Saturday 16 March: Advocates of assisted dying should not gloss over what has happened in Canada

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

750 thoughts on “Saturday 16 March: Advocates of assisted dying should not gloss over what has happened in Canada”

  1. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story

    THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE

    Father buys a lie detector robot that slaps you when you lie.
    He decides to test it out on his son at the supper table.
    Father asked the son, “Where were you last night?”
    Son replies, “I was at the library”
    The robot slaps the son
    “OK I was at a friend’s house, watching a movie!”
    “What movie?” the father asks
    “Toy story,” robot slaps the son, “OK it was porn.” cries the son.
    Father yells, “What? When I was your age, I did not know what porn was.”
    Robot slaps the father.
    The mother laughs and says, “He certainly is your son.
    Robot slaps the mother.

  2. Morning all,

    The DT’s front page today reports that right wing Tories want Mordaunt to replace Sunak as PM.

    A Penny for your thoughts?

    Recent joiners may wish to Specculate.

    1. If Petty Officer Moron is the best the Parliamentary party can offer – they really DO have a death wish.

    2. They only care about saving their seats and sinecures. Principles like defining a woman? Poof.

    3. Can you imagine: long-time WEF officer puppet Mordaunt in charge of the country?

      A bit like Barack Obama’s very own hand puppet, Joey Biden, going for second term (Obama’s fourth term).

    4. The DT’s front page today reports that right wing Tories want Mordaunt WEF/Gates to replace Sunak as PM.

      No change there, then.

    6. Thank you for the offer but no, thank you. (Sorry, not quite sure if I’m right wing or far right). Seems like a push for her to replace fishi rishi, they keep pushing her name.

    7. Isn’t she a left wing ‘Tory’ who is all in favour of the WEF like most of the others?

      They ought to recall Andrew Bridgen and go for him – I know that the Legal Beagle says he is a liar but aren’t they all?

    8. Perhaps, when she acknowledges her errors in subscribing to the WEF agenda and actually realises that the only way for a woman to have a penis is to drop her knickers and open her legs, I might support her.

    9. Some people never learn. “They are their own worst enemies.”
      Edit: I see it is only a group of MPs. Leave everything to them; they know so much better than the rest of us.

  3. Morning all,

    The DT’s front page today reports that right wing Tories want Mordaunt to replace Sunak as PM.

    A Penny for your thoughts?

    Recent joiners may wish to Specculate.

  7. EU president congratulates Putin on ‘landslide’ win … as Russian voting kicks off. 16 march 2024.

    The European Council president congratulated Vladimir Putin on his big win in the Russian presidential election — just as three days of voting began Friday.

    “Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” blasted Michel, who is more renowned for diplomatic faux pas than social media snark. “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”

    How many people voted for M. Michel?

    There’s nothing unusual in the above of course. The EU is even less democratic than Russia. It was designed with that in mind. The Telegraph put up five propaganda articles yesterday about the Russian election, this still hasn’t stopped them stacking the threads with in house trolls or deleting my posts. At present in the United States the Democrats are waging an illegitimate war against Donald Trump to prevent him even standing for office.

    The truth is that democracy in the sense of responding to the people’s concerns is essentially dead. What we have instead are struggles between power blocs of various descriptions. The peasants, like those in the medieval world, must shift for themselves. If they have a good master, as in Vladimir Putin, they must think themselves lucky. The UK in comparison is disintegrating around us. Its people disenfranchised slaves.

    https://www.politico.eu/article/charles-michel-congratulate-vladimir-putin-landslide-win-voting-russia-election/

  8. Hot and cross aficionados in bunfight over Easter treat

    Critics berate supermarket giants in recommending cream and jam for new range of hot cross bunsROWS over how to eat the perfect scone are almost as old as time, but few would expect hot cross buns to join the fray.

    Two of Britain’s leading supermarkets have been accused of “playing fast and loose with culinary tradition” by serving the Easter favourite with clotted cream and jam.

    Advertisements placed in newspapers by Tesco and Asda picture the buns alongside jam – an unusual choice of topping for a treat usually served only with butter.

    Critics have accused the grocers of trying to wade into the debate on scones, which have long stoked controversy in Devon and Cornwall over whether the jam should be spread before the cream.

    In an Easter advertisement this week, the new “Tesco Finest Strawberries &

    Clotted Cream Hot Cross Buns” with pink crosses were shown being plastered in clotted cream and jam – in that order.

    Meanwhile, Asda promoted its hot cross buns by showing them being slathered in butter with jam on the side.

    It could well be an advertising ploy to avoid the somewhat mundane look of melted butter, but some scone lovers are not impressed.

    “Some might say these supermarkets are playing fast and loose with culinary tradition, attempting to slap a scone label on hot cross buns,” Michelle Milton, of the High Tea Society, told

    “Cream and jam on hot cross buns? It’s enough to make a purist’s scone crumble.”

    Sarah Merker, 50, who completed a challenge last year to taste scones in all 244 National Trust cafes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, accused hot cross buns of trying to “get in on the act”.

    “This is shocking news – you have to take it as a bit of a compliment to the scone and the cream tea that the hot cross bun is trying to get in on the act a little bit,” she said.

    “The scone is untouchable, but if the hot cross bun wants to get in on that act I can’t blame them. Without a doubt, there can only be one cream tea and that’s the scone, the cream and the jam – hot cross buns are a bit Johnny-comelately in that regard.”

    Ms Merker, from west London, questioned the “odd” combination of strawberry jam and the spices found in hot cross buns, but said she was “all for innovation” and would need to try it.

    She stumbled across a similar idea on her scone tour, with several tearooms offering “hot cross scones” which she ate only with butter, as she felt strawberry and cream would just not fit.

    Supermarkets have stoked controversy in recent years for wacky hot cross bun flavours such as Sainsbury’s cheddar and caramelised onion chutney recipe, Asda’s tomato and red Leicester version and Waitrose’s Earl Grey tea and orange zest flavour.

    Despite what the silly warring factions of Devon and Cornwall think [as well as the “purists” (WTF is a “purist”?)] they are all wrong.

    Cream and jam are unnecessary accompaniments to both toasted teacakes (which is what a “hot cross bun” really is) and scones. Teacakes should contain dried fruit, be served freshly-toasted and slathered with lots of melting butter. Scones should also contain fruit (plain scones are diabolical), be served at room temperature and thickly buttered.

    1. Please don’t reignite the scone and pasty wars.
      It is a fact thought the both the pasty and clotted cream scone (far better with gooseberry or blackcurrant jam) originated in Devon.

      1. I didn’t. The article is in today’s DT.

        If I’m going to eat jam, I prefer either raspberry seedless or morello cherry … on toast.

        2. Our local strawberry is good – very lightly boiled, minimal sugar. Tastes of strawberry!
          The best is SWMBOs Seville marmalade. Flavoursome, minimal sugar, and sharp.

    2. Morning, Grizz!
      Teacakes: Real butter.
      Scones: if you have cream & jam, put the jam on first, as that way the whole lot is more stable and less likely to slide off.

    3. Morning, Grizz!
      Teacakes: Real butter.
      Scones: if you have cream & jam, put the jam on first, as that way the whole lot is more stable and less likely to slide off.

    4. Ah Grizz. I spotted you on Press Reader hence my comment a few minutes ago. I didn’t realise you had already vented your spleen on the matter here!🙂

      For what it’s worth, i like untoasted teacakes and yes they are like hot cross buns imho. I will take a toasted teacake too, how er, if you are offering.

      1. Here is where all discerning NOTTLERs have conniptions.
        Half HXB; insert slice of strong cheddar and reassemble..
        Microwave for 20 -30 seconds.
        Yummeeeeeeee.

      2. I used to eat untoasted teacakes with lots of butter, cheese and Branston pickle. The other three commenters were all having a pop despite the tongue-in-cheek nature of my post. Were you one of them?

  9. Hot and cross aficionados in bunfight over Easter treat

    Critics berate supermarket giants in recommending cream and jam for new range of hot cross bunsROWS over how to eat the perfect scone are almost as old as time, but few would expect hot cross buns to join the fray.

    Two of Britain’s leading supermarkets have been accused of “playing fast and loose with culinary tradition” by serving the Easter favourite with clotted cream and jam.

    Advertisements placed in newspapers by Tesco and Asda picture the buns alongside jam – an unusual choice of topping for a treat usually served only with butter.

    Critics have accused the grocers of trying to wade into the debate on scones, which have long stoked controversy in Devon and Cornwall over whether the jam should be spread before the cream.

    In an Easter advertisement this week, the new “Tesco Finest Strawberries &

    Clotted Cream Hot Cross Buns” with pink crosses were shown being plastered in clotted cream and jam – in that order.

    Meanwhile, Asda promoted its hot cross buns by showing them being slathered in butter with jam on the side.

    It could well be an advertising ploy to avoid the somewhat mundane look of melted butter, but some scone lovers are not impressed.

    “Some might say these supermarkets are playing fast and loose with culinary tradition, attempting to slap a scone label on hot cross buns,” Michelle Milton, of the High Tea Society, told

    “Cream and jam on hot cross buns? It’s enough to make a purist’s scone crumble.”

    Sarah Merker, 50, who completed a challenge last year to taste scones in all 244 National Trust cafes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, accused hot cross buns of trying to “get in on the act”.

    “This is shocking news – you have to take it as a bit of a compliment to the scone and the cream tea that the hot cross bun is trying to get in on the act a little bit,” she said.

    “The scone is untouchable, but if the hot cross bun wants to get in on that act I can’t blame them. Without a doubt, there can only be one cream tea and that’s the scone, the cream and the jam – hot cross buns are a bit Johnny-comelately in that regard.”

    Ms Merker, from west London, questioned the “odd” combination of strawberry jam and the spices found in hot cross buns, but said she was “all for innovation” and would need to try it.

    She stumbled across a similar idea on her scone tour, with several tearooms offering “hot cross scones” which she ate only with butter, as she felt strawberry and cream would just not fit.

    Supermarkets have stoked controversy in recent years for wacky hot cross bun flavours such as Sainsbury’s cheddar and caramelised onion chutney recipe, Asda’s tomato and red Leicester version and Waitrose’s Earl Grey tea and orange zest flavour.

    Despite what the silly warring factions of Devon and Cornwall think [as well as the “purists” (WTF is a “purist”?)] they are all wrong.

    Cream and jam are unnecessary accompaniments to both toasted teacakes (which is what a “hot cross bun” really is) and scones. Teacakes should contain dried fruit, be served freshly-toasted and slathered with lots of melting butter. Scones should also contain fruit (plain scones are diabolical), be served at room temperature and thickly buttered.

  10. 374798+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Leave well enough alone as is,you give these political overseers an inch they will take the whole nine yards,.
    The closing of the eyes has been well practised
    by the authorities regarding very serious issue as in, paedophile / rotherham, so to accompany someone to Switzerland for humanitarian reasons should have no comeback.

    Advocates of assisted dying should not gloss over what has happened in Canada

    1. It would simply follow the abortion descent to Hell in which within twenty years a high proportion of deaths would be ‘assisted’ as the legal scope gets broader and broader. Depressed? One pill will solve it forever. Chronic back pain? Death by morphine overdose etc etc.
      It’s an impossible subject because one simply cannot trust the motives of families, quacks, NHS administrators or politicians.

    1. Good article expressing a truth we already know. They really do have to go. All of them, then perhaps one day some conservatives might just fill the void. Half of the current lot belongs in the Lib-Dems in any case.

  12. Good morning all and what an absolutely beautiful one it is too!
    Clear skies, bright sunshine and calm air with not quite -1°C on the Yard Thermometer.

    After my nocturnal foray I’m probably going to be back in bed sometime through the day.

    1. Morning Bob, bright sunny start here too, I’ll be taking advantage of the free electricity

  13. British Wildlife Photography awards

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3bd429753c77f8d48caed5f9965b157fc086ca8a/0_0_4608_3072/master/4608.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=fd0f93de1c989e428f0f6f7c0e1965e3
    Coast and marine: runner-up
    Fireworks anemone, Loch Fyne, Scotland by Dan Bolt

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/49bfbec86d9b2bbc41db93557e91bd65e0b93f4e/0_0_6000_4000/master/6000.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=80e1665dd88ebbe156c1b2ae7b54aa5e
    Red fox, Sherwood Pines forest park, Nottinghamshire. Photograph: Daniel Valverde

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/09b250e7d8d09d570d3f9631dbe0d8a9f615ddde/0_0_3257_2714/master/3257.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=6691f1da828d0f26352d6bf002ab65cf
    Animal portraits: winner
    Starling at Night by Mark Williams

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1eec9767b58849302400ae5453b2cd24ecdc0658/0_0_3736_3053/master/3736.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=5e1d9949c27d278f7f69becf4d9bf679
    Animal portraits: runner-up
    Sunrise Hare by Spencer Burrows

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/79bf4e308cb52fef2ef117695ec2bf2657cb229c/0_0_7770_5180/master/7770.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=66e5093e428ae26d3f120567ac6a4d1a

  14. I gave been known to eat it at breakfast. 🙂 Strawberries are a pain to grow while blackcurrants and gooseberries are less sweet and reliably heavy croppers here in Devon if I can keep the blackbirds off them – they go mad for gooseberries.

    1. I’ve not had any problems with my strawberries yet, here in southern Sweden. We gat a fresh supply every three-years-or-so from a friend and then use the new plants produced by the runners for the following two years. They are in a (slightly) raised bed that is netted to keep the opportunists away.

      A solitary (red) goosegog bush produces sweet berries that are ignored by the birds.

  15. Right everyone. I’m still pooped with this cold though the dehydration has eased somewhat! I would like to rest up but I have to go shopping. See you all later.

  16. I read some interesting new research the other day about sleep and it turns out that people who have trouble sleeping at night should spend a few minutes outdoors at dawn and dusk each day as that resets the circadian rhythm.

    1. Daylight is an interesting thing. Some years ago, Firstborn was getting very down, so we got him a “sunlight” light (all the right frequencies to mimic sunshine), and he perked up almost immediately (we live in southern Norway. It gets dark in the winters).

      1. Seasonal Affected Disorder has been well attested for years and is caused by lack of sunlight triggering serotonin and/or melatonin deficiency. A light box does help many people, but this new research suggests that experiencing natural twilight does address other sleep disorders. Melatonin is another hormone one can take to help with sleep deficiency.

    2. Well, I’ve just been up the “garden” hanging a load of towels out and I plan getting some dead ash saplings taken down later.

