Monday 25 December: NHS patients and doctors deserve better than endless red tape

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

473 thoughts on “Monday 25 December: NHS patients and doctors deserve better than endless red tape”

    1. Merry Christmas to you, Geoff! (heh! Got in earlier than expected, albeit soaked to the skin, and still made it before the day started properly l. 🙂

        1. Vitello tonnato to start (although the name was Hispanicised), with lots of colourful salads.

          Then a massive asado- roast beef, chicken, pork and blood sausage, with potatoes. Delicious!

          Panettone to finish us all off (they call it Pan Dulce).

          Champers flowing freely, ditto Malbec for them as wanted it (me!!).

          All I can say is, I hope your belly today will be as happy as mine was last night!

          1. What a fantastic feast. I was hoping you would get invited to something like that.

            Soft boiled eggs for me today but i think my pals are boxing up a lunch for me. I am feeling a lot better but not taking any chances on infecting them. Still got the cough but most of the aches and sweats have diminished. What a terrible Christmas present that would be.

    2. Merry Christmas to you, Geoff! (heh! Got in earlier than expected, albeit soaked to the skin, and still made it before the day started properly l. 🙂

    6. Cheat!
      Merry Christmas and God Jul, Geoff.
      Thanks for another year of Nottling. Life would be so much duller without.
      😀

    7. I supposethat I could have snuck in last night and tried for first but that would be akin to cheating,

      Happy christmas to you from the unfrozen white north – it is really foggy

  3. Good morrow, Gentlefolk. today’s story
    Family Love
    Son: Daddy! Daddy! I hate grandpa’s guts!
    Father: Well push them aside and eat your peas!

  5. Democracy is more robust than its enemies believe – and 2024 will prove it. 24 December 2023.

    To say we are living through “historic” times is a cliché, but 2024 measurably will be. More citizens in human history will go to the polls than ever next year: over two billion across 50 countries.

    Will it mark the high-water mark of democracy? The prevalence of increasingly authoritarian, imperialist states like Russia – democracies in name only – and the domestic volatility in countries like the United States, set to elect its president in November, conjures, for many, a sense of Gibbon-esque decline, of Western democratic hegemony eroded by its decadence and faint-heartedness.

    The author of this piece suffers from the usual self-serving confusion. All states are democratic that vote except for those that aren’t! They are democracies in name only! That this might apply to the West in general and the UK in particular completely escapes him. Though voting is an essential it does not a Democracy make if the elected powers have no intention of carrying out their manifesto’s on which the Demos voted for them. It will be a sham, a fraud. This is the UK in which there is no way for the popular will to be implemented. In which in fact it is thwarted and frustrated.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/24/democracy-is-more-robust-than-its-enemies-believe-and-2024/

    1. Good morning and a Merry Christmas to you Minty.

      Democracy – (a bit heavy going for early Christmas Morning) – defined as mob rule. Arguably that’s exactly what we have ruled by The Mob in power in Westminster…

      On that cheerful note may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Healthy New Year.

    1. I can tell from your tattoo that it’s you Michael with your back to the Camera!

      Merry Christmas

  9. Merry Christmas, all.

    I’ve been up since 5 a.m. getting the sliced topside of beef that has been covered in a mustard, cracked black pepper, oregano and olive oil marinade overnight into the slow cooker with stock, fried onion and carrot topped off with a good slug of Italian red wine. Never cooked, what was a joint before slicing this way before. Recipe states six hours on low and so it should be cooked by about midday ready for lunch at my son’s home about 1 p.m.
    Forcemeat stuffing to prepare a little later along with blind baking a flan case – caramelised red onion and camembert – and a tray-bake for Bakewell tart, or is that pudding? for lunch and tea tomorrow at a friend’s home.
    It’s all go but I’m taking a break with a fresh brewed coffee and some of Elsie’s marmalade on bread. Delicious.

    1. Glad you’re enjoying the marmalade, Korky. So you see, Mr Lime’s advice not to put it all in a cake made sense. Enjoy your day at your son’s.

  11. 379868+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Lest we forget, we should be packing the Christian Churches
    giving thanks for what we once had and sadly neglected, once again there will be many an empty chair worldwide come dinnertime.

    By the by,
    Is the time known for the kick-off betwixt the MPs and the peoples, football match.

  13. Wishing everyone a happy and peaceful Christmas.
    Thank you, Geoff, for putting the page up today.

    1. A very good laugh this morning, Korky. I vote you take over from Sir Jasper on January the 3rd. Lol.

  15. Merry Christmas to all from Mc Phee Towers. It’s a grey dawn with the wind in the South West and a mild day at 11-12℃.

    Today is a day not for wordly cares but for the family, calm reflection and maybe a few quiet prayers. I’ll be ringing the church bells in our village this morning, play some games and go for a family walk before the rain arrives around 2pm then settle down after Christmas dinner to listen to whatever the King has to say this afternoon.

  16. Wordle 919 5/6
    5 today – Great!

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    Now I’m off to do my Christmas meal preparation. Once again, enjoy your Christmas, chums. See you all tomorrow.

  17. Good morning, all. I wish you the very happiest of Christmases and pray that we have a peaceful day without any t hing ghastly happening.

  18. Merry Christmas Nottlers, I hope you have a fine time over the festive period. I’ll be heading up to my brother’s this morning to drop off presents for his ever extending tribe. Then I’ll be taking my folks to my niece’s for Christmas dinner. The main course is a turkey that thinks it’s a goose. It’s transgander.

    1. Goose is so much better for Christmas. I have a great recipe but maybe it’s a little late for today.

  20. Rishi Sunak urged to stop ‘dithering’ over Ukraine funding. 25 December 2023.

    Mr Wallace said: “Ukraine could be entering its darkest hour. Now is not the time for Britain to be dithering.

    “Britain is at risk of throwing away its leadership in supporting Ukraine for no apparent reason. We need to demonstrate long-term commitment. The best thing we could do is not only give £2.5 billion next year but another £2.5 billion the year after that.

    “Five billion over two years would send a message to Moscow that we will be sticking by Ukraine before, during and after the rigged Russian elections [due in 2024].”

    Its leadership? This is self-delusion. The US leads. We follow. The Americans have stopped funding Ukraine not only because of internal politics but that they also know that the war is lost. It is not simply a matter of maintaining the status quo. Russia has now fully mobilised its forces and sometime in the next six months it will possess the wherewithal to overwhelm the Ukies and take the entire country. Needless to say this would be a political disaster of the first magnitude. The problem is how to avoid it without loss of face. The easiest way is of course to make Zelensky negotiate now, while there is time. The only way to do that is to pressure him. If that fails then it will be the old Diem route from Vietnam.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/12/24/rishi-sunak-stop-dithering-ukraine-funding-2024/

    1. I didn’t think we had any dogs in this fight. However, it appears we do. Ministers and ex-ministers.

    3. US intentions to control the Black Sea were thwarted back in 2014 when Russia took back Crimea. Despite regime change and the placement of the clown Zelensky as President followed by the funding of a massive military operation with Ukraine as proxy the US war has proven utterly disastrous.

      Crimea remains under Russian control and the Donbass is secured by Russia. Further gains are likely to include Odessa and Kiev leaving a “Ukrainian” rump to be decided between Hungary, Poland and Romania. It is estimated that at least half a million Ukrainian servicemen have lost their lives.

      US policy has been a disaster not only for Ukraine but for the World. The fact that Ben Wallace has written such hogwash is merely further illustration of the lack of intelligence of our representatives in UK government.

      I remain deeply ashamed that my country is so feebly led and by ignoramuses.

  21. Rishi Sunak urged to stop ‘dithering’ over Ukraine funding. 25 December 2023.

    Mr Wallace said: “Ukraine could be entering its darkest hour. Now is not the time for Britain to be dithering.

    “Britain is at risk of throwing away its leadership in supporting Ukraine for no apparent reason. We need to demonstrate long-term commitment. The best thing we could do is not only give £2.5 billion next year but another £2.5 billion the year after that.

    “Five billion over two years would send a message to Moscow that we will be sticking by Ukraine before, during and after the rigged Russian elections [due in 2024].”

    Its leadership? This is self-delusion. The US leads. We follow. The Americans have stopped funding Ukraine not only because of internal politics but that they also know that the war is lost. It is not simply a matter of maintaining the status quo. Russia has now fully mobilised its forces and sometime in the next six months it will possess the wherewithal to over whelm the Ukies and take the entire country. Needless to say this would be a political disaster of the first magnitude. The problem is how to avoid it without loss of face. The easiest way is of course to make Zelensky negotiate now, while there is time. The only way to do that is to pressure him. If that fails then it will be the old Diem route from Vietnam.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/12/24/rishi-sunak-stop-dithering-ukraine-funding-2024/

  23. I mentioned the other day I am reading my unread book collection, to which end i finally read “Things fall apart”, which I reckon I bought 28-odd years ago during my Africa phase. I spent a year back-packing round in1995/96 – Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa (Barmy Army!), Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Especially brilliant as I had done my dissertation on the relationship between Germany and South Africa 1929-1939 and could finally visit the place (and German South West Africa and German East Africa into the bargain).

