Saturday 19 February: Landline phones that worked during Storm Eunice power cuts won’t work in future

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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710 thoughts on “Saturday 19 February: Landline phones that worked during Storm Eunice power cuts won’t work in future”

    1. Good afternoon, Minty. The storm that blew a few of my empty plastic pots around the garden yesterday. Sorted it all in two minutes flat.

  2. MI5 Chiefs warning to the West. 19 February 2022.

    The head of MI5 gives a chilling warning today that we are engaged in a struggle for our very way of life. Even more worryingly, he says we are fighting ‘with one hand tied behind our backs’.

    In a rare and extremely candid interview, with the Daily Mail, Ken McCallum speaks of a battle for supremacy between the liberal, democratic West and ‘authoritarian’ states such as Russia and China.

    We are fighting; though the War is to some extent already lost. The globalists have won and “our way of life” is being erased not only in the present but also the past. Mi5 has done nothing about this; has in fact aided and abetted it. This because to some considerable extent it is in actuality, with its Metrosexual Chief and carefully chosen Diverse Personnel a microcosm of Wokeism itself! The “liberal, Democratic West” that McCallum speaks of now exists only in the history books and memories of people like ourselves. We can see this in a thousand ways. The suppression of Free Speech,Thought Crime, teaching children CRT etc. All these would have been unthinkable only twenty years ago!

    The struggle with Putin is not about Ukraine; a backward, corrupt and poverty stricken polity, but to consolidate the Globalist hold on the West. As their lackeys Johnson and Biden confront Russia in a spurious war over borders in Eastern Europe tens of thousands of incomers flood in through the West’s open doors. McCallum’s appeal here for more powers of repression is analogous to that in Canada where the Emergencies Act has been passed against its own citizens. So it is here. Our real enemies walk among us!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10529581/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-MI5-chiefs-chilling-warning-West.html

    2. I give a repost of last night’s offering from Horace Pendleton:-

      Horace Pendleton • 8 hours ago
      Ah, “trans rights” etc. On the Scottish News this evening we were told that around 900 children under 18 are on a waiting list for “gender reassignment”.
      This is Scotland today, a country where parents can be jailed for giving a child a thick ear, but are being encouraged to help them to be mutilated.
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60395731

      With the likes of “Dr.” Sidhbh Gallagher, who appears to be a disciple of the Mengele School of Medicine, gleefully carrying out “Teet Zeeting” (double mastectomies) on pubescent teenage girls, sometimes as young as 13, and the many other ills the Liberal West is suffering from, does Western Liberalism deserve to survive?

      https://lilymaynard.com/wielding-the-sidhbh-gallagher/

        1. It’s very simple: a person who thinks they’re a goat is more than happy to do so. A man who tihnks himself a woman can wear a dress – but he remains a man. He is simply mentally ill. Such people should be treated as such. Not indulged, not pandered, not spoiled, not protected, just helped to resolve the mental conflict in their minds.

          1. Exactly.
            Or as I put it:-

            If a man want to pretend to be a woman, or a woman pretend to be a man, then ok, fair enough, so long as the do not scare the horses.

            What has this old carthorse kicking in the traces, is when they not only insist that men really CAN become women or women really CAN become men, but insist that I must believe their bullshonet and that they really CAN change sex.

            However, when it comes to Men competing in Women’s Sports or when it comes to putting male sex offenders into women’s prisons simply because they claim that they are now women, I’m kicking the stable door down!

      2. The absolute bastards.

        Hey teacher leave those kids alone !
        All in all its just another brick in the wall.
        Pink Floyd.

      3. One begins to understand the emotion in anti-sbortionists that sees them firebombing, threatening and assaulting the practitioners when one reads of this woman’s barbaric actions. Hell, you aren’t allowed to dock a dog’s tail, what about cutting the tits off a girl? What kind of barbarity is that?
        I’m going to go and do the washing-up. I’m too furious to continue.

    3. Ummm… the UK is an authoritarian state. What choices are we given over the diktats it pushes on us that are detrimental to our way of life?

      Russian offers no such restriction. The pursuit of Left wing arrogance, greed and lust for tax makes us all poorer.

  4. Good morning all.
    A clear skied and frost Derbyshire this morning with -2°C in the yard. A much quieter start though the worst of the storm appears to have passed us by.
    It’s getting lighter with the moon setting opposite the house, visible through the trees behind the ex-pub, with the owls hooting and I caught a glimpse of what looked like a heron winging it’s way up towards the village.

  6. So as storms go Eu nice wasn’t a patch on the one in 87 or 91 but the problem was it happened during the daytime when people were up and about.

    1. In 1987, half the tiles on my back roof blew off. Yesterday, one of my fence posts ended up being a bit wobbly.

  7. Morning all.

    Share

    Landline phones that worked during Storm Eunice’s power cuts won’t work in future

    SIR – Yesterday in the midst of Storm Eunice the electricity went off. The mobile phone network was down, but the trusty landline stayed up.