  17. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f5fd2eb73615d47e888e10115aa24de1c2648824/0_0_2500_1407/master/2500.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=15ead828378a82f8fce1862f16c6c3c6
    A rare black leopard deep in the forest of India’s Tadoba-Andhari tiger reserve. Its unusual colouring comes from a mutation that causes melanism, an excessive development of dark-coloured pigment in the skin. This darker fur may be an advantage in tropical forests, where very little sunlight filters through the dense tree canopy

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c45bde6172a1742a93a9a7d70a23494572c88a00/0_0_7352_4901/master/7352.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=38575a2726cfc29cb643b75b82bcede4
    Galapagos.

  18. Morning, all Y’all.
    Terrible weather this morning. After a day of rain yesterday, we now have strong winds, and the rain is not only heavy but going over to sleet. Yukk.

  19. More than 80 migrants die in twin-boat Med disasters

    Rescuers attend to survivors on the deflating rubber dinghy in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea on which passengers were left without food or water for several days

    More than 80 migrants are feared to have died in the Mediterranean in twin tragedies as they tried to reach the shores of Italy and Greece.Yesterday Turkish officials said that 22 migrants, including at least five children, drowned after their boat capsized off Turkey’s largest island, Gokceada, which is also known as Imbros.

    The migrants’ nationalities were not clear, but in recent years tens of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans have crossed the Aegean in boats organised by smugglers.

    “The Turkish coastguard found the bodies of 22 people,” the local governor’s office said in a statement.

    There has been a rise in the number of migrants and refugees trying to cross the Aegean in recent weeks.

    In the second incident, around 60 people who tried to cross by boat from Libya to Italy were reported to have died of hunger and thirst. The motor on their boat broke down and they drifted at sea for more than a week. The fatalities included women and at least one child, according to survivors.

    Around 25 survivors from Mali, Senegal and Gambia were found on a deflating rubber dinghy in the middle of the Mediterranean. The dinghy was spotted by the Ocean Viking, a rescue ship belonging to the organisation SOS Méditerranée. “These people saw many of their dear ones die,” one of the rescuers, identified only as Massimo, said in a video released by the NGO.

    Two of the migrants were unconscious and had to evacuated by the Italian military by helicopter to Sicily. The other 23 were dehydrated, traumatised and had burns from fuel.

    “MORE than 80 migrants are feared to have died …” Who is doing the ‘fearing’? I’m certainly not! I still believe in ‘safety of the realm’.

    1. That’s a real tragedy, Grizzly. Why on earth aren’t the RNLI rushing some of their boats down to the Mediterranean to escort some of these poor illegal immigrants safely to shore? (I jest, of course.)

      1. Maybe it’s because I’ve stopped my standing order to them and so have many others.

    2. That is the appalling truth about weak governments.
      They create exactly these situations where people’s normal humane instincts are crushed by the failure to defend a country or culture against invasion by alien creeds.
      When people can no longer rely on their rulers to respect them and their standards – and even criminalise those wishing to hold on to values that gave them a bearable life – then mayhem takes over.

      1. Your observation makes me think of the ridiculous Abbott/Hester debacle about whether Ms A’s chronic grievance gig might make people hate all black women inappropriately. The wider phenomenon is one of getting so sick of being abused by minorities that something good and generous within one dies.

        1. That is the worrying point.
          We have been born and brought up in a Christianity based, tolerant society and the very weakness of our rulers have subverted our characters.
          They have actively turned-on those who built that society over many generations. Not content with passively allowing this situation to develop, they now actually criminalise those who question their multi-culti nirvana.

  20. Good morning, chums (belatedly). i had the devil of a job logging into NoTTLe late last night from my hotel room. And after managing Wordle in just three. Anyhow I’m enjoying my stay in Bath with other P G Wodehouse fans. I’ve just been down for my breakfast and put my gnashers around the old E and B. The very friendly and welcoming lady on the door to the breakfast area said “I’m sure you’ll be used to helping yourself to what breakfast items you’d like”. She is apparently a devoted PGW fan so I replied “Not really, Jeeves normally just glides in with my breakfast on a tray when he senses I am awake”! Toodle pip, I’m now off to do today’s Wordle and then back down to enjoy the day’s activities.

    Wordle 1,001 5/6

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

          1. I think he might be a newbie from the Speccy. Perhaps he blocked you there on disqus.

    2. When MB and I last stayed in Bath (many, many, many years …..) there was a Roman legion enactment society in town.
      Their next appearance was in ……. ?????? Make a wild guess.
      Our car was too small to cram in an entire Roman Legion.

      1. Was one of them holding a placard saying ‘Camulodunum or bust’ and you chose to give a lift to the bust?

  22. Good luck, but unfortunately with a net figure of at least 750,000 gimmigrants arriving each year, the powers that be will need to find places to plonk them all.

    Anyways, couldn’t the New Forest do with some cultural enrichment?

  23. ‘Morning All

    Can this be real??

    https://t.me/truthpills/24811

    Medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7483c18450205756354dcb73b259784bf1f67a593271bc5494b24bb27a485e14.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d83fe9276cea772b02c0c95c7f56c60f670c7d12ce53965a6771fb03efcf9e64.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/00e4b595a4c6323581266bb94891b9146394c1cb421b2de61b6fb3928dd3863f.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2914a85b2588160c20405b91e8c8ab2e305e5f37668b2dd56967e6d6cb1f434d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/82556d9afd05d0d33f2f0401cfb8404371820f1ec1c052a5974470ec6170a60b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5eef811dabf0f4f0cf22e01468ebd5a3fb6641e3411ee98a24966a72e4638433.jpg

    1. Well said Prof Bellamy! No wonder we never saw him on the propaganda channels, er MSM, after that.

    2. The bottom left one in the ‘cultural differences looks like a Muslim version of that Newtons clicky thing or a Muslim windchime

    4. Back in spring 2020 I asked someone on Facebook who identified himself as a hospital consultant if he thought the Stanley Milgram obedience trials were relevant to Covid. I wish I’d saved his answer. He explained the parallels perfectly, beginning with the invisible threat.

    1. “ Veganism, I guess, was interesting for a while but when everyone’s at it, if you’re to have any hope of still being talked about, you’ve got to start sleeping with your neighbours.”
      Sums up actually quite nicely the vacuousness of many of the people who live amongst us.

      1. Look how getting covered in tattoos is working out in the desperate search for meaning.

      2. A couple of weeks back I provided lunch for a couple of people who would be working with a disabled relative who was visiting us. I enquired of their manager whether anyone had dietary needs and my heart sank when I was told X is a vegan. After much thought was expended on what would suit all concerned I was not too impressed to be told ‘Oh no, I’m not vegan. I am sometimes for a bit and then sometimes I’m just vegetarian for a bit but at the moment I’m eating meat and fish’.

  25. Did any of you watch the four part series: “The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson”? The thought that this charlatan is still hoping to return to Parliament is unutterably depressing.

      1. It showed him to be the total shit we all know about. Interestingly, the American woman (Arcuri) came across as sensible, level-headed and fair. Halfcock and Cur Williamson each tried to show what very decent (and misunderstood) chaps they are…

    3. I’d like to think that the voting public have seen through the old Bozo, I’m a bit of a clown and really a nice guy, Johnson charm offensive. Once very, very badly bitten it should be a BIG FO from the constituencies.

  27. Good moaning.
    Well, I thought I was an untrusting old bat, but last night highlighted something I’d not encountered before.
    I ordered a sushi set for grandson’s birthday and asked his father if it was all right to give his mobile phone number and email address to make sure that the parcel didn’t sit on their doorstep for hours.
    Sonny Boy agreed and I buzzed off the order. No request for payment details appeared which worried me in case our son had paid instead. He hadn’t and neither of us had given any card or account details whatsoever. Son checked, and the money had been taken from his account.
    Panic ensued and son cancelled his card. Thinking through the events, SB realised he uses ApplePay and once his email address, mobile phone number and the verification code sent to him had been entered – which I did at my end as he dictated the numbers – the link was established and the money was automatically removed from his account.
    I never touch these fancy methods – credit cards and debit cards are sadly a necessary evil in this techie age – but I feel my prejudice against giving even more organisations the chance to dip into my bank account has been justified.
    Even Sonny Boy, who uses such devices far more than I do, was somewhat taken aback.

    2. Make sure you are reading the details of a website. Sit in a quiet space. Take your time. The internet likes to show us images of smiling goons with ipads and cups of coffee with their feet up on a sofa. Have a state of mind like you would on High Street.

      1. I realised that if a tech savvy son was worried, then it was information that needed to be shared.

    4. I’ve never used my phone to pay for anything, even car parking. I do use contactless debit cards and very rarely my credit card but via the laptop not the phone. Just old-fashioned I suppose.

      I gave my debit card to OH this morning to pay for a tankfull of diesel as he was going into town and passing the filling station. I said he might as well take my car and fill it up rather than me making a special trip to do so.

      1. I always insist on inserting the card into the machine and tapping in my PIN number.
        That establishes a known pattern of behaviour.

        1. I do sometimes have to enter the pin when I use the shopping card, but it’s a long time since I’ve had to with my personal one. He brought me the slip back for info! I did check that he used the diesel pump………

  29. DM
    “Veterans minister Johnny Mercer could face jail for refusing to
    name whistleblowers who raised concerns about alleged extrajudicial
    killings of Afghans by British special forces.
    His sources are said
    to be witnesses who were given assurances that their identities would be
    protected were they to raise concerns about their comrades.
    The MP
    served in Afghanistan and told the inquiry he had been aware of
    allegations about SAS activities in the country – investigating them
    after he was appointed to his ministerial role.
    Tessa Gregory, a
    partner at Leigh Day, the law firm representing some of the Afghan
    families whose relatives were allegedly killed by the SAS, previously
    told BBC News that his testimony ‘lays bare the depth of concern…that
    UK special forces were carrying out extrajudicial killings in
    Afghanistan’.
    Hmm Leigh Day you say another set of grifters that should have been banned over the fake Iraqi allegations
    Mercer protecting whistleblowers or fantasists?? or do they even exist??
    Who the hell would be an SAS trooper or a Police firearms officer these days do your job and politically motivated prosecution could well be your lot…………….

    1. Leigh Day even give lawyers [sorry Bill] a bad name – why are they still in business??

      1. Don’t apologise. There have always been some lawyers who are crooked shits.

        Edited: And often in the field of criminal law…. Funny that. Not.

      2. Don’t apologise. There have always been some lawyers who are crooked shits.

        Edited: And often in the field of criminal law…. Funny that. Not.

    2. How stupid .

      The accusation is pathetic.

      The Taliban or whoever the ruling party are in Afghanistan have punished and slaughtered their own people .

      Leave Johnny Mercer alone , and stop this disgusting witch hunt .

    3. Mercer is one of the good guys – and he supported the old soldier accused of murder in NI. ‘They’ are out to get him.

    5. Leigh Day was at one time said to be the firm with the largest revenue in the country from Legal Aid.
      Opinions will vary but I have seen several complicated cases dealt with by this type of ‘radical’ practice where establishing whether there was any fault or what the best interest was of – say – a child born with no hope of developing into a sentient adult was very difficult. IMHO the plaintiffs would have been much better to go through their grief reaction and come out the other side while they could still move on, but they spent years with an open sore in the deluded belief that they would have a triumphant day in court.

  30. I’d love an electric car to nip around the countryside – but the reality just isn’t practical
    Battery vehicles might suit eco-warrior urbanites, but I’m more likely to buy an old banger to match my oil-fired boiler
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2024/03/16/electric-cars-dream-townies-and-fantasy-for-country-bumpkin/

    BTL

    We have just returned to our home in France having gone the the funeral of a very dear friend in England. The round trip was about 700 miles. We filled up with petrol in France at the beginning of the trip and once in England and the petrol tank is still half full.

    We could not have gone to the funeral in an electric car – the logistics would not have worked.

    1. “We could not have gone to the funeral in an electric car “

      That’s a dead cert.

      1. Who remembers singing this on long car journey during one’s childhood? (Once one got started everyone had to make up new verses)

        “You’ll never Go to Heaven in an Old Ford Car
        ‘Cos an old Ford car won’t go that far.
        You’ll never Go to Heaven in an Old Ford Car
        ‘Cos an old Ford car won’t go that far.

        Chorus
        I ain’t going to grieve my lord,
        I ain’t going to grieve my Lord,
        I ain’t going to grieve my lord no more.”

        You’ll never go to heaven in a cycling club,
        ‘Cos half-way there there ain’t no pub!

        You’ll never go to heaven in a limousine
        ‘Cos the Lord don’t supply no gasoline!

        You’ll never go to heaven in a vampire jet,
        ‘Cos the lord ain’t got, no runways yet!

        You’ll never go to heaven on the underground
        ‘Cos the underground goes underground.

        Etc. etc. etc. Until everyone has run out of verses and then

        This is the end St Peter said
        As he shut the gates and went to bed.

        1. My old man has just said that I made that up! He was never a Scout, nor a Guide, so he never sang it!

          2. I wasn’t either, but my boys were scouts – I’m sure we must have sung that on family camp weekends. They were good fun.

          3. Our sons were Cubs for a while.
            The Akela’s son was in the same troupe and became a sixer for no apparent reason other than ….
            He was an obnoxious child and the boys left after a fraught camping weekend.

        2. Oh you’ll never go to heaven
          In a baked beans tin
          Cos a baked beans tin
          Got baked beans in

          Oh you’ll never go to heaven
          On roller skates
          Cos you’ll, roll right past
          The Pearly Gates

        3. Oh you’ll never go to heaven
          In a baked beans tin
          Cos a baked beans tin
          Got baked beans in

          Oh you’ll never go to heaven
          On roller skates
          Cos you’ll, roll right past
          The Pearly Gates

      2. Who remembers singing this on long car journey during one’s childhood? (Once one got started everyone had to make up new verses)

        “You’ll never Go to Heaven in an Old Ford Car
        ‘Cos an old Ford car won’t go that far.
        You’ll never Go to Heaven in an Old Ford Car
        ‘Cos an old Ford car won’t go that far.

        Chorus
        I ain’t going to grieve my lord,
        I ain’t going to grieve my Lord,
        I ain’t going to grieve my lord no more.”

        You’ll never go to heaven in a cycling club,
        ‘Cos half-way there there ain’t no pub!

        You’ll never go to heaven in a limousine
        ‘Cos the Lord don’t supply no gasoline!

        You’ll never go to heaven in a vampire jet,
        ‘Cos the lord ain’t got, no runways yet!

        You’ll never go to heaven on the underground
        ‘Cos the underground goes underground.

        Etc. etc. etc. Until everyone has run out of verses and then

        This is the end St Peter said
        As he shut the gates and went to bed.

