Saturday 13 January: It’s time for the Western world to face up to the malign influence of Iran

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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474 thoughts on “Saturday 13 January: It’s time for the Western world to face up to the malign influence of Iran”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolk. today’s story (On Tuesday 16th, The Joke Book dies)

    TODAY’S SHORT READING FROM THE BIBLE
    From Genesis: “And God promised men that good and obedient wives would be found in all corners of the earth.”
    Then He made the earth round and He laughed and laughed and laughed!

    1. I have similar difficulties with circular jigsaw puzzles because I can never find the four corners! Good morning, btw, Sir Jasper.

    1. I heard that we can’t send our carriers because we don’t have the staff.

      Perhaps the Left had not spent 20 years trying to destroy the very fabric of society and replpace it with a rootless, debased, race obsessed open sewer.

  5. Watch: Ed Davey fails 10 times to apologise for role in Horizon scandal

    Liberal Democrat leader blames Post Office for lying to him on an industrial scale and ‘regrets he was part of conspiracy it perpetrated’

    Genevieve Holl-Allen
    12 January 2024 • 5:41pm
    *
    *
    https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1745813007819538922?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1745813007819538922%7Ctwgr%5E73681da100b7b1573ca9830b80859dfdb13b188f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2024%2F01%2F12%2Fed-davey-refuses-to-apologise-to-subpostmasters%2F
    **************************************************************

    PJ Spiers
    12 HRS AGO
    Ed Davey is a none-too-bright politician who has been elevated to a position way above his ability.
    He is incompetent if he knew nothing about the Horizon problem and a liar if he did.
    Liar or incompetent, and probably both, will make little difference – the Lib Dems are going to get what is coming to them if he leads them into the General Election.
    He is a typical example of the low-rent and dishonest politicians that have driven this once wonderful country of ours to the precipice of ruin.
    I loath him and all his fellow travellers.

    Paul Cornish
    12 HRS AGO
    Does he ‘regret’ the six figure payment to him (at £833 per hours ‘work’) from the Post Office’s lawyers whilst he was the Minister overseeing them?
    Did he not feel that there was a conflict of interest in taking money from them whilst ignoring the concerns of the innocent PO men and women whose lives were ruined, partly by his indifference to their plight? EDITED

    1. If a director of a major company spouted the drivel this useless bag of effluent did Davey, being the moron he is would scream and stamp his wittle feet. He wanted the trough without the responsibility. He’s responsible and should be destroyed for it, in every way possible.

    3. What’s the point of repeated demands for an apology? Should it be forthcoming, it’ll be dismissed as insincere.

  6. Sir Keir Starmer branded ‘hypocrite’ over £25,000 private jet to Cop28 provided by Qatar

    Labour leader has repeatedly attacked Rishi Sunak over his use of private planes and helicopters, including at this week’s PMQs

    Nick Gutteridge, WHITEHALL CORRESPONDENT
    12 January 2024 • 7:28pm

    Sir Keir Starmer has been branded a “hypocrite” after it emerged he took a £25,000 private jet while at a climate summit in the Middle East.

    The Labour leader used a plane provided by the government of oil-rich Qatar to fly to and from the Cop28 summit in Dubai last month.

    He was whisked from the conference to neighbouring Doha for talks with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the country’s leader.

    Sir Keir has repeatedly attacked Rishi Sunak over his use of private planes and helicopters, including at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions. He said Mr Sunak “doesn’t get” how many Britons felt because “the view on the ground is very different to that from his private jet”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/01/12/TELEMMGLPICT000359080393_17050856595420_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqY4-XNG_7v-V2jIZ3ghNYKOB8VXEHCs73yexWqFsf2H4.jpeg?imwidth=960
    Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, meets NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at COP28 in Dubai

    The Labour leader made a similar jibe last June when he told the MPs: “I’m sure from the vantage point of his helicopter, everything might look fine”.

    Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has also attacked the Tories over their use of private jets and said Labour ministers would fly commercial.

    Last year she pledged to show more “respect” for taxpayers’ money by stopping “ministers going around on private jets rather than on normal flights”.

    Sir Keir had also previously promised to boycott Qatar over its human rights record, insisting that he would not visit the Middle Eastern nation.

    Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (right) and Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero, Ed Miliband hold a briefing with the media during the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/01/12/TELEMMGLPICT000358532179_17050856842730_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=960
    Sir Keir (pictured, centre), had also previously promised to boycott Qatar over its human rights record CREDIT: PA

    He was asked by LBC last autumn if he would attend the final of the football World Cup, which was being hosted in the country, if England made it.

    To which he replied: “No, I wouldn’t. I’d love to but I think that the human rights record is such that I wouldn’t go and that’ll be the position of the Labour party.”

    Sir Keir’s latest parliamentary declaration of financial interests, published on Friday, showed the private jet trip for him and three staffers cost £25,508.

    The hour-and-a-half trip between Dubai and Doha is served by regular flights. Sir Keir flew from the UK to the conference on a commercial plane.

    The organisers of Cop28, which the Labour leader attended for three days in December, separately paid £765 for his car travel to and from the conference.

    Lee Anderson, the Tory deputy chairman, said: “Starmer is a hypocrite. He is winging it and taking the British public for a ride”.

    Sir Keir met world leaders including the King of Jordan and the president of Brazil, as well as John Kerry, the US climate envoy, during his time in Dubai.

    A spokesman for the Labour leader said: “Keir Starmer was pleased to accept an invitation from His Highness The Emir of Qatar. Their conversation focused on the current crisis in the Middle East.”

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

    Gillian Gill
    10 HRS AGO
    Starmer actually said that PM Sunak; ‘didn’t get Britain.’ If a Tory MP said that to a Labour MP of Asian descent, the left would be in uproar.

    Toby Jug
    10 HRS AGO
    Kneeler Starmer is a disgrace. He should resign over the Post Office scandal that he can’t remember happening, just like he didn’t know about Saville and the grooming gangs.
    He’s a duplicitous fraud,he should have gone over Durham gate which was no different to Johnson.
    And now this, what next?

    1. The lot of them are disgusting. Swanning about in private jets, wasting public money on nonsense projects, slapping their bills on expensees and pontificating from on high about their self righteousness while ruining everything.

      The lot of them are all the same. Utter, putrid scum.

    4. Re sir beer’s hypocrisy.

      They know we know. We know they know we know. They know we know they know we know. But they don’t care and there appears to be nothing we can do.

      1. I’ll bet if you went out onto any British High Street and asked people it would take about five seconds to find someone who would say “the Tories are a bloody disgrace, I’m voting Labour next time.”

    1. Tractor production is up, Comrades!

      I do, genuinely think that’s where we’re heading. Goodness knows the state is forcing communism on us.

    4. Brings joy to my Saturday morning.

      Incidentally my pen friend and her husband are visiting this weekend from Wiesbaden.

  11. Oh yeah?? Sheer coincidence?

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Ff987be3b-34cf-48c3-8ec1-7274e451e06d.jpg?crop=795%2C447%2C0%2C1&resize=480
    CRICKET
    South Africa strip Jewish player of U19 captaincy ‘for his own safety’

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f225f4cb24f9bbe8b9851a970bf5202eaabec023/0_0_4250_3001/master/4250.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=c55e3b11708f52f11412de1c7b1a9521
    The Hague, the Netherlands
    Tal Becker (second right), the legal counsel to Israel’s foreign ministry, sits before the start of a hearing of the genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa at the international court of justice

    1. I’m confused. Who started the conflict by bombing Israelis? Was that other Israelis or was it muslims from Palestine?

  12. Shapps warns Iran: Patience is running out with your Houthi thugs. 13 January 2024.

    Grant Shapps has warned Iran that the world is “running out of patience” after Britain and America launched air strikes against Tehran-backed Houthi rebels.

    In an interview with The Telegraph, the Defence Secretary said the Iranian regime must tell the Houthis and other Middle Eastern proxies to “cease and desist”, warning that a “limit has been truly crossed”.

    Shapps is the one the US Chiefs of Staff were thinking of when they complained about leaks. I don’t know what they think about their content. I suppose that it is faintly embarrassing for them. Something like the Wehrmacht experienced when they had to listen to Italian bombast in WWII. It is quite obvious from recent revelations that UK armed forces are following their civilian counterparts down the tube. The Navy in particular is now in a dire if not terminal state.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/12/grant-shapps-iran-running-out-patience-yemen-houthi-strike/

    1. When the basis of society is actively assaulted by the state, the alien is lauded above the native and the very thugs they’re sent to fight against are being imported by the Home offfice in their millions every year who would bother?

      The real enemy is the state itself.

  13. Shapps warns Iran: Patience is running out with your Houthi thugs. 13 January 2024.

    Grant Shapps has warned Iran that the world is “running out of patience” after Britain and America launched air strikes against Tehran-backed Houthi rebels.

    In an interview with The Telegraph, the Defence Secretary said the Iranian regime must tell the Houthis and other Middle Eastern proxies to “cease and desist”, warning that a “limit has been truly crossed”.

    Shapps is the one the US Chiefs of Staff were thinking of when they complained about leaks. I don’t know what they think about their content. I suppose that it is faintly embarrassing for them. Something like the Wehrmacht experienced when they had to listen to Italian bombast in WWII. It is quite obvious from recent revelations that UK armed forces are following their civilian counterparts down the tube. The Navy in particular is now in a dire if not terminal state.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/12/grant-shapps-iran-running-out-patience-yemen-houthi-strike/

  14. Shapps warns Iran: Patience is running out with your Houthi thugs. 13 January 2024.

    Grant Shapps has warned Iran that the world is “running out of patience” after Britain and America launched air strikes against Tehran-backed Houthi rebels.

    In an interview with The Telegraph, the Defence Secretary said the Iranian regime must tell the Houthis and other Middle Eastern proxies to “cease and desist”, warning that a “limit has been truly crossed”.

    Shapps is the one the US Chiefs of Staff were thinking of when they complained about leaks. I don’t know what they think about their content. I suppose that it is faintly embarrassing for them. Something like the Wehrmacht experienced when they had to listen to Italian bombast in WWII. It is quite obvious from recent revelations that UK armed forces are following their civilian counterparts down the tube. The Navy in particular is now in a dire if not terminal state.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/12/grant-shapps-iran-running-out-patience-yemen-houthi-strike/

  16. Accusing Israel of genocide is an inversion of the truth designed to leave it defenceless

    South Africa’s case before the ICJ is seeking to achieve via lawfare what Hamas attempts via warfare

    CHARLES MOORE
    12 January 2024 • 6:54pm

    Mourning Hamas’s innocent victims: British-Israeli Lianne Sharabi and her daughters Noiya and Yahel were among those murdered on October 7
    Mourning Hamas’s innocent victims: British-Israeli Lianne Sharabi and her daughters Noiya and Yahel were among those murdered on October 7 CREDIT: TOMER APPELBAUM/AFP
    On October 7, Hamas and its associates slipped into Israel, massacred more than 1,200 people and kidnapped about 240 more. As they did so, they shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is Great!”) and called down curses on “Jews” (they did not use the word “Israelis”) and “dogs” as they shot them and dishonoured their bodies.

    Most victims were unarmed. Some were tiny children, or very old. Many were teenagers. Rape and other sexual indignities were committed against women.

    I generally dislike the use of the word “innocent” in media reports of terrorist attacks on civilians: it implies that soldiers killed in such incidents are guilty. But perhaps the word is worth using in this case. Hamas’s victims were innocent, not only in having committed no wrong, but in the looser sense – innocent of politics, extremism and of the utter wickedness that lurks in some human hearts. Many were kibbutz residents or a young music festival crowd. Their innocence was part of what their murderers wanted to destroy, like wolves on the fold.

    Hamas’s greatest joy came because the great majority were Jewish. That was the victims’ only “guilt”. That was why Hamas exterminated (or kidnapped for future bargaining and torment) everyone they could find.

    For a few days, the world seemed to understand this. There was no limit to what such killers would do, so people acknowledged that Israel must fight back. It was self-defence, or death.

    But only for a very few days. On October 9, for example, the UN Human Rights Council met, and – before Israel had counterattacked – held a moment of silence for “the loss of innocent lives in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere”. “Elsewhere” was the only word that hinted at what had actually happened two days earlier. The suppression of the truth had already begun.

    It was a quick move from truth-suppression to truth-inversion. As soon as Israel went after Hamas in Gaza, international bodies, pressure groups, hostile powers and much of the media assailed the “disproportionate” response. Within a fortnight, the Muslim Council of Britain was urging its followers to write to their MP to stop the Gaza “genocide”. On Thursday, South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague began, presenting as legal fact the idea that Israel is committing genocide.

