Saturday 16 November: NHS patients need clarity over the role of physician associates

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

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

817 thoughts on “Saturday 16 November: NHS patients need clarity over the role of physician associates”

    2. I'll bet RFK Jr knows a lot more about vaccines than Peter Brookes…but Brookes knows how to toe the line….

    3. I am surprised at the number of upvotes given to this Peter Brookes cartoon. Brookes is noted for his "woke" cartoons. The implication in this is that JFK believed that the more we know about things then "ignorance" unfolds, and thus Robert F. Kennedy Junior is "ignorant". But in fact if you read more carefully what RFK Jnr said about vaccines being dangerous and more likely to lead to bad results he was told by the "experts" that his views were a nonsense. He said, in effect, "OK show me one study where they show they are safe". He was told "There are lots" so he asked to be given one single case. His critics prevaricated for over a year until he took them to court, and eventually the critics' lawyers admitted that they couldn't find a single case. And they had known this for almost a year until RFK Jnr. took them to court.

  3. Good morning, chums – and thanks to Geoff for today's NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,246 5/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie and all
      Wordle 1,246 4/6

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  5. Good morning all.
    A tad over 5°C on the Yard Thermometer and dry.
    Too dark to see what the sky is like!

    Dr. Daughter is here, so consigned to the Laptop and sat up in bed listening to a CD of Emma Kirkby and Evelyn Tubb.
    It seems Dr, Daughter is taking the DT to Buxton for a Spa Treatment so had the alarm on this morning.

  6. THIS IS VERY FUNNY

    Yesterday The Graun thought they had nailed Allison Pearson by uncovering a naughty tweet

    Allison Pearson’s ‘racist’ tweet is at centre of Telegraph’s row with police
    Exclusive: Person who complained tells Guardian that columnist’s ‘Jew haters’ post was inflammatory

    Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent
    Fri 15 Nov 2024 12.45 GMT

    Daily Telegraph readers have woken up this week to successive front-page headlines alleging a grave threat to free speech, triggered by a star columnist’s “Kafkaesque” encounter with police.

    The rightwing broadsheet described how Essex police had told Allison Pearson on her doorstep last weekend that she was under investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in a tweet last year.

    The Telegraph and Pearson say they are unaware which post caused two officers to knock on her door at 9.40am on Remembrance Sunday.

    But the Guardian believes it has found the post at the centre of the row.

    It is an alleged retweet by Pearson of a photograph posted several months ago amid heightened tensions over the policing of Gaza protests. It shows a group of people of colour posing with a flag on a British street, flanked by three police officers.

    The photograph angered Pearson, who allegedly wrote a tweet condemning the Metropolitan police: “How dare they.

    “Invited to pose for a photo with lovely peaceful British Friends of Israel on Saturday police refused. Look at this lot smiling with the Jew haters.”

    In fact, the picture is from Manchester, sources confirm, and thus the officers pictured are from Greater Manchester police and not the London force.

    The implication that the Muslims pictured are antisemitic and supporting Hamas is undermined by the green and maroon flag they are holding. The flag is used by supporters of the Pakistani political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). It also, rather clearly, has the word “Pakistan” written on it.

    PTI was founded by the former international cricketer Imran Khan, who became prime minister of Pakistan before being deposed and jailed.

    The person who complained to the police is not Muslim nor one of those pictured. They are a former public servant with training in criminal law. They wish to stay anonymous, fearing reprisals, especially from far-right elements, but told the Guardian the post by Pearson was “racist and inflammatory” – which she denies.

    They added: “Pearson tweeted something that had nothing to do with Palestine or the London protests: she tweeted a picture of two persons of colour holding a flag of a Pakistani political party standing next to some GMP officers … Her description of the two people of colour as Jew haters is racist and inflammatory.

    “Each time an influential person makes negative comments about people of colour I, as a person of colour, see an uptick in racist abuse towards me and the days after that tweet are no different.”

    The row has led Essex police to report the Telegraph to a media standards body, claiming some of its reporting has been false. The force has also set up a “gold group”, used by police to deal with a critical incident.

    Last Sunday, officers visited Pearson’s home asking her to attend a voluntary interview after a complaint that the writer had incited racial hatred.

    The Telegraph and Pearson castigated police and said the visit was an affront to free speech and freedom of the press. Their disbelief was shared by senior lawyers, the former Telegraph journalist Boris Johnson and other leading Conservatives, as well as Elon Musk.

    The complainant first went to a different force, in April, which passed it on. Essex police initially did not wish to investigate, but then reviewed their decision and decided they should.

    The complainant said: “As a former public servant, I was concerned about the tweet that Pearson put out last year so much so that I reported it to the police … I have no political affiliation and will call out racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia when I see it.

    “This is not a debate about free speech; this is about a journalist who tweeted something false during the height of the tensions in London following the 7 October atrocities.

    “She could have tweeted an apology stating she was wrong. She didn’t.

    “I am not a leftwing activist, I am a member of the public shocked by her original tweet, and her recent doubling down is not helping.”

    In a post on X on Thursday, Pearson wrote: “The British people deserve to be informed about the Kafkaesque state of their justice system.

    “Instead of solving frightening crime police are frightening people.”

    The visit by officers to Pearson’s Essex home was captured on body-worn video. A source insisted police were polite and merely trying to arrange a proper interview, where Pearson could have a lawyer present and answer questions, in keeping with laws governing police interviews.

    Neither Pearson nor the Telegraph responded to requests for comment.

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

    Unfortunately, The Graun had got the wrong Allison Pearson

    Massey Ferguson
    5h
    Oops, could prove to be an expensive smear from the Guardian. Spreading fake nooz is now a crime under SStarmzi diktat 703.

    1. 'Morning, C1. The leftie, low-level, woke-infested amateur rag called the Grauniad isn't normally permitted to enter this household, so your post has brightened my day immeasurably! How are the pious undone…

      1. Growing up in Nottinghamshire, my father's daily newspaper of choice was The Manchester Guardian which was not then a lefty rag. Aged about 12, I asked him why? "Coz it's not from bluddy London" came the reply.

          3. That reminds me of the old joke: ‘90% of bishops take The Times. The other 10% pay for it’

        1. Hmm… This does not confirm the existence of another Alison Pearson, it merely asserts that the tweet in question was not racist,

    3. Which Allison Pearson was it then?
      Not that anybody should be harassed for getting facts wrong.
      Heck. The Gruniad is notorious for its bloopers.
      How many "former public servants" are there in Sussex? A good few thousand, but not the whole 1.7 million population (according to Google).

    4. If the "Former Public Servant" is willing to make a statement to the Press, then he should be prepared to be named publicly.

    5. The complainant – "they" – seems to be entirely a left wing whiner, seeking to find anything to take offence to, despite its denials! "Member of the public" indeed!?

      1. Probably as many as there are Alans who spell their name Allan or Allen.

        The Alans were a tribe (Kingdom) of Iranic nomadic pastoral people whose reign of influence peaked in the 5th and 6th centuries AD.

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

        Were there any tribes (or Kingdoms) called The Richards (or The Dicks)?

    7. "The complainant said: “As a former public servant, I was concerned about the tweet that Pearson put out last year so much so that I reported it to the police … I have no political affiliation and will call out racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia when I see it."

      Nobody likes a sneak….

    8. This does add an (appropriate) Inspector Cluseau element to the whole thing.

      It's an interesting fantasy to imagine Elon Musk being called in to give UK police forces an efficiency once-over.

  7. 'Morning, Peeps and Geoff,

    A fine comment from a DT reader with which to start the day:

    James Devlin
    2 hrs ago
    If the Chief Constable of Essex police believes that verbal hate poses one of the greatest threats to communities, and uses police resources to criminalise it, he’s lost the plot. This country spends untold millions protecting communities from actualised hatred in the form of terrorism. Normal humans, those not belonging to a deranged cult, are allowed to hate terrorists and all those who support and embolden them. Including the Ayatollah’s weekly idiots that this government protects more than its own very frustrated, very angry citizens.

    If politicians and university educated police cannot read the country, get off the pot and leave room for those who can. Otherwise this country is finished. And the Ayatollah and his cult will have won. Make the choice. Pick the side.

    Bravo Sir!

    2. Last night was the brightest moon I've ever seen in my life. You could see colours. In the morning, the west was brighter than the east when I got up.

  11. Доброе утро, товарищи,

    A cloudy day in prospect at the McPhee manor, wind South-West, 6 to 10℃.

    Well, we know now what Badenough really thinks about 'hate' speech and, by extension, 'hate' crime. She's not for us.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5c4149afa4e99976c1a21033ba94469cc881f4d055ad2b7028b3c1d3f93ecd24.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/11/15/free-speech-is-under-attack-warns-kemi-badenoch/

    This legislation doesn't need to be reviewed, it needs to be repealed. A crime is crime whatever the motivation. Would the deeds of the Nazis be any more heinous if they had been prosecuted at Nuremburg as 'hate' crimes? You know the answer to that.

    1. Kemi's point is that the gung-ho promise anything and do nothing approach is exactly what sunk the Conservatives.
      She is right. Realistically, unless we roll out the tumbrils and sharpen up the guillotine, there are several years of opposition in which to seriously delve into legislation (from at least 1997, probably from 1990, there are measure from even earlier) and unravel it and propose action. Actual possible action, not sound bites to grab headlines for nanoseconds.
      In short, give her and her team a chance. We are in even deeper doodoo and with a far more vindictive, Britain hating government and its employees than we were in the 1970s.

        1. You have a good point.
          For example, the NHS was founded at a time when belief in all-encompassing government solutions was at its highest. (Misty eyed memories of nobly handing in aluminium saucepans to build Spitfires; sharing your scabies with your neighbours on Underground platforms etc…..)
          And still the myth continues. If you go back 76 years from 1948, you reach 1872.
          Did people seriously think there had been no scientific or social change since the mid-Victorian era? No, they didn't hence; an organisation built on reactions to recent history and contemporary society.

    2. It seems that what ever happens in our lives, our useless politicians turn everything they can against the British people and then blame the people for everything that goes wrong.
      When more than obviously when things do more often than not go wrong it's the fault of those in Westminster and Whitehall. But covered up.
      Basically they are continually working against us and don't really care about the lives and the effects their dreadful mistakes inflict on the general public.
      The general attitude of our political classes needs to be changed.

  12. Rachel Reeves wants pension funds to bail her out

    The Chancellor’s push to use pension pots to boost growth is a case of two steps forward, two steps back

    15 November 2024 5:57pm GMT
    Guy Opperman
    The Budget bashed business, and also the Labour Party ratings. It mentioned growth more than 300 times and yet the Chancellor then hammered companies, entrepreneurs and generally made it harder to grow a business.

    Rachel Reeves has now tried to reboot the growth agenda with her Mansion House speech on Thursday night. Her mission is to boost the amount UK private pension funds invest in UK private markets and infrastructure. Her problem is that simply making a speech is not enough. And many, many pensioners do not want the Government telling them how their money is to be invested.

    There were some parts of the Chancellor’s approach that do make sense. She is building on the reforms I started as pensions minister, and Jeremy Hunt brought forward in the summer of 2023 with the Mansion House Compact. That compact stated that 5pc of the default pension funds would be invested into unlisted equities in the UK by 2030. Rachel Reeves has decided that this is not enough.

    Her decision to force local authority pension schemes to merge is fine in principle, and seeks to emulate the Canadian and Australian example. Greater size will potentially save administration costs and definitely increase buying power.

    But local authorities are responsible for over 5m local government pensions: many of those members want their own democratically elected authority investing as they see fit. With forced mergers, that influence is massively diminished.

    What is envisaged is the local authority pension scheme acting as an initial investor in infrastructure, with private sector money following in behind. That is fine until the project does not attract private sector support – or worse than that, it fails. And infrastructure is notoriously hard to deliver and then get a return on.

    To make matters worse, this Government is making such investment harder. The best recent examples are water companies, in which pension funds have invested very heavily. In most cases they are losing money for their pension investors. But the language and approach of Labour cabinet ministers, particularly the PM and Steve Reed, the Defra secretary, is making a difficult situation worse.

    The water companies need private investment, such as the massive support that the USS, the Universities pension fund, gave to Thames Water several years ago. But the USS trustees are definitely regretting that investment now; in my view no pension fund will touch a water company in the UK for at least five years.

    The Government’s approach, the uncertain regulatory future, the obvious struggle to get any return for members’ investment and so much more mean that this water infrastructure, which needs investment, will be shunned.

    This instance highlights the fact that the hard work will be to create the products for the pension schemes to invest in.

    For example, the only way Reeves will get the finance to invest in nuclear will be to create proper government-backed infrastructure bonds for pension schemes that are attractive in terms of risk and return.

    The Treasury shows no inclination that they want to support the nuclear investment we so clearly need in this country. And yet, without Treasury support and guarantees no UK pension or overseas pension funds will invest in UK nuclear infrastructure.

    Finally, transport infrastructure and some housing is blighted by a combination of excessive litigation, particularly by climate change activists seeking to block new developments, planning red tape overkill and the massive build costs in this country.

    The PM and Chancellor will have to create the framework and projects that demonstrate to pension funds the opportunity, the certainty and the return needed to justify the investment. It is doable, but choices need to be made.

    The Chancellor has shied away from mandating investment into UK productive finance. But her decision to accelerate mergers and consolidation of the master-trust multi-employer schemes is an extension of the previous Conservative government’s work.

    Finally, it is crazy that we have two regulators trying to run one industry.

    The Chancellor should take away the powers of the Financial Conduct Authority over some pensions and give it to the Pensions Regulator. Having been the pensions minister, it is very clear that pensions are a sideshow to the FCA. Put one regulator in charge with a new mandate to drive forward value for money for both the investor and the country. That would make a big difference.

    The present approach is a case of two steps forward, two steps back. Without clarity and drive, this combined set of measures by the Chancellor will fail.

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

    James Cheadle
    12 hrs ago
    I don’t want any politician of any hue to go anywhere my pension pot. Certainly not any of this current lot who are bloody clueless and think borrowing will automatically generate a return to cover the cost of the loan and some. There are no guarantees and I will vote against any politician getting within a million miles of our scheme .

    Roger Elwell
    11 hrs ago
    Pension funds belong to the members, not Rachel Reeves.
    This needs to be tested in court.

  14. Good morning, all. Yet another dreary, grey, sunless day. Wunnerful, this global boiling…

    1. According to the weather forecast, thousands – nay, millions – dead by next weekend.
      My fault for using the tumble drier.

      1. Morning Anne ,

        How about this for a good idea , I decided to have 2 good washdays during the week .. Continuous wash, duvet covers etc , all the towels , flannels etc , a handkerchief hot wash , then Moh's trousers , my jeans , sons stuff .. then dried mostly on the line and finished off in tumble drier .. folded and stored everything back in cupboards .

        Aren't I clever , so that meant five days light electricity use , and 2 days heavy electricity use !!! https://media3.giphy.com/media/Vd31Rg1ejtC8JwVrSX/giphy-downsized-small.mp4

        1. Get solar panels Maggie and do it when the sun shines – zero cost. I'm sure you'll have enough clothes to survive between sunny days – I have

          1. FA

            Good idea , but so far all okay .

            I was delivering a tongue in cheek comment ..

            We can’t put solar panels on our roof , it is a clay tiled Rosemary roof .. and prone to slippage !!!

        2. I have a drying rack that I found in the middle of Lidl aisle.
          All our clothes are dried overnight on that; just ambient, no heater involved.
          Most of the year, I don't touch the tumble drier, but I have admit to defeat with towels and large bed linen during the wet winter months.

          1. Our tumble drier just gave up the ghost and we're not replacing it. We have a heated rail and and a dehumidifier for Winter and our outside whirlgig for the Summer. Tumble driers are wonderful but jolly expensive to run.

  15. Good Moaning.
    I need advice. If Essex perlice rock up at the Dower House because I typed something hurty, would it be advisable for me to offer them a choice of black or white coffee?

      1. Mr Plod the Policeman was my rôle model.

        I took no crap from any Noddy!

        As for Big Ears and Golliwogs …

  16. Morning all 🙂😊
    No choice when it comes to the weather, or our politicians. At least we didn't have a frost…… yet. Not too late to hack back my mint and dry it. I do like minty peas. 😉
    I think the basic and most obvious problem (that nobody ever likes to mention) with the NHS at the moment is, it seems that an awful lot of surgeon's spend more time now in the private sector. Hence the long waiting times and huge queues for treatment.

