Monday 25 November: Assisted dying for those whom the palliative care system cannot help

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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874 thoughts on “Monday 25 November: Assisted dying for those whom the palliative care system cannot help”

  2. おはよう. (Ohayo) Geoff and everyone.
    Today's Tails – Pet themed

    I just told my wife, I’d been bitten by an Alsatian on my walk.  She said 'My God, what if it had been a small child!'  I said, 'I could have fought off a small child!'

    You know it’s cold outside when you trip over dog sh!t instead of standing in it.

    Think twice before getting a rescue cat.  My Nan got one. She tripped and fell one day and it just sat there and did nothing.

    My cat went missing yesterday. I walked around the local area for half an hour but no luck. My wife said I needed to look harder. So I shaved my head and got some tattoos on my knuckles but I still couldn’t find him.

    I went to the pet shop and asked for a dozen bees. The assistant counted out 13 bees and handed them over. I said “you’ve given me one too many”. He said “No, that one’s a freebie”.

  3. Good morning, Geoff, and thanks for today's new NoTTLe site. And a very good morning, to the rest of my NoTTLer friends.

    Wordle 1,255 4/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie and all
      Wordle 1,255 5/6

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  5. Good morning all.
    Still dark but dry and blustery with 4°C on the Yard Thermometer.

    Up to 1,826,933 now.

    Posted on Yesterday's page, here's one that people seem to be ignoring:-

    Petition
    Reverse changes to Winter Fuel Payment
    We want the Government to restore the Winter Fuel Payment to how it was paid last winter immediately. We are concerned that pensioners could die if MPs do not act, and that the NHS could be under more pressure.
    https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700074

  8. A very good point. Had any NOTTLer thought of this?

    "SIR – Clause 29 of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying Bill would prohibit a coroner from investigating any death where the duty to do so arises only because the deceased died as a consequence of the provision of assistance in accordance with the Bill. But for that clause, the coroner would be under a statutory duty to investigate such a death and, if satisfied at inquest that the deceased had used an approved lethal substance to end his or her life with the intention of doing so, would be obliged to record a conclusion of suicide.

    Since the coroner’s jurisdiction affords a powerful deterrent against misfeasance, the public may wonder why the Bill proposes to abandon such a robust safeguard. The approval of the High Court is no substitute as it would be given in advance of death and could offer no assurance that the assistance had been provided in strict compliance with the law or that the circumstances of the case had not changed following the Court’s declaration.

    If the Bill becomes law, who will provide the necessary posthumous judicial scrutiny of these unnatural deaths?

    His Honour Thomas Teague KC
    Former chief coroner for England and Wales
    Chester"

    2. HH Teague's opinion is less easily brushed aside like mine would be. It's a good point he makes, I didn't know that.

      1. This is because the Bill allows "a responsible person" to make decisions for those too ill to

        be able to communicate their wishes.

        I'm sure that MPs would be considered to be "responsible people" but there are certainly a few

        that I couldn't rely on, and wouldn't want to rely on.

        I suppose that one could make a similar comment about certain mayors.

        Or even consider the motives of Matron desperate for beds for sons of politicians.

        Need I go on…………?

          1. Obviously the proposed Bill thinks so.

            Your question is probably why so many people are against the Bill.

    3. "Prohibit" seems a bit unnecessary…almost as though there was some reason why they wouldn't want inquests on euthanised patients.

  10. Britain is in ‘AI arms race’ with Russia, Pat McFadden to warn. 25 November 2024.

    Mr McFadden will also warn that Moscow is prepared to launch a wave of cyber attacks across the country in a n attempt to cause havoc on the UK’s critical infrastructure.

    He will say there is an imminent risk of a Russian cyber attack on businesses and infrastructure that could “shut down the power grids” and deal a hammer blow to the economy.

    This has been extensively leaked beforehand to give Mr McFadden some street cred. If it were not for the risk to the economy I would suspect a false flag operation. In reality of course we have been waging cyber warfare with the Russians from well before the Skripal business.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/25/ai-arms-cyber-race-pat-mcfadden-putin-russia-ukraine/

    3. The most danger this country faces from either information warfare or energy is the government itself, not a foreign power.

      The online harm bill is an appalling piece of legislation aimed specifically to control the truth on the web and make government the ultimate censor.

      Our energy security is horrifically at risk thanks to Miliband's appalling climate change act and non-sensical pursuit of destructive, ecologically damaging unreliables.

    4. When THEY want a cyber attack, a cyber attack will happen and the Russians will be blamed. Mystic BB2 predicts that a fragment of code will be found on an affected computer with Russian words in it!

    5. When THEY want a cyber attack, a cyber attack will happen and the Russians will be blamed. Mystic BB2 predicts that a fragment of code will be found on an affected computer with Russian words in it!

  11. 397356+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    De-criminalise escorts actions and leave as is.

    Monday 25 November: Assisted dying for those whom the palliative care system cannot help

    As has been proved you cannot, in any shape or form, trust the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled / government controlled, paedophile umbrella, murder inc. coalition party.

      1. Relatively quiet outside. Not raining, light breeze. Opened the windows and inside temp is 16.9 but feels a lot warmer. The barometer for too cold is when the Warqueen complains and she hasn't yet.

        Odd though, that some days it can be 18 in here feel freezing. Others 16 and be perfectly OK.

  13. Assisted dying for those whom the palliative care system cannot help

    The phrase Assisted Dying is deliberately vague, open to interpretation and can mean so many things.
    A Lefty must have thought of it.

    1. I put this as a BTL response:-

      "Good palliative care" does include the administration of drugs to relieve pain even if those drugs are likely to cause death.

      And yes, I know, it is a fine line to be drawn.

    1. Had a lass in a class once who wore the tightest, tiniest electric purple lycra shorts and a sports bra combo. Oh, she looked amazing, it was very distracting but if she'd gone outside in that someone would've got to her.

      So I gave her my coat to wear and said why. It's simply not safe for women to dress like that in the UK.

      1. Russia is probably safer.
        Just don't plan a career in the forces. Or get a bigger mansion than Vlad.

    2. 'Climate change' is merely the Left's latest weapon to remove tax from the earner and shift it to the state.

      It's nothing more than a tax scam. The idea that we can control the weather is stupid.

      There is much we can, and should be doing to help our ecology and environment – forbidding immigration (which goes against the globalist race replacement/government, not national allegiance idoelogy), scrapping child benefit (but that would exclude the hard Left's customer base of feckless wasters), aiming for 90-95% recycling and re-use (but that requires a lot of energy, which is heavily taxed), building longer lasting appliances (but that requires a long spare parts chain, warranty and engineer training, all of which is vastly expensive when manufacturing and employment are heavily taxed).

      At every turn, government makes policy that is antithetical to what they blither on about. In reality, they don't give a stuff about the environment. They just want to tax people.

        1. A Nottler put up a post a few days ago showing a chief executive of Blackrock explaining that they had to apply pressure on people to make them think as they were supposed to think.

          And very successful too. The majority of people still have swallowed the Covid and Climate lies and cannot see that they are being scammed.

      2. Prior to it being used by the Lefty Labour Party, it was common parlance in the Lefty Conservative Party.

      3. No. Camilla PB showed Charlie how to use his wedding tackle when he was a twenty two year old virgin and he was be-smitten. His infatuation was overwhelming but she was already married. Didn't stop them cavorting at every opportunity, She got her objective in the end – Queen Cammy. She is the Controller!

    3. "At least Dad only cheated with one woman whom he subsequently married. But Mum was the first to cheat and she then became a serial cheater".

        1. Mine was ‘mum’. Mum (Derbyshire) called her mum ‘mam’. Dad (Yorkshire) called his mum ‘mi mother’.

  20. Morning, all Y'all.
    Torrential rain last night, on top of snow and cold ground. LIke a skating rink this morning, and nice neighbour couldn't remember how to drive up the hill when it's slippery, so blocked the road. So, having to work from home, we couldn't get he car by the stuck one… 🙁

  22. Good morning all,

    Blue sky , quiet , slight breeze , dry .. and no golf for the golfer ..

    Pulling the curtains to be greeted with a lull in the weather is very gratifying .

    My heartfelt sympathies to everyone with flood problems , power cuts and general misery .

    1. Morning, Maggie.
      MB and I have always wondered how on earth people cope with or recover from having their homes flooded.
      Furniture, fixtures and fittings and power systems ruined. Months to dry out the house. Insurance hassles. Living in temporary accommodation for weeks on end. Constant feeling of insecurity. Trouble selling the house.
      It would finish us.

      1. Good morning Anne ,

        Yes , I agree with you .

        Once , only once years ago , we experienced the worst ever .

        In the very early eighties , only 2 years into a brand new home .. furnishings etc , we visited the Southampton boat show . A quick drive up the motorway and we were there , living in the Wimborne area at the time .

        I had a new automatic washing machine .. and put it on for a wash before we left .. and we reassured the springer spaniel at that time and the parrot , we wouldn't be long .

        We were mentally enjoying spending money we didn't have .. lovely boats and yachts and atmosphere .. and came away with lots of memories a few hours later .

        Arrived home , opened the front door , spaniel greeted us with a paddling sound , splish splosh , parrot shrieking hallo.. and water everywhere .. soaked carpets , froth, stink and heartbreak ..

        We called the insurance company and a plumber , who contacted a specialist team to come and remove the carpets, dry us out etc..

        My nightmare was .. the carpets were muddy soggy heavy , the floor underneath was muddy smelly etc skirting boards and plaster boarded walls under the skirting .. a mess .. .

        Things were chaos .. too stressful to really remember .. Moh was livid .

        The muddy mess was the result of a couple of years worth of Shake and Vac .. remember that terrible advert ?

        The Cleaning company told us that the dry carpet cleaner should be banned .. it caused more damage in their opinion than any other cleaning product.

        I was broken , for a good few months after the incident .. my fault .

          1. Ha ha, yes .. goodness , how foolish was I ..

            Thanks for the reminder Anne ..

            Shake and vac .. well 3 untrained men in the house ( 2young sons and husband ) dog and parrot etc..

            The mess they made, eek!

    2. Yes – blue sky here too. No wind, rain gone. Will have to see if I can retrieve my car from where I left it stuck in the mud.

    1. I thought he had some smart Saville Row suits!

      If it is true that his wife has left him then we can say that these suits and her clothes came from Alli money!

  24. I appreciate I'm an outlier in my perhaps overly libertarian views, but on the assisted dying issue I honestly do think it's the right of the individual to choose how to both live and how to die.

    What am I missing in this argument? What don't I understand? No one is suggesting a Logan's Run style escapade.

      1. It isn't my only problem, but it's a major concern after what happened over abortion. I don't trust any government now. What has happened in Belgium where putting down the disabled and mentally infirm is legal does not make pleasant reading.

    3. If I decide I want to die that is one thing – if a family member who would like to get hold of my assets or be rid of the inconvenience of having me still around – puts pressure on me to make that decision it is a completely different matter!

    4. 1. Any individual can commit suicide any time they want, they just can't request or require others to kill them.

      2. I am also libertarian, but I believe in accepting one's responsibilities too. Responsibilities have to balance rights. People are choosing to take medical treatment that extends their life way beyond its natural span and brings them to a point where the quality is very low and they are being kept alive by the pharma industry. This is in no way a natural situation. (it can and probably will happen to most of us though)

      – the pharma industry gets profits
      – the patient gets precious extra years of life
      – due to social medicine, everyone else pays for the treatment of many patients, i.e. transfer of wealth from people to billionaires
      – due to medication, more people arrive slowly at the state where their quality of life is very low, i.e. candidates for euthanasia.

      The waters are now muddy. More is involved than the individual patient's freedom.

      3. Euthanasia will cost money, and will become a billion pound industry that will fight to enlarge itself, eg by lobbying behind the scenes for changes in the law. This is morally wrong.

      4. Individual liberties should not be allowed where they damage society fundamentally. Eg migration should be controlled, people should not be allowed to go around murdering others or stealing from them. Euthanasia will fundamentally damage society by cheapening life.
      -Children will be brought up with the expectation that Grandma and Grandad will be taken to the gas chamber when they're "too old to live any more."
      -The balance of looking after someone (elderly or disabled) will be destroyed permanently, because everyone will know that the burden put on the carer could be lifted any time by euthanasia. Guilt will overwhelm the person being cared for.

      5. The state will bully people into signing the form by removing other options. Eg your treatment is just too expensive for Our NHS, here's the form.

      1. They are looking to make murder by the state legal.
        No suprise that people will fall for it.!

      2. I don't understand the socialised element. Arguably that already exists. You're paying for my inhalers, for example.

        The wealth transfer I don't understand as pharmacology is a business. Nothing has changed there.

        For 3, yes, you may have a point as big government decides to change the law. but doesn't that come down to democratic accountability anyway? I've never believed the state should be allowed to kill someone, but if you choose to kill yourself, that's your decision.

        Individual liberty implies the rights over rule responsibility. I refute that premise. Same as massive uncontrolled gimmigration removes the responsibility from the immigrant it also removes the freedom from the citizen to contribute to their country, to earn a living. Their income is confiscated to pay for someone else's lack of responsibility. They are deprived by a third party of freedom.

        The NHS already deprives some people of drugs on the basis of cost. It always has.

        Guilt is an issue I hadn't considered. I don't know how that would work but again, for me it comes down to choice.

        1. Rights without responsibilites are pure hedonism and selfishness.

          The point about social medicine is that it’s a giant system that transfers wealth from the many to the few. The many put up with it, because their dividend is a few more years on this earth, which is precious. However, one of the unwanted by-products of social medicine is a larger than natural number of people whose quality of life is very low. The euthanasia supporters want to eliminate this by-product by killing them. I’m saying that rather than “solving” the problem by killing the people, we should look again at the whole premise of social medicine, and whether pills and operations for everything is really the way to go.
          Rather than being pressured to sign a form when it’s already too late, people should understand what they’re potentially getting into when they take the first pill.

          “it comes down to choice” – but the truth is that choice will be meaningless to many people, because they won’t have alternatives. Eg palliative care getting wound down because euthanasia solves the problem. The NHS depriving people of treatments will become worse if there is a very cheap alternative available, i.e. killing the patient. It’s only human nature to favour the easiest solution.

          The disabled groups that are campaigning against euthanasia have no illusions – they know that they will be labelled ‘useless eaters’ at the drop of a hat and guilt-tripped into euthanasia.

    5. Keep the government out of it.
      Ever since dwale was invented, human being have quietly administered painkillers known to shorten often unbearable lives.
      It is the formal involvement of government in such a matter that is disquieting.
      And we fret about tax increases.

    6. No one is suggesting it, but it will end up like that – see how the abortion law has turned out. The power of life and death in the hands of the state – is that really a good thing?

    1. No mention of the petition that I can see in the DT today.

      Isn't the speed in which it has risen newsworthy to a supposedly right leaning newspaper?

      1. Here's one from the past..
        The British government has rejected a petition calling for Brexit to be stopped, which gathered more than 5.8 million signatures.

        Though they managed to trash it.

        2. They didn't need to heed the petition, they had no intention of delivering a proper break with the EU in the first place.

  28. Good morning, Nottlers,

    Last night, just before going to bed, we suddenly remembered that our Telegraph sub was about to renew automatically at an inflated price so I scrambled to attempt to cancel it.