    The South African delegation includes Jeremy Corbyn, who, famously, was “present but not involved” for a wreath-laying ceremony which included tributes to the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. He seems to be playing a similarly decorative political role on this occasion. One of the luminaries in the South African legal team is John Dugard, a former Cambridge law professor who once chaired the UNHCR’s special commission on human rights in the Palestinian territories. He is a leading advocate of the idea that Israel is an “apartheid state”.

    Listening to the BBC radio news report of South Africa’s case on Thursday, I heard its diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, begin his analysis thus: “The last three months have been shocking enough, but hearing it all summed up by South Africa’s lawyers is devastating. How, many wonder, can this not be a story of genocide?” Many will indeed wonder that if they rely on the BBC for information. Adams’s frail sandcastle of “many wonder” is no defence against his own propagandist tide.

    “Genocide” arose as a concept in international law because Hitler killed Jews. There is sadistic bad taste in using the term against the state created to prevent the repetition of such a policy. What does it say about our Holocaust education that this sly libel can be believed?

    A recent press release from the Islamic Human Rights Commission describes Israel’s actions in Gaza as “textbook genocide”. What textbook? You can consult the rule itself. The Genocide Convention of 1948 identifies genocide as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious or racial group, as such”. Israel’s sole battle aim is to destroy Hamas in Gaza. If the ICJ decides to regard Hamas as a group such as the Convention describes, then genocide will have become a human right, with its victims rebadged as its perpetrators.

    The ICJ is a body in which states may arraign other states. In the immediate post-war world, the framers of the Genocide Convention probably did not foresee the problem of non-state actors – such as Hamas, IS and Hezbollah – who, unlike Israel, sign no convention but fight wars and grab territory, as has been the case in Gaza for many years. Such actors are beyond the reach of international law. States ill-intentioned towards Israel are hoping to achieve by politicised lawfare what a group such as Hamas attempts by unrestrained warfare. South Africa is thus the ally of Hamas.

    The ICJ will take years to decide if genocide has been committed, but if it demands interim “provisional measures”, such as a ceasefire, because it suspects genocide, it could help make Israel a pariah nation if it refuses and an endangered one if it agrees.

    Imagine such law being applied to Britain during the Second World War. There were powerful arguments against our bombing of German cities, which was far bloodier than anything Israel has done to Gaza. But it would have been a travesty if some non-combatant authority had told us, who were fighting a dictatorship animated by race hatred, that we were committing genocide.

    If you look at the current composition of the 15-judge court, you will find plenty of judges from jurisdictions – China, Russia, Uganda, Lebanon, Somalia – where the separation between law and politics barely exists and whose undemocratic politics is anti-Israel. Israel, by contrast, operates in a law-based democracy. Aharon Barak, the judge representing his country at the Hague, is perhaps the leading jurisprudential adversary of its prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu.

    Last month, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) compiled a 45-minute film of the October 7 massacres, not for general release. I was invited to a showing in Parliament. I refused, thinking it would be almost voyeuristic to watch such horrors. But as truth-inversion became so extreme that even some quite moderate people were denying atrocities, I changed my mind, and went to a later showing this week.

    The film has no commentary. It simply reproduces, with factual captions, visual (and some audio) recordings from the day. This includes GoPro film from Hamas fighters, dashcam, mobile phone and social-media footage from the same, and a couple of intercepted phone conversations; dashcam and mobile footage from survivors and first responders; CCTV film which catches the murderous intruders, and their terrified victims failing to escape. The atrocities are explicit, but the faces of the victims are pixillated to spare the bereaved families. In some cases, pixillation is unnecessary, the faces being so mutilated by burning, beating or shooting as to be unrecognisable.

    The most chilling scenes, even worse than the whooping celebrations of blood, are those in which the gunmen search to kill, stalking the little houses, shooting at torso height through a row of portaloos in which festival-goers are hiding, unearthing with head torches an entire family hiding under a table and then murdering them.

    This was the worst day in the history of the state of Israel. When the victorious powers permitted Israel’s creation in 1948 (the same year as the Genocide Convention), they could not guarantee eternal protection for the Jews, but they did at least give them a fighting chance. Now many want to make their fight illegal. The grim reality is – no fighting, no chance.

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

    Matthew Powell
    11 HRS AGO
    The Palestinian’s literally carried out genocide on the 7th of October when they engaged in deliberate and explicit attacks of civilians because of their race. Yet Israel ends up in the doc charged with it?
    Even Orwell would not believed the total debasement of truth in the modern world.

    Victor Meldrew
    10 HRS AGO
    Cyril Ramaphosa is a corrupt buffoon presiding over a state that has been captured by China, Russia and the Islamists. How many women and children have been brutally murdered in South Africa since 1994 under ANC rule? Total silence from ANC. How many farmers have been murdered since 1994? Total silence from the ANC. How many elderly men and women have been murdered since 1994 under the ANC? Total silence. World cup held in 2010 and miraculously crime went down and no major incidents against tourists. Families are actually starving in parts of South Africa, due to extreme poverty levels. Recently a mother killed her three children rather than see them starve. Silence from the honourable president. Israel is fighting a war against a dangerous and corrupt enemy who want to exterminate all Jews. Israel is a country that actually cares about its people unlike South Africa who doesn’t care if it’s people are slaughtered as long as the ANC fat cats have the best cars and Swiss bank accounts. South African is taking the role of distorter of the truth in favour of a corrupt Hamas (no surprises). It’s good that this has happened. The West needs to wake up to what it has funded in the likes of a country like South Africa. Ordinary decent South Africans have not had their lives improved while Western funding funds the ANC just like Western funding funded Hamas. Israel has been placed in such a terrible position which is cunningly exploited by Hamas and Hamas lovers world-wide. South Africa is just a cheap pawn in a bigger game and they are losers.

    1. The technique used by narcissists against their victims has the acronym DARVO.

      Deny
      Attack
      Reverse victim and offender

      As well as an explosion in narcissistic individuals, we also appear to have narcissistic states and unelected global organisations. Populated presumably by the narcissists that have exploded (if only) in the last 40 or so years.

  17. Accusing Israel of genocide is an inversion of the truth designed to leave it defenceless

    South Africa’s case before the ICJ is seeking to achieve via lawfare what Hamas attempts via warfare

    CHARLES MOORE
    12 January 2024 • 6:54pm

    Mourning Hamas’s innocent victims: British-Israeli Lianne Sharabi and her daughters Noiya and Yahel were among those murdered on October 7
    Mourning Hamas’s innocent victims: British-Israeli Lianne Sharabi and her daughters Noiya and Yahel were among those murdered on October 7 CREDIT: TOMER APPELBAUM/AFP
    On October 7, Hamas and its associates slipped into Israel, massacred more than 1,200 people and kidnapped about 240 more. As they did so, they shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is Great!”) and called down curses on “Jews” (they did not use the word “Israelis”) and “dogs” as they shot them and dishonoured their bodies.

    Most victims were unarmed. Some were tiny children, or very old. Many were teenagers. Rape and other sexual indignities were committed against women.

    I generally dislike the use of the word “innocent” in media reports of terrorist attacks on civilians: it implies that soldiers killed in such incidents are guilty. But perhaps the word is worth using in this case. Hamas’s victims were innocent, not only in having committed no wrong, but in the looser sense – innocent of politics, extremism and of the utter wickedness that lurks in some human hearts. Many were kibbutz residents or a young music festival crowd. Their innocence was part of what their murderers wanted to destroy, like wolves on the fold.

    Hamas’s greatest joy came because the great majority were Jewish. That was the victims’ only “guilt”. That was why Hamas exterminated (or kidnapped for future bargaining and torment) everyone they could find.

    For a few days, the world seemed to understand this. There was no limit to what such killers would do, so people acknowledged that Israel must fight back. It was self-defence, or death.

    But only for a very few days. On October 9, for example, the UN Human Rights Council met, and – before Israel had counterattacked – held a moment of silence for “the loss of innocent lives in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere”. “Elsewhere” was the only word that hinted at what had actually happened two days earlier. The suppression of the truth had already begun.

    It was a quick move from truth-suppression to truth-inversion. As soon as Israel went after Hamas in Gaza, international bodies, pressure groups, hostile powers and much of the media assailed the “disproportionate” response. Within a fortnight, the Muslim Council of Britain was urging its followers to write to their MP to stop the Gaza “genocide”. On Thursday, South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague began, presenting as legal fact the idea that Israel is committing genocide.

    The South African delegation includes Jeremy Corbyn, who, famously, was “present but not involved” for a wreath-laying ceremony which included tributes to the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. He seems to be playing a similarly decorative political role on this occasion. One of the luminaries in the South African legal team is John Dugard, a former Cambridge law professor who once chaired the UNHCR’s special commission on human rights in the Palestinian territories. He is a leading advocate of the idea that Israel is an “apartheid state”.

    Listening to the BBC radio news report of South Africa’s case on Thursday, I heard its diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, begin his analysis thus: “The last three months have been shocking enough, but hearing it all summed up by South Africa’s lawyers is devastating. How, many wonder, can this not be a story of genocide?” Many will indeed wonder that if they rely on the BBC for information. Adams’s frail sandcastle of “many wonder” is no defence against his own propagandist tide.

    “Genocide” arose as a concept in international law because Hitler killed Jews. There is sadistic bad taste in using the term against the state created to prevent the repetition of such a policy. What does it say about our Holocaust education that this sly libel can be believed?

    A recent press release from the Islamic Human Rights Commission describes Israel’s actions in Gaza as “textbook genocide”. What textbook? You can consult the rule itself. The Genocide Convention of 1948 identifies genocide as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious or racial group, as such”. Israel’s sole battle aim is to destroy Hamas in Gaza. If the ICJ decides to regard Hamas as a group such as the Convention describes, then genocide will have become a human right, with its victims rebadged as its perpetrators.

    The ICJ is a body in which states may arraign other states. In the immediate post-war world, the framers of the Genocide Convention probably did not foresee the problem of non-state actors – such as Hamas, IS and Hezbollah – who, unlike Israel, sign no convention but fight wars and grab territory, as has been the case in Gaza for many years. Such actors are beyond the reach of international law. States ill-intentioned towards Israel are hoping to achieve by politicised lawfare what a group such as Hamas attempts by unrestrained warfare. South Africa is thus the ally of Hamas.

    The ICJ will take years to decide if genocide has been committed, but if it demands interim “provisional measures”, such as a ceasefire, because it suspects genocide, it could help make Israel a pariah nation if it refuses and an endangered one if it agrees.

    Imagine such law being applied to Britain during the Second World War. There were powerful arguments against our bombing of German cities, which was far bloodier than anything Israel has done to Gaza. But it would have been a travesty if some non-combatant authority had told us, who were fighting a dictatorship animated by race hatred, that we were committing genocide.

    If you look at the current composition of the 15-judge court, you will find plenty of judges from jurisdictions – China, Russia, Uganda, Lebanon, Somalia – where the separation between law and politics barely exists and whose undemocratic politics is anti-Israel. Israel, by contrast, operates in a law-based democracy. Aharon Barak, the judge representing his country at the Hague, is perhaps the leading jurisprudential adversary of its prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu.

    Last month, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) compiled a 45-minute film of the October 7 massacres, not for general release. I was invited to a showing in Parliament. I refused, thinking it would be almost voyeuristic to watch such horrors. But as truth-inversion became so extreme that even some quite moderate people were denying atrocities, I changed my mind, and went to a later showing this week.

    The film has no commentary. It simply reproduces, with factual captions, visual (and some audio) recordings from the day. This includes GoPro film from Hamas fighters, dashcam, mobile phone and social-media footage from the same, and a couple of intercepted phone conversations; dashcam and mobile footage from survivors and first responders; CCTV film which catches the murderous intruders, and their terrified victims failing to escape. The atrocities are explicit, but the faces of the victims are pixillated to spare the bereaved families. In some cases, pixillation is unnecessary, the faces being so mutilated by burning, beating or shooting as to be unrecognisable.

    The most chilling scenes, even worse than the whooping celebrations of blood, are those in which the gunmen search to kill, stalking the little houses, shooting at torso height through a row of portaloos in which festival-goers are hiding, unearthing with head torches an entire family hiding under a table and then murdering them.

