Saturday 16 April: The practicalities of flying boatloads of failed Channel migrants to Rwanda

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

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

679 thoughts on “Saturday 16 April: The practicalities of flying boatloads of failed Channel migrants to Rwanda”

  3. Good morning all.
    A pleasant start this morning, light overcast with 3°C outside.

  5. Aeneas Sue Edison • 11 hours ago

    I don’t believe the Russians. I don’t believe the Ukrainians. Apparently, questioning the Russian explanation of anything is verboten on this message board. I am close to leaving.

    Citroen1 Aeneas • 6 hours ago

    #metoo. I’ve been fed up with Minty’s preachy crap for many a year and that other Russian Californian’s crap who asserts that we ought to believe whatever he says because he’s a long-time Orthodox. My God he’s bogus and I loathe every aspect of his propaganda. God I hate him, in part because one of my very best friends, now dead, was the daughter of a Russian Princess who would have blown every aspect of that little turd’s assertions out of the water.

    http://disq.us/p/2oe9xpx

    When I was very young I used to believe that a frank exchange of views would lead to a “clearing of the air” and the solution of problems. Now that I’m much older I know that it just leads to further acrimony and eventual breakdown. It would do this Wonderful Blog; that allows us to say what we please; no service to respond in kind to Citroen’s assertions or Aeneas’s threat. Free Speech requires, that you must by necessity, be prepared to read and hear what which you do not like; to think otherwise is self-deception. I do not expect everyone, or indeed a majority, to share my interest in Geopolitics and History. To those who do and disagree there is a “Reply” tab at the bottom of every one of my comments and to those who do not there is a blocking mechanism that will spare them the agony of reading them.

    1. There is only one person I have blocked since I have been on this board. I have not said I disagree with any points made, apart from replies I have made to individual comments. My point was that this board seems to be overwhelmingly pro-Russian and pro-Putin. I am very sceptical of both Ukrainian and Russian reports, and I find it irksome to find that one side of the argument is pushed on this board, which up to now I have found to be a friendly discussion forum of like-minded people. I did not ‘threaten’ to leave – I am not egotistical enough to believe that anyone would note my departure or miss my contributions.

      Citreon1’s reply to my post I found to be framed in language which was excessive (to put it mildly). Passions can get excited, especially after a few drinks have been consumed. Let’s hope that posters return to their previous polite way of expressing their opinions.

      1. I no longer tend to post after 7pm. I too easily get into trouble.

        After being so obviously lied to over Brexit and Covid i no longer believe Western Media in anything said. That leaves me more inclined to hear and listen and judge an alternate (Russian) view.

        Our very own Secret Squirrels warned of this happening.

        As Minty says. There is a blocking option.

        BTW. We don’t want to lose anyone over a difference of opinion. Including your good self.

        1. I wasn’t complaining about a difference of opinion. I have disagreed with people on this board over other matters, most especially my view of the monarchy. It’s when one side of an argument is voiced overwhelmingly that I find suffocating.

          2. Good advice, but there could come a time where I think – “I couldn’t be arsed”.

          3. Good advice, but there could come a time where I think – “I couldn’t be arsed”.

        2. Isn’t it sad?
          So much has been exposed about the mendacity of our ruling class, that we can no longer believe in ‘our’ side.
          There have always been ‘state secrets’ but they were largely for the protection of this country. Nowadays, the exact opposite seems to be the case. Have our politicians become feebler or more treasonous? Have supposedly better communications merely exposed many years of the status quo?
          Is this deliberate or mere c0ck-up?

      2. One of the problems in the way the Ukraine Conflict is being reported is not only the almost total absence of any Russian input, but the total demonisation of Putin without any attempt to recognise factors that may explain his actions.
        Note I said explain, not excuse as there is no excuse for such actions, but there is an almost total lack of mention of factors that, until recently, had been widely reported, such as the strongly Fascist elements within The Ukraine’s militias and the continual bombardment of the Russian speaking areas of the Donbas region.

        Sadly, trying to understand and learn about these missing factors is being interpreted as being “pro-Putin”.

        1. I tried to have a discussion with my younger brother in which I tried to give an explanation of why Putin and the Russians would not feel comfortable with the expansion of NATO, and also told him about the Ukrainian aggression in the Donbas region. His only information about the situation had come from the MSM. He accused me of sympathising with the Russians.

          1. I’ve tried to posit an alternative view to people by offering this analysis.
            https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine/
            The general responses have been he’s pro Putin so MRD award, it’s a conspiracy site and can’t be trusted or too words to the effect of it’s long I can’t be bothered.
            (It has been posted on Nottle before, I wonder how many actually read it to the end.)

          3. Goodness. Reads like the author knows something about the situation and history. That will never do.
            I note particularly: It is easy to be combative with the blood of others.

          4. Very telling:
            “As we can see, more than 80% of the victims in Donbass were the result of the Ukrainian army’s shelling. For years, the West remained silent about the massacre of Russian-speaking Ukrainians by the government of Kiev, without ever trying to bring pressure on Kiev. It is this silence that forced the Russian side to act. [Source: “Conflict-related civilian casualties,“ United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.]

          6. To understand Putin’s mindset you have to go back to the breakup of the USSR and look at the assurances and promises given to the struggling Russia and subsequently ignored.
            Russians are also well aware that, as they were struggling to rebuild their country, former Soviet apparatchiks and nomenklatura were asset stripping the place, being nobly assisted in laundering their ill gotten gains by Western financial institutions.
            And that is before we even touch upon the corruption between The Ukraine and the Biden family as exposed by Hunter Biden’s laptop.

          7. I am aware of the background to this conflict. I can understand why Putin has the attitude he has. What makes it so uncomfortable for me is that Russia has invaded a sovereign country, causing huge destruction, thousands of deaths and millions of people fleeing their homes. Is the fact that there has effectively been a war in the Donbas for the past eight years justification for military action by Russia? I have grave reservations, to put it mildly.

          8. The crowing attitude of the west towards Russia in the 1990s was not helpful.
            The winner should always be magnaminous in victory.
            I do wonder if the US’s Puritan foundations make it so uncompromising.

          9. Aeneas, can I suggest you turn to sosraboc’s link (theprostit.com…. etc.) above and read it in full?

          10. I have already read part of it, and so far it contains nothing with which I am unfamiliar.

          12. “In other words, we can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack. But WE (that is: the United States, France and the European Union in the lead) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out”.

            I don’t disagree with the author’s opinion. It is the first part of his first sentence which resonates with me, despite acknowledging the role of the West in not addressing Russian concerns.

      3. I know you aren’t fishing for compliments, but I would miss you – I find myself upvoting your comments very often, and I appreciate your sense of humour.

  6. Morning all

    The practicalities of flying boatloads of failed Channel migrants to Rwanda

    SIR – As a former director (for ports) of the then UK Immigration Service, I predict that the Home Secretary’s latest plan to counter cross-Channel immigrants is destined for failure.

    Who will select those to be removed to Rwanda and what criteria will be used? The sheer practicality of removing hundreds of migrants by air to Rwanda is fraught with danger and difficulty. I shudder to imagine a planeload of migrants intent on staying in Britain being forced to fly 4,000 miles away for possible resettlement. The lawyers must be rubbing their hands with glee.

    In Rwanda their claims would be considered – presumably by British staff sent for the purpose. Those whose claims are successful stay there – presumably at Rwanda’s future cost. What say will the Rwandans have in the process, given that the migrants may be settled there?

    Those whose claims are rejected will, presumably, need to be returned whence they came. Who is going to be responsible for organising that? What proportion of those who land here will be sent to Rwanda? In the words of the Telegraph leader (April 15), “a cynic might think that the optics matter more to the Government than any practical outcome”.

    Very little mention has been made of one part of the proposed deal – which is to resettle “a portion of Rwanda’s most vulnerable refugees” here in Britain. So, we send “refugees” to Rwanda for possible resettlement, but for reasons which are not clear we take vulnerable refugees from Rwanda and bring them here. Eh?

    All this would be at huge cost.

    This is before the refugee organisations, lawyers and the judiciary get their teeth into it and send the plans into a tailspin.

    Peter Higgins,

    West Wickham, Kent

    SIR – In reality I’m sure the Government does not want to send anyone to Rwanda. It wants the prospect of being sent to Rwanda to act as a deterrent to stop people from trying to enter Britain illegally.

    Peter Wells,

    East Haddon, Northamptonshire

    SIR – One of the main arguments of critics of the government scheme for sending some illegal Channel migrants to Rwanda is that they are fleeing oppression in their own countries.

    However, no one seems to mention that they have reached safety in Europe before handing over cash to criminal people smugglers in France.

    Frank Murray,

    Torthorwald, Dumfriesshire

    SIR – On BBC television, Bénédicte Paviot of France 24 said that the French government was working hard to help stem the flow of migrant boats across the Channel. The failure of these efforts has resulted in a British proposal to fly some to Rwanda.

    A vastly cheaper solution would be for France to accept the return of such migrants, to be kept there while their UK asylum claim is processed – costs borne by the British Government. The illegal route would then be unviable and the traffic would quickly cease.

    It is such an obvious solution that I suspect France will not agree to it.

    Tim Green,

    Cutteslowe, Oxfordshire

  7. Memories of inky fingers and scuffed shoes

    SIR – On the subject of evocative smells (Letters, April 13), opening a drawer at work and smelling rubbers and pencils, I was immediately transported back to my primary schooldays decades before.

    Marnie Pedley,

    Corfe Mullen, Dorset

    Sharpened memories: the smell of a pencil can transport you back to schooldays

    Sharpened memories: the smell of a pencil can transport you back to schooldays

    SIR – I can confirm the sometimes very peculiar connection between smell and memory. Out walking recently, I was able to confirm that some black berries were actually juniper by their distinctive smell. Later, I was plagued by a familiar tune that popped into my head and would not go away. I spent a long time repeating it and trying to sing it to my husband, before realising it was the song Jennifer Juniper by Donovan, dating from 1968.

    Isabel Page,

    Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire

    1. Some years back, I was walking home after a shower of rain.
      A scent hit me and I nearly burst into tears.
      It was the smell of damp, dusty privet; took me back to my childhood in post-war London.
      Apparently the sense of smell is the most primitive of all the five senses.