    I suspect that because it was in the middle of the night it didn't send me to a telephone number, to my relief. I waded through the pages begging me to stay "This is what you'll be missing!", hunted for the "Cancel" button on each page and eventually got to the business end. Up popped "Tell us why you're cancelling" and rather than just zapping that one I clicked "Other" and told them that their renewal fee was too high. I was expecting the next page to confirm my cancellation, but no! Up came a fresh renewal offer at £29 – under a third of what the orignal fee was. So we're still with you!

    1. Much the same happened to me. And Sky offered me Netflix at an all-in price which was lower that what I was already paying.

  29. Morning all.

    With the assisted dying bill about to be voted on, Free Speech asks readers to vote on whether they support it or not at the top of the Today page. personally, as distrust of government and the State is now habitual, I'm against it.

    And the Duke looks at why the MSM freely bashes some groups while others remain untouchable in his ‘ Up to the Gills in Weirdness and Hypocrisy’ , using the late AA Gill’s report on Japan as an example, and our Grumpy Old Man has a crack at DIY .

    If you have not already done so, please sign the petition to parliament calling for a new general election on the grounds that Labour has broken its manifesto promises, which it obviously has. It is already the fasted growing petition and at 0800 this morning 1,859,601 had signed. Any petition that gets 100,000 signatures is ‘considered’ for debate in parliament. The more that sign, the harder it is for them to ignore. Please sign by following this link .

    Energy Watch: Demand at 0800: 19.399 GW (unusually low). Supply: Hydrocarbon = 19.9%; Renewables = 52.1%; Nuclear = 9.6%; Biomass = 7% and Imports 8.2%.

    https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/

    1. The trouble with petition debates is not that they don't take place, they do – but not in the main House. They are just a select few who meet in Westminster Hall and talk politely about the issue for an hour or so and that's it. Done.

      1. Good point Ndovu, but when that becomes evident after a few million have signed a petition, it could add fuel to the flames of indignation that are being sparked.

        1. I don’t know how evident it becomes- they send out a report of the debate but how many people realise it’s not in the main chamber and only a few MPs attend and have their say and an hour or so later that’s it.

  30. Well, I shall no doubt set the cat among the pigeons but….that petition.

    In 2016 the referendum result indicated that a majority of those who voted wanted to leave the EUSSR. Immediately, remainiacs started to campaign to reverse the result and, later, to rejoin. The majority complained about the refusal of losers to accept the result.

    In 2024 the election result gave Labour a majority. I loathed them before the election and hate them even more now – BUT, I abide by the result.

    This petition seems to me to be just like remaniacs campaigning.

    Either one accepts election results or one doesn't. I do – for better or worse.

    I don't expect to find many thumbs!

    1. No indeed. I signed, not with the slightest expectation that 2TK would say "Blimey, that's a lot of signatures. I'd best be along to see the King", but as a way of expressing my horror at just how badly this pound-shop Blair has performed.

    2. Good morning M. T (and all)

      It's not the legitimacy of the election result that folk are protesting. It's the mendacity of Labour's pre-election promises i.e a false prospectus that has riled folk. Had they been totally honest would they have achieved their incredible majority?

    4. I don't because they have reneged on pre-election commitments. The Labour Party is a lie, it is demonstrably the Communist Party that has been elected by deception. We have to get rid of them.

      Once it reaches a figure that exceeds the number of votes they attracted we could exercise our right under the Bill of Rights (1688) and petition the King to remove them.

      1. Which should be done through recalling those politicians individually rather than as a general election.

        Government should serve the public will, not it's own ideology. The public should set the agenda – When the first budget is demonstrably anti growth that should be made clear and Reeves recalled, unable to pass the budget as chancellor and the Labour party simply told no, this is not what you were elected to do.

        1. Recall requires 10% of a constituency's registered voters to sign the petition.
          In most constituencies that is roughly 10,000 signatories.
          Not impossible, but needs a degree of political engagement that most do not possess.
          And yes, I do realise that means that most voters are apathetic and deserve what they get.

    5. I think you are right (with the caveat that the election result doesn't give any kind of mandate to steal farm land), however, I don't believe that any petition will reach a million signatures unless promoted to the people by TPTB.
      The last one to reach a million was promoted in the Mail; I believe that this one has been promoted on Twitter, with the same aim, i.e. to soak up people's anger and let them feel they've told the government. It is perfectly clear bringing down this govt, given their majority, is almost impossible.

    6. I think that will be very close to the government response. However, the exercise does send a message that many people are unhappy even if it does not achieve any change.

    7. I said exactly the same, yesterday.

      Those clamouring for an new election are no different from the Remainiacs they pillory.

      1. Except the remoaners got what they wanted anyway: a statist refusal to enact divergent policies.

        Again, here's the state implementing policies that it wants, not ones the public would benefit from.

        The state will ignore this petition. It's a protest. The underpinnings, in both circumstances is the entire machinery of government being utterly detached from the public will.

      2. And as I said yesterday, the two situations are different. There was a binary choice for the referendum and one of the choices won. In this election the choices which people voted for turned out not to be choices at all because they were lies.

    8. The difference was that 52% of the voters in a turnout of 72% voted for Brexit while only a third of voters voted for Starmer when the turnout was 59.7%. in the 2024 general election – the lowest at a general election since 2001. This means that the percentage of eligible voters who voted for Starmer was only 20%.

      Of course we tend to support the system which gives us a result we like. For years the Liberals have said that they wanted PR but they are far less enthusiastic for it now that PR gave them 72 parliamentary seats with far fewer votes than the Reform Party which only got 5!

      Now that the Conservative Party is no longer right of centre my views on FPTP have changed – and I would prefer PR.

    9. Go back further than that – we were lied to by Heath regarding the EU ie we joined on the basis of lies, just like Labour winning the last election

    10. You're right, Bill. I would argue that it goes a bit deeper into a complete lack of democracy in this country though.

      The referendum was son the government's terms, called when it wanted to, for it's benefit. Since then, every opportunity has been taken to prevent any benefit whatsoever from leaving the EU. Our instruction has, basically, been ignored.

      Government enacts myriad law without our consent. We shouldn't need an election to stop that, it should be part of our system of government that it cannot act without our permission or consent.

      This petition will also be ignored, dismissed and no doubt derided by the state. The fundamental problem is one of accountability. We, the public, cannot stop the government from doing whatever it likes while it is in office.

      One could argue the numbers – remoaners fought against democracy yet still got what they wanted while the petitioners are fighting for it, but they both come back to the same issue: the state does whatever it wants.

    11. The referendum was a binary vote about one issue.You knew what you were getting.
      Labour has so far shown that prior to the GE it lied about almost all of its plans. There must be a legal and/or constitutional reason for a recall.

      1. Agreed – but it was the principle of accepting results (like them or not) that was my point

        1. I would agree with that nine times out of ten, Bilty but when the win was procured on the back of such blatant lies, my principles wobble.

    12. That doesn't stop us protesting. Silence indicates dumb acceptance, which leads to ever more arrogant behaviour by parliament.
      Nobody expects the petition on its own to alter things.
      It is a marker; an indicator. It signals to many that they are not alone.

    13. As I've pointed out before, the two are not the same; the remainers didn't like the result although people knew what they were voting for. In this instance people are objecting not so much that they don't like the result of the election as that people voted on something that was an absolute lie; they did NOT get what they were promised and on which basis they voted.

  31. Morning all 🙂😊
    Could be a break in the cloud and some sunshine later.
    Assisted dying is just another scam that when fully investigated will show is real worth.
    Future Gas chambers spring to mind.

  32. The trouble with Labour’s ‘respect orders’. 25 November 2024.

    As the Allison Pearson debacle begins to settle down, the lesson being drawn by many is that the police have no business harassing people for voicing opinions that are legal, no matter how offensive or hypothetically damaging they might be. Many of us have been urging as much for years. But taking stock now, surely most can agree that it’s not the state’s role to monitor speech, morality or the way we conduct ourselves in our private lives.

    Fixed that.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-trouble-with-labours-respect-orders/

    1. There is no 'right not to be offended'. We have had the ridiculous instances of people being offended on behalf of someone else. Some 900 police officers have been tasked with trawling social media for hurty words. Get out on the street and catch some criminals! Better still, get stuck into crime prevention.

    2. I was about to criticise TTK's glasses, then I remembered I need to get the ironing done first.

    1. The time for Orwell analogies are past, it's been used to death and we have arrived. It's an excuse and justification for yet more Authoritarian control.

      1. Well, err, rather than past, surely they're more relevant than ever? After all Orwell described a dystopia where authoritarian fascism ruined a nation. They are pointers as to what not to do, warnings of the behaviours expressed?

        Orwell didn't excuse or justify it. He opposed it.

    2. The time for Orwell analogies are past, it's been used to death and we have arrived. It's an excuse and justification for yet more Authoritarian control.

  35. On Saturday, club members volunteered to do a spot of maintenance in the club house and on the Archery field. Today looking at the club's website the entire field is flooded to a depth over over 4 feet and even though the club house is on a raised platform 3 feet above the field it too is flooded. The River level is currently 4 metres above normal….. 🙁

    1. At least there will be something for the maintenance party to do now…

      Sorry. My commiserations. Our cellar flood will take a long time to fade from my memory.

    1. "Full force of the law." phrase is used again. As opposed to the Hugh Edwards justice and Hamas supporters justice and so on and so on.

    2. Spiking someone's drink isn't the crime. It's the action taken toward the individual after the drink is spiked that's the crime.

  39. Oh dear she's at it again, a 25% tax grab on savings for pensioners leaving the UK to live in Europe.

    5. I have no idea if this is true (link?), Ready Eddy, but that is exactly what Hitler did regarding Jews wanting to emigrate in the early 1930s.

      1. I think you’re right Elsie.
        And not many people know that he also had a ‘regiment’ of muslims either.

  40. Good morning.
    Southend is to become a smart city…
    Some ideas about countering the imposition of smart cities(/towns/villages for the pedants among us)
    The infrastructure is being laid to make the next lockdown harder to resist. We're currently at the solar max, so time for war. Last solar min was 2020 (lockdowns). Next solar min is about 2030-2031 I think, so that's when we can look forward to the next deadly plague.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G533Mg4GmQ

    1. Narcissism is a specific illness brought on by trauma. Surely they just mean egotism? All politicians are egotistical. Their entire existence depends on their being popular. It's why they want to be in office.

      1. As there is photographic evidence of his being seen in the close company of Savile as a child, he may well have suffered trauma. I don't think Starmer is interested in being popular. He wants to get back at society in a meaningful way under the banner of the WEF diktats.

  42. Доброе утро, товарищи,

    Well, Bert's cleared off, it's a sunny morning at Castle McPhee, steady South West breeze so the flag's up again, 9℃ but cooling as the day progresses.

    Here's what they plan for us oldies.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fb5c521b542f0c9f6a018576f30b0f486321fa80c1766311317520e886a90242.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/24/sarco-death-pod-philip-nitschke-assisted-dying-bill/

    I reckon Streeting will give him a big fat government contract and the 'basement' (NHS-speak for morgue) in every hospital will have rooms of these devices to slip the bed-blocking geriatrics into once they have been adequately sedated.

  43. 397356+ up ticks,

    This should really call for the ,now adult, victims of the rotherham mass paedophilia AND COVER UP odious issue sequel to be penned.

    Children told refugees ‘enrich our country’ and drive ‘growth’ in Usborne book
    Publication stocked by local council libraries and sent to schools is described as ‘indoctrination’

    Smacks very strongly of poison pen material.

    1. Refugees might. Depends if they're productive citizens who earn a lot. Most of the criminal immigrants are not refugees. They're just welfare freeloaders and no, they do not make us richer and do not increase growth – except in crime, welfare and state debt.

      These are statistical facts, not the opinion of a grumpy old man.

      Local councils, like all sorts of big government struggle with the facts and manipulate statistics to deceive the public.

    1. France did. It failed. So did New Zealand. Failed there as well. You see, Treasury and HMRC are greedy thieves, but they're also up against far brighter, more motivated individuals.

      1. Them too. It is utterly outrageous that any government thinks it has the right to lay its thieving hands on people’s savings because they dare to move out!

  47. 'Morning, Peeps and Geoff,

    Wet and breezy here, with a promise of 12 degs this morning. Time to break out the shorts and flip-flops? Well, almost…

    SIR – I have been in business for more than 50 years and have built one with very little initial capital to a turnover of roughly £30 million. We now employ more than 80 people and export 25 per cent of our turnover.

    Prior to the Budget, I could pass business assets to my family without inheritance tax. If the proposals become law and I die the day afterwards, my wife could not pay the tax if she liquidated all of our assets and sold the house.

    I’m struggling to believe the situation in which I find myself. I now have to give everything away to my family earlier than I intended and then hope to live for seven years to avoid the swingeing tax bill. What sort of country are we living in?

    Malcolm Ainge
    Alfrick Pound, Worcestershire

    Insanity. Total bloody insanity. My advice to the younger generations – if you want to get on, get out!

      2. Samuel? The chap with a big diary?

        Oh, silly me, that was Pepys (similar pronunciation, though).

    2. Our older son 'got out' – but only to Turdeau's Canada. A case of out of the frying pan, into the fire?

  48. 397356+ up ticks,

    Even though this petition may change very little then may one suggest it is kept open for the next 4 1/2 years or the islamic take over, and added to daily

  50. Why do we need 5G? It seems like technology for its own sake, and it does enable the 1984 electronic spy network. And I speak as someone who worked in the mobile industry for twenty years!

  51. There has been a steady drip of propaganda in the media for at least a decade. Heart rending articles in the Mail about poor people who just want to die only the heartless state won’t allow them to – and underneath, all comments that challenge this narrative are suppressed.

        2. Listen to the Lotus Eaters podcast. He's already done more damage to the UK before becoming Prime Minister than Corbyn ever managed.

        1. Of course he is. We can protest as much as we like; the whole country can sit outside Westminster, he will not be moved. Tyrants never are. The WEF certainly chose their man carefully for the job they wished him to do.

          2. The truly interesting thing is not what happened to the little lass, bad enough in itself, but all the glaring omissions and evidences that were not followed up and the parents odd behaviour. There is much to read up on the Jill Havant forum, it will keep you going for weeks.

          3. Thanks, I got your other message. Mentioned what you said earlier to someone I know, they said ‘obvious, blood in boot of car’…seems a number of people unhappy about it.

    2. There's a good Lotus Eaters podcast on this blokes legal career. It doesn't make for enjoyable listening. The detail makes the overview so much worse. At least cake was not involved.

      2. I was interested in tracking down the article(s) in The Times that was used as a source for much of this material. Guess what? I can't find it. Only a reference on a LinkedIn post by the Times crops up in any Google search, not the Times article itself.
        See: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.linkedin.com/posts/the-times_human-rights-extend-to-everybody-how-keir-activity-7213632905653202945-JKtI&ved=2ahUKEwiuiK7x_PmJAxUhYEEAHUoqBXgQFnoECBcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3L_-apIvDLJxuyNGFsvNNQ
        and on a Facebook page. Strange, eh?

  53. Good to see Sir Kneelalot is clamping down on benefit claimants. Turns out he's increasing climate benefits to foreign powers while he's at it. 🙄

    2. Giveth with one hand etc…James – power gone to his head (or perhaps just giving Millib* more time than he should). Can only hope not the bad winter I foresee, huge numbers of fieldfares now. Stack the woodpile high. (Good morning, btw:-))

      1. Yes, more fieldfares here too. We had eight of them mistake our garden for a field a few years ago.

      2. Some years back, I saw a flock of fieldfares strip the berries from a holly tree.
        I was miffed, as I'd always used it for Christmas decorations.
        The following year, I cut several small branches from the tree and stored them in buckets of water in the shed.
        The mice ate the berries.