    This was the worst day in the history of the state of Israel. When the victorious powers permitted Israel’s creation in 1948 (the same year as the Genocide Convention), they could not guarantee eternal protection for the Jews, but they did at least give them a fighting chance. Now many want to make their fight illegal. The grim reality is – no fighting, no chance.

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

    Matthew Powell
    11 HRS AGO
    The Palestinian’s literally carried out genocide on the 7th of October when they engaged in deliberate and explicit attacks of civilians because of their race. Yet Israel ends up in the doc charged with it?
    Even Orwell would not believed the total debasement of truth in the modern world.

    Victor Meldrew
    10 HRS AGO
    Cyril Ramaphosa is a corrupt buffoon presiding over a state that has been captured by China, Russia and the Islamists. How many women and children have been brutally murdered in South Africa since 1994 under ANC rule? Total silence from ANC. How many farmers have been murdered since 1994? Total silence from the ANC. How many elderly men and women have been murdered since 1994 under the ANC? Total silence. World cup held in 2010 and miraculously crime went down and no major incidents against tourists. Families are actually starving in parts of South Africa, due to extreme poverty levels. Recently a mother killed her three children rather than see them starve. Silence from the honourable president. Israel is fighting a war against a dangerous and corrupt enemy who want to exterminate all Jews. Israel is a country that actually cares about its people unlike South Africa who doesn’t care if it’s people are slaughtered as long as the ANC fat cats have the best cars and Swiss bank accounts. South African is taking the role of distorter of the truth in favour of a corrupt Hamas (no surprises). It’s good that this has happened. The West needs to wake up to what it has funded in the likes of a country like South Africa. Ordinary decent South Africans have not had their lives improved while Western funding funds the ANC just like Western funding funded Hamas. Israel has been placed in such a terrible position which is cunningly exploited by Hamas and Hamas lovers world-wide. South Africa is just a cheap pawn in a bigger game and they are losers.

  18. Good Moaning.
    TCW weekly roundup.

    Dear Readers,

    HELLO, and a belated Happy New Year. We hit the ground running so fast that I feel we’re two months into 2024 already. I can’t remember when we began the new year with such a stunning batch of articles and writers. Our starting gun sounded on January 6 with Professor Angus Dalgleish (of ‘ban mRNA vaccines now’ fame) first out of the traps with a searing invective on the triple con trick played by government – the Post Office scandal, covid and climate change. The Telegraph has caught up on the PO scandal, which Allister Heath rightly describes as a parable of modern Britain. Like the rest of the MSM he’s 12 years too late. I worry that it will be 12 years before the penny drops about the even bigger and more terrifying vaccine injury scandal, the indifferent and callous bureaucratic elite walking away with honours and contracts while ordinary people suffer and die.

    There’s none so blind as those who will not see.

    For a list of the callous who’ve been honoured for the injury, illness and death they’ve inflicted on their fellow men, Mr Heath could turn to Karen Harradine’s series that tracked where Sage’s scientists are now – honoured to a man a woman. Those who missed out last time round have not been forgotten. No siree. The Honours Committee could not possibly exclude that most determined of lockdown and vaccine zealots, Professor John Edmunds. Yes, he’s got a knighthood for pushing arbitrary detention and disregarding human rights.

    It came as no surprise to find that the MP who took up both the Post Office scandal (12 years ago) and the vaccine injury scandal (over the last two years) had been airbrushed out of ITV’s drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office and all subsequent MSM coverage. Which is why I immediately asked Andrew Bridgen to write for us and give us his account. He was great to work with, and it’s a cracking piece on the full story including the deaf ear the MSM has turned to it for years, despite his best efforts. If you haven’t yet read it, it’s a must. I also asked the courageously independent-minded Lt Gen Jonathon Riley for his assessment of the Ukraine-Russia war to date and his prediction for 2024. In a sentence, it will bring Ukraine to the negotiating table – and Putin holds all the cards. The West have badly misjudged it all, whoever you think is responsible. I was proud to publish both articles but I couldn’t help thinking that in better days they would have been splashed across the Telegraph.

    On Wednesday Laura took a crack at the ‘false flag’/‘you are being played’ brigade who, rather like the covid misinformation contingent of the last few years, are dominating the nastier end of the freedom movement. They ‘know’, you see, and spend their time putting their dissenting colleagues right. Some readers thought she was suddenly agreeing with the mainstream ‘conspiracy labelling’ of dissent from the official narrative. She wasn’t, rather with the sudden surfacing of speculation that there are darker forces at work. Instead of following the money and the evidence as we always have on TCW, the worst of these new theorists who are so certain of themselves are peddling international Jewish conspiracy theories and associated ‘Satanist’ allegations, unbelievable though it may seem. Those are the rabbit holes. I cannot believe some of the people engaging in this type of rabid smearing, crazy speculation and innuendo. It is not the way forward. Investigative journalism is. The callous bureaucratic elite is there in plain sight, from Ofcom to CEPI to the WHO and so on. We will continue to expose and report on them.

    On happier matters, we are thrilled to welcome a new fortnightly columnist to our fold, one who is firmly grounded in reality and has had the courage and conviction to put his money where his mouth is. In May 2020 he founded ‘Keep Britain Free’, taking his challenge to lockdown to the Supreme Court. It’s Simon Dolan, who’s done more personally than anyone in this country to hold the government to account (making them publish Sage minutes, as well as forcing them to admit that schools were closed with no legal grounds). His is a true voice of conservatism, not Rishi Sunak’s leftist, statist party still in power, as you’ll see from his first Dolan’s Digest here.

    In so many ways it is the expansion of the state, hand in hand with the left’s long march through the institutions, that’s been our undoing. All the establishment elites, including Jewish ones, are governed by progressive leftist wokery. When the chips are down it leaves us – the West – very vulnerable, as Karen Harradine and Norman Fenton bravely argued this week.

    Without doubt one of the best things about being TCW’s editor is the new allies in reasoning and moral courage who find us and approach us as a platform to write from. Our first full week of the new year brought us another – someone else I have long admired, the retired consultant surgeon, Dr Meirion Thomas. He has never beaten about the bush about the ‘plague’ of part-time doctoring, led of course by feminist demand for ‘family-friendly’ working practices and now followed by men. So I was delighted to hear from him. The article he has written for us inveighs against the damaging decline and eroding practices of NHS GPs. He shows how guaranteed income irrespective of performance, virtual consultations, part-time working and failure to provide continuity of care, are all contributing to the UK’s dire cancer survival rate. Will NHS boss Amanda Pritchard or the Secretary of State for Health, Victoria Atkins, read it? Or will they, like Paula Vennells, Sir Ed and Sir Vince, Dames June, Jenny and Kate, Sir Patrick, Sir Chris and Sir John, take their gongs and in due course retire on several other sinecures, like the rest of this venal and feckless establishment class?

    We can only keep calling them out and be a permanent thorn in their side as we will continue to do through 2024, TCW’s tenth anniversary year.

    Best wishes,

    Kathy Gyngell

    Editor, TCW Defending Freedom

  19. An interesting and important article on the nonsense that is ESG ( as required now by the FCA for UK regulated entities):

    “ Its faulty software led to the wrongful imprisonment of innocent people. It charged the Government vast amounts of money along the way. But, hey, never mind about any of that. It turns out that Fujitsu, the IT contractor at the heart of the Post Office scandal, still has an impeccable “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) score. It has won plenty of plaudits for its commitment to sustainability, LGBT inclusiveness, and for promoting diversity.

    But why would anyone be surprised by that any more? In truth, the ESG movement has turned into a bogus, self-congratulatory charade, in which the worst kind of companies think they can get away with anything simply because they are “good” or “kind” people. The Fujitsu scandal should hammer the final nail in ESG’s coffin.

    It probably hasn’t been the best week for those staffing the Fujitsu press office. ITV’s dramatisation of the vicious campaign the Post Office ran against sub-postmasters following the introduction of the company’s IT systems brought a scandal that has been bubbling for years to life.

    Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has already announced plans to exonerate all those wrongly convicted.

    Paula Vennells, former Post Office chief executive, has handed back her CBE. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who was postal affairs minister for much of the time that these sub-postmasters were being prosecuted, is under pressure to forfeit his knighthood. There may well be more revelations in the weeks ahead.

    Holding politicians and officials to account is important. But what of the IT giant? Fujitsu looks like a champion of sustainability and diversity. Only last month, its press office released an announcement proudly announcing it had been chosen “for inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, the world’s leading ESG … stock price index. This is the 22nd time for Fujitsu to have been included in this index since its creation in 1999”. And that is not all. The company is also included in the “FTSE4Good” index, designed by the London Stock Exchange to recognise a commitment to ESG, while CDP, representing a network of investors controlling $96bn (£75bn) in assets, rated it “A” for its commitment to climate change and water security.

    It scored 100 for the second year in a row on the equality index run by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation for “corporate policies, practices and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees”; Stonewall ranked it among the top 100 employers; and the

    The Times ranked it among the Top 50 employers for women. The list goes on and on. When it comes to gay rights, diversity, and protecting the environment, Fujitsu is a global leader. Yet when it comes to sub-postmasters, it now faces accusations of “putting profit before people”.

    Perhaps the real question is why we are still surprised by the ESG racket. All too often, when there is a major corporate scandal (though few will ever compare to this miscarriage of justice), it turns out that the company at the centre of it was winning plaudits for its corporate social responsibility.

    The FTX founder Sam BankmanFried was a hero of the “effective altruism” movement even as the crypto exchange was systematically losing track of billions of investors’ money. Organisations including Coutts have signed up to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, which incorporate ESG considerations into investment practices. Yet how responsible is “debanking” those who hold views executives might regard as unsavoury? Unsurprisingly, when Volkswagen was found to have been installing “defeat devices” – software that allows cars to cheat in emissions tests, making them appear cleaner than they actually are – it was winning awards for its commitment to the environment. The ESG movement

    seems to exist in a parallel universe where up is down and left is right.

    It would be easy, of course, to dismiss the ESG ratings as nothing more than PR guff. But it is more serious than that. It casts into doubt the idea that investors should focus on the bottom line, by suggesting corporate governance, social impact and environmental damage are of equal importance. It may allow bad practices to endure for longer than they would otherwise. However, investment in ESG funds has started to collapse. In 2023, funds defined by their commitment to “responsible investing” recorded inflows of only $68bn globally, compared to $158bn a year earlier, and more than $550bn in 2021. The overall assets within the ESG industry fell from $35trillion to $30trillion last year, according to figures from Bloomberg.

    It looks like investors have woken up to the fact that returns which were turbocharged over the last decade by the soaring performance of the tech industry, and the weakness of the oil price, have started to turn. Many ESG funds are now underperforming the broader market. Perhaps they worry much of it was just “greenwashing” of the worst sort, with companies congratulating themselves on how wonderful they are while treating customers and suppliers poorly?

    It is not hard to figure out what companies need to do to be “responsible”. Just make a decent product, charge a fair price, pay your suppliers and staff on time, and file your tax returns. Oh, and if you happen to be making an IT system that triggers a spike in “fraudulent” activity, perhaps consider whether there are some dots which need connecting, and some tweaks which need making.

    Investment in ESG iscollapsing, but it’s time to put a stop to it for good. We won’t miss it when it is gone.”

  20. An interesting and important article on the nonsense that is ESG ( as required now by the FCA for UK regulated entities):

    “ Its faulty software led to the wrongful imprisonment of innocent people. It charged the Government vast amounts of money along the way. But, hey, never mind about any of that. It turns out that Fujitsu, the IT contractor at the heart of the Post Office scandal, still has an impeccable “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) score. It has won plenty of plaudits for its commitment to sustainability, LGBT inclusiveness, and for promoting diversity.

    But why would anyone be surprised by that any more? In truth, the ESG movement has turned into a bogus, self-congratulatory charade, in which the worst kind of companies think they can get away with anything simply because they are “good” or “kind” people. The Fujitsu scandal should hammer the final nail in ESG’s coffin.

    It probably hasn’t been the best week for those staffing the Fujitsu press office. ITV’s dramatisation of the vicious campaign the Post Office ran against sub-postmasters following the introduction of the company’s IT systems brought a scandal that has been bubbling for years to life.

    Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has already announced plans to exonerate all those wrongly convicted.

    Paula Vennells, former Post Office chief executive, has handed back her CBE. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who was postal affairs minister for much of the time that these sub-postmasters were being prosecuted, is under pressure to forfeit his knighthood. There may well be more revelations in the weeks ahead.