      1. It felt damned strange when we lost our senses of smell at the beginning of last December. Even now it doesn’t seem quite right. I can smell a sort of chemical in my left nostril and MOH practically vomits when she smells onions, raw or cooking. It’s screwed up my cooking as onions were my go to ingredient for practically everything.

        1. That’s not fun. Have had almost no sense of smell for several years now, only briefly restored when squirting chemicals up me schnozz. Food becomes awfully dull when all you have to go on is texture, heat, and tongue flavours. Helps you lose weight, but it takes yet another joy of living away. Why have nice (expensive) dinner when a cheap sandwich has the same effect in dampening hunger and tastes the same (ie, wet cardboard)?

      2. I love the smell of wet earth. At the start of the rainy season in Nigeria, small clouds would come from the south, and evaporate. Then. they’d go past, heading North. Then bigger one, then ones with grey patches, then, suddenly, that amazing smell of wet earth would appear, and the next day, with a roar like you get when Wales score against England at the Arms Park, the rain fell. As a kid, I’d go and run about in it – first rain for 9 months or so. Still evokes the same emotions even now.

      3. In the 1960s there was an area of the Royal Courts of Justice (known as the “Bear Garden”) which smelt EXACTLY like the building in which my prep school lived. Going there every day as an articled clerk, I has taken back years in a trice!!

    2. Juniper look nothing like a blackberry. Is he woman deranged? Bit more like a blackcurrant, but why would a blackcurrant grow in a (very distinctive) Juniper bush?

      1. To be fair, she says “black berries” – two words, describing the colour of the berries.

        1. True. My bad. Need more coffee… I tell juniper by the bush they grow on. Firstborn has many at his farm.

  8. SIR – Extinction Rebellion protesters recently blocked the entrances of Lloyd’s of London and glued themselves to the Business Department in Whitehall (report, April 14). The police, you report, “handled the activists gently” to avoid them damaging their skin. Why?

    These people are not going to suffer for their annoying actions unless the police leave them glued to doors and floors. If the police are not going to arrest them, they should ignore them until they are desperate enough to beg for help. It’s almost as if the police are on the protesters’ side.

    Robin Nonhebel,

    Swanage, Dorset

    1. ‘It’s almost as if the police are on the protesters’ side’.

      They are. Just as Border Force and the RNLI are on the side of the illegal economic migrants.

      It will come back to bite them though. Us too unfortunately.

      1. The entire state machine is dedicated to the eradication of choice, freedom and individuality.

  9. Good morning my friends

    Devices to stop drivers speeding could be mandatory in all new cars
    Measures, which would be introduced for safety reasons, would be likely to be backed by environmental campaigners
    Speed limiters could be fitted to all new cars under government plans to fall in line with a controversial European Union ruling.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/15/eu-style-devices-stop-drivers-speeding-may-fitted-new-cars/

    The next thing is that you shall have to have someone waving an EU flag walking in front of your car so that you do not ever exceed 7 k.p.h.

    And you will be happy!

    1. I think this is a bad idea. The ability to accelerate out of a dangerous situation is important, for example overtaking a HGV in rain to get past the spray.

      1. Of course it’s a bad idea!
        It’s merely part of the campaign to stop the plebs from having the freedom of a car, small step by small step.

        1. So you’re saying, blackbox2, (© Cathy Newman) that the eventual aim of the government is to wheel clamp every single car? Lol.

    2. I think this is a bad idea. The ability to accelerate out of a dangerous situation is important, for example overtaking a HGV in rain to get past the spray.

    5. Isn’t part of the German autobahn system de-restricted I.e. no speed limit? How will the Germans react to having speed limiters fitted to their cars?

      1. I think it will merely formalise a system that informally already exists. You drive at whatever speed you want, but if they can prove you were doing more than 130 km/hr and you’re involved in an accident, they will throw the book at you.

      2. I was reading an article last week suggesting speed limits on the autobahn. I don’t believe in coincidence.

    6. Why should we fall in line with EU rulings, controversial or not? I thought we had left the EU.

  10. This is what happens when you have a Parliament and Civil Service full of PPE graduates, and no engineering expertise in sight.

    The great hydrogen swindle – ‘green’ gas is not what it seems. Hydrogen’s intrinsic physical properties create a whole range of unique problems.

    Andrew Orlowski

    Engineers will rarely tell you something is impossible, even when your proposal is a very bad idea. Computer scientists at Stanford and MIT in the 1970s came up with a wonderful expression for this, an assignment that was technically feasible, but highly undesirable. They called it “kicking a dead whale down a beach”. The folklore compendium The Hacker’s Dictionary defines this as a “slow, difficult, and disgusting process”. Yes, you can do it like that. But you really don’t want to.

    In its efforts to show the world how keenly it is embracing CO2 emission targets, our Government has left a lot of dead whales on the beach for us, and as consumers, we’ll be the ones doing the kicking.

    For example, it’s not impossible to heat a home with a heat pump, but it is a very noisy, ineffective and expensive way of doing it. An electric car might be fun to drive, but it is also expensive, and because of the inferior energy density of batteries, a petrol equivalent will always be lighter and go further. Nor at the end of the day will an EV be able to boast any CO2 emissions savings, we now know, thanks to Volvo. But perhaps the greatest whale to land on our beach is hydrogen.
    Advertisement

    Every day, manufacturers announce that they’re working on some kind of hydrogen initiative.

    These include our best and brightest companies, such as Rolls-Royce and JCB. The Government has a Hydrogen Strategy. The Climate Change Committee thinks hydrogen is wonderful. You may think these are all signs that it’s a good idea. But things are not what they seem.

    Hydrogen has two big problems which turn any project into a dead whale exercise.

    The first is that pure hydrogen doesn’t exist – it’s both everywhere and nowhere. We must generate all the hydrogen we can then use, and this requires a lot of energy. This is fine when the output of the process is something very valuable to us, such as fertiliser. But less so when the output of the process must compete with much cheaper commodities, as it must in an energy market.

    Secondly, hydrogen’s intrinsic physical properties create a whole range of unique problems. It’s a tiny atom that easily escapes confinement. Keeping it captive for storage is expensive, and moving it around safely even more so, because in liquid form it must be very cold.

    Hydrogen advocates tend to shrug off these issues – solving them will be someone else’s problem, they reckon. Individually, none of these factors make hydrogen as an energy carrier or storer impossible, but the whale-like properties are becoming harder to ignore.

    To replace gas boilers with hydrogen boilers requires thousands of miles of new, much thicker, high-pressure pipes. Last year, Lord Martin Callanan, the energy minister, candidly described the plans to replace our gas boilers with hydrogen boilers “as pretty much impossible”.

    Wrong, m’Lud. It’s not impossible – it’s just a supremely bad idea. And when hydrogen explodes, it is quite spectacular. Right on cue, Australia’s first hydrogen carrying ship set sail for Japan this year, and burst into flames on its maiden voyage.

    Again, hydrogen powered transport is not impossible, it’s just hampered by reality. Liquified hydrogen may be as light as petrol or kerosene, but keeping it at -257C requires much heavier apparatus. Converting a two engine turboprop from kerosene to hydrogen, I noted here recently, increases the weight of the engine from two tonnes to 13 tonnes.

    As for storage, the story is little better. Wind often generates electricity when it is not needed (and doesn’t generate it when it is needed). So when the wind is blowing, the hydrogen lobby argues, we can create “green hydrogen” using electrolysis. These electrolysers are expensive, and sensitive, and switching them on intermittently to produce the mythical green hydrogen isn’t economic.

    So green hydrogen is really not one, but two dead whales, engaged in a gruesome act of congress.

    In his devastating assessment of the Government’s energy paper, Prof Dieter Helm calls it a “lobbyist’s utopia”. Prof Helm, an energy expert, describes how rent-seekers “[react] to each problem… by inventing another intervention. Each has unintended consequences, and these unintended consequences need more ‘fixes’”. That’s green hydrogen in a nutshell.

    Green hydrogen may be generated reliably and cheaply using high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors (HTGRs), a technology the Japanese have been refining for two decades. Japan’s first HTGR opened in 1997, but incredibly, was out of commission for a decade.

    The history of nuclear energy is full of such stories, of untapped potential, and of avenues not explored. Our own Government tepidly hopes for a “HTGR demonstration by the early 2030s at the latest.” But even with a fleet of HTGRs generating hydrogen, the nasty stuff still needs to be stored and moved, and those costs haven’t gone away. Using hydrogen remains the worst way of doing almost anything.

    Special interest groups however have discovered that the magic words “net zero” have the same incantatory power as “Open Sesame!”. In Arabian Nights, the phrase opened up a cave full of treasure. Here, they open up an unlimited trove of research grants and subsidies, and tap into abundant buckets of ill-directed “green” capital. The dead whale is never removed from the beach – and perhaps that’s the point.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/04/16/great-hydrogen-swindle-green-gas-not-seems/

    1. Here we go again…idealogues rushing away with the latest campaign for an impractical technology.
      Government has no business mixing itself up in this kind of thing. If the industrial revolution had been left to Government, every farm would have been given subsidies to build a railway branch line onto their property! Or to transport their goods to market via hot air balloons!

    2. Here we go again…idealogues rushing away with the latest campaign for an impractical technology.
      Government has no business mixing itself up in this kind of thing. If the industrial revolution had been left to Government, every farm would have been given subsidies to build a railway branch line onto their property! Or to transport their goods to market via hot air balloons!

    3. I have always said hydrogen is a poor solution to any problem, as first, energy must be used to create it (with losses), and then it needs stored somehow. At best, it solves the slow refueling of vehicles, but is otherwise an energy transport medium. The other is its propensity to go BANG! very loudly indeed. Easter about 3 years ago, I was standing on the terrace enjoying the sun, when this Christ-awful deep BOOOOMMM! echoed across the valley, followed shortly by sirens starting. Very reminiscent of the Canary Wharf bomb, it was. That was the hydrogen filling station the other side of town blowing up. Fortunately, nobody was refuelling, but many cars on the motorway close by were jolted enough to fire their airbags…

      1. I disagree. Hydrogen is a great solution, but we are not investing sufficiently in it to store and transport it safely.

        For every penny wasted on a windmill or solar, we could have put it into a genuine next generation fuel.