    Anyway the book I have now moved onto is “The Africa House” by Christina Lamb. It turns out she was in Zambia just months after I was there – I particularly remember a few happy weeks in Ndola – and this book os about a man called Stewart Gore-Browne who built a house 450 miles east(ish) of there in the 1920s. I started it this morning and am 60 pages in and it’s a cracker (imho). Unfortunately i have to put it down to go and attend to the (non-brined) turkey.

    Happy Christmas to you all and look forward to checking in with you all throughout the day.

  24. ‘Morning All

    Christmas Medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bfadc603de9da89ca92e3bd856b14a4243c3ed9778ae61239d64a8286b6f84e0.gif

    https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExYXNldHdycXRmcTJiZnJ5MDJoZ3R5dGRlamd6MWxqZm4xbnByYmxrMyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/4Tbi3JylIFpzm1qyRY/giphy.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2ae4c8d1fe25c31919e986a8eec07f90cedbea819d4c0744b5d803300d3dddee.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d86b0b69a4493b1e524639bce87b4418dceda3d6a1d0412cc3507cbe2da4d5c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c04811a00cd1ba10d7a65d68b5566ba5ca72ebd20e2b61f36909bc37cf23b691.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f55db6ddc4e5bb6faf2f82fe42ca358b0de34d811da49ad8c80a47cace07969b.png
    Have a great day y’all !!
    Edit forgot this
    https://twitter.com/number10cat/status/1738506965108854972?s=61&t=Y0IVE-UcdX8lOqxTEHXI9w

  26. I think this has been the grimmest Christmas I have ever encountered.

    I was desperately tired at Midnight Mass, and could barely croak a note. I tried to sleep through every other carol in order to summon up enough voice for the psalm, which came through ok, but it was more keeping up a tradition than a celebration. Father Naz in his homily told us of our obligation to be joyful in this day, but it reminded me of the order “BE OF GOOD CHEER!” in the secular song “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”. It is a long time since I have done any of those things listed in that song.

    Even the cheery greetings, where there were some, seemed forced, with the most smiles and hugs from Father Naz and the beautiful Sri Lankan woman with the musical daughter who seems to like me, but then she is like that with everyone, and memories of being set up by another family 27 years ago haunt me with a small, still voice “be careful”. The two beautiful sisters of great beauty I saw grow up, one of whom sang during Mass, ignored me. Maybe they did not even recognise me. Have I aged so much since Lockdown? Even my ex-mother-in-law who was at Stanbrook had to look in her programme to see if it was really me, and we met only a couple of years ago going to Gloucester Cathedral.

    And so at last to bed, to the sleep I so craved. I dreamed I was on a long journey with my sister, who had her mobile phone with her. First I lost my side bag, the one I carry with me, but had forgotten where I put it when we ate at a restaurant somewhere. Then my main bag was stolen on the bus going through Germany. When I went to look for it in the place reserved for bags, it had gone, and I was trying to think of all the precious things, such as the fountain pen I used to write to my first girlfriend, the Mademoiselle from Armentieres, with, that were in it. I tried the bus company, but they were not interested. I asked ,y sister if I could ring Chalcot to speak to my mother, but she did not have enough money on her phone.

    I was so pleased to wake up, and realised it was Christmas morning and thought of Bethlehem. But all I could see was rubble and a lot of suffering people trying to dodge the bombs. There was and is no celebration in Bethlehem this year. I found it hard to breathe and was panting like a dog, and there were little fires around me, not the general furnace of hell, but just here and there. I turned on the radio, but there was a cheery carol sung in the hyped-up ‘Songs of Praise’ style, so I turned it off again, I had another go. Lesbians at Dawn with Clare Balding this time. On the third attempt, it was some American woman, but I could not make out what she was saying and decided to have a glurp at some cold coffee I made as a nightcap but was too tired to drink and go for a pee. Dark, smelly urine – no doubt old age has got at my kidneys in the night, but this is something that I must live with.

    So to the laptop to write this all down while it is still fresh in my mind and before I cheer up because it is Christmas…

    Bah! Humbug to to you all!

    1. I think this has been the grimmest Christmas I have ever encountered.

      I’m sorry to hear that Jeremy. They are grim times it is true but we have to make the best of them.

      Merry Christmas without any intention of mockery.

    2. Strewth, Jeremy, waking or dreaming, that’s grim. Seems to me that you have a fever, and a need to rehydrate (not with cold coffee, either).
      Hope the day goes better for you. Take care, y’hear?

    3. 🎵 But the fire is so delightful. Since we’ve no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…🎵

      Merry Christmas, Bob.

  28. NHS patients and doctors deserve better than endless red tape

    It’s all the red tape and health & safety that is wrecking productivity.

    1. I notice in the letter it mentions errors. They seem to be a tactic to slow down tests and admissions they are now so common.

  29. Happy Christmas, all Y’all!
    Hope you dodge the mini-flu that’s going around, and have a really good, family-filled day!

      1. I think it’s Devon, but difficult to tell through the rain.
        If Chef allows, some cider taken on Licenced Premises planned for later!

    2. Happy Christmas.

      Too late for me. My friends are going to box up a lunch for me and send it over later.

      1. Bugger.
        Only solution is grape, grain or apple-based antisceptic, taken copiously and often.
        Keep warm.

    3. Our elder son rose to the occasion yesterday evening.
      He should get an Oscar for best actor at Pretending he Hasn’t Got a Cold and Would All These Bloody Cheerful People Go Home – NOW!!!!!

  31. Good morning and a Merry Christmas to all!
    A dry start to the day with a pleasantly mild 4½° outside.
    As t’Lad is here I’m sat up in bed beside the DT with mugs of tea.

  32. Happy Christmas to you all. 🎅
    Don’t forget to clear up the old boys sooty footprints 👣 .
    Apparently hottest Christmas eve since 1967 at LHR 15 degrees. Hardly surprising with all those exhaust fumes and heat from huge jet engines.
    Are these people completely barmy?
    But hey 37 in QLD according to my cousins. Horrible, it was never the same Christmas in all that heat.
    Off to the family soon.

    1. In about ’84 or ’85 (sorry, can’t remember exactly) it was 16C at 2pm on Christmas Day

      ………….and that was before Global Warming !

      But we wish you all a very Happy Christmas, whatever your temperature.

      1. Don’t forget: unusually cold for the time of year is weather. Unusually warm is climate change.

  33. Merry Christmas to all NoTTLers from a bright and breezy galey Skåne.
    Hope you all have a wonderful day.😘

    1. I said hello to the crooked spire of Chesterfield as the train passed through yesterday afternoon, Grizz! St Pancras was organised chaos but Sheffield was just chaos. Finally made it to York though.

      1. God Jul, Sue. I hope you passed my regards to that magnificent building as you passed through. Give my regards to your wonderful city too.

        1. About three and a half hours but it should take less than two and it’s not so much the timing that rankles as the sheer ineptitude of the whole operation!
          I met some nice people along the way though. Tess was good company in the queue at St Pancras (we had seat reservations but were still made to queue), the young woman with the Dolly/Harry lookalike doggy sitting across the aisle on the first train was very sweet and the lady from Seattle who’d already been travelling for twenty four hours and was en route to Edinburgh where her daughter is studying was a lesson in stoicism.

      3. A lot of rail workers were on holiday. That’s why there was chaos. Who ever signed off the rota doesn’t like passengers.

  35. Marginally better than yesterdays blob

    Wordle 919 5/6

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    1. Five for me too.

      Wordle 919 5/6

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    2. Who knows how I got the answer after two blanks.

      Wordle 919 4/6

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  37. Merry Christmas from an overcast but dry ( for the moment) Cumbria. Try to have a restful day even if you are preparing Christmas dinner.

    2. Thanks Eric! Have been up since 6am! Don’t know what happened to all the prep I did yesterday! Merry Christmas!

  39. A very Merry Christmas to you all.
    Eat drink and be merry.
    Thank you Geoff for another year of entertainment on this blog.

      2. We all have a good laugh over your Norman Wisdom escapades ! Falling off ladders and puddle surfing.

  40. “Unto us is born a Knight”

    Archbishop of Canterbury praises radical Left-wing activist

    Most Rev Justin Welby urges people to follow a ‘counter-culture leadership’ in his Christmas message from the pulpit

    Hayley Dixon, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
    25 December 2023 • 6:00am

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/12/24/TELEMMGLPICT000360898725_17034587124540_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqCca9BU0TuyHkZJzHTSJqztLThprPcZHj5TeYpYIHMRM.jpeg?imwidth=680
    The Archbishop of Canterbury with pastor Shane Claiborne to his left

    The Archbishop of Canterbury will use his Christmas Day sermon to praise a radical Left-wing American peace activist who turns guns into crosses.

    The Most Rev Justin Welby will urge people to follow “counter-cultural leadership” in a time of war and will single out pastor Shane Claiborne, who works in deprived areas of Philadelphia.