      5. That wasn’t the experience of the brother of a friend of mine when he came over from Paris in his EV but it is wise to research the charging options at various locations. We’ve been running an EV since just before lockdown. It was allegedly capable of 330 miles per charge but of course we took that with a pinch of salt, assuming that applied to a car with one slim occupant and zero luggage driving on a clear day in flat country. It never showed charge above 306 miles and is now down to about 298 which is fine for everywhere in England (less so Scotland where range anxiety set in and we haven’t tried the people’s republic of Wales since buying it).
        There are now a lot of fast charging outlets run by Gridserve and a few others as well as the Tesla network. These can add 200 miles in the time it takes to go to the loo and pick up a coffee or newspaper. Maybe it’s just because advancing years have brought us to the point of needing a pit stop after 200 miles that this doesn’t seem a big deal.

        1. Interesting item on Sir Baldrick’s show.

          A car maker somewhere in Wales decided that a small hydrogen-powered engine was fine for cruising, but no good for stops and starts. However, an electric engine powered with a super capacitor, such as already developed in Korea using graphene, is fine for the stops and starts but runs out of puff when cruising and has no shelf life.

          Combining the two cuts down the weight and energy consumption considerably, All that is holding it back is an adequate network of H2 filling stations. When there is, then range is not a problem either.

      6. That wasn’t the experience of the brother of a friend of mine when he came over from Paris in his EV but it is wise to research the charging options at various locations. We’ve been running an EV since just before lockdown. It was allegedly capable of 330 miles per charge but of course we took that with a pinch of salt, assuming that applied to a car with one slim occupant and zero luggage driving on a clear day in flat country. It never showed charge above 306 miles and is now down to about 298 which is fine for everywhere in England (less so Scotland where range anxiety set in and we haven’t tried the people’s republic of Wales since buying it).
        There are now a lot of fast charging outlets run by Gridserve and a few others as well as the Tesla network. These can add 200 miles in the time it takes to go to the loo and pick up a coffee or newspaper. Maybe it’s just because advancing years have brought us to the point of needing a pit stop after 200 miles that this doesn’t seem a big deal.

    2. I posted a furious comment btl on Press Reader on this. Also on the Matthew Lynn story “ESG is over – but the City hasn’t noticed”.

      In the Sitwell piece on EVs, which is along the lines of “EVs are for Townies only”, towards the end he puts in the virtue-signalling obligatory “I would go electric…” i.e. tacitly telling is he’s “one of the good guys”, he understands “the Science”, he’s “on the side of history.” He cannot/won’t say what we implicitly have always known – these EVs are anything but green.

      Similarly, Lynn is along the right lines but towards the end writes: “This isn’t to suggest that we shouldn’t decarbonise.” Why not, Mr Lynn? Why shouldn’t you suggest that we shouldn’t decarbonise? We this toadying, virtue-signallingness? Why can’t you say what we all know – that decarbonising the UK won’t make a jot of difference to the planet?and that we are all being played for fools?

        1. Indeed.
          Tomato-growers pump it into their greenhouses.
          Maybe if we stopped cutting down all the trees and grubbing up all the scrub and vegetation, things would be much better balanced.

      2. Where does all that extra ‘leccy come from? Mostly, burning coal, oil & gas. Th3re’s losses in transmission, and so an EV isn’t noticeably less CO2-emitting than a fossil car – just that the emissions are somewhere else.

  32. Future of Money’ — European Central Bank Unveils Plans for ‘Digital Euro’ CBDC to Be Introduced Next Year

    The European Central Bank outlined its plans for the introduction of a “digital euro” Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) on Wednesday, which is projected to be implemented throughout the EU as soon as next year.

    A presentation from Piero Cipollone, a Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB), published on Wednesday said that a “digital euro”, which he dubbed “the future of money”, could be made available to the public by November of 2025.

    The central banker said that a digital euro would bring cash-like features to the digital world, saying that it would be functional on and offline, would be free for basic use, have “Pan European reach”, would be “respectful of privacy”, and crucially would be issued by a central bank.

    “There is currently no European digital means of payment covering all euro area countries: 13 out of 20 euro area countries don’t have a national card scheme and instead rely on international schemes for digital payments, which settle 69 per cent of all digital transactions in the EU,” Cipollone wrote.

    “A digital euro would fill this gap, providing a European digital means of payment accessible and accepted in all euro area countries. A digital euro would provide a pan-European platform that would standardise digital payments in the entire euro area,” he added.

    The central banker claimed that the introduction of a digital euro CBDC would not mean that other forms of payment, including cash, card, bank accounts, other digital payments would go away.

    The presentation also claimed that the ECB plans to build several privacy safeguards into the system, including transactions being anonymised with the central bank only being able to view “a minimal set of pseudonymised data”.

    However, other concerns remain about the implementation of CBDCs, particularly surrounding their potential use as a means of social engineering. Indeed, the Bank of England previously admitted that Central Bank Digital Currencies — unlike decentralised cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin — would be “programmable“, meaning that the state could potentially decide how and where people spend their money.

    For example, a CBDC could feasibly set a limit on the amount of money one could spend on petrol to fill up a car in order to meet EU emissions targets.

    Unsurprisingly, the European Central Bank has been heavily critical of Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrencies that are not under the control of a central bank.

    The head of the ECB Christine Lagarde — a lawyer by trade who never worked as an economist — previously declared that she believes that cryptocurrencies are “worth nothing” claiming that their value is “based on nothing, there is no underlying assets to act as an anchor of safety.”

    On the other hand, Lagarde has been a chief supporter of a European Union CBDC, saying: “The day when we have the central bank digital currency, any digital euro, I will guarantee it… So the central bank will be behind it. I think that is vastly different from any of those things.”

    The European Union is not alone in looking to implement a CBDC, with Rishi Sunak’s Tory government in the United Kingdom working on a “digital pound” and the Biden administration in the United States also working on creating a “digital dollar“. Central Bank Digital Currencies have also been championed by the globalist World Economic Forum (WEF), which listed them on its list of technologies that will “change the world by 2027“.

    1. Christine Lagarde – a lawyer by trade – and also a convicted felon. As for “respectful of privacy”. Yeah, right! Anyone who falls for that deserves what’s coming to them and I know who they are. I watch people at work paying for their lunch with their phones. Gullible and then some.

      1. The “look a squirrel” tactics work. They give us GDPR etc and hope we don’t notice that our actual privacy is eroded daily.

    2. Christine Lagarde – a lawyer by trade – and also a convicted felon. As for “respectful of privacy”. Yeah, right! Anyone who falls for that deserves what’s coming to them and I know who they are. I watch people at work paying for their lunch with their phones. Gullible and then some.

    3. Christine Lagarde – a lawyer by trade – and also a convicted felon. As for “respectful of privacy”. Yeah, right! Anyone who falls for that deserves what’s coming to them and I know who they are. I watch people at work paying for their lunch with their phones. Gullible and then some.

    4. “The central banker claimed that the introduction of a digital euro CBDC would not mean that other forms of payment, including cash, card, bank accounts, other digital payments would go away.”
      Slowlee, slowlee, catchee monkee. Slice by slice.

    5. “Take control of the Courts and the Currency and let the rabble have the rest”.

      Frank Herbert.

  33. New first minister for Wales ,

    Guess what … go on guess.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughan_Gething

    Vaughan was born in Zambia and brought up in Dorset. He was educated at Aberystwyth and Cardiff universities. He has one son with his wife, Michelle and is a largely retired cricketer who is also a fan of both rugby and football.

    Vaughan was a solicitor and former partner at Thompsons. He is a member of the GMB, UNISON and Unite unions, and was the youngest ever President of the Wales TUC. He has previously served as a county councillor, school governor and community service volunteer – supporting and caring for a student with cerebral palsy. Vaughan is also a former president of NUS Wales.

    Between 1999 and 2001, Vaughan worked as a researcher to former AMs Val Feld and Lorraine Barrett and between 2001 and 2003, was the chair of Right to Vote – a cross-party project to encourage greater participation from black minority ethnic communities in Welsh public life. He is also a current member of the Co-operative Party.

    Vaughan has held the following roles in government, before taking up his current role as Minister for the Economy in May 2021:

    Cabinet Secretary/Minister for Health and Social Services May 2016 to May 2021
    Deputy Minister for Health September 2014 to May 2016
    Deputy Minister for Tackling Poverty June 2013 to September 2014

      1. Just about , thank you OB.

        I had a better sleep last night , steering clear of porridge for a good while and other gluten laden food!

        1. Excellent!
          SWMBO has a boiled egg (made by me) for breakfast every day – because of diabetes. It boils over the same timespan as making the coffee, so convenient. Maybe worth a thought?

    2. I saw the choice of candidates yesterday and assumed this one would be the result.

  34. Has anyone received an email, or any sort of communication from their surgery requesting their blood pressure figures? Or a request that they turn up for a blood test to check on their cholesterol? I received a text message (I do not recall ever parting with my phone number, I am very careful regarding to whom I give it) from the surgery asking me to check my blood pressure or pop into the surgery to get it done on their public machine. A few days earlier I read that the WHO was requiring a compilation of everyone’s blood pressure and cholesterol level, and there was a third item, it might have been blood sugar level. Now as I am very seldom at the surgery I just wondered at first if they wanted an up-to-date reading to complete their readings, but now I am beginning to smell a WHO rat in the woodpile and I am tending not to comply with the request. I belong to me, then my family, not the surgery and definitely, very definitely, not the WHO. It is private information – but I’ll tell you because most of you don’t know who I am and those that do won’t tell the WHO. It was 127/77 after a couple of glasses of Friday night wine. I don’t take any medication, I am 77 so I suppose that is an okay sort of reading. Anyway, back to business – the only way we will get through all this WHO/NWO mess we are in is by not complying with authority (see Katy Hopkins below on trust and authority); we belong to ourselves first and foremost and not the State, nor its agencies.

    1. You’re 77? Strewth & crikey! You need to start looking like 77, PM! Putting the rest of us to shame!

      1. The avatar photo was taken on the 7 Feb this year on the occasion of my 7 year old grandson’s birthday. He took the photograph with his grandad’s camera, it has a little camera shake so not quite as sharp as it could be but that is no bad thing!

          1. Thank you! Well, mine hasn’t turned properly yet, I have a few greys round the margins (in the manner of an old dog) but mostly it has gone much darker in a colourless sort of way which I don’t like and doesn’t suit my pale skin.

          2. I was already grey round the edges in my thirties. I started to dye it back to my natural dark. In 2005 we were away on a five week trip to Peru & Bolivia and it got a bit faded……. after that I stopped bothering and it went white. I’ve got used to it.

    2. The attack on the notion of being born free has been breathtaking. It appears for many in the culture it’s an unknown or alien quality.

      1. They want us all to become willing servants of the welfare State, AA. People tend to lose sight of the palpable fact that all three major parties lean towards the political left and so they don’t seem to notice anything odd. It’s the old adage about fish swimming in water never noticing water and so on.

    4. Thanks for posting that. I have had my local surgery nosing around trying to get a blood sample from me for the past couple of weeks and smelled a rat. Suspected that HMG/NHS were giving them £26.99 for each sample successfully collected, or somesuch. Even more plausible that WHO are behind it. Anyway, I told the nurse that my blood was 70 degrees proof last time I checked it.

      1. Thank you for confirming my suspicions! I am turning into a disagreeable ‘just leave me alone!’ sort of elderly person and actually, I rather like the feeling and the sense of freedom! Not complying becomes easier every time. I suppose we comply with these smaller health detail requests through a niggling, sense of fear, of which we are scarcely aware. Once you come to terms with inevitable mortality, the fear departs and you are free. An opportunity cost (or benefit, in this case).

        1. Absolutely! I’m 75 (76 in July) and on no medication – I can travel to Kenya on my own and I’m free!

    5. I think the surgery must have got my phone number years ago when I was less suspicious of their motives. I used to have regular medication for breast cancer, but since stopping that I’ve only been to the surgery once – when I had shingles five years ago.

    6. Since OH got captured by the surgery with his prostate and heart issues, he’s had no end of blood tests, etc. Last year one for pre diabetes – but I don’t think they have followed up on that. It does make you wonder what they do with our personal information.

      1. I’m waiting for a replacement hip, but it’s on hold as my blood pressure is rather high – now the local GPs have me on the radar they also want bloods – naturally they can’t access the samples the hospital took pre hip, so I needed a second set!!

    8. We get those every month at least once as text messages. We just ignore them. It is definitely from the surgery, who just want to get some figures on to their system. I won’t comply, since it is no more than a random figure lacking any context at all.

      The message usually begins, “Your GP has asked for a reading of your blood pressure…”, etc. The doctor is clearly not interested though, because when my other half actually turned up at the surgery for a consultation on something to do with her foot the doctor just said when asked about it, “I’ll take it if you want, but I don’t need it for your condition, so I’ll be taking no notice of it anyhow.”

      Bear in mind that a previous Health Minister of note had a grand plan to sell off all our medical data to third parties and we got an option to opt out, which I duly took. It’s just the useless NHS acting in character yet again.

      1. Yes, we opted out too, and from the vax, although 93% in this area did take it up. I just thought it odd that it should happen now, having never had a request before (and the little voice within telling me ‘they care not one jot, you know that.’).

    3. I trust his iris scans and fingerprints are on file with the Home Office/border force in case he changes his mind.

      1. I don’t think they bother with that. Only bona fide travelers have to put up with that nonsense.

    1. That’s an odd third letter you use

      Par for me
      Wordle 1,001 4/6

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

    2. Would he be, though, given that this is two and a half years after conscription / no more volunteering to sign up came in ? Some people just look young, eg this well-known pilot here who his fellows in 66 sqn were convinced had to be about 14 yo, when he was actually 20: https://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/pritt.php

        1. We get a seniors discount at the local supermarkets. They don’t question our age before knocking that five percent off the bill but if we are buying a bottle of wine we do end up being asked for proof that we are over twenty-one.

          OK be honest, it’s always six bottles of wine because that is worth another twenty five percent off.

  39. Oh, Brave New World.

    “An “error” in an overnight software update has left Sainsbury’s unable to deliver food or take contactless payments at its stores.

    The supermarket chain cancelled all home deliveries that were scheduled for Saturday and told customers to rebook for later in the week.

    In stores, customers reported being unable to pay using contactless cards and a number said tills were only able to take cash payments.

    “Due to an error with an overnight software update, we are experiencing issues with contactless payments,” a Sainsbury’s spokesperson said.

    The chain said all of its shops would remain open on Saturday but warned customers that they would have to pay using “chip and pin and cash”.

    It also confirmed that it had been left unable to directly contact customers who had been expecting a home delivery.

    “We apologise to customers for the inconvenience and are working hard to fix the issue,” the spokesperson added.”