        1. That tiny molecule diffuses well into, for example, steels, changing their behaviour such as fracture toughness, and generating internal stresses that can cause spontaneous fractures. Aluminium – diffuses right through, so not much H is left. Ignites well, burns fast, takes a load of power (where from?) to create whether by electrolysis or by reforming hydrocarbons, difficult to handle in liquid form and not a lot of energy in compressed form.
          It’s only sensible use is for making voices squeaky.

          1. I didn’t know a lot of that, yet i stand by my point – if we don’t bother investing, we’ll never get to using it.

            I appreciate it’s not a panacea, but without active investment nothing will ever change.

        2. That tiny molecule diffuses well into, for example, steels, changing their behaviour such as fracture toughness, and generating internal stresses that can cause spontaneous fractures. Aluminium – diffuses right through, so not much H is left. Ignites well, burns fast, takes a load of power (where from?) to create whether by electrolysis or by reforming hydrocarbons, difficult to handle in liquid form and not a lot of energy in compressed form.
          It’s only sensible use is for making voices squeaky.

    4. There is, of course; no reason whatsoever to reduce our CO2 emissions. None whatsoever.

      What would be nice is to plant lots of trees. As in millions of them. Let’s say, whereever HS2 is supposed ot go, and the fools want to put up windmills.

      Not on arable farmland, but in cities – bulldoze Luton and Birmingham and just plant a massive forest.

      I’m always reminded of this sketch whenever government waffles on about things it knows nothing about (which is everything):

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

    1. A smokescreen to pretend the vaccines and heart attacks are a good thing because new research is finding the benefits from the odd fatality/attack.
      ha bluddy ha.

    2. Well I suppose if you die from the experimental mRNA heart attack treatment, then you won’t have any more heart attacks…

  12. ANDREW NEIL: Biden’s now ready to arm Ukraine to the hilt… Germany and France must pull their weight too

    Keep going boys and girls, keep going. Escalate the war so that it bursts through its current confines.

    The question I would like answered is why are you all so very keen on starting WW3?

    Are you hoping that predominately white Western Europe can be drawn into a huge conflagration without nuclear exchanges and that vast populations move and are killed, to be replaced by Africans and people from the over-populated meddle east and Asia?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10722981/ANDREW-NEIL-Bidens-ready-arm-Ukraine-hilt.html

    Edit: I spotted my meddle east typo, but I’ll leave it as a happily accurate error

    1. I was talking to a friend about this yesterday. We were speculating on whether the European nations would be able to raise an army of young people to go off and be slaughtered, as they did in 1914.

      TPTB have spent the last couple of generations breaking down national borders. Many people don’t live in the country that they or their parents were born in. Others owe their allegiance to islam rather than the country in which they live.

      One of my children told me that the foreign volunteers in the Ukraine had their mobile phones with them and were posting photos on social media. Her take was “my generation is so stupid, they can’t imagine life without their phones, they gave away information on social media, and I don’t want to be part of an army depending for my life on idiots like that.”

      Last but not least, how many straight white men will go to war for a country that despises them, to protect women who can take them to the cleaners after a divorce?

      So my next question is, assuming Mr Global realises he can’t easily raise an army – what will he do then? Avoid a face to face war and hope to wear Russia down with a proxy war? Step up the propaganda? Pass conscription laws (for men and women)? Try to persuade or bully India and other regional powers to come over to the West’s side?

      Since Russia put the rouble back on the gold standard, it’s fair to assume that the western globalists will want Russia crushed, and we know they also want to put their own countries into digital slavery (if anyone doubts that the WEF’s You Will Own Nothing plan is going full steam ahead, look on the digital.NHS website, where there is currently an advertisement for a Delivery Manager for the digital covid pass that we’re supposed to believe isn’t being implemented).

      If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say they might try to keep the proxy war running while they implement the digital ids in the west, and clamp down on the internet. But meanwhile, India and China are supporting the rouble by buying Russian oil, and the Arabs seem quite happy with that situation too. Plus, the whole dollar crisis might blow up in Mr Global’s face before they are ready to launch a CBDC.
      I hope the Russians keep cool heads. A repeat of the Great War would be a tragedy beyond belief.

      1. Agree on almost all counts.
        Wearing Russia down will require manpower that won’t be available. Unless W Europe persuades the Islamic folk that irregular warfare like Afghanistan is in their interests the wearing down will not happen in the way it did there or in Vietnam.

  13. Good morning, all. Rather brighter today – and the weather is much the same. Thank you for your concern.

    We watched yet another very highly lauded film which turned out to be bollox. “The Favourite”. Well worth missing.

    1. Is that the film where Queen Anne is outed as a lesbo?
      Played, inevitably, by Olivia Coleman.
      Never saw it, just read the hooha.
      And it’s luvverly to see you in fine(ish) fettle.

      1. Yes – the MR is a fan of O Colperson. I ain’t. She has a smile face or a grumpy face. That’s it. In this farrago, she had a grumpy face.

        Yes – posh lesbo romp – lots of “F” and “C” words tossed about. Plus a bit of flogging. Ludicrous dialogue. “You are brilliant”. I think not. “OK” deffo not. “Posh” no no….

        I’ll have a lie down.

        1. Thank you for the film review. Now I don’t have to feel bad about missing a film that I have no time to watch anyway.

          1. It is the 4th film this year that we recorded because of the universal praise that was rubbish.

          3. Yup, I have often been thankful for those little “Shortlisted for the Booker Prize” stickers giving me fair warning of pretentious, unreadable left wing drivel!

          4. If you want to watch some recent films which are not rubbish, may I recommend the following three: Belfast, The Duke, and Phantom of the Open. Possible additions may well be Operation Mincemeat and Downton Abbey 2, which are the next two films lined up for my Wrinklies’ Film Club to watch and which I’ll review on this site later on in the month.

          5. The Phantom one looks possible – though, yet again, it has been lauded to the heavens — which is off-putting (see the neat pun?)

            The Mincemeat film I gather is far from the reality. Having read Ewen Montagu’s book when I was 12, I am sceptical about any veracity in a film made nearly 70 years later. The clothing, vehicles etc will all be far too clean and sparkling for a start…..

          6. That is what surprises me about period vehicles in films, Bill. Their owners obviously keep them in a pristine condition, but what is to stop the film’s makers from spraying a gentle non-abrasive “dust” over them just before filming and hosing them down afterwards for a more realistic “look”? And I have to confess that the Phantom film is not quite as good as Belfast and The Duke.

          7. A lot come from museums. I’ll bet sixpence that there is a term in the contract prohibiting any such treatment…!

          8. Raise you to ninepence, Bill, and see you. Lol. (PS – in many modern films a car crash happens off screen and then we see a spotless close-up of a mudguard or some such parked tightly up to a tree.)

          9. Go on ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ or ‘IMDB’ and look at what ordinary people have to say about a film. Never listen to the pro critics.

            If any genre of film scores more than 70% it is normally watchable.

            Good morning. Glad you got your spring in your step back.

          10. I do. I don’t.

            I follow the whims of the MR. It is better that she learns by watching dross that it IS dross than trying to persuade her not to be led astray by the “expert” critics.

      1. Not bad, young Grizzly, although I have put on a bit of weight this past week.

  15. 352006+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Saturday 16 April: The practicalities of flying boatloads of failed Channel migrants to Rwanda

    The political overseers are expanding the Dover controlled illegal campaign swapping
    Dover illegals for Rwanda units in some form of illegal “cleansing” exercise.
    The United Kingdom end up with the same number only the tory (ino) supporter/ member / voters are satisfied something is being done, just in time for the May elections,AKA fodder for fools.

    So seemingly NOT a case of stopping more a case of swopping.

      3. The People’s Party, People’s Dome, the People’s Lottery
        I am the People’s laxative so the People swallow me
        Pragmatic opportunism has given me success
        A sad girl died and so I dubbed her: The People’s Princess

        [ironic impersonation of Blair]

    1. “Nor should they, it’s an idiotic scheme. The simple & obvoius solution is to send them back to France where they come from. ” (the spelling of obvoius from tweet left in btw)

      But they didn’t come from France did they and like an un-flushable turd they will surely reappear by another route .

      1. Then that which attracts them must stop. Free anything and everything. Show NI card before health treatment, or pay full fee. No cash handouts, no accommodation, no nowt.

        2. You know that, I know that, the PTB know that, You know that the PTB know that we know etc etc etc but whatever we may say the response to that eminently sensible notion will be. “Cry RACIST!!! and let slip the hounds of Law”

        3. Then they’d disappear into the black economy where they’d be even more dangerous. We should treat them all as criminals. Finger prints, dentals swab, DNA. Assume they’re violent offenders from the outset.

          What bothers me is that amongst the 91% of single men – there are families and young children. Why didn’t they stay in France?

        5. Agree. Jail them as soon as they get here in old military barracks with armed guards and electric fences around them. No privileges of any sort.

    2. “Nor should they, it’s an idiotic scheme. The simple & obvoius solution is to send them back to France where they come from. ” (the spelling of obvoius from tweet left in btw)

      But they didn’t come from France did they and like an un-flushable turd they will surely reappear by another route .

    3. “Nor should they, it’s an idiotic scheme. The simple & obvoius solution is to send them back to France where they come from. ” (the spelling of obvoius from tweet left in btw)

      But they didn’t come from France did they and like an un-flushable turd they will surely reappear by another route .

    4. Don’t worry Ogga, after the May elections it will all be quietly forgotten, and the few token “asylum seekers” sent to Ruanda

      will be quietly allowed to re-enter UK to live the rest of their days in a council house on benefits.

    5. Stapleford is a sad idiot who should either post, or be damned.

      As for human rights complaints – I don’t care. The gimmigrants had a choice. They should have applied – and be refused – legally.

    2. I’ll stick to my cup of black coffee and 2 slices of homemade sourdough toast after walking the dog, thanks.

    3. I like M+S but….The bacon has to have crispy edges. The yolk needs to be soft. The sausages need to have meat in them.

    1. MB and I have just had a heartless titter over that one.
      Now, there’s a thought; offer every ‘asylum seeker’ a scratch card. No ID, no chance to scoop the pool since they need a bank account.
      “Oh dear, Sir; you come from (insert shitehole of choice here). Sorry, nothing to do with us.”