    Mr Claiborne, a self-described “radical evangelical”, is one of the most outspoken critics of America’s religious Right and has staged rallies against Donald Trump and supported the Black Lives Matter movement.

    In his sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, the Archbishop is expected to say: “One of the things they do is take in guns, and they melt them down, and they turn them into crosses.

    “And that is the cross I’m carrying today. What was once a weapon of violence, of fear, of death, transformed – into the sign of hope and new life.”

    The comments are part of his call for peace in a “war-torn world” which will be the focus of the Christmas Day message.

    Path to peace
    He will say that service is the only path to peace as “in serving, not in being served, we resolve the problems of climate, the threats and realities of war, the malevolence of terrorism, the injustice of economic inequality, the desperation and ambitions that drive more and more to migration.”

    Mr Welby will cite the Coronation as an example of service-based leadership, noting that King Charles said “I come not to be served, but to serve,” and will add that “we know it to be his intention, the right way to be a King.”

    The Archbishop will also draw attention to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict.

    “This year the skies of Bethlehem are full of fear rather than angels and glory,” he is expected to say.

    “Ukraine carries the wail of the sirens. Sudan and South Sudan ring with warning and terror. So many parts of the world seem beset with violence.”

    Making a parallel with the birth of Jesus, he will add: “Today, a crying child is in a manger somewhere in the world, nobody willing or able to help his parents who desperately need shelter.

    “Or in an incubator, in a hospital low on electricity, like Al Ahli in Gaza, surrounded by conflict. Maybe he lies in a house that still bears the marks of the horrors of October 7th, with family members killed, and a mother who feared for her life.”

    He will encourage people to “embody Jesus’ model of counter-cultural leadership” in response to violence and war, a Lambeth Palace spokesman said.

    Mr Welby will tell the congregation that Jesus “shows us a different kind of victory because he meets our violence with his vulnerability. He confronts our cruelty with his compassion. He responds to our selfishness with service. He commands us to imitate that service.”

    It is against this background that he will praise Mr Claiborne, a pastor who lives among the poor and models his ministry on the life of Jesus.

    Mr Claiborne has previously revealed in a blog for the evangelical group he co-founded, Red Letter Christians, that he has become friends with Mr Welby in recent years.

    He has been to stay at Lambeth Palace and in August the Archbishop and his wife Caroline went to stay with the pastor and his wife at their home in the Kensington neighbourhood of Philadelphia.

    “We grilled out in the backyard, talked for hours and hours, and laughed really hard together,” Mr Claiborne wrote.

    Crosses out of gun barrels
    He continued: “We blessed two crosses made from gun barrels that Justin will deliver to the UN secretary-general… and – are you ready for this – Pope Francis.

    “Archbishop Justin and Pope Francis have become dear friends and next month have another meet-up where Justin will deliver this cross that we made from a gun to the Pope. I think Pope Francis is really going to dig it.”

    Mr Clairborne later shared an image of a message from Mr Welby saying that he had delivered the cross to the Pope and would send him a photograph.

    Mr Welby also mentioned his visit to Philadelphia during a speech at the Lord Mayor’s dinner in October, telling guests that he was wearing one of the crosses melted down from guns.

    Mr Claiborne rose to prominence in the US when he began challenging the Christian right and their support of Mr Trump.

    In the run-up to the 2018 presidential election he was even threatened with arrest and up to 12 months in jail if he preached against “toxic Christianity” at Liberty University in Virginia, which was being run by ardent Trump supporter Jerry Falwell.

    A pacifist, he spent time in Baghdad during the second Gulf War as part of the Iraq Peace Team and in 2011 he refused to pay taxes to fund the US military, withholding the proportion that would have gone to defence and giving it to charity instead.

    Like the Archbishop, he has called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

    The Christmas Day Eucharist service in Canterbury Cathedral is attended by approximately 1,500 people and is live streamed on Canterbury Cathedral’s website.

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

    Mike Seguss
    2 HRS AGO
    You’d think, wouldn’t you, that for one day at least, and on this day of all days, Woolly-Wokey-Welby could manage to elevate the Gospel of Mark over the gospel of Marx, and prioritise God over Gaia, but evidently not.

    Joe Woe
    2 HRS AGO
    Reply to Mike Seguss
    What would you expect from Corbyn in frock and mitre?

    Bill Ackland
    2 HRS AGO
    Perhaps he could pop over to Palestine to deliver his Sacred message in person to the terrorists who control Hamas. On hearing his message they would surely lay down their arms and find repentance in their hearts. Or they might shoot him.

    Richard Whiteley
    2 MIN AGO
    There is no place for Christianity in the mind of the communist. The march through the institutions did not neglect the Church and Welby uses his pulpit to berate the country with his half baked lefty ideology. In a sane world, his position would long since have become untenable.

    3. Sorry -posted before seeing your post.

      Using human shields is obviously quite acceptable to the Archpillock. So when the human shields serve their purpose and are killed it is the Israelis’ fault and not the fault of Hamas.

    5. I know it’s not a grea5 word for Christmas Day, but I hope the bastard gets his ‘just’ desserts!

    6. Welby…why not pay the radical preacher a visit. Take walk on the south side of Philadelphia and see how long you survive without a gun.

    7. When MB was a choir boy, he punctured a harvest festival marrow with the cross, so the metal can still be used as weapons.

  43. Had a lovely surprise this morning. Opened a parcel and it’s from Garlands. A pair of high tech Calvin Klein gloves.

    2. I remember as a four year old child I was being whiny, whingey, weeping and woeful. My parents told me that if I did not stop I would be given something to cry for. I didn’t stop. At the next appropriate place my father stopped the car and my mother gave me the mother of all somethings to cry for! Every time we passed this part of the road again I cheerfully exclaimed : “Oh, look – that’s where Mummy gave me something to cry for!”

      A year of two later my parents managed to dump me with my very dear Aunt Kitty while they went off on holiday without me. I was as odious as I knew how to be – and at that age I had odium down to a tee. My dear Aunt Kitty was finally so exasperated that she said she would smack me. I asked her:

      “How hard will you smack me – as hard as Mummy or as hard as Daddy?”

      ” As hard as Daddy, ” said Aunt Kitty hoping to frighten me.

      “Oh, that’s quite all right then!”

  46. Merry Christmas all.
    A fun Christmas site I found yesterday. Classic glass baubles made in Germany. Many of the designs remind me of my childhood especially the ones with the painted concave feature and the birds with tail feathers which were common in those days. I note that they are pretty expensive now 20 euros plus for one.
    https://www.weihnachtskugeln.com/en/collections-overview/

    2. We have a beautiful white swan (complete with a crown) made of blown glass.
      He/she is topping our Christmas tree.

  47. Rishi Sunak urged to stop ‘dithering’ over Ukraine funding . “5 December 2023.

    BELOW THE LINE.

    A Allan10 MIN AGO.

    The entwined history of Ukraine and Russia is not a simple case of Goodies v. Baddies. It is far more complex and I doubt western politicians know enough to realise how much they don’t know.

    If – IF – we have, £2.3 billion to spare, how about beefing up our own defence forces?
    There is a very nasty world out there, and it doesn’t love Christianity, white people or Great Britain.

    Cor! This A. Allan person gets some stick for this. It sounds like the entire 77 Brigade being forced to work on Christmas Day are in on it!

    martin Edwards.9 MIN AGO

    So there is no collusion between Russia and Iran to destabilise their common enemies?

    ian parker7 MIN AGO.

    Pure deflection!
    Putin doesn’t love Christians or white people.
    His soldiers are murdering, torturing, raping and kidnapping them in Ukraine.

    Katy Taylor 5 MIN AGO

    Raping and murdering women and children, torturing people, carving swastikas into foreheads, bashing heads in with a sledge hammer, targeting schools, museums and hospitals makes the Russians ‘Baddies’, in my book.
    I guess that’s all ok in yours.

    Katy Taylor4 MIN AGO.

    ps I forgot kidnapping children and teaching them to hate Ukraine.

    Hmmmm? Pity we don’t have someone like that on Nottl!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/12/24/rishi-sunak-stop-dithering-ukraine-funding-2024/

    1. That A Allan chap is a well known, far-right, foam-flecked stirrer. I’d take anything he says with a handful of salt!

          1. The salt we are using for brining the chicken is hand-gathered in Guérande. (Google it)…. Men prepare pools; the sea comes in; the water evaporates, then the chaps with wooden spades and wheelbarrows harvest the salt. Exactly as they have been doing for hundreds of years.

          2. Beautiful town. I think the Hairy Bikers visited the salt marshes as part of one of their shows.

          3. Town hideously over-visited and full of shops selling tourist tat of the worst possible kind. Interesting church, though. The salt mines pits surround the town.

          8. The Himalayas pass through Pakistan and they mine the salt there. Then probably piss on it.
            If you see cheap sea salt it is probably from there.

      2. Sounds like some person, Mintoe or whatever, always posting pro-Vlad propaganda. I’d have them all shot myself!

    2. Well, those BTLs are either 77 Brigade or proof that we have some extremely ignorant people in the UK – try reading some actual history, rather than listening to the MSM and/or de Cretin-Gordon!