    Holding politicians and officials to account is important. But what of the IT giant? Fujitsu looks like a champion of sustainability and diversity. Only last month, its press office released an announcement proudly announcing it had been chosen “for inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, the world’s leading ESG … stock price index. This is the 22nd time for Fujitsu to have been included in this index since its creation in 1999”. And that is not all. The company is also included in the “FTSE4Good” index, designed by the London Stock Exchange to recognise a commitment to ESG, while CDP, representing a network of investors controlling $96bn (£75bn) in assets, rated it “A” for its commitment to climate change and water security.

    It scored 100 for the second year in a row on the equality index run by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation for “corporate policies, practices and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees”; Stonewall ranked it among the top 100 employers; and the

    The Times ranked it among the Top 50 employers for women. The list goes on and on. When it comes to gay rights, diversity, and protecting the environment, Fujitsu is a global leader. Yet when it comes to sub-postmasters, it now faces accusations of “putting profit before people”.

    Perhaps the real question is why we are still surprised by the ESG racket. All too often, when there is a major corporate scandal (though few will ever compare to this miscarriage of justice), it turns out that the company at the centre of it was winning plaudits for its corporate social responsibility.

    The FTX founder Sam BankmanFried was a hero of the “effective altruism” movement even as the crypto exchange was systematically losing track of billions of investors’ money. Organisations including Coutts have signed up to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, which incorporate ESG considerations into investment practices. Yet how responsible is “debanking” those who hold views executives might regard as unsavoury? Unsurprisingly, when Volkswagen was found to have been installing “defeat devices” – software that allows cars to cheat in emissions tests, making them appear cleaner than they actually are – it was winning awards for its commitment to the environment. The ESG movement

    seems to exist in a parallel universe where up is down and left is right.

    It would be easy, of course, to dismiss the ESG ratings as nothing more than PR guff. But it is more serious than that. It casts into doubt the idea that investors should focus on the bottom line, by suggesting corporate governance, social impact and environmental damage are of equal importance. It may allow bad practices to endure for longer than they would otherwise. However, investment in ESG funds has started to collapse. In 2023, funds defined by their commitment to “responsible investing” recorded inflows of only $68bn globally, compared to $158bn a year earlier, and more than $550bn in 2021. The overall assets within the ESG industry fell from $35trillion to $30trillion last year, according to figures from Bloomberg.

    It looks like investors have woken up to the fact that returns which were turbocharged over the last decade by the soaring performance of the tech industry, and the weakness of the oil price, have started to turn. Many ESG funds are now underperforming the broader market. Perhaps they worry much of it was just “greenwashing” of the worst sort, with companies congratulating themselves on how wonderful they are while treating customers and suppliers poorly?

    It is not hard to figure out what companies need to do to be “responsible”. Just make a decent product, charge a fair price, pay your suppliers and staff on time, and file your tax returns. Oh, and if you happen to be making an IT system that triggers a spike in “fraudulent” activity, perhaps consider whether there are some dots which need connecting, and some tweaks which need making.

    Investment in ESG iscollapsing, but it’s time to put a stop to it for good. We won’t miss it when it is gone.”

  22. Good morning all.
    Another dry start with a chilly -1°C outside and a pink sky as daylight slowly gathers.

  23. Wordle 938 4/6

    Did it in four today.

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

  24. Be warned.
    Not sure if grandparents are equally embarrassing.

    “Will Gen Z ever grow up?

    Young people today deeply resent being portrayed as cossetted snowflakes. Sometimes, though, they really don’t help themselves. Consider, for example, the results of a new survey of American employers. Incredibly, a fifth of them reported that recent college graduates have taken to bringing their parents along to job interviews.

    What a bizarre phenomenon. Why anyone would want their parents to be present during a job interview, I can’t imagine. Think how embarrassing it would be. Especially if your parents kept butting in every time you tried to answer a question.

    Employer: “What would you say is your greatest weakness?”

    Candidate: “Well, I’d say I’m probably too much of a perfection—”

    Candidate’s mother: “It’s leaving dirty socks and underwear all over his bedroom floor. And forgetting to put the lavatory seat back down. I’ve told him a thousand times, but will he listen?”

    Employer: “And, er, where do you see yourself in five years?”

    Candidate: “Well, I—”

    Candidate’s father: “Not still playing Xbox in our spare bloody room all day, I hope.”

    As it happens, almost 40 per cent of the employers in the survey said that young job candidates today are so unimpressive that they prefer to hire older people. So that’s another reason not to bring your mother to a job interview. They’d probably hire her instead.”

    1. I’m quite sure that you, as a loving grandparent, could rise to the occasion and outdo your sons in the ’embarrassing’ stakes. I know I can outclass my children in that arena.

  25. Good morning all,

    Grey day at McPhee Towers. Chilly too 0℃→2℃.

    Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a050901cd2bb417929ebef373bdd5f049e61e99f24d983d2ebd7e70dd912f654.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/11/hertz-sells-tesla-electric-cars-drivers-stick-with-petrol/

    Dealerships here are having trouble shifting them too. They have a big log-jam building up because few folk want to buy them. I wonder why?

    2. Ross Clark agrees.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/12/the-ev-fiasco-has-descended-into-farce-just-ask-hertz/

      “I’m no petrol-head. I will very happily dump my old diesel for an EV when someone can sell me one that does at least 500 miles between charges, takes around 10 minutes to charge and costs no more to buy or insure than a petrol or diesel car. As for the oft-made assertion that I could save on running costs over the lifetime of an EV, I’ll believe that when I see a genuine comparison between electric and petrol. Trouble is, almost all the comparisons presented by the electric car lobby ignore the huge differential in tax – the fact that around half of what you pay for a gallon of petrol is tax whereas if you charge your EV at home you will pay only 5 per cent VAT. That advantage isn’t going to last, because the Government isn’t going to sit back and watch £28 billion of revenue from fuel duty evaporate”.

      But he doesn’t mention the use of child slave labour in extracting the cobalt and lithium or the fact that there isn’t enough of either in the world to make enough EVs to replace ICE vehicles on a one for one basis. Or that China is monopolising the necessary rare Earth metals. Or the cost of a new battery when it is degraded. Or that you have to replace the battry if it is damaged – as it will be if the car is in an accident or if you “ground” it. Or the rocketing cost of insuring them given the tendency to explode and burn. Or ferry companies banning them.

      I could afford to buy or lease one if I had to but the real purpose of EVs is to get us plebs off the roads. I’ll never have one. Or rent one. Who wants to sit for 45 minutes charging the damn thing, or worse, sit in a charging queue for hours?

    3. I thought each parked electric car needed oodles of space (roughly at least twice that needed round an ICE) round it in case of spontaneous combustion?

      1. Then they can claim on insurance – no need for the hassle of selling, but cars gone! What’s not to like?

  26. Good morning all,

    Grey day at McPhee Towers. Chilly too 0℃→2℃.

    Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a050901cd2bb417929ebef373bdd5f049e61e99f24d983d2ebd7e70dd912f654.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/11/hertz-sells-tesla-electric-cars-drivers-stick-with-petrol/

    Dealerships here are having trouble shifting them too. They have a big log-jam building up because few folk want to buy them. I wonder why?

    1. I don’t understand it – and the warqueen’s reply was too complicated if they put 934m on tax relief and that was illegal, why are they only paying 100m in tax?

  28. 381767+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Morning Each,

    Saturday 13 January: It’s time for the Western world to face up to the malign influence of Iran

    But first
    Saturday 13 January: It’s time for the English section of the world to face up to the malign influence of the lab/lib/con/current ukip political overseers and their RESET agenda,

    This shappstwat is following the hitler agenda calling on phantom forces that do not exist, next will be arm, train & brainwash the cadet forces to die for the NWO via RESET it will be an honorable through short career move, every little adds to the depopulation / culling numbers.

    England must surely tidy its own kitchen domestically before
    demanding wales,scotland, n Ireland, do the same, otherwise we are ALL working for the man, the WEF / NWO man that is.

    1. 381767+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Dt,

      UK aircraft carriers can’t be sent to Red Sea because of Navy staffing crisis
      Calls to send the £3bn HMS Queen Elizabeth to the region set to be spurned because crew shortages mean only support ship cannot sail

      May one suggest manning them from the nearest hotel you will risk giving the enemy a navy but it will cut down on the hotel bills.

      1. We can’t send our Daring Class Destroyers either. They don’t operate well in warm water FFS.

    2. It’s not Iran, it’s muslim. A barbaric, savage religion stuck in the Dark Ages. Our DIE obsessed statist morons, so convinced are they of the righteousness of their cause they couldn’t care less about the carnage they’re causing.

      At every step, crushing high taxes create a recession. The state denies it and borrows more. High energy prices caused by green – more green. Unreliables making energy expensive? These fools pour more money into them to make them competitive, ignoring the basic fundamental reality.

      Every turn they set about seeing a happily, free moving wheel and jam a spanner into it and are surprised when the wheel keeps turning, so another spanner and another and another until there are no more to waste, but it’s not a spanner, and not a wheel – it’s tax payers money going into breaking a working market – solely so government can force an ideology.

  29. In this age of great danger, economic disaster, illegal swamping of the country – if you want o be REALLY depressed – watch a film called “Nomadland”. I went to bed after half an hour of the drivel. The MR thinks it is one of the best films she has seen in a long time…..

    But don’t let my judgment cloud your views!!

    2. Audience rating on ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ 82%.

      Ratings that high regardless of genre normally mean the film/drama is well made and worth a watch.

      Perhaps it was the subject matter that didn’t appeal to you.

      2. Don’t we all have the tendency to think that when public opinion supports our point of view it shows how sensible people are; when public opinion does not support our point of view we say that of course the majority of people polled are mindlessly ignorant?

    1. Just like any real scientist arguing against ‘The Science’ hoax of climate change, they’ll be ignored. The state will find a way to suppress this and no one will face any consequence for it.

      This is how big government works: destroy the opposition, suppress the facts, tax people to oblivion. At the end, tax is all they care about.

    2. Published studies misrepresented by cardiologist Peter McCullough to push false claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause sudden cardiac death

      Conclusion
      The claim that these three studies point to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines causing “metabolic cardiomyopathy” and “sudden cardiac death” is baseless. As we explained above, McCullough’s statements about the studies misrepresent their findings or leave out important information that contradicts his claim. In fact, none of the studies found any association between COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and sudden cardiac death or metabolic cardiomyopathy. Other published studies have also found no association between COVID-19 vaccination and sudden death or an increase in all-cause mortality.

      https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/published-studies-misrepresented-peter-mccullough-false-claim-covid-vaccines-sudden-cardiac-death/

      To see the details which lead to that conclusion, click on the link.

      1. I would give this fact check site more credence if it wasn’t a WHO run organisation. A bit of, ‘They would say that.’

        “The website of Health Feedback is a member of the WHO-led project Vaccine Safety Net (VSN).

        Health Feedback verifies scientific claims in the media by soliciting evidence-based reviews from subject matter experts who provide credible references to recently published scientific literature that supports their analyses. A large number of our articles focus on correcting misinformation about vaccine safety contained in news coverage or content disseminated via social media platforms.”

        https://www.who.int/teams/regulation-prequalification/regulation-and-safety/pharmacovigilance/networks/vaccine-safety-net/vsn-members/health-feedback

      2. And will you welcome the WHO having the power to exert “vaccine” coercion?

        Politicians used to get away with things much more easily because in general they were trusted. They have lost that trust and do not deserve the confidence that the naïf still place in them.

        My distrust of politicians started when Heath lied by saying that the Common Market was just an economic club with no implications for British constitutional and legal issues and posed no threat to our sovereignty. My trust was further eroded by Major and then killed completely by Blair.

      3. Peter McCullough is the most published medical researcher in the US and that is a nasty bit of slander.

        1. It’s not nasty slander. It’s a considered appraisal of his claims about others’ studies.

          1. David, it really, really isn’t. It’s funded by the people pushing the mRNA jabs as mola points out and its sole purpose is to try and attack Dr McCullough. There has been zero evidence from the WHO, Pfizer, Moderna et al that they have been interested in the truth about the mRNA jabs since the beginning of this sorry episode – their testing is well known to have been inadequate and to have ignored very important questions such as how many people died or what the effects on pregnant women and their babies were, as well as the myocarditis issue. It beggars belief that they are suddenly interested in truth when the harms done by their product are being uncovered. That headline has nothing to do with product testing or scientific research and everything to do with slandering an opponent, i.e. politics.