      1. All the giving away of OUR money to undeserving foreign leeches makes one-eyed Gordon's selling of our gold at Poundland prices seem like a non-event.

    1. “We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him … We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond; and on those faces there are no smiles.” Hillaire Belloc.

  55. Spencer toasts new love ‘from classless world’

    The Daily Telegraph 25 Nov 2024 By Danielle Sheridan

    EARL SPENCER has said his new relationship has blossomed because his Norwegian girlfriend comes from a world without a class system.
    The brother of Diana, the Princess of Wales, who is in the process of divorcing his third wife of 13 years, said that being with Dr Cat Jarman, a professor of archaeology, has allowed him to be “who I really am”.

    “I’m too old for hearts and flowers stuff, but the best way to describe it is that with Cat, I can be myself,” the 60-year-old said. “She knows who I am. Who I really am. I don’t have to pretend to be something I am not. And she brings out the best in me.”

    Dr Jarman, 42, who along with her now-boyfriend and the Rev Richard Coles co-hosts the history podcast The Rabbit Hole Detectives, said she was not aware who Earl Spencer was until their paths met when she travelled to Althorp, the country estate belonging to his family, for an archaeological dig.

    Dr Jarman said: “I grew up in Norway, where we don’t really have a class system, and there isn’t really any interest in all that. I’m a nerd. I’d heard of Althorp, and was excited about the lost village.

    “When a TV producer phoned me up and asked if I would be interested, I said yes. But to be completely honest, I didn’t know who Charles was. He sort of tagged along.” The pair started as friends but were brought together through “shared interests”. “We were fascinated by the same things,” Earl Spencer said. “And she made me laugh. Laughter was key.”

    Speaking to the Mail on Sunday at a literary festival in Iceland to promote their new book, The Rabbit Hole, Earl Spencer said: “It really is nice to be with someone who wants to do stuff.

    “Take today. We could have come to this festival and just stayed in the hotel, but we were up this morning going to see a lagoon. It really is nice to find someone dynamic and interested.” He added that when they met, he “wasn’t looking, neither of us were”.

    Earl Spencer’s memoir, A Very Private School, published earlier this year, reveals he was subjected to sexual assault and beatings which left him with “lifelong demons”.

    In common with Norway, Sweden is also a class-free society, where no one looks down on anyone else. Australia is very similar. Why the hell the UK continues to hold on to its Caste system (for that is what it really is) is beyond me.

    I have rubbed shoulders with 'toffs' at the highest level and they are just like me, normal (and just as common as me in many of their likes and habits). The problem is those insecure, 'wannabe' nonentity chumps in the middle. Just as the Ronnie Barker character in the famous Frost Report sketch, they grovel before those at the top, while sneering at the hard-working grafters they consider to be beneath them.

    Haughty, affected, overweening and overbearing, they take the every opportunity — at every end and turn — to remind all those that still have the patience to be around them that they are "Middle Class, you know".

    I call them the Flatulent Class.

    Norway and Sweden are far nicer places to be without having to endure the pompousness of those pretentious nincompoops.

    3. Tell us all , from deep in your 42 year old heart , Dr Jarman .. what exactly attracted you to this very wealthy much married highly disturbed brother of the late Princess Dianna, mother of the heir to the throne ?

    5. "I can be myself". But Charles dear, your wealth and status are an integral part of who you are. It's impossible that your new squeeze is oblivious to that and she doesn't come from a classless society. All human society is hierarchical. He was spotted in the congregation at Barts a couple of weeks ago. The clergy are hearing confessions on Saturday, as Advent begins (and Advent, lest we forget, is a penitential season). What are the odds? Vanishingly small I would think.

      1. Advent is the beginning of the church year (as I'm sure you know). Purple for penitence, just like Lent.

    6. The Garden Party : Hilaire Belloc

      The rich arrived in pairs
      And also in Rolls Royces
      They talked of their affairs
      In loud and strident voices.

      The poor arrived in Fords
      Whose features they resembled
      And laughed to see so many lords
      And ladies all assembled.

      The people in between
      Looked underdone and harassed
      And out of place and mean
      And horribly embarrassed.

  56. HMRC are already genuinely keen on detecting and stopping benefit fraud but benefits wrongly awarded to migrant claimants will continue to be legal under this government. Starmer will promote immoral use of our money and there will be nothing either we or HMRC can do about that.

    1. Yes indeed so. It's smoke and mirrors. He and Millipede need too to find the promised handouts from COP24.

    1. Look on the bright side – bigger area for family swimming, and you might meet any of the many RN Lifeboats returning with hundreds of fearful refugees escaping starvation and oppression in war-torn France.

    2. The Severn was over the accompanying fields when I drove past today. The riverside car parks have been closed due to flooding for days.

    1. Less than a mile from one of my daughter's residence. Where she lives is a lovely area but the surrounding district is enemy territory – like most of London and the major cities of the UK.

      2. I suspect drug gangs.
        Apparently some new players have arrived in London who are not bothered about killing the whole family to get their target.

  60. Alison Steadman would quote her mother, who would say 'where's your gun when you need it'………..

    2. As Sheldon’s mum put it, “As a Christian I should forgive you, but as a Texan I think I’m going to shoot you instead!”

      1. Indeed, James – I still watch it…… ‘or whatever god it is you people pray to’…..😂😂😂

  63. A good start to the day: None of my three attempts had been used before.
    Wordle 1,255 3/6

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  65. A previous request for an immediate GE was posted in late 2023. It got only 288,042 signatures and was debated in Parliament. I haven't looked but I'll bet the present one at 1,984,653 and climbing is the largest number of signatures ever for a petition. Pity they won't take any action though.

    2. Colchester has had the same woman loitering at the top of Scheregate Steps for years.
      (I think she was done for being abusive a while back.)
      I'm not even sure her copies of the Big Issue are this years, let alone this weeks.
      Last time I was in town, she appeared to have a twin sister lingering in the High Street.

      1. I regularly saw a Romanian woman selling the BI in Inverness. I followed her one day and she got in a top of the range Range Rover and drove off

      2. Lingering, and loitering with intent. On the lookout for daft people who walk around with handbags open.

    1. Mind reading techniques, developed when working at various nurseries, playgroups. Boys the most obvious, girls the sneakiest……

    1. Starmer is an out-of-control AI bot, and he is in no mood to listen to you or any petition.
      However, he has a knack of upsetting all the wrong people & everyone else.. it will be an outsider that turns off Starmer and his goon show.

      Some time after January 6th he will really pee off the Trump administration. Then with the flick of a switch.. all the usual 65.3 million Visa transactions made daily in the UK will cease.
      That's £3.7 Trillion of UK bank payments stalled.. until HM Govt folds.

      Sure, there will be hissy fits from Owen & JamesOB.
      Silver lining and all that.

      1. Russia found ways of working without the Swift system but of course as important as foreign trade is, Russia is self-sufficient for food and energy. I wonder if Donald Trump would really go so far as to remove UK access to Swift? We'd be well f*cked if he did of course.

      1. Now you're just being silly. Labour would also take the right most piece and the plate.

        Then come back for half of the left side, your spoon, plate and the tea you had with it.

  70. Just woken up. Still crook.

    A very annoying six.

    Wordle 1,255 6/6

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    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Me too.

      Wordle 1,255 6/6

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      ⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
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      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
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    4. Me too, although I was nowhere as close as you!

      Wordle 1,255 6/6

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

    5. I worked through the alphabet for the first letter. It does not always work and I had already eliminated the letter G.

      Wordle 1,255 3/6

      ⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
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  71. Petition
    Call a General Election
    I would like there to be another General Election.

    I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.

    Sign this petition
    2,000,004 signatures

    1. I don't want another election. I want government to be made accountable and unable to operate without public consent. I want, in short, democracy.

      1. Blatant and deliberate lies should be grounds for a government to be thrown out. But the problem would be to find honest and impartial arbiters to decide if the lies were deliberate.

        Has any government in recent times been quite so cynically dishonest and mendacious from its very first day?

      2. I want a written constitution. The Founders derived theirs from English Law. It is our politicians who have sought to disrupt our fundamental rights with legislation.

        By far the worst occurrence in recent years was our unwanted attachment to the EU ECHR and submission to our own invented wretched Supreme Court.

      3. Democracy does not exist in the UK. It never has done. What you invariably get is a continuance of the same elective oligarchy.

      1. Indeed! I suppose they were all so used to it that it smelled normal and they didn’t notice it.

        1. Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

          Shakespeare was not put off by his paramour's halitosis!

          Sonnet 130

          My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
          Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
          If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
          If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
          I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
          But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
          And in some perfumes is there more delight
          Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
          I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
          That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
          I grant I never saw a goddess go;
          My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
          And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
          As any she belied with false compare.

    4. The one with the dog was like Kadi this morning; he saw a couple approaching, looked at them suspiciously, then when they got near he started barking at them and ran behind me and hid!

    5. The one with the dog was like Kadi this morning; he saw a couple approaching, looked at them suspiciously, then when they got near he started barking at them and ran behind me and hid!

  74. From ChatGPT on the subject of UK knife crime:
    Historical Trends:
    There was an 80% increase in knife crimes over the last decade leading up to 2024, with recorded offences rising from around 28,000 in 2010 to over 50,000 annually in recent years. However, there were notable drops during the COVID-19 pandemic due to reduced public activity​
    BENKINSELLA
    ​
    OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS
    .
    Recent Figures:
    In the year ending June 2024, there were 50,973 knife-related offences reported in England and Wales, representing a 4% increase compared to the previous year​
    BENKINSELLA
    ​
    OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS
    .
    The rate of knife crimes varies regionally, with urban centers like London and Birmingham showing the highest per-capita rates​
    OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS
    .

    1. And not yet slowing down. Yes, the anti-Brexit petition got 4 million signatures but over a much longer time. We still have six months to go. I hope people ignore the change.org version. The Parliament one will at least trigger a debate and even if only Nigel and friends turn up for that, it will go on the records.

      1. Next signpost, 4,000 average per constituency = 2,600,000 signatures. Hoped for time of arrival? Perhaps, sometime late on Tuesday 26 November.

    2. So the only positive effect of the lockdowns may be a decrease in knife crime. Locked up to stop you being stabbed. Yippee!

  77. The poly-crisis' are taking their toll; the weather catastrophe, transphobe crisis, Islamophobia emergency.. now the cost-of-touring crisis.

    With paltry streaming royalties and a cost-of-touring crisis Lily Allen is now on OnlyFans

  78. I have researched the GOV.UK petitions and there was one by those who wanted Brexit which reached 4,150,262. signatures, The topic was debated on 5 September 2016 before the Government confirmed it would not be pursuing a second referendum. I think this one may beat that – and. it too, will be ignored.

    1. vera
      18m
      Wasn't Starmer one of those who wanted a rerun of the Brexit referendum, the first just being 'advisory'?

    1. Those are simple facts that we learned in geography. Trees roots and those of the undergrowth help stabilise the soil, and help stop/diminish run-off, soil erosion and flooding. I can almost hear my old geography teacher and visualise the diagrams he drew on the blackboard.

    2. Those are simple facts that we learned in geography. Trees roots and those of the undergrowth help stabilise the soil, and help stop/diminish run-off, soil erosion and flooding. I can almost hear my old geography teacher and visualise the diagrams he drew on the blackboard.

  82. The Telegraph moral-free zone at its most egregious: "Police must prioritise ancient hatreds – antisemitism."
    This is Goebbels stuff. If you see mass murder of civilians happening in Gaza and want it to end immediately you are antisemitic. It is one of the wonders of the age that people who suffered the Holocaust are re-enacting such horrors with such enthusiasm and mendacity. Lke most people I know I feel evenhandedly hostile to any person or persons who slaughter others, whether they are Semites or antisemites.

    The early Israeli pioneers were honest in a way that has been lost. They knew well that in taking land occupied by others they would have, as they said to do it through the barrel of a gun. They knew that force was their only real hope to succeed They believed in their God-given right to do it. Nothing has changed except the death of truth on the matter.

    1. The mass murder and kidnap of civilians on Oct 7 seems to have been airbrushed. Forgotten already?

      1. That is an offensive and truly unthinking suggestion. If you have forgotten it I certainly have not. The blindness is in quite another place, and is a testament to the continuing success of propaganda. Murder is murder even in God’s own country! You are a killer; I am a slum clearer… doesn’t quite sound right, does it?

        1. You have got the wrong end of the stick. I am not making a criticism of you. I am pointing out that there are many, many references to Gaza generally but virtually none refer to Oct 7.

          1. My apologies for overreaction, Delboy! You’re quite right; my only thoughts on that are that, monstrous as it was, the Oct 7th was just that – a one day event. Additionally the events during that day and what led to them are a bit like the Nordstream sabotage – unclear in some quite crucial areas. What is happening in Gaza is impossible to obscure, and so very like what was done to the Jewish people in Hilter’s war that it does merit loud and universal airing.

          2. My apologies for overreaction, Delboy! You’re quite right; my only thoughts on that are that, monstrous as it was, the Oct 7th was just that – a one day event. Additionally the events during that day and what led to them are a bit like the Nordstream sabotage – unclear in some quite crucial areas. What is happening in Gaza is impossible to obscure, and so very like what was done to the Jewish people in Hilter’s war that it does merit loud and universal airing.

  83. May well have been……. sorry, I have a touch screen keyboard and my touch is sometimes too light to register – even though I check before posting my eye doesn't always see these typos, it sees what it wants to see.

    1. Why apologise for honest typos? They often produce amusing results.

      To be fair, she had a fine pair.

      1. “I must leave here,” said Lady De Vere,
        “For these damp airs don’t suit me, I fear.”
        Said her friend: “Goodness me!
        If they don’t agree
        With your system, why eat pears, my dear?”

    2. We see what we expect to see when we are typing and when we read something without concentrating.

      1. If I post in a hurry there always plenty of typos which I correct and repost if and when I discover them.

  84. Nope, still carrying on with our well thought out agenda.

    We will bring in legislation to ban misinformation and at the same time invest x million in a communications program to clearly explain our programs.

  85. At that time, our youngest grandchildren were the same age.
    Our son and daughter-in-law used those same Warner hotels because they ran children's clubs every day and night bar Thursday. Even then, if you asked, the hotel could find recommended baby sitters for that night.
    It beggars belief that a professional couple (and their equally well remunerated friends) could not afford baby sitters for one evening per week. Heck, they could even spend the evening with them.

    1. It really has crossed my mind if she actually did exist. But…. the scent of cadaver in the boot of the car, behind the sofa. The feeling that the tapas seven (?) were trying to hide something…. and whoever runs back to the group saying “M’s been abducted, she’s been abducted….” Wouldn’t it be more natural to say “M’s gone, she isn’t there…”? There are so many instances like that throughout.

  86. Ha, worth reporting. I've got a merlin zipping round the field behind my house. That's a very scarce visitor in the winter.