  21. Morning, all Y’all.
    🙂
    First world problem: Delayed breakfast, as the coffee machine got an airlock, and wouldn’t make coffee… :-((

    1. I am certain that the lorry driver will be prosecuted for assault on the poor, defenceless protester.

        1. Isn’t that how the chap who made cakes after whom the Park is named used to fly?

      2. Good morning Bill, how are you feeling?
        Thé rather warm night caused sleeplessness this end…
        *
        Perhaps the term “assault” needs re-definition….

          3. “A pessimist is an optimist who is never disappointed.” And good morning!

  23. Why Elon Musk has rattled them. Spiked 16 April 2022.

    But that’s not what Musk’s critics are worried about. They’re terrified that he is the real deal – that this is indeed a kind of ethical venture on his part to free up Twitter from censorship. As Musk put it at a TED conference in Vancouver yesterday: ‘Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, so it’s really important that people have both the reality and perception that they are able to speak freely, in the bounds of the law.’ This is what curdles his critics’ blood.

    Free Speech has always been and always will be the Enemy of Tyranny. This is why 77 Brigade exists; why the internet is slowly being strangled, why the MSM is replete with lies at every level. Musk is right! We must all resist any attempt to curtail the right to say what we please.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/15/why-elon-musk-has-rattled-them/

  24. Why Elon Musk has rattled them. Spiked 16 April 2022.

    But that’s not what Musk’s critics are worried about. They’re terrified that he is the real deal – that this is indeed a kind of ethical venture on his part to free up Twitter from censorship. As Musk put it at a TED conference in Vancouver yesterday: ‘Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, so it’s really important that people have both the reality and perception that they are able to speak freely, in the bounds of the law.’ This is what curdles his critics’ blood.

    Free Speech has always been and always will be the Enemy of Tyranny. This is why 77 Brigade exists; why the internet is slowly being strangled, why the MSM is replete with lies at every level. Musk is right! We must all resist any attempt to curtail the right to say what we please.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/15/why-elon-musk-has-rattled-them/

  25. I can only empathise with Wibbling, who described yesterday how he was having to buy cheap shelves in an attempt to sort out and consolidate his stuff.

    We are living in chaos at the moment – we are having new ceilings in the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. (among other window work and repair to the outside gable elevation). I never realised we had so much STUFF! I am gradually clearing out, as the rooms have to be largely empty before the builders start. The mess is enormous as there isn’t that much space to empty the contents of thos 3 rooms into.

    Also, we are trying to save a bit of money by stripping some of the paper off the walls by the ceiling, where the ceiling curves in our bedroom due to the roof slope. I have been here 30+ years and that paper was here when I came…I have been concerned that the plaster underneath would come away in chunks as this is an Edwardian house.

    To live in chaos and mess is depressing, apart from the fact that you can’t really get to clean the place! The builder who is coming is friend, and just a well as he has been telling us that he will start “within the next 2 weeks” for the last 6 weeks – he knows that I am not happy, but he is avery good and worth waiting for.

    It’s awful being in such an unequal position – if I complain then (friendship apart) he can just go on to his next job, and it’s no skin off his nose. I believe that when he does a job people extend what they want him to do, while they’ve got him. He is very in demand because he is so thorough and good at what he does, so I just have to button it and wait. Grrr.

    2. I hate mess. It bothers my brain.
      Once when we moved house about 30 years ago, SWMBO spent weeks putting stuff in boxes. REsult: stuff we needed to use was lost in a box, the house looked like it had been robbed, and there were boxes everywhere, so you couldn’t move. AAARGH!
      The next move, I paid the removal firm to just pack everything. The day of the move, we gave them the key, took our Amaryllis (still have it) and went. That evening, everything was in the new house, boxes in the garage as instructed. No stress. Arranged the (empty) furniture in the house (easy), and started at the first box in the garage for emptying. Rapidly designated two boxed – one for throw-away, one for charity shop, and kept going until the boxes had been empties, put out in the right place, or disposed of. No stress.

      1. It’s much harder if you don’t have a garage.
        My first move was a disaster – there were 3 floors & the men didn’t bother to put the correct things/boxes in the right rooms. They were literally all over the place, all wrong (except kitchen)…& all stacked up in the centre of the rooms.
        They had emptied my desk drawers & these had spilled. Ghastly chaos.
        I had requested that they be careful with the room allocation – ignored.
        They were a large estate agent doing removals.
        In the most recent move I chose local people, small company nearby, & they were calm & put everything in the right room.
        Made SO much difference.

        1. In all the embuggeration to do with Mother’s house, my experience echoes yours exactly, Rose, as regards small local firms. Flexible, diligent, helpful, and usually cheaper.

          1. Yes that was the case.
            We should help every small business where we can these days, too.
            The other firm was blasé- selling Bath houses for 1 to 3 million all the time…

    3. It was like that for me in my original move from Bath.
      They were large Victorian rooms & I had been there 15 years.
      I thought I had done a lot of clearing & downsizing, but had literally forgotten what was behind wardrobes for example, never mind the huge airing cupboard!
      I’ve now downsized twice, & given so much away (to charity). Hard to sell things nowadays, or for only a pittance.
      In 2021 even the charities were full up!
      Trouble is one needs space to do the sorting…

    4. STUFF!?!? Don’t tell me about STUFF! I am wearing a groove down to the charity shop.
      The one thing that I haven’t kept is a mouse or keyboard that would allow me to decommission my old iMac before it goes to that great Google centre in the sky.

      1. I have mice and keyboards a-plenty. What do you need? Someone will have my email address to contact me.

    6. We are slowly cleaning out stuff in anticipation of a move to a condominium apartment later this year. We are down to selecting just the few items that we need, it is too disheartening to go through everything.

    7. It’s not bad to have a good clear-out of stuff every few years. We were seven years in a rented house before we bought our current one, and I had made the mistake of not having a big clear out in that time. When we came to move, it was a huge task. Now I have regular small sorting and throwing sessions.

    8. I do sympathise. I have been in that situation over the conservatory replacement (and I’m only just beginning to get half-way straight due to having so much stuff to store). Shortly it will start all over again as I am having some insulation added internally to the external walls of the sitting room. One day …

  26. And another thing about “The Favourite” film. While some of the music was contemporary, the tune they played a great deal, by Schubert, was written 110 years after Queen Anne died.

    2. When it was released, Hello magazine did a feature on the costumes. With all the hype, I was interested so took a look. The designer admitted to making it essentially contemporary, with just a nod to Queen Anne. That alone put me off ever watching the movie. There are always some concessions to current modes in period drama but this went way too far.

  27. Do you pass the waist ratio test? Forget your weight or BMI, there’s a new magic formula scientists say really DOES reveal how healthy you are.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

    The rule I was taught as a child was:

    Twice round one’s thumb once round one’s wrist;
    Twice round one’s wrist once round one’s neck;
    Twice round one’s neck once round your waist.
    And twice round your waist equals your height.

    By that reckoning, based on my waist measurement, I should be 7’6″.

    Any other Nottlers prepared to be so frank and honest?

    1. Wouldn’t work with Marfans…my wrist is about 1-2” “too small”.
      Have to have watches altered so they don’t slip off. Costs a lot.
      It’s one of the telltale signs of Marfan Syndrome.

    3. I’m about 5’4″ (or I was before old age shrinkage) and my waist (which I haven’t measured lately) is about 30″. So I’m probably within the ratio.

    5. I start badly.
      I must have a very thin thumb vs the wrist and then a relatively thin wrist for the wrist to neck.
      The neck to waist and then waist to height is spot on.

    6. I am 3″ shorter than I should be – I put that down to the increased force of gravity

    7. I will try the test in Summer, at the moment Canadians are still carrying excess nutritional winter baggage.

    8. According to the last one, I should be 6’4″ – I’ve always said I’m short for my weight 🙂

  28. Do you pass the waist ratio test? Forget your weight or BMI, there’s a new magic formula scientists say really DOES reveal how healthy you are.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

    The rule I was taught as a child was:

    Twice round one’s thumb once round one’s wrist;
    Twice round one’s wrist once round one’s neck;
    Twice round one’s neck once round your waist.
    And twice round your waist equals your height.

    By that reckoning, based on my waist measurement, I should be 7’6″.

    Any other Nottlers prepared to be so frank and honest?

    1. The Germans chose Merkle & the Greens, not AfD….they can live with the consequences.

      1. Exactly. Why dig them out of a hole they purposefully climbed in to? At great personal cost?

      2. A majority (me not included) in the UK voted for a Conservative party but got a Green one, and we have to live with the consequences.

        1. True… but in Germany the Greens & Merkle were up front about their intentions…unlike here.

      3. Most of them do not make the connection…those that do, probably voted AfD already!!

    4. Good old retired general sir Nick Parker eh !
      I expect his huge pension would be the envy of thousands and would even support at least 500 people per annum.

    5. Eff that for a game of soldiers.
      The Krauts did well out of WWII. Infrastructure replaced FOC.

    6. Germans have been told to turn off their heating, save electricity and not use their cars to lower their country’s dependence on Russian oil.

      Remarkably similar to what they were told to do for climate change and for covid. Funny, that.

  32. Flying boats could land on the Zambezi…but I digress.
    If I have copied it correctly, this is Liz Truss wishing UK Jews, and Jews everywhere a Happy Passover.
    https://twitter.com/i/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Ftrussliz%2Fstatus%2F1515008409124409351%3Fcxt%3DHBwWjsC4meGHsoYqAAAA%26cn%3DZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%253D%253D%26refsrc%3Demail&t=1+1650098725792&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&sig=5e79fde5ad150cfb8df1f7df6d434127abda76c5&iid=2df9ecaaf1f04f65ac15507b358b82cc&uid=2789298938&nid=244+281088001

      2. No point in her overdoing it, she might cause mass mental health issues and we have St Georges day coming up as well.

          1. I can remember reading around ten to fifteen years ago that certain councils were banning parades because of lack of public liability insurance health and safety but not a word when thousands of people of other faiths gather in Hyde park and other places to kneel and face east.
            I use to love the parades when i was a cub and a bot scout and my father use to be the standard bearer on the marches for his Local RAF association.

      1. One of my biggest regrets is that I was born too late to enjoy travel in a flying boat. (There are 21st century compensations, however, such as Google and the NoTTLe site.)

      2. Thanks for the links to the books. I must get one or two. I love the idea of flying boats and seaplanes. I’ve had a cursory look at the bookshelves but could not find one. I do have “Empire of the Clouds” which is about British planes after WW2, Vulcans and Vampires…

        1. My favourite all time aircraft is the WW2 Catalina. They have one at Duxford and i have some photographs of it during repairs/rebuilding work.