    3. That happened throughout Westfield shopping centre at White City one evening. It was comical watching some of the nonplussed (mainly young) trying to tap their phones and being told they needed to use their cards to go and draw out some cash. I heard one wail, “But I don’t carry CARDS”!

      1. I saw a guy denied entry to a bus because his Apple Pay wouldn’t work and he carried nothing else with which to pay. Of course that could have happened if he just carried one card as well – while waiting for my fish and chip order the other week , the woman next to me was in a right pickle (excuse the pun) her order was all ready ie getting colder and greasier by the minute but the one card she carried was being refused by ‘the system’. Had this been an indigent looking soul ordering a saveloy or chip buttie would have been tempted to pay on her behalf. As it was she had to phone somebody at home, ask them to find another card and drive round
        I was paying with cash.

    4. Why is this a problem? There are other supermarkets; or heaven forbid, a few shops left on the high street.

      1. These poor folks won’t get their shopping this weekend. They might have to go through the list again and actually go out to another store to get their food etc.

        1. When my Mother was at home, she relied on delivery. No option, she wasn’t capable of going out…. but supermarkets wouldn’t drive out to her place, but a local grocery would. Lifesavers! We made sure to send them Christmas cards.

    5. Any business worth its money would have alternative ways of paying when the system fails. We did we had roll out tills that could take the money with manual slide machines to take cards.. and duplicate books if all else fails. That was a few years ago when people had sense.

    1. So much for the cashless society.

      No point treating yourself to a gourmet McDonald’s meal either, apparently their internet service was down yesterday and they couldn’t process orders.

  44. There was the now normal hamas protest in Toronto last night where they tried to disrupt a liberal fund raising event that featured pretendy emporer. For once police actually reacted and pushed the demonstrators back, even arresting one protester. Yeah we all cried, about time.

    But it has since been found that the one person arrested was a reporter for the right wing Rebel News site. No demonstrators were arrested for screaming “kill the jews”, none of the msm reporters were arrested, just this one reporter who has been getting the Tommy Robinson treatment from Canadian authorities. No mention of who was arrested in the press, the are too busy defending the hate speech law that has been proposed.

    When you think the liberals have reached rock bottom, they manage to find a way to dig us deeper into the hole.

    Oh and good morning from sunny south carolina. If only there wasn’t a problem with health care, I could see me moving here. I like the fact that supermarkets are not just allowed to sell alcohol but some actually have bars that serve thirsty shoppers is an illustration of how much less controlled life is down here.

      1. Well our incompetent finance minister (her tubiness on the right) is a WEF director, so she has the right to sit with God and the emporer.

        We don’t even ask where their loyalties lie any more because it is so obvious that it is not with canada.

    3. Apparently he was arrested for failing to show a police officer ID when requested. There is a video online where ge is showing his ID.

    4. It’s one of the things I love about living in WV, the freedom from ‘”Jobsworths” trying to interfere in my life!! And the weather of course, pretty moderate most of the time. Have a safe trip back home,

  48. I was in a good mood until wrestling with the phone company over their new SIM card – it needs a bank ID, which has expired. The code cannot be sent to the new SIM card because it’s not activated, and it can’t be activated without the bank ID. Circular argument… and, being thwarted yet again, I’m now furious.

    1. I set up a shared router on a payg SIM for the children and their families who stay at MOH’s holday lodge. A year ago we found that EE top-up cards no longer worked and SIL could no longer get connected to the internet without setting up a contract SIM with a banking ID.

      I have now found a way of shared access to the router without a contract by identifying the SIM using its phone number as the account number and crediting the account anonymously. Thus there is no permanent way for the provider to suck money out a permanently linked bank account.

      I use this anonymous EE SIM payg account top-up which can be used by any of my children before they get to use the router at the lodge :

      https://ee.co.uk/bills-payments/mobile/fast-payment-payg

  49. Right-wing Tory MPs want Mordaunt to oust Sunak
    Support for Commons leader comes as Conservatives continue to struggle in the polls
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/15/penny-mordaunt-should-lead-general-election-not-rishi-sunak/

    BTL
    She is a great admirer of Schwab and the WEF as well as Bill Gates.

    Apart from carrying heavy swords well at coronations and looking rather lascivious in a swimsuit what else can she do?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/500573f51317df8849649fa2a2c72b74a803c847aa789e7b41504ef580e84e47.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/56c810a193a8d97e81063e02d8821b9d5e2c0e548d5f03398690d4b36c3a25cb.png

    1. You’d never have seen a photo of Margaret Thatcher in a swimsuit like that, no matter how blue.

      1. Maggie was well endowed in other more appropriate ways for a prime minister!

    4. Ti’s a wonder, given her “top heaviness”, that the sword didn’t cause her to topple.

      PS I recall how glad I was that the scroughbag Bojo was NOT PM at the Queen’s Funeral.

      1. If you don’t mind, the correct term is now person with a vagina.

        I am now struggling with how to identify if someone is a woman or not, the only foolproof way that I can think of would have me arrested.

        1. Considering the issues surrounding the correct term for a woman that you have identified, am I right in thinking that you would be arrested for thinking that there were holes in the argument? 🤔

        2. Considering the issues surrounding the correct term for a woman that you have identified, am I right in thinking that you would be arrested for thinking that there were holes in the argument? 🤔

        3. There are occasional cases of women being born without a vagina. Years ago I read an article that suggested Elizabeth I was thus afflicted but how the heck the historian deduced this escapes me.

        1. So she trots out the trans nonsense? Biological female? No, just a woman, not a mentally defective man pretending he’s a woman.

    6. The swimsuit pic is taken at a flattering angle. She has a belly on her. We might be thankful that unlike beauty contests, posing in swimwear is not mandatory for prospective pm’s.

    7. Apart from looking like a poweful woman what has she done to become leader. I do not know enough about her.

  50. Right-wing Tory MPs want Mordaunt to oust Sunak
    Support for Commons leader comes as Conservatives continue to struggle in the polls
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/15/penny-mordaunt-should-lead-general-election-not-rishi-sunak/

    BTL
    She is a great admirer of Schwab and the WEF as well as Bill Gates.

    Apart from carrying heavy swords well at coronations and looking rather lascivious in a swimsuit what else can she do?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/500573f51317df8849649fa2a2c72b74a803c847aa789e7b41504ef580e84e47.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/56c810a193a8d97e81063e02d8821b9d5e2c0e548d5f03398690d4b36c3a25cb.png

  51. Slightly different sources for the Americans, but this could just as easily refer to what is happening in the UK.
    https://www.takimag.com/article/it-takes-a-pillage/

    Today, not only is the word “assimilation” itself taboo, but what we are experiencing is no less than a deliberate effort to completely annihilate the character, culture, traditions, and history of this nation as it was founded and what controlled immigration with mandatory assimilation had created—the greatest, freest, most prosperous society in history. And the brainwashing of America’s native-born children to reject their birthright and heritage as evil, and demand it be replaced with the kind of tyranny their forebears fled, is just as evil, if not more so. It’s classic divide and conquer.
    Looking back, the Haitians that I knew and went to school with 50 years ago in the melting pot of melting pots, Brooklyn USA, were fleeing the nightmare hellscape of the Duvaliers and for the most part, at least in my experience, became fully Americanized. In fact, it was to such an extent that they earned the enmity of native-born black Americans who, by that time, had fully bought into the toxic propaganda of Democrat-invented victimization culture, and all the rot that went with it. Bitterly ironic that black Americans have been destroyed to such an extent by the welfare state, abortion, family dissolution, and the blood libel of “institutional white supremacy” that the Democrats now have to import millions of foreign indigents to take their place at the voting booth. Yet that is the cold, hard, and simple truth as to why we have an erased border, zero immigration controls, and of course nothing even approaching any kind of program of assimilation. The fact that we have had institutionalized and government-mandated programs of bilingualism and multilingualism for decades just underscores the point.
    As for Trump rightly questioning the sanity of flooding America with millions of people from “sh*thole countries,” it might sound cruel, but many times the truth is indeed cruel. Haiti has been a failed state for decades, like Mexico, much of Latin America, and a good chunk of the rest of the third world that continues to flood in, unchecked. But the D.C. junta will insist that millions of Haitians must be settled here. Along with a few million “Palestinians” from Gaza. And we’ll not only have to accept it, we’ll be forced to cheer it on as we transmogrify ourselves into Haiti itself.

    1. The Democrats have pretty much abolished the voting booth. Now it’s all about mail ins for everyone including the deceased and the non existent. Election day goes on for however long the Democrats consider necessary to ensure there are enough fake votes in the system for them to win.

      That’s why President Donald J Trump won 82% of the bellwether counties in 2020 and the swing across the US. Except in the critical parts of the swing states which went to Biden.

      1. It’s happening in the UK too.
        I was amused by Reuters fact checkers concluding that “only” 43% of the votes cast in Rochdale were postal votes.

        “VERDICT
        False. 43.3% of the total number of votes submitted in the 2024 Rochdale by-election were postal ballots. This is in line with a moderate rise in postal voting nationally, according to the Electoral Commission.
        This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team.”

        As block-votes those percentages are easily enough to swing almost any seat in the UK

        1. It should be a legal requirement that the returning officers should publish the split between postal and in-person votes by candidate.

          1. Bills friend Mr Rashid should be required to submit the counts along with the ready filled postal ballots.

          3. Better still, abolish postal voting with maybe a few exceptions that are rigorously checked. I would add that proxy voting should be abolished.
            If you aren’t in the country when an election takes place, tough luck.

          5. If there were no postal or proxy voting and ballots for each constituency had random variations in the candidate order , we could go some way towards that goal although I daresay some would be schooled in recognising a particular name,

          6. If you aren’t in the country because the government has sent you off to fight its wars, you’re entitled to a vote.

          7. Absolutely but that can be dealt with through a local arrangement. The same would apply to embassy staff.

        2. It is too easy to get a postal vote. There are zero checks. You don’t even need to know your own date of birth!

  54. Here’s another clue to how things work in Britain.

    Green tech expert, George Polk, advised George Soros where to invest $1billion in the green technology sector.

    George Polk’s green pressure group, ClimateWorks, donates money to the Smith School at Oxford where one of the principals, Dr Ben Caldecott, is a member of the Climate Change Committee which owes it’s existence to the Climate Change Act 2008. Soros’ financial fingerprints are all over the Climate Change Act and Legal Net Zero. Other members of the Climate Change Committee, such as Dr Steven Fries, have Soros connections and also the first chairman, Lord Adair Turner, who has worked closely with Soros for many years and is a senior fellow of Soros’ Institute for New Economic Thinking.

    In addition, George Polk’s ClimateWorks donates money to the European Climate Foundation which part financed Conservative think tank Bright Blue which recommended Legal Net Zero 2019 to Theresa May.

    That’s just a small part of the background story to Britain’s climate laws.

  56. Putin is gambling on Europe’s weakness. 16 March 2024.

    As America turns inward and the wider world loses interest, it should be clear to all that this is now Europe’s fight. Having consolidated power at home, Putin will be gambling that we no longer have the stomach for it.

    Well that’s it then! It’s pretty obvious that Europe is dying. The EU has sucked out its democratic life and what is left is a shell devoid of any patriotic content.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/03/15/vladimir-putin-is-gambling-on-europes-weakness/

      1. “And then there’s the huge logistical challenge of scaling the project up to a meaningful level – one estimate suggests that you could need about 10 million wind-powered pumps to thicken sea-ice across just a tenth of the Arctic.“

    2. “We don’t actually know enough to determine whether this is a good idea or bad idea,” admits Dr Fitzgerald.

      Marvellous news. That settles it. Trebles all round for a job well done.

      2. It’s obvious that Dr Fitzgerald needs generous funding for many years ahead to research this further.

        2. The most important finding from any research is always ‘more research is needed’

    3. As sea-ice vanishes, the dark ocean surface can absorb more of the Sun’s energy, which accelerates warming.

      This statement forms the pivotal argument about how global warming is caused by the earth absorbing the Sun’s energy.

      It doesn’t even require a scientific argument to work out that using solar panels to suck energy out of the Sun is the very reason we are experiencing global warming!

      Using fossil fuels however is a way of using stored historical solar energy and by not using the earth’s current surface for energy generation this will promote global cooling.

      1. Dark surfaces not only absorb infra-red better than light surfaces, they also emit it better than light surfaces. Ice & snow is quite insulating, as any igloo-dweller will tell you.
        And wind-chill doesn’t make the temperature lower, it speeds up the heat transfer, making it feel colder! If they can’t even get that right, what value has the rest of their work?

      3. The Left can only permit ‘climate change’ to be caused by man. If they say ‘it’s the sun’ then there is no reason to tax people. No threat to demand the developed nations are forced backward to socialism. The con ends.

        The Left can’t have that, so they ignore reality because it doesn’t suit the narrative. After all, ‘the science is settled’. Which is the most ludicrous statement to make about science as can be imagined.

    6. You know as jaundiced as I am towards the BBC’s critical thinking skills and impartiality I am still surprised to see how much they are utterly sh*tting the scientific bed in this piece, it’s everywhere.

    7. Nothing is beyond their desperation. They won’t stop, regardless of the environmental damage they do. The Left meddle with everything.

  58. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1328f1c2c5023ac16af0c80016f1ce703c306f572abb7428f8443805b21f7878.jpg
    I just heard a leaflet drop through the letterbox.
    I was, naturally, immensely reassured (sarc). Then I looked more closely and saw that the knife crime pledge was to use the next 10 years to halve it (along with other violence) among women and girls. No mention of the demographic that is principally at risk from knife crime.

    Mothers – Sadiq doesn’t regard your sons as a priority.

    As for the ad feminem attack on Susan Hall ….

    Edit: the other side of this boasts of freezing TfL fares, stating that Labour has frozen TfL fares for the past 5 years whereas Boris apparently increased them by 42%. It would be interesting to see a comment on the finances of TfL alongside this as I seem to remember Sadiq persistently demanding more cash from central government to save TfL. There’s also a boast about free school meals (which started in September I think) ‘for at least another year’ . There is no comment on how this has affected school budgets as a recently retired primary head known to me was dreading the policy. The extra money doesn’t cover the cost of the meals in her school, especially as most parents will now want them rather than sending in packed lunches.

  59. S.S. Inger Toft.
    .

    Complement:
    30 (0 dead and 30 survivors).
    885 tons of herring meal and cod liver oil in drums

    At 09.20 hours on 16th March 1945 the Inger Toft (Master N.M. Brinck) in convoy RU-156 was torpedoed and sunk by U-722 (Hans Reimers) 3 miles 270° from Neirst Point, Isle of Skye. The master and 29 crew members were picked up by HMS Grenadier (T 334) (A/SkrLt A.G. Day, RNR) and landed at Loch Ewe.