    3. Good Moaning, Minty.
      I could have got personal and suggested that those merrily beating the war drums were unlikely to be making a personal or financial sacrifice when indulging their blood lust.
      But sheer good taste stopped me from typing such a comment.
      Peace and Love.

      1. Congratulations. A first class lesson on how to annoy trolls en masse.
        I like your scattergun approach. Hopefully they will all get indigestion from their Christmas dinner.

      2. Morning Anne. It’s amazing how bloodthirsty they all are. On the Spectator threads Nuclear War is considered perfectly acceptable! The only calls for moderation are from the “Putinbots” who are just asking for negotiations.

        1. Seeing grandson who is approaching his 18th. birthday concentrates the mind.
          Makes it rather more personal.

  49. Good Moaning, NOTTLers one and all.
    Just about to face a breakfast of smoked salmon, Christmas cake and fizz.
    (Maybe I should post that BTL in the Tellygraff and whip up some more diatribes.)
    Love and Peace.
    Mummy Warbucks.
    x

  50. Panic stations! The fire alarm went off in the hotel. Turns out someone had a hot shower running for too long and it set off the alarm. Phew!!

    2. Don’t get me started on the lack of baths on hotels these days. We paid a fortune at Wolverhampton’s best hotel last week for mum’s 8Oth and all 3 rooms had “walk-in” showers – not a bath to be seen. Where is choice in all this? It’s the fourth English hotel i’ve been in this year an so far I am on 0/4. If they can’t provide the punters with what they want, this punter will stay away.

  51. In half an hour or so, we shall be heading for the North Narfurk coast (Weybourne) to enjoy our traditional (since 2020) Chrishmush picnic lunch of trombetti soup and terrine sandwiches.

    I will be back later – prolly when JWK is sprouting* on about saving the effing planet. Apparently he is bragging that his Christmas tree will be re-planted after the festive(?) season is over. Wazzock.

    * Seasonal pun.

    TTFN

    1. Weybourne beach and cliff tops were one of my favoured stamping grounds when I lived in yer Naarfurk. We must have crossed paths on a few occasions, I’ll wager.

    2. Just pity all those Ukie shoppers who thought they had the best part of a fortnight in which to panic shop for unwanted presents.

    1. 379868+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      To add insult to injury roffy had just stopped picking his hooter with that very same finger.

    2. “King of England”?

      Have the rest of the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth already disowned him?

  57. First time I’ve sat down today. Happy Christmas everyone. (BH).
    Off to pub for my allotted hour.

  59. Good morning, all, from a sunny Buenos Aires; the weather equivalent of butter wouldn’t melt, after last night’s pyrotechnics. I saw Christmas morning in on a 14th-floor balcony, glass of champagne in hand, watching lightning streak around the skyline, thunder crashing madly, and rain pelting down. What a show!

    For those who were wondering, I kept to my resolve not to tango (although I had to promise to dance today), although there was a lot of mad gyrating to other types of music. And whatever Phizzee’s suspicions, my dress stayed firmly on. (Very firmly – my host’s eyes were out on stalks 🤣🤣)

    I was walked home in the pouring rain by my host’s charming son, laughing all the way, and dropped into bed at about three, only to be awakened at seven by video calls from family members who had forgotten the time difference… 🤣🤣

    I shall think of you all enjoying Christmas dinner as I head out, slightly bleary-eyed, to celebrate life once again through the tango. 🙂

    1. I remember you in that velvet gown. No surprise your host looked like a rabbit in the headlights ! So nice to hear you were escorted home. Did they not have an umbrella !

  60. Apologies if this has been posted before but this excellent Simon Heffer article, from yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, should be compulsive reading for all potential Labour voters, even those who are beyond education.

    Drakeford’s legacy in Wales is the nightmare future under Labour

    His five-year tenure has left the Principality in a sorry state, and London under Sadiq Khan is no better. Is this what Britain has to look forward to if Sir Keir Starmer is elected? By Simon Heffer.

    Drakeford seemed determined to maintain the worst traditions and even update them. Conditions in London have deteriorated markedly since Khan took over.

    A hundred years ago, on Christmas Eve 1923, those with crystal wireless sets who gathered around them to hear the news would have learnt of a possible, and for many of them alarming, development in Britain’s political life. Just over a fortnight earlier the Conservative party, under Stanley Baldwin, had lost its majority in a general election few felt it should have called. Baldwin had sought a mandate for a protectionist trade policy, which voters rejected. The Labour Party had come second, and it was possible that Liberal support would help it form a minority administration. Four weeks later, after Baldwin’s King’s Speech was defeated in the Commons, Britain’s first Labour government, led by Ramsay MacDonald, took office.

    If the opinion polls are right, in the coming year the seventh Labour government – after 1924’s and those of 1929, 1945, 1964, 1974 and 1997 – will take power. With the exception of that first administration (which lasted only nine months and had Philip Snowden, a devotee of Gladstonian economics, as Chancellor of the Exchequer) every Labour government has left Britain a worse economy than it had inherited.

    MacDonald’s second administration imploded so spectacularly in the slump in 1931 that a national coalition, dominated by Conservatives, had to rescue the country from bankruptcy. Clement Attlee’s rule ended with high taxation and after a devaluation of the currency. The Wilson administration never recovered from his devaluation of 1967. James Callaghan’s rule ended with the Winter of Discontent, following Britain’s near-bankruptcy and rescue by the International Monetary Fund in 1976. And Gordon Brown left office less than two years after a crash that drove financial institutions under, torpedoed sterling, and caused a Treasury minister to leave a note for his Conservative successor telling him, with commendable frankness, that the money had run out.

    Should you detect a pattern, you would be right. The first two Labour governments failed because of inexperience, incompetence, some bad luck and an alarming inability to handle the realities the world threw at them during international turbulence. But the others had something else in common: a desire to aggrandise the state and to finance that by diverting, through taxation, resources from the productive sectors of the economy to the unproductive ones. Expansion of the state meant putting armies of workers, mainly Labour’s supporters in the trades unions, on the public payroll in strictly regulated and demarcated jobs. It appeared that public services existed more for the benefit of those working in them than for the taxpayer who funded them.

    We need not speculate whether a Starmer administration would repeat these self-destructive errors. Some of them, indeed, have been perpetuated by the Conservatives since 2010 – certainly the overpopulated public sector – but others are obvious in parts of the United Kingdom where Labour already exercises power. Britain was reminded of this recently when Mark Drakeford, Labour’s First Minister in Wales, kept an earlier promise to stand down in 2024. It was, indeed, one of the few promises Drakeford did manage to keep in his remarkably undistinguished five-year tenure of office, not that his comrades in the Labour Party would admit this. Instead, they received news of his departure with a mixture of sentimentality and special pleading.

    While there was no shortage of Conservatives, in Wales and elsewhere, willing to highlight Drakeford’s numerous failures, Labour leaders paid glowing tributes and moved on. At the time of his announcement, Drakeford’s popularity was at an 18-month low, according to polling, putting him behind Rishi Sunak. Senior Labour figures at Westminster were keen for him to move on. One difference between the Labour and Conservative parties is that the former tends to have its squabbles in private, while putting on a public face of serenity.

    Those who defend Drakeford’s record argue that he secured, in 2021, the best result Labour had ever had in a Welsh election, ending up only one seat short of an overall majority. However, Labour has an almost tribal vote in what were once the South Wales coalfields, giving a solid core of support for even the most ordinary leader. Drakeford had also built up a considerable public profile through the expenditure of vast amounts of money, largely channelled in from England, that aided his recognition.

    His success was certainly nothing to do with having enhanced the prosperity of the Welsh people, or having improved the services of the Welsh state. With his party in opposition at Westminster for well over a decade, Drakeford seemed determined to maintain its worst traditions and even update them to accommodate the latest obsessions of the Left. In 2022, the Taxpayers Alliance found he had spent almost £9million on “woke” jobs, which it defined as those with one of these words in the title: “equality, diversity, inclusion, wellbeing, carbon, net zero, climate, race, LGBTQ+, sustainability, green, culture or art”. Drakeford prioritised ingratiating himself with every fashionable cause and branch of identity politics he could find, using public money to do so.

    He loved intervening in the lives of individuals, creating a formidable nanny state. He borrowed Nicola Sturgeon’s minimum alcohol pricing policy in 2019, convinced the valleys were coursing towards drunken oblivion. Paradoxically, alcohol-related deaths in Wales have risen every year since he began this interference. More seriously, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment, Welsh schools are the worst in the United Kingdom. Despite having enjoyed the sort of grammar school education his party roundly despises, and having studied at two English universities, Drakeford (who, among various other roles in a public sector career, ended up as a professor of social policy at the University of Cardiff) took decisions that harmed the educational achievements of tens of thousands of Welsh schoolchildren. One policy was scrapping exam league tables, a decision taken under pressure from teachers’ unions keen that the shortcomings of some of their members should not be unduly exposed. The slope has run downwards ever since.