    3. If Dr McCullough is correct in his analysis then a good proportion of those who were coerced into having these ‘vaccines’ can look forward to not having to endure the indignity of spending several years ‘living’ in a nursing home at some point in the future….

      Good morning o1 and all.

      1. Instead of voluntary euthanasia or trips to Dignitas in Switzerland perhaps extra strong doses covid vaccine gene therapy can be used?

  32. A good article here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/12/britain-become-bad-country-to-be-hard-working-decent-honest/

    It cmes down to the state – and other organisations – are faceless edifices. The fundamental problem is the amount of money the state consumes. If the public had more control over the state, and could refuse tax hikes and the laws it wants to passthen most of the problems we have today simply wouldn’t exist. Government would be accountable and controlled. We would be, basically, a democracy.

    Then there’s insurance/banking/any other monolith. We were covered, supposedly for escape of water. But I asked about this, gave them an invented hypothetical and of course, that wasn’t covered. The constant ‘treat our staff with respect’. Well, answer the phone within 3 rings and I might. But you don’t. You don’t want to speak to me. You want the cheapest, crappiest customer service possible. Absolutely anything to cut your costs – because you’re not experiencing high call volumes, you’ve not hired enough staff – while you pocket millions in profits and you demand civility after wasting my time? How about I send you a bill for that time. Let’s see that made law and then how eager you are to force me through a 30 point IVR.

    1. Never mind rapex – a razor-sharp knife to sever the offending protruberance would be better.

      1. I once sent to police officers to a town centre Portaloo where such a thing had taken place. A “respectable married man” (closet poof) stuck his erect dick through a hole in the wall of the bog’s closet and the chap on the other side grabbed it before severing it with a Stanley knife.

        The hospital sewed it back on but the victim’s main concern was how to tell his wife. He was told “That’s your problem, sunshine!”

        1. A school friend and I were on the London underground, Baker Street if I recall correctly, when my friend had to go to the station lavatory. He needed a cubicle, and the man next door pushed his erect penis through a hole in the wall.
          My friend took off his heavy Oxford shoe and smashed it onto the offending object, almost certainly he would have broken blood vessels very badly. I heard the scream of pain on the station platform and when Andrew appeared a short moment later he said to get on the next train, wherever it’s going and once we were on he explained what had happened.

    4. I’ve clicked on several news reports about the rapist but not one of them mentions that he will not be deported. Where is Ron English getting this from?

      1. How much money would you bet on whether or not he will ever be deported?

        You optimism and faith in the justice system does you credit!

        1. He has an Islamic name but that does not automatically mean he’s a deportation candidate. If he’s a British citizen, not only is there no legal route to deportation, no other country has any obligation to take him and would be quite within their rights not to do so. For all we know, he was born and raised in this country. If so, he’s no more a deportation candidate than I would be in his position. We need to know what his citizenship status is.

          1. But now Sunak is clearing the backlog by giving everyone British passports willy-nilly.

            Unfortunately many of them wield the willy without fear of real reprisals and if they cannot be deported or executed they should be treated far more harshly than they are.

    5. “Some critics say this is a medieval punishment”.

      These people are not “critics” they are simpering, quarter-witted, Liberal twats!

  34. SIR – I agree wholeheartedly with Ed Wiseman on bright lights, but
    there is a concurrent issue that he didn’t mention. The headlights, even
    when dipped, are often so bright compared with the adjacent indicators
    that their flashing on some cars is completely lost, and you are not
    aware that an oncoming vehicle has any intention to turn in either
    direction, which is a serious safety hazard.

    I accept that some cars dim the light on the flashing indicator side, but not enough have that facility.

    Cdr Phil Gibbs RN (retd)
    Fareham, Hampshire

    One would think that if you were jailed for stealing from charities you would keep your head down…Some people have no shame…

    https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/crime/navy-veteran-jailed-for-siphoning-charity-cash-in-ps117000-fraud-3423028

    2. Commander Gibbs RN (retired) would have used a type of basic online banking fraud which had been inadvertently enabled by paranoia about personal ‘data protection’; a friend was a victim of similar tactics by an employee. When transferring money, the fraudster would use the name of a genuine payee, but match it to a bank account controlled by himself or herself; temporarily swapping either the name or account number. On the bank statements, a name such as Bloggs Office Furniture would appear, but the funds had gone elsewhere. Edit: and the UK banks would not allow the customer/victim to discover to where the money had been diverted, due to GDPR, Yuman Rights etc. Fortunately, several years after this fraud became frequent, the banks somehow woke up, challenged the Information Commissioner (etc) and most BACS transfer software now checks the relevant details before allowing the transaction to proceed. This type of fraud could not have occurred via online banking in Spain, where each transfer allows the account holder to view what I call a ‘transmission report’, showing the technical details and the destination of the funds. IMHO a similar type of trail would have limited the devilry of Post Office (Counters) Limited.

      1. A lot of them do it. A major part of their lives i suppose. My RN friends don’t behave like that. To them it was just a job.

  35. Good old Fred..

    SIR – A sage once observed that a fish rots from the head down. So does a society, as our own has tragically demonstrated over these past 30 years.

    From Covid to the Horizon scandal – in all cases we see one blithering incompetent after another elevated to high office, often enjoying honours, a title and a wealthy retirement. The useless prefer and promote each other because the arrival of a human dynamo would prove too embarrassing a contrast.

    The only way to reverse this trend would be the institution of a campaign dedicated to the pursuit of excellence deriving from the highest authority – Downing Street. But that would require a ruthless driving force in No 10. Unfortunately we do not have that either.

    Frederick Forsyth
    Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

    1. Incompetents get into office and promote each other. The competent are too busy churning out the make work demanded by the inept to disguise their own utter pointlessness.

    2. If there were a God I hope he’d have warmed up to throwing flaming mountains at most nations on the planet long, long ago.

      The amount of hatred in the world generated from ideology, be that climate change through to islam is staggering. There’s a reason Switzerland is neutral. It’s people want to be left alone and thus leave others alone. Why can’t we all do that, be that government or anyone else.

  37. Among the dogs

    SIR – There have been lots of negative letters (January 12) about the rise of dog-friendly hotels.

    I’ve actually struggled to find these in areas I wish to visit. But when I
    did stay in a hotel in Yorkshire where dogs were allowed, I found
    everyone so much friendlier.

    There were no unpleasant smells and it was a bonus having the dogs around – even though mine was staying with a sitter.

    Chris Rigg
    Bolton, Lancashire

    Very true. Doggie people are splendid. Cat slaves on the other hand are weirdos.

    3. I have always found the same Phiz.
      During my many, many miles of now past dog walking. Other owners always passed the time of day.
      But people who didn’t have any thing on a lead usually looked deliberately vacant and stared elsewhere.

      1. I found that when I was temporarily between dogs. Attempting to pass the time of day with a fellow pedestrian, as was my wont when walking my dog, caused them to suspect my motives because I didn’t have a dog!

        1. I can understand exactly.
          And when and if I do go for a walk now, I feel quite ‘underused’ and lonely.

        1. Not really….. they live here but they don’t ask for much. They do their own grooming, don’t need taking for walks, don’t attack postmen……

          2. List of things that a cat can do that a dog cannot:

            1. Shit in a tray.
            2. … er …
            3. … give me a minute …

          3. Our two lovely girls have so far shown no interest in killing the local wildlife. It’s one of the good things about taking in older cats.

    5. People like Chris Rigg, who cannot smell dogs because they are with them all the time, fail to realise that to other people, the smell of their dogs (especially when wet) is nauseating.

      I shall never patronise hotels, B&Bs or pubs where dogs are welcome.

        1. #metoo…even though I haven’t owned a dog for several years. Dogs and dog owners are far nicer than bad tempered, smelly old bears.

        2. You mean the ones who think just because they like dogs then everyone else should especially when they jump up at you – I normally knee them in the chest…….. oh they’re just being friendly

          1. #metoo.
            Not a dog fan.
            If it has some modicum of self-control, then fine. Otherwise, can just fcuk off.

            Had an experience as a small child of being licked on the mouth by a crazed Dachs, in Nigeria. Resulted in a trip to the hospital and injections for rabies (for me, not the fcukking dog). Brother couldn’t find the damned dog, so it could be tested and then shot.

          2. We stayed in a dog hotel by mistake in teh summer – we thought it was a fishing hotel, but it had changed hands!
            It was actually fine – the dogs were super well behaved.

  38. Dai Vercity in Holly wood

    SCENE: a meeting room at the Globe, 1606.

    Director: “Terribly sorry, Wills darling, but I’m afraid we have one or two small issues with your new play, Macbeth. Judging from the script, all the characters appear to be white, straight and cisgender.”

    Shakespeare: “Well, yes. It’s set in 11th-century Scotland.”

    Director: “Hmm. That’s really going to cost us on awards night. Any chance you could make King Duncan a trans lesbian of colour?”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/13/hollywood-oscars-diversity-best-picture-backfired/

    1. And of course, they rejected Jews as a minority. And of course, as white people comprise most actors they were sidelined.

      When will these fools learn that we only have films because so much food is produced, so much housing that we have enough time to play pretend. That only came about as a consequence of industrialisation.

      (Yes, we had travelling players but the real take off occurred after the introduction of specialisation for efficiency).

  39. Putin’s oil tankers sail through Red Sea unscathed. 13 January 2024.

    Russian ships are continuing to travel through the Red Sea despite escalating Houthi attacks on commercial vessels.

    Tankers carrying Russian oil and container ships bound for Russian ports have not changed their paths through the Bab El-Mandeb Strait since attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels began in October.

    The Russian response is in stark contrast to that of Western shipping companies, many of whom are redirecting ships around the Cape of Good Hope at significant extra cost and time. Danish fuel tanker company Torm became the latest company to halt all transits through the Red Sea on Friday.

    This is because they still have their cojones intact!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/12/russia-oil-tankers-sailing-red-sea-houthi-attacks/

    1. I seem to recall Russian flagged ships were off limits to Somalian pirates as well after a couple of attempts met a rather more “robust” (extermination) response than they were expecting
      See hostage taking in Lebanon for further details…………
      ‘Morning Minty

      1. There were clips of Russian ships with machine gunners slaughtering the Somalia pirates. That seemed to calm things down a bit.
        Good for them.

    2. They trade with Iran. The west is suffering the consequences of its arrogant attitude, and is now throwing the toys out of the pram.

    1. Today’s printed Mail leads on this book. There was an article in the Telegraph last night as well but it looks as if that version has been changed to thus one.

      I find these articles and the tone of Hardman’s book, if not distasteful, rather inappropriate. Maybe I’m just old fashioned.

      https://twitter.com/hardmanr/status/1746080705967198654
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/01/12/queen-prepared-to-hold-final-privy-council-meeting-balmoral/

  42. Morning all 🙂😊
    Bright grey today, so far.
    Strange how the western world seems to always be so far ‘behind the game’ of world politics. They are Probably too interested in hurting and punishing their own people, or even heaven forbid their own lines of personal successes.
    I suspect due to the recent new laws put firmly in place and administered, anyone who might have even thought of saying that Iran is a leading player in the adverse hate of western societies and its varied religions would have been arrested for antisomethingism. How silly our governments all seem to be. Now it’s been left until the ‘last minute’ as usual, before something has been done about it all.

  43. Andrew Neil telling it as it is.
    A couple of tasters from a long article.

    Iran’s appetite for mayhem is insatiable. Not content with triggering October 7, unleashing the Houthis on the Red Sea and firing up Hezbollah, it also encouraged pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq to attack U.S. bases in the region. There have been around 130 since Hamas attacked Israel, more pinpricks than serious attacks and, thankfully, no U.S. fatalities to date (though some have suffered life-changing injuries).

    But the Biden administration’s proclivity merely to look the other way has only emboldened these Iranian proxies to increase the intensity of their attacks which, in turn, has caused despair in moderate Arab capitals at the lack of a robust U.S. response.

    Indeed, far from showing Iran an iron fist, Biden (at least until very recently) was more inclined to put a friendly arm around the regime in Tehran.

    The attempt to bring Iran in from the cold started under President Obama, was frozen under Trump and started again under Biden (whose foreign policy cadre largely cut their teeth in the Obama administration, hence the continuity).

    America has almost nothing to show for its olive branches over the years. Obama returned shedloads of cash which had been been frozen by sanctions, only to see the money fed to Iran’s proxies across the region by its sinister Quds Force, which fosters and finances various foreign Islamist militia. It was the Quds Force which was given an extra $250 million by the Iranian regime in 2022 to arm the Houthis with long-range missiles and state-of-the-art drone technology which it’s been using to such effect on the Red Sea.