      1. Morning Ellie.
        But when a patient has been diagnosed with a problem and suffered with it for mere than thirty years you’d expect someone to help.
        Instead of being continually faffed out of the way.
        Just sayin’ ……

  18. 397034_ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Look at this illogically, currently it is to be taken as the norm and on par for the future as the WEF / NWO / RESET way of what is to be, ongoing.

    This is resulting from the fertile shite laid down via the spite riddled, vengeance seeking, tactical voter.

    IT has been party before Country every time for decades, we are finally reaping what the majority voter has sown in its quest to place its party in the seat of power,

    The party names alone are & have been for decades the magnet
    even though the party names had been captured and turned years ago.

    Well meant advice, do not trust anything that holds any sort of political power in parliament today.

    https://x.com/addicted2newz/status/1857410321935159653

  19. Good morning Geoff and Nottlers
    Today's Golfing Tales, from Plymouth
    A husband and wife were playing golf together when the wife got severely stung by a bee. Panic-stricken, the husband ran to the club house, looking for a doctor.
    “Come quickly!” he said. “My wife’s been stung by a bee."
    “Where was she stung?” asked the doctor.
    “Between the first and second holes," gasped the husband.
    “Gee," replied the doctor, “she must have a wide stance.”

    Keith, a sales representative, was taking his client, Ron, for a day out on the golf course for a quick round. After playing a couple of holes, they were slowed down by two women players in front of them.
    “I’ll go and ask if we can play through,” said Keith.
    Keith returned, visibly shaken.
    “You won’t believe this, Ron, but the two women in front – one is my wife and one is my mistress!”
    Ron looked at his watch impatiently and said, “You keep out of sight. I’ll go and talk to them.”
    A few minutes later, Ron returned.
    “You’re not going to believe this, Keith," he started

    2. It's not the only accusations flying around. Ask her why she was forced to resign from HBOS.

      1. I heard that too – folk are suggesting a trio of managers were signing off each other's expenses?

    3. Here's one of the most liked BTL comments – "Don't know or care where she worked, but it's as clear as day that she doesn't know the first thing about economics. She's designed a budget for growth and achieved precisely the opposite. Some achievement! "

      1. I simply don't believe that lie. She didn't design for growth – unless you count growing the tax take.

        Perhaps that was the whole lie, much as 'we won't increase taxes on working people really meant – but we will on their employers, which will immediately affect working people.

        It's a very Left wing lie: it sounds positive, but when you think it through it really means the exact opposite of what they said. A bit like the BBC reporting '500 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers' when the truth is the civlians were killed by Palestians shelling Israelis who were evacuating the civilians.

    4. I do hope so, but I suspect this is wishful thinking – we are stuck with this incompetent, malevolent, ignorant shower for a while yet, I fear!

  23. I'm sure Ms Pearson would not object to Essex plod revealing the incriminating bodycam footage.

    1. There's a scream of Gotcha.. like George Easton's moment of joy snaring poet and critic Roger Scrutton.

      Ms Pearson misread an image of some Pakistanis & policemen then assumed they were Muslim & Gaza supporters. She's toast.
      There is a two-tier war on y'know.

      1. No doubt the Pakistanis in question were as shocked by the (then) recent atrocity as the rest of us.

        1. Irrelevant.
          Ms Pearson should know better. She's in Hope Not Hate's top ten list of journos to bring down. They monitor her every utterance, and calling someone a Jew-Hater was all they needed.

        2. Irrelevant.
          Ms Pearson should know better. She's in Hope Not Hate's top ten list of journos to bring down. They monitor her every utterance, and calling someone a Jew-Hater was all they needed.

          1. Outrage as Guardian identifies someone else's tweet as Allison Pearson's in failed swipe at under-fire journalist
            The Left-wing paper said it believed Allison Pearson was behind a 'Jew haters' tweet

            Two Ls not one.

        2. This story just gets better and better. Popcorn time. I bet the little lefty queer shit Owen Jones is involved somewhere.

          1. Owen Jones brings out my primeval instincts: he makes me want to pull his arms off (like you would the wings off a fly).

            That would be just the precursor to modifying my behaviour towards something more mediæval in character.

            Oh, what (drawn out) fun I could have!

        3. Apart from the headlines to her articles, the detail that jumps out at you is the unusual spelling of her Christian name.
          Did plod not notice the extra letter 'l'?
          I assume this is a developing story.

      3. But they were carrying a Palestine placard?

        This is all so crazy and un-English.
        And very ironic that this should happen to Allison Pearson of all people. I have just read her second novel, published around 2011 iirc. She toes every line going. The book is full of not-so-hidden propaganda, the most egregious example being a completely random and unnecessary scene where the heroine is booked in for her annual flu jab in her lunch break! (Annual jabs are normal, folks! Everyone has one!)

    2. There's a scream of Gotcha.. like George Easton's moment of joy snaring poet and critic Roger Scrutton.

      Ms Pearson misread an image of some Pakistanis & policemen then assumed they were Muslim & Gaza supporters. She's toast.
      There is a two-tier war on y'know.

    3. I'm sure that Mrs Pearson, a happily-married woman and committed capitalist, would object to being labelled with an idiotic women's lib label such as "Ms".

        1. That excuse is a non-sequitur. Using the appalling label ‘Ms’ is a socialist-type of affectation.

  24. Telegraph View The fight for free speech
    The hounding of Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson has put freedom of speech in Britain under intense scrutiny

    Telegraph View 16 November 2024 5:57am GMT

    The hounding of Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson has put freedom of speech in Britain under intense scrutiny.

    Ms Pearson was visited at her home early on Remembrance Sunday by officers who told her she was under investigation for a social media post, but who did not tell her the precise nature of the post in question.

    The scale of the investigation is now beginning to emerge, with officers from the Metropolitan Police, Sussex Police, and Essex Police all involved over the past year. The last of these has now set up a “gold group” of the sort usually established to deal with major incidents such as terror attacks to handle the investigation

    Freedom of speech, and the ability to express strong opinions, are integral to the good functioning of democracy. Downing Street has signalled that it will now review the recording of non-crime hate incidents to ensure that free speech is protected and the system is “proportionate”. This surely does not go far enough.

    Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper should make clear exactly what they stand for. Over the summer, Sir Keir appeared to urge the criminal justice system to investigate people for social media posts while Ms Cooper has moved to increase the recording of non-crime hate incidents.

    We now appear to be seeing the consequences of these actions. If Sir Keir and Ms Cooper now wish us to believe they stand in favour of free speech, they should set out exactly which steps they will take.

    1. Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper should make clear exactly what they stand for.

      It's very loud.. and very clear.
      They are ethnically cleansing 52% of the population. Dissent will not be tolerated.

      1. Perhaps they could step in as horribly white themselves to be cleansed, and set an example. I'm sure many would be grateful.

    2. TTK and Lemon Lipped Cooper wouldn't recognise free speech if it were presented to them on a platter topped with parsley.

      1. Of course they wouldn't. Who dresses a dish with parsley any more FFS. Chopped chives is de rigeur !

    3. And we still don't know what Allison tweeted and who was the 'victim.'

      As I said here yesterday: given that the 'offensive' tweet was issued at the time of the 2023 October 7th outrage of rape, murder, kidnap and imprisonment committed by Hamas against Jews, and given that Allison Pearson has championed the Jews' cause since then, it seems more than likely that her tweet had something to do with that outrageous event.

      So are we now to infer that those who say they disapprove of those who commit murder, rape, kidnap and imprisonment should be hounded by the police and are more 'hateful' and more to blame than those who actually do these horrible deeds in the first place?

      1. Rastus, just bear in mind that this investigation is being led by Chief Superintendent Waheed Khan of the Essex Police.

    4. That Boris is squealing about it and troughing away on the outrage is putrid. His on line harm bill is to blame.

      He could have repealed this sort of legislation. He chose not to.

  25. Treasury Admits New Farm Tax Is Based on Research From Only One Academic

    Ministers James Murray and Daniel Zeichner penned a piece in the Times last week defending Labour’s new farm tax. Incensed farmers are due to descend on Westminster next week in a protest attended by Jeremy Clarkson…

    They brandish an intellectual foundation for their new tax:

    “As tax and economics experts from the IFS and the Tax Policy Centre have suggested, these changes are reasonable and fair. These changes strike a balanced approach that will ensure we can continue to protect family farms while also allowing us to ensure stability in the public finances and fix the public services that those same farming families rely on.”

    Guido didn’t recognise the Tax Policy Centre and asked the Treasury to clarify, which it did, that the ministers are referring to the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax). That “think tank” is run by Arun Advani and Andy Summers, two of the three “wealth tax commissioners” who consistently push for huge tax hikes…

    A 2023 IFS report called for the scrappage of Agricultural Property Relief and other “loopholes” on farms. It was written by Arun Advani.

    Analysis calling for APR to be capped was produced by the IFS before the election this year. It was written by Arun Advani.

    CenTax’s recent report calling for APR to be capped was written by Arun Advani. The think tank has, in fact, led the charge in calling for taxes on carried interest, the removal of the non-dom regime, and hikes in Capital Gains Tax. Reeves has contracted out her tax policymaking to far-left academics Advani and Summers…

    Advani, who also sits on the advisory board of the OBR, himself said at Labour Conference that he was “optimistic” because the Labour government is “genuinely listening” to his ideas. The groundswell of support for Labour’s tax hikes is being entirely manufactured…

    3. I am concerned that all the concern is about the 'farm tax' when the daylight robbery of all private pension funds on death should be attacked.

      1. I have a small private pension in the UK. To be honest, I never thought I would get much from it and now that Labour's thieving the pot, I know I won't. It's not really part of my retirement planning. I got suckered in when I was younger, but I don't really trust the entire UK financial sector.

        1. Same as BB2, I recently drew some money out to help pay our house hold bills heating etc and for the first time they stole 256 pounds in tax. Around the same amount of our heating allowance. So robbed twice.

    4. I think there was a case to stop the agricultural land IHT relief being cynically exploited by people who have made a lot of money in other sectors and don’t run a family farm (even if they themselves do run the farm, usually with assistance from managers). But that could have been done fairly simply by requiring executors to make applications for IHT relief backed up by documentary proof that the beneficiaries have been engaged long term in working on the farm themselves. There could be a notional IHT levy that would become payable if the farm were sold within a certain period – at least 10 but maybe 25 years.
      The sanctimonious Labour apologists who have barely strayed outside the M25 keep claiming that farmers get £3M before paying IHT But they are a) being wilfully ignorant of the nature of farm assets and b) cherry picking their example. A couple starts to lose the £1M IHT threshold on passing a house to the next generation if the total estate is over £2M and it goes down to £650K when the estate value reaches about £4M. These apologists also claim that the farmers should gift everything 7 years in advance of dying. They clearly haven’t heard that ‘no man knoweth the hour’.

    1. Before any taxes are imposed the inflation should be first deducted or else the governmental theft is even greater.

      If I have a bank deposit paying 5% on a total capital sum of £10,000 and inflation has run at 10% then my capital will be worth £9,000 but I will also have been taxed on the interest of £500 which at 40% will be £200 so what remains of my initial £10,000 will be £8,800.

      This is not a great incentive for people to invest or save.

      1. Forgive a little Devil's advocacy: the state of affairs that you have described encourages you to take your money out of the bank and put it into a productive investment. (That's the theory. my line is that if positive 2% inflation is acceptable, so is negative 2%.)

        1. Putting it simply:
          The theory goes that if inflation is negative then people won't spend, because they believe the goods and services will become cheaper, so they wait. The economy then shrinks.
          It's the foundation of the BoE trying to maintain a low, but steady rate of inflation, so that people continue to spend, thus boosting the economy..

        2. But where is the capital gain in my £100,000 investment which after a year is nominally worth £110,000 if inflation is at !0% and then CGT is applied on £10,000 which is not actually a gain at all!

          My point is simple: to tax income or capital gains which have been wiped out by inflation is nothing other than governmental theft.

          1. I once suggested that income tax on savings should be reduced in accordance with inflation, as tax on capital gains used to be. Strangely enough, my idea failed to gain traction, as they say.

    2. Folk don't understand inflation. If someone told them it'slike saving £100 and in ten years finding you've got 50 (3 years under this government) it'd be clearer, but big fat state likes to hide the truth.

  27. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/15/scotland-is-a-laboratory-for-labours-socialist-tax-plans/

    You'll have to forgive me but even Mongo could have explained if you take more of what people have to spend then very quickly you have less to take.

    It really is utterly obvious. I don't understand why politicians struggle with these basic concepts. I understand many are socialists and thus thick. I appreciate few have ever had a job outside of politics. Some may even be illiterate and innumerate.

    But the basic evidentiary facts remain: low tax economies raise more in tax revenues. They grow faster, adding even more tax revenues when tax rates are kept the same. The people are generally happier, healthier, with better infrastructure, larger homes and facilities because they can afford to pay more for the things they want – such as Singapore with 10GB fibre lines. In the UK that's £5k a month. Over there it's £30.

    If politicians don't understand this. If their advisors don't understand this. If government officials don't understand these basic facts then they should feed themselves into a volcano and do the world a favour by raising the average IQ by 20 points.

      1. The evidence that lower taxes raise more revenue? No, it isn't. It's unequivocal.

        Every nation that has lower taxes and a smaller state has higher rates of growth with commensurably better outcomes.

  28. A serving Gloucestershire Police officer has today (Tuesday 12 November) been arrested by officers from Counter Terrorism Policing South West (CTPSW) on suspicion of a terrorism offence.
    “The arrest has been made to allow for a prompt and effective investigation to take place and we must not draw any conclusions at this stage.”

    Just because he's a Muslim, supports Hamas, wants Sharia Law and thinks you are vile for liking; alcohol, gays, Jews, Christians, museums, democracy and bacon.. doesn't make him any less British.

    In fact he's just the kinda guy the national broadcaster have been looking for.. since our Gary resigned.

        1. Thank you for this link.

          We are not given the suspect's name or any other information which might lead us to the right conclusion!

    2. This speculation. Wouldn't be what used to be called 'the truth', would it? While the Left keep enforcing diversity this was inevitable. The pollution gets everywhere.

      There are even groups set up to 'close the attainment gap' at universities. What that means is blacks getting lower grades. Rather than accepting that they're simply less capable the default Lefty reesponse is grade inflation or.. 'support'.

      1. Does grade inflation mean inflating everyone's grades? In that case those with higher grades will still have higher grades. Or is it only one sector, so that eg. someone who would have got a 3rd now gets a 2:1/2 but only if they are part of the target group (and I thought that exam papers were supposed to be anonymous anyway?)

  29. A serving Gloucestershire Police officer has today (Tuesday 12 November) been arrested by officers from Counter Terrorism Policing South West (CTPSW) on suspicion of a terrorism offence.
    “The arrest has been made to allow for a prompt and effective investigation to take place and we must not draw any conclusions at this stage.”

    Just because he's a Muslim, supports Hamas, wants Sharia Law and thinks you are vile for liking; alcohol, gays, Jews, Christians, museums, democracy and bacon.. doesn't make him any less British.

    In fact he's just the kinda guy the national broadcaster have been looking for.. since our Gary resigned.

    1. As with Sunak's various faux pas, I wonder why CSs either didn't advise KS or even wrongly advised him. Our true, permanent and unelected government.

    2. Serving meat and alcohol is not a slur on anyone. Nobody is forced to partake, and surely it is a compliment that a foreign religion is celebrated at No 10 at all? This is a nominally Christian country. We are bending far too far backward to appease people that we have made welcome – that should really be enough without apologising.

  32. Please don't forget to support the farmers protest up in London next week- countrywide protests henceforth are inevitable. No farmers- no food .

  33. She'll avoid being sacked. They always do nowadays – and falling on your sword is an alien concept now. The whole political caboodle stinks to high heaven.

    1. We think that being a Complaints Manager at a bank is an ideal qualification for a Labour Chancellor.

      A determined attitude of "we are always right" plus the thick skin of an elephant makes for a

      succesful career in ignoring facts and common sense.

      Yes, it really was ideal training for her.

    2. Agree. Politicians are shameless these days. She'd be sacked from any normal job for making stuff up like that.

  36. They haven't – they think it means prices going up, whereas in reality it is the value of the pound decreasing.

  37. Good morning everyone .
    Grey morning , no wind , 7c.

    I copied and pasted this letter on the Aden Veterans Face book page , the response was incredible , over 46 comments and read by many veterans .