    In another stunt from the Sturgeon playbook, Drakeford embraced gender ideology and advocated a selfidentification system for the Welsh, despite huge potential risks to women and girls. He ran a “Period Dignity” campaign that, preposterously, initially refused to mention women and girls: it later condescended to operate for the benefit of “women, girls and anyone who menstruates”.

    There are astonishing levels of idleness across Wales supported by Mr Drakeford’s utopian welfare state, which is heavily subsidised by the English taxpayer. In the three months to July this year 23.2 per cent of those in the Principality aged between 16 and 64 were classed as economically inactive. Drakeford wanted a four-day week for public-sector employees and a universal basic income, without obvious regard for where the money was coming from. His interventionism sometimes bordered upon authoritarianism. Across Wales he ordered 20mph limit zones, despite nearly half a million people signing a petition against them, and attacked second-home owners and holiday rentals, despite the much-needed cash they bring to Wales. Inevitably, he claimed his own second home was fine, because it was only a “chalet”. He wanted to ban teenagers buying energy drinks, which he asserted were a “gateway” to smoking and drinking. He also considered banning the under-16s from buying tea or coffee in “an effort to make young people healthier and to stop rising obesity rates”.

    Drakeford hates criticism, admittedly something not unknown in politicians. When Michael Gove underlined the debacle in Welsh education policy, he was accused of showing “invincible colonial attitudes”. And nor was education the worst of Drakeford’s failures. The Welsh administration’s management of the National Health Service has been so bad that David Cameron, when prime minister, called the border with England “the line between life and death”. More than 30,000 people in Wales have waited more than two years for treatment; many vacancies remain unfilled because morale has collapsed in the NHS and many decline to work for it; and all this is despite the Welsh NHS receiving £1.20 for every pound received by the English service. There were, and still are, stories of Welsh people turning up at English hospitals for emergency treatment, so wrecked is their confidence in the NHS at home.

    Much of Drakeford’s Covid policy – again like the SNP’s – seemed designed to embarrass the Westminster Conservative government. His decision to impose Covid restrictions for Boxing Day and New Year in 2021 (also copied from Sturgeon) appeared petulant, driving those in border areas to celebrate in English pubs and bars; earlier, he had told supermarkets to close nonessential aisles.

    There are other indications of the dangers of a Labour government in the United Kingdom. In London, Sadiq Khan has for nearly eight years governed a population three times the size of Wales’s. Conditions there have deteriorated markedly since he took over in 2016, especially since the pandemic. Violent and ordinary crime are up: the former by 30 per cent since Mr Khan became Mayor, and knife crime by 21 per cent in 2023 alone. In the year to last March the 12,786 knife crimes in London were more than a quarter of England and Wales’s total. Vermin in the street, especially at night, or scurrying along Tube platforms, are increasingly common, with litter more commonplace.

    Some West End shopping streets are squalid. Oxford Street is rife with American “candy stores” rather than high-value shops. Pickpockets are legion, with the Underground – for which Mr Khan shares responsibility with Transport for London (TfL) – becoming notorious for it. Women’s groups in particular are calling for the streets to be “reclaimed”, which suggests that Khan and his London administration have lost control of them. Khan is not known for his ostentatious support of the police, which may help explain this epidemic of crime.

    Public order has become deeply compromised under Khan’s rule, again perhaps because of his attitude to the police. Lately, pro-Palestinian marches have frightened Jews and made central London a no-go area for many visitors. When Michael Gove’s personal safety was threatened by a mob at Victoria Station, Khan remained unmoved. A long-term advocate of the rights of Palestinians, he has done nothing to reassure Jews or to unify London under his leadership. Neither he nor Sir Keir Starmer attended the recent march against anti-Semitism. Khan has also been tolerant of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, despite the economic damage they have done.

    That is not his only policy to have had a bad effect on London’s economy, showing how little understanding of, or sympathy for, business he has. His extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez), levying a £12.50 a day charge on older cars, played a significant part in Labour’s failure to win the Uxbridge by-election.

    However, Khan remains unrepentant and Labour is committed to strict environmental policies, irrespective of the hardship and economic damage they might cause. Arguing for the extension of Ulez, Khan made wild claims about his opponents having links with the “far Right”, claiming at one point that “Tories don’t care about children dying”. Ironically for a Labour politician, his policy hit the poor hardest, tending as they do to have older cars. He and many in his party seem not to care that this is also having a serious impact on businesses and working people, and the evidence of environmental improvements through extending the zone is mixed to say the least.

    Another economic failure has been to miss housing targets. Despite £4billion of government funding, few affordable homes have been built, seriously damaging mobility of labour and productivity.

    His Conservative opponent in 2024’s mayoral election, Susan Hall, calls him “a protest politician” who “taps into the worst of identity politics”. As a substitute for serious thought, Khan routinely engages in grandstanding and diversionary tactics, trying to shift the blame for his own failures on to others. At the Covid Inquiry, he asserted that had he been invited to Cobra meetings, he could have saved lives in London: all that is missing is any proof. He shares the general

    Labour notions that the state should interfere wherever possible in people’s lives. TfL, of which he is chairman, banned an advertisement for a West End play because it displayed a Victoria sponge cake, apparently fearing it might encourage those seeing it to go home and stuff themselves senseless. For those who might be unable to afford to do that, he found £145,000 for an “advice bus” to help people with the cost of living crisis (ironically, given his Ulez obsession, it was diesel-powered). The Greater London Assembly’s Oversight Committee revealed last year that a £700,000 diversity and inclusion draft budget had been proposed, somewhat larger than the £400,000 earmarked to protect people in “food poverty”.

    Anyone still seeking ideas about how Labour might govern could also helpfully examine the record of the Scottish National Party. Although entirely separate from Labour they are also leftist in direction. Indeed, Drakeford’s desire to emulate the SNP’s policies in several respects shows that all that separates them is whether or not to stay in the United Kingdom. By pursuing socialist policies the SNP has ended up missing targets on affordable home building, big infrastructure projects, cancer treatment and rural housing. It spent millions on free mobile phones for prisoners, while closing schools, failing to inspect many surviving ones, extending NHS waiting lists, presiding over a doubling of drug-related deaths and cutting the police – while taking an extra £1billion in tax while growth and disposable income lag behind those of England.

    At its conference last October, Labour set out a number of policies – although a veteran Tory MP told me this week that “their only real policy is to appear innocuous”. The party pledged to raise business investment from 10 to 11 per cent of economic output, though how it could control what businesses invest in is anyone’s guess. It said it would end non-dom status, which allows up to 15 years of tax-free foreign earnings; and in doing so would drive numerous very rich people out of a country where they spend vast amounts of money and employ many workers. Labour pledged to save money in government by cutting ministers’ use of private jets and the employment of consultants but made no mention of cutting the permanent state payroll, where real savings could be made. An “infrastructure acceleration unit” would ensure that projects were delivered “on time and on budget”, despite no allowance for the possible inflation that might result from a typical Labour expansion of the money supply.

    Labour promised a state-run energy company and 100 per cent clean power by 2030. It said there would be new towns, and 300,000 houses built annually, and a mortgage guarantee scheme. There would be £1.1billion for more NHS overtime, and two million extra operations a year to cut waiting lists, but no mention of tackling the huge overstaffing of the NHS bureaucracy. It offered a “Community Policing Guarantee” with 13,000 more neighbourhood police, more patrols, and a “young person initiative” to halve knife crime in a decade. That all sounds simply rhetorical, as do phrases uttered by the party such as the promise to “raise confidence in every police force to its highest levels”, to “halve the level of violence against women and girls” and to control anti-social behaviour with something called a “respect order”. In “a fairer Britain where everyone lives well for longer” there will be “breakfast clubs” at every primary school – a further step in the state’s usurpation of normal family life – and, back to the rhetorical flourishes, “a world-class teacher in every classroom, paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools”. Bent on class politics, Labour will not admit that taxing education in this way would drive many thousands of children into the state sector, raising very little money as a result; and with no funding for the teachers needed to teach them, nor the buildings needed to house their classrooms.

    And then there are the – so far – unaddressed issues. How would Labour limit migration? Or encourage enterprise? Or fulfil any of its pledges if it does not plan to increase taxes (except for VAT on school fees, of course)? What is its nuclear strategy? Does it have a coherent defence policy for our very dangerous world? How would it capitalise on Brexit – or does it secretly plan to lead us back into a collapsing EU.

    3. No different to the Tory vermin. They’re all the same spendaholic socialists adamant they can waste our money and make our lives better.

      Just buggering off and leaving us alone while cutting waste is beyond them.

      Imagine the ego you’d need to be so convinced you know better than the earner? The fascist, authoritarian conviction.

  61. Happy Christmas all. The Warqueen is using her mini Dremel, Junior is legoing and I am making a cake.

    Cheese on toast today!