    But this week I had an email from BT saying my connection to the telephone network would be terminated soon. Apparently this is part of a nationwide disconnection by 2025 of the Public Switched Telephone Network that has served us for over 100 years. BT says that all landlines will work through broadband instead.

    But in a power cut we won’t be able use the landline that we held on to for that eventuality. Has anyone thought this switch-off through?

    Ivor Coleman,

    Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

    SIR – In 1987 I was in a school hall supervising 500 terrified schoolgirls as sheet glass disintegrated, slates whizzed off the roof like Frisbees and a mature tree crushed my car.

    Forgive me if, having endured that “once in a lifetime” storm, I am rather complacent about Eunice, nasty as she was. The 1987 storm was nameless, as storms were. Their naming and the hyperbole heralding them are part of a climate hysteria which I deplore.

    Dorian Wood,

    Castle Cary, Somerset

    SIR – There is a changing debate over the harm that burning wood may do.

    Sitting in Cornwall I am suddenly surrounded by an abundance of timber, courtesy of Storm Eunice.

    With kiln-dried logs at £7 for a small bag, I fear I may not be able to resist profiting from nature’s bounty.

    Denis Kearney,

    Lostwithiel, Cornwall

      1. Yo Ol and good morning

        I detect a pun in name Ivor Coleman

        I’ve a Coalman are words that wil soon be banished from the English language, well ,i UK anyway

    2. Ah, that wonderful Green logic. Using energy to dry logs to save energy rather than drying naturally over time.

      1. My BTL Comment on his letter:-

        Robert Spowart
        1 HR AGO
        Message Actions
        I wish Denis Kearney luck as he clears out his fallen logs for the fire. He will not only benefit financially, but the hard work involved will see him getting fitter and losing weight!
        I do hope, however, he has sufficient sheltered space to stack and store the split logs whilst the season for at least a year!

        1. The beginning of spring / end of winter is the time to cut your trees, before the sap starts rising. They are at their dryest then, and after splitting and drying can be used the following winter.

          1. Some years ago, we had to quickly chop down an invasive walnut tree during the spring; the water/sap that gushed out of a relatively small tree was impressive.

      1. El fibre – or so we should hope.

        BT will love to throttle that though. An alternative is to get a 5g modem and a third party router?

        https://consumer.huawei.com/en/routers/5g-cpe-pro-2/

        It’s overkill, especially with the cost of mobile connectivity in this country (we are ripped off. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or working for the mobile companies) but it’s an option.

        The bit I don’t understand is why the connection uplink is only gigabit, and not 10. It’s just cheap.

    4. My kids don’t have landlines, saving money by having none or choosing broadband without one since one stopped being a requirement (eg £60 per year cheaper on BT), preferring to rely on their mobiles. We all have phone battery extender packs that mean we can ride out power cuts for days.

      Furthermore, most landline phones are now cordless and stop working in power cuts. You can buy a home UPS for £60 that’ll keep the digital landline kit working and charge mobile phones for a long time.

      The advantages of switching to all-digital far outweigh the negatives. Time to move into the 21st century.

      1. Our broadband (just over 2 mbs) is on a landline. It works off mains electricity and so we don’t have any service when there is a power cut. Power cuts are normal. So we also have a simple landline as this works from the exchange and is not affected by power cuts. When there is a power cut the electric company phone us on it to check if we are OK. We need mains power to charge our mobiles. (I will, from your post, check battery extender packs.)

        1. Hmm… I think it’s not the line that’s on the mains, but the router device itself.

          You can get little UPS plug sockets for that sort of thing? Heck, the last time the router here fell over the warqueen went berserk.

          1. Yes, the router. When there is power cut the router stops working and we lose that landline. So we got a direct exchange line.

      2. Dale, this sounds like something I ought to look into. Unfortunately I have no idea what a home UPS is and I really don’t understand your post. You say that most landline phones stop working in power cuts, but suggest that I spend £60 for a gizmo which keeps the digital landline kit working. Why would I want to move from my landline to a mobile like your children and then spend £60 to keep the landline kit working?!?!? Please explain.

          1. To be fair, Tom (good afternoon, btw), Dale may be out in the kitchen making a cup of tea. But I hope that he does reply and explain exactly what he is on about.

        2. Universal (sometimes ‘uninterrupted’) power supply – a glorified mains-connected battery pack that maintains a supply to your electrical appliance when the mains goes off.

          2. They’ve been around for years. They became very popular in the 80s with the great boom in the use of desktop PCs, particularly in smaller businesses. Power cuts meant corrupted data or operating systems so a few minutes to shut down properly and cleanly made them worth the expense.