    Aden remembered

    SIR – The Aden Emergency (1963-67), an armed insurgency against British rule in what is now Yemen, is known as the forgotten war.
    Sure enough, once again the BBC chose not to acknowledge our remaining few veterans of that conflict, who were marching in the Remembrance Sunday parade – let alone film them.
    We lost scores of men out there, with hundreds wounded, and it was not our fault we were sent to fight.
    Those left are in their 80s and 90s. The fact that our small but proud contingent were almost at the rear of the parade, and never mentioned, was a real disappointment.
    Sally Welzel
    Abbeydale, South Gloucestershire

    ( Copied and pasted from the Daily Telegraph letters 14/11'24)
    Nor did the BBC mention Korean Veterans nor Suez Veterans

        1. After Harold Wilson announced that we'd be leaving Aden, the Adenese Police, who up to that moment had been loyal group of locally recruited men, realising they were likely to be on the receiving end of retribution from the Yemeni forces, mutinied and took control of the Crater District.
          Mad Mitch, then commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, ignored orders not to intervene and took back control of the area.
          After severe criticism, Mitchell resigned his commission shortly after the Regiment's return to the UK.

  38. I have a zero-tolerance policy towards socialists. This is not Hate Crime (or a "Non-Crime Hate Incident") because I do not hate them.

    I PITY them.

    However, I do fear there will soon there will be a "Pity Crime" on the statute books (or non-statute books if it is a "Non-Crime Pity Incident").

    3. Wotcher Grizz,

      I don't pity them – they aren't worth it. I despise any of them over the age of 20. I sort of understand the starry-eyed socialism of teenagers, as on the very surface, as a concept "socialism" superficially does sound "fair". It just doesn't work in practice, and anyone past the age of 20 with any experience of socialists should realise that.

          1. I have a couple of Pinko acquaintances (I'm loth to call them 'friends') who we meet a few times a year. They are a couple in their early 70s who upped and moved to Sweden over a decade ago since they believed it to be a "socialist utopia". They have a Pinko daughter who lives in Scotland whom they visit twice a year. Moving to live in Sweden was the most incongruous thing I could imagine. They have no friends or relatives here and cannot — will not —speak the language!

            I told them, early on in our acquaintance, that the discussion of politics is utterly off the agenda at dinner parties. In the main this is agreed to and we talk about all manner of topics (both the chap and I are keen woodworkers, he being a retired woodwork teacher) but not politics. Having said that that, there are innumerable aoccasions when his wife casually drops out her hatred for 'Trump', her active support for 'Bernie' Sanders, and the Democrats. For some inane reason she is heavily into Left-wing American politics. She speaks, weekly, on WhatsApp to Sanders' pathetic failed son, Levi [pron: "Levvy], usually on a Saturday night.

            She is also an avid reader of The Guardian and sneers at The Daily Telegraph. They have travelled extensively to Russian and hold that country as a paragon of the socialist cause.

            I have resolved that the next time we meet; that is, if we meet again; I shall rejoice in telling her about my delight in the new Trump administration; my utter loathing for the Democrats and the British Labour Party; and emphasise my strong belief in individualism over the mob-handedness of the discredited socialist 'cause'. I shall also ask them how fooled they feel to realise that Sweden is a free-market capitalist economy and not the socialist utopia they thought it was.

            I shall not hold back.

    4. Wotcher Grizz,

      I don't pity them – they aren't worth it. I despise any of them over the age of 20. I sort of understand the starry-eyed socialism of teenagers, as on the very surface, as a concept "socialism" superficially does sound "fair". It just doesn't work in practice, and anyone past the age of 20 with any experience of socialists should realise that.

  40. Why Ed Miliband’s net zero dream is doomed to failure. 16 November 2024.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/08b2f2ab779830d190fb2b9cdf9600701c5e555b7b0698caa3b54c8f278e7ba3.png
    Meanwhile, the Energy Secretary was repeating now-debunked claims about how his plan to deliver clean power by 2030 (five years earlier than the Tories’ plans) will result in cost savings for the average household, while supporters of the UK’s net zero ambitions and sceptics alike have been picking holes in the Government’s proposals.

    I know what you’re thinking. If we follow Milliband, the UK, which already has the highest domestic electricity prices on the planet will implode.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/16/ed-miliband-doomed-net-zero-dream-labour/

    1. They all spend too much time trying to justify their existence.
      Then someone else has to try and repair all the damage. And as he is displaying, don't have a clue.

      1. 500 tons for off shore wind, 50 for one shore. Fibre glass blades and hundreds of tons of steel. 1000 litres of oil, rare earth metals in the engine bit.

    3. Unreliables will never, ever save people money.

      Well, hang on. Maybe it's one of those Left wing lies: they will save you energy because it'll be so expensive you can't afford it, so don't use it, thus saving money!

    4. Re. the photo, pity the top edge isn't very, very sharp…

      Not that he would have much to disturb, though.

    4. I doubt it.
      Ghastly though she is what alternative do they have, Lammy?
      Perhaps she and he could swap.

  44. Morning, Araminta. My lips are sealed! 🤫🤣

    After all, Big Brother/Little Sister is watching/listening.

  46. I recently received a "Christmas Appeal" begging letter from the RNLI. I haven't bothered to open it and I will either throw it in the bin or return it to sender. It has on the front "We saved three people today. But there's one person on our minds, the one we couldn't save".

    How many indigenous Brits are swimming/boating etc. in this weather, for the RNLI to "save"? Not many, I would guess. How about the thousands they have imported and continue to import into our country every day?

    The sheer gall of this institution is beyond belief. And they have the nerve to ask us for money because it's Christmas. Have they thought about how many people's Christmases will be ruined because they won't be seen by a GP or at a hospital? Or who have nowhere to live? Or who are having to face Christmas without a loved one who was killed or with a traumatised family member who was stabbed or raped?

    Apparently the RNLI boats are often manned by volunteers. Why on earth are people volunteering to do this – are they all woke do-gooders? Or do they like getting the time off work to go out fishing for people. I find it hard to understand.

      1. The picture of the volunteers was "terribly white" – no sign of any of the saved volunteering to save others, is there?

        Edit: 'Morning, Belle. Hope you are keeping well.

      2. Similar to the RSPCA – magnificent HQ in an expensive part of London, well remunerated CEO (animal rights, natch) and yet they were closing animal shelters.

    2. RTS.
      The truth might be debatable HL, but alone they might have done more damage to British culture and social structure than WW2.

      1. Yes, except that they are not working alone. They might think they are, but that is another matter.

      1. Yes, let the unpaid go out and do the nitty gritty, but there is an admin. onshore, which is doing quite nicely.

        Why are people volunteering to pick up immigrants? Are they all woke, or just stupid?

    4. On the same lines, RBL didn't get my money this year.
      If they can afford DEI officers, they are not short of a bob or two.
      The money went to a local charity.

    5. I had that. I wrote "NO! I don't want to fund illegal immigration"on the flyer where it said "YES! I want to help save people" or something similar. I put it in the pre-paid envelope and posted it back.

        1. I have previously sent back their begging letters telling them they won’t get a penny while they are facilitating illegal immigration. If everybody did that, they might, just possibly, get the message.

  47. I recently received a "Christmas Appeal" begging letter from the RNLI. I haven't bothered to open it and I will either throw it in the bin or return it to sender. It has on the front "We saved three people today. But there's one person on our minds, the one we couldn't save".

    How many indigenous Brits are swimming/boating etc. in this weather, for the RNLI to "save"? Not many, I would guess. How about the thousands they have imported and continue to import into our country every day?

    The sheer gall of this institution is beyond belief. And they have the nerve to ask us for money because it's Christmas. Have they thought about how many people's Christmases will be ruined because they won't be seen by a GP or at a hospital? Or who have nowhere to live? Or who are having to face Christmas without a loved one who was killed or with a traumatised family member who was stabbed or raped?

    Apparently the RNLI boats are often manned by volunteers. Why on earth are people volunteering to do this – are they all woke do-gooders? Or do they like getting the time off work to go out fishing for people. I find it hard to understand.

  48. I recently received a "Christmas Appeal" begging letter from the RNLI. I haven't bothered to open it and I will either throw it in the bin or return it to sender. It has on the front "We saved three people today. But there's one person on our minds, the one we couldn't save".

    How many indigenous Brits are swimming/boating etc. in this weather, for the RNLI to "save"? Not many, I would guess. How about the thousands they have imported and continue to import into our country every day?

    The sheer gall of this institution is beyond belief. And they have the nerve to ask us for money because it's Christmas. Have they thought about how many people's Christmases will be ruined because they won't be seen by a GP or at a hospital? Or who have nowhere to live? Or who are having to face Christmas without a loved one who was killed or with a traumatised family member who was stabbed or raped?

    Apparently the RNLI boats are often manned by volunteers. Why on earth are people volunteering to do this – are they all woke do-gooders? Or do they like getting the time off work to go out fishing for people. I find it hard to understand.

    1. I'd be ashamed if I had forced very rich wealth creators out of this country as well.

      Oh! That isn't what they mean, is it. Ah, I had forgotten the insanity of the Left wing mind.

    1. Paul has kept quiet about this.

      I wonder when the commies took over, in yer Norge, and why did the citizens — of such an insanely successful capitalist enterprise of a country — permit it to happen?

      1. Same way that Brits have allowed what is currently our country's position to happen. Stealth, lies, ignorance and (in our case) a skewed and out of date voting system.

  52. Good morning, all. Overcast and chilly here.

    After the Reeves revelations yesterday, questions about Starmer's involvement in and around the Southport atrocity have arisen via Rupert Lowe MP and Laurence Fox. The latter's query has generated much speculation. Proof would be ideal.

    It would appear that some/all? asylum seekers are referenced with letters of the alphabet on the court documentation, not their names.

    Now some pictures.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/283e5878b2c01fb44bd3d43c8282a3d2a882128397faedd88f6ac8bdda82a787.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4c544407b7aa77dcc8d5f23bb188b836477c700b6a33d98263e22b200b425e39.png

    Starmer/Reeves, hold my beer!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/480b8798cd601f751aac4dce73c54f784bec91833b8ac19457befac37026fd6f.png
    Good luck trying to dismantle that when it's full of concrete.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/01fe483618c2dc83b193e069d8fd3122672d076a94fb217d4d8c4e767c240d96.png

      1. Good morning, Grizzly 🙂 today have both male and female GSWs on bird feeder…on the lookout now for Green Woodpecker/s, and still no sight of LT tits. A bright light in the doom and gloom 🙂

    2. Comedy.

      Don't know why the lighter girl did all that side stepping. Could have just walked around the dumpling then booted her in the knee.

      You don't get any points for it but tubby'd go down in no time.

      1. Indeed we are a caliphate now.

        To know who runs the country, ask whom you mustn’t offend. And it’s our peaceful friends (who mostly don’t work, if the statistics are to be believed).

      2. Indeed we are a caliphate now.

        To know who runs the country, ask whom you mustn’t offend. And it’s our peaceful friends (who mostly don’t work, if the statistics are to be believed).

  56. Flight Lieutenant David Ernest Hornell VC (26th January 1910 – 24th June 1944), 162 (Bomber Reconnaissance) Squadron, Royal Canadian Airforce.

    Flight Lieutenant Hornell was captain and first pilot of a twin-engine amphibian aircraft (Consolidated Canso) engaged on an anti-submarine patrol in northern waters. The patrol had lasted for some hours when a fully-surfaced U-boat was sighted, travelling at high speed on the port beam. Flight Lieutenant Hornell at once turned to the attack.

    The U-boat altered course. The aircraft had been seen and there could be no surprise. The U-boat opened up with anti-aircraft fire which became increasingly fierce and accurate.

    At a range of 1,200 yards, the front guns of the aircraft replied; then its starboard guns jammed, leaving only one gun effective. Hits were obtained on and around the conning-tower of the U-boat, but the aircraft was itself hit, two large holes appearing in the starboard wing.

    Ignoring the enemy’s fire, Flight Lieutenant Hornell carefully manoeuvred for the attack. Oil was pouring from his starboard engine, which was, by this time, on fire, as was the starboard wing; and the petrol tanks were endangered. Meanwhile, the aircraft was hit again and again by the U-boat’s guns. Holed in many places, it was vibrating violently and very difficult to control.

    Nevertheless, the captain decided to press home his attack, knowing that with every moment the chances of escape for him and his gallant crew would grow more slender. He brought his aircraft down very low and released his depth charges in a perfect straddle. The bows of the U-boat were lifted out of the water; it sank and the crew were seen in the sea.

    Flight Lieutenant Hornell contrived, by superhuman efforts at the controls, to gain a little height. The fire in the starboard wing had grown more intense and the vibration had increased. Then the burning engine fell off. The plight of aircraft and crew was now desperate. With the utmost coolness, the captain took his aircraft into wind and, despite the manifold dangers, brought it safely down on the heavy swell. Badly damaged and blazing furiously, the aircraft rapidly settled.

    After ordeal by fire came ordeal by water. There was only one serviceable dinghy and this could not hold all the crew. So they took turns in the water, holding on to the sides. Once, the dinghy capsized in the rough seas and was righted only with great difficulty. Two of the crew succumbed from exposure.

    An airborne lifeboat was dropped to them but fell some 500 yards down wind. The men struggled vainly to reach it and Flight Lieutenant Hornell, who throughout had encouraged them by his cheerfulness and inspiring leadership, proposed to swim to it, through he was nearly exhausted. He was with difficulty restrained. The survivors were finally rescued after they had been in the water for 21 hours. By this time Flight Lieutenant Hornell was blinded and completely exhausted. He died shortly after being picked up.

    Flight Lieutenant Hornell had completed 60 operational missions, involving 600 hours’ flying. He well knew the danger and difficulties attending attacks on submarines. By pressing home a skilful and successful attack against fierce opposition, with his aircraft in a precarious condition, and by fortifying and encouraging his comrades in the subsequent ordeal, this officer displayed valour and devotion to duty of the highest order.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/310c3f9c5894ff5801e06c32f4769e2d41a71d84363b01ddcaabbd709f5489d1.jpg

    3. He won't though. He'll pretend it was nothing to do with him and swan off into another non-job. The entire concept of a non crime incident involving plod is absurd. If it's not a crime, they've nothing to do.

      Plod! Solve some burglaries.

  58. Today Free Speech has two articles, both related to freedom and free speech. One calls for Essex Police heads to roll following the sinister and hugely wasteful logging of a non-crime hate incident against the brave DT journalist Allison Pearson, and in the other FSB asks ‘ Do you need a VPN’ for your online safety. Knowledgeable posters have already added a lot of useful information.

    Again, we urge everyone to write to your MP, we have a template letter here , and make as much noise as possible against this sinister attack on free speech.

    Energy watch.  Demand 34.9GW. Supply: Fossil fuel = 17.2%; Renewables = 40.1%; Nuclear 13.7%; Biomass = 7% and Imports 20.5%.  The idiots would rather import expensive electricity than use our own gas power stations – which still have to be paid to remain on standby.

    https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/

    1. They should be deported out of hand. There is no need for a trial because they were caught red handed.

    2. As one cannot look at the Daily Fail without paying or agreeing to endless adverts – is that Washington DC or Washington Oop North?

        2. I do, stupid. That prevents adverts. The mail demands that one ALLOWS adverts….. Do try to keep up.

      2. I just click/touch the X to the left of the webpage address. You have to wait until the scrolling bar on the right indicates that the text has loaded but, once it has done so, you can halt the prolonged loading of adverts, video clips and other extraneous paraphernalia.

        1. Tried that. Doesn’t work. No matter. I can live without the Fail! But thanks for the suggestion.

          1. I'm a little surprised. It works for me everytime. I also circumvent the Telegraph's paywall using the technique. You're right, though, about the Fail. It is hardly an essential read.

      1. She did survive. Her fellow pupils waded in and beat off the parents.
        In Blighty, all those pupils would get a visit from the Plod. If they were ,lucky, the front door wouldn't be kicked in.

        1. A t least she survived then, thanks to her friends. Unlike poor Sara, who was murdered at home and out of sight.

  60. Morning all. Dark day here and again the movement of the air is completely stagnant. Does anyone know when the last time the wind was suitable for windmills?
    I see that Tommy Robinson is, again, like the last time he was in prison, living off tinned tuna because he dare not eat the food supplied to him by the prison.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KYo3Ky4P64

      1. I don’t know how it works. I think you can send money and then the prisoner is allowed to buy things from the concessionary, I think that it’s what it’s called? Supplies some foodstuffs, toothpaste, etc

        1. You'd be surprised (and probably appalled) at how much fresh fruit and veg, bread, confectionery and toiletries prisoners are allowed to buy.

          1. That’s nice to know because I remember the last time TR was in jail and on his release looked absolutely dreadful from living off nothing but Tuna. Apparently he ended up with PTSD as a result of his treatment in the same jail he is in now.