  62. I’m sure NoTTLLers could put on a spiffingly good production of Peter Pan – Phizzee in the title role.

    JAN MOIR tours the best Peter Pan pantos and is delighted to report that, from Julian Clary’s cheeky smut to Jennifer Saunders’s saucy innuendo, there’s one area of British life PC killjoys haven’t cancelled

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/12/22/22/79273865-12895371-image-a-59_1703285978894.jpg

    Remarkably, there are at least 20 Peter Pan pantos in production; an all-pervading Pan-orama panning across the country, bringing with it a barmy army of Captain Hooks and assorted Smees, Wendys and Peters, Tinkerbells and pirate ne’er do wells, all of them shivering their timbers in a never-ending Neverland. From Julian Clary starring as Seaman Smee at the all-star, big-budget Peter Pan production at the London Palladium – and still hoping for a warm hand on his entrance – to the Peter Pan at the 353-seat Hazlitt Theatre in Maidstone, 2023 has brought Pan-de-monium to British theatres.

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/12/22/23/79273867-12895371-image-a-60_1703286007028.jpg

    Jennifer Saunders as Captain Hook

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-12895371/JAN-MOIR-tours-best-Peter-Pan-pantos-delighted-report-Julian-Clarys-cheeky-smut-Jennifer-Saunderss-saucy-innuendo-theres-one-area-British-life-PC-killjoys-havent-cancelled.html

    1. Great costumes. My only claim to fame is Bottom from Midsummer nights dream. But i expect you guessed that.

      2. My biggest part was also in our school production of Midsummer night. I had to crouch down behind a piece of scenery and release the dry ice at the right time.

        1. They never let me near machines like that. I would have flooded the whole place like thick fog. I would have thought it would be more authentic with audience participation saying things…’where’s the stage?’

    2. And just to think that all these alternative comedians once eschewed traditional entertainments.

  63. Heck. Buck’s Fizz – made with English champers and home made orange juice (OK, I forgot to buy any) – makes for maudlin moments.
    I looked across at a chilled out MB with Spartacus snoozing in his arms and felt quite tearful.
    After last year’s dire Christmas surrounded by packing cases and bare walls (thank you shitty solicitors further back in the chain), I felt we had come home.
    Also gave thanks that we don’t have any vets in the family. Spartie’s second breakfast (after the conscience saving bit of Hill’s science diet) of smoked salmon and home made chicken liver would have a vet in absolute conniptions.

    1. I do hope you didn’t forget the blinis for the smoked salmon! Dogs can be fussy eaters you know.

    2. I’m nearly 73, Nursey, and I have never sampled Buck’s Fizz.

      Having said that, I’ve never been a big fan of any type of fizz!

      1. There are times when only bubbles will do.
        p.s. I didn’t find the whole almond in my Danish rice pudding last night. Boo!

        2. Almonds come separate from the stone-cold Swedish rice pudding. I had some for the first time, yesterday. It was a shock, eating it cold, but the flavour was delicious.

          2. Fish chips and mushy peas followed by a nice ice pudding is wonderful. Just add curry sauce to the chips and you have it made

          4. As you know, Tom, I’d rather have both excellent foodstuffs than that disgustingly inedible stodge called ‘bread pudding’.
            A proper, light, custardy bread-and-butter pudding, though, is on another level.

      2. Far too healthy. Half fizz, half Vodka, topped up with a small amount of orange juice for the look of the thing

    3. Ah well, it is not even 9AM here but it may be time to follow Pauls advice and take some grain / vine based medicine to counteract this damned cough that appeared from nowhere.

      A mimosa / bucks fizz gives the excuse with all of that vitamin C in The orange juice.

    4. A bottle of Chapel Hill here and now onto a French Cremant de Limoux. The English sparkling wine suits my taste but both are good.

      Fleurie for me with the sirloin and Malbec for Carol.

      1. I love Malbec; my favourite red.
        We make a point of using English ‘champers’. We have the climate and soil to produce it.

  64. How Xi Jinping is challenging dollar dominance with landmark Saudi deal. 25 December 2023.

    President Xi has ambitions to challenge the global dominance of the dollar. One way to do that would be to start trading oil and gas in renminbi.

    Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, has traded oil entirely in dollars since 1974. But talks about pricing sales to China, Saudi’s largest trading partner, in renminbi have been accelerating. In November, China made a breakthrough.

    China and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement to set up a currency swap line worth 50bn yuan (£5.5bn). The landmark deal means Saudi Arabia has free access to a supply of Chinese currency at a set exchange rate, and vice versa for Beijing and the Saudi riyal.

    It is pretty obvious that the dollar is coming under increasing stress. Of course stealing other people’s assets hasn’t gone unnoticed in the wider world. It will not be immediate but the dollar hegemony is drawing to a close.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/12/24/xi-jinping-china-dollar-dominance-saudi-arabia-deal/

  65. Back from t’Coast. Very overcast and a tad windy but dry.

    Half an hour’s walk then fantastic trombetti soup an roll filled with home-made terrine. Then popped into Wiveton Church (which has been closed for several years for roof repairs. Splendid and very large church. A real treat.

    The rain started just as we drove into the garage.

    Back to find two sulking cats….

  67. “Moses’ parting of the Red Sea may NOT have been a miracle and could have been because of a ‘meteorological phenomena’, study suggests”

    Global Boiling – obviously.

    1. If I was a Hebrew being chased down by Pharaoh’s army I’d still bless God for his meteroligical phenomena miracles.

  69. My first reaction: the King seems wet, totally unlike Her late Majesty, who with Prince Philip behind her as support, seemed a hard woman. PP himself was a properly hard man. Charles seems effete.
    Suitably diverse childrens choir ticked all the boxes.
    Sorry, low level of impressed.

    2. Could be worse, we are expected to absorb a Christmas message from Trudeau just before lunchtime (with about three rebroadcasts later today).

      His message is be kind to each other which I doubt will do a lot to calm the hamas loving demonstrators as they attack anything vaguely connected to Judaism,.

  70. Dozens killed in Israeli strike on Gaza refugee camp, Hamas says. 25 December 2023.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/be99179ebd192085b8d26dd5f2732d316862762da035cda07b04ff873cc2dc2d.jpg

    At least 70 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a refugee camp in central Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry has said.

    The strike hit a residential building in the Maghazi camp east of Dei Al Balah, said Ashraf Al Qudra, a spokesman for the health ministry said.

    The incident is believed to be the biggest single loss of life in the enclave in days.

    I’m not a Muslim. I don’t support Hamas and I know about October 7 but this war is a disaster. For Israel. The optics are absolutely terrible. Even I; and I am by no means squeamish, turn the Gaza coverage off after couple of minutes. This is not a military operation but Mass Murder. The effect on opinion in the Global South, let alone the rest of Islam will probably prove to be seminal for Israel’s reputation.. I’ve even noticed pro-Hamas comments appearing in the threads of the Telegraph and Spectator. I have no solution to it but this is not one either.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/12/25/dozens-killed-israeli-strike-gaza-refugee-camp-hamas/

    2. It is probably going exactly to plan for the Islamic side.
      Dead Gazans, who cares? They must have allowed for multiple martyrs in their planning.

      The protracted action has only aided the propaganda program to paint Israel as the bad guy, they would have been better to just drop a whoping great bomb or two on Gaza at the beginning.

      1. Dead Gazans are martyrs for Islam, and so to be welcomed. Don’t make the mistake that these people have the same values or thought processes as the rest of us.

      1. Its notable that all IDF news ‘has yet to be verified’ by Aunty. But Hamas reports are quoted without reservation. I have not looked at the news today or listened to the King’s twaddle but I did hear news of Welsh clergy saying that civilian deaths in Gaza should be in the front of our minds. No mention of the 1300 butchered or 100+ being held hostage from 7/10.

        1. Indeed.
          7-10-2023 kicked the latest shitestorm off. Maybe we should focus on that?
          BiL blames Israel for everything, and cannot see that judicial intervention in the POTUS election is dangerous antidemocracy. Man’s cracked, and a PITA.

    6. I believe it was Kissinger who stated that Hamas has only to survive in order to defeat Israel.

      There are mechanisms by which such conflicts as between Hamas and Israel could have been resolved. Mass slaughter of civilians by either side is a War Crime. Admittedly the events of October 7 were atrocities of the most venal kind but even so Israel should have chosen a measured approach and sought international support and intervention.

  71. King Chares fails to understand that Muslims represent an incompatible culture re ‘The West’; inter alia they are dedicated to the destruction of Christianity by all possible means.

    King Charles is devoid of scientific knowledge re energy and ‘climate change hypotheses’; his ill-found beliefs are loud – and his ambitions are dangerous.

    Charles has always favoured all aspects of Arab culture. This throws doubt on his impartiality regarding Israel v. Hamas.

      1. The lad is seventy five.

        He is a granddad.

        He has opinions.

        Get over it, we must.

        To be wrong is more admirable than to shilly-shally.

        2. He’s a constitutional monarch. If he has opinions it’s part of his job description not to air them.

    2. We hadn’t finished eating by then so we missed it. I wasn’t really intending to watch it. I miss the Queen – he’s not much of a replacement.

    3. KC111 is devoid of all knowledge of …..well….. just about everything, really. This also includes insight and reflection. Happy Christmas, lacoste, and a merry New Year to you!