    Type VIIC U-Boat U-722 was sunk on 27th March 1945 in the North Atlantic in the Sea of the Hebrides by depth charges from the British frigates HMS Fitzroy, HMS Redmill and HMS Byron. 44 dead (all hands lost).

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/br/inger_toft.jpg

  60. Watching parts of the GB News 3 hour show … The presenter, Pip Thomson is showing quite a lot of cleavage …. doesn’t bother me, but I know quite a few blokes who’d get distracted.

  62. Well – just spent an hour replacing the vital hairpins on the greenhouse vents. I’ll bet you a groat the bloke who designed them NEVER tried to fit them IN a greenhouse, up a step ladder, working over his head…. Why on earth can’t crucial bits of a kit be designed to be easily fitted??? Grrrr.

    And I’ll bet the damned things come out.

        3. Another self opinionated ‘pundit’ – his voice really gets up my nose 😘

  64. Sainsbury’s problems aren’t just with delivery services. In-store tills, both manned and self-service, won’t accept card payments. I strolled up to ours to find a notice ‘Cash only’ at the entrance. I always have some on me but not enough for this visit so I went round the corner to the cashpoint – out of action. Back inside for the essentials only (beer first, obviously), paid up and left. Passed the cashpoint on the way out to find it was working again and the queue was a long one – just like 2020…

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68584235

  65. Afternoon all. 😵‍💫🥴
    I ended up in A&E again yesterday, arrived home around 6 am. I took one newly prescribed antibiotic for my second hacking cough, with half an hour I was sick almost passed out legs gave way and nearly fell over. Previously my experiences with this particular medication had been very satisfactory.
    111 sent two very good paramedic who subsequently ordered an ambulance.
    4 of these wonderful people surrounding my home bedside. My reaction to the single dose anti biotic was almost unbelievable. My wife in obvious stress in the background thought she was going to lose me. Such a very strange and worrying experience.
    Blood pressure low teens, from my waist to the top of my head I had severe irritation and itching. Palms of hands bright red and very sore. Sweating buckets and a grey appearance. Fortunately after 5 hours what ever they had prescribed had carried out the necessary improvements.
    Back to the drawing board Monday morning.
    Sitting quietly today and no meds.

    4. Gosh, that’s frightening. A proper allergic reaction. (I have various intolerances – not to be confused with allergy!) Good to know the medics performed well and you’re still with us! Take care.

    5. Cripes. Years ago MB had a similar reaction to an antibiotic.
      I know exactly how your wife felt; totally helpless.
      Just chill out and let your system rest.

    6. Sounds like anaphylactic shock, RE; I’m glad you had such good attention from paramedic and ambulance staff.

    7. Strewth! Scary… I hope Mrs Eddy has something to help her calm down.
      Glad you’re still with us, man. KBO!

    8. Wow , what a terrible fright, and how uncomfortable for you ..

      So very pleased their reaction was swift , even though you were suffering hugely from the reaction to the antibiotic .. You were clearly very scared , and your poor wife must have been beside herself

      So , 2 Nottlers were in A+E yesterday .. You and me !

      I am allergic to 2 antibiotics as well as certain foods .

      I ended up in A+E a few years ago after being treated for a tooth infection with an antibiotic that the dentist gave me, I had the same reaction as you .. I was almost choking . .

      My trip to A+E yesterday was because I was in pain with a bad diverticulitis episode and was treated with morphine and a CT scan . My blood pressure shot up to a very unhealthy high 190/90 , pain induced , and thankfully reduced to a much more acceptable level.

      We are all stronger than we think and so pleased you are taking it easy now.

      This coughing virus is everywhere , and is a very nasty inconvenience .

      There are some horrid imported bugs in Britain at the moment .

      1. Oh dear TB you have my deepest sympathies. Going to A&E Is obviously necessary but can also be an unpleasant experience.

    10. Bloody Hell!
      That must have been a laxative moment for you and you wife.
      Hope you’re on the mend now.

    11. That must have been so frightening for you. I wonder if some other ingredient in the tablet had changed, such as a ‘filler’ or if they had used a different supplier which used different ingredients. Your wife must have been so distressed. I recall a friend saying that her father had taken aspirin for years – it was his go-to remedy – quite happily; he suddenly had a violent allergic reaction one evening having taken it for a headache and he was ‘blue lighted’ off to A&E. Fortunately he survived. So pleased to hear that you are feeling better and you and your wife are having a peaceful day.

  66. Michael Deacon in the DT.

    Must pop down to Dedham and kick a few blacks tourists into the Stour.

    “Michael Gove has announced a list of groups that may fall under the Government’s new definition of extremism. Unfortunately, however, he failed to include perhaps the most dangerous group of all.

    Amateur watercolourists.

    This oversight is deeply worrying. Because, thanks to a revelatory new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, we now know that looking at pretty paintings of the English countryside can turn you into a goose-stepping racist.

    “Paintings showing rolling English hills”, explains a sign in the museum’s “Nature” gallery, have a “darker side”. By reinforcing “loyalty and pride towards a homeland”, and implying that “only those with a historical tie to the land” – i.e., white people – “have a right to belong”, pastoral landscapes can inflame “nationalist feeling”.

    This is shocking news. I for one had always assumed that artists painted the English countryside because they thought it looked nice, rather than because they were plotting to foment far-Right insurrection. Thank goodness the Fitzwilliam Museum has finally opened my eyes to this horror. I dread to think how many ordinary British art-lovers have been converted to neo-Nazism by the sight of fields at harvest time, or a duck pond at sunset. Imagine the countless thousands who have taken one glance at The Hay Wain, then marched straight out into the streets in white hoods, demanding the immediate repatriation of immigrants.

    For the sake of national security, therefore, I urge the Government to seize every landscape painting in Britain, and have the whole lot destroyed. Frankly, I find it surprising that the Fitzwilliam Museum is displaying such paintings itself. Given what its curators know about the radicalising powers of bucolic artworks, it strikes me as wildly irresponsible that they should place a selection of them on public view, thus dramatically heightening the risk of Cambridge succumbing to fascist dictatorship.

    We can at least feel confident that my plea will be heard north of the border. Recently, Police Scotland launched what it calls the “Hate Monster” campaign, the aim of which is to stop young white working-class men committing hate crimes. According to its website, “We know that young men aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime, particularly those from socially excluded communities… They may have deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged, combined with ideas about white-male entitlement.”

    Clearly these young men spend far too much time in art galleries.”

    2. Logical. The countryside is white, therefore racist, so any painting of the countryside must also be racist. QED.

    4. One can only hope that Vlad’s first target will be Cambridge. I recall that the well meaning young people murdered by their protégé at Fishmongers’ Hall were postgrads studying Criminology at Cambridge, a venerable institution that has now given us rather a lot of decolonisers, grifters, climate alarmists and general haters of this sceptred isle.

      1. He’s improved a lot over the last year or so. Now has the confidence to say what he thinks.

        1. Yes, when he first started out 5 or so years ago I had him down for a limp Leftard lettuce. I agree he was good today (and previous weeks).

  67. A sad way to go for George North, but at least he got the standing ovation his career deserved.

        1. But they did find their mojo towards the end of the game. If only they can play with that level of conviction from the start. They are mostly a very young team.

          Italy has pulled back from the brink with good coaching, and did indeed deserve to win.

          GN was in tears during “My Hen”

        2. Did you hear Nigel Owens desperately trying to find the reason that the 2nd movement try was given?

          1. I don’t think NO has covered himself in glory this series, and neither do I think Jonathan Davies, a commentator I usually like, has been particularly good this year.

          2. He was dreadful, sos! From his stupid, outraged remark after Italy’s second penalty, right through to the ‘comeback’ he was a whinging Welshman with verbal diarrhoea!

          3. As a neutral (almost as paternal, paternal ancestry from the Welsh Marches) I’ had always considered JD very fair minded but maybe the stress of seeing Wales pick up the wooden spoon was too much for him.
            One thing that got me was that one of the commentators started saying that Wales would avoid the wooden spoon if they managed a losing bonus point. I didn’t have the points table to hand but how could a team with no wins possibly come above a team with 2 wins and a draw? It would only just be possible if the one with no wins had 2 bonus points per match and the other had no bonus points. This was not the case and not going to be the case!
            These people get paid …

          4. The lack of preparation is staggering! I wasn’t too keen on Bill McLaren but he was meticulous and knowledgable!

          5. Yes. It was pretty marginal and really could have gone either way depending on the TMO :D!

        3. Yup, Italy took their foot off the gas the last 15mins and the score-line flattered Wales. Pity Lynagh couldn’t hang on to that intercept – there was nothing between him and the line and he can move!!

    2. One feels very concerned for his future given the number of head injuries he has had.

  68. The bluddy spoiler won’t work on my phone. I was trying to be careful I didn’t want to be arrested for something.
    I’ve been using that antibiotic for years the no problems.

    1. Aha! I was given Amoxicillin once for an ear infection. The rash started around my neck and shoulders and worked its way down, disappearing off my toes six months later! The itching wore off after the first few days. No anaphylactic shock. I do boring in that respect.

  69. A black Welsh leader, a Palestinian Scottish leader and an Indian PM.

    And folk wonder why the country is in such a mess.

    2. I think you will find video easily available where Hamza and Anus enumerate the number of powerful positions still to conquer. The curse of HWaite still dogs our country

      1. ‘White white white’ spat through clenched teeth, and spittle-flecked lips. It was an absolute disgrace from a revolting racist and bigot, who reports to his local imam!

        1. Gods that man should have been kicked in the face and, once he’d fallen over kicked some more. An utterly putrid screaming of racism. He should be humble and reminded that he is a guest – an offer we’ve no revoked to be rid of him.

    3. 1. Main facts and figures
      according to the 2021 Census, the total population of England and Wales was 59.6 million, and 81.7% of the population was white
      people from Asian ethnic groups made up the second largest percentage of the population (9.3%), followed by black (4.0%), mixed (2.9%) and other (2.1%) ethnic groups
      out of the 19 ethnic groups, white British people made up the largest percentage of the population (74.4%), followed by people in the white ‘other’ (6.2%) and Indian (3.1%) ethnic groups
      from 2011 to 2021, the percentage of people in the white British ethnic group went down from 80.5% to 74.4%
      the percentage of people in the white ‘other’ ethnic group went up from 4.4% to 6.2% – the largest percentage point increase out of all ethnic groups
      the number of people who identified as ‘any other ethnic background’ went up from 333,100 to 923,800
      Related content
      Regional ethnic diversity
      Age groups
      Male and female populations
      People born outside the UK
      Working age population https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest/

      1. Hi Maggie, how are you today? I read your post last night about your bad day, hope you are recovering today, take care.

        1. Hello Jill.

          Feeling rather tired , have been shopping , washing and worried about Pip spaniel .

          Quite coincidently, poor Pip was sick last night , Moh took him for a good run after he had retrieved me from A+E, Pip might have eaten something he shouldn’t have .

          I had a birthday card to send off this morning , and pay a small fortune for a book of stamps at our local post office , then called into our village hall to look at the second hand book fair .

          Whilst I was away from the house , Moh was panicking because the poor dog had had a wobbly fit .. vet practise was out of hours , and he and son wondered what to do.

          I arrived home , and had decisions to make ..

          No fuss , soothed my furbabe .. and decided to leave him on the bed resting .

          Pip had some microwaved carrot and broccoli, ready cooked chicken breast cut into small pieces and a spoonful of organic bio yoghurt , just a small amount and he happily ate some of it .

          Cross fingers ..

          1. Certainly going through worrying times, Maggie, hope Pip recovers. Now go and have a great English panacea, a cup of tea, put your feet up and relax!!

      2. Bigger problem is the population is not 60 million. It’s well over 80. The stats I read come from Tesco, not the government. As it is, no one lives in my house.

        It is an obscenity. We’re forced to pay for people who are not from this country, who have no ties to this country and in the case of Khan and Humza actively hate it. It is pollution, and it’s long past time for clearing the stables.

      1. Institutional and structural racism! We may not have it now but Keir appears likely to ensure that white Brits become official second class citizens.

      2. Institutional and structural racism! We may not have it now but Keir appears likely to ensure that white Brits become official second class citizens.

  70. Historians seem to have the ability deduce many things according to their personal agenda.

  71. Matthew Stadlen claims not to have noticed the skin colour of the feral scum that snatched his phone.
    Which proves his assailant was black, because if he was white he would crowing it from the rooftops.

    1. Had to Google him. He seems to be a rather self-important little man, with a huge opinion of himself!

      1. It’s enough to know he is a left wing Woke commentator on Twitter.

        1. It’s funny that whenever they don’t tell you the perpetrator it’s always a black or muslim. Always. It’s as if the press are desperate to ignore than 80% of crime in London is caused by Blacks.

        1. They have a rich vein of those. I applaud the strategy of fielding some intelligent left-wingers (Matthew Laza and Stephen Pound are my favourites) in the interest of proper discussion and the occasion shouty young trustafarian fruitcake is useful to expose the deranged thinking of Gen Z (is there a Gen Y?) . But I am sick of seeing some of the regulars who are described as ‘broadcaster’ or ‘author and broadcaster’ who can just be relied on to spout contrarian woke rubbish and to claim ‘research shows’ while never saying what that research is or what their credentials are for scrutinising the research.

  72. Signing off early today. About to go to hear the MR (and 79 others) signing parts of Mozart’s Requiem.

    I’ll have to record the England match – what a bloody silly time to start a game of rugby. I’ll be in the land of nod while they are still waiting for the TMO to pontificate.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

      1. It is the definitive piece that argues that perhaps Mozart’s music, rather than Bach’s, is actually God

        2. Dies irae
          That came out as Dies irate the first time – I almost certainly will

  73. I do like a beach on a cold sunny Winter’s day shortly after a storm.
    This is Highcliffe a year or two back with Highcliffe Castle and The Needles:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1a800811b3905a2e249e8e3c3798b207d6fd57b0e24b285498e0ae31bc57de08.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ec208cd82ef33323121b100a924c964723fe4402af952f927dfc9da31ad8e7b7.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/282d706e35a8dd46008b117f232fe17e5e73ff31be0431fd39a929b30cc897bc.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e64425ebb41be729f84e21d203587e77bbff300885530fde3d1fd865421a98d.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/85a72dc11f096720e1dd7a17678d1e111fb24c7ac09e215c690f7398b86550c3.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/34a152324f0a583e04b832da5a6621cb4427035915ff9acb3ccbbedb7555cb0e.jpg

  74. The trouble is that if the activities of the Sun were given due importance in our climate patterns there would be a well-funded movement to have it put out.