      4. Ah, the RR Merlin. Music to my ears.

        Move on a couple of generations of fighters and we have the Hawker Hunter which I flew during my RAF service, a boyhood ambition realised. The Hunter was famous for its "blue note" when at speed. I used to enjoy flying at low-level above 500 knots knowing I was leaving this behind me.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82lm9ApDXOo

        1. Fiscal, I know that sound.
          One of my most memorable flights ever was on 12th April 1962 when I was at a University Air Squadron Summer camp at RAF Chivenor, near Barnstaple, improving our flying. Each of us cadets was given the chance for a 'Boom Run' – a supersonic flight in a Hawker Hunter T7 two-seat trainer.

          We all had to be fitted with 'G-suits', which compress the legs and lower body during high 'G' forces to prevent blood from pooling there. My pilot, a South African Flight Lieutenant, took us up to 42,000 feet. He then turned off the power-assisted controls and told me to "have a go". Accustomed to light and responsive flying controls, I was staggered to find the joystick felt as if stuck in concrete until he turned the power-assistance back on.

          Then it was a near-vertical dive to Mach 1.05, just faster than sound. Ears and sinuses began to hurt like hell. But the best bit was to come, as Fiscal describes, low flying over north Devon at around 500 knots and peering into farmhouse windows as we shot past. Unforgettable!

          In Brisbane last September (2023) I visited the local teaching airfield and asked the CFI* if he would check me out and, if still OK, to let me do a few landings (dual of course). Landing an aircraft is something like riding a bike – you don't ever forget how to do it, even in an unfamiliar aircraft. One slightly wonky landing and two decent ones. Now checked off my Bucket List.

          *Chief Flying Instructor

          2. I know. You can't do it in the UK since the Shoreham crash. A tragedy. I once had the opportunity to get involved with flying private Hunters in the 1990s but SWMBO said NO in no uncertain terms (I'd banged out of one during my RAF career).

        2. I was going to have a flight in one at Wittering in the '70s, but it went u/s so I had a trip in a Westland Whirlwind instead. Interesting, but not quite the same.

        3. I was going to have a flight in one at Wittering in the '70s, but it went u/s so I had a trip in a Westland Whirlwind instead. Interesting, but not quite the same.

  87. So transparent aren’t they. Not even good liars. Just after robbing pensioners to pay the unions and following the drivel about a £20 billion unexpected black hole in the economy. Really, they really do think we’re a bunch of gullible fools.

  88. FYI: Michael Westwood (author of 'The General Election Petition') due to be interviewed shortly after noon on GBNews.

    2. He might blame that, but the point of a petition is that WE are the ones doing any blaming. Not him.

      His role is to open his tin ears, pin back his lug holes and hear what we have to say. So, budget yes and lying, also yes; also a background charge that the government is just supporting its own minority base while spitefully acting against those who disagree with him.

      As usual politician tries to control the narrative. It won't wash.

      1. …. spitefully acting against those who disagree with him pay the taxes that fund his never ending lunacy.

        1. Yes – theft in plain sight.
          Mind you, the money probably isn’t there anyway to pay out everything that’s promised, let alone after a currency reset!
          That’s why saving in real assets is so crucial! (I am a rank amateur but even I can figure that out, after the last sixteen years of the B o E printing money like a drunken sailor!)

    5. Indeed. A great many people didn't vote Labour – probably why Labour has shafted them with their unnecessary "difficult decisions".

  91. Why England have left it too late to drop Ollie Pope
    Vice-captain needs to come good with Brendon McCullum using Ricky Ponting as an example of how even the best can suffer from jittery starts
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2024/11/25/england-ollie-pope-drop-vice-captain-no3-new-zealand-ashes/

    This BTL was under the article about a cricketer who is erratic – he is either brilliant or frightful

    He's like the little girl Who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead; When she was good she was very very good, But when she was bad she was horrid.

    (This should act as a guide to those who mispronounce the word forehead!

    It rhymes with florid, it does not rhyme with WHORE BED!)

    Which pronunciation do Nottlers favour?

  92. Matthew Lynn
    Rachel Reeves deserves a rough ride at the CBI
    25 November 2024, 11:34am

    Rachel Reeves was probably expecting to be cheered for restoring ‘stability’, for rebooting ‘growth’ and crafting a British version of Bidenomics to create ‘the industries of the future’. Instead, the Chancellor’s ‘fireside chat’ at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference today is likely to be rather uncomfortable. There probably won’t be any heckling, walk-outs, boos and cat-calls. Yet the business world has made it all-too-clear that Reeves’s Budget will hit both jobs and growth hard. Reeves is going to get a rough ride this afternoon – and deservedly so.

    The CBI made it clear this morning what it thinks of Reeves’s Budget. “Across the board, in so many sectors, margins are being squeezed and profits are being hit by a tough trading environment that just got tougher,” its chief executive Rain Newton-Smith told delegates. She argued that “profits…aren’t just extra money for companies to stuff in a pillowcase” but that, “when you hit profits, you hit competitiveness, you hit investment, you hit growth”.

    A survey of its members found that 62 per cent will slash hiring plans following the Budget, while 42 per cent will delay pay rises. In response, Reeves is expected to give her well-known impression of a Dalek with a bad cold, droning on about ‘black holes’ and ‘fixing the NHS.”

    Whatever Reeves has to say, there won’t be much of a meeting of minds, nor are any of the delegates likely to come away fired up with enthusiasm for building a new warehouse or investing in research and development facilities. Most have probably already started looking again at moving to the United States, Dubai or anywhere where businesses aren’t constantly being punished, as they are in Britain.

    The CBI’s hostility to Labour matters. It wouldn’t be any great surprise if the Federation of Small Business was criticising Reeves. Or, indeed, if the more free market Institute of Directors was taking a pop. But the CBI would normally be sympathetic to Reeves’s version of statist corporatism. It would probably be anticipating under a Labour government lots of grants and subsidies, co-operating with growth strategies, and occasionally even investing some real money.

    The trouble is that Reeves has made such a mess of her first few months in office that she appears to have lost even the CBI’s support. The Budget hammered companies with steep rises in employment taxes, with bills running into tens of millions a year for any company with lots of workers; the lower paid they are the harder they are hit. Employment rights have been extended, making it even harder to fire someone who turns out to be no good.

    Perhaps most significantly, there has been absolutely no sign of anything to compensate for this business bashing by making it easier to invest in the UK. Even proper reform of the planning system, which many companies thought would be a big win from this government, has failed to materialise. Instead, all that appears to be on Labour’s agenda is an endless series of increases in corporate taxes to pay for an insatiable NHS, and an out-of-control welfare system. The government’s relationship with business is now broken beyond repair. Reeves fully deserves the rough ride she will get this afternoon.

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

  95. As a top economist all Reeves has to do is go there, lecture those second raters and I'm sure everything will be just fine and dandy.

  96. Also the fact that more Arabs are killed by other Arabs than have ever been killed by Jews. Hamas have a massive income that they spend on themselves and their arsenal of weapons. The humanitarian aid going in to Gaza is mostly provided by Israel. The Arabs do FA to help their own.

  97. Recall requires 10% of a constituency's registered voters to sign the petition.
    In most constituencies that is roughly 10,000 signatories.
    Not impossible, but needs a degree of political engagement that most do not possess.
    And yes, I do realise that means that most voters are apathetic and deserve what they get.

  100. The Police must prioritise the ancient hatred: Anti-Semitism

    Plenty of resources for tackling nonsense, no time for crime

    Telegraph View
    25 November 2024 5:58am GMT

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/93d5d78f7707cf885366197e197f509c24809cfa47caef49532887c97b1d169d.jpg
    Police Constable Mohammed Adil, 26, at Westminster Magistrates Court. PC Adil has been charged under the Terrorism Act after allegedly publishing a Hamas-supporting image on WhatsApp [Credit: Geoff Pugh]

    Anti-Semitism is sometimes called "the oldest hatred", but on the streets of London and other British cities it was until recently still comparatively unfamiliar.

    Since October 7th last year, however, Jews in this country have endured thousands of vile attacks, often in connection with marches and other protests against the war in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon. Perhaps for the first time in recent history, British Jews have felt anti-Semitism to be a serious threat.

    The police have been slow to respond to the scale of this hostility. They have shown culpable reluctance to pass even the most egregious cases on to the Crown Prosecution Service.

    Now Jews are fighting back. Gideon Falter, head of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAAS), says that his charity has been forced to bring private prosecutions when police refused to act. In effect, the CAAS is doing what ought to be the police's job.

    Meanwhile, the notorious (and now abandoned) investigation by Essex Police into a year-old social media post by our columnist Allison Pearson has highlighted the colossal waste of police time on trivial incidents online. In Mr Falter's words: "Recent events show that the police do have the capacity and will to act when they want to, but they too often devote their resources to nonsense."

    It is high time that recognising, pursuing and prosecuting anti-Semitism were made a top priority by the police and criminal justice system. As the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained, this form of hatred is a virus that has mutated over time and now appears most conspicuously in the form of Anti-Zionism.

    Jews were first hated for their religion, then for their race, and today for their state. Denying Jews the right to live peacefully in their own state, as Hamas, Hezbollah and various other Islamist organisations do, is the most dangerous present-day manifestation of anti-Semitism.

    The forces of law and order in this country are still turning a blind eye to this threat. Whether due to a lack of training or an unwillingness to risk confrontation, the police have failed to reassure the Jewish community that anti-Semitism has no place in Britain. The time left in which to do so is fast running out.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/25/police-anti-semitism-racism-ancient-evil

    2. Given the reasons for his appearance in court, I wonder whether his outfit could be construed as contempt?

    3. Are both antisemitism and muslimophobia criminal offences? Seems a bit silly. Why not get rid of both and let people insult one another and then apply laws as appropriate. Driving a car and screaming abuse is public order, for example.

  101. The Police must prioritise the ancient hatred: Anti-Semitism

    Plenty of resources for tackling nonsense, no time for crime

    Telegraph View
    25 November 2024 5:58am GMT

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/93d5d78f7707cf885366197e197f509c24809cfa47caef49532887c97b1d169d.jpg
    Police Constable Mohammed Adil, 26, at Westminster Magistrates Court. PC Adil has been charged under the Terrorism Act after allegedly publishing a Hamas-supporting image on WhatsApp [Credit: Geoff Pugh]

    Anti-Semitism is sometimes called "the oldest hatred", but on the streets of London and other British cities it was until recently still comparatively unfamiliar.

    Since October 7th last year, however, Jews in this country have endured thousands of vile attacks, often in connection with marches and other protests against the war in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon. Perhaps for the first time in recent history, British Jews have felt anti-Semitism to be a serious threat.

    The police have been slow to respond to the scale of this hostility. They have shown culpable reluctance to pass even the most egregious cases on to the Crown Prosecution Service.

    Now Jews are fighting back. Gideon Falter, head of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAAS), says that his charity has been forced to bring private prosecutions when police refused to act. In effect, the CAAS is doing what ought to be the police's job.

    Meanwhile, the notorious (and now abandoned) investigation by Essex Police into a year-old social media post by our columnist Allison Pearson has highlighted the colossal waste of police time on trivial incidents online. In Mr Falter's words: "Recent events show that the police do have the capacity and will to act when they want to, but they too often devote their resources to nonsense."

    It is high time that recognising, pursuing and prosecuting anti-Semitism were made a top priority by the police and criminal justice system. As the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained, this form of hatred is a virus that has mutated over time and now appears most conspicuously in the form of Anti-Zionism.

    Jews were first hated for their religion, then for their race, and today for their state. Denying Jews the right to live peacefully in their own state, as Hamas, Hezbollah and various other Islamist organisations do, is the most dangerous present-day manifestation of anti-Semitism.

    The forces of law and order in this country are still turning a blind eye to this threat. Whether due to a lack of training or an unwillingness to risk confrontation, the police have failed to reassure the Jewish community that anti-Semitism has no place in Britain. The time left in which to do so is fast running out.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/25/police-anti-semitism-racism-ancient-evil

    1. I fully expect Hungary to break away from the hated EU. When Russia secures Odessa they will have unimpeded access to the Black Sea via the Danube and will trade freely with Russia.

      1. I think there is also an awakening in these countries that if conventional war breaks out, being a NATO member will ensure it's their countries that are devastated before the more Western members get pulverised. There is also a possibility that peace talks would commence after they were wrecked but before France and Germany etc are hammered.

        Where they were once a buffer between Russia and NATO the boot is on the other foot, they are now the buffer between the West and Russia.

  105. The Times reports that many local councils will be ended as there will be the largest overhaul of local government in 50 years .

    Which local councils will this be ? Rural councils being swallowed up by more urban councils whilst rural land is stolen by the government.

    3. The creator kept it admirably brief and to the point – they've gone back on their election promises.

  109. Well that was a productive morning a few messages and phone calls and a shortish drive and I've sold our youngest sons car and the money is on the way to his account in Dubai.
    All happy, more room on our driveway.

      1. Feminists aren't normally honest about mysogynistic muzzies otherwise they would condemn the Arab world more.

    2. The French police are certainly keeping abreast of the situation by staring down the opposition at close quarters.
      Note that they couldn't bare it any longer.

    12. Meanwhile over here we have a white ribbon and the slogan "it all starts with men". Of course it's all white men's fault – not.

  113. Reeves Revealed as “Trainee” Two Years Into Bank of England Job Amid Career History Scandal

    Reeves is due this afternoon to sit down for questions in a “fireside chat” at the CBI annual conference. The Chancellor is under significant pressure over her career history after Guido exposed her LinkedIn CV edits…

    Reeves no longer claims she was an economist at HBOS after Guido revealed her real position was in administrative complaints. Hacks have also seized on Reeves’ six years at the Bank of England, pointing to a tweet from 2012 in which she describes herself as a ‘very junior Japan analyst’ in her first years at the bank. Guido can reveal that Reeves wasn’t even described as an actual “Economist” two years into the job…

    In February of 2002 Rachel wrote in favour of a pro-Comprehensive School campaign by the Campaign for State Education. The following blurb introduced her:

    “Rachel Reeves is a 23-year-old trainee economist at the Bank of England. She attended Cator Park School, Beckenham from 1990- 1997 and New College Oxford from 1997-2000.”

    Reeves was two years into her job at the Bank of England at this point and was soon to depart to Washington to work away from the Bank in the British Embassy. On her return, she spent a year out at LSE to complete a masters, which she received in 2004. Within another year she would be selected as Labour candidate for Bromley and Chislehurst and barred from working at the BoE for months. Their rules state employees are “required to take unpaid leave from the point of adoption as a prospective candidate until the election.” The same thing occurred when she stood in the by-election the next year. Even as a trainee two years into the job Reeves was pitching in to political campaigns – was working as an actual economist too boring for her?

    25 November 2024 @ 13:32

  115. Petition has slowed a bit but still just over a hundred sigs average ten seconds. By my calls, it should reach 2.2m by 4.00pm.

          1. As long as you need my dear….

            Puts earpods in and plays Bat out of Hell on loop.

            Smiles beatifically…

    3. I wouldn't want to be in the room when you eventually get defrocked! I don't know about the ladies though.

    4. "Archbishop of Cant…" That should be Archbishop of Cant.

      cant (v.)
      1560s, "to speak in a whining voice," From c. 1600 as "to speak in the jargon of thieves and vagabonds;" 1670s as "talk hypocritically in pompous phraseology."

    5. "Archbishop of Cant…" That should be Archbishop of Cant.

      cant (v.)
      1560s, "to speak in a whining voice," From c. 1600 as "to speak in the jargon of thieves and vagabonds;" 1670s as "talk hypocritically in pompous phraseology."