    5. I wonder if King Charles is aware of all the Christian churches burned to the ground not just in Europe but everywhere else? Thousands in the last few years. Mostly stone buildings which don’t spontaneously combust.

      1. He should look at St Philippe’s cathedral in Algiers – it’s now a mosque – and there are plenty like it in lands where the musselman now holds sway.

  72. King Chares fails to understand that Muslims represent an incompatible culture re ‘The West’; inter alia they are dedicated to the destruction of Christianity by all possible means.

    King Charles is devoid of scientific knowledge re energy and ‘climate change hypotheses’; his ill-found beliefs are loud – and his ambitions are dangerous.

    Charles has always favoured all aspects of Arab culture. This throws doubt on his impartiality regarding Israel v. Hamas.

  73. I survived the Christmas Cookathon. Some of our neighbours survived a morning dip in the pond.
    Husband has a stinking cold – great timing but the first since January 2020.
    We sat down to our Christmas ‘lunch’ at 2.30pm and most of the rest was ready soon after 3.00pm.
    Edit. January 2020 was the last time we had a bug.

          1. Q. What do you call a man with a plank on his head?
            A. Ed Wood.
            Q. What do you call a man with three planks on his head?
            A. Ed Wood Wood Wood.

      2. This seems appropriate:
        When the Nazis came for the communists,
        I remained silent;
        I was not a communist.

        When they locked up the social democrats,
        I remained silent;
        I was not a social democrat.

        When they came for the trade unionists,
        I did not speak out;
        I was not a trade unionist.

        When they came for the Jews,
        I remained silent;
        I was not a Jew.

        When they came for me,
        there was no one left to speak out.

      3. Ditto.
        I’m throughly ashamed of the unpleasant outbursts here.
        After a lifetime of assuming the British were above such things, I have to accept that this country has been changed for the worse.

        1. Back at ya, Pud. Here in leafy Surrey, we don’t have Iron Dome. Frankly, we don’t know we’re born, here in Blighty. We’re ruled by bloody imbeciles, but no incoming rockets as yet. Probably only a matter of time. Best wishes…

        2. No family these days, but doesn’t matter. After two weeks of utter nonsense re. church services, I was glad to just chill out. “Happy New Year” sounds somewhat exaggerated in the circumstances, but I hope that comes true for you and yours…

      5. It has mine, too. I had to tell the woke youngest son a few home truths as he was going on about Israel committing genocide and supporting Hamas.

  75. Late on parade but not too late to say Nadolig Llawen, pawb.

    We’ve just finished dinner. Sat down at 3.55pm. Not bad going for a planned lunchtime of 2.00pm.

  76. A poor Bogey Five

    Wordle 919 5/6
    ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩
    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
    🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Par today, just did it, it’s been so busy.

      Wordle 919 4/6

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

    3. And me.

      Wordle 919 5/6

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

  77. Merry Christmas everyone.
    Dinner cooked, eaten and washed up, now a well earned rest!

    At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old trout, I have been to three services over the last few days, and…
    – they all have the feeling of being slightly ad-libbed
    – they all use the Janet and John Bible
    – this was what really surprised me – there was APPLAUSE at all three services!
    – nobody comes in, prays and waits in silence for the service to begin – they are all braying over the pews at the neighbours until the Vicar interrupts. When you don’t know anyone else in the church, this is fairly off-putting.

    I decided that I am going to go to the one church in our group with a Churchwarden who is a hold-out for the Book of Common Prayer from now on. I used not to go very often because I didn’t want her to think I was sucking up to her – she is one of those sophisticated upper class ladies who is marvelous company, and I have no particular reason to go to her church apart from admiring her terrifically and enjoying talking to her. But I’ve had it with primary school Christianity and Welbyism sneaking in now.

    1. Don’t want to be more than usually depressing – but our church is listed (and for 100 years plus was) a BCP church. No longer….{:¬((

      1. I’m in two minds, Paul. I like BCP Evensong (although we’ve for some time stopped doing it). For a while, we would do Choral Evensong with both choirs in alternate churches. Inevitaby, I ended up as Cantor. But the choir + ‘staff’ inevitably outnumbered the congregation.

        It always seemed appropriate to use KJV readings in those services. But for mainstream services, there are more accessible translations. We stick largely to the traditional hymns, though…

    3. Merry Christmas, BB2. Following our conversation in Horsell, that sounds like a good plan. Ironicaly, in my “united” parish, we’ve had a full scale mutiny by a churchwarden who really ought to know better. The Rector has been ill with Bronchitis and Covid, and his friend and countryman (boyo), our former Archdeacon and now Suffragan Bishop kindly offered to lead a couple of services this weekend. Since we’re supposed to be a “united” parish, it was assumed that the Rector wouldn’t be sufficiently recovered. So the focus was on supporting the Bishop at Midnight Mass in one main church, and at Christmas morning Eucharist at the other. The Rector planned to go to t’other church this morning, merely to say his prayers. Should anyone turn up, they could join in. Besides, we were short of organists.

      A certain Churchwarden, former High Sheriff and current Deputy Lieutenant had different ideas. She WhatsApped the entire village to make sure they would go to the ‘wrong’ church, hijacked the choir, and persuaded a passing High Court Judge to play the organ. Basically, this is mutiny against the Rector, and as an officer of the Bishop, she really, really ought to have known better.

      Thus, it seemed likely that the turnout for the ‘official’ Communion this morning would be embarassingly small. But God moves in mysterious ways. The church was packed, complete with dozens of children. It felt like a revival of sorts. Because of the shenanigans above, we had only two in the choir, both sopranos, but they sang their little hearts out, especially to the Willcocks descants for “O come, all ye faithful” and “Hark the herald angels”. The organ, recently overhauled at no insignificant cost, was unusually in tune. The Bishop sang lustily, and even taught us a version of the Gloria, since he refuses to say what is essentially a song.

      It’s been a difficult week or two, what with all the illnesses and shenanigans, but the end result couldn’t have been better. I’m considering the possibility of redundancy, after 18 years in the parish. My revised contract runs to 30 September 2025, but – given the greatly reduced numbers post-lockdown, they simplycan’t afford me. I would join the volunteer musicians, and prolly still do the lion’s share of services, but I’ve realised that – if I’m no longer an employee – it clears the way to my standing as Churchwarden. A thankless task, but I did it in darkest Suffolk for a couple of years in a previous life.

      Funny old world…

          1. Much, ta.
            Little bit of residual cough, but is all.
            Strong need for home, where TV is not blaring, and alcohol consumption is normal…

      3. These village Whatsapp groups are more trouble than they are worth sometimes, especially when they are invitation only and not everyone is in them!
        It’s so easy to manipulate things via the Whatsapp group, which is no substitute for actual real organisation. It’s no coincidence that the best organised parishes are run by Churchwardens who do things in a more traditional way.
        I also noticed that we had very good turnouts for the three services that I went to. Perhaps things are finally starting to recover from covid?

        I am terribly sorry Geoff, but I lost your contact details. I will ask hertslass for them again if you don’t mind.

  78. That’s me for this Christmas Day. Very good, so far – though I fear my cold is returning (as predicted by knowledgeable NoTTLers…

    Enjoy the rest of the day. Supposed to be sunny tomorrow – but chilly – as we go to Bury St Edmunds (bet most of you didn’t know he was dead) for lunch tomorrow with the chum who introduced the MR to me.

    A demain, briefly.

  79. Being forced to watch Dr Who.
    How are the mighty fallen… Jon Pertwee will be spinning.
    What utter shite. Out for a cider in a few mins.

          2. Enjoy, Paul. I’ve now run out of red, so I’ve opened a bottle of Edna Valley Chardonnay, gifted today. I should prolly have put it in the fridge, first.

          6. They’re open here, but there are no trains. So Amazon Fresh to the rescue. I don’t know whether they’ve reached your part of the world, but they now offer a choice of Amazon, Morrisons and the Co-op. Rather like Deliveroo and Just Eats, they can deliver within a short time frame, whereas the supermarkets tend to have no delivery slots, especially at this time of year.

          7. You in the SW again, Paul? Just a thought – GWR trains to Reading stop here until 10.04. I frequently take those, and go on to Exeter St Davids. If you fancy a pint, anywhere between Surrey and Lands End, do let me know. After two-to-three months of stress. trying to print stuff for the Parish on a broken printer, I finally have my life back.

          17. Thank you. And a very Happy Christmas to you too Geoff.
            With all the Church shenanigans I do wonder if the folk involved have lost sight of Christianity…..?

          18. Christianity? I’ve been a church organist since 1971. Which means I raised my head above the parapet. So, much criticism incoming. But I don’t care. Today’s service surprised me. The church in Puttenham doesn’t have a good, welcoming reputation. Nevertheless, we had 60 – 70 worshippers this morning. I’d expected less than 10, most of whom were “Staff”.

          19. As I went to church twice yesterday (normal morning service for the fourth Sunday in Advent) and to Midnight Mass, I felt I was excused church parade this morning.

          20. Fairy Nuff. We somehow managed to bypass Advent 4, sadly. But, since our Ministry Team is now reduced to one, and he’s crocked due to Bronchitis and Covid, I can harly complain.