  62. Walking down to Bournville Station, my wife casually remarked: "Have you noticed there seem to be fewer people in mobility scooters than a year or so back?". I had to agree.

    is this true? And, if so, why?

    1. Maybe they have switched to battery-powered bicycles and stand-on scooters. There are many more of these kinds of devices about these days. If mobility problems revolve around prolonged walking, these less bulky machines might be an attractive alternative for those with moderate mobility impairment. That said, based on the evidence of my own eyes, they seem to be ridden by the young, fit and healthy.

      2. My cleaner couldn't afford to repair her car and so bought an E-scooter off Facebook marketplace. Within a few weeks it stopped working.

        Of course when they get old and the battery is dodgy they sell them on and mugs buy them.

        She started using the bus to get to me which was taking £5 out of the money i paid her.

        So i bought her a new scooter. Another mug !

  63. Found it very difficult today:
    Wordle 1,246 5/6

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

    1. I can't believe it's not mutter…Edit: actually, knowing that it was tricky set my mind on other tracks than I am used to.
      Wordle 1,246 3/6

      ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  64. An excerpt from a Daily Mail article on John Smyth. NOTTLers had already remarked that such behaviour in a family home could not go unnoticed.

    ….. "During the 1970s, John – who like his wife hailed from the conservative wing of the Anglican community – became a key figure in the Iwerne Trust, a charity which ran Christian summer camps in Dorset for boys from the country's leading public schools.

    He also volunteered to run a 'Christian Forum' for boarders at Winchester College. The organisations allowed him to become a sort of father figure to many teenagers. Soon a select few were being invited to attend Sunday lunches at Orchard House.

    Over time, John would gradually brainwash young guests into believing they were committing mortal sins. Alongside pride and envy, he had a particular fixation with lust, informing his young protégés that having impure sexual thoughts, or worse, engaging in masturbation, would condemn them to eternal damnation.

    Fortunately, Smyth told them, the problem could be solved: they could accompany him to the garden shed, where he'd strip them naked and subject them to punishment beatings that would bring them closer to God. The attacks, carried out with a cane, were brutal and highly sexualised, often continuing until blood trickled down a victim's leg.

    And, shockingly, they took place with the knowledge of Anne, who not only bought into his medieval interpretation of the scriptures, but played a role in covering it up.

    After many of the assaults, 'bandages and other medical supplies to dress wounds were provided by Anne Smyth', reads the report.

    'Sometimes they were handed to victims as they returned to the house following abuse, and prior to being served tea or Sunday lunch.'

    One victim recalled Anne's brazen complicity in her husband's violence, as he was handed bandages. 'I think Anne explained, 'We're conscious that this can result in some blood. We don't want you to have to remain like that, we don't want to be found out, we don't want you to have blood on your underpants or your clothes or whatever, so, if you put one of these on each buttock for the next few days, that will prevent blood getting on to your clothes'.'

    Another, chronicled in Bleeding For Jesus, a 2021 book about the scandal, recalls the savage beating of a victim named 'Paul'.

    'Afterwards, Paul lay face down on the bench in shock and agonising pain,' it reads. 'Smyth kissed him softly on the neck. Then he massaged Savlon on to his buttocks and carefully wrapped them in a nappy to catch the blood. Together they walked back to the house. Every step was agony.

    'When they got to the kitchen, Anne Smyth was smiling. She handed him a cushion.'

    Anne didn't just help cover up her husband's vile assaults, she also appears to have been involved in the grooming of his victims.

    On one occasion, she told a 16-year-old boy that John wished to see him while he was lying naked in the bath. 'They have described how they had to go and sit in the bathroom to discuss something with him, and how this felt uncomfortable,' the report reads.

    'They have described that Anne Smyth was also in the bathroom while this was taking place and that made the event feel legitimate.'

    On another occasion, at an Iwerne Trust camp in 1977, a victim was instructed to visit Smyth in his bedroom in the afternoon. 'He was stark naked with his wife, on a mattress on the floor, and they were asleep,' he recalled.

    'I was a kid of 16, 17. I walked in and I thought, 'What the heck'.' The stunt appears to have been in keeping with John Smyth's habit of trying to impress adolescent boys by boasting about his and Anne's 'very active' sex life.

    'He would say that this was a reward for waiting to be married before having sex and he wove this into his warnings about masturbation,' the report states.

    In 1981, alterations were even made to the couple's home to facilitate Smyth's campaign of abuse. An enlarged shed was built with walls soundproofed using blankets to muffle the cries of victims.

    'The shed was situated out of sight of the house, away from the road, behind a large hedge,' Makin states. A flag post was installed, with a pennant hoisted whenever John wished not to be disturbed because he was beating children, one victim recalled. The following year a victim attempted suicide while at university, after John contacted him and asked to celebrate his 21st birthday by travelling to Morestead for a special beating." ……

    1. How terrible that must have been.
      And the follow up is,……. many of the victims are now politicians ?

      1. Apparently she lives in South Africa.
        I only posted part of the article as it was long and somewhat repetitive.
        It is behind the Mail's paywall, so posting a link is pretty useless.

    3. Sigh. Nowhere does it point out that this abusive and criminal behaviour is not consistent with conservative Anglicanism…

    4. Sigh. Nowhere does it point out that this abusive and criminal behaviour is not consistent with conservative Anglicanism…

    5. I heard one of them say he was twenty and it was still going on. Why did none of them report it to the police? Something fishy here.

      1. It maybe similar to women who think rape is partly their fault and are loath to report it unfortunately.

  65. He doesn't look old enough the be an 'expert'.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/it-is-staggering-migration-expert-brands-latest-figures-utterly-devastating-as-britain-tops-unwanted-list/ar-AA1u906k?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=0261a65e36bc499daa72dd021e6b9e3d&ei=31

    "In fact, mass migration can actually damage the economy. The last major study that was done on this by Oxford Economics, they found that it was a huge burden to the taxpayer in the financial year of 2016."

    Who knew that, certainly not our recent useless governments.

      1. But remember T this government have still not recognised the huge black hole in our economy.

  66. Thank you all for your kind comments yesterday evening. I’ve read the hospital notes now and yes, I was treated for atrial fibrillation and have been prescribed Bisoprolol. My blood tests all came back normal and I’ve been to collect the tablets this morning. They’re only 1.25 mg. The disturbance, such as it is, is still in the abdomen and not the chest, which is why I mistook it for chronic indigestion. The x-ray yesterday showed the heart is not enlarged but a scan has been recommended.

    2. That's encouraging news, Sue. At least whatever it is or might be, you seem to have caught it early. x

    3. Good luck, Our Susan. Be warned: Bisoprolol can make you feel dizzy. On the rare occasions that I feel the need for it, I take it at bedtime – so the dizziness occurs while I sleep!

    4. Have you been breathless as well, Sue? I hope the scan will show no damage inside the heart. Maybe you have a leaky or narrowed valve.

      1. I have mild arrhythmia. I was sent for a scan that discovered a valve leak.

        The arrhythmia is intermittent. I often go for weeks without it and then have a day or two of the flutters. However, it's been bothering me now for the best part of a fortnight. I tried drugs once before (atenolol) but it had no effect.

    5. Bisoprolol.. ugh.
      I'm not a Doctor.. be interested to hear if you suffer any side effects from taking Bisoprolol.
      I strongly believe there are better ways of dealing with atrial fibrillation than submitting to Big Pharma.

        1. We all die.. eventually.
          Except Keith & Marianne.
          Many complaints against Bisoprolol such as perma tummy pains making the run to death orrible.

      2. I take a twice-daily dose of 5 mg without any apparent ill effects, but humans have a broad spread of vulnerabilities to the side effects of medication. In Sue's case, 1.25 mg once-daily is probably at the bottom end of the dosage range, so she'll be unlucky to experience ill effects.

        I was once prescribed Amlodipine as a hospital in-patient to counter heightened blood pressure, but it led to water retention and swollen ankles. It was noticed by a nurse on a home visit during my recovery period after discharge from hospital. My previous remedy of Ramipril was restored to my prescription in its place and the water retention problem disappeared.

        1. My OH has Bisoprolol and Ramipril. He was prescribed Amiodarone for a short period last year for AF but it made him quite ill so it was stopped.

          1. I take Bisoprolol Ramipril and Doxasosin twice a day..
            The combination can make me feel sleepy mid morning.

        2. You say we have a wide spread of vulnerabilities and i agree with you.

          Having said that i had the exact same problem with swollen ankles on amlopidine and i am also now on 7.5mg Ramipril.

          Kankles ain't pretty !

          2. I don't take amlopidine or any other similar medication, but I had a bout of swollen ankles during Lent last year. It comes and goes, but I don't take anything for it.

      3. Not sure about that KB.
        After the two covid jabs 2nd and 5th month 2021 the atrial fibrillation I had been operated for 6 years earlier came back with avenegence. They tried a (Cardio version) restart but it only lasted 3 months. It was shocking when it gave up I thought I was dying.
        I had to wait two years because of a rubbish cardiologist who is now no longer at Lister hospital. But eventually had the catheter ablation last year in July at St Barts in London. Quite an experience, four hour op and fully conscious.
        Unlike the first one in Hammersmith just ovrr 9 years ago.

        1. The ablation I had, 10 years ago, carried out under local anaesthetic took about 90 minutes. In at 7.30 am out at 6.30 pm and cured. Carried out by the same doctor who is shown in the BHF video.
          It’s a bit like a car service but this one is carried out while the engine is running. :-))

          1. They kept telling me to keep still even if I only moved a finger. And kept topping up the LA. In at 7am I stayed overnight out by 9 am ish.

    7. I'm on 5mg Bisoprolol. Before I was prescribed it my resting heart rate (RHR) was 85 bpm (I used my pulse oximeter shown here <- as my avatar as a reminder).

      At this daily dose my RHR is now 55 bpm.

      I developed a long term allergy to Ramipril and reported it via Yellow Card as the side effect manifested itself as Angioedema. This entitled me to a red wrist band when I got referred to hospital with SupraVentricularTachycardia (SVT).

  68. Spotlight finally falls on David Cameron and his handiwork.

    Free Speech Union’s Toby Young reveals that there are 65 per day Non-Crime Hate Incidents being logged on a database since David bonfire-of-the-quangos Cameron introduced to the College of Policing its infamous Hate Crime Operational Guidance in 2014.

    Which is why two coppers were prioritised for Allison Pearson. This was directed by Essex Chief Constanble who was instructed by the College of Policing.
    The rationale is simple. The academics advising the C of P believe in the concept of "the pyramid of hate" with hurty words at the base of the pyramid & gennycider at the top. Hurty words always lead to genocide. FACT.

    Of the 250K people on the database, very few know they are on it.. until they are mysteriously refused a job or mortgage, then perhaps seek a FOI request.

    Dontcha just love Wet Tories.

    1. Wow. And that’s why we mist never ever vote for them again.

      It’s my children i feel for. I have 30years left max. But they have at least 60.

      1. If I'm lucky (?), I may have 10 to 15 left, my children (all working and contributing), and grandchild have many, many more, I hope. I also hope that what I fear will not happen. Watching this absolutely dire, hapless, dangerous and evil government, I can't see how it won't happen. I'm afraid Musk will be proved right again.

  69. One phone call won’t make Putin listen to Scholz. 16 November 2024.

    This afternoon, for the first time in nearly two years, the German chancellor Olaf Scholz picked up the phone to speak with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The two leaders reportedly spoke for approximately an hour, with Scholz calling on Putin to end the ‘Russian war of aggression in Ukraine’ and withdraw his troops from the country. Scholz also made another demand of Putin, that ‘Russia must show a willingness to negotiate with Ukraine – with the aim of achieving a just and lasting peace’.

    During the call, Scholz reportedly condemned Russia’s continued striking of civilian targets in Ukraine and raised the subject of the 50,000 or so North Korean soldiers believed to have been shipped to the Ukrainian front to help prop up the Russian army’s advance. Scholz is said to have warned Putin that keeping North Korean troops in the fight would lead to an escalation of the conflict. Ending the call, the pair apparently agreed to ‘stay in touch’.

    Well originally there were 10,000 and then 13,000, now there are 50,000. The Ukies should surrender. There will be a million by Christmas.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/one-phone-call-wont-make-putin-listen-to-scholz/

    1. Fear not. Trump is already in charge and that horrible war.. (and I mean horrible. The tonnage of stomach churning footage on Telegram Channels are just mind blowing. And that's both sides posting btw).. will end in January 2025.
      Trump has already informed us how he will end the war. God forbid if Putin declines the offer.

      1. If legal aid were withdrawn from asylum cases and welfare removed from all gimmigrants they'd leave. Not just the criminals, all of them.

        1. I believe I read that it was actually Starmer who originally got legal aid eligibility for immigrants.

          3. Human Rights were originally supposed to be given to people who were suffering deprivation – not foreigners who want to have an easier life at other people's expense. That's why Blair's Human Rights Act was a deliberate attempt to undermine our own authority and security. There is a special place in Hell reserved for that so-called Catholic. He won't escape it by buying pardons…

  71. 397034+ up ticks,

    Lest we forget or don't want to remember for the good name of the party, the least said the better about this issue,although labour seem to harbour a great many top ranker politico's suffering criminally from mental disorders.

    Is it their fault one way well ask for instance, look at the mlllybung chap, the eyes have it, mad as a march hare, should really be in Broadmoor building leggo windmills.

    The politico top ranker the tool of tools AKAs capo dei capi.
    seen in action on his way up the mafia nwo/wef / reset ladder dealing with one of his "soldiers"

    https://x.com/Really369real/status/1857526884298301545 https://x.com/Really369real/status/1857526884298301545 https://x.com/Really369real/status/1857526884298301545

    1. The Left have always prioitised crushing their enemies over those who threaten society. Big government doesn't care about the citizen.

    5. Bluewater?

      You'd have thought he would be better employed doing similar at Lightwater.

      After all the place has his name in it.

  73. We all die.. eventually.
    Except Keith & Marianne.
    Many complaints against Bisoprolol such as perma tummy pains making the run to death orrible.

  75. Wasn't Russia ready for peace – and didn't our fat buffoon Johnson get parachuted in to scupper that?

    1. Yes he did H. The only thing you really have to know about this war is that the US has made no effort to bring it to an end. They have in fact encouraged it and armed the Ukies.

      1. Well they sell arms, and much of the money allegedly came back to the Republicans. DEMOCRATS (what a blooper!)

      2. Arms are big business. Trump will end the war and the USA will benefit again from the reconstruction.

      1. The advert is insane. So unattractive. How can Boots not have realised that it's going to alienate people? I don't consume any of that kind of Hollywood trash offering – looking at it makes my teeth curl. The people who think it's normal have a warped view of reality.

        1. If they trialled it at all, they would have tried it out on the same woke DIE versity crowd as they think it appeals to. Normal people won't have figured anywhere in the calculations.

      2. WTF? The "New Feminist"? What on earth persuaded you to look into such a pathetic Pinko rag?

        You must have too much time on your hands, Joey.

        1. I do the tough stuff so that you don't have to. I was in the Provisional Wing of the RNIB.

    3. It's hardly plumeting. I watched the Lewis one and couldn't make head nor tail of it. It didn't seem to be about Christmas or any of it's themes at all.

    4. Boots lost my custom some time ago when they made collecting my medicines from them as awkward as they could make it. I went elsewhere (to an independent pharmacy).

  78. Jeff Bezos backs development of fart vaccines for cows to help save planet. 16 November 2024.

    Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, has invested more than £7 million in a project trying to find a vaccine to stop cows producing methane-rich flatulence.

    Livestock agriculture is responsible for approximately 14 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions globally because cattle need land to graze, and they produce vast volumes of methane, which is 80 times more potent for global warming than carbon dioxide.

    Before the rise of Homo Sapiens and his discovery of T Bone steaks, the planet was covered in vast herds of herbivores who did nothing but eat grass, shit and fart.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/16/jeff-bezos-backs-development-fart-vaccines-cows-save-planet/

        1. Reminds me of the barrack room after lights out trying to light farts, the screams and laughter could be heard for miles

    3. Champagne bottle corks is the answer.

      What is there not to like about a product that is able to withstand pressure, natural and renewable. Well there is no profit but apart from that!

      1. The Roman playwright Plautus describes a character in one of his comedies as being so miserly that he sleeps with a bung in his arse so that even his farts aren’t wasted.

    4. Without knowing the herds fertilised the plains/steppes etc. with their excretions and later with their bodies when they died. An almost perfect rotation plan.