  117. And just to cheer everyone up, a quote from an American economist:

    According to Richard Johnson, U.S. Nuclear Policy Director, “The United
    States’ planned overhaul of its nuclear weapons strategy may not be
    sufficient to take on the threats posed by Russia and China, a top
    Pentagon official has admitted. He also said, “We are now in a world
    where we’re facing multiple nuclear competitors, multiple states that
    are growing, diversifying and modernizing their nuclear arsenals and
    also, unfortunately, prioritizing the role that nuclear weapons play in
    their national security strategies,” One wonders if the world is about to
    take a step across a very old line. All it takes is one misstep, by one
    misguided player and everything changes.

    2. Putin has no need of nuclear weapons because he has precision guided hypersonic missiles that cause massive damage on targets without turning an entire country into glass.

      See my later post.

  118. Quite agreeable in t'garden. Finished what I set out to do – a task made twice a long by finding that the small pruning chainsaw wasn't cutting. Drove into town to buy a replacement (or two) only for chap at the shop to tell me that the chain was on the wrong way round!! I had NO idea that it was possible to do that…. So one lives and learns…(I hope).

  119. Idiots, congenital bloody idiots.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/galleries/article-14123561/Report-Britain-France-not-ruling-sending-troops-Ukraine.html

    'Discussions are underway between the UK and France regarding defence cooperation, particularly with the aim of creating a core of allies in Europe, focused on Ukraine and broader European security,' a British military source told Le Monde. When asked about the possibility of French boots on the ground in Ukraine, France's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, told the BBC : 'We are not ruling out any option.'

      1. There is no mention of it on the BBC but Russia recently deployed a new missile on a massive military arms complex and depot in Ukraine which has left nothing but dust.

        The missile travels at speeds of Mach 10 to Mach 12, has multiple stages and multiple warheads and is precision guided.

        Independent weapons analysts say that the western powers have nothing to match the technology. It is thought that this new hypersonic ballistic missile technology has been years in development and was developed jointly by China and Russia.

        Of particular interest is the metallic nature of the explosive charge. Again, experts are trying to work out what the precise constituents are.

        It is becoming obvious that the very nature of warfare is changing and that Russia does not need to deploy nuclear missiles when it can cause immense damage in a targeted way and with weapons the collective west cannot possibly match.

        Meanwhile idiots including Starmer and Macron and their advisors seem unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation in which they have placed us all. The idea that our soldiers should be sent to Ukraine to be annihilated by such weapons shows that these supposed leaders lack any sense of humanity or care for their peoples.

        This is the reason that Starmer, Macron and the other EU warmongers have to be thrown out of office by the people and the sooner the better for humanity.

      2. There is no mention of it on the BBC but Russia recently deployed a new missile on a massive military arms complex and depot in Ukraine which has left nothing but dust.

        The missile travels at speeds of Mach 10 to Mach 12, has multiple stages and multiple warheads and is precision guided.

        Independent weapons analysts say that the western powers have nothing to match the technology. It is thought that this new hypersonic ballistic missile technology has been years in development and was developed jointly by China and Russia.

        Of particular interest is the metallic nature of the explosive charge. Again, experts are trying to work out what the precise constituents are.

        It is becoming obvious that the very nature of warfare is changing and that Russia does not need to deploy nuclear missiles when it can cause immense damage in a targeted way and with weapons the collective west cannot possibly match.

        Meanwhile idiots including Starmer and Macron and their advisors seem unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation in which they have placed us all. The idea that our soldiers should be sent to Ukraine to be annihilated by such weapons shows that these supposed leaders lack any sense of humanity or care for their peoples.

        This is the reason that Starmer, Macron and the other EU warmongers have to be thrown out of office by the people and the sooner the better for humanity.

        1. Just remember:

          Roses are reddish
          Violets are blueish
          If it wasn’t for Christmas
          We’d all be Jewish!

    2. The excuse they need to create a european army.

      Vehemently denied by the lying bastard Nick Clegg.

      It already exists and guess what. We are paying for it.

      1. Starmer doesn't see that as a problem. Immigrants are Labour voters and Starmer promotes a supra national attitude. He certainly doesn't care for the UK.

  120. Were I a Labour strategist (ho ho), I'd tell the party to dismiss the "petition" as the outpouring of grief of bitter, twisted Tory bad loser voters. I'd then arrange (with YouGov – the pollster that gives the answer YOU want) to produce a poll showing 2 million plus happy voters, delighted with the way the Labour party has stuck to its plans.

    My fees are very reasonable – though a new suit or two would be nice, Lord Comical Alli….

    1. Even youguv couldn't manage that. Maybe if that counted the entire civil service, the prison population they could make the numbers add up but prisoners are not allowed to vote, so that'd be rumbled.

          1. Thank you. As most prisoners seem to be out of gaol – except respectable middle-class hate folk, of course – most would be able to vote. God help us… Though I suspect that yer average crim is more likely to be centre-right than a leftie

  121. She is a very strong (viciously so at times) independent woman, More fool my son for going against everything he was brought up with.

    1. I guess we can both guess the attraction, he won’t be the only one fallen for it. He’ll stay for any children they have, is the usual scenario. If not, he still has a chance.

      1. Just like the king’s younger son, he is ‘trapped’ by having children. he is, unfortunately, very much under the thumb, and his personality has been changed in the nearly 20 years they have been together. Even if the marriage fails, he would stay there for his children.

        1. Harry no longer looks like the fun-loving younger son, at a guess he misses the laughs he had with bro and s-i-l and I think they miss him too. I don’t think Trump will nay-say his staying USA. I do wonder tho if Harry’s wife might be the one to split.

          1. If/when they split, I would bet it would be Markle that instigates it, as soon as a richer and more powerful victim is available. Harry hasn’t delivered quite the level of influence she anticipated. She will ditch hapless Harry, and milk him for as much as possible, and she will use the children as a bargaining tool to get as much money as possible.
            As I understand it, his children ‘belong’ to the Royal family, but whether that would influence who got custody in the USA, who knows.

    2. I guess we can both guess the attraction, he won’t be the only one fallen for it. He’ll stay for any children they have, is the usual scenario. If not, he still has a chance.

    2. Curiously I noticed that West Mercia Police have looked at my Linkedin profile. Nothing there apart from a potted employment history (an honest one) as I hardly ever post anything.

        1. Prisons are the remit of the Home Office and they would use the government Property Services Agency for such commissions or at least they did when I practiced in London and had to deal with the buggers.

          In those days the PSA had offices in Croydon (Lunar House known colloquially as Loony House) and in Southwark (St Christopher House).

          When I did Richmond House in Whitehall I had to attend monthly meetings in St Christopher House and often looked around at the dozen or so wasters in attendance to realise that I was the only party doing any actual work. I remember that when the Tea Trolley arrived they would snaffle all the biscuits.

          Memories eh?

    3. I've just seen on 5 news a truck causing a wave as a much smaller car drives in the opposite direction and suffered water over the bonnet.
      Obviously it wasn't discussed or followed through. But of course it's just something that happens in floods.

    4. I wonder if any of these people has ever driven a tractor through a fast flowing flood? I doubt that it would be doing that for fun (weather emergencies are yet another circumstance during which we rely on farmers for help and rescue – there's often bugger all else ) and would also suggest that both impetus and traction could be a matter of life or death in such a situation. But – hey ho. Evil farmers are to be robbed of everything.

  124. I'm guessing as the wind has dropped Border Force and the RLNI will be working overtime to clear the backlog.

        1. I never really cared for it. Because I once told my father (in 1977 that I didn't mind Bristol Cream – every Christmas for the next ten years he sent me SIX bottles of the blasted stuff. Came in handy for Church raffle prizes!

          2. I don't like the sweet ones, the rest are reasonably pleasant, though nowadays I stick mainly to red wine and beer when travelling to the UK.

          3. I don't like the sweet ones, the rest are reasonably pleasant, though nowadays I stick mainly to red wine and beer when travelling to the UK.

        1. Now there I would disagree, Paul. There are some stonking wines from all over Spain. We know those from Catalunya best. Stunning.

          1. No experience.
            The Mediteranean fortified wines are superb – and very tolerant of being chilled, put over ice, drunk as-is in warm or cold environment…

          2. No experience.
            The Mediteranean fortified wines are superb – and very tolerant of being chilled, put over ice, drunk as-is in warm or cold environment…

        2. Now there I would disagree, Paul. There are some stonking wines from all over Spain. We know those from Catalunya best. Stunning.

  129. A drab par Four!

    I got there in four.

    The icon for transferring images is missing.

    I remain sick as a dog; don't ask!

    1. Par here as well, needed a bit of work though!

      Everything seems to be working OK here. Hope you feel better soon!!

      Wordle 1,255 4/6

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

    2. Par for me too. Get well.

      Wordle 1,255 4/6

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

    3. Six for me. Hope you're better soon.

      Wordle 1,255 6/6

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

        1. First letter was a choice of B, C, D, and F because I eliminated G. I then plumped alphabetically and was lucky.

          I hope you feel better soon. This weather is not helping and when I read about Starmer’s exploits on the World Stage and at home I feel sick.

    5. OK won't ask.

      par as well.

      Wordle 1,255 4/6

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

  130. The local ones from Catalunya I suspect you can’t. Limited production (to the highest modern standards) and sold within Spain.

  132. An example of how socialism stifles initiative.
    Our cleaner's brother was an alcoholic. 13 years ago, he rescued himself from the edge, and set up his own car valeting business visiting homes in south London; we are talking about big houses with expensive cars. Not a huge money spinner, but it gave him pride and a sense of achievement. Has his own flat and his life back again. He built up a list of regular customers for whom he cleaned their cars in their garages.
    Then Khan struck. Special licences have to be obtained to clean cars in garages – not just the valet but also the car owners. This was the only way he could make a reasonable living in the winter since few want their cars cleaned and immediately besmirched by rain etc….
    Add in the congestion charge which has now also been extended into the area where he lives and he is not making enough not to claim assistance. Or afford a ULEZ compliant van.
    Hours on his own in a small flat ….. for a recovering alcoholic (they are never cured) …….

      2. I suspect they sit around and discuss who, why and how they can hit, upset and cause the most problems to. Selected revenge programs.

        1. Close
          They sit around and discuss who, why and how they can hit, upset and cause the most problems to.
          Selected revenge pogroms.

          1. Close to where I was brought up in Mill Hill NW7 there was a huge and iconic building known as the National Medical Research Institution. Out of date it was destined to be turned into flats and apartments.
            The rest of the smaller buildings to be demolished and new homes built. The Royal family cut the tape in the late 40s.
            That hate monger Kahnt gave the order to have it flattened.
            That's the sort of thing I mean.
            anything to damage the long established culture of our country.

    2. That has to be the saddest story I have heard so far this week .

      I hope he has the strength to resist the temptation , and use his time another way . 🙏🏻

    3. Well done on turning his life round. May those who have made it impossible for him to carry on, reap their rewards in hell.

      1. Don't apologise, Mir. that is exactly what he is, and if I could think of something ruder i would employ it.

      2. Don't apologise, Mir. that is exactly what he is, and if I could think of something ruder i would employ it.

  133. That's me gone for today. Looks sunny again tomorrow but chillier. Will do more wood collection from the recent high winds. Every little helps…

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

  134. Sky news reports ' the Right of the Conservatives, Reform and Musk cause signing of the petition for another general election ' The Times reports ' Musk fans the flames for the UK petition for another general election. What utter liars twisting the truth.
    This petition on a Gov UK website is for the UK electorate alone, a way for us to say how much we hate thus vile government. It is countrywide, every constituency has signed the petition ( with the exception of London ) Labour voters too, the North West is equal to the South West with the amount of signatures. We are aware that venal Starmer won't call an election but its heartwarming to see the petition numbers increasing- I expect It will slow down but I hope it reaches a higher number then the mere 9 million who voted Labour . I also hope it'll fracture the Labour government from within with the new Labour MPs becoming more skittish knowing their constituencies hate them. I am just furious with the deceit and lies from the media even if its well known . I'll ignore the news etc for awhile and look forward to Labour being slaughtered in next May's Council elections.

    1. ITV suggests many signatories from abroad don't count and as you say 'followers' of Musk, Farage etc responsible. How they know all this, I know not.

      1. But I now have a vote in general elections, why can I not vote in a petition.

        I did not sign because I expected they would come up with this excuse.

        1. I signed, and learned that there is a MP for expat Brits, so I might sign up ro vote after all.

      2. But I now have a vote in general elections, why can I not vote in a petition.

        I did not sign because I expected they would come up with this excuse.

          1. Perhaps they say it hoping it won't be challenged, and then later they can say it again but claim everyone agrees?

          3. Perhaps they say it hoping it won't be challenged, and then later they can say it again but claim everyone agrees?

    2. ITV suggests many signatories from abroad don't count and as you say 'followers' of Musk, Farage etc responsible. How they know all this, I know not.

  135. 397356+ up ticks,

    I take it then a new vocabulary will come into play as in, lying, deceiving, etc,etc is doing a reevcie, and practising insanity doing a millie,plus "you ain't tooling me "

    Came a long way have labour, whispers from the past,
    "there's no money left".

  136. 397356+ up ticks,

    I take it then a new vocabulary will come into play as in, lying, deceiving, etc,etc is doing a reevcie, and practising insanity doing a millie,plus "you ain't tooling me "

    Came a long way have labour, whispers from the past,
    "there's no money left".

  137. Former Met chief calls for review of non-crime hate incidents

    Report finds incidents take up 60,000 hours of officers' time every year and distract them from fighting crime

    Charles Hymas Home Affairs Editor. Connor Stringer Senior reporter
    25 November 2024 12:01am GMT

    A former Metropolitan Police commissioner has urged ministers to review the use of non-crime hate incidents in the wake of an investigation into a Telegraph journalist.

    A new report, published on Monday by the Policy Exchange think tank, urges ministers to abolish the recording of the incidents by police after finding they take up 60,000 hours of officers' time every year and distract them from fighting crime.

    In response, Lord Hogan-Howe said the Government should study the report and consider whether police should be investigating the incidents at all. His comments come after a row sparked by the investigation into Allison Pearson.

    Lord Hogan-Howe is the most senior policing figure to criticise non-crime hate incidents.

    He said the original aim to log incidents that could lead to racist attacks after the murder of Stephen Lawrence was "well-intentioned", but the way the rules had been introduced had led to "little debate about their efficacy".

    The peer said police had no powers to investigate or interview "suspects" in non-crime hate incidents, which meant it had caused public concern when officers had done so.

    "Whether something is a non-crime hate incidents is a subjective test based on guidance, producing inconsistent outcomes," he said. "Parliament, rather than the College of Policing, has to decide whether the police should be investigating people for non-crime hate incidents and how they are recorded. "I would urge ministers to look closely at this Policy Exchange report to inform the path they intend to take."

    In its report, Policy Exchange estimated that police officers were spending up to 60,000 hours a year investigating some 13,000 non-crime hate incidents, diverting them from fighting actual crime. Its analysis suggested that Essex Police, the force that investigated Pearson, spent more time per officer on non-crime hate incidents than other, larger forces.

    Last year, Essex Police recorded non-crime hate incidents at a rate of 21.5 per 100 officers a year – twice the national rate and three times that of the Metropolitan Police, four times that of Greater Manchester Police and 10 times that of West Yorkshire Police.