          3. Ah, just like the secondary lighting system in cinemas which are constantly connected to the mains supply. When the mains goes off, there is enough charge in the battery-powered secondary lights to enable the customers safely to exit the building in light without falling down the stairs in the pitch black. Why couldn’t Dale have said that?

        3. I’m not sure on the £60 – I’ve a 400W APC unit and an IEC to normal plug thing for the home and support stuff (that books her classes, badminton, backs up the files, books a shopping slot) that in an emergency could be used to power a telephone.

    6. Why on earth would you buy logs dried in a kiln? Just wait a couple of years, they’ll have dried out by themselves.

    7. BT says that all landlines will work through broadband instead.

      No, this isn’t true.

      Decades ago the copper line ran from your house, to the box, and from the box to the exchange as a one to one ratio. That copper was powered slightly to receive the signal.

      Then BT replaced the bundle of copper wires and replaced it with one bit of fibre optic. The intent BT has is to replace all the copper with fibre (as Singapore did about 25 years ago). Phones should still work. The carrier signal will be provided by a form of UPS – as they are now.

      Will the connectors change? Will we ever truly get a genuine fibre link to our homes? I sincerely doubt it. BT are squeezing the absolute maximum out of an ageing technology that they practically ignore. The only maintenance they do is the absolute minimum.

      1. Once again, on this forum, Wibbles, we come across the strange 3 letter abbreviation UPS which, as far as I know stands for United Parcel Service.

        What might your translation of the otherwise gobbledegook be?

  8. How foolish we are to ignore our subterranean bounty.

    SIR – Jeremy Warner is wrong to say that Cuadrilla’s shale gas exploration wells in Lancashire “produced no burnable quantity of gas at all” (Business, February 16).

    Each of our two Lancashire gas exploration wells flowed very high-quality natural gas to surface from just a handful of fractures completed in the underlying shale rock. The limited number of fractures was due to the regulatory requirement to halt operations any time micro-seismicity induced by fracturing exceeded just 0.5 on the Richter scale. A study by Liverpool University has equated the impact of a 0.5 micro-seismic event to sitting down on an office chair.

    Just 10 per cent gas recovery from the Bowland shale could supply 50 years of current UK gas demand. To produce the same amount of energy as a single 10-acre shale gas site of 40 wells would require a wind farm some 1,500 times that size or a solar park nearly 1,000 times the size. Shale gas is by far the best option to minimise land use per energy produced.

    At current UK gas prices, the value of just 10 per cent of the in-place British resource would be approximately £3.3 trillion. The potential tax take from producing this could be close to £200 billion. Imported gas produces no tax, no jobs and higher carbon-dioxide emissions.

    Gas from the existing Cuadrilla wells could and should be flowing to local domestic consumers within 12 months of equipment remobilising to site.

    The case for shale gas is strong and fundamentally logical. The Government needs to lift the moratorium urgently.

    Francis Egan,

    Chief Executive Officer, Cuadrilla Resources Limited

    Manchester

    1. Shutting off the people’s access to abundant, relatively inexpensive sources of energy appears to be the aim of this gormless, green, and globalist government. In this instance it’s shale gas, next it will be that the small modular reactors are not safe, reliable, efficient etc. The £210 million ‘investment’ is peanuts compared to the potential worldwide earnings of this innovation in energy production. China will either steal the technology or our globalist sympathetic government will give it away to them. Does anything that the green lobby promotes make any sense for the people’s welfare?

    4. There’s a train line about 200 metres and some 50 houses from us. When it goes past we get such measurements.

      We – and the hundreds of homes much closer, along and either side of the railtrack haven’t had any problems.

      Get fracking.

      1. Heavy lorries using the Roman road outside my house probably cause more severe seismic events. Sometimes the whole house shakes!

  9. Morning again

    War on le wokisme

    SIR – The Académie française has its work cut out as it confronts efforts to accommodate le wokisme (“France is fighting a losing battle against the rise of Franglais”, Comment, February 17).

    When Le Robert dictionary recently added the gender-neutral pronouns iel / ielle / iels / ielles to its pages, Jean-Michel Blanquer, the minister for education, unreservedly supported François Jolivet, the MP who had voiced his criticism of l’idéologie woke. Mr Blanquer wrote: “L’écriture inclusive n’est pas l’avenir de la langue française” (inclusive writing is not the future of the French language).

    Will the English mount such a robust defence of their language against wokism?

    Dr Sarah Alyn Stacey,

    French Department, Trinity College, Dublin

    1. Those pronouns don’t look gender-neutral to me. They appear to be masculine and feminine singular and plural.

      1. I think you’re right.
        A male “it” and a female “it”, and male “its” and female “its”.

    2. Are you allowed to make assumptions that people are English? (Asking for a lexicographer friend.)

    3. The problem wokers have is that their very