      The latest, and very dangerous phenomenon, is the bought and paid for scientists who never challenge the unscientific notions of their paymasters, and worse, their peers.

    5. Cows pooing on land does wonders for the soil. It's as natural a fertiliser as could be gathered. With the hard left green lobby trying to destroy both farming, cattle and forcing everyone to become vegetablists he's probably going to make a fortune.

  79. Rachel Reeves's attack on the family farm is a recipe for a latter-day peasants' revolt

    Inheritance tax changes which threaten the rural way of life have the potential to create a coalition of the discontented

    Charles Moore – 15 November 2024 – 6:22pm GMT

    I was brought up on a Sussex farm of under 200 acres. In our pantry stood one of those Victorian china two-handled mugs which celebrate agriculture. It carried pictures of the tools of the trade – plough, scythe, rake, churn etc – and a poem which began:

    Let the wealthy and great
    Roll in splendour and state
    I envy them not I declare it
    I eat my own lamb
    My own chickens and ham
    I shear my own fleece and I wear it.

    Our small mixed farm slightly resembled this pretty picture. Early – before daybreak in winter – a pail of milk, still warm from the cow, would be carried from the dairy and placed near our back door.

    Occasionally, I was up by then, keen to "help", aged eight or so, with the milking. In summer, I offered similarly useless assistance, moving hay-bales or sitting behind the combine in harvest.

    Beneath the cheerful little poem, the two-handled mug carried a motto in capital letters: "INDUSTRY PRODUCETH WEALTH".

    That sentence is an important one for the health of any society and for human self-respect: if a country works well, its people get richer. With a huge welfare state, and especially since Covid, a lot of people in Britain seem to have given up on this idea.

    For farmers, it rubbed salt in the wounds made by Rachel Reeves's Budget that staff at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) now say they want a four-day week on the existing five-day pay, leaving them with "one day of chores, one day of fun and one day of rest".

    Most farmers, especially dairy ones, work a seven-day week. I once asked Will, bachelor brother of Bert, who rented our farm, how much holiday they took. He told me they had been to Wales for four days in 1949. Otherwise, they had never left the farm during his working life of more than 40 years.

    Much else has changed in farming since then, but that level of commitment has not. Labour's phrase "working people" does not do justice to it.

    For all sorts of reasons, full-time agricultural industry nowadays produceth a great deal of food but, for most farmers, bugger-all wealth. Although the world has ever more mouths to feed, the money resides elsewhere in the process, such as supermarkets, or in farms of enormous scale. British farming produces less than 1 per cent return on capital.

    Yet there is money in agricultural land because, as farmers love saying, "They're not making any more of it". Many want the land for leisure, quiet, prestige, "hope" value (the prospect of development), green experiments, other business opportunities and, yes, sheltering their money from tax. Farmland in southern England is worth about £10,000 an acre.

    Leave aside the unworthy (but probably accurate) suggestion that Labour has an ideological animus against people who own land, and consider the world as seen by Rachel Reeves. Having created an even bigger "black hole" in the public finances than the one left her by the Conservatives, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is desperately casting around for more money.

    Her eye falls on all those acres. Farmland is subject to Agricultural Business Relief (ABR) and therefore not taxed on inheritance. She will have been easily persuaded that this "loophole" should be closed. So she decided to remove the relief and impose an inheritance tax rate of 20 per cent (half the standard rate), on all farms worth more than £1 million.

    Now consider the point of view of the working farmer. It is well illustrated in a YouTube channel called Harry's Farm, its author, Harry Metcalfe, being the possessor of 400 acres in the Cotswolds. Ms Reeves's plans overturn the business model, Harry says, of 70,000 farm businesses – i.e., the majority.

    Farmers live with the problem of being price-takers not price-makers. But they have been able to get overdrafts, plan succession, improve the quality of the farm and invest in modern machinery. This is not because of fat earnings, but because they had a reasonable expectation of passing on what they had. Stability and family – good for the landscape and good for people – have also been their economic rationale.

    Such farmers were lulled into a false sense of security by pre-election semi-promises made by Sir Keir Starmer, Ms Reeves and the Defra secretary Steve Reed (whose famed wellington boots from Lord Alli cost roughly the annual profit from six acres of wheat).

    Relying on ABR, many elderly farmers had planned to "die with their boots on" to keep qualifying for relief until the succession was ready. On Budget Day, says Harry, "they received the most terrible shock".

    I rang up Stephen, a farming neighbour (chiefly arable plus some beef cattle). He had already counted half a dozen ways the Budget will damage him and his children.

    First, of course, the inheritance tax. HMRC will now tax the tools of his trade as if they were personal, not commercial, assets. The three tractors, a combine and a sprayer that sit in his yard add up to about £1 million in value. That is before you start valuing the land itself.

    On Stephen's rough calculation, 500 acres of arable land can turn an annual profit of £60,000. But those 500 acres are worth £5 million, so 20 per cent of the soon-to-be taxable £4 million is £800,000 – more than the entire profit of 13 years. It could be paid only by selling up.

    Like many farmers, Stephen has also used the exemption of personal pensions from inheritance tax to make some of his land his pension pot. Now the value of that choice will be nullified for his heirs because Ms Reeves has decided to tax those pots on death.

    On top of that come the stiff increase in the minimum wage and the rise to 15 per cent in employers' National Insurance payments.

    Then there is the increase in Capital Gains Tax and (new, but not part of the Budget) the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, a levy which will add £50 to every imported tonne of fertiliser (current price, £230).

    There is even a double-cab van tax. Such four-door vehicles have been classified as commercial, therefore allowable against tax. Now they will not be.

    This new approach to farming amounts to a cultural assault. When you combine it with the semi-nationalisation of land accomplished by ever-greater regulation and green dogma, you realise that the Government's mental model is one without family farms.

    All that will survive will be tiny ones whose owners make money elsewhere, and enormous agri-businesses that can afford the accountants to work round the taxes.

    Similar results, less physically visible, but equally damaging to enterprise and to families, will be caused by the comparable taxes imposed on all but the very smallest family businesses of all kinds.

    On Tuesday, farmers will rally in London. I would not presume to advise them on tactics, although I like the vision some are conjuring up of a mass refusal to take the dried sewage that they currently collect from sewage plants.

    But when farmers consider what else is happening – the threat of Ed Miliband's miles and miles of pylons and vast, hideous new solar farms; imposed housing projects; fresh attacks on wood-burning stoves, gas boilers, and shooting and hunting; country pubs unsustainable because of regulatory costs and wage and food inflation; potholes unmended – they can be cheered by the thought that the constituency for revolt is bigger than ever before.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/15/rachel-reeves-attack-family-farms-peasants-revolt

    2. Somewhere in the Treasury is a nasty, bitter little man who's never had a job outside of government and has been desperate to tax land ever since Clarkson's farm came on TV.

      He saw it and thought – I'll stop these rich b****ds hiding what's their from me! Our little rodent presented his plan and Reeves, being a moron and only seeing the end number leapt at it, thinking it'd punish the well off landowner.

      Now the real consequences are being seen and suddenly Reeves is finding herself in political hot water – but because her entire cabal are gormless Marxists they don't see the problem. After all, what harm can a few farmers do?

    3. Labour is an urban party. It doesn't understand (and thus fears) the countryside. They do things differently there (largely based on the seasons, biology and reality as opposed to Labour's "protected characteristics"). I hope the protest (to which I, unfortunately, can't go) brings the capital to a halt, mires it in muck and sends a message "no farmers, no food in Waitrose" to the urbanites.

      1. "Labour…doesn't understand…the seasons, biology and reality…"

        And the mad buggers want our electricity supply to depend on the clock, the calendar and the weather.

  81. Back from a Whole spine MRI at Ashford Hospital. The place was like a morgue except for the MRI which is run by Allied Medical. All the millions of pounds worth of equipment idle because of the NHS’s 5 day week. What an utter waste.
    They don’t need more money nor doctors and nurses they need to rota staff to get better coverage.

    1. When will you have the results? Hope the findings are positive. To compile rotas the NHS management will demand millions of pounds to pay for administrators on salaries way higher than nurses and junior doctors. I could have done with booking my GP appointment at the same time as going to the hospital pharmacy this morning, as they’re in the same building. However the pharmacy is open till 1pm but the GP practice is closed till Monday. A&E have shift rotas of course.

      1. Was told 3-4 weeks for results. Why so long one wonders?
        I have another MRI on Thursday for my heart. 8.15 am with lots of don’ts and don’ts (sic) for 24 hours before it.

        1. Will the heart scan be done locally or at a specialist unit like Barts? My ticker is calm right now but was fluttering again earlier.

          1. It will be at St Peter’s, Chertsey only 4 miles from us.
            Have you been told it’s AF? I was never given any medication but am on blood thinners for life as I have a condition Factor V (5) Leiden. My blood is more likely to clot that the other 95% of the population, apparently.

        2. When i had my MRI at the Spire private hospital he went over the results with me that same afternoon. My dentist takes an X-ray and shows it to me seconds later.

          Hope all goes well for you.

      3. Nothing changes – when I was a student trying to earn some cash to keep my racing dinghy well equipped, I worked as a porter in a local hospital, basically standing in for whoever was on holiday at the time. At one stage I was working in the pharmacy – as a "porter"my working hours were 0800 to 1700; the pharmacy opened at 0830 and closed at 1730. The simple solution was that I worked the same hours as they did, but that wasn't allowed – a porter's working hours were set in stone. So, for 30 minutes in the morning I sat outside my department and did the crossword, and I got 30 minutes overtime every evening!! Good for me, as the pay was useful, but …..

      2. Breaking up. Their ‘business’ model is broken beyond repair. If they try to ‘reform’ they’ll appoint someone coming through the revolving doors who would appoint even more managers without admitting it has so many managers who can’t, er how do I put, can’t manage.
        Despair.

    3. Some hospitals seem to manage to work weekends – a friend had her knee replacement done on a Saturday last year, and my OH had his cardioversion done on a Sunday last January.

        1. NHS hospitals – not sure who did the knee surgery. The cardioversion seemed to be done by regular staff.

    1. LIVE EXCLUSIVE: Alex Jones Returns To Infowars’ Historic Studios After Judge Blocks Sale To The Onion! Massive Legacy Media/Democrat Hoax Has Collapsed!

      Just what i wanted to hear.

      1. I'm not sure why the sale was blocked. Infowars was made bankrupt by Jones saying vaccines were invented, or some such nonsense.

        The onion doesn't get the audience who'll go elsewhere. It's a waste of their money.

        1. Probably worth checking the story. It was blocked because of major fraud in evading the court's direction on the sale which tried to acept the Onion buyer when much larger offers had been made. It was the first of what was intended to be a lawfare scam to bring down Jones and then Carlson and others. I don't know what will happen to the original judgement, but given the circumstances that may also be prejudiced by this…..

  86. Totes O/T

    Lunch today was beef olive with Diane sauce. How retro is me !

    Pounded out the fillet steak and rolled it up with a stuffing of black pudding and walnuts. I mixed Dolcelatte through the spinach and a side of carrots. The obligatory glass of red finished me off. Burp !

    1. I made some sausage rolls.

      I did want to make a tiramissu but can't find a decent recipe and don't have the ingredients.

      Chortle… pounded out…. chortle.

        1. I found that one. Not sure on the sausages though.

          More sensibly I've always done both cream, mascarpone and egg whites. That's made too runny a custard. Either that or my idea of a tablespoon is off whack.

          1. You need to follow the recipe precisely to get that finish. I have trouble with it collapsing. Still…people don’t tend to mind that much.

          3. I now pronounce you man and wife.

            I am a Minister of The Universal Life Church.

            So you are a bigamist as well as a Northerner !

          1. I do too.

            I have an event coming up in December where i am making a beef welly. Two of the six guests are gluten intolerant so that will be Jus Rol too.

            I don't mind accommodating their preferences but vegans never ever get an invite.

          2. I've made Beef wellington precisely once and got the timings completely wrong. The beef was ok but the pastry wasn't edible.

          8. It does take a bit of thinking. I have made it a few times and i think i now have it down pat.

            Done right it is certainly a showstopper and i'm sure the Warqueen would be impressed. The dogs too i expect. :@)

            I would be happy to give you my method.

    4. I see you're still obsessed by buying the most flavour-free cut of beef. Get some skirt, hanger steak or bavette and find out what beef really tastes like.

      2. I invited you to join me for lunch/dinner when you were in country. Then i heard through your posts you had actually been. I know how difficult things may be with visits to family…funerals and God knows the rest. Message me when you are back here.

        I would like to meet you in person.

        It’s why i do the Nottler parties.

  87. Junior's millenium falcon was wrapped today, used two ruddy rolls. A book series, some smaller lego kits and some slippers along with sundry bits for his computer.

    The Warqueen has a jumper. Some cashmere white thing with a frilly collar. Alongside that a grey flat cap. No, I don't know why but she said she wanted one.

    Mother in law has the traditional gin hamper with some poncy paté. Also bought her a bottle of James May's gin. I won't wrap those.

    I was told I was impossible as if I want something I buy it. I rather thought that was the idea. Never know, she could go insane and arrange to lower the slope so we can park both cars near the house, or insulate and heat the garage so we can use it for storage.

    The big Christmas present is more sockets and moving a radiator. Have to careful how exciting we get here.

    2. I bought Robby the Robot for a Christmas gift. 12 inches tall with flashing lights and voice. I checked it out before wrapping and there were corroded batteries and corroded terminals.

      This was also from Amazon. £57 refunded.

  88. Off topic
    Drat and blast.
    I bought a battery charger from the US via Amazon.
    It had rave reviews and it appeared to do everything I wanted and more.
    I now know that American chargers use 120 not 240 as I discovered when it went bang.

    Next time read ALL the instructions not just the benefits when shipping from the USA.

  93. Not the best drive but holed the 3 iron from the fairway.

    Wordle 1,246 2/6

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    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  94. Get your lefty propaganda here:

    X users jump to Bluesky – but what is it and who owns it?
    Bluesky is growing rapidly and is currently picking up around one million new sign-ups a day.

    Not posting a link because it is the BBC's recruitment advert for lefties to desert X and join its preferred propaganda outlet on social media.

    They never give up.

  95. Why Ed Miliband’s net zero dream is doomed to failure

    Starmer wants Britain to be a ‘climate leader’, but the obstacles facing the Government’s ambitious plans seem increasingly insurmountable

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/11/15/TELEMMGLPICT000401930468_17316871110250_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq-IWLY18X4-CzgyIcjLEAj_SVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Give it a whirl

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

    Christopher Worth
    7 hrs ago
    If, like me, you have worked in UK construction on physical infrastructure projects for the National Grid, Hinkley Point C, Thames Water, South West Water, Wessex Water, the Environment Agency, Highways England, Uniper, the Port of London Authority, Keir, Costain, Bam Nuttal, Laing O'Rourke and many others.
    If, like me, you have worked in new house building.
    If, like me, you have worked in the farming industry too, spraying toxic chemicals on our land.
    You will know that whatever the people in charge say is so far detached from reality as to be delusional.
    This Labour Party is systematically delusional and is leading the country to socioeconomic disaster.

    Sharon Jagger
    5 hrs ago
    Reply to Christopher Worth
    I believe that is what net zero is intended to do, kill off wealthy western nations, and transfer wealth to the rest of the world…
    This bunch of 'leaders' have bought into it hook, line and sinker!!

    1. I worked on the safety case for Hinckley "C" back in the late 1980s. Not sure it's generated a kW yet.

      1. From Chat GPT:
        Hinkley Point C, the new nuclear power station under construction in the UK, has faced significant delays and cost overruns. Initially scheduled to begin operation in 2025, its timeline has been pushed back multiple times. The latest estimates suggest that the first reactor may not be operational until 2029 at the earliest, with worst-case scenarios placing completion in 2031. The project's costs have also escalated, reaching an estimated £46 billion when adjusted for inflation, more than double its original budget

      1. Like the other race-baiters. Dr Shola Shog whatever, and that dreadful Ayarn whatever her name is.

      1. Man bad except cocks in frocks. Whiteys bad apart from trannies (except that we have a season and a celebration where we give presents. They'll have the presents). Why on earth wreck children's Father Christmas except to rub our noses in d……..

  98. Olav Thon, Norway's richest man, died today, aged 101. Born a farm boy, was good at making business, owned a large chunk of Norway. Gave a lot of money to good causes. Known for always wearing a red benny hat. Was a good man, it seems.

    1. The truth of the matter is that he is not a very nice person; added to which he probably has halitosis, BO and gangrenous decay in his lower limbs.