    Biden almost repeated Obama’s mistake by planning to hand over another $6 billion to Tehran, until the events of October 7 made that politically impossible.

    Even so, the more Iran unleashes its proxies, the more it seems the Biden administration loosens its sanctions.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12958547/ANDREW-NEIL-Iran-backed-Houthi-terror-Red-Sea-forces-Britain-America-military-action-ayatollahs-fomenting-atrocities-instability-threatening-conflagration-globe.html

    It is a fair bet that if anything bad or evil is happening in the Middle East or areas around it these days, then Iran is probably behind it. Its tentacles grow ever longer.

    Even British security services admit they cannot be sure of protecting Iranian dissidents in our country from regime hitmen.

    The tragedy is that, without the medieval mullahs in charge of Iran, it could be one of the most prosperous countries in the world.

    Its people are hard working and entrepreneurial, its young have a deep thirst for education and advance, it has an ancient and sophisticated culture and, despite the malign hand of the mullahs these past 40 years or so, a vibrant middle class has somehow survived.

    Obama is Blair in black, everything he starts rebounds badly on the West.

    1. The answer to all the ME troubles is NUKE Iran – the whole country, this will warn others of the consequences of terrorism then kick all the Muslims out of the UK

      1. It would still leave 100’s of millions of Muslims all over the globe, the vast majority of whom will seek revenge in one form or another.
        The problem is far more that of Islam than Iran and its people.

        1. Iran has , or will have soon, nuclear capability and they will use it. Ridding the UK of Muslims will at least reduce the terrorist threat here. Let the rest of the world decide how to deal with their Muslims

          1. And how would we know they’ve all been removed?
            The slippery slope argument is seldom a very good one, but even trying to identify them all smacks of what led to many of the ghastly ME problems we have now.

  44. ‘Morning All

    Medley……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fae8d3cedf0a400903f3f1c89d2c0f232b2a8cd2c31bc8c2ab42a8648aa48901.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/67501ca8d2b8d1c9c37e4a7fc08bc40cfa511cd00935cd323ba7a48c95db9eaf.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff5096edf7eed90afe331f1460fff82575e53486c7ec0a5382f8879012fc42f0.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ada2b451fcf8b14d5b325d0528e282501cbc1c31dd950160a11481f0864c0f1f.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/482c775e075e2164d6695cbb6e9179b134fa6cbc4219da4a424cde130a62f429.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/750b6a8c5cd636836a2bd589ef817f96e68a046968bcc8b782a96a3d08afd26e.jpg

  45. Lighter side…….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/12c5db4d275c5feedc63cb7aafa381e7b7403247fad5dd5277bd1331c87f1503.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f8941e680d833c5a9a1d3a2f3e2c53091c06c52bd838c82b1e7546a94932e038.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/34d41e9c4bf659840950e7eae8a8e7b7f9d2f9417d9720c1afd328161cd8cb6d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/51cf60a1f5dc2eaad64cbfc141236afe04b9c3437cfcdbad03211f6b004dd3c2.gif

    We’re Doomed!!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9442666bb6f793d5b83c01eea14280aefb7384286a475f47d454c6fef9527bd6.jpg

    1. Obviously tennis. You should only be knocking one ball around of it was golf.
      I walked past our local tennis courts on Thursday. One lady one end was playing two the opposite end. She had a lot of ball’s to pickup.

      2. The Dauphin sent the young King Henry V a present of tennis balls to mock the time he had, before he became king, caroused and cavorted with the likes of Falsaff.

        Henry Vth’s reply was:

        We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
        His present and your pains we thank you for:
        When we have march’d our rackets to these balls,
        We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set
        Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.

  47. That’s the van serviced, a shopping trip to Belper done and £400 paid off the garage bill with £155 to pay.
    As well as oil & filters, it needed track rod ends, anti-roll bar bushes and rear springs. Not bad for a 15 reg ex-builder’s hack.

    There was a road gang replacing a telecoms manhole on the pavement as I walked down to pick the van up. Given that the pavement is often used as an extension to the carriageway when a pair of HGVs have to pass on that stretch, it’ll need doing again in a couple of years!

  48. 381767+ up ticks,

    Seafarers urgently needed, the answer to mass uncontrolled immigration urgently needed, combine the two by supplying naval uniforms to today’s Dover intake of fifty.

    Dt,
    First migrant Channel crossing of 2024 reported as Border Force lands around 50 people in Dover
    26-day gap in crossings is the longest in five years and Home Secretary denies claims falling numbers can be attributed to bad weather

  49. Just been into Hungerford. The Co-op petrol station/convenience store where I frequently picked up fuel for our naughty ICE cars has changed identity. Overnight it has become an ASDA Express. As the Co-op it operated a small local cartel with the Shell station just scross the bridge over the River Kennet fuel was always the same price at either. ASDA is now undercutting the Shell station by 3 or 4 p per litre (when are we going back to gallons?). However given who owns ASDA, I will no longer be calling there.

  50. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d956ed6c6cc29b862621d4f55693f8e0c893092e88a9acbf325ad442d8dcae4d.jpg Where’s Philip?

    After discussing old school meals with Swedish friends I tried to explain to them about jelly and blancmange. This led me to using up four limes I had lurking in the fridge. I removed the zest and placed it in a saucepan along with the lime juice, some water and a little sugar. After boiling it to extract the lime oils I cooled it somewhat before straining out the zest and adding six soaked gelatine leaves and a little green and yellow food colouring.

    After it had set to a nice wobble in the fridge I looked up a recipe for blancmange. I discovered it is simply a mix of milk and a little cream with sugar, cornstarch and vanilla extract. Once cooled it joined the jelly in the serving glasses. Finally, as a flourish, I topped it with a coulis made from frozen raspberries, strained to remove the seeds.

    Lime, vanilla and raspberry are my favourite sweet flavours. I may sample some tonight, purely as an indulgence, you know! Well, the weather is still very cold and it may do me good, despite its sugar content!

    1. Reminds me of the “Traffic Lights” cocktails we used to down at rowdy dinners in the Officers’ Mess. Crême de Menthe, Advocaat and a Bloody Mary on top.

      1. Thank you, Mrs Macfarlane. I’ve not sampled it yet. It may remind me too much of school dinners. 😲

          1. I never had lumpy cutsad at school. All my school dinners were great for five bob a week.

    3. It must be great fun educating your Swedish chums in British food.

      I once made a traditional roast dinner for a party of French students. They weren’t impressed. Ignorant frogs !

        1. Years ago we had two teenage German chaps, Pen friends of my elder sister, come to stay with us.
          They didn’t like muvvers roast dinner.

          1. Just gove them their national dish sausages. Their Brat Wurst is very similar. Good food is wasted on most Germans

      1. It is actually a starch and not a flour. Cornflour is cornmeal, the ground-up grains. What the English have traditionally called “cornflour” is actually a misnomer.
        I once made a Tamale Pie (a Mexican dish) and the recipe called for “cornflour” so I, being English, used English “cornflour” i.e. cornstarch and instead of baking a pie,
        I ended up with a bowl of gloopy wallpaper paste! As a consequence I call the two substances, cornstarch and cornmeal to avoid confusion.

  51. For those who know who he was, Gonzalo Lira has recently been killed in a Ukrainian Prison. His crime? Posting videos severly criticising the Biden regime, Kamala Harris in particular, Zelenskyy and fingering Victoria Nuland as the only begetter of the war.

    Gonzalo Lira, Sr. says his son has died at 55 in a Ukrainian prison, where he was being held for the crime of criticizing the Zelensky and Biden governments. Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen, but the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture. Several… https://t.co/F0nOG9qGvv— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 12, 2024

      1. The Biden administration could have instructed Zelensky to release Gonzalo Lira. Gonzalo was in ill health with pneumonia and other ailments and was an American citizen. I am sure that Nuland will have been involved in the administration’s refusal to make the call.

        I personally found Gonzalo’s insights into both financial and geopolitical affairs enlightening. He is an enormous loss to real journalism.

    3. Only just seen this and I’ve approved the pending post now.

      He must have been shockingly badly treated.

  53. Campaigning is well underway here in Wellingborough for the forthcoming by-election. Labour were first off the mark earlier this week, their little gang of volunteers barely distinguishable from a troupe of Michael Foot supporters c1983. I had heard the neighbours’ dogs barking a few moments earlier so I ignored the knock at the door.

    This morning I saw another group marching along the road, their dress and blue scarves making them look like Tory campaigners c1987. I ignored another knock but when I picked up the poster pushed through the door, I discovered they weren’t the Tories but Reform. By this time they were gone. Anyway, it’s too cold to be standing by an open door discussing the wrongs of the world. And how long would it take?!

    The Tories will be next. I might make the effort to answer the knock, if only to tell them what I think of them for selecting Boney’s bedmate as their candidate.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d5cf883e1189fc6d4aff42137e2ab4bfc8b209652b6bb0ff6e16df7061d0ee9d.jpg

    1. As folk know, I am an upbeat, positive thinking fellow. I understand what the advert’s saying but I’d really like to see a positive campaign from Reform.

      I want a reason to vote for them, not just to be told the others are crap. I know they’re crap. I know why they’re crap.

      Something along the lines of… “Something about Britain isn’t right. High taxes, unemployment, people struggling. Help us Reform it.’

      They could put in everyday problems that really affect people – like high energy bills. (Worried about putting the heating on? – to get the older person vote) worried about jobs? A fairer country based on merit…. the specific legislation responsible doesn’t have to be mentioned, just the consequences we can all see. Be positive. Keep the message consistent. Engage the voter. Tell them it’s *their* party. The problems are all of ours, caused by the last 25 years of socialist government.

      Being positive, being ‘engaging’ on real world issues people understand would be such a different campaign. Once in office they can present the truth, present the statistics and ask the public what they want. We could call this miracle concept… democracy.

      1. Sales #101: Give people reasons to buy your product, not reasons to NOT buy the competitors product.
        Duhh…

        1. It’s not about selling in a healthy market – “Our widgets are better than theirs!” – but identifying a problem. If your front door won’t shut properly, it might not be that it needs replacing – it might be that the house is subsiding…

    2. As folk know, I am an upbeat, positive thinking fellow. I understand what the advert’s saying but I’d really like to see a positive campaign from Reform.

      I want a reason to vote for them, not just to be told the others are crap. I know they’re crap. I know why they’re crap.

      Something along the lines of… “Something about Britain isn’t right. High taxes, unemployment, people struggling. Help us Reform it.’

      They could put in everyday problems that really affect people – like high energy bills. (Worried about putting the heating on? – to get the older person vote) worried about jobs? A fairer country based on merit…. the specific legislation responsible doesn’t have to be mentioned, just the consequences we can all see. Be positive. Keep the message consistent. Engage the voter. Tell them it’s *their* party. The problems are all of ours, caused by the last 25 years of socialist government.

      Being positive, being ‘engaging’ on real world issues people understand would be such a different campaign. Once in office they can present the truth, present the statistics and ask the public what they want. We could call this miracle concept… democracy.

    1. The dinners at my primary school were not even fit for pigswill. The dinners at my secondary school were restaurant-standard.

  55. How much more ideocracy do we have to put up with ?
    Gove again what an idiot.

    Residents will be able to add up to SEVEN storeys to their homes without planning permission under Michael Gove’s new plans for local street referendums
    Story by Eirian Jane Prosser •
    Daily Mail

    Residents will be able to add up to seven storeys to their homes without planning permission if a proposal to introduce local street referendums is given the green light.
    The Government is introducing plans to encourage ‘gentle densification’ which will allow neighbours to decide on whether extensions, basements or loft conversions can be built.

    The ‘street votes’ plan, which currently at consultation stage, aims to encourage residents to work together on what developments they would like to see and in turn could increase house prices.

    Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove pushed the idea forward making sure it was included in legislation passed in 2022, The Times reported, with the department now revealing more detailed aspects of the plan.
    The consultation states that local votes ‘will encourage residents to consider the potential for new development on their streets and are intended to deliver additional or more spacious homes in places where they are needed most’.

    Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove pushed for the idea of ‘street votes’ to be included in proposals
    © Provided by Daily Mail
    Fullscreen button
    Residents will be able to add up to seven storeys to their homes without planning permission in some areas if a proposal to introduce local street referendums is given the green light. Pictured: A residential street in Chelsea, London
    Residents will be able to add up to seven storeys to their homes without planning permission in some areas if a proposal to introduce local street referendums is given the green light. Pictured: A residential street in Chelsea, London
    © Provided by Daily Mail
    Rather than having referendums on individual planning application all households will be allowed to build certain types of developments.