    Policy Exchange said ministers should legislate to abolish recording of non-crime hate incidents by police. If they decided to retain them, police guidance should be rewritten to strengthen protections for freedom of speech, reduce officers' distraction from fighting crime and ban logging non-crime hate incidents that did not contain personal data.

    Under the current guidance, the personal data of alleged non-crime hate perpetrators can only be recorded if the incident is "clearly motivated by intentional hostility" and where there is a "real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence".

    However, Policy Exchange said the definitions used by police for "hostility" were so low that they included "unfriendliness" and "dislike". This, it said, "distorted the prevalence of genuine 'hate' incidents". It recommended the definition threshold should be raised.

    The Policy Exchange report, written by David Spencer, a former Met Police detective chief inspector said the Government should pass legislation to mandate police forces to follow the non-crime hate incident guidance.

    Lord Hogan-Howe's comments come after Lord Ken Macdonald KC, a former director of public prosecutions, also raised concerns about the recording of non-crime hate incidents.

    The crossbench peer said people risked having their reputations tarred by the word of a supposed victim, telling BBC Radio Four's PM: "We are talking about non-crimes.

    "These are non-criminal incidents, and the bottom line is that a disclosable record is being made that a named individual has been responsible for a hate incident short of a crime without any proper process to determine whether the event took place or was motivated by hate, because the hate component is identified solely by the supposed victim on the basis of what they feel happened."

    Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, is considering plans to lower the threshold for recording non-crime hate incidents specifically for anti-Semitism and Islamophobia amid concerns that the current guidance is preventing police from logging incidents that could escalate into violence.

    Last week, a No 10 spokesman said Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, was clear that the police should be spending their time protecting the public and keeping streets safe.

    "When it comes to those incidents, we've also said that it's vital we carefully consider how we balance the fundamental right to free speech and how police can gather information where relevant. We're looking at how we can best ensure this is the case and will set out next steps in due course," the spokesman said.

    However, the Policy Exchange report said there was currently limited, if any, evidence to demonstrate that the large-scale recording of non-crime hate incidents had enabled police officers to prevent the "escalation" of situations into serious criminality.

    Mr Spencer said non-crime hate incidents were having a "devastating" impact on the public's perception of policing, adding: "Too often, police chiefs have chosen to focus their attention on matters other than the fight against those crimes that most affect the public.

    "By abolishing the entire non-crime hate incidents regime, the Government has an opportunity to keep the police's attention on what really matters to the public – catching the burglars, drug-dealers and violent thugs who cause misery to the lives of millions."

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/25/former-met-chief-calls-for-review-non-crime-hate-incidents

    Wasn't Hogan-Howe one of the worst Met commissioners of recent times?

    As for Pixie Balls…

      4. I think that was Sir Craig Mackey.. the one who locked himself in his car and speed off.. as he watched terrorist Khalid Masood kill one of his colleagues in the Westminster attack because he had two colleagues with him who were quite distressed *so we courageously retreated to defensive positions*.

        Awarded a KCMG.

    2. “Wasn't Hogan-Howe one of the worst Met commissioners of recent times?” No, there was someone who really was a dick!

    3. a No 10 spokesman said Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, was clear that the police should be spending their time protecting the public and keeping streets safe.

      A beige silly Billy meaningless slogan from a silly Billy beige regime.

  142. Gawd! Don’t give them ideas! I reckon that gay tosser Reed in his frightfully expensive wellies was driving the tractor!

  143. Gawd! Don’t give them ideas! I reckon that gay tosser Reed in his frightfully expensive wellies was driving the tractor!

        1. Labour members leaving the Labour Party, not disaffected general UK citizens leaving the UK at this time according to that link.

  148. Fine BTL Comment:

    Jimbo Jones
    5 HRS AGO
    The most efficient Labour Government ever. Normally it takes them a full term to destroy the economy and divide communities. This lot only took 100 days. That takes real talent and careful planning.

  149. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    On the edges of the City of London, a couple of miles from where I grew up, there’s a very famous cemetery: Bunhill Fields. When I was growing up, it was pretty clear who the three most famous tombs belonged to: John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and William Blake.

    However, I am not sure any of these men are the most famous inhabitant any more. Instead, I think it’s Thomas Bayes.

    He was quite obscure in his lifetime. He was so obscure that we’re not even sure there is a correct picture of him. In the 1st edition of the Dictionary of National Biography, his father, a non-conformist preacher, featured, but he did not.

    But today his most famous work is studied in universities around the world. His name has become an adjective (‘Bayesian’). He has had a profound influence on philosophy, medicine and technology. His most famous work is not a novel or a collection of poems or a devotional allegory but an algorithm that helps you to work out what to do when faced with uncertainty.

    The prominence of Bayes and his theorem is illustrative of wider changes in education, and that wider change is that maths is in the ascendancy and the humanities, particularly literature, are in decline. I have a striking graph from FFT proving this point.

    The graph shows you the number of students taking maths A-level and the number taking English literature level. One graph goes from low to high and one goes from high to low. English literature and maths have basically replaced each other on the chart of most studied A-levels.

    Why has this happened?

    There are a lot of heated debates about whether the decline in English Literature is due to curriculum changes in England. I find this relatively implausible because the decline is happening in many other countries.

    I think there are two more plausible reasons. One is the economy. Students are now much more focused on the return they are going to get from a degree, and they feel maths will give them a better financial return.

    The second reason is that reading is in decline. Half of British adults don’t read regularly, and 35 per cent say they are ‘lapsed readers’. Smartphones and social media have self-evidently changed the way we spend our time. If you are spending a couple of hours a day scrolling through various apps on your phone, that’s a couple of hours that are not available for reading. It’s also possible that they affect our ability to concentrate for long periods on time on text. Essentially, reading was a more popular leisure pastime in the past, and that probably ensured a steady pipeline of students for the humanities. That pipeline is no longer there.

    So what should we do about this? I am a literature graduate, and these graphs concern me. But I do also have to acknowledge that the success of maths is an earned success. Sometimes, I think we humanities graduates can be a little mean about maths. We can say that it’s all just utilitarian, it’s all just students doing it for the sake of earning more money, isn’t that awful. I'd say three things in response to that.

    The first is that earning a decent living is not the sole aim of education, but it is not an unreasonable one. Younger students are faced with enormous economic headwinds. They are being asked to invest large sums of money in their education. There is nothing wrong with expecting a return on that investment.

    If we often neglect the beauty of maths, we can also be guilty of the opposite error: neglecting the utility of literature

    Secondly, whatever your motivations and whatever job you want, maths is becoming increasingly not just useful but essential. It is getting harder and harder to avoid statistics, in particular. I speak from experience: I gave up maths at 16 and became an English teacher. I work for an assessment organisation and the bulk of what we do is assessing writing. Statistics are unavoidable, and I have had to go back and fill in some of those gaps.

    Third, maths isn’t just purely utilitarian. It has its own beauty and its own fascinating history. Bayes’s theorem is a triumph of civilisation that is up there with Defoe's novels, Bunyan’s devotionals and Blake’s poetry.

    However, if we often neglect the beauty of maths, we can also be guilty of the opposite error: neglecting the utility of literature. I hear stories of smart, motivated and hard working graduates who turn up in prestigious graduate roles and say why do I need to read? Can’t I get everything I need from podcasts and videos? In a purely utilitarian sense, no. Podcasts and videos are less efficient methods of transmitting information. Just as a useful equation is also beautiful, a beautiful sentence is also useful in the way it can efficiently transmit information across time and space. This communication function of reading and writing is well understood.

    But there is also another function of literacy which is equally important, but perhaps less well understood, which is the ability of literacy to extend thought. Even if you never write for an external audience, writing allows you to extend your own thoughts beyond the limitation of puny working memory. This is one the reasons literate societies are bigger and more complex than pre-literate societies. It is also a reason why we cannot rely on artificial intelligence to do the writing for us, because to outsource our writing is to outsource our thinking.

    What are the solutions to the decline of the humanities? It may well be that the old days, when students read extensively for pleasure, are gone. But there are then two possible responses. One is to go with the grain of the trends in society, and to replace the traditional lengthy texts with shorter extracts, more audio recordings, more video clips. The other response is to double down on the lengthy text. Embrace the new difficulty students have with reading, and overcome it. Position the humanities, and their difficult texts, as valuable because they are difficult.

    And remember that students today are not lazy or demotivated or unwilling to work hard. They are not rejecting the humanities in favour of TikTok studies. They are rejecting the humanities in favour of subjects we traditionally think of as difficult: maths, physics, even further maths. They are willing to work hard at tricky subjects if they see the value. Clearly, they are not seeing the value in the humanities, or in persevering with reading. We have to show them that value: both the utility and the beauty. We can’t do that by compromising what is valuable.

    Still, I am ultimately quite pessimistic about the future of the humanities, and particularly English Literature. Many of us have grown up in a world where literature was at the heart of the English story. Writers like Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare are national icons, recognisable by everyone. That may not be the case for much longer. The Times columnist James Marriott, himself a literature graduate, has done a great deal of reporting on this issue, and his articles make for sobering reading. His argument is that English Literature was in some ways the cultural underpinning of mid-century liberal democracy. The decline of English Literature and liberal democracy goes hand-in-hand. Combine this with the changes in technology and leisure habits, and it can be hard to see a way back for literature.

    There is a possibility that literature becomes like some other aspects of our national history which were once central but are now marginal. The study of classics, for example, or the sport cricket, which are taught by fewer and fewer state schools. As a lover of literature, I would hate it if that became the case. But as a realist, I fear it may be likely.

    This piece originally appeared in Daisy Christodoulou’s No More Marking Substack.

    WRITTEN BY
    Daisy Christodoulou

    1. Reading story-books and wring stuff about them from memory always struck me as a waste of time.

    3. Two things immediately spring to mind.
      Maths has probably been dumbed down to get that result, and the best of English literature may have been removed from the curriculum in favour of trendy writers.

    4. Bayesian if I recall correctly was the name of the super yacht which capsized and sank recently and so called by a chap (whose name I forget) whose fortune derived from his understanding and use of Bayesian theory. The man and several of his family perished.

  150. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    In a letter to Katie Morley, consumer champion for the Telegraph, CK from London explained that her £4,000 Smeg hob doesn’t work with her Le Creuset pans. She said she was ‘furious’ because she had renovated her kitchen and had a marble worktop cut to fit it. ‘Given the price tag, I expected it to work like a dream, but instead I am having some significant performance issues with it… I feel very badly let down, and I may have to report this to trading standards’.

    Induction is a bit like using an Aga but worse, because at least Agas can look attractive

    Why would anyone choose an induction hob over a gas stove top? It is the worst kitchen invention since electric carving knives and soda streams. These days, every rental apartment in the western world is kitted out with one, and they are almost impossible to regulate. I have screamed at them, hit them with an incompatible pan, stormed out of the kitchen, and ended up with toast for dinner instead of whatever it was I was planning to cook.

    For some reason, it decides itself how hot it will get and totally ignores the settings. I can’t imagine any self-respecting chef or prolific home cook preferring one to gas. Having to buy a whole set of new pans to ensure compatibility is utterly ridiculous. Induction is not capable of heating a single pan evenly, and yet they are growing in popularity.

    We are told they are safer, more hygienic, easier to clean, and produce better air quality. Who cares? I’ve never been able to set one on a steady simmer, and when low they often switch themselves off. With a power cut, you are stuffed.

    I’ve read that once you try induction you never go back to gas. What? Everyone I know who has been foolish enough to do so has said the opposite. Obviously, climate change activists would have all gas cookers banned, and we have been told gas emissions are bad for our health and can generate unsafe levels of indoor air pollution. The science is undecided on this. They are more expensive than gas or straight solid plate hobs, and it is impossible to effectively sauté or stir fry. Induction is a bit like using an Aga but worse, because at least Agas can look attractive.

    The touch control is much more difficult and imprecise compared to knobs because it is invariably too sensitive, and it’s impossible to operate one when your hands aren’t perfectly dry and grease-free. Cooking comes to a standstill if something moves, such as a pan sliding off the ring. Any disturbance on the glass plate and off it switches. Try cleaning around the rings and it beeps and flashes red, like something is going to explode.

    CK obviously only has herself to blame. That letter screamed more money than sense, and why would she pay so much for something that she wasn’t sure she would get on with? Induction hobs are a terrible alternative to gas, and no one who is serious about cooking would get one.

    I don’t know why anyone would pay £4,000 for a cooking hob aside from professional chefs, but seriously, she should have done her homework and found one that she did not have to have a special marble top fitted to accommodate. My extremely efficient gas hob cost around £500 and works brilliantly. The 1,800 (and rising number of) comments underneath the article are not sympathetic. Anyone thinking of buying an induction hob needs their head examining. I’d rather use an old microwave or Baby Belling than put up with one.

    WRITTEN BY
    Julie Bindel
    Julie Bindel is a feminist campaigner against sexual violence. She is the host of The Lesbian Project podcast, with Kathleen Stock.

    2. Had induction for 15+ years. Never going near gas or electric rings again.
      Firstborn has had induction over 5 years.
      Only a total dork cannot regulate them, one just turns the heat up or down by touching the + or – button. And any spills wipe off, just like that.

      1. Agreed been using Induction hobs for 10 +years. There are very efficient and very easy to keep clean.

        On the boat I put a silicone baking sheet over the glass top to stop the steel kettle from sliding whilst on the move. It works perfectly well.

    5. I have designed kitchens for several restaurants. Professional kitchens will usually have gas jobs and often induction jobs as well but occasionally where gas is either unavailable or imposes additional costs, suppression systems for example, then all electric kitchens with induction hobs are installed.

      The last all electric kitchen I designed before my retirement was for Gastrono-Me in Abbeygate Street Bury St Edmunds.

      Pans for use on induction jobs have to be magnetic otherwise they will not heat efficiently or at all in most instances.

    1. Having read it I am very suspicious that it isn't a work of fiction, an earlier Alex Haley's Roots.
      Interesting for all that.

  152. Martin Down, June 2024: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b27d87da409bf9ad5d4c84fb680c9f31f07a40cd952b02c231be6e467a6f262b.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b51585ea0c94764b81e6b8a9466e6795873636c41a359fff4837ca8733267fbc.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ed06b1ceb0684a8a66504d3f9c3650beace017b7a9d1fd72d3eb8bbe8bfd27a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bd8dc4443dd187633b727642438ccaf5fc92f151005165fd5fa2de331aa3fd7b.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6392b4b81b9237648f228e6ddab342ce7853e03d995ddc5e00378b5086c4c56a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/098b91d45eecee0be3d542654ae81a87ffee75da77b2202205a4115d29db38b8.jpg

      2. The sod would sit still. Every time I was about to push the shutter he moved.
        I'm pretty sure I heard him bloody laughing.

      4. I was just coming to say it looked a bit tatty! I know they don't live very long!
        Edit : oops! Yes they do! Up to 11 months

  153. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    Should Shabana Mahmood be allowed to ‘impose’ her religious beliefs on everyone else? Lord Falconer doesn’t think so, arguing yesterday that the Justice Secretary was ‘motivated… by her religious beliefs’ in her opposition to assisted dying. He added: ‘I respect that religious belief but I do not think it should be imposed on everybody else.’

    It’s not uncommon to hear a secular politician making this argument about those with religious belief, though perhaps Falconer should be applauded for aiming it at a Muslim politician rather than a Christian one, as is more frequently the case. Either way, suggesting that someone’s religious beliefs mean their views on key issues are in some way less important and perhaps quite sinister is a very common technique. The problem is that it implies only people who subscribe to some kind of organised religion have irrational beliefs that shouldn’t be imposed on the wider population. The truth is that we all have beliefs, religious or not.