  101. Typhoo Tea is set to fall into administration after more than 120 years in business

    Since 2021, private equity firm Zetland Capital has been its majority shareholder.
    It hired the former head of Burts crisps, Dave McNulty, as its new chief executive in October, while also launching a shake-up of its supply chain.
    The overhaul was intended to stop sexual violence against women working on tea plantations in east Africa, and resulted in reducing the number of plantations in its supply chain in the region from 300 to just three.

    So, to pander to the equality morons, workers in 300 plantations and several hundred others in the UK an elsewhere are to lose their jobs. Diversity. Equality and Inclusion strikes again.

      2. Were you on 19 Sqn (Lightnings), in the '70s, Alec? I ask because I came across an anecdote about a Lightning pilot and wondered if you knew him.

    2. Their Typhoo packets are covered with messages of Diversity , Equality and Inclusion writing ..

      They stick out like a sore thumb .

      Typhoo have scored an own goal . Their packaging is boring , colourless and humourless , no warmth ..

      1. https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/318084246?sc_cmp=ppc*GHS+-+Grocery+-+New*MPX_PMAX_All_OT_All+Products_Online+Budget_1011017**318084246*&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAouG5BhDBARIsAOc08RTpqXisgV08Iumeecrt8rMbq10jYju5wRbJpCuwFIEf1623reQ-bT0aAmnaEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

        Add
        Product Description
        Typhoo 240 Premium Everyday Tea Bags 750G
        No more violence against women on tea plantations
        No-one should suffer for your cuppa
        We're on a mission to make the tea industry safe for women working on tea plantations
        Let's make tea right!
        1 Million women fear violence while working on tea estates. We're working to make them safe.
        Funding women's safety
        Paying growers higher prices and investing to make women safe
        Revolutionising our supply chain
        From hundreds to a handful of trusted growers who put women's safety first
        Making tea right
        Setting the standard for a tea industry free of fear of sexual violence
        Want to help us?
        1 Start the conversation
        2 Stay informed
        3 Choose fear free tea
        Find out more at TYPHOO.COM

          1. I quite agree ..
            Especially over a warming cup of tea , and a nice chocolate biscuit or a slice of Victoria sponge cake .

            I will stick to my Earl Grey and Moh and son can drink as many PG tips cuppas as they want .

            None of us like political food messages .

  102. Next time you're stoning someone to death, remember that you are being racist…
    [LOCK UP THESE NUTTERS]

    Geology is racist, claims university professor

    Queen Mary lecturer links science to ‘white supremacy’ and and colonialism

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/11/16/TELEMMGLPICT000401773011_17317690629240_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq-8h3Bru9lT0-jh5CdEyqLaaWubKk5z9KiSss2dm9Lkk.jpeg?imwidth=680

    Kathryn Yusoff is a professor of inhuman geography at Queen Mary University, London

    Julie Henry
    16 November 2024 3:14pm GMT
    The study of the Earth’s rocks and natural resources is racist and linked to “white supremacy”, according to a geography professor at a leading UK university.

    Kathryn Yusoff, an academic at Queen Mary University of London, said the hard science subject of geology was “riven by systemic racism” and colonialism.

    She also suggested palaeontology, the study of prehistoric life through fossils, was partly to blame for racism, labelling it “pale-ontology”.

    In her book, Geologic Life, the professor argued the extraction of gold, iron, and other metals was racist. She wrote that geology began as a “colonial practice” that created hierarchies, promoted materialism, destroyed environments and led to climate change.

    ‘Geotrauma’
    The theft of land, mining and other geological aspects of colonialism led “toward the white supremacy of the planet” and resulted in “geotrauma”, Prof Yusoff wrote. She also claimed “geology continues to function within a white supremacist praxis”.

    Demands to decolonise courses, led by activist students and lecturers, have spread across UK universities, backed by official bodies such as the Quality Assurance Agency for higher education.

    The agenda began in social sciences and humanities and is now being applied to hard science and maths subjects. It uses critical race theory to support the view that the knowledge studied in universities is male and white and has been used to attain and perpetuate Western global domination through racism and injustice.

    Prof Yousoff’s book focused on geology from the 17th to the 19th century. She argued that non-white people have a closer relationship to the land than white people.

    “Broadly, black, brown, and indigenous subjects… have an intimacy with the earth that is unknown to the structural position of whiteness,” she wrote.

    Prof Yousoff described herself on the Queen Mary website as a professor of “inhuman geography”.

    The study of rocks was also “racialised”, according to the academic.

    “To tell a story of rocks is to account for a eugenic materialism in which white supremacy made surfaces built on racialised undergrounds…” she wrote.

    Critics last night slammed the decolonisation agenda as “anti-scientific” and said the “exploitation” of the land was almost as old as mankind itself, and not race-dependent.

    Dr John Armstrong, a reader in financial mathematics at King’s College London, said: “The programme of decolonisation is politically contentious, anti-scientific, and consistently associated with calls to lower academic standards.

    “Many university departments have resisted the pressure to dumb-down and politicise their courses, but university leaders and their equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) teams continue to demand that courses are decolonised.”

    Chris McGovan, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Geology is no more racist than ‘fish ’n’ chips’! It is an entirely neutral term. Those seeking to decolonise the curriculum are, in fact, building their own sinister empire of thought-control and intolerance.

    “Applied to exploitation it involves mining and this is almost as old as mankind and not race-dependent, as tourists are reminded when they visit our prehistoric flint mines such as Grime’s Graves, the English Heritage site in Norfolk.”

    1. “To tell a story of rocks is to account for a eugenic materialism in which white supremacy made surfaces built on racialised undergrounds…” I think that sort of Bolleaux tells you all you need to know about Yousoff!

    4. They tie themselves in the most ludicrous knots rather than acknowledge evolutionary biology and race differences in intelligence. While Michelangelo painted the Sistine, her pet primitives were sharpening flints and eating one another. That isn’t because renaissance artists were racist.

    6. Geologists know that climate change is a hoax. Could there be any connection?

      As for claiming that non white people have a closer connection to the earth than white people, she's just projecting her own racist ignorance on others. What a contemptible person.

      1. Sadly, theses that blither on about 'climate change' even in the most obscure and desperate stretches – get funding. Real research gets nothing. One grant was for £150,000 for thorium research. A poncing about in the Maldives studying 'climate change's' effect on rocks got £400,000.

        The state is desperate to find anything, anywhere to continue the lie and our money is wasted hand over fist on this tripe.

    7. She argued that non-white people have a closer relationship to the land than white people.
      Well, living in mud huts they naturally have a a close relationship with the land.

    9. How the heck do these morons become professors. It's a bit like getting a knighthood or being "elevated" to the HoL: it simply means that you licked the right orifices and then put your head up your own.

    10. How the heck do these morons become professors. It's a bit like getting a knighthood or being "elevated" to the HoL: it simply means that you licked the right orifices and then put your head up your own.

    1. every single one must be removed. There is simply no alternative. The invasion of this country by criminal savages cannot be permitted to continue.

      1. It won’t happen. There is no incentive and the systems don’t work. The illegals are coached in what to say and our laws won’t allow them to be sent back because “human rights”.we are being replaced by barbarians.

    1. My starter word really set me up well here – subsequently there could only be one letter that worked at no.4, and therefore only one word that could possibly fit!!
      About as straightforward as an Eagle could be……..

      Wordle 1,246 2/6

      ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      3. I am so bad at this, it usually takes me six tries if at all – husband and daughter compete to get it in three. I'm better at Spelling Bee..so far…🙂🙂🙂

      4. I am so bad at this, it usually takes me six tries if at all – husband and daughter compete to get it in three. I'm better at Spelling Bee..so far…🙂🙂🙂

      3. I hope your heart rate settles to 'normal' soon, Sue.
        I've had AF – and similar treatment – for five years.

          2. So sorry to read you're not 100%, Sue…guessing you're on meds, perhaps they need a check? Good luck, Kate x

          3. I was on fortnightly monitoring by an excellent Heart Failure nurse who made adjustments to my medication regime; this lead to stability, Sue.

    4. beats me

      Wordle 1,246 5/6

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

    5. Been bass fishing until 6pm, lure fishing at Portwrinkle. Came home bassless.

      Par today.

      Wordle 1,246 4/6

      ⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
      🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
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  106. Evening, all. Have had a lazy day today as I didn't have to go anywhere; got up late (despite Kadi's efforts to get me up early, starting at just before 4am!), had a leisurely bath (I know, TMI!), breakfast and then a saunter along to the bank to pay a bill at the ATM – a luxury that will disappear next year when the bank branch closes. Damp, dark and miserable, but apart from that absolutely fine.

    Does the role "physician associate" = assisted dying technician?

    1. They will cling onto power with their fingernails. It will take more than ordinary persuasion to get that lot out.

        2. You sure? Not in this country – they will just keep on grifting, after all they have learnt how to, in the last few decades.

          1. They have invested too much in Ukraine which investment is lost. At the same time their plans to raid pensions to fund the green nonsense will lead to power shortages and further deindustrialisation.

            All Labour are left with are overpaid wastrels in local and central government working from home and producing nothing of worth. Meanwhile farmers go bust and supply chains break leaving us all exposed to lower living standards and sheltering beneath a mountain of debt.

            If you doubt me look towards Germany where the major industries are shrivelling for lack of affordable gas and oil, where for example VW are closing plants and laying off workers and so on. All of this is the result of the madness in backing Ukraine and sanctioning Russia.

          3. I fear that's the easy bit, HL. Once gone, the damage needs repaired and business brought up again. Timeconsuming, and who will do that? Not the Tories, I suspect.

          5. If an Emergency Election is called by opposition parties – a collapse in the £ etc…quite possible I'd have thought…

          6. And do you really believe the Labour people would vote for their own demise?

            And worse still, what makes you so sure that if they dissolved Parliament that they would not get back in, and claim it gave them the mandate to accelerate the destruction of the UK as you knew it?

          7. Don’t think I said either of those things, sos….mostly because a) turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and b) dopes will vote for Labour. All I did say was that a vote of no confidence can be called by opposition parties with GE outcome. Reform will need to either get much stronger (could do) or form coalition with Conservatives (unlikely foreseeable).

          8. Do they care about that – they won't vote themselves out. Labour, the LibDem tarts and others will simply band together. They won't call an election.

          10. Ha. Coupled with electricity from wind turbines (just forget the damage to wildlife), what could possibly go wrong. I've written numerous times how my husband swapped out my VW for a Renault Zoe, and I won't go into that again except to say it's still unforgiven.

          12. So I see, thanks Paul….not been any wind here for weeks, there are a few turbines but not turning at the moment (I’ve been told when the weather is still, sometimes electricity is used to keep them turning and in peak condition but that may be an urban myth? Perhaps it’s windy at sea, being appreciated by the wildlife there. The only alternative is to flood the valley where I live, turn it into a hydro dam, according to my ‘green’ neighbour.

          13. So I see, thanks Paul….not been any wind here for weeks, there are a few turbines but not turning at the moment (I’ve been told when the weather is still, sometimes electricity is used to keep them turning and in peak condition but that may be an urban myth? Perhaps it’s windy at sea, being appreciated by the wildlife there. The only alternative is to flood the valley where I live, turn it into a hydro dam, according to my ‘green’ neighbour.

          15. The internal combustion engine (ICE) has been develooed over many decades and has pushed designers to the limit in developing ever more unreachable emission control targets demanded by governments.

            As such we have now reached the stage where methane emissions from cows are seen as a greater threat to the planet than the ICE car and now, due to the use of rare earths in building EVs, the latter are also gaining disrepute.

            For the health of both the planet and one’s body I consider it more sensible and practical to drive an ICE car whatever distance it takes to get to a restaurant serving superior carniverous meals.

          16. There you go…:-)) Friend of mine works hydrogen business, been telling me some time it’s the future, and any storage problems resolved. Currently opening a base I think near Bradford. Bloomberg given it a mention this evening. No doubt prospectors pile in, the modern gold.

          17. JCB have a development program for hydrogen powered heavy earth moving vehicles.

            They say the enormous extra weight of equivalent batteries make EV powered large earth moving vehicles a non-starter.

          18. Thanks for info corri hadn’t read that. My friend is really great guy I was worried he’d made a mistake but I should have known better 😇😊

        3. Agree re Ukraine, that'll be over soon as Trump can do a deal. Starmer will blame the Conservatives, especially Johnson (as many other people do).

    2. Forget it. Trudeau has been hanging on with his minority government for years now. All they need is a thick skin, a lack of concern for the population and a love of the money they can steal.

      1. They have already shown that they are well qualified, on that basis.

        There is such a thing as "common" which has nothing to do with so-called class: The Wife of Bath, in the Prologue to her Tale in Chaucer is very interested in what it is that makes a gentleman. She avers that it is not by how much money or land you possess or what titles you have but by your actions that you are or are not a gentleman;
        gentyl dedys meketh gentyl men.

        They are neither ladies or gentlemen – they are common as muck, all of them.

  109. Police logged hate incident when pub staff threw trans customer out for having sex in the toilet – as research shows doctors, vicars and social workers have been investigated for just doing their jobs D Fail

    If you can't have transgender sex in a pub toilet, where can you do it? What use are Police Stations if they don't open their toilet doors to the woofters? They should be charged with with non criminal hate crimes.

    1. That's today's police. Try reporting a theft, you'll be given a reference for you to claim on insurance, that's the limit of investigation.

  111. That's me for today. Drizzling this afternoon. Getting colder.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain – probably.

    1. Not a link – it was in a proper paper magazine. Clive Rowley, in his book "Lightnings to Spitfires" wrote, "the memento I liked best was presented to me by the 19 Squadron ground crew immediately after the incident [which was bringing a badly damaged Lightning back to base]. It was a cartoon … with their sarcastic comment, "With the sincere gratitude of the ground crew No 19 (F) Squadron August 1975", no doubt referring to the amount of work that I had created for them."

  114. Catholic Caroline Farrow journalist & writer enjoyed the UK thought police at a new sinister level.

    She was;
    arrested in front of children,
    put in jail,
    all devices taken for 16 months,
    took all children's devices,
    arrested a 2nd time because trans claimnant demanded it.
    then stalking protection order.
    then a ban from internet.
    assigned her an offender manager meaning even texting her mum required permission.
    given an order that allows police to enter home between 8am to 8pm to check devices.

    The crime? A trans claimant said she was the type of person that could have posted a meme on a forum.
    CPS said "This is ridiculous. An offensive meme that she didnt even send."

    https://youtu.be/NZLw6f9oxnY?t=13

    1. The Left need to be collared and chained. Current law gives utter nutters far too much power over normal people.

      1. I was disbarred from Instagram because I questioned the usefulness of wearing masks – I seemingly offended someone who reported me and it was decided to stop me using my account I think for 40 days. I re-registered which surprisingly worked. My point such as it is – can be a bit of a minefield on some sites, take care.

    2. Irony Alert:
      While this was going on.. down the road Sara Sharif was being beaten & battered to death on a daily basis.

      1. The state would be far happier suppressing your talking about it than doing anything to save the child.
        muslim cannot be criticised. The state cannot be questioned.

      2. No doubt if social services had stepped in, the "community" would have done like it did elsewhere, when a bus was set fire to. I can't remember exactly where, but nobody who did criminal damage seems to have been apprehended although there were videos actually showing the people who committed the crimes. Unlike the Starmer screws which were applied to people at Southport after three little girls had been killed. Starmer is weak and evil.

        2. It does, but I just looked at the video and it was very good, so I didn’t initially join those dots.
          So many Labour people have posted such comments that it wasn’t impossible, and I wonder whether they are actual quotes from an assortment of Labour people.

  116. if Rachel Thieves has cooked up her CV to gain position , isn't that a crime , a scam ..

    If doctors do that , they are struck off , same applies to anyone who lies .. Is she a relative of Fred the Shred ?

    1. There is coming a crisis. On the back of that, if the opposition can move no confidence.

      1. The opposition can move what it likes – look at the demography of the House of Commons…there simply aren't enough MPs to vote against, once Labour have wormed their way into the LibDems (who are the political tarts of this country – they'll sleep with anyone for a taste of power).

      1. It's like the "carbon awareness" courses I keep getting invited to (I'm a parish councillor). I keep saying I'm aware that CO2 is plant food. It doesn't go down well!

    2. To Hell with Islamophobia awareness month, it should be Islam awareness month.

      Telling everyone what a Satanic concoction it is.

      1. Unless and until Starmer can make it clear what the difference between a phobia and a genuine fear is then the word Islamophobia is meaningless.