  75. Well since medical matters seem to be to the fore I shall update you all on my progress. I’m getting better. My dehydration problems are almost over though I am still absolutely pooped and had to take another nap this morning. I did catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and I look as though I’ve aged ten years in four days! At this rate i should have made a full recovery by Thursday or Friday.

    4. Dehydration really does age you, Minty! Hope you get over the shock! Take care and get plenty of rest.

    5. Put some salt – no more than half a teaspoon – into a glass of water or squash. Add some sugar, stir like crazy and drink it. Rinse, repeat.

      It’ll taste vile, but dehydration isn’t just a lack of water, it’s the things water carries with it and the inabliity to adsorb it, of which salt is crucial.

    7. Minty , try these .

      Husband and son use a supplement , son after running and husband puts one in his water bottle when he is playing golf .

      https://www.amazon.co.uk/HIGH5-Electrolyte-Hydration-Performance-Grapefruit/dp/B009M3VUTQ/ref=asc_df_B009M3VUTQ/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=606602720112&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9995130376689053690&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006680&hvtargid=pla-707047806474&mcid=1f49beffafad35b98d04675e4e09dc50&th=1

  76. Not many parish churches stand in ruins, and fewer still occupy sites associated with prehistoric rituals. Four thousand years separate the main late Neolithic earthwork at Knowlton and the Norman church that stands at its centre. The earthwork itself is just one part of a landscape which is one of the great Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial complexes in southern England.
    The main earthwork at Knowlton is of a type known as a henge. There are nearly one hundred henges in Britain and Ireland, dating from about 3000 to 2000 BC. Although they are generally believed to have been ceremonial sites, it is likely that they fulfilled many functions, and may have changed their role through time.
    Church Henge, as it is now known, has been protected from plough damage; the earthworks in the surrounding landscape have been less fortunate, but are still clearly visible in aerial photographs.
    There are three other main earthworks nearby: the Northern Circle and ‘Old Churchyard’ (both to the right of Church Henge in the photograph); and the Southern Circle, which encloses Knowlton Farm (top left), and is surrounded by a ditch 790 feet in diameter.
    Associated with this group of henges is one of the greatest concentrations of round barrows, or burial mounds, in Dorset.
    The clump of trees 200 feet to the east of Church Henge marks the enormous Great Barrow, the largest individual barrow in the county.
    Many other barrows and ring-ditches survive within a one-mile radius: stretching away to the north-west, for example, is the Dorset Cursus, twin banks of chalk about 6 feet high running for over 6 miles, defining another zone in this ceremonial landscape.
    The high number and diversity of prehistoric and later archaeological remains surviving in this area of chalkland, known as Cranborne Chase, is partly due to the later history of the Chase as a royal hunting ground from at least Norman times, which meant that land use was strictly controlled.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75d4f4e461e4b27e28e6cc0902d7848e5388740a45cd075a4336bb8df1ef94c5.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/687ac53f25af61005f2a06a1e61410861a5fa5d5cefc444305fcc036a8029915.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a2c5e6082c106cff5f996fb289fd8af184a14beb519c8efd2fc8da1053859215.jpg

    1. When Jack and I moved to Essex, we enjoyed visiting St Peter on the Wall at Bradwell-on-sea for a bracing walk along the sea wall, built if memory serves me correctly, sometime 600 by Orthona(?)

      1. My old home. I was born a few hundred yards from the chapel. My mothers ashes were spread on the grounds thanks to a helpful administrator – if you ask I cannot give permission but if you don’t ask I will not know!

  77. A poisonous Par Four!

    Wordle 1,001 4/6
    🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Indeed!

      Wordle 1,001 4/6

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

    2. Lucky first go here.
      Wordle 1,001 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
      🟨⬜🟨⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  79. I can only hope that someone sues him under his horrific new Hate Crime laws! Or he walks in front of my car….

    2. You put me in mind of a joke, Sue:

      A Priest picks up a faithful hitch-hiker and they are driving along chatting merrily away about matters ecumenical when a lawyer steps into the road, right into their path of travel. The Priest swerves sharply, but there is a resounding thump and he draws to a halt, shaken.

      “I thought I’d missed him” he gasps.

      “Don’t worry Father, I got him with the door”

      1. Love it! I don’t generally hate people, but I could really make an exception for Dumza Useless.

    3. Looked a bit like sheep to me Opo but I have the multifocals on so I can watch rugby and read the iPad simultaneously

  82. Maybe they changed the filler, or added (why?) artificial sweetener? We discovered Firstborn has a reaction to artificial sweetener when a cola changed the recipe without relabelling “New Improved Recipe” or similar BS. Vomit every place… 🙁

      1. The pills consist of some active ingredient, and fillers to slow down the release – much of it being titanium dioxide, which is the brilliant white colour. Maybe there’s a new chemical there that you reacted to? New brand of the same Amoxycillin?

  84. My paternal grandfather used to say to me ‘I don’t know how those little leggies of yours hold you up!’

  85. Blimey, Eddy! I’ve just read your post! What a horrible experience for you and your dear wife! Thinking of you, and sending good wishes.

      1. I haven’t got there yet (no, I’m not a slow reader, I just read newest first), but I send you my best wishes regardless.

  87. Just been reading a couple of articles talking about , in essence, who is entitled to and valuable in, England and wales.
    Apparently a Welsh/Nigerian chap has just been appointed leader of a historical culture he hasn’t a clue about as inspite of living in Wales since he was four with his white Welsh father and Nigerian mother, he considers himself to be Nigerian first and foremost.
    The other one was the re- hanging in the Fitzwilliam museum of the paintings to show up the failings of the English over centuries. attributing to them the most unpleasant intentions towards other races and deconstructing them to reveal racist and jingoistic intent in even Constables landscapes.
    I see the negative judgement of Constable’s painting fitting in perfectly with oikophobia, or a tendency to repudiate one’s own culture in favour of foreign ones that are seen as more valuable, innocent and exotic.

    1. If he.was Nigerian first and foremost, why dun ‘ee not bugger off to Nigeria …. a much bigger, growing, country than Wales.

    3. Nigerian?
      So he’ll be up to his armpits in forebears involved in the slave trade then?

  88. Just saw a new BA advert while watching the rugger. What happened to all the white people?

    2. They’re now the ones packing the hold and fuelling the plane. Pilots will also be black high-fliers.

    2. This lot aren’t messing about. I speak from experience, I’ve spent time in a chamber choir.

          2. I’m thinking this melodic line would have been sung by a boy in the original historical setting.

          9. I’m for ever doing that, dropping the h is how we speak around here, so that mistake is phonetically hardwired. Thank you.

          11. Traditionally, this part was given to the top boy treble. Boys’ voices are flutier than girls’. I had a slight argument with the musical director of the Powick Community choir over the Fauré Requiem. Fauré is a master of tonal blend. Tom Wells though takes the fashionable approach that tenors can be male or female, but I don’t agree. A male tenor produces a sweeter tone full of high resonances, whereas a female singing tenor (actually a low contralto) is at best a rich and soupy sound, especially below middle C. A male countertenor is again quite a different sound to a female mezzo. The Allegri demands a great purity that is almost chaste, whereas Fauré works well with the more sensuousness of female voices. Mozart, when he was a teenager, had a phenomenal vocal range and would have covered that top C with ease.

            I must say that there are two wonderful sopranos in our opera company performing ‘Die Fledermaus’ next week in Droitwich, both of whom have flawless and reliable top Ds.

          12. I agree with you about the relative purity (flutiness) of the boy treble compared with the female soprano but also agree with JD on the purity of that particular soprano’s voice.

            I do find a true counter tenor to be perhaps the most beautiful sound on this earth – again, not fruity like that of a rich mezzo or contralto. It’s partly a matter of vibrato.

            The Allegri Miserere calls for absolute purity of tone and near zero vibrato, as you say.

            The Ave Maria I posted (although of dodgy provenance, I know) has a different kind of beauty and a very liquid soprano in this case.

            I also love the Russian boys’ choir.

            There is so much beauty and so much variation in the world, isn’t there?

          13. Indeed. A girl or even (and especially) a young woman adds a warmth to a note that can sound somewhat sterile in a boy. For a mature woman, it is harder work, since this often turns sour or flat like milk or old beer, but is worth persevering with, since the richness of the bosom that has known motherhood carries with it the key to the world’s future.

            There is some debate in liturgical circles whether readings should carry any expression, lest it convey (heaven forbid!) any hint of carnality. I am not such a purist, but when I read from scripture and even sing its words, I endeavour always to allow its own expression to come through. I must be quite invisible, and none of my own self-expression should taint what is coming from the words. I am just their vehicle. I think it was the composer César Franck that said this.

    3. Recorded in my church. Our regular choir performed it there on Ash Wednesday. You know the Mozart in the Sistine Chapel story?

      1. Yes I know the story and yes I know it’s in Marcus Walker’s church (and yours).
        And yes – I wish I’d been there to hear it.
        🙂

      2. I listened to both recordings – but St Bart’s Church is wonderful.

        A local choir did this last year with opposing choirs as well – the church was absolutely perishing – but the soprano got all the notes perfectly. It is a wonderful piece.

    6. Excellent, JD. Tenebrae are up there with the greats. But I offer this as an alternative. Same piece. OK – I’m biased. My former teenage assistant organist went on to great things, and sang Tenor with Voces8 for several years, until he decided that he was actually a baritone. Only two remain in the line up from those days. They’re still bloody good, though…

        1. Frankly, there’s not much difference. I felt the V8 version had slightly better acoustics, but it might just be down to the recording.

          Moving on, I just found this video…

          I even get a mention. 🙂

      2. I listened to both versions – I prefer the V8 one – but St Bart’s Church is beautiful. No wonder our Sue goes across London to worship there.

      3. I prefer the blend of voices that VOCES8 produce, and I think their lead soprano has slightly the better technique.

  92. Just read (skimmed, really) a load of British and Norwegian newspapers. What a load of carp! Not fit to wrap chips in – so much “What if…” speculation, on everything from Princess Catherine to Russian elections, to the colour of my socks.
    Will have to resort to Youtube – this is worth a view, about MH370 https://youtu.be/Y5K9HBiJpuk?si=blsXRuPXkNaSbV0N

  93. Can we white Christians have a reservation please? Say Devon, Cornwall and West Somerset. It’s not much to ask.

    2. My niece works in HR in one of those areas. The boss came in and asked her to draw up a strategy for recruiting a more ethnically diverse workforce. She told him that it would not be realistic as the only diversity locally is provided by travellers and by people on holiday.

      1. That’s about right, and I can’t say we even see travellers here in east Cornwall.

      2. I’m so glad I’ve retired. You’d not catch me, under current conditions, becoming a productive hardworking member of society again. Not that they’d want me to be.

        1. I retired from the day job 12 years ago, through disability. I remain a part-time employee of the local branch of the Church of Woke – CEO: Justin Welby. Which is somewhat embarassing, but at least the Rector is as scathing as I am re. the decline of the CofE. If the hierarchy were aware of my “far-right extremist” views, I’d prolly be excommunicated…

          1. Well the good news as they all seem to be terrified of global warming they are unlikely to burn you at the stake!

    3. I’d move down there in a heartbeat, were it not for the fact that I’m in an exceptionally affordable retirement bungalow in leafy Surrey. Friend Dianne the Ex moved from Woking to Topsham in 2019. I visit as often as possible. It works both ways, since I’m three minutes’ walk from Wanborough Station, which in turn is seven minutes from Guildford. So she can park here, and head up to London for theatre, exhibitions and the like. I retreat to the corner sofabed, since I’m up early to post the new page. She gets the bedroom.

      I never tire of Devon, be it Exeter, Dartmoor or whatever. Just a huge playground.

        1. Quite. But, in fairness, I’ve had 15 delightful years in Surrey Hills AONB, now three plus years in a marginally less attractive location, but with public transport virtually on the doorstep. All is well.

          2. Possibly. But my feet are plastic. It’s better if they aren’t loose. Currently, four stump socks each side work. Plus the gel-lined ones…

    5. Could we stretch that to South Somerset too please, I don’t want to move house again!

  94. Someone asked me the other day why I bother travelling five miles across town to go to church…

    3. I travel ten miles across country to attend my church – but the troubles are so well known that nobody asks me why 🙂

      1. At present, I plod on in the local Parish. But my contract expires on 30 September 2025. If I’m no longer needed in the villages, I’ll explore elsewhere. I have somewhere in mind, despite the absence of a functioning organ…

      1. I will never forget a photo of George North carrying the ball – and his opponent – over the line!

        1. For my money, he’s in the pantheon of Welsh greats.
          I never thought he got the praise his all round play deserved.

    3. Wonderful, but of course you realise that that is a Russian trained Beluga whale which destroys Nordstream pipelines.
      };-O

  103. A young girl speaks out on being trans and detrans. The revelations come in the last two minutes. How our governments exploit our young people’s identity struggles, anxiety and depression as they move from childhood to adulthood, for their own nefarious political and ideological purposes is indeed a crime against humanity.
    https://x.com/james_freeman__/status/1769079797974553078?s=20

  104. The Home Office plans to exclude foreign hate preachers from the UK – what about those already here?

    Britain could learn from France’s much more robust stance towards those sowing division

    MICHAEL MURPHY • 15 March 2024 • 3:46pm

    The boffins of the Home Office have hatched a brilliant plan: hate preachers are to be barred from entering Britain. Soon, the most dangerous extremists from countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia will be identified before they arrive in the UK and placed on visa warning lists.

    This policy sounds eminently sensible, but it is a dreadful advert for the Tories’ competence on immigration to date – this is surely the lowest hanging fruit which should’ve long been picked. Ministers are also mulling over a ban on foreigners who are “non-conducive to the public good”, which further begs the question: what was the criteria before?

    The new plan is being drawn up as Rishi Sunak declared earlier this month there had been a “shocking increase” in extremist activity since the October 7 attack on Israel.

    It is a step in the right direction, but what about the extremists already ensconced in Britain? Half of the organisers of some of the anti-Israel marches occupying central London each weekend – the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of al-Aqsa and the Palestinian Forum in Britain – have known links to Hamas, a proscribed terror group cheered on by many of the protestors. The Charity Commission recently said it was investigating a string of “utterly repugnant” sermons delivered in British mosques in the weeks after October 7.

    While some of these Hamas sympathisers are homegrown, and cannot be deported, other extremists have come from abroad – including senior Hamas officials living in leafy London suburbs. The Government has an opportunity to put them on notice – to show that Britain’s hospitality is not without limits, and that the Prime Minister’s warning that “you cannot be part of our civic life if your agenda is to tear it down,” has teeth.