    Mahmood has offered extensive reasoning for her stance on assisted dying

    Falconer knows this very well, as someone who has taken several deep dives into the debate around biological sex and gender. He has given evidence to parliamentary committees and produced lengthy threads on the legal complexities of gender recognition certificates. While he focuses on the administrative implications of the way the law is drafted, he will be well aware that part of the debate rests on a matter of belief: do you believe that someone born in a male body can fully become a woman? Strangely, those who fully assert that this metamorphosis is possible are rarely accused of irrational beliefs, presumably because they are not part of a recognised religion. But just because adherents to certain beliefs don’t turn go to mosque or church, doesn’t mean they haven’t signed up to a wider belief system, even if unwittingly. One of the reasons that the gender debate has become so tortured is that many of its proponents initially backed reforms out of a belief that they were the right, progressive thing to do, and without proper dry examination of the implications. They fitted into the set of beliefs that other progressives approve of, and therefore there wasn’t much need to interrogate what was going on. But agreeing with something because it makes you popular with others isn’t any more respectable than believing what your vicar told you to believe.

    That failure to interrogate, though, is exactly the kind of thing Falconer is taking issue with when it comes to Mahmood and assisted dying. It’s just that it is easier to point at a Muslim or a Christian than it is to point at someone who worships progressive secularism and to ask whether they have really thought through whatever they are about to ‘impose’ on others.

    In any case, the debate around Kim Leadbeater’s bill on assisted dying really hasn’t become split along religious and secular lines, even though some campaigners including Falconer and the Humanists, would like to characterise it as such. Some of the more vocal opponents are worried about the drafting of the legislation rather than the principle: Liberty, not known for being a hotbed of religious fundamentalism, has come out against the bill on those grounds. Others have not darkened the door of any religious building for many years but are nonetheless opposed to the principle itself, too. Some of them have poor arguments against, some are well-thought-through. Mahmood has offered extensive reasoning for her stance on the bill, as we should expect of any politician doing their job. The arguments in the Commons this Friday would be vastly improved if all MPs felt the same pressure to interrogate their own beliefs and show that they had the right to ‘impose’ their views on everyone else.

    Isabel Hardman
    WRITTEN BY
    Isabel Hardman
    Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminste

    1. 'I respect that religious belief but I do not think it should be imposed on everybody else.’

      I expect Hardman has a point, but it's hardly the point, is it. More to the point in what sense is Mahmood's belief being imposed upon anyone? Is this Bill being contemplated because it was moved out of religious fervour or some requirement that this matter ought to conform to religious doctrine?

      I'm afraid too many politicians, especially of Falconer's ilk given his history in Blair's government are rather too fond of that rhetorical sleight of hand.

    2. 'I respect that religious belief but I do not think it should be imposed on everybody else.’

      I expect Hardman has a point, but it's hardly the point, is it. More to the point in what sense is Mahmood's belief being imposed upon anyone? Is this Bill being contemplated because it was moved out of religious fervour or some requirement that this matter ought to conform to religious doctrine?

      I'm afraid too many politicians, especially of Falconer's ilk given his history in Blair's government are rather too fond of that rhetorical sleight of hand.

    3. Having muslims' beliefs imposed on everybody else has never bothered the government before (halal, full face coverings, praying in the streets, calling for jihad, etc). Why now? Ah, it interferes with their desire to cull people they don't like.

    4. Having muslims' beliefs imposed on everybody else has never bothered the government before (halal, full face coverings, praying in the streets, calling for jihad, etc). Why now? Ah, it interferes with their desire to cull people they don't like.

    5. It's nothing to do with religion.
      I do not trust my "fellow man" not to kill me if it suits whatever the agenda of the day might be:
      My estate, my useless eating, my beliefs, my cost to the health system.

    6. What are the views of Falconer's chum, political boss and former flat mate?
      One Anthony Lynton Blair who converted to Roman Catholicism a few years back?

      1. And this is law, I will maintain

        Unto my Dying Day, Sir.

        That whatsoever King may reign,

        I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!

  154. Evening, all. Been a lovely day here – sunny, bright, dry and not too cold, even. Had a trip to Shrewsbury and coffee and cake with my 93-year old ex RAF colleague.

    Those people who have good experience of excellent palliative care (like my aforementioned mate whose wife had it in a local hospice) think that should be the norm, not bumping people off because they are inconvenient and get in the government's way.

    1. The government can't be trusted with everyday bus services so I don't see why we should allow them this.

          7. You are beginning to sound like an Estate Agent so I claim my £5
            Locquation, locquation, locquation…..!

  155. Any chance that someone could create another petition calling for a general strike unless Labour calls a general election.
    They govern with our consent, they are not dictators yet.

    3. Labour would claim that they are very much in favour of the Tories trade union legislation…

  156. Thought for the day.

    They should debate the assisted dying bill with a clause that allows for a petition to have an MP terminated after 1,000,000 votes so to do.

    Would it pass? What do you think?

    But would you vote for it?

    1. No. I was present when my terminally ill mother in law was subjected to the Liverpool path way. My wife and I were asked to step outside while the nurses 'made her more comfortable' we returned to the ward, she had her bed tidied and looked more comfortable. But within 20 minutes she passed away. Peacefully but they didn't mention that they had probably sent her on her way.
      This was mid 80s.
      I feel that the amount of deaths will get out of hand.

      1. Sorry to read that, and I agree.

        But you may have missed the sarcasm in what I was suggesting, the ability for the public to terminate MPs by a general vote.
        I'm certainly not keen on their assisted dying proposals.

      2. Sorry to read that, and I agree.

        But you may have missed the sarcasm in what I was suggesting, the ability for the public to terminate MPs by a general vote.
        I'm certainly not keen on their assisted dying proposals.

    2. Terminated with extreme prejudice, you mean! Those votes would rack up quicker than ever seen before!

  157. OT: been toying with GB News. Why do they employ a rabid lefty as their Chief Political Editor? might as well watch the Beeb.

  159. Here we go again bbc Panorama bringing up and highlighting the over intake of alcohol and overall consumption causing liver diseases.
    Another step up for the promotion of and a roll over in front of a certain other faith or the religion. Dogs last week what ever next.

    1. 'The over intake of alcohol and overall consumption….'
      Now that's what I call PAD personalised assisted dying!

      3. Perhaps that’s why they are making life hard for farmers. To make them give up producing pork.

  160. Okay, deep breaths .. stay calm . https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/nov/25/two-million-voters-already-think-keir-starmers-team-should-be-relegated

    It’s the logical conclusion to the disposable society. Don’t like the result of the last general election? Then just have another one. Who cares if the new government has only been in office for four months? If you’re not feeling markedly better off already then the new prime minister is clearly a dud. No matter that it actually might take years to turn around an economy that has been on its knees for more than a decade. Just never give Labour an even break. Keir Starmer is like a Premier League manager after a run of bad results. On borrowed time.

    At least that’s what the likes of Nigel Farage and Elon Musk would have you believe. So thoughtful of the world’s weirdest man to take such an interest in us poor Brits. You’d have thought he had enough on his plate running the new department of government efficiency for Donald Trump. He could start by sacking himself. That would save several hundred thousand dollars.

    The petition calling for a new general election has now got more than 2m signatures. Which is probably no great surprise. Far more than that voted for parties other than Labour back in July so they are probably no great fans of the government. What’s more remarkable is that anyone is taking this stuff remotely seriously. In this new world, anything you don’t like can be reversed within minutes. Apart from Brexit. That must never be tampered with under any circumstances.

    We have arrived at the point where the wokest people are those who rail loudest against the wokerati. Poor Nige. Can’t manage another second under a Labour government. Of course, like most things Farage, he tries to pass it off as just a joke. A bit of populist mischief-making. But you just know that – beneath the surface – he’s deadly serious. Because if there was any chance of blagging a general election through the petition, he’d take it.

    To cap the sense of the surreal, Starmer was even asked about the petition when he turned up on the This Morning sofa on Monday. He had been there ostensibly to talk about making spiking drinks illegal. “I know it’s already illegal,” he said. “But I am determined to make it even more illegal.” That should do it. Still, he treated the petition with the contempt it deserved. As far as he knew, the UK still had a constitutional limit of a five-year parliament and so far we were just four months in. Elon is going to be devastated.

    But the sense that anything you don’t like can be cancelled is gaining ground everywhere. Later in the afternoon Priti Patel used an urgent question to try to get the government to ignore an arrest warrant from the international criminal court alleging that Benjamin Netanyahu has committed war crimes. In Priti’s multiverse, we should be able to pick and choose which verdicts we like and which we don’t.

    So, obviously, when the ICC issues arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin we applaud its findings. But when the court finds grounds to believe that Netanyahu may have used starvation as an instrument of war then Priti throws her toys out of the pram. The ICC was nothing but a pariah court. Understandably, Labour was reluctant to agree with Priti. And to think she’s normally the first to complain about two-tier policing.

    Rachel Reeves walks in a group of people and holds a red folder
    ‘We had no alternative’: Reeves defends her budget to the CBI
    Read more
    Still, no one is ever going to die wondering what Patel thinks. Most of us already know before she even speaks. It’s always the nastiest take imaginable. She is someone of whom it’s almost impossible to think the worst because she’s already one step ahead of you. On the other hand, Kemi Badenoch has taken to speaking in riddles. You know that what she’s saying is almost certainly unpleasant but there’s no way of verifying it. Her sentences begin somewhere in the middle and end in a different paragraph. There is no logic. No obvious signs of intelligence. She’s going to bore or confuse us to death.

    There was no CBI conference last year – the organisation was still in deep shame over sexual misconduct allegations – so all it managed was a “winter moment”. But now it is back. Sort of. The numbers were down and the main hall was half the size of audiences past. But it is still a force that politicians feel the need to keep onside. So KemiKaze was given the lunchtime slot for a keynote slot. It was just a shame she did not bring her A-game with her.

    What she said was anyone’s guess. Delegates were turning to one another in mystification. Looking for answers that were not forthcoming. But let’s see if you can make any more sense of it. Kemi wanted to deregulate because that was good for business. Er … Brexit, Kemi? Governments couldn’t do everything but she couldn’t say what it could do.

    She wanted growth. Not just any growth, but a special kind of growth that you would know by looking outside. Some jobs needed to go. Some people needed social skills. Pots and kettles. There would be knobs and levers. The system was broken but she couldn’t mend it. Restaurants should forget about having menus. We needed an alternative strategy but she didn’t know what that was. She didn’t even know if she would keep Labour’s national insurance changes. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Thank you and good night. She’s either a genius or a halfwit. You decide.

    Later on, Rachel Reeves joined us for a fireside chat. Or Je ne regrette rien. There was no alternative to her tax rises. Have a go if you think you’re hard enough, CBI. Tell us what you would have done differently. No one said a word. The Ministering Angel of Death was heard in near silence. As was Kemi. The applause was several claps short of polite. Fair to say most delegates don’t seem to have a lot of faith in government’s ability to fix the economy. We are in a state of unstable stability. They will believe in growth when they see it. That way they can avoid further disappointment.

    1. "At least that’s what the likes of Nigel Farage and Elon Musk would have you believe."

      I wonder if it ever occurred to Guardianistas that the timing of this petition is just a bit convenient? Farage: it's just a joke. Meanwhile Musk stokes up the rhetoric on X. Oh, and "the new Trump team", which includes Musk by the way rails at Labour for trying to interfere in the US presidential election …

    2. Very Guardian. Suddenly ministers are warm and cuddly needing compassion and comprehension. When the referendum was lost they supported petitions asking for a 'people's vote'. Liz Truss was ousted after only six weeks because her policies seemed to be failing.
      Nothing out of the ordinary here. Two million people want another election and have used their right to free speech to ask for one. So what?

  161. A giant oil discovery in the Falkland Islands is even bigger than originally thought, it has emerged.

    An independent report into the North Falkland Basin has upgraded estimates of recoverable oil resources from 791m barrels to 917m – twice the annual output of the entire North Sea.

    Rockhopper Exploration, the company planning to drill in the field, said it planned to extract 532m barrels, up from a previous estimate of 312m. Most of the remainder could be recovered under further plans.

    The government of the Falkland Islands has approved production despite Labour blocking new oil and gas licences shortly after coming into office, risking an embarrassment for Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary.

    Is Lammy about to hand the Falklands over to Argentina?

    1. Whatever happens, like our shale (untapped), like our lobster, like our lamb… the product will be globalised and the profits and the produce won't be coming here.

      Watch Reeves do a Brown with our Bitcoin reserves (as he did with gold.) Billions confiscated from gangsters in government coffers.

      Bunch of incompetents !

  163. I have been trying, without success, to find the total number of people who voted in the July GE to compare the % of people signing the current Petition (2,425,000) vs the % signing the “rejoin the EU” that someone referenced earlier (5 million on a vastly higher turnout).

    I would bet my house that the number of people signing the Petition as a % of voter turnout is much higher.

    2. It's all very well Carol Voderman saying that the anti Brexit petition was ignored because it wasn't. That petition (added to polls) was used to mandate the obstruction of Brexit in the courts and in Parliament for FOUR years before the global pandemic delayed it further and led to the only Brexit PM of that era being stitched up for an offence that would have been inconceivable as an offence a few months earlier.

  166. Starmer's pledge to govern Britain like Wales is beginning to sound like a threat

    Devolution has left the region vulnerable to the worst impulses of Left-wing policymaking

    Tom Harris
    25 November 2024 4:03pm GMT

    When Keir Starmer described his party's record in Wales as a "blueprint for what Labour can do across the UK", he probably didn't intend it as a threat.

    But as the western principality is subjected to the latest in a long line of Left-wing experiments – tourists may be charged for the privilege of visiting Wales in future, according to a new policy published today – it might be regarded as such. Wales has become a Petri dish for social anthropology students curious to see what might happen if the more extreme elements of the students union is given free reign in at least one corner of the country.

    The Welsh Government has already courted controversy by allowing various strands of Welsh civic society to press ahead with its ludicrous obsession with the "decolonisation" of Welsh history. Not previously known for his membership of the Ku Klux Klan, David Lloyd George, one of Wales's most celebrated political figures, has nevertheless been targeted by publicly-funded "anti-racist" consultants.

    The former war-time prime minister's home in Llanystumdwy in rural Wales, which has been turned into a museum, will in future "promote a multicultural, vibrant and diverse Wales". Think red non-binary dragons against a rainbow background.

    But it's the tourist tax that is worrying leaders of the country's beleaguered hospitality industry. When visitor figures have yet to recover from the Covid pandemic and skills shortages are already pushing up wage costs (not to mention the new UK government's recent increase in employers' national insurance contributions), there could hardly be a worse time to impose further disincentives on tourism.

    The tax is envisioned as being relatively modest, added to visitors' bills for overnight accommodation. The money raised would be spent – so ministers tell us – on improving facilities for tourists and hence increasing revenue as part of a virtuous economic cycle. And if you believe that, I have a talking steam engine with a baby dragon resting in its furnace to sell you.

    The policy was part of an agreement between the ruling Labour administration and their nationalist rivals in Plaid Cymru, which should surprise no one. Welsh nationalism in its more extreme forms has a history of cultivating a warm welcome in the valleys for English incomers: remember that "Not The Nine O'Clock News" sketch from the 1970s? "Come home to an open fire – buy a cottage in Wales."