  119. Half-time – England 17 South Africa 19 – cracking game!

    I fear for the second half, though, England are being monstered up front in the scrum and the Boks half-backs look a different class…….

    1. Dang I missed it…Saturdays family all here. Anyhow…J D P…his book is on Amazon, sold by World of Books, I msgd them asking if they knew of any way to get in touch…rec'd a bog standard reply thank you for your message your support means so much to us etc…sorry G4 but that seems to be a non-starter…I'll continue to lookout for him and get back to you if I hear owt, best Kate x nothing from PJ x

      1. Dont fret KJ – it’s really not a problem, I’d be delighted to hear from JD again but I understand if he wants a break from the on-line merry-go-round. Dont waste your time chasing it….
        I dont suspect we will hear from our dear Peta again, that upsets me more than I ever thought possible x

        1. Thanks G…if I see him I will tell him, no problem. You’re right, she knew what was happening – the last message we shared we agreed we’d meet again (we had previously decided we would see our parents again). I still hold to that, she’d laugh at me if I said I was slightly annoyed she beat me to it:-D Living in France, she was ahead of me on the clock…first thing on waking I still reach for phone to see if there’s a message from her and one day I believe there will be. Sentimental I know, but there we are. Thanks for thinking of her, all the best, Kate x

    2. Hem – it is customary in NoTTLand NOT to reveal scores. Quite a lot of people record matches to watch later.

      Just saying

          1. GGGGaspar: nor do I. All I know about sport is Stanley Matthews and W G Grace. Were either of them playing for France or New Zealand today? Lol.

          3. Well, I even know a third: a batsman called Jeeves after whom Bertie Wooster's gentleman's gentleman was named by P G Wodehouse.

          5. Very good, sos. The cricketer Jeeves' first name was indeed Percy. And Percy and P G Wodehouse were both at the same school – as were C S Forester, Raymond Chandler, and Nigel Farage.

          6. Borstal?

            And before you complain, we used to play many sports against Dulwich and in my day, a more reprobate bunch of thugs would have been hard to find, even worse than Haileybury and ICS.

          7. Very good, sos. The cricketer Jeeves' first name was indeed Percy. And Percy and P G Wodehouse were both at the same school – as were C S Forester, Raymond Chandler, and Nigel Farage.

          8. Yes, he played for Warwickshire (I think) but I also believe he was killed on the Somme – so sad…..

          9. Well, I even know a third: a batsman called Jeeves after whom Bertie Wooster's gentleman's gentleman was named by P G Wodehouse.

          10. I apologise if it wasn't you then; I perhaps have confused you with someone who bet and gloated about the results.

          11. Apologies accepted! (but not really necessary) – I seem to remember the fallout but cant recall the other party.

            I guess it's a difficult area, I'm always a bit cautious about the Wordle result! There's always the 'spoiler' function!

      3. Apologies if I ruined anybody's fun – I have to say that, if I dont want to know the score, I make sure I dont go anywhere on-line!

  120. We are,not long home from Luton Hoo hotel for our Afternoon Tea gift, from my elder sister for our 50th wedding anniversary. End of August.
    I am so full up I am a bit uncomfortable. And we came home with two small boxes of cakes.

      1. It's a lovely experience.
        I had no Idea that the Queen and Prince Philip spent their wedding night at the Hotel. There were lots of old photographs of many well known people spending time there.
        Close to the airport I guess.

        1. I might put it on my list of "things to do". I like taking afternoon tea and have done it in a few stately homes (Belvoir, Chatsworth and Sandringham, among others) as well as hotels.

          1. What I didn’t mention was we went to the Ritz in London a few years ago as well. Also very good.

  122. I'm aware that a number of church attendees in our valley are all into Net Zero good, CO2 bad. Perhaps OilWelsby will enlighten us.

    1. The diocese appears to be full on woke – into die-versity, youth, net zero and any other bandwagon you care to name. Actually preaching the Word seems to be low down on their list of priorities.

    1. "IRA activity
      Anderson was arrested aged 18 leaving a furniture store in Derry and charged with possession of a firearm and causing an explosion. She was released on bail after spending two months in Armagh Women's Prison and fled across the border to Buncrana in County Donegal.

      Anderson was again arrested on 24 June 1985 at a flat in Glasgow with four other IRA members including Brighton bomber Patrick Magee. On 11 June 1986, all five were convicted of conspiring to cause explosions in England, although Magee was the only person convicted in relation to the Brighton hotel bombing.

      In 1989, Anderson married fellow prisoner and IRA member Paul Kavanagh at Full Sutton Prison. By 1993, she was one of just two female category A prisoners in England, the other being fellow republican Ella O'Dwyer. While at Durham Prison, Anderson obtained a first-class honours degree in social science from the Open University. In 1994, she was transferred from Durham to Maghaberry Prison in Northern Ireland. On 10 November 1998, Anderson was released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement."

      Up there with all those Freedom Fighters.

    2. Good grief – James B-N! If it's the same man [and there can't be that many, surely?] he was a rather more senior member of the staff at Dartmouth while I was much more junior – very impressive family!

      1. A completely different example.

        I'm sorry if you think it's acceptable for packs of dogs to attack pedestrians, women and children, even toddlers, but hey ho, each to their own.

      2. A completely different example.

        I'm sorry if you think it's acceptable for packs of dogs to attack pedestrians, women and children, even toddlers, but hey ho, each to their own.

    3. I have no idea why anyone would leave either a baby or a young child alone with any animal. My two dogs skedaddle as soon as grandchildren hove into view.

        3. That’s everyone’s choice, sos 🙂 I’ve had a dog since I was four years old…so for over 70 years, majority rescues. But these two will be my last, I think.

          1. We always had dogs and cats when I was young.
            I would have loved a dog for the boys, but HG was badly bitten as a child, and wasn't keen.

          2. Sorry to read that, not surprised at reaction. I’d be similar, puppies can give you a nasty nip too, needle teeth.

          3. Not even a puppy, this was a random attack, completely out of the blue.
            Even now she is very wary of all dogs, even those she recognises as belonging to friends or family.
            Oddly enough, those dogs treat her like a long lost friend, they are always trying to snuggle up, perhaps they realise she’s scared and are trying to be reassuring.
            My parents had a big Labrador who used to greet her at the gate and take her by the hand, literally, to show her where I was in the house or the garden. It scared the bejesus out of her the first few times, but he was so gentle and it was clear that that was what he was doing that they became friends

          4. Lovely to read…sometimes we just need to step outside our fear..good for Mrs sos…Labs can be very big, saw one at the vets some years ago, size of a small donkey, my two dogs kept quiet at the sight…😄

          6. I honestly think the Kennel Club, Crufts, dog breeders have a lot to answer for. Puppies today can be very expensive to buy, and where there’s money people will follow.

          7. Lovely to read…sometimes we just need to step outside our fear..good for Mrs sos…Labs can be very big, saw one at the vets some years ago, size of a small donkey, my two dogs kept quiet at the sight…😄

          8. We always had dogs and cats when I was young.
            I would have loved a dog for the boys, but HG was badly bitten as a child, and wasn't keen.

      1. I want to know why he is slumming it in a three star hotel when all his tens of thousands of mates are in four and five star hotels.

    2. Some time ago, I seem to recall, Panorama did an investigation into "charidee" scams – they apparently included Children in Need? Needless to say, the programme has never been shown, as far as I am aware.

  131. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    In the near three-decade history of the annual round of UN climate conferences, the Baku Cop29 stands out. There have been disastrous Cops before. For those with long memories, there was Cop6 in the Hague after George W. Bush narrowly won the 2000 presidential election, which was disrupted by protestors and the outgoing American climate negotiator had a cake thrown at him. Then there is the Copenhagen Cop15, when the Global South, led by China, India, Brazil and South Africa, sunk a binding climate treaty that would have required them to cap their emissions. But never before has there been the indifference and mass absenteeism that marks the Baku Cop.

    The choice of Azerbaijan to host the talks was always going to be challenging. Being an oil producer did not disqualify Dubai from skilfully running last year’s Cop. But the brutal ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh last year and President Ilham Aliyev’s long-standing denial of the Armenian genocide proved too much even for a UN climate conference where white-washing and hypocrisy are the order of the day. Ironically, it was the Paris Cop21 in 2015 – widely seen as the crowning achievement of the UN climate talks – that drained the drama from all subsequent Cops.

    Telling the truth about the price tag of net zero is tantamount to killing it

    Under the Paris climate agreement, the process moved from countries sitting around the conference table negotiating emissions targets to countries submitting their own targets – or deciding not to have any targets at all – in the form of five-yearly Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs). Unsurprisingly, the Paris agreement failed to bring about a peaking of global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2015, global emissions of carbon dioxide were 35.4 billion tonnes. In 2023, they had risen to 37.79 billion tonnes – an increase of 6.75 per cent – with little sign, despite the UK and EU delivering massive emissions reductions, that global emissions are close to peaking.

    The outcome of the Paris agreement’s system of NDCs is that Cops have become talking shops devoted primarily to two issues: standardising the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, a yawnathon if ever there was one, and money – how much of it the West should give the Global South. In an FT article last week, Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, cited UN estimates that the energy transition required to meet net zero needs up to $11.7 trillion a year, equivalent to 10 percent of world output. Our economic survival depends on unlocking trillions of dollars of green capital, Lagarde argues. This is a nursery-school level of thinking about finance. The world’s second most powerful central banker appears to think there are trillions of dollars of unused capital lying around in someone’s cellar. What Lagarde really means, but lacks the honesty to say, is that net zero requires diverting a vast amount of capital from being deployed in productive investments where they earn a higher return than on so-called green ones.

    But telling the truth about the price tag of net zero is tantamount to killing it. The one world leader who has grasped the dire economic consequences of net zero is Donald Trump, whose election is already accelerating the Cops’ slide into irrelevance. Having withdrawn the United States from the Paris agreement in his first term, Trump is promising to do so again in his second. This provoked a bizarre response from ExxonMobil’s CEO, Darren Woods. Speaking in Baku, Woods complained that pulling out would ‘leave a void with respect to what the Trump administration could bring to this process.’ This echoes the view of Woods’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson, who, before being fired as Trump’s first secretary of state, argued that staying in would enable the Trump administration to renegotiate the terms of the Paris agreement.

    This shows how little Tillerson understood. The only renegotiation that would have relieved the US of the legal commitment to submit an NDC with ever more stringent emissions targets every five years would mean gutting the agreement. Renegotiation wasn’t going to happen. The whole point of the US exiting the Paris agreement is to leave a void, so that the US is not obligated to submit another NDC or hand over more American taxpayers’ money to the Global South. Trump’s views are evidently shared by Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who ordered his country’s climate negotiators to leave the Cop.

    These developments left Keir Starmer looking an increasingly forlorn figure at Baku, where he presented Britain’s NDC for 2035, which would see an 81 per cent cut in emissions. ‘Our goal of 1.5C… Is aligned with our goals for growth,’ the Prime Minister declared. In just 11 words, the Prime Minister shows himself doubly deluded. The following day, Oslo-based climate researcher Glen Peters said that the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is ‘so small that it almost makes no sense anymore.’

    On net zero being good for growth, Starmer should have a quiet word with Ed Miliband, as his net zero minister knows the truth. When Miliband was doing the same job under Gordon Brown, on 9 March 2009, he signed an impact assessment on the Climate Change Act’s 80 per cent target. ‘I am satisfied that, given the available evidence, it represents a reasonable view of the likely costs, benefits and impact of the leading options,’ Miliband certified on the first page of an impact assessment. In a paragraph near the top of the document, it reads: ‘Where the UK acts alone, though there would be a net benefit for the world as a whole the UK would bear all the cost of the action and would not experience any benefit from reciprocal reductions elsewhere. The economic case for the UK continuing to act alone where global action cannot be achieved would be weak.’ The prime minister should heed that warning and withdraw the UK’s NDC before net zero does even more damage to the dangerously fragile British economy.

    WRITTEN BY
    Rupert Darwall
    Rupert Darwall is a senior fellow of the RealClear Foundation and author of Green Tyranny

  132. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    In the near three-decade history of the annual round of UN climate conferences, the Baku Cop29 stands out. There have been disastrous Cops before. For those with long memories, there was Cop6 in the Hague after George W. Bush narrowly won the 2000 presidential election, which was disrupted by protestors and the outgoing American climate negotiator had a cake thrown at him. Then there is the Copenhagen Cop15, when the Global South, led by China, India, Brazil and South Africa, sunk a binding climate treaty that would have required them to cap their emissions. But never before has there been the indifference and mass absenteeism that marks the Baku Cop.

    The choice of Azerbaijan to host the talks was always going to be challenging. Being an oil producer did not disqualify Dubai from skilfully running last year’s Cop. But the brutal ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh last year and President Ilham Aliyev’s long-standing denial of the Armenian genocide proved too much even for a UN climate conference where white-washing and hypocrisy are the order of the day. Ironically, it was the Paris Cop21 in 2015 – widely seen as the crowning achievement of the UN climate talks – that drained the drama from all subsequent Cops.

    Telling the truth about the price tag of net zero is tantamount to killing it

    Under the Paris climate agreement, the process moved from countries sitting around the conference table negotiating emissions targets to countries submitting their own targets – or deciding not to have any targets at all – in the form of five-yearly Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs). Unsurprisingly, the Paris agreement failed to bring about a peaking of global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2015, global emissions of carbon dioxide were 35.4 billion tonnes. In 2023, they had risen to 37.79 billion tonnes – an increase of 6.75 per cent – with little sign, despite the UK and EU delivering massive emissions reductions, that global emissions are close to peaking.

    The outcome of the Paris agreement’s system of NDCs is that Cops have become talking shops devoted primarily to two issues: standardising the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, a yawnathon if ever there was one, and money – how much of it the West should give the Global South. In an FT article last week, Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, cited UN estimates that the energy transition required to meet net zero needs up to $11.7 trillion a year, equivalent to 10 percent of world output. Our economic survival depends on unlocking trillions of dollars of green capital, Lagarde argues. This is a nursery-school level of thinking about finance. The world’s second most powerful central banker appears to think there are trillions of dollars of unused capital lying around in someone’s cellar. What Lagarde really means, but lacks the honesty to say, is that net zero requires diverting a vast amount of capital from being deployed in productive investments where they earn a higher return than on so-called green ones.

    But telling the truth about the price tag of net zero is tantamount to killing it. The one world leader who has grasped the dire economic consequences of net zero is Donald Trump, whose election is already accelerating the Cops’ slide into irrelevance. Having withdrawn the United States from the Paris agreement in his first term, Trump is promising to do so again in his second. This provoked a bizarre response from ExxonMobil’s CEO, Darren Woods. Speaking in Baku, Woods complained that pulling out would ‘leave a void with respect to what the Trump administration could bring to this process.’ This echoes the view of Woods’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson, who, before being fired as Trump’s first secretary of state, argued that staying in would enable the Trump administration to renegotiate the terms of the Paris agreement.

    This shows how little Tillerson understood. The only renegotiation that would have relieved the US of the legal commitment to submit an NDC with ever more stringent emissions targets every five years would mean gutting the agreement. Renegotiation wasn’t going to happen. The whole point of the US exiting the Paris agreement is to leave a void, so that the US is not obligated to submit another NDC or hand over more American taxpayers’ money to the Global South. Trump’s views are evidently shared by Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who ordered his country’s climate negotiators to leave the Cop.

    These developments left Keir Starmer looking an increasingly forlorn figure at Baku, where he presented Britain’s NDC for 2035, which would see an 81 per cent cut in emissions. ‘Our goal of 1.5C… Is aligned with our goals for growth,’ the Prime Minister declared. In just 11 words, the Prime Minister shows himself doubly deluded. The following day, Oslo-based climate researcher Glen Peters said that the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is ‘so small that it almost makes no sense anymore.’

    On net zero being good for growth, Starmer should have a quiet word with Ed Miliband, as his net zero minister knows the truth. When Miliband was doing the same job under Gordon Brown, on 9 March 2009, he signed an impact assessment on the Climate Change Act’s 80 per cent target. ‘I am satisfied that, given the available evidence, it represents a reasonable view of the likely costs, benefits and impact of the leading options,’ Miliband certified on the first page of an impact assessment. In a paragraph near the top of the document, it reads: ‘Where the UK acts alone, though there would be a net benefit for the world as a whole the UK would bear all the cost of the action and would not experience any benefit from reciprocal reductions elsewhere. The economic case for the UK continuing to act alone where global action cannot be achieved would be weak.’ The prime minister should heed that warning and withdraw the UK’s NDC before net zero does even more damage to the dangerously fragile British economy.