    Packing off extremists is fraught with legal complications, but these can be overcome if there is the political will to do so. The French government recently introduced tougher immigration laws which cut through red tape holding up deportations. The Minister of the Interior also has the power to order immediate expulsions in extreme cases. As a result, France has become a less lucrative place for Islamic radicals.

    An Islamist preacher in France last month shared a video in which he called the tricolour a “satanic” flag which held “no value with Allah”. The French state responded tout de suite – Mahjoub Mahjoubi, a father of five who has lived in France for 38 years, was arrested and deported to his native Tunisia less than 12 hours after being detained.

    In France, the imam had called for the “destruction of Western society”, encouraged discrimination against women, “jihadist radicalisation”, and had referred to Jewish people as “the enemy”, according to an extract of the deportation order obtained by French media.

    Mr Mahjoubi appeared to harbour nothing but contempt for France, while enjoying its largesse and hospitality for decades. His insult to the country’s flag was the last straw for the French state, whose parting favour to the unhappy cleric was a plane ticket home.

    France did not have to leave the EU to do this. It is also signed up to the same human rights conventions as Britain. Though Mr Mahjoubi intends to contest his deportation in European courts, his chances of returning to France are slim. The French government said in October it is willing to break European human rights law to expel dangerous foreigners. It will simply pay the fine if European courts rule against it, but not allow them back. In other words, France has adopted a “shoot first and ask questions later” approach.

    Britain has opted for the inverse. “They would never do this to an imam in England,” Mr Mahjoubi stated in a tearful interview from Tunisia. “A minister wouldn’t be allowed to throw me out. I’d have the chance to defend myself in court.”

    Mr Mahjoubi is quite correct. If the government pushed for his deportation it would initiate a costly, drawn out process. There would be a clamour from Islamic organisations and professional do-gooders pulling out all the stops to keep him in the country – for the sake of his human rights, children or mental health.

    Taxpayer-funded lawyers would be instructed and prepare the case to be heard at a future date. All the while, Mr Mahjoubi – who insists his remarks about the tricolour were a “slip of the tongue” – would remain in Britain pouring bile into suggestible ears from his digital pulpit on TikTok, which has more than ten thousand followers.

    I doubt this is a price most Brits would be willing to pay, even if denying Mr Mahjoubi due process would grate with the British sense of justice. British politicians, on the other hand, are petrified of inflicting damage to our “international reputation” – which has become the main talking point against the UK having a freer hand over deportations, implementing the Rwanda scheme and leaving the European Court of Human Rights.

    However, France’s political class is more afraid of handing power to Marine Le Pen, the leader of the hard-right National Rally party and the bookies’ favourite to win the next presidential election.

    Emmanuel Macron’s government is being forced to harden its stance on immigration, in line with the French public’s wishes, to take the wind out of Le Pen’s sails.

    There is a salutary lesson here for centrists in Britain: if they don’t address the dangerous externalities of mass migration, the public will lurch further to the Right until it happens upon someone who will. As the problems continue to fester, it is likely the candidates, and their solutions, will grow more unpleasant.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/15/what-about-hate-preachers-already-here/

    Mr Murphy was doing well enough until his last paragraph…

        1. My view of our leaders and their minions.

          shower of s’s running a bunch of c’s

      2. We’re not ‘lurching to the right’. Most of the people in Britain have had this opinion for years. If anything, the wokeists have lurched to the left.

        1. Precisely. We knew at the time of his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech that Enoch Powell was correct and that Heath was a globalist swine.

  105. A pickup from Going Postal:-

    https://going-postal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Vale-of-Oxford-1030×580-FI.jpg

    The Platform at Aston Rowant
    16th March 2024 Joe Slater Literature, Poetry

    From Aston Rowant to Kingston Blount
    From halt to halt, it beetled west
    For miles below the Chiltern crest
    A country line, of no account ..

    Now trains no longer skirt these hills
    And fencing posts alone remain
    To bound a weed-choked, unwalked lane
    And yet the sight brings boyhood thrills

    The platform ledge now runs with briars
    A playground once it was for me,
    And in life’s voyage a parting quay
    For farmers’ sons of brother shires

    What private dramas, hopes and fears
    Filled waiting thoughts as, London-bound
    They left their homes and daily rounds
    With farewells flushed and stifling tears?

    Left for offices, works and schools
    And ’prenticeships in far-off towns
    With dubbined boots and half a crown
    For food and clothing, books and tools

    Their sisters, sent to manse and store
    They paced here too, at break of day
    And twice the specials hauled away
    Good Bucks and Oxon men, to war

    Doctors roused to midnight call
    Alighted here with anxious heart
    To clatter off in farmer’s cart
    To stricken Fanes at Wormsley Hall

    Or troubled cottage birth; and men
    Of Boards and business, Trilby’d strangers
    Come to sow the seeds of change
    With deed in hand and fountain pen …

    Through memory’s veil I see them flit
    Across the stage of village life
    From this wing; I hear the fife
    Of the evening train, yellow-lit

    And think of those like me who roamed
    And on returning, sanctuary found
    Upon this crumbling platform mound
    And knew once more the joy of home

    From Aston Rowant to Kingston Blount
    From halt to halt, it beetled west
    For miles below the Chiltern crest
    A country line, of no account ..

    © text & image Joe Slater 2024

  106. France England

    I hope the second half is equally entertaining.
    The Italian try earlier, was superb, and at the time was try of the tournament for me.
    And then, the French try eclipsed even that one.
    If he lasts long enough on the pitch the French no 3, Antonio, is man of the match for me.
    Great scrummaging, tackling, and support play, not to mention his “carries”.

    1. Well that was a cracker want it? It sort of helped that there wasnt the Championship riding on it or the tension might have been too much to bear!
      Antonio is a fat lump – and I speak as a tight head myself, I might just pick him if he was English, however…..

      1. I was amused when Otoje ran straight into him, bounced off and ended up on his backside.
        I’m always impressed by the way he gets around the pitch, his tackle rate and his positioning, let alone the proppy things he does.
        An over-looked player.

  107. Why does the V&A think Margaret Thatcher is a villain equivalent to Hitler?

    It’s staggeringly offensive to bracket Britain’s first female Prime Minister with a genocidal maniac and a terrorist

    CAMILLA TOMINEY, ASSOCIATE EDITOR • 16 March 2024 • 8:00am

    A reader contacted me this week after a recent visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

    He was walking through a special exhibition on British humour when he stumbled upon a caption next to some Punch and Judy puppets.

    It read: “Over the years, the evil character in this seaside puppet show has shifted from the Devil to unpopular public figures including Adolf Hitler, Margaret Thatcher and Osama bin Laden, to offer contemporary villains.”

    As the reader pointed out: “I believe that this bracketing of Margaret Thatcher with a genocidal maniac and the worst terrorist of the 21st century to be deeply offensive and repugnant and I am sure most people would agree. It is completely unacceptable in a taxpayer funded institution.”

    I couldn’t agree more.

    But of course the V&A has form when it comes to Mrs Thatcher. Remember when the museum was accused of refusing to exhibit items from the wardrobe of the first female British prime minister in 2015?

    Despite boasting one of the largest fashion collections in the world, it was reported to have “politely declined the offer of Mrs Thatcher’s clothes, feeling that these records of Britain’s political history were best suited to another collection which would focus on their intrinsic social historical value.” Many of the items were later sold at auction, although the museum subsequently said that no formal offer had been made.

    In 2016, the V&A did put on an exhibition of some of the former prime minister’s clothes, which had been donated by her children Mark and Carol Thatcher. At the time, Claire Wilcox, the V&A’s senior curator of fashion, said the gift constituted “a record of the working wardrobe of one of the most influential and powerful women of the 20th century.”

    How odd then, that the very same museum should now seek to denigrate the Iron Lady in such an appalling fashion.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/16/victoria-albert-museum-margaret-thatcher-exhibition/

    1. What would have been an interesting exhibit are the clothes bought in a hurry from Marks & Spencer for the Tory Conference in Brighton the day the Grand Hotel was blown up.

      I actually campaigned heavily against her and her government in the 1980s, but never considered her a genocidal maniac. For me, she was the monkey on the organ grinder of Global Big Money, mostly led by America. I found her quite misguided on a number of issues, and set about the demolition of so much of what I valued in my country that has persisted and intensified ever since.

      The closest she got to genocidal mania was when she once went on ‘Blue Peter’ to explain to the nation’s children that were “Good Pol Pot” and “Bad Pol Pot”, and she supported the good guys. Sorry, Mrs T, but I don’t think there was any good Pol Pot during the Killing Fields era in Cambodia.

      1. I expected your dreary anti-Thatcher diatribe. I’m only surprised that it took you as long as sixteen minutes.

  110. Another day is done, as am I so, I wish you goodnight and may God bless you all, Gentlefolk. Bis morgen früh.

    Trying to get a good night’s sleep. We’ll see.

    1. I am not sleeping very well either at the moment, SJ. Some nights I do, some nights are difficult.

      1. I find it goes in phases. And I do have to get out for the loo a couple of times at least. Sometimes I can’t get back to sleep afterwards.

        1. I ask Alexa to play Radio 4 – i.e the World Service. Invariably that sends me back to sleep before I can ask her to set a sleep timer…

          1. I wouldn’t give Alexa house-room……… especially as I don’t sleep alone………

          2. Since I live alone, I’m unconcerned about whether Jeff Bezos is listening or not.

            When I moved here, all the light bulbs were extremely low-wattage CFL lamps. The sort that make the room darker when you switch them on. I bit the bullet, and re-lamped with LED ‘Smart’ lamps. Add to which my Ring video doorbell, my TV (which I rarely use), 2 venetian and 2 roller blinds, the Nest thermostat and a couple of ‘smart’ plugs, and I think it qualifies as a ‘smart home’. It’s cleverer than I am…

  111. As ye sow…

    Pro-Palestinian activists target dozens of MPs in ‘litany of menace’

    Counter-extremism analysis shows elected representatives experiencing intimidation related to Israel-Hamas war

    Will Hazell, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    16 March 2024 • 8:30pm

    A damning dossier has revealed almost 40 incidents of MPs and councillors being targeted with intimidatory tactics by pro-Palestinian activists, The Telegraph can disclose.

    Counter-extremism analysis has revealed a “litany of menace” since the start of the year, involving elected representatives experiencing verbal abuse, intimidation and disruptive protests related to the Israel-Hamas war. Earlier this month, Rishi Sunak condemned a “shocking increase in extremist disruption” since the Oct 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing military action in Gaza.

    The analysis shows how widespread and routine the disruption of political meetings and barracking of MPs has now become. The dossier of incidents – compiled by a counter-extremism analyst who asked not to be named – reveals that at least 38 such incidents took place across England between Jan 1 and March 15.

    While politicians from both main political parties have been targeted, the data shows that Labour has borne the brunt of the protests. On Friday, Chi Onwurah, the shadow science minister, required the presence of police outside her constituency surgery.

    Responding on X, formerly Twitter, to a protester who accused her of being a “coward” for getting “a police escort out of your surgery”, Ms Onwurah wrote: “The police came because your protest was becoming aggressive, banging on the library walls and hurling abuse, then running around the building, attacking my staff member’s car and jumping in front of traffic.”

    In another incident on Thursday, a meeting of Haringey Council, in north London, was repeatedly disrupted by protesters. A person who was present and asked to remain anonymous told The Telegraph that the “viciousness” of the protest was “astonishing”, adding: “They were literally frothing… screaming: ‘Haringey Council, you’re complicit, you’re committing genocide’ It’s really extreme, frighteningly so.”

    In a third incident in February, Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, and David Lammy, the the shadow foreign secretary, were forced to abandon an event in Tottenham after protesters picketed the venue. One placard photographed at the event read: “Lammy supports racist killings” while another said: “Genocidal Starmer Not Welcome In Tottenham”.

    A number of incidents tracked by the research involved the Palestine Solidarity Campaign or local affiliates.

    The dossier has been shared with Lord Walney, the Government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, who said: “This litany of menace highlights a clear pattern of intimidation of elected representatives by pro-Palestine activists. Storming council chambers and haranguing MPs has nothing to do with changing people’s minds. It’s about trying to bully and threaten them into submission.

    “If this was protesters with the St George’s flag hijacking council meetings for a Right-wing cause that was nothing to do with local government, everyone would rightly demand action. So it’s time for all mainstream parties to stand up for their people against this thuggery and work to cut funding and support for organisations like the PSC who facilitate it.”

    A Home Office spokesman said: “It is totally unacceptable that a tiny minority seek to intimidate democratically elected representatives and impose their views. Protests should never take place at an elected representative’s home address or seek to intimidate people at democratic venues and prevent people from entering. This is exactly why we brought in tough new powers and record funding to ensure the police can act swiftly to prevent disruption and protect our democracy.”

    The PSC was contacted for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/16/pro-palestinian-activists-target-mps-litany-of-menace/

    1. Why don’t they call them by their correct name. They are FAR LEFT TERRORISTS.

      1. They have been appeased too often. It will escalate. The more you give the more they will expect. Don’t give? Hope you have fire insurance.

    2. It’s about trying to bully and threaten them into submission islam. There, fixed it for you.

    1. Why bother working at all? Stay in your Council-paid house, with your taxpayer-funded benefits, pay nothing in and just take, take, take.

      1. Welfarism creates dependency. No independence. Do as you are told or we turn off the taps. This is why ‘they’ are happy with 10 million and rising on benefits in the UK.

          1. Oh PJ – I watched the England v France game with my 6 year old grandson (who plays btw) – we were yelling our heads off! Fabulous game and probably (just) the right result – huge performances from so many – Ben Earl is a freak of nature!

            I was forecasting a close win for Italy and so it was – but only in the scoreline – Italy absolutely battered them, it’s the biggest 3 point stuffing I’ve ever seen! If Wales had started with Mason Grady and Will Rowlands it might have been a bit different…

            Ireland/Scotland played out pretty much as expected – sadly I think this great Irish team has now peaked and they should grasp the nettle and start to rebuild.

            All in all it just proves that the 6N is the best sporting competition on the planet!

          2. Your last sentence – totally agree, it always throws up surprises, not all of them good ones!
            I see that Gatland has offered to resign and Wales has rejected his offer. They shouldn’t have. I’ve never really rated him I’m afraid, for similar reasons to those that I never rated Eddie Jones.
            I agree about Ireland too, that was a pretty turgid spectacle. They always are when one team (and sometimes both) are doing little but defend.

    1. Actually overall the discipline was pretty good, and all sides make mistakes, often costly ones.

  117. Fantastic match to finish off the Six Nations – the kind of match that actually neither side deserved to lose! Very sad for England but my goodness, haven’t they progressed :)) I have divided loyalties as some here may know, so I am happy for France, especially for Galthié who has come in for a lot of undeserved flak from the French press since the RWC.