    Rather than make Wales a vibrant, forward-looking part of the UK, devolution has turned it and its politicians inwards, fixating on dictating how people should lead their lives.

    Of course, devolution was always intended by its enthusiastic and naïve promoters as an opportunity to do things differently at a Welsh and Scottish level from the way things were done at Westminster. It was just never explained why "different" must always mean "better".

    Any Welsh citizens tired of being constantly used as the subjects of clever experiments by academics and activists who wouldn't get a foot in the door in Whitehall might, therefore, blame the principle of devolution itself for their plight. After all, wasn't the devolution project supposed to improve the standard of living for those lucky enough to live in those areas?

    Yet in key areas of public policy – health, education, transport, etc – it is at least a challenge to produce empirical evidence that the promise of devolution has been realised.

    Confirming the Labour Party's role as the nation's Human Resources Department and its instinct either to make everything free, forbidden or compulsory, the Senedd has already subjected Welsh motorists to a nationwide ban on driving above 20 mph (since adjusted to allow local authorities to decide on speed limits), a policy that was conceived and imposed by over-mighty climate change activists-turned-government advisers. The same minister who imposed the 20 mph policy also opposed scrapping tolls on the Severn Crossing on the dubious basis that it would be too car-friendly.

    The Welsh Government's anti-car strategy and its new plans to charge visitors (mostly from the UK) to visit Wales are two faces of the same philosophy. Economic growth and a healthier environment for business are essential to improve standards of living for ordinary people. But under devolution, Welsh Labour sees both as disposable, depending on the political fashion of the here and now.

    Keir Starmer take note: Wales under Labour is no blueprint; it is a warning. If he doesn't heed it, the rest of the nation will.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/25/starmers-pledge-to-govern-britain-like-wales-has-backfired

    1. I am so glad I don't need to stay overnight to visit Wales. What next, a pay per mile charge and checks at border crossings? I'd have to get a helicopter to reach Oswestry (it's in England, but the road to it runs in and out of Wales).

    2. "Think red non-binary dragons against a rainbow background."
      Look; I know about these things. I watched Ivor the Engine. The red dragons were completely sexless.

  167. I'm off in ten minutes.
    Up early for a Hair cut in the morning, last one this year. I should consider my self lucky at least, with my prolific Barnet I do get value for money with the cut.
    Night all. 😴
    I managed to complete the deal for our number three son in Dubai, sell his car and the money has gone through to his account.
    It's all in a day's work for old daddy. 🤗

    1. I am jealous! I still have two cars in England: one sitting on my brother's drive, the other in a garage. I didn't manage to sell them before running away, and now…. 🤣🤣

    1. Not sure that I agree with the description of Edward Miliband and his colleagues as 'hulking' though clearly wasteful.

  169. Just a thought on the panorama prog earlier.
    Liver damage might be caused by bumping over thousands of Pot holes.

    1. My wonderful father wasn't an alcoholic , but he enjoyed a drink or 2.

      He spent most of his life overseas , as well as serving in the Fleet Air Arm during the war , and several very short spells in the UK .

      He was a tall sporty well built chap , and as he got older , a bit too tubby ..

      Dad loved a pint , and also whiskey and soda .. not excessive , but always convivial , good company and a mans man . Cricket , rugby and football !

      He had malaria several times , and also several infections of liver , hepatic infections , living in Africa early 1950's as well as West Africa , and imprisoned by the Egyptians with many hundreds of other expats during the Suez crisis for 3 months wasn't helpful .

      Areas where water had to be boiled and filtered , high risk, he had typhoid , cholera and yellow fever , and survived ..

      In his late sixties he had a short contract in Mozambique , and started to have problems with his liver plus reoccurrence of malaria or similar ..

      He suffered greatly when my mother was killed in her car when a B###### collided with her .. she was 61 driving alone , dad was 64.. a broken man .

      3 years after losing mum , he met a twice divorced woman , a white Rhodesian .. and they galloped together at wine o'clock , every night, my own mother would have disapproved .. and she could be very stern .

      Dad married Liz .. and enjoyed life .. and drank , ate , drank .. etc . Liz was pleasant and cared a lot for dad .. My sisters( both ) reported to me that a visit to the liquor store was a weekly event ..

      In the mid 90's , I started to receive phone calls in the UK from SA.. Dad wasn't well, tests were alarming ..

      In the May I had a desperate phone call from family .. advising me that daddy was very ill . I prepared to fly out to SA .. leaving Moh in charge at home .

      I was not prepared for the shock that was going to confront me .

      Daddy was in a mess , his abdomen was so distended , he was yellow and in pain and confused .. He was in a private hospital , and so confused was he that he fell out of bed and damaged his arm and shoulder .

      A week after my arrival in SA , Daddy died in early June aged 72 , the best Yorkshireman ever !

      Conditions of the liver can happen to any of us , but it is the luck of the draw whether one succumbs or not .

      Dad was not an alcoholic , or was he .. He liked a good whisky , nice wine and a good beer .. when in England he always asked for a pint of Bass bitter ..

      His second wife Liz came back to the UK and lived in Bath until she died aged 70yrs . an elegant tall fit woman , but a heavy drinker .. wine oclock started at 4pm .. helped her sleep and settle she said , by 8pm !

      There was an 11 year age gap between Dad and Liz ..

      Bye bye to all that.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b70aa9e6bcaf553216634e942d7b190b7f649a584a55c8076a824b459eefb9de.jpg

      1. Families are so odd, and in times past things were different. Colonial posts and jobs were very stressful and alcohol was a common way of coping. My mum was a colonial baby in India and Borneo. Mad as hatters when they returned to England.
        Your dad looks like a nice man.

      2. My dad liked his IPA. He served in Burma and being Welsh had acquired the habit of drinking beer from his father who was a Brewery Drayman in the days of steam driven drays.

        My grandfather whom I met just once as a child when he blew pipe smoke into my eyes, walked with a limp. Evidently he drank a crate of the beer he was supposed to deliver, crashed his steam engine and suffered a broken leg. The broken leg was not properly reset and in those days they used rabbit skin to bind it. As a result the damaged leg was inches shorter than the good one, hence the limp.

        As far as I can tell my paternal grandfather sired 16 children including my father, his third child and eldest son (born 1910). Two of his offspring, twins, died at birth but the rest survived but with a wide gap in their ages such as to have produced almost two separate generations.

        My paternal grandmother was the daughter of a Regimental Tailor and born in Cawnpore, India, in 1887 and presumably during the second uprising against British rule. She must have been a tough old bird and I never met her.

        By contrast my mother’s family were a genteel lot, Methodists and my mother was born in Corsham, the daughter of a printer and the most beautiful of four daughters in a family of seven with one child dying Age 0.

        I believe it is important to seek out information about our forbears and remain thankful that we are able to do so from public records and with the aid of various internet sites.

  170. From the Daily Telegraph,

    These are my ultimate Christmas roasties. Boil them the day before and leave in the fridge overnight to dry and help with stove space on Christmas Day. A jar of duck fat for roasties always signified Christmas in my house, but feel free to substitute it for any fat or oil you prefer, the variety of potato is the real key to success.

    I’ve done my research this year and there was a clear winner. Glass-thin with a crispy exterior and a soft, buttery textured centre, The Red Rooster blew the Maris Pipers, King Edwards and fancy restaurant spuds out of the water.

    Overview
    Prep time
    10 mins
    Cook time
    1 hr
    Serves
    4
    Ingredients
    6 large Red Rooster potatoes, peeled
    Maldon salt
    50g duck fat (or beef or goose fat or 100% rapeseed oil)
    50ml rapeseed oil
    4 sprigs of rosemary
    4 sprigs of thyme
    3 bay leaves
    3 garlic cloves, finely sliced
    Method
    Step
    Cut the 6 large Red Rooster potatoes in half lengthways and then into large even-sized pieces. Place in a large pan of cold, generously salted water. Bring to the boil very slowly and cook in gently simmering water until soft – you want to catch them just before they start to break up. Drain and leave to steam for 5 minutes in the colander. If you’ve cooked them for long enough, there’s no need to smash them around in the pan, the edges will naturally roughen.
    Step
    Turn the oven on at 230C/210C fan/gas mark 8 and place a large roasting pan inside. Once the oven has come up to temperature, add the 50g of duck fat and 50ml of rapeseed oil to the roasting pan and put it back in the oven for 5 minutes. Season the cooked potatoes with a little Maldon salt and put in the hot oil. Baste with the oil until evenly coated and place in the oven for 15 minutes undisturbed. Remove from the oven, turn, baste and return to the oven for a further 15 minutes. Repeat this process until they’re crisp and golden all over. Usually, 45 minutes does the trick but an extra 15 never hurt anyone.
    Step
    While the potatoes are cooking, pick the leaves from the herbs, finely chop and mix with the finely sliced garlic cloves and 3 bay leaves. When the potatoes are cooked, add the herbs and garlic to the pan and toss everything together with the hot oil (this is my favourite aroma in cooking). Carefully remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon, being sure not to leave the garlic and herbs behind.

    1. I never boil the potatoes first. Just put sliced potatoes in a tray with olive oil and salt and roast until done.

      1. I open a tin of potatoes (38p) rinse and dry, Toss them in a bowl containing 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp of dried parsley, some garlic salt, salt and black pepper. Put in air fryer for 20 min @ 200C shaking every 5 min. 👌🏻

        1. I put frozen roast potatoes in duck fat (or goose fat) in the oven with whatever I'm roasting. Works for me 🙂

        2. I've no room for an air fryer. But I'm very happy with my eBay purchase of a Siemens oven. Default is fan oven, but there are many other options. Hot air grilling being just one.

      2. Whatever. I have a rotray slicer. It's only once taken a bit of my index finger.

        I mostly use it for thinly sliced bread.

        I'll give your recipe some thought. Thing is, as a church organist, I play for a 9:00 am and a 10:30 am service. With luck I'll get to the pub. I do my best for Christmas Lunch, but I've been known to settle for a tin of sardines on toast.

        1. Myself and Mrs VVOF once had a Christmas Day all to our self’s with the family not due until Boxing Day.
          We spent Christmas Day morning in the greenhouse sorting out long put off jobs and when we finished we had a Christmas Day lunch of beans on toast!
          It was absolutely delicious, I don’t think Her Majesty minded that we watched her speech with beans on toast on our plates rather than what we normally have. 🙂

  171. Could assisted dying be achieved using non-lethal methods?

    Business Secretary Vince Cable said:

    “We oppose the death penalty in all circumstances and are clear that British drugs should not be used to carry out lethal injections. That is why we introduced a control on sodium thiopental last year – the first of its kind in the world. And it is also why we are now controlling the export of the other drugs used in lethal injection in the US. …

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-bans-export-of-lethal-injection-drugs-to-the-us#:~:text=Measures%20will%20be%20put%20in,potassium%20chloride%20and%20sodium%20pentobarbital%E2%80%A6

      1. There comes a stage in palliative care when conventional pain relieving drug administration becomes ineffective due to accepted dose limits becoming insufficient for relief.

        There used to be however cocktails of drugs which could afford a comfortable tolerance to unbearable pain but due to the likelihood of patient death these were withrawn by the medical profession as being unethical.

    1. Starmer is completely out of his depth. By providing missiles and assistance in launching them against Russia under Biden Administration direction the fool is attaching the UK to Biden’s obvious attempt to derail the incoming Trump Administration.

      Trump will be furious and I am quite sure will want retribution.

      You should never go to war on the basis of the woolly thinking of think tanks in Washington. Regrettably none of our political class have experience of military matters and have merely outsourced the thinking to Chatham House and similar think tanks here plus those in Washington.

      We are witnessing the diminution of our once great country by a bunch of Marxist totalitarian maniacs. President Trump might just do the job of evicting these morons on our behalf.

        1. Thank you but this must be bloody obvious to anyone following the war in Ukraine.

          It is even more obvious to anyone witnessing what the fool Starmer is proposing in putting our servicemen’s lives at risk with his suggestion for their deployment in Ukraine which would necessarily be an open invitation for Americans to do the same. Fat chance that President Trump would back this posture. We would be left to sink or swim.

          2. There is some debate as to whether it is a glide vehicle or a development of the missile used by the Russian submarine fleet.

            The military channels say the industrial complex hit was turned to dust and imagery suggests the bunkers deep in the ground were destroyed. If so the western nations would be mad to antagonise Putin any further.

          3. Others do have similar but naturally UK does not. It’s a much more modern variation on the old “tall boy” principle by the looks of it.

      3. 397397+ up ticks,

        Morning C,

        I believe the latest fad for a
        self harmer via starmer, is to have a self portrait encapsulated in a paving slab.

    1. Hmmm… Since moving to my final home in 2020 (let's be honest – no-one in an affordable retirement bungalow expects to move on), my loo seems to struggle with substantial emissions, more than any of its predecessors…

      It doesn't help that the retaining screws have sheared off the pan.

      So it's tricky if a #2 is needed overnight, when the prostetic lega are off.

      Prolly too much inforn=mation…

      2. I think water saving designs in toilets are responsible for more blockages. We have had an unexpected blockage in a ‘blade’ flush toilet which I managed to shift by pre-soaking with warm water and washing up liquid.

      1. You pour fat down your sink and bog? You should be thoroughly ashamed!

        Any fat that I don't eat or cook with is wiped up on kitchen paper and then placed in the bin.

          2. I intend to make my neigbour pay for for the next Dynorod.

            A ‘fatberg’ isn’t just fat. It is made up of all sorts of other muck.

            People being encouraged to wash their clothing at a low temperature. Same with the dishwasher.

            That residue all collects and cools into a lump.

            The neighbour also believes her electricity is green even though she pays the same price for it as i do.

          3. One day, at Norwich airport, I was on duty in the large baggage screening area when a grating in the floor burst and hundreds of gallons of foul-smelling effluent (mainly piss and shit) flooded the area. The airport’s fire service had to be called to sluice the area down and the maintenance chaps had to investigate. It was sourced to the Ladies’ bog where some unsavoury bitch had flushed a large sanitary towel down the bog instead of using the bins provided for the job. This caused a blockage and the ensuing build-up burst open the grating.

          4. Just one sanitary towel…oh just one sanitary towel….sounds like a song.

            I don’t believe the system couldn’t cope. Like all our drains they are left clogged to make people think flooding is because of the climate change…er…shit.

    1. Unsurprising. If they're not running for the hills by now, then they'd do well to do so.

      Additionally I'd expect a ceasefire in Lebanon pretty soon followed by isolation of Hamas in Gaza and much private 'dobbing in' of outstanding hostage takers by some Arabian people…

  176. Crumbs! I went out for a curry last night. Home early, then fell fast asleep. So now I'll just do the Wordle for today (Tuesday) then go straight back to bed.

    1. I just did Wordle. I normally do it early morning as there are no distractions:

      Wordle 1,256 4/6

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

  178. Must get up need to leave for work in 10.

    Loved this from Michael Deacon:

    ”She [Thieves] regularly professes to be, but I’m starting to wonder. Last month, The Telegraph revealed that Ms Reeves claimed £1,225 on expenses to pay someone else to help file her tax return. Is that really a task with which an actual Chancellor of the Exchequer would require professional assistance? It’s like a Cambridge professor of mathematics needing help with his 10 times table, or a farmer having to google how many legs a cow has.”

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