          1. Have you seen the film”Steelyard Blues “? a Catalina is the star of the improbable plot. Great fun.
            Here is the only clip that I could find.

          2. They have one at Cosford, too. I have dined in the Catalina Restaurant at Rose Bay 🙂

          3. I saw trips in Holland flying in a Catalina but the noise was horrendous, i suppose ear plugs would make it more acceptable.

          4. Ferry from Circular Quay ?
            Next time we go….we are due a trip over haven’t been for nearly 7 years.

        2. I have that. I’ve always fancied following the old Imperial Airways route down to Cape Town, but that’s just a dream now. I did have a flight in a float plane out of Rose Bay, Sydney.

      1. Not in Mel Brookes’ SILENT MOVIE, he didn’t. He spoke the film’s only line of dialogue when he said “Non!” (I guess he thought he was playing General de Gaulle.)

        1. I remember that – and Mel Brooks miming “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know who I used to be?”

      2. Not in Mel Brookes’ SILENT MOVIE, he didn’t. He spoke the film’s only line of dialogue when he said “Non!” (I guess he thought he was playing General de Gaulle.)

    2. The French hierarchy still have their feet stuck in the mud of Agincourt.
      As many of you will know it’s such a lovely and vast country by run by idiots as ours is.

    4. It’s the EU not France who is the culprit, Plum. BB let herself (her looks) go and became a crazy animal welfare freak. Good things from France include: Wine, cheese, Le Pen, etc. etc.

      1. Ogga will be pleased:
        I was talking to an acquaintance in the market today and commiserated about his man, the Communist, not getting though.
        His comment was “it’s the bloc the votes go to, to keep the other one out, not for the policies”

        Oddly enough he seemed to be more pro Le Pen than Macron. We see him at various night markets in the summer and he’s quite entertaining. He’s always out protesting about something or other and is extremely anti vax mandates and the vaccinations.

        1. “… extremely anti vax mandates and the vaccinations.”

          Ah, I see. A doctor.

          1. If you looked at him, a doctor is the last thing you would guess, an aging rock star perhaps.

          2. We had several like that in Laure!

            Actually, the GP had a ponytail and could pass for a hippy!

          3. We had several like that in Laure!

            Actually, the GP had a ponytail and could pass for a hippy!

    6. My sincere thanks to jdgarfunkle who posted a fabulous Song from Brazil called “Brigitte Bardot” and which is a favourite of mine. I tried to thank him but was told that his post had been removed – copyright problems?

      1. I replaced it with the same song but a prettier picture..There was a compendium of pics on youtube with the same song, but I can’t find it. History in the electronic age is ephemeral.

  34. Morning all looks like i missed a busy day for nottlers.
    And i massed Hat Man.
    But we had a lot of catching up to do in the garden.
    We had been hit by the dust storm and rain a few weeks ago and all our garden furniture had to be washed down. All ready now for our BH Monday family BBQ, now after the forecasts had seemed safe they seem to have changed their minds, as they often do.
    Bloody mice have been in my greenhouse and been eating the freshly sprouted new seedlings, some thing else i had to fix.
    London is being swamped by football fans going to Wembley no trains some one should pay the penalty for such a stupid mistake.
    And what on earth is this about ? Is it some sort of disguised warning https://www.hertsad.co.uk/news/crime/101-lambs-dumped-on-farm-near-st-albans-8896740

    1. Probably stolen and died while being kept for live slaughter at the end of Ramadan and couldn’t be kept longer where they were being hidden.

      2. I’m quite sure that the Police won’t identify the culprits “for the sake of community cohesion”

          1. I said jokingly yesterday that gypsies are the ones responsible because they know people will think it was the muslims.

          3. As happened with the wee girls in Rotherham. They eventually jailed some of the pimps, but few of the customers, or the social workers and police who facilitated the crimes.

      3. 101 seems to coincide with Dalmations.
        Scanning through I noticed yesterday a Nottler posted some thing about Lambs to the slaughter.
        Perhaps they had over ordered for the Albert Hall picnic.

    2. Hope your family BBQ goes okay. I have just decamped to my garden room, the weather being so nice. Dolly snoozing on the sofa next to me.

      Lamb rustling season is upon us again. Ramadan too. No connection i’m sure.

    3. The vegetarian wing of “Extinction Rebellion”. The way they think it’s perverse enough for them.

      1. Kemprow farm was mentioned where the carcasses were dumped. Not a million miles from the M1 and not a million miles from Luton.

    4. “London is being swamped by football fans going to Wembley no trains some one should pay the penalty for such a stupid mistake.”

      Engineering works on the WMCL south of Rugby but in all the reporting of this the ex-GW routes via High Wycombe and Reading seem to have been ignored.

    5. “London is being swamped by football fans going to Wembley no trains some one should pay the penalty for such a stupid mistake.”

      Engineering works on the WMCL south of Rugby but in all the reporting of this the ex-GW routes via High Wycombe and Reading seem to have been ignored.

  36. 352006 + up ticks,,

    May one ask when the herd who by now must surely be punchy realise finally they have been duped once again and large dollops of shite hit the fan are there any country’s across the English Channel we can turn to for refuge & welfare or will we learn 27 different ways to say F… OFF.

    breitbart,
    FRENCH ELECTIONFOOD CRISIS LOOMSUKRAINEBORISUKMIGRANT CRISISEUFAKE CONSERVATIVESFARAGE
    Nearly a Million Ukrainian Refugees Have Already Returned to Their Country

  38. Last reference to That Film. A brilliant comment in the Grauniad BTL the (glowing) film review:

    “I always closely follow Guardian Film reviews. If they like a film, I find I am bound to hate it. No change here.”

    1. Michael Chabon is one of the ‘writers’ for the new Star Trek series. They are all awful, full of dreadful characters, rudeness, abuse, without a single redeeming feature.The sort of work that the gruaniad loves but that loses money.

      Chabon has also written the foreword to the Elric saga book 2 and…. it’s terrible. Stilted, desperately trying to force some sort of diacritical essay on how Elric reflects modern times, uses paratheses, lists (in paragraph lists!). He tries for praise and how he would talk to Michael Moorcock about his post modernist allegorical analysis but he falls flat, empty – like one of those essays churned out by a computer.

      Moorcock would simply say ‘Wanker.’ to Mr Chabon. It’s a sad waste of an opportunity to praise a vastly better writer and pay homage to a superior style Chabon could not hope to aspire to, let alone match.

      2. Normally with Star Trek episodes i watch them several times. Not this time. I think your critique correct.

  39. Russia bans Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Ben Wallace from entering country. 16 april 2022.

    Russia’s foreign ministry has said it has barred entry to the country for the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and 10 other British government members and politicians.

    If only we could do the same! Sigh!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/16/moscow-bars-entry-russia-boris-johnson-liz-truss-ben-wallace

      1. They’ll be back when all the tasty little bungs start to arrive.

        Can this really be true, some one is circulating this ‘Info’ surely not !!!


        So… it now comes to light that Rishi Sunak’s wife was part owner of Lava Mayfair Club Ltd (a private membership gym), which collapsed last year owing almost £44million to creditors, including £374,000 to HMRC!
        Another of Mrs Sunak’s ventures… Mrs Wordsmith (an education business) went into administration last year owing £16.3million – after receiving a £1.3million loan from the Government’s “Future Fund”!
        OH IT GETS WORSE… Digme Fitness (which she owns 100% of) received up to £635,000 of furlough money… before it then closed its eight studios in London and Oxford… still owing HMRC £415,000!
        So …. Mr Sunak introduces the furlough scheme … and the woman he’s sleeping with benefits by up to £635,000!
        Mr Sunak oversees the rules regarding Non-Dom status … and the woman he’s sleeping with benefits by over £20 million!
        Mr Sunak is in charge of ensuring that the UK maximises its tax revenue… yet the woman he’s sleeping with has been active in, or has owned, companies going bust owing a staggering £789,000 to HMRC!
        Mr Sunak says his wife’s tax affairs are none of OUR business…
        Arrogance is almost immeasurable !
        Now we know how he got the job.

  40. In the past, some of you have referenced Rebel News the Canadian news source.
    Trudeaus mob have just declared that they are not a valid news service and therefore will not receive press certification nor will they receive any of the funds being handed out to the press. The excuse for disqualification is that they have less than one percent original content!

    In other news, only found on the nothing original Rebel News, the Ontario Medical Officer of Health who rules on covid vaccine use just happens to receive a big grant from Pfizer for research work – to say he has a conflict of interest is understanding it.

    2. I saw the Fox news report on this (someone linked it from here, I think). It is full on authoritarian fascism.

  41. Priti Patel faces Home Office mutiny over Rwanda migrants plan

    Unions representing Whitehall workers warn of mass walk-outs and transfer requests over ethical and legal implications of policy

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/15/priti-patel-faces-home-office-mutiny-rwanda-migrants-plan/
    As with most btl……sack the stroppy bastards and get on with it!!
    Edit,the real reason
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eff59cd2777e1265e530dd507500c006d98b8ace8d38ce4531a68ab4fa4fafcc.jpg

      2. Indeed. They are the tail wagging her dog.

        I noticed a couple of days ago that this daft bitch “Warned of 24,500 illegals this year” – as though it was OUR bloody fault and not hers

      3. There is nobody who resents illegal immigration and freebies to “refugees” more than someone who came the hard way. It’s the common purpose mentality that’s the problem I reckon, not the ethnic origin.

    2. Isn’t the point of the Home Office to obey the minister rather than discuss their views? After all, if they don’t feel they can properly carry out the requested tasks – and those tasks should be time boxed to prevent slacking and heel dragging – then they should properly resign or be made redundant.

      Heck, the tombstones to failure that are government departments could lose half their staff and no one would notice.

      1. Just sack them for gross misconduct if they refuse. I have in the past and won the case.

      1. They now go out at 10 pm for the night They are usually in the porch asleep at 7.30 when we appear.

  44. Not the best, but anything is better than yesterday’s abject failure.
    Wordle 301 5/6

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

    1. Nah nah na nah nah
      Wordle 301 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
      ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟨
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      (I failed yesterday too)

    2. 3 or 4 – luck of the draw …

      Wordle 301 4/6

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

    3. Wordle 301 4/6

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

  45. Yet another song I’ve never heard in my life on Heardle. I’ve even playing it for a week now and have only kno5wn the song twice. Both times I got it in two seconds.
    Pity – it would be a good game if the music clips chosen were more of my taste.