    If at least 20 per cent of locals or ten households submit a proposal for a street plan which is approved by the Planning Inspectorate, the local council must hold a vote on whether to adopt the plan, with a 60 per cent majority required for it to pass.

    READ HERE: Councils are warned they WON’T be able to block drive to build 300,000 homes a year as Michael Gove vows crackdown on ‘Nimbys’ – as poll shows less than one in 10 renters plan to vote for the Tories at the general election
    According to the plans, the vote will take place via post, to allow landlords living elsewhere to take part.

    There will still be a number of rules and regulations in place if the plans go ahead, however, such as preserving green space, celebrating the heritage of an area and making sure there is a ‘gradual evolution in character’ of areas.

    There will also be limits on how tall buildings can be depending on the area. Rural areas or low-density areas will only be allowed extensions of up to two storeys, with a mansard or dormer storeys allowed.

    Meanwhile, in cities or high-density areas, up to five extra floors will be permitted, as well as up to two dormer storeys.

    Former head of housing at the think tank Policy Exchange Ben Southwood told The Times that the seven-storey home would only be suitable in some areas.

    He said the proposal was ‘designed for those pockets where you can find two-storey infill among seven-storey Victorian buildings to bring them to the level of the area’.

    Officials also said the seven-storey plans were only for those streets with large properties.

    Listed buildings, national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty would be off limits for street votes. As would green belt land or sites of special scientific interest.

    A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘We want communities to have a say on future development in their areas – which is why we are seeking views through this consultation – as we develop our street votes policy.

    ‘Our proposals, which could only be used with local support, include safeguards to help ensure development is in keeping with the local area and does not significantly affect neighbouring streets.’
    More on the website.
    Daily Mail.
    https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=a67c936f46a65f3cJmltdHM9MTcwNTEwNDAwMCZpZ3VpZD0wZDc5MWI5Yy1lY2M2LTYzMTMtMGUxNC0wZjk5ZWRlMTYyMDQmaW5zaWQ9NTIyNA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=0d791b9c-ecc6-6313-0e14-0f99ede16204&psq=daily+mail.com+news&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGFpbHltYWlsLmNvLnVrL2hvbWUvaW5kZXguaHRtbA&ntb=1

    2. They are just taking the p. Get everyone riled up and fighting over seven storey extensions while the dollar collapses in a pile of debt.

    3. “Former head of housing at the think tank Policy Exchange Ben Southwood told The Times that the seven-storey home would only be suitable in some areas.

      He said the proposal was ‘designed for those pockets where you can find two-storey infill among seven-storey Victorian buildings to bring them to the level of the area’.”

      So this is why Michael Gove is the Levelling Up Secretary.

    4. I thought the current fashion was for extending basements. I saw a prize attempt at that in West Hampstead. The house collapsed into the hole.

      1. I think i saw that one as well.
        There was another in North Finchley.
        A few years previously I had worked on a loft conversion and ground floor extension on the property next-door.
        A lot of the older houses in London built on clay a had very shallow foundations. Step footings Brick and stone infill.
        If that is undermined, disaster.

        1. Our little old house in Horsham had 2 bricks depth as foundation – on clay. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be too tightly bound the the ground.

    7. If anyone was planing on adding seven stories to an existing building, I would prefer that their plans were checked out and approved before building started.

      It’s not just the foundation collapsing under the additional weight, what about fire escapes and such!

  56. Hello all! 🙂

    Today’s smile from my end: my language comprehension has shifted up a gear. For a while now, I’ve been fine when I know roughly what the subject of conversation will be (as in my tango lessons), but random remarks in the street etc are much harder to decipher.

    I just successfully understood that the man knocking at my door was my downstairs neighbour asking if he could please climb down from my balcony to his as he’d locked himself out walking the dog. 🤣🤣

    I even managed to reassure his dog as it whimpered when he disappeared over the railings (with good reason; I’m on the ninth floor…).

    Happy. 😎

    Sending sunshine to you all.

    1. Wow Ashes! My excitement today involves taking in a delivery of 6 chair arm covers, from Evri! I’m soo jealous! And it’s freezing here!💃

        1. We’re lucky to have a wonderful Evri driver, who a) knows where we live and b) is charming!

          2. We had a super EVRI chap, but, when we moved we were outside his delivery area.
            (Literally, we moved only a couple of suburban roads away!)
            In fairness the EVRI delivery drivers are perfectly efficient, but we used to enjoy our chats with Keith.

    2. Wow Ashes! My excitement today involves taking in a delivery of 6 chair arm covers, from Evri! I’m soo jealous! And it’s freezing here!💃

    3. Fabulous, Ashes! Grand to see you are having a good time… when do we have a NoTTL event at your place? 😉
      You’d never get that in the UK – let alone the need to understand yer Forrin…
      Thanks for the good weather – it’s sunny, +3C and lovely, as a direct result.

      1. Nottlers always welcome chez moi! OK, I’m in a studio flat, but that’s never stopped me from giving parties before… 🤣🤣

        Glad to know the weather spell is working.

    4. Heyup Lass!
      You’re certainly living an exciting life and the weather is beautiful today, bright sunshine!

          4. “Whatever twisted mind said ‘ I know let’s advertise our chocolate with a gorilla drumming to Phil Collins’ was pure genius, one of the most talked about and remembered adverts ever” – except I couldn’t remember what it was advertising, I was so fascinated by the gorilla’s star turn!

    2. When I was 18 and working as a messenger boy for an advertising agency in Mayfair I took a bet against my flatmate at the time that I could run up the down escalator at Leicester Square Tube Station which, at the time had the longest and steepest escalator on the network

      My flatmate tried and failed so I won the bet but I doubt if I could manage to run up the up escalator now without clinging to the rail!

    3. When I was 18 and working as a messenger boy for an advertising agency in Mayfair I took a bet against my flatmate at the time that I could run up the down escalator at Leicester Square Tube Station which, at the time had the longest and steepest escalator on the network

      My flatmate tried and failed so I won the bet but I doubt if I could manage to run up the up escalator now without clinging to the rail!

    4. Some years ago, I worked in the Ministry of Defence Main Building in a department located 4 storeys below ground (there was actually another storey below us). To get to the office, one had to go down a flight of stairs but, before going down from level 2 to level 3 (and below), there was a massive steel bulkhead and door like those you see on battleships. This, apparently, was at the level of the River Thames and was to prevent flooding if the river level rose. At landings in the staircase, there were little trays of rat poison but none below level 2 because, it was said, the rats would not go below the level of the Thames (smart creatures, those rats).

  58. What an absolutely gorgeous day!
    Excellent for leaping about up the hill bringing fallen wood down from the upper reaches.

      3. We were promised a big snowfall last night. Maybe an inch fell and that had melted by 8AM , our lawns are green again.

        Ah well, they are promising snow tonight..

  59. I thought David Cameron was the worst British Prime Minister after Theresa May. Both are now surpassed by Rishi Sunak. It is as though an unelected fifteen year old public schoolboy is calling the shots and committing our country to the most infantile folly.

    We should not be backing Ukraine with money and military equipment. We should not be bombing Yemen. Our armed forces are a joke and we are bankrupt. We should be policing the English Channel not The Red Sea.

    1. I think we should be policing the English Channel AND preventing attacks on ships in the Red Sea. I agree we should not be sending money to Ukraine.

      1. We find it amusing that Sunak is so keen to send money(untraceable) to Ukraine rather

        than tanks, field guns, ammunition, medical supplies which can be accounted for and traced..

  60. Re today’s headline: Warmongering against Iran! We have no reason to attack Iran, we should STAY OUT of middle east politics. The Americans have openly admitted that they wanted to attack Iran since the turn of the century.

    1. If we are to become isolationist (I have no objections), we must include our economic policy. In the sacred name of free trade (stop sniggering at the back!) we have become dependant on points east for out energy and manufactures.

      1. If we import our Chinese tat via the Cape then free trade will take care of that problem as cheaper alternatives spring up though

    2. How things change.

      Back in the 1970’s, when the Shah was still ‘in charge’ of Persia/Iran, the RN had enough personnel to send a team out to the Gulf to train his Navy.

      I was on an RN ship that operated out of Banda Abbas for months.

      A sign of things to come, bribes needed to be paid to get incoming stores and equipment out of their airport

    3. The danger in condemning Iran is that most Iranians are normal highly intelligent people holding the same aspirations as the West. Iranians have a great cultural history of excellence in all matters, especially Literature and the Arts.

      The problem is the Mullahs and their stifling Cult of Death.

      1. Indeed. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is testament to the exceptionally high standard of Persian (Iranian) Literature.

        1. A friend’s son married a very intelligent & graceful Iranian lass who is one of the most beautiful women on the planet.

        2. The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
          Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
          Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line

      1. Blairites – aren’t those the things that cling to the glass ceilings of power covered in slime?

  63. Screen shot from Rick’s earlier post.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6b6fce3d17e2338e0b58d92229cb66868a091839df8e58d29ab7ce77711f0880.png

    Here is Dr Peter McCullough (Cardiologist/Epidemiologist) testifying a day or so ago at an inquiry held by Representative (R) Marjorie Taylor-Greene in the USA Congress. McCullough’s testimony is a tour de force of scientific and medical fact – citing peer reviewed evidence at every turn. The complete inquiry panel included Dr Ryan Cole (Pathologist) and Dr Kirk Milhoan (Paediatrician).

    With this level of evidence where will those responsible hide? Who will be thrown under the bus, useful idiots?

    War Room – MTG’s Inquiry in Congress

    Full video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-p0kFdcVkA

    1. A powerful and accurate confirmation of what I have personally believed since the start of the “Covid” abomination.

  64. Candidate who champions autonomy from China wins Taiwan election
    Lai Ching-te, the leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is set to replace Tsai Ing-wen

    Mr Lai was facing two opponents for the presidency – Hou Yu-ih of Taiwan’s largest opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) and former Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je of the small Taiwan People’s Party, only founded in 2019. Both conceded defeat.

    In the run-up to the election, China denounced Mr Lai as a dangerous separatist, saying that any moves towards Taiwan’s formal independence meant war.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/taiwan-election-china-democratic-progressive-party-b1132134.html

    I wonder what China’s response will be?

  65. Banned Russian broadcaster boosts UAE presence in attempt to exonerate Putin. 13 January 2024.

    “The Kremlin is happy to spend vast sums on propaganda on any potentially inflammatory wedge to sow anger and division between allies whilst its own people suffer in poverty under Putin’s mismanagement, corruption and warmongering,” the Tory MP for Rutland and Melton said.

    A Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokesman said, “This is a further example of the Russian state interfering in the affairs of other countries and trying to distract from the brutal war it is waging against Ukraine.”

    O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us…

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/13/russia-today-uae-putin-ukraine-broadcaster-tv-banned/

    1. Lucky we never interfere in the affairs of other countries or we’d look a right bunch of hypocrites!

    2. Is this the moment to utter two words?
      Post Office.
      Though the obvious duo would also serve their purpose.

  66. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/726a2fe0c33a8ceff4562fe5822c217b56a7b8f8b55f9939aaa7a4c3cd1ff897.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/13/uk-go-full-nuclear-ensure-solutions-british/

    BTL

    And Britain was, as it was in many fields, the world leader in harnessing nuclear energy.

    We are not world leaders in anything much anymore and when we do come up with a brilliant idea it is killed by our suffocating politicians and civil servants and is snapped up by other countries who develop it, profit from it and then sell it back to us!

    We cannot blame just today’s politicians – the British people have been betrayed by several generations of politicians.

    1. And to think that one of the nicknames the police here acquired was also the filth.
      I suspect around the time when they ceased to be an integral and respected part of their local communities, but I don’t know the derivation or the dates.

  69. Down to about -40 in Alberta last night.
    Trudeaus response is to raise the carbon tax, making home heating even more unaffordable.

      1. He really has it in for anyone from the Western Provinces but he is nicer to people in the East

    3. At some point the hoax will unravel. I doubt I’ll be alive to see it, but when it does and this nonsense ends completely I can only hope government is castrated and never, ever permitted tax raising or altering powers.