          21. Undoubtedly. But I ‘m glad to report that all the services were well-attended in the end, despite all the nonsense. Prolly not a religious revival, but I’m a happy bunny. For now. Truth is that – of the sixty-odd that came to Puttenham yesterday morning – fifty-odd would haave been blissfully ignorant of the church politics. I suspect that’s also true of the church at t’other end of the parish. They also had a good turnout, a splendid choir, and an organist who moonlights as a High Court Judge. Merry Christmas…

    2. Ahh we have just turned it on, for some reason my son wants to watch it. We are 5 minutes in and I am not convinced about it…but we are bonding over taking the mickey out of it.

      Am drinking my expensive bottle of wine, given to me by my CEO (nothing personal – he gives one to all of us).

      1. How did your turkey work out. We cooked our turkey breast roll on a rack over roast potatoes, roast carrots and parsnips and roast sprouts and bacon. Best Christmas dinner ever. I’d made stock from last week’s chicken carcass that was the gravy. Also had pigs in blankets and stuffing. Not enough room for afters (pudding).

        1. Hi Alf
          Actually I was very pleased…I put a mix of chopped sage, garlic and butter under the skin and then covered it in rashers of streaky bacon, then, a la Delia, wrapped the whole thing up in a big parcel of foil…and uncovered it and turned up the temperature for the last half hour. It tasted really nice, I thought. Served with roast potatoes, roast carrots and roast parsnips, sprouts, red cabbage, cauliflower cheese, stuffing, chipolatas and the reserved bacon.

          1. Wonderful.
            I read yesterday that Delia uses her own cookbook to make Christmas dinner because she can no longer remember how.

    3. I stopped watching it when they got rid of William Hartnell. Every single “Doctor” since then has been a pastiche impostor.

      2. Like the old woman of 95 who greeted the new vicar saying:

        “I have seen eight new vicars in my time in the parish – each one worse than the one before. I don’t think you’ll be the exception!”

    4. Days have gone since the Doctor exited the Tardis with companion on a completely strange planet and then immediately split up…

  80. 18:36 and Christmas Feast chez Citroen has just gone in the oven.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8be2c3007b10bf54b91b1d3ce98e4f72bdf4225f8fca6adc93cb25647c0a5d3e.jpg

    Great excitement from my two house guests, Penny & Twiglet, who are staying for a month whilst their humans are on hols in New Zealand. As you can see, P & T are correctly dressed for dinner whereas I am not.

    Roast Pheasant
    Sage & onion stuffing
    Piglets in blankets
    Bread sauce
    Proper gravy
    Roast parsnips
    Roast spuds
    Brussels sprouts

    Christmas pudding with proper brandy butter
    Crystallised fruits

    Coffee & Indigestion

    Just hope and pray I don’t burn everything. Sulky Jack Russells if I do.

    2. Just a bit of light nibbling, here and there, for me today. No real food eaten.

      Yesterday I attended a traditional Swedish julbord (Christmas table) laden with all manner of food. Tomorrow, I’ve been invited to the home of another English expat who is cooking a traditional English Christmas Dinner, albeit one day late.

      Today’s ‘fast’ was necessary to normalise my system between two feasts.

      1. Fair enough, Grizz. Church notwithstanding, I’m playing “Johnny No-Mates” today. Ordinarily, I’d have made an effort, but with no discernible sense of taste post-Covid, I’m making do with a Co-op Chicken dinner which expired yesterday. Happy Christmas…

    3. 6:30 and the meal has just gone in the oven?

      You must be a youngster, many of us oldies are thinking about bedtime not much later than that!

    4. Oscar, Kadi and I survived Christmas with friends, their sons and their (7) dogs. Oscar was worn out by it all, Kadi got into a fight with one of the bitches (I suspect she started it) and had to have Savlon on a wound on the back of his neck. Apart from that it was hilarious. I haven’t laughed so much in years. Youngest son (who works in a university) was a full-on climate changer. I think it was a bit of a culture shock for him to find that the rest of us told him some home truths about sun spots and the need for CO2.

    5. Oscar, Kadi and I survived Christmas with friends, their sons and their (7) dogs. Oscar was worn out by it all, Kadi got into a fight with one of the bitches (I suspect she started it) and had to have Savlon on a wound on the back of his neck. Apart from that it was hilarious. I haven’t laughed so much in years. Youngest son (who works in a university) was a full-on climate changer. I think it was a bit of a culture shock for him to find that the rest of us told him some home truths about sun spots and the need for CO2.

  81. There’ve been so many false dawns with silver but it’s bound to come good one day…

    Willem Middelkoop
    @wmiddelkoop
    Big for Silver

    “Silver Revolution in Hydrogen Fuel Cells ..

    Researchers at Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Lab and Toyota have transformed hydrogen fuel cells by replacing expensive platinum group metals with more cost-effective Silver.
    This breakthrough in silver technology is projected to surpass the demand for Silver in solar applications by 2026’

    Me: They have to source the Hydrogen in a cost effective way first!!

    1. Charity becomes big business.
      Develops all the problems associated with big business, but without the managerial skills to cope.
      Money vanishes. Individuals become rich and can’t cope, either.
      Charities of the old school take up the slack. Again.
      Man’s a dumbass.

  85. They’ve got Netflix on while I’m staying in the kitchen with some wine and a book. But I can hear Ricky Gervais doing a stand-up comedy. I’ve laughed out loud a few times and asked them what it was.
    Ricky Gervais, Armageddon on Netflix. I can recommend it, you’ll be very happily surprised, at least those of us un-woke with a dark sense of humour. Not usually a fan.

    Edit: Warning, his language is extremely ‘ripe’ to say the least.

  86. Spent Christmas Day with my family so saw the King’s speech. Could have been worse. We explained to two little great nephews that we have a king now because the queen died and the eight year old, who spends a lot of time playing shoot-em-up type video games, became quite flustered and said, “Don’t talk about death, I don’t want granddad to die”. A game of dominoes after that.

    1. I remember being totally distraught when I understood death, aged about six.
      Pretty well all relatives were gone by then, but even so…

        1. I’m sorry about that, N. So did I, and waking up to realise, yet again, was hard.(as a 37-year old).
          Now dream and worry about Mother, who isn’t doing too well.
          Family, eh? Who’d have them? (me, btw).

        2. Yes, I did too, Ndovu, even though I was 22 when he died. They became more spaced out as the years passed. The last one, a few years ago, was disturbing, it was different from the others that I had had, but I’ve had none since then.

          2. As a child, I was convinced he’d come back. I worried that if we moved, he wouldn’t know where to find us. We didn’t move, but he didn’t return either.

  87. Phew!
    I’m knackered! After a HUGE Christmas Dinner, (with Yorkshire puds by the way) and getting the washing up done, t’Lad decided to go for a walk and I joined him.
    We did the 10 mile circular over Middleton Moor minus the pubs as they were shut.
    Dr. Daughter & boyfriend have arrived and I’m sat quietly having a mug of tea and will be off for a bath soon so will bid one and all a Merry Christmas and a good night.

  88. Well, that’s me told off.
    Texted a friend to ask her if she was available for a Christmas drink now we’re relatively closely located, and got ticked off as a response that she’d told me that she’s minding crumblies.
    Searched the sms trail, and that’s correct, but:
    – The situation might have changed
    – Who but a creep keeps calendars for friends movements?
    Ah, bugger it. Looks like the answer is “NO!”

  89. I don’t know if it’s that Christmas Day has lacked all the traditional silly stuff we usually have – little sacks for the lads for little presents, brandy butter for the pud, whatever, but I’m left with a strong feeling of foreboding, related to me. It’s quite powerful, and very disturbing, and feels like the schedule is “soon”. No idea what, but I’ll likely not be active much here until it’s gone. Lots of tension. Brr!
    Goodnight, all Y’all. Bis später!

    3. Large amounts of alcohol can create a euphoric state. As with any mind state change there is payback.

    4. You’re not wrong…

      Gold Telegraph ⚡
      @GoldTelegraph_
      Ethiopia is the latest country to default on its debt.
      We are in a global debt crisis, and many are sleeping through it until it arrives on their doorstep.

      and

      Gold Telegraph ⚡
      @GoldTelegraph_
      Central banks are buying themselves gold for Christmas using the paper currency they issue.
      Is that not magical?

  90. I’m back home after a lovely Christmas day at eldest and DiL part of my family. Lovely grand children. And our eldest in-laws. Had a lovely private chat, jokes and laughs with our eldest’s father in law alongside the consumption of at least one extremely pleasant bottle of red wine around 14.5 % but a tad pissed off with Erin for calling me an alcoholic.
    Probably because she had to drive home.
    But you just can’t win can you. Tomorrow is another day and heaven forbid more wine. I might be mistaken but I thought it was Christmas. Not the day of reckoning..
    Night all 😄😉😴

  91. Evening, all and just in time to reiterate “happy Christmas”! Soon it will be Happy St Stephen’s Day 🙂

  92. Goodnight, all. That’s Christmas over for another year. Boxing Day and the local meet later this morning.

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