  46. Happy Saturday. The weather is gorgeous here- warm, sunny and bright blue sky. I am now able to wear my lighter, spring weight sweaters which is nice.
    Mailman walked past today so I’ll have to wait now until Tuesday for any info- bugger. Very frustrating.

    Going to Sainsury’s later to take advantage of the 25% off 6 bottles offer and to get some green veggies to go with the duck we are having tomorrow. Already have some Jersey Royals and carrots; I like carrots. (Is this usual for a penguin identifier? )
    Hope you’re all having a nice day.

    1. I can take or leave carrots. I’ll eat them if they’re on my plate but would choose all other veg ahead of them.

      1. I love ’em, cooked or raw. I like most veg apart from cauli which I am not keen on. The little bistro we sometimes go to always has a nice selection of fresh veg. Last Tuesday I had delicious green beans, some broc and a few carrots. Yummy.

          2. I like sauerkraut too, both the sauer German type and the sweeter Norwegian type.
            Firstborn makes a really good salty version that is both salt and crisp at the same time. Lovely!

          4. We make it all year round – with salald cream and tabasco sauce. Lots cabbage and onion… yum!

        2. Have you noticed how they sell sweet corn as if it was veg, when it is not. and should be avoided as it is so hard to digest and they now sell cattle food ( kale) that is also very hard to digest as we do not have four stomachs. I noted in a bag of frozen mixed veg over 25% was sweet corn.

          1. Don’t like kale but we do like corn. Some leafy things are fine raw like spinach but kale isn’t one of them.

          2. Love spinach, best steamed, drained and mixed with ground black pepper and butter – yummy.

          3. I never knew that. After a bit of research i found it is not only a whole grain but it can also be classed as a fruit.

            I still like it though. Corn on the cob slathered in butter with salt & pepper.

          5. If you want to check that your digestion is working properly, eat sweetcorn. After a day you should see the result pass through 🙂

        1. Me too Spikey! I eat enough carrots to outdo Bugs Bunny but have been wearing glasses since I was 15- only for reading at first but now all the time.

          1. Beaufighters, actually (they were the ones that were used for Aerial Interception with radar, for which “Cat’s Eyes” Cunningham got the credit).

      3. I have started buying sooper-dooper more-organic-than-thou carrots that cost four times what normal carrots do. They are some old-fashioned variety that is far less sweet and more flavoursome than ordinary supermarket ones. They’re now my favourite veg again!

    2. Prefer parsnips!
      We’re having roast chicken, roast potatoes & parsnips tomorrow.
      *
      Hasn’t it been a beautiful day. Garden is rejoicing…& it’s not too hot.

      1. When i first had parsnips with a roast dinner i didn’t like them because i thought i was eating a roast spud. I enjoy them creamed with creme fraiche and nutmeg now.

      3. I re-potted my calla lilies into a bigger pot (I’ve put it in the greenhouse in case the temperature drops tonight with very little cloud). They had good, strong roots, so I’m hoping for a prolific show.

        1. Probably will be lovely…
          I’ve kept things in the cold frame too.
          Today lots of wallflowers & tulips that have been holding back began to peep through with their colours.
          I think there is a full moon rising?
          That helps…plants are very thirsty..

          Happy Easter Sunday

          1. Happy Easter, d_r. It’s a deep pink one with fainter blush at the base. Unfortunately, my cold frame was wrecked one winter when the water butt froze and rolled off its plinth onto the cold frame! I’ve never bothered to sort it. My tulips are out now.

  47. If the DT can’t/won’t maintain British English, who will?

    Mortuary

    ‘This is genocide’ says forensic examiner at Ukrainian morgue overrun with corpses

    2. There was something the Daily Panic today about people trying to make Mercia a separate country. The red line between it and Wales was labelled Offa’s Duke.

      2. …and they didn’t like to use the word Dyke, for fear of offending LGBTQXYZ everywhere.

        1. Oh heck, that never occurred to me. Ye gods, what a state for a country to be in.

          4. Good grief, Annie, I have enough trouble with Kiev and Kyiv without you starting another confuseroonie.

    3. Without consulting the online oracles, my first opinion is that ‘morgue’ is acceptable; it indicates that the corpses are outside a British environment, and therefore that the dead are foreigners.

  50. The DT is getting even woker. In the print edition, Money section – back page (help for readers) there is a story about a man with a seriously injured dog and his pet insurance problem.

    The page is “illustrated” with a drawing. A very black man in a boat holding a dog. I ask you.

    2. I did wonder if that was an example of the aggrieved one’s art. Apparently he or she has a studio.

          3. Poor dog.

            I expect I’ll be cancelled etc etc – but I would have had the dog put down.

          4. At that price, certainly. I’d have got a second opinion with a cheaper vet. PDSA help out poor dog owners if they can show proof of poverty. Three legged dogs can function quite happily, but there comes a time when surgery has to be cost effective.

    3. Does the drawing have a caption with the name of the man? (I would imagine the dog is called “Digger”.)

  51. The War on the West. Douglas Murray.16 April 2022. 16 April 2022.

    There are many facets to this war on the West. It is carried out across the media and airwaves, and throughout the education system, from as early as preschool.

    It is rife within the wider culture, where all major cultural institutions are either coming under pressure or actually volunteering to distance themselves from their own past.

    We appear to be in the process of killing the goose that has laid some very golden eggs.

    When it’s gone the world will sink into a New Barbarism that will make the Dark Ages look like a Summer Holiday!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10722935/DOUGLAS-MURRAY-examines-Western-civilisation-achievements-erased-history.html

    1. We’re all goin’ on a summer holiday
      No more workin’ not a week or two
      Run and slaughter on a summer holiday
      Even more worries for me & you
      For a week or two
      We’re goin’ where the guns shine brightly
      We’re goin’ where the mood is blue
      We’ve seen it in the movies
      Now let’s see it come true….

    2. “We appear to be in the process of killing the goose that has laid some very golden eggs”

      Thanks to slavery, of course….(sarc)

    3. While I watch the racing I have to put up with the adverts (even at x2) and there’s one where white women go on about “poor little girls” (in muslim countries). It really lights my fire a) because women are of no account in islam and b) they are all blek – we all know that whitey money is colonialist and tantamount to slavery.

      1. I cropped the picture, then tried to include the amended version. I couldn’t, so deleted the post and posted a new comment.

    2. Cornwall and East Lindsey councils cannot let go of the ‘C’ word, it’s become another ‘control’ word for the ‘sitting on their arses thinking of what to do next to piss off the public’ brigade.

      Sitting on the beach in bright sunlight with a refreshing breeze is about as good as can be for not catching any airborne disease: that’s if it is airborne. Ignoring these control freaks is the order of the day!

  54. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/to-survive-boris-johnson-must-do-more-than-pose-as-a-war-leader

    Everything Boris has done to date has been the wrong thing. The covid panic I’ll excuse as it was unprecedented chaos. However, the correct way, the Conservativeway to recvoer the economy afterward is not continuing to spend money on the state, but for the state to take the hit and be cut – 5% cuts across the board. A freeze on council tax, the scrapping of the green taxes on energy. A gas and nuclear power station building program. Not demanding boilers go, but demanding ICE vehicles go. By all means, encourage electric ones by offering tax incentives – not discounts, that just gives the lower earner’s money to the higher. On top of that, a reform of the welfare state to remove any form of child benefit and over time, housing benefit.

    He’d win votes by saying that the elderly needing medical care will not have their homes stolen from them but saying that this year the tax allowance won’t increase, but it will next year. Scrapping the upper and higher tax bands – and all the fiddly rules around those would be a start.

  55. Another Johnson, another pifflemonger. 16 April 2022.

    According to the German foreign trade statistics office BAFA, in 2021 Germany imported 142billion cubic metres of Russian gas. That comes out at 1.5million gigawatt hours (GWh).

    Producing that much energy from nuclear power would take more than 55 Sizewell C nuclear power stations. Assuming all the gas was made into electricity (it isn’t) at an efficiency of 60 per cent (generous), Germany would still need more than 30 Sizewell Cs. Or, as Germany doesn’t do nuclear at the moment, some 30,000 8MW offshore wind turbines. (Germany currently has 1,500.)

    Sorry, Stanley, but there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance of replacing that energy from European resources. So let’s look at importing LNG.

    A new, large LNG carrier holds about 75,000 tons, equivalent to 100million cubic metres. So the German gas demand equates to about 1,400 loads of LNG. Unloading such a carrier takes a day, so the Germans would require port facilities to allow four ships to unload every day of the year. Allowing for some redundancy for maintenance and problems (handling LNG is far from straightforward) the Germans need at least six new terminals. Had Stanley spent ten seconds on Google he would have discovered that Germany signed a contract to build an LNG terminal on March 5, to be in operation by 2024 at the earliest. But then fact-checking is also a problem for the Johnson family, the CEN and this government. (By the way, that terminal will deliver only 8billion cubic metres per year, or just 6 per cent of the German need.)

    I’m not completely au fait with the detailed statistics of energy requirement but I assume that this is correct simply on the basis that to write a load of cobblers would have the Net-Zero crowd crowing over your stupidity. Still, if I understand it correctly, it means that Germany will not be energy independent of Russia for the foreseeable future and that thus talk of sanctioning Russia is just that. Hot air!

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/another-johnson-another-pifflemonger/

    1. When they beg Russia not to let them freeze and starve next winter Vlad might add a premium to offset the cost and nuisance of fighting this unnecessary war.
      If the Germans had had the nads to tell the Americans to poke it this entire murderous mess would never have been more than a dark glimmer in Obama’s eye.
      People in France are really wondering why the EU has gone along with this for no apparent benefit.

      2. I think the people in France aren’t particularly enamoured of the EU (if my friends are anything to go by). It’s the politicians who are hell bent on sticking to it.

    2. Don’t forget, you need a liquefaction plant or plants to supply that extra 1 400 LNG loads, plus ships to carry them from the liquefaction plant to the import terminal. None of those appear overnight, either, and nobody in the world has spare capacity sitting idle.