    WRITTEN BY
    Rupert Darwall
    Rupert Darwall is a senior fellow of the RealClear Foundation and author of Green Tyranny

  133. Yes, they need to be turned over slowly, else they can get bearing damage from overheating (if they have been running) and just the weight of the shaft sitting on the rollers in the bearing. It's called "barring over" in the industry.

  134. from Coffee House, the Spectator

    If Peter Mandelson is confirmed as our next ambassador to Washington there will be an outcry among swathes of both the right and the left of British politics. There always is when Mandelson lands a plum position. On the left, the resentment began over his transfer of allegiance from Gordon Brown to Tony Blair more than 30 years ago. But it really gained momentum after Blair parachuted him in to be Northern Ireland secretary in place of Mo Mowlam in the autumn of 1999.

    Grassroots Labour mythology sprung up around the idea that Mowlam was being punished by Blair for being too popular and that Mandelson had been manoeuvring for her job. He had been sacked from the cabinet late in 1998 over his taking of a secret loan from fellow Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson.

    Farage has become an unlikely cheerleader for Mandelson’s latest job search

    The more prosaic truth was that Mowlam’s relationship with Unionist politicians had deteriorated to the point that it had become an impediment to the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Most of the heavy lifting needed to get the deal signed in the first place had been done by Blair’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell anyway.

    Mandelson made a good pantomime villain, but in the event was rather successful during his brief tenure in the job. The Stormont Assembly, the power-sharing Northern Ireland executive and police service reform all sprang into life before Blair sacked him again, this time over the Hinduja passport affair. Later, an inquiry cleared him of wrongdoing and a no-doubt sheepish Blair supported him bowing out of the Commons to become a European Commissioner late in 2004. There were groans aplenty at this, as well as much mockery from those who recalled Mandelson declaring upon his re-election in Hartlepool at the 2001 general election that he was ‘a fighter, not a quitter’.

    On the right it is his Europhilia that lies at the root of much of the hostility towards him, something heightened by his support for a second referendum to overturn Brexit. Yet Mandelson also made a success of his European Commission trade portfolio in the noughties, impressing none other than Nigel Farage with his mastery of the brief. Indeed, Farage has become an unlikely cheerleader for Mandelson’s latest job search, recalling his impressive grasp of policy detail during his Brussels years and conceding his possession of ‘a good brain’.

    As well as being frontrunner in the ambassadorial stakes, Mandelson is also in the race to become the next Chancellor of Oxford University. With a characteristic degree of modesty, he has pronounced himself capable of doing both jobs at the same time.

    His main rivals for the Washington role are said to be Baroness Ashton, a fellow Labour peer and former EU foreign affairs supremo, and David Miliband, the New York-based fellow Blairite whose pitch for the Labour leadership was famously thwarted by his younger brother Ed. Miliband major also has a good brain, no doubt, but seems to regard the demonstration of that as the prime objective of most functions he attends. Mandelson’s advantage is an awareness of the need to draw concessions from the person sitting on the other side of the desk.

    It is largely for this reason that I find myself hoping that he gets the job. I cannot imagine a long-time Hillary Clinton fan from central casting such as Miliband endearing himself to the incoming Donald Trump administration. Mandelson, by contrast, will surely understand the key aim of a UK ambassador to the US, once inelegantly set out by the aforementioned Powell as being ‘to get up the arse of the White House and stay there’.

    The grim experience of our former man in Washington Kim Darroch during the first Trump administration – he resigned shortly after getting caught being rude about Trump and then the president being rude about him right back – should remind us that handling the incoming POTUS will not be straightforward.

    Selling Britain as America’s most important ally while Britain is led by a Labour government that is anathema to Trump in almost every regard will require a masterclass in diplomacy as well as a Machiavellian mind. If anyone can pull it off, Peter Mandelson can.

    Patrick O'Flynn
    WRITTEN BY
    Patrick O’Flynn
    Patrick O’Flynn is a former MEP and political editor of the Daily Express

    1. Mandelslime, just an utterly revolting creature, slithering around on a film of his own bile.

      2. I'm a populist prime minister from a minor pubic school
        I love your adulation so I'll make Britannia cool
        I'll toady to your prejudices wreck the House of Lords
        And if you vote New Labour' you'll have joined my mindless hordes
        I'm a third way politician and I know how good I look
        When I stand beside my grubby minions: Blunkett, Straw and Cook
        Glib and oily Mandy's lies and mortgage I could not excuse
        Twice I sacked the sleazy bugger though his spittle shone my shoes.

    2. Wales has gone full communist. Dogs are wacist too according to lunatics running the Welsh gubbermint. Absolute lunacy.

  137. From the Daily Telegraph

    Donald Trump is facing a clash with the CIA over a promise to release top secret files about John F Kennedy’s assassination.

    Mr Trump pledged on the campaign trail to release “all of the remaining documents” relating to the 1963 shooting, which has been the subject of long-running conspiracy theories.

    The nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former president’s nephew, as Mr Trump’s health secretary has given fresh impetus to calls for the files to be made public.

    After accepting Mr Kennedy’s endorsement in August, the president-elect said he would set up a taskforce to release the documents as a “tribute in honour of Bobby”.

    Mr Kennedy, who claims the CIA were directly involved in the assassination of his uncle, last year launched a petition calling for the Biden administration to release the last of the government’s records to “help to restore” trust in the government.

    Experts believe Mr Trump could have a fight on his hands if the agency pushes back against releasing the documents when he returns to the White House.

    “There’s going to be a conflict,” warned Jefferson Morley, an expert and editor of JFK Facts.

    The assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963 has been the subject of long-running conspiracy theories Credit: Bettmann
    Others have warned that a clash with the CIA is inevitable at this point, given Mr Trump’s repeated claims he will have the documents released.

    Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed, said: “I think Trump has locked himself into a position where he has to release them.”

    Mr Trump heavily criticised the CIA for being part of the “deep state” working against him.

    Under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, all government documents about the assassination were to be made publicly available by October 2017.

    However, the law permitted their release to be delayed for national security and privacy reasons.

    Under his previous administration, Mr Trump had pledged to unseal the remaining 15,000 documents containing redactions but was then allegedly persuaded out of doing so by Mike Pompeo, his CIA director.

    Joe Biden released a tranche of the remaining files under his administration, whittling down the figure to 3,500 outstanding files, but the deadline for their release was pushed back owing to Covid-related delays.

    1. In the summer I went with a friend to see a play about Marilyn Monroe at the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park. A friend of the friend was playing Marilyn’s housekeeper. The play claims that Robert F Kennedy Snr killed Monroe by creeping in to her house at night and administering a poison enema. The empty pill bottles were supposedly planted on the bedside table afterwards. It’s preposterous but the Kennedy’s are still a threat to the Deep State.

      1. I think it's generally accepted at least as a possibility that Marilyn Monroe was murdered. Bobby Kennedy personally? Far fetched, I think.
        The same cocktail of alcohol and barbiturates was used to finish off Dorothy Kilgallen and that too was alleged to have been a suicide although others blame the CIA. Mark Shaw has written several books about the conspiracy to murder the journalist Kilgallen, the Voice of Broadway, who after interviewing Jack Ruby was busy preparing a book which she thought would tell the truth about JFK's assassination.
        They will not let Trump release sensitive information which will shed new light on Kennedy's shooting no matter what he may say now.

  138. From the Daily Telegraph

    One of Britain’s most prominent feminist writers has revealed that police visited her home to warn they were investigating one of her tweets as a “hate crime”.

    Julie Bindel said she received a knock on the door on a Sunday afternoon from two Scotland Yard officers, who told her a “transgender man” from the Netherlands had reported one of her social media posts.

    The case bears a striking resemblance to the ongoing police investigation into Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson and will add to growing concerns over the curtailing of free speech in Britain.

    Ms Bindel, a longstanding campaigner on violence against women and critic of gender ideology, said she was not allowed to know which tweet had prompted the investigation, under what category of hate crime it was being investigated, nor the identity of the complainant. The officers asked her to voluntarily attend her local police station to make a statement, she said, but she refused.

    She described the visit as as “Orwellian” and said detectives “could better use their time investigating rape and domestic violence”.

    ‘A waste of police time’
    Last night, a former head of MI6 criticised hate crime investigations into journalists as “ridiculous” and a waste of police time.

    Pearson is currently being investigated by Essex Police over an unspecified tweet she posted a year ago.

    Two officers visited Pearson’s home on Remembrance Sunday over what they described as “an incident or offence of potentially inciting racial hatred online”.

    Ms Bindel told The Telegraph: “Police coming after those of us that do nothing more than speak the truth about gender madness and refuse to bend the knee to the crazy cultists, are doing a massive public disservice.

    “Unless there is a very good reason not to, we must all publicly protest this terrible infringement of our human rights.”

    Ms Bindel said the incident was witnessed by multiple people in her house at the time. The Metropolitan Police said it had no record of the incident.

    Writing for The Telegraph, she says: “The officers left looking a little bewildered. I did have a sense that they understood what a ridiculous mission they had been sent on.”

    Speaking of the visit, which took place in 2019, she added: “Police have limited time to investigate actual crime, but are instead being tasked with ticking off the likes of me for daring to tweet that ‘trans women are not women’ or whatever the person in Holland had objected to.”

    ‘A deliberate tactic of the Left’
    A former Tory MP also discussed on Saturday night how a “non-crime hate incident” was recorded against his name following a complaint from a Labour activist.

    Tom Hunt, who represented Ipswich, said the incident was recorded against him after he had raised concerns that “certain communities” were disproportionately responsible for crime in the city centre.

    Mr Hunt said that Ms Bindel’s case showed how reporting of alleged hate crimes had become “an absolute free for all” and said ministers must “nip it in the bud”.

    He said: “The fact that not only do you not have to be a victim, you don’t even have to be in the same jurisdiction, it’s just beyond ludicrous.”

    The former Ipswich MP was reported to Suffolk police for a non-crime hate incident shortly after being elected at the 2019 election.

    The complaint related to a local newspaper column in which he had written of the need to “confront the possibility that a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by individuals from certain communities”.

    Mr Hunt said the complaint was made by a local Labour activist and that, though he faced no criminal investigation, he believed the incident was still on his record.

    He added: “It’s a deliberate tactic of the Left to try and drag the long arm of the law in to stifle legitimate debate and cower the Right and Conservative voices.”

    Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, said the investigation into Pearson was “ridiculous” and officers “shouldn’t be wasting their time on these sorts of issues”.

    He said: “I think those of us who have grown up in an era of free speech just can’t understand the way things have developed. It’s extraordinary.

    “There are other ways of tracking extremism and I don’t think doing stuff which prejudices people’s freedom of speech is a sensible starting point.

    “If it’s the activities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in the UK or serious stuff to do with Hamas, that’s what they should be looking at.”

    Police ‘should concentrate on violent crime’
    Baron Stevens, a former Met commissioner, said that police forces should be using scarce resources on violent crime.

    “We need officers on the streets for prioritising things like knife crime and violence,” he said. “Public safety should be the biggest priority.”

    Two former home secretaries said hate crime investigations were distracting the police from their core duties.

    Suella Braverman said: “The time has come for this insidious practice to be scrapped. Police the streets, not tweets – that’s what the British people expect.”

    Grant Shapps said: “These incidents, where no actual crime has been committed, feel like the kind of thing that both waste police time and reduce the public’s trust in policing. It would surely be better for law enforcement to focus on actual crimes.”

    Essex police defended its handling of the case in a statement on Saturday, saying it had been launched because “a complaint of a possible criminal offence was made”.

    The force said: “We police without fear or favour and that’s why we respond to alleged offences which are reported to us by members of the public.”

    It released a transcript of the conversation that officers conducted with Pearson, which was captured on their body-worn video cameras.

    In it, an officer told her that “it’s gone down as an incident or offence of potentially inciting racial hatred online. That would be the offence.”

    They then added: “It’s what’s been alleged and if there’s an offence we need to ask questions about then we need to do that.”

    A spokesman for the Met said: “We take all reports of hate crime extremely seriously and are committed to investigating allegations thoroughly and impartially where they are made.

    “Our approach seeks to balance the right to free speech with our duty to protect individuals and our communities from harm.”

    3. 'a “transgender man” from the Netherlands had reported one of her social media posts'. So, not even British – are we now beholden to the foreign 'perpetually offended"???

  139. Annoyingly Hertslass…you are likely correct. Possibly the only hope for conservative minded people is if Reform/Conservatives make a pact. It was reported that it was Farage’s firm intention to destroy the CP when they wouldn’t let him stand as a candidate. Certainly been achieved, with or without him.

  140. A new study has found that taking 600 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day—the amount typically recommended for adults—lowers blood pressure in older adults, especially those who are obese.

    The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, involved 221 older obese adults who received vitamin D supplements at either 600 IU per day or 3,750 IU per day over one year. Currently, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends a daily intake of 600 IU.

    Participants’ overall systolic blood pressure decreased by 3.5 mm Hg after one year, and diastolic blood pressure decreased by 2.5 mm Hg after one year.

    Those who took higher doses of 3,750 IU daily had a slightly higher decrease of 4.2 mm Hg for systolic blood pressure. In comparison, those who took the lower 600 IU per day generally reported a reduction of 2.8 mm Hg after one year.

    The authors concluded that the differences between the high- and low-dose vitamin D groups were not statistically significant.

    People with a higher body mass index (BMI) of over 30 saw more significant reductions in blood pressure, especially in the high-dose group. People who took blood pressure medication with their vitamin D also observed substantial decreases in their overall blood pressure.

    All participants also received daily supplements that included 1,000 milligrams of calcium.

    2. I cannot believe the total ineptitude of those in charge who ought to be tackling this issue (irrespective of the potential votes involved) shame on them!!

        1. P.S. A not insignificant reason is also set out in Belle's email. You only have to look at photos of HO employees.

  144. SIR – I am a 56-year-old full-time GP who works in one of the most deprived areas of the South Wales Valleys.

    When Labour was elected, I foolishly thought Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, would honour his pledge and support general practice. However, I will now have to find an extra £25,000 a year because of the increase in employer’s National Insurance that the Chancellor has levied on small businesses.

    Unfortunately I can’t “pass this on to my customers”, as they are my patients. So I can either cut doctor or nurse hours, or reduce my receptionist numbers. What would Labour like me to do?

    Dr Darren Lloyds
    Tonyrefail, Glamorgan

  145. Is Allison Pearson about to get mud on her face? She should stand her ground on these points:
    1. The 'Free Palestine' marches are about hatred of Jews, even if some of the white simpletons joining in think they're about Israel's 'illegal occupation'.
    2. The supporters of the Pakistani party Tehreek-e-Insaf should toughen up, the poor little darlings. AP might say sorry for the confusion but people hanging about in an English urban setting with a green, red and white flag while looking a bit Middle Eastern/Asian is highly likely to cause a muddle so the remarks about Palestine [sic] still stand. And if you don't want to sing 'From The River To The Sea' because you don't support the cause, say so.
    3. Someone somewhere, almost certainly of a higher rank than the Chief Constable of Essex Police, set this up to dangle AP on a string. Flush him/her/it out. There's something quite rotten about this.

    The BBC and its support act in the Labour Party will be unbearable if AP is charged with a criminal offence.

    1. How long was the tweet up before it was deleted?

      How many more of us are aware of the supposed offence now than when the tweet was extant?

    2. I say, "Bang her up with Tommy Robinson!"
      The more ridiculous legal machinations there are the sooner the masses will see the truth.

    1. Crayons/Tory scum?

      Butler/blackface of white supremacy?

      Muslims/anti-semitic utterances?

      Of course not. This NCHI stuff is only designed to work one-way.

    1. Yes, but it makes for cheap building land for ghettos to house all the third world savages we're importing and solar and wind farms.

    2. The attack on our farmers is just one prong of a multi-pronged attack on our lives and culture.

      The covid health scam with its false "vaccinations"; the climate scam; mass immigration; two tier policing; attempts at restricting free speech, all are manifestations of the WEF/Globalist playbook perpetrated by our politicians et al.

      No farmers and little or no quality food will lead to ill-health and death, plain and simple. What next, the water supply?

    1. Brilliant!

      Cryogenics is widely used in cell and genetic research.

      If you freeze a whole body it could never be revived as a human being. The resultant tissue damage rules this out but fools will still buy into it.

    2. Brilliant!

      Cryogenics is widely used in cell and genetic research.

      If you freeze a whole body it could never be revived as a human being. The resultant tissue damage rules this out but fools will still buy into it.

Comments are closed.