      1. Indeed – real peeping between the fingers stuff 😁
        I wonder how many people know that yesterday in Pau England beat France in the Six Nations U20s final, coming back from 21-5 down at half-time to I think 24-35 – or something like that! Bodes well for the future of England :))

          1. The U-20s games have all been live on the BBC Red Button (aka Channel 601), and the France – England game an be watched in its entirety on BBC i-Player.

  118. Today I discovered that scientists are trying to stop our planet from absorbing energy from the sun because they know that this causes global warming. It follows therefore that solar panels which do precisely that means that they particularly contribute to global warming.

    Upsetting the delicate balance of nature has unforeseen consequences as illustrated in the events of 1958 in China:

    https://youtube.com/shorts/THa_nOO93ig?si=fZLcQhgC4lZqvsys

    One also wonders how extracting energy from the wind and tides will also unbalance nature in catastrophic ways for humanity.

      1. I wish it would. We deserve to be put out of our misery. All of is. On the Beach.

    3. We need to save the planet from carbon. Trouble is, no one tells us what sort of carbon.

      Carbon fibre? Coke? Buckminsterfullerene? Charcoal? Pencil leads? Diamonds? We must be told.

      2. Golf clubs as in the gadget you hit a tiny ball with, have carbon fibre shafts..

        Some things are quite impossible to understand .

        Semantics eh?

      3. Nah…..they mean the plant food that we all breathe out all the time. We’ll have to stop breathing.

      4. We need to save the planet with carbon.
        The carbon atom exists in many compounds the most notable of which is Welsh coal – it is the best coal in the world as is Welsh slate for the use of roofs. There’s nothing better than a Welsh home fire in a rainstorm in winter.

        What is puzzling is why the carbon atom can be used for so many different purposes such as powering steam engines, building the lightest and strongest structures, producing gas, firing barbecues, drawing lines and sharpening the hardest tools. As such it can build empires, win wars. make people look black without immigratiion and even be a girl’s best friend.

  121. Are you in France? I think it it was only on pay TV and I don’t have that at all, either in French or English!

        1. Not really. I follow cricket more than anything these days. Rugby affects me and can get me very wound up. It brings back memories of tackles made and missed and runs, kicks and passes that ended well or disastrously. This current 6 Nations has been more relaxing for me than the previous few.

          1. I love cricket too, especially test cricket. Dates back to my days at Uni when by default I ended up as official scorer for the team for three years :)) Obviously at my age and being female I have never actually played either game :D!

          2. Me too but I like the faster flowing 20/20 or 50 over matches. Can’t stand the 100s – too glitzy and definitely not cricket

          3. I like the 50 over matches but not 20/20 and don’t even mention the 100s – it sends my blood pressure soaring! Cricket for dummies – and money 😡

          4. Yes, back in the day we had different sports for boys and girls. It seemed to work back then, but if girls want to play cricket or rugby that’s fine too. I just hope it stays with girls against girls and boys against boys.

          5. I used to. But o gave up when they started grovelling and kneeling to BLM. I still miss it. but i will never go back.

  122. Evening, all. Spent most of the day (and a lot of money) at a local garden centre to brighten up the winter months with early-flowering plants. Now all I need is some decent weather to get out and plant them. As for the headline, it won’t matter what people say or what evidence is presented to the contrary, the PTB will press ahead with their agenda.

      1. Thank you. I did manage to get the new plants in (I also have some bulbs I bought earlier and some seeds awaiting planting/sowing) before it started to spit with rain.

    2. The front of our house faces north. Under the window we have a lovely shrub Sarcococca it has small insignificant flowers in January/February but gives off the most amazing scent. Worth consideration if you have a north facing aspect.

      1. I bought a sarcococca. I do have a north facing aspect (the south side of my patio, shaded by next door’s hedge). I might put it in a large tub there.

  123. Labour’s rule over Wales has been so dismal it makes even the SNP look good

    There is little in Vaughan Gething’s record to suggest that things will get any better after he takes charge

    ROSS CLARK • 16 March 2024 • 6:43pm

    The devolved Welsh government was put on this earth, it sometimes seems, to make the Scottish government look competent. Vaughan Gething will begin his stint as First Minister under some very large clouds.

    Healthcare, which was Gething’s former brief? The NHS in Wales has done so poorly that English hospitals in 2022/23 found themselves treating 40,000 refugees from across Offa’s Dyke. Waiting lists are longer – with patients waiting an average of 24 weeks for hospital treatment in 2022, compared with 13 in England.

    As for Covid, which occurred on Gething’s watch, Wales continued to discharge hospital patients into care homes without testing them for two weeks after Matt Hancock finally got his act together.

    Education, where Scotland recently made headlines because the performance of pupils in the international PISA tests had plummeted after the SNP revamped the curriculum? The one consolation for the SNP was that Welsh pupils performed even worse. In 2022, Welsh pupils were near bottom-of-the-class among OECD countries in mathematics and reading – both with scores of 466. Pupils in England scored 492 in maths and 496 in reading.

    The economy – which is Gething’s most recent brief? Wales has the weakest economy in Britain. Council tax has risen faster in Wales, too: up by 32.4 per cent in Wales since 2018 compared with 29.8 per cent in England. Mercifully for Welsh taxpayers, the Welsh government doesn’t have the same powers to vary income tax that the Scottish government has – otherwise, they would no doubt be paying more from their pay packets, too.

    Crime? Yes, you’ve guessed it. Recorded offences have increased faster in Wales than in England, up nearly 50 per cent since 2016. And so it goes on.

    Wales’ miserable performance relative to England – and also Scotland – matters because we will soon be in an election campaign in which Sir Keir Starmer is determined to make competence a central issue. He will presumably be counting on voters not taking too much notice of the living laboratory that is Wales, because it offers very little to suggest that Labour is capable of making a better fist of things than either the Conservatives in England or the SNP in Scotland. He will be hoping that the Scots, in particular, won’t have heard of what has been going on in Wales, given that Starmer may very well need a good number of Scottish seats to be sure of an overall majority.

    Trouble is, there is little in Gething’s record to suggest that things will get any better in Wales after he takes charge, and a good deal to suggest that things could get worse.

    The Covid Inquiry’s Welsh leg couldn’t have come at a more unfortunate time for him. True, you can attack Boris Johnson’s government for being a bit slow off the ball, but Gething has admitted he hadn’t even read the report produced for Exercise Cygnus – carried out in 2016 to prepare Britain for a future pandemic. The Welsh cabinet didn’t discuss Covid until 25 February 2020, a month after the country’s Chief Medical Officer warned that the disease posed a serious risk. So much for the narrative which Gething and Mark Drakeford tried to promote that they were somehow the wise, sensible ones dragged down by a bumbling Boris Johnson in London.

    And then there were the chips. In May 2020, Gething and his family were photographed eating bags of chips on a picnic bench on Cardiff waterfront – all very nice except that, at the time, Gething’s own government had banned people from sitting on a park bench for a prolonged period. It may have been a stupid, petty rule, but as we found out with Partygate, the public takes a pretty dim view of ministers who break rules which they have imposed on others.

    Labour will be advertising its wares in this year’s general election by claiming that it is the new broom to sweep up the mess left behind by the Tories. Yet in one-party Wales – which has been governed by the party for over a quarter of a century — Labour is an extremely old broom, and one whose few remaining bristles are incapable of making much of an impact on its own detritus.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/16/labours-rule-over-wales-so-dismal-it-makes-snp-look-good/

    1. Labour is an extremely old broom, and one whose few remaining bristles…

      At least Trigger had the sense to replace worn out parts of his broom. Labour hasn’t got the nous to do that and continue on with the same old worn out policies and rhetoric and expect the electorate to believe that they’re capable of cleaning up the Tories mess.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56yN2zHtofM

  126. FigureAI is an American company founded in 2022 based in Sunnyvale, California. In a very short timescale it has produced an autonomous robot that walks just like Joe Biden as can be seen in this video:

    https://youtu.be/i9JYil2pv9o?si=5koZjKHFFpYpnzII

    It won’t take long before it will considered for running as POTUS.🤔

  127. Greenwich is to London as Summertown is to Oxford so I expect some snotty vegan LibDem was behind this.

    Award-winning fish and chip shop ordered to take down Union flag

    Owner left bemused when flag in south-east London deemed ‘inappropriate’ for the area

    Henry Bodkin, SENIOR REPORTER • 16 March 2024 • 9:25pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a8148445840cd4b22dec38bbaf891ca158585da6d1f8290d77b2a991049fc856.jpg
    London’s “best” fish and chip shop has been ordered to remove a Union flag mural by council officials. The owner of the Golden Chippy, in Greenwich, south-east London, was left bemused after a design featuring the flag held by a humanoid fish and a slogan saying “A Great British Meal” were allegedly deemed inappropriate for the area.

    Chris Kanizi and his staff have had a strong footfall of visitors, including many overseas tourists, since the shop was deemed London’s top-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor in 2016.

    Painted only a month ago, at a cost of £250, the mural was providing a further boon to his business by giving social media-conscious customers a selfie opportunity. It is not the first time Mr Kanizi, who arrived in the UK in 1977 from northern Cyprus, has fallen foul of Greenwich council with his zeal for celebrating fish and chips.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c03a423f987145ce5d8b54b4cba72077c5625cd42b936ff5dccd636923b4ddff.jpg
    In 2016, the town hall ordered him to remove a much larger sign – about 17 feet high – featuring a very similar design, from above the door. He relented after a two-year battle and a petition of support, which attracted more than 3,000 signatures when he was faced with being taken to court.

    “It’s just something to put a smile on people’s faces,” he said. “But the council said “this is a preservation area – you can’t have that and you’ve got to paint over it. They also said people had been complaining, but I don’t believe that. Everyone who has talked to me say they love it”.

    Mr Kanzini arrived in London with the ambition of studying medicine, but says he instead became “an expert fish surgeon”. The 65-year-old has run the Golden Chippy for 20 years and lives two doors down. “I’m going to stick it out for as long as I can,” he said. “They haven’t given me a date to paint over it yet, but they will. I’ve got so many international customers. They all like taking a photo with the mural in the background.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d2f1679530e0c2f7d0c8282222250da543a6d3769a1d38f044c46feb46532e07.jpg
    The shop is located in a 19th-century conservation area. However, Mr Kanizi has previously pointed to pictures of the corner property from the 1940s, when the premises was a cafe, which included numerous large trade signs. At the time of the last furore, a local residents group described the council’s definition of heritage as “narrow and out of touch”.

    A Greenwich council spokesman said: “Following a number of complaints made to local ward councillors, an enforcement case was raised about the mural in question. Our Planning Enforcement team is investigating this as it is effectively an unauthorised advert for the chip shop. The owner has agreed to paint over it. We will always try to negotiate with the owner before proceeding to a formal planning enforcement notice.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/16/award-winning-fish-and-chip-shop-ordered-to-take-down-union/

        1. Photo taken in May 2020 during the farce called Lockdown. I wanted a finally look prior to moving to the West Country.

          1. I know. And of course we were all told it was climate change and we are all going to die. Then it rained.

  128. Never rated Gatland – one trick pony with ‘Warrenball’ – but they have a number of very good young players who will become a seriously decent team in a couple of years, whoever is coaching them. Good time to get the job!

          1. I think somebody said that (Geoff?) recently?

            All I can manage is

            Wales, Wales, bloody great fishes are Wales,
            They swim in the sea
            You can eat them for tea
            Oh bloody great fishes are Wales

            Not sure that would pass muster however….

        2. I liked Bob Dylan’s response to being asked about “Land of my Fathers” – my fathers can keep it 🤣

          2. Indeed 🙂 I’m off to bed now, in Frogland it is past midnight. Night all, see you in the morning!

  129. Up in Wolverhampton with my lovely Mum. It is 42 years tomorrow since her mum (my Grandma) died. Mum was only 39. She is now 80 and I am immensely grateful to still have her. Dad has gone to visit my brother and his mob in Oz and seems to be having a ball. Mum and I both agree tbat we can’t be bothered.

    2. I was 39 years old when my mother died .

      I can remember my fathers voice and personality , more than I can remember my mother .

      We weren’t very close .

      1. My mother died in 1979, aged 66. She was as mad as a hatter but could be very charming. I wish I missed her.

    2. Gone – for ever. I thought it was 11 days actually……….”Give us back our 11 days” the people cried.
      One of my ancestors was minister of a church not far from here – a few years ago they had an event and the original parish registers were available to view. The last entries in his handwriting were shortly before he died, aged 52 in 1701 or 2, depending on the calendar.

  131. I see my mother in the mirror now I’m nearly as old as she was. I hear her words too.

    1. It’s been 24yrs since my Mum died at 91yrs old and I still think of her sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear, about some problem I am having!!

      1. Boom tish.

        I was on a field trip yesterday for my Geology course and decided to treat myself to a night away instead of rushing back.

      1. I was on a field trip yesterday in Forest of Dean. Part of the Geology night class I’m doing.
        It was very good but my arthritic hips are of a different opinion this morning.

    5. We stayed there many years ago and remember seeing a Peregrine Falcon on a cliff side.
      Very beautiful area.

    2. Wow. Don’t remember that at all. Incredible. Now that makes you proud to be English/British.

      1. This English/British thing is something that lights my fire; Ed Chamberlain corrected somebody who said, “an English victory” (which was correct as trainer, owner and jockey were all English) into a “British” victory. I could 100% guarantee that wouldn’t have been the case had Lucinda Russell (Scottish) or Christian Willams (Welsh) been the trainer.

        1. I am very conscious of it too. I used to get very fed up reading the Metro. Everyone English was British, and everyone Welsh or Scottish was Welsh and Scottish. Anyone from Norn Iron was just “Irish” (sic). I tried to write to them, but they are impossible to contact, so I stopped reading it. (It is a rag, anyway). That was pre-pandemic.

  135. Well – I think it’s bedtime! Thanks all for your company! Good night and sleep well………

      1. I did, thankyou. Two cats crept in at some stage. It’s nice to feel the weight by my feet. When they think it’s time we got up they come and sit higher up.

          1. Lily died last summer……… the house was very empty without her so when these two needed a home last October, we decided to offer ours. Ziggy and Jessie have taken over and rule the roost here. They are both beautiful tabbies and quite lively.

  137. AI Rubbish. BBC item.

    ”

    In
    February, Google apologised after its recently launched AI image
    generator created an image of the US Founding Fathers which inaccurately
    included a black man.

    Gemini also generated German soldiers from World War Two, incorrectly featuring a black man and Asian woman.

    It also immediately “paused” the tool, writing in a blog post that it was “missing the mark”.

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