    3. There’s also a great deal of difference between capacity and output. Your average wind farm might need 30,000 of them, but when the wind doesn’t blow, what do you do?

  56. Have spent most of the day listening to two disparate people telling me about their ailments – which includes mutual acquaintances dropping dead or sporting colostomy bags. I’m also up to date with rows and general fallings out on local committees. Slights – real or imagined – snubs from twenty years ago, umbrage taking in general …. you wish to air them I’m obviously your gal. Oh, and how could I forget the mouldering Jack Russell in a nearby garden? Dammit, I could make serious wonga from going “really?”, “uhah” and “oh, yes, now didn’t she live in xxxxxx?”
    However, out of all this mental glazing over, my memory returned and I have now found missing iMac keyboard and mouse; in a carrier bag in the attic that was like a steam free sauna.
    Surely, I am being rewarded for my self-less listening to assorted gripes and bad news.
    Off to polish halo and re-read my pet computer nerd’s instructions for decommissioning an iMac.

    1. Well, since you are in listening mode – let me tell you about my skin blotches, swollen feet, hernias……oh, and prostate problems….

      If you have been, thanks for listening. You are a star…!

    3. Are you planning to buy a newer iMac, Annie, or move to a Microsoft laptop type replacement?

    4. Are you planning to buy a newer iMac, Annie, or move to a Microsoft laptop type replacement?

  57. That new “star” tennis prodigy – Emma Raducanu. Failed again (and again).

    And so the press have a go at her again.

    Such a shame they built her up after her first fluke win in the US.

    1. #MeToo, sweetie ! … x

      Wordle 301 4/6

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

    4. Please put me out of my misery, Plum. What has Pooh Bear’s Bath Mat got to do with Wordle?

      1. I think it’s the fact that the words are reversed and it’s confused the Bear of very little brain.

        1. S’pose you’re right, even though it’s only the reversed B which is “different”. I was trying to make a 5-letter word out of a 4-letter (BATH) and 3-letter (MAT) one.

    2. That reminds me of the old ‘un:
      Q: What’s the black, gloppy stuff between an elephant’s toes?
      A:Slow natives

    3. That reminds me of the old ‘un:
      Q: What’s the black, gloppy stuff between an elephant’s toes?
      A:Slow natives

    4. That reminds me of the old ‘un:
      Q: What’s the black, gloppy stuff between an elephant’s toes?
      A:Slow natives

  61. That’s me gone – after this gorgeous day. Lots of useful garden work. Almost in a T-shirt (but not quite – breezy).

    Same tomorrow, allegedly. I will be potting on the brassicas.

    Those two cat snaps I posted at 12.30 – G & P haven’t moved…..!

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain

    1. My gardeners are coming soon. I shall watch them from my garden room. Cocktail in hand. Dolly is on her back in the sunshine, legs akimbo stuffed with roast pork.

    2. Hope you’re feeling better, Bill. I was in a T shirt this afternoon – hotter than Greece, prolly!

    4. Might just be because the shops are closed tomorrow. No level of idiocy would surprise me any more.

      1. A friend of mine is a Masterchef semi finalist.

        Bill has Cook. Because he burns water.

        1. You can’t burn water. I’ve tried. What you do is let the saucepan run dry, then that explodes off the hob.

          1. SWMBO did that a long while ago. The aluminium pan got annealed, and went all floppy.

        2. I’ll have you know that in the year you were born (1964) I did a 3 month Cordon Bleu course. I taught my first wife to cook. I am very skilled at most things except pastry.

          Because the MR loves cooking – I leave her to it….

          1. Yes Yes. But in the modern era we have fan ovens and blast chillers. We don’t need to rely on bonfires.

  64. Well, the XR spin-off kids are out in central London today.
    I went up to town to buy some concert tickets at the Wigmore Hall and discovered that the 94 bus was terminating at Lancaster Gate and the 148 was doing a detour via Knightsbridge.
    Got the Central Line to Marble Arch and saw rows of police vans blocking Oxford Street. Looked around expecting a large demo approaching and saw just a few dozen loony kiddies sitting in the road further back, stopping access to both Oxford Street and Park Lane.
    The police on the street were chatting and laughing. A nice sunny day. Wotz not tu like, like?

    1. Perhaps P & O Ferry’s Peter Hebblethwaite should be hired to run the Met ?

      He could sack the lot !

        1. Johnson is a fatuous windbag as everyone is coming to understand. I blame his parents. They should have listened to his headmaster.

      1. Police are worse, as their position is to maintain the peace, not join in with disruption. Why does nobody sue the Met Commissioner to do her/his/Its bloody job for once?

        1. If I had run any classroom or my library the way this lot “manage” things, I would have been sacked.

          1. Indeed. Where’s Churchill: “Action this day!”
            The only conclusion is that the government wish it so, with XR disruption, gimmegrants and the like, since they don’t do anytjing about it.
            And, if the Home Office are blocking it, then fire the lot of them for incompetence and insubordination. Nobody would notice that they do nowt anyway. Fcuking useless bastards.

    4. Blocking the highway is an offence. Why are the police not enforcing the law? Oh! I remember. Because the state likes this sort of protest.

      Frankly, if Kahn won’t enforce it, then he should be beaten to death. Heck, hang an adrenaline bag so he’s kept alive longer. After all, plod seem to choose what crimes to enforce.

  65. Watching Jesse Stone (Tom Selleck) on 5USA. Great dialog, 1 word sentences.
    No doubt you either like him or hate him. Quite dry humour.

      1. I only watch the racing (and I record it to whizz through the woke/football/blek bits).

  67. The hunt was good and the god and goddess are happy.
    Made it to Sainsbury’s and stocked up on Kanga and took advantage of the 25% off. Got some nice spring greens and mange tout also. Think the spring greens with Daffy Duck tomorrow.
    Slightly embarrassing moment…. MH was off hunting for summat or other and I was looking at the shelf with Ryvita…. all I wanted was plain old Ryvita. Was fulminating out loud about bloody this flavour and another flavour and where on earth was the plain stuff. A voice behind me said, it’s the red one madam.
    A security guard was patrolling the aisles and had obviously heard rantings and came to investigate. He was right and I thanked him- then slunk off into another aisle pdq.

    1. I’m having a lamb chop tomorrow + mint sauce, mash, roasties, peas and carrots. Worthy is the lamb …

      1. We both like lamb but we have two ducks in the freezer and one is going to be eaten tomorrow. So here it will be Worthy is the Duck;-))

        1. I’ve had the lamb chops in the freezer and couldn’t be bothered to cook them. As the Rayburn will be out for the summer soon and lamb is traditional at Easter, I thought it was an ideal opportunity.

  68. Last post – just read this and thought that NoTTLers would like it, too. Rory Sutherland – The Spectator.

    “According to Pliny the Elder, Scipio Aemilianus was the first man to shave daily.

    The origin of the name Boeing is Welsh. The family emigrated to the US from Germany, where they were called Böing, but this was a Germanisation of the Welsh patronymic ab Owen.

    In Pembrokeshire there is a Church of St Elvis.

    Helen Viola Jackson, the last recipient of a US Civil War widow’s pension, died in 2020.

    At the time of the Napoleonic wars, France was the fourth most populous country in the world, behind only China, India and Japan, with double the population of the UK.

    The origin of the word ‘zydeco’ – to describe the Cajun musical genre – is uncertain. One theory is it was formed from ‘zarico’, derived from the French les haricots ne sont pas salés. This means ‘the beans aren’t salty’ and is used idiomatically to describe conditions of deprivation.

    The starter motor for the Centurion tank was effectively the engine from a Morris Minor.

    The postcode for the Falkland Islands is FIQQ 1ZZ.

    Now at this point most people will have stopped reading a few paragraphs back. ‘What the hell is going on here? This is just a random collection of irrelevant facts.’

    On the other hand, if you are still reading at this point, and thinking ‘Sutherland has finally hit his stride here – in fact I might steal that fact about the Centurion tank to use as a chat-up line’ then you are probably a teeny-weeny bit on the spectrum. This means you are my kind of person, and I have some useful advice for you. Get YouTube on your telly. Now.

    If you have an older, non-smart TV, simply plug in an Amazon Firestick or a Roku device for around £40. Connect this to your wifi, then sign up for the free two-month trial of YouTube Premium to watch YouTube advert-free. Once you have done this, sit back and start searching at random. ‘Kedgeree recipes.’ ‘James Hoffmann on coffee.’ ‘Live Alaska Bear cam.’ ‘Big Jet TV.’ ‘Verdi 4K.’

    Most television is produced for neurotypical people. These are the millions who happily watch C-list celebrities parading in a ballroom dancing competition every week. But if, like me, you find it incomprehensible that anyone would waste time on such guff when they could be watching a two-hour documentary on the Messerschmitt Me 163, then nothing beats content produced by the obsessive for the obsessive. Beyond the cats and the car crashes (and nothing wrong with that), YouTube has millions of hours of such viewing; 720,000 hours more are added every day. Much is rubbish, of course. But the best is divinely good. It is an altogether different, complementary genre of television which now deserves a bigger screen.

    In 1995 there was a Private Eye cartoon which showed a family in a darkened room. ‘Hey, Dad,’ said the younger son in a speech bubble, ‘Kevin’s just found a way of train-spotting on the internet.’ The joke at the time was that combining train-spotting and the internet was the nerdiest activity imaginable.

    Yet during lockdown I learned to do exactly that. Virtual Railfan on YouTube lets you watch live footage of American railways. Network Rail has recently posted beautiful 4K cab’s-eye views of the most scenic rail journeys across the UK. For the plane spotters, during Storm Eunice, Big Jet TV’s live landings at Heathrow had audiences in the millions.

    This, of course, is the great transformation effected by having video on demand. On broadcast TV, you can’t show a 40-minute film on how to change the fuel pump on a 1998 Toyota Camry, as it would drive most viewers insane. For viewing on demand, you can make any content you like”.

    1. If you are interested in WWII history, Mark Felton has a very good channel on Youtube. He documents stories which are little-known, but fascinating.

      1. Mark Felton’s programmes are great. And so is the music for the programmes.

    2. I enjoy the science and maths programmes. Two I watched recently were on how pi was measured by the ancients and on the theory of special relativity. I especially enjoy watching programmes about quantum physics despite not understanding a word they’re on about.

