justify a putsch. But being in the vicinity of cake? Come off it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/23/boris-johnson-did-not-lie-parliament-labour-knows/

    1. It’s ridiculous and vindictive to have a witch hunt two years later when people who have been working togther in the same office stop for a piece of cake and a drink. The rules were barmy and stupid anyway – but everybody who was caught by them should be pardoned and reimbursed for their fines.

      We and other neighbours had a get-together in our n-d-n’s garden for her birthday in May 2020 – eight or ten people came and went at various times and no harm befell any of us.

    2. “…he was telling the truth as he knew it”

      Yeh, like he usually does. Reminds me of what the Queen said about Meagain’s claims: “recollections may differ”, i.e. ‘you lying b*tch”.

    3. I thought this a valiant effort to defend the PM. (Not that I believe it!). However, …”cracking down on illicit entrants”… “… trying to get out of a particular country, not in to a particular country”… and “signs of acting unilaterally to correct the Northern Ireland protocol”… none of this is true.

  80. Evening, all. Back from the land of the Dreich Goch. A few days in the company of Welsh people reminded me how dictatorial and separatist they are (and I say that as one with Welsh ancestry) and how little they like the English. Still, it’s made me appreciate home. Next time I go away, I’ll be staying in England. I hope you’ve been good during my temporary absence. I see there is a determined effort to sanitise Partygate by claiming it wasn’t a party and the cake wasn’t even taken out of its Tupperware container. I don’t care about that; what I care about is that the person who made the rules broke the rules and for me that’s unacceptable. If it was okay for him, it was okay for the rest of us and we need not have been made to suffer such draconian measures.

    1. Evening Conners – I’m just off to bed. I’ve said my two pennorth below about the ‘ parties’……. nobody should have been made to suffer such stupid rules.

      Sorry your trip wasn’t too enjoyable – read about Bill’s.

      1. I can’t say it wasn’t enjoyable on the whole. I just got riled by some anti-English sentiment and one woman’s domineering insistence on mask wearing “because you’re in Wales now”. The campsite was lovely – quiet, in walking distance of the beach and not far from the Co-op, Post Office and a dog-friendly cafe. Oscar enjoyed himself playing ball in their secure dog exercise area and I read and chilled with no Internet to distract.

      1. Owing to my Welsh ancestry (Taid was a Welsh speaker) I used to think of myself as Welsh, rather than English. Devolution, chippy attitudes and three years at a Welsh University cured me of that.

  85. Good night, everyone. (Or, since it is now 00.10 am on Wednesday, good morning, everyone.) CORRECTION: As some wide-awake NoTTLers have reminded me it is now TUESDAY and not Wednesday! Oops!

    1. World hunger my arse. The $43bn would just evaporate, as did all the billions given to Africa to “end hunger”. Nothing to show for it except Mercedes, Gulfstreams and Swiss bank accounts.

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