    4. Think I’ll go out to Alberta
      Weather’s good there in the fall
      Got some friends that I can go working for
      But I wish you’d change your mind if I asked you one more time
      But we’ve been through that a hundred times or more

      Four strong winds that blow lonely
      Seven seas that run high
      All those things that don’t change come what may
      But our good times are all gone
      And I’m bound for moving on
      I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agVCT9y5SG0

    2. Very nice.
      I had a walk to Cromford, pick up the van from the garage, did a shop in Belper, dropped part payment off for the work done to the van on the way home then, after a mug of tea, got up the hill above the “garden” and cleared all the wood I’d missed yesterday.
      Absolutely gorgeous sunshine all day!

  71. An easy Birdie Three!

    Wordle 938 3/6
    ⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
    🟨🟨⬜🟩🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. One better than me
      Wordle 938 4/6

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

    2. An uneasy blooming 5.

      Wordle 938 5/6

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

    3. Par four for me.

      Wordle 938 4/6

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

          1. And the Harrier. And the Hawk. The Harrier had two cannon and the Hawk one but the good old Hunter had four. When I was a Qualified Weapons Instructor on Hunters in late 70s/early 80s we used to take part in army fire power demonstrations and Forward Air Controller courses on Salisbury Plain. We’d have the Hunter’s ADEN gun pack loaded with 4×120 rounds of HE/AP and belt the shit out of the tank hulk targets on the plain. The vibration and cordite smell in the cockpit was unforgettable.

        2. 30mm cannon, developed in the 1950s and in still use in Sea Harriers until 2006. Often installed in packs of four.

          The name is derived from Armament Development Establishment Enfield.

        3. An amazing 30mm revolving cannon. Some fitted inboard and outboard. It was made before the ’67 Aden Crisis and was an acronym ; “The name ADEN was created by combining the two first initials of Armament Development Establishment with the first two letters of Enfield, producing ADEN”

          1. The concept lived on in the 27mm Mauser cannon for the Tornado and later the Typhoon. Slightly smaller calibre but much higher muzzle velocity and rate of fire.

  73. I’m beginning to think that those in government have finally found a way out of the Post Office & Covid scandals…..:

    “Reacting to the ‘unprecedented’ military aid package just reached between Kiev and the United Kingdom, and with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the Ukrainian capital, the Kremlin has issued an urgent warning saying that any deployment of British troops to Ukraine as a “declaration of war.”

    The alarming and blistering words came from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev upon Sunak’s arrival in Kiev for the unveiling of the $3+ billion defence aid package. The new security agreement has outraged Moscow……

    1. What on earth makes them think British troops are not already operating in Ukraine, we’re certainly training them here.

    2. Afternoon Stephen. It seems pretty obvious that there’s already a large western military contingent in Ukraine. Technical advisors, Special Forces etc.

  74. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/681bad56fa39465296016dde25dee949a264645da4f3e798481f4bc8e011f7df.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/13/starmer-and-contemptuous-governing-class-dont-get-britain/

    BTL
    Keir Starmer was undoubtedly a very successful lawyer.

    I cannot, for the life of me, understand how this could have been the case – he seems very clumsy with words and does not express himself lucidly, convincingly or elegantly and he hardly has a rapier- like wit.

    1. He’s totally unsuited to be a politician. For that matter, so are most of the other 649. Politics has been utterly debased by first Brexit, which revealed the outright contempt politicos had for democracy and then Sunak has proceeded to just follow orders and do as his masters have told him – to the detriment of the nation.

      Every high tax, pro EU, socialist policy they can implement, they have. Then they proclaim how amazing their attempt to reduce inflation – which they had nothing to do with except removing the causes from the CPI. They hike tax because ‘the government needs to recoup the money it spent during the pandemic – as if it’s theirs to take, not our to keep. It is insanity.

    2. It’s Keir Starmer and the contemptuous governing class who don’t are out to get Britain.

      There, that’s better.

    4. But was Kneeler ‘undoubtedly a very successful lawyer.?

      It would be interesting to know how much of his barrister’s income was funnelled to him via the ‘Legal Aid’ gravy train rather than clients seeking him out because he was top in his field.

  75. I was a 2nd year student nurse with the RN in Malta, when we received many badly burned soldiers rom Aden who were caught in a terrorist attack.

    We couldn’t do much except give them pain relief and provide sterile dressings until they were sent to a military hospital in Germany for specialist treatment .

  76. That’s me for today. A quiet day of leisure. The MR took LF out for the day. Did four crosswords and carried on with reading. Being lazy has something to commend it. There was even watery sunshine.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  77. Wellingborough by-election again.

    Since I posted earlier, ‘Britain First’ has pushed a leaflet through my door. Included is a scathing reference to Reform’s ‘net zero’ immigration policy i.e. one in, one out. Surely not? Here it is:

    Let’s welcome those who have high level skills and talents that we need – such as doctors, engineers, software developers, scientists and surgeons – in tightly controlled numbers that meet our requirements.

    Net zero immigration means that the number legally allowed to enter to live and work in the UK each year should equal the number emigrating, so the overall population remains approximately the same. Some 400,000 people leave every year so there is plenty of scope for bringing in the skills and people we need.

    This policy will mean wages for lower paid will rise, it will help young British workers and so help to significantly reduce the number of people on out of work benefits. It will reduce pressure on affordable housing and public services, given that we already have a record high population. We want these valuable people to come and work in the UK legally, and play by the rules, respecting our values.

    Muddled nonsense.

    Who do I waste my protest vote on?

    PS BF’s candidate is Alex Merola, of Italian ancestry…

    2. Not the words of a reporter in the Falklands war:

      I counted them all going out – I lost count of all those coming back

    3. The more doctors, engineers, scientists that come here, the more of the unqualified will follow them to gain from the way of life here and the larger our foreign aid bill to the countries they leave behind.

  78. Biden says US sent ‘private’ message to Iran about Houthi attacks. 13 January 2024.

    US President Joe Biden says today that the United States has delivered a private message to Iran about Iran-backed Houthis responsible for attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

    “We delivered it privately and we’re confident we’re well-prepared,” Biden tells reporters at the White House before departing to the Camp David presidential retreat for the weekend.

    This is being kept out of the MSM. Is it an ultimatum? With Biden it could be a birthday card. I suspect it will be the former. A threat of direct action on Iran if the attacks continue. We are to my eyes drawing ever nearer to the “Moment of Truth”.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/biden-says-us-sent-private-message-to-iran-about-houthi-attacks/

    1. I expect he has offered them $50 billion to stop being such beastly boys. It is the only thing gangster families know. Pay offs or gun diplomacy.

    2. How many of that 68m were born in the UK and might feel some allegiance to the country and how many of the 16 to 25 year Olds would you trust with a kitchen knife let alone an aircraft carrier?

      Canada is in the same boat mainly because we don’t have any boats of our own. The latest attempt to increase recruitment is to ensure that free tampons are available in men’s washrooms – we don’t believe that it has helped.

  82. From the Janet Daley article referred to earlier and the remark by Starmer that was ignored by members but which was the basis of the text:

    Sir Keir Starmer, who was obviously determined to begin his election campaign with a bang, ended a “question” – actually a verbose condemnation of the Prime Minister – with the words, he “does not get Britain”.

    Note that he did not say, “He doesn’t get the working people of Britain”. Or, “He does not understand how ordinary people live”. Both those observations would have been obvious – and perhaps justifiable – references to Rishi Sunak’s wealth and the difference between his family’s circumstances and those of most voters.

    But what Sir Keir actually did say – that Mr Sunak did not understand Britain – could surely have only one possible implication. That, in spite of having been born, raised and educated in this country, he was somehow alien to it: that because his parents were Indian immigrants – ones who had, in fact, led successful, fully integrated lives in this country – he did not “get” the values and attitudes of Britain.

    For the life of me, I cannot see how this statement can be interpreted in any other way. I am quite sure that Sir Keir is not a racist. I cannot imagine what he or his advisers were thinking when they scripted this line. But I am absolutely certain that, if any Tory leader had uttered such a remark about a Labour prime minister – in Parliament, no less – the sky would have fallen in. The clip of him enunciating the fatal words would have been played on a loop by the broadcast news and nobody would have allowed it to disappear into oblivion for a very long time.

    I have found (as an incomer myself) that the real people of Britain – the ones who are governed by that self-regarding caste of bien pensants – are exceptionally kind and tolerant of human differences. The racial hostility that was a brief feature of the skinhead era a generation ago is almost entirely gone. Class prejudice and the tyranny of acceptable accents is largely forgotten. Perhaps it is the complacent liberal elite who actually do not get Britain.

    Daley doesn’t explain in what context Starmer made his remark but I read them as correct because The Fakir doesn’t have long roots in this country in the way that the ancestral British do. Why would anyone be offended by this simple and obvious recognition of nationhood?

    And if Daley thinks that the attitude of the ‘skinhead’ era is gone, wait until something really big happens. Basic human nature will take over.

    (For the record, the early skinheads were great fans of some forms of 1960s black music…)

    1. If Sunak isn’t Christian he isn’t going to understand the values that underpin our society, culture and history, is he?

        1. Funny, you have a Christian name. You don’t have to be practising, just to have been brought up with the ethos surrounding you.

          1. My name is not of my choosing. It was given to me at birth. I was brought up with some Christian religious education. I don’t know about ethos but I consider the Bible to be mostly bunkum.

          3. That isn’t the point. You don’t have to believe or practise, you just need to have been brought up according to the tenets. I bet you think it’s wrong to steal and lie (two of the Ten Commandments). That is not true of other ideologies where lying is actively encouraged, for instance.

  83. In preparation for our youngest at 36 years old. Family birthday lunch tomorrow, I’m in the middle of making Focaccia to accompany his favourite Lasagne. Rosemary, garlic and olive oil to be added before the bake very soon. And possibly another glass of vino……just getting some practice in.
    So it’s good night from me.
    Sleep well all.

    1. Not from me. I don’t downvote or block. It’s daft. I much prefer to engage with people to understand their point of view.

      1. I’m with you on that. It’s no good talking about free speech then blocking and downvoting. It’s doing what you accuse others of doing.

    3. I sometimes feel that wordle is downvoting me when I get four letters and the fifth could be one of many possibilities.

  88. There’s a footy match on tv from the African Cup.
    Not much diversity on show in either team.

  90. Evening, all. The headline has two letters right; the West needs to face up to the malign influence of islam.

    2. Too late I’m afraid. They have too many in positions of influence and an increasing number of booties on the ground.

  92. A crie de coure …

    Matthew Biddlecombe
    7 HRS AGO
    Many apologies for my rant about Reform earlier. Whilst my general view of them remains the same, I certainly was angry when I posted the comments! My anger is borne out of the sheer frustration at the current state of this once great country.
    I see failure rewarded with huge bonuses, pay-outs and honours. I see the average, honest citizen being kicked and pushed around by the state with nobody to support them. I’ve been forced into virtual house arrest by a government that couldn’t be bothered to read Covid data. I see people prosecuted for, so-called, “hate crimes” whilst real criminals carry on their trade with impunity. I see a political system that is not just broken, but shattered manned by men and women that have no idea of how we live our lives. I see people struggling to pay energy bills because of this government’s stupid Net Zero policies. I see net immigration now standing at nearly 750,000 per year when all the time I’m promised by successive Prime Ministers that this will change. I see a media that has given up on investigative journalism and who seem to be becoming a part of the establishment; a part of the problem and no longer the solution. I see my history and my culture being destroyed by a handful of people who hate the country that has given them a home.
    I don’t know what the greater emotion within me is; anger or bitterness? All I do know is that with each passing day I become evermore grateful that I’m nearer the end of my life than the beginning. This is a shocking admission for me as I’ve never been the pessimistic type, having a glass that’s always half-full yet at the moment, all I feel is total and absolute despair, with no hope of anyone on the horizon to rescue us.
    As the great Terry Wogan used to say; “is it me?”

    2. It is a very despondent day when Matthew Biddlecombe is in a state of despair. I wouldnt say he had a sunny disposition but, until now, I’ve never seen him in such a grim mood.

      1. Nottlers would but most people are totally unaware of what goes on around them and will continue to vote whilst not knowing what they’re voting for.

    2. Glib and oily Mandy’s lies and mortgage I could not excuse
      Twice I sacked the sleazy bugger though his spittle shone my shoes

      [From a song by RCT at the turn of the century about the populist prime minister from a minor public school]

    1. Well they must be in regular contact to receive their bennies.

      What you really mean is that the Home Office can’t be bothered to find them.

      1. They may be getting their bennies under their second identity. While having a job or a second set of bennies under their third one…etc. All those London boroughs side by side present great opportunities!

  96. Watching ‘The Producers’. I’d forgotten what it was to laugh out loud. Stupid, but…

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