    3. I enjoy the science and maths programmes. Two I watched recently were on how pi was measured by the ancients and on the theory of special relativity. I especially enjoy watching programmes about quantum physics despite not understanding a word they’re on about.

  69. 352006+ up ticks,

    The PEN is mightier than…. she CAN do it.

    That would surely be one mighty hefty stick
    shoved betwixt the spokes of the lab/lib/con
    mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella close shop, pro eu coalition.

    https://gettr.com/post/p14onef35fa

    1. Beneath the rule of men entirely great: the Pen is mightier than the … Plaything? Toy boy? Concubine? Halfwit? Tadpole?

      2. Would the sheep confined in a pen say that it was mightier than the sward?

    2. She won’t be allowed to. Big state cannot permit it. They’ve learned their lessons from the frenzied desperation to get rid of Trump and Erdogan.

  70. Apart from Meghan, does anyone give a Tuppenny…?

    “Prince Harry has taken part in a driving challenge as the Invictus Games get under way in the Netherlands.
    The Duke of Sussex tackled a specialist course in a Land Rover ahead of the games’ opening ceremony which is taking place in The Hague.”

    3. It would be more realistic if Ginge was tasked with driving an un-armoured Land Rover down a dirt track mined with IEDs.

      This is after all what the poor Invictus Games soldiers with legs and arms blown off were tasked with. Blair himself could reward Ginge on a successful completion of the course.

  71. Pick of the day TV

    Channel 4 – Titanic
    Building the World’s Largest Ship.

    You needn’t have bothered….

  72. Holidaymaker leaves car on family’s driveway for FIVE DAYS after space was ‘sold through a parking app by fraudsters’ – and they are powerless to move it

    Jack it up, remove the wheels, and tell the owner that they should take it up with whoever rented the space.

    Nottlers, any other ideas how to deal with something similar?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10724353/Holidaymaker-leaves-car-familys-driveway-FIVE-DAYS-space-sold-fraudsters.html

      1. By doing that there’s a cost with no return to you.
        Perhaps one could put up a notice:
        Parking here costs £200 a day and any car found after 24 hours will be clamped until the whole fee has been paid.

        1. Getting it towed to the short term parking at the airport might cost you, but not as much as it costs the illegal parker. If they are that bothered about cost, tow it to a scrap yard.

          What do they mean they cannot do anything about it?

          1. I’m guessing that having contacted the police they’ve been “warned off” doing anything.

            I would be looking for solutions that both cost the owner of the car a lot of money AND give the owner of the drive a profit.

          2. Looking at the photographs, the front lawn is really dull and lacks character. A nice fence with concrete posts would improve the aesthetics ( no spell corrector I did not mean anesthetic!).

          3. That doesn’t give someone the right to park their car there.
            How would you feel if the same happened to you?

      2. Entirely legal, so long as you don’t damage it. Then just leave it on an MP’s front driveway and see how Plod reacts.

        1. The alternative is an electrical fault that makes it go on fire… not too close to the garage, naturally.

    3. Put a ‘Slippery Jim’ under each wheel attach a tow rope and pull the car onto the road and leave it there. No damage done, you don’t even have to break into the car.

      1. Where’s the profit?
        Perhaps towing it onto double yellow lines somewhere might at least give a smile of revenge!

        1. It’s not the victims fault (however gullible he has been) so I would try not to cause him aggro and unfortunately you’ll never find the fraudster but my way does at least get it off my premises

          1. Why not cause them some aggro?
            I assume he/she parked the car, I would have been highly suspicious.

            Next time they might not be so gullible.

          2. The fraudsters may have parked it there – if the victim had parked there then he deserves all he gets. Vandalise it , I doubt if he has a case against you

          3. I wonder how many other people have also been affected by the fraud.
            Assuming it actually was a fraud.

  73. Ukraine falls out of the headlines due to Ginger and Minger.

    Let’s guess, Zelensky has stopped his propaganda and war-mongering for an Easter break.

    1. Ukraine has been the news for weeks, the media have lost interest and need a change in their headlines..

      1. Whilst I take your point, either Ukraine is important or it isn’t.

        A couple of parasitic chancers is hardly the stuff to put up as important when we are facing WW3.

        1. That why I wrote media looking for different headlines. I don’t see the importance of an item being relevant to whoever assembles the DM pages, it is all show.

    2. How about this one as if you didn’t already know ! I am a lapsed homosexual. Lapsed being 40 years this June 20th.
      I can’t take it any more ! :@(

          2. Not just …. but also in the Bond film……..sang the original. Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blaumauer on October 18, 1898, in Vienna, Austria (at that time Austro-Hungarian Empire)

            Nice shoes !

      2. What are we supposed to respond? What happened on June 20th? July 10th, I got married 40 years ago. Must have been an interesting summer.

          4. I have tried to reply to this post a few times and bloody dicsus wouldn’t let me. I have renewed the page.

          8. Er… is it a happy or a sad story? Not so strong with the sad stories just now, tendency to tearing up. Need a vacation…
            But you’re on, when I’m next in the UK – later this spring, to clear Mother’s house.
            You can buy it, if you like. About £500k.

          9. Erm…500k is a bit big.
            250k and a crate of 00 Guiness thrown in.
            As far as a sad family story…….My elder sister attacked me and told every other family member that i had attacked her. My name was Mud. Years later when she got in to an argument about where our father was to be buried (she waited until we had all left the hospital) the elder attacked the younger sister. Held her up against the wall by the throat. When one of my brothers tried to intervene she punched him in the face.
            Lots more though i try not to re-live it.

          11. They do sound to be a nightmare. You’ve made your own life and kept away from them so good on you.

          1. The wee dog is a giveaway. Personally, I don’t care whether you are gay or otherwise. You are good company, and a good person.

          3. Well, I am small, only 8 stone, a bit of a scruff but cute. MH thinks so anyway. I like to wear jeans and tee- shirts, I don’t wear make up or colour my hair. I do know a lot about Lit and History and I have a great sense of humour.
            I am a white, female heterosexual and I make no bones about it;-)) That’s me.

          6. I think women look better without facepaint or other decoration. Beautiful enough already.
            You sound like SWMBO, except she is 5′ and overweight… I love a woman with curves rather than angles.

          11. I’m slightly larger than Ann but smaller than your OH and I don’t wear make up either.

          12. Smaller than 5′? Strewth, how cute can a lass get?
            Noted that the Good Lord made you small to stop you taking over the world… :-O)

          13. No – not shorter – I’m 5’4″ but not very much overweight. At least not too much.

          14. All we ladies about 5′ 4 should form a small army. Think what we could do…..;-)

          16. I’m probably less than that that now due to age reduction. My mother lost several inches in her later years.

          18. I’m 5’6″. I have a small step in the kitchen that I use to reach the top shelves. Sometimes I stand on it and look around and see the world from 5’10”. It is a completely different perspective.

          23. As dear Bill Thomas has said………i like to be different. I like to be off trend and……when i say to the taxi driver after a night on the piss……….it’s the green one !

          25. Now look what you have started! There will be all sorts of revelations at this time of night. So long as you’ll buy me a beer, I dont care who buys it! A bit like my women, anyone who’ll have me… so long as they are… I just need another glass…back in a mo..

          31. I have a young step daughter who I give the benefits of my life’s lessons. She is 18 and actually seems to take note. We are off to London tomorrow for a visit as we are going to see some colleges she has applied to and have a day sight seeing.

          33. I went to London Uni, which is where I met Mrs Pea Mk1. A great place at the time but I visit less these days although my son lives and works there. Always expensive, as is every city, but I think almost prohibitive for the student today. Anyway, 2 nights in the Premier Inn Brentford and a wander around beats sitting at home throwing books at the TV.

          34. I grew up in London but went north to uni…it is so sad to see what London has become.

      5. As you are 58 now then did you go straight – if that’s the right way of putting it – at the age of 18 and 4 months?

        One of my closest friends when I was in my early 20s was a homosexual. He was charming, a fine musician, very good looking and always immaculately dressed. Sadly he was also very promiscuous and got AIDs before they knew how to treat it and he died.

        Homosexuality in boys’ public schools was commonplace but temporary but I never had any such urges in my adolescence.

  74. Heyup All.
    I got a couple of mixes of concrete done & poured today then went to check stepson’s post and drop some cancer sticks off for him at the hospital.
    I do not think he’s going to be leaving Hospital any time soon.

    Also bought a couple of bags of cement so I can do a couple more mixes tomorrow and perhaps some wall building later on and on Monday.

    Feeling a bit knackered now so am off for a bath then up to bed.
    Good night all.

      2. Yes, but because he’s on a locked ward he has to be accompanied to the smoking area.

    2. Cheapskate! Where’s me 5 bob?
      Sorry Elsie- I think you think I owe you 5 bob;-)

  76. I think that’s me for the night.
    Little Cat has just fallen into the firewood cauldron, and looks baffled, so I’m off to bed!
    Nighty night, all Y’all. Sov godt!

  77. Evening, all. Clearly the headline letter write contemplating the practicalities of the scheme has not yet twigged that it was never intended to happen. It was a sound bite for idiot voters with the locals coming up.

  78. OK – Geoff doesn’t want this to be an echo chamber…GB News has become as bad as Fox in USA. Neil Oliver should stick to history and leave politics alone.
    I won’t be watching GB News again.
    Why can’t there be a channel where all opinions are welcomed? One should not have to be inclined one way or the other; there should be some panel where opposing views are greeted with discussion. And before some of you chime in and say it is here- no it isn’t. Yes, we are tolerant to a degree but there are many who vehemently oppose those who disagree with their viewpoints.
    And on that note, good night.
    Thank god for Vivaldi.

    1. Mark Dolan is becoming increasing more trite and irrelevant.

      We have had students with us for the last two weeks and so I have not watched any television at all and am sorry to see how the GB News Channel is going down.

      Nigel Farage and Mark Stein, I hope, will cheer me up tomorrow.

  79. Rwanda refugee plan is ungodly, says Justin Welby
    Archbishop of Canterbury criticises PM’s Channel migrants policy, as second country proposes similar deal,
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/16/rwanda-refugee-plan-ungodly-says-justin-welby/

    BTL

    Everything that this most unholy atheist, Welby, does and says convinces me that Cameron appointed his fellow Old Etonian with the express instruction to destroy the Church of England and wipe out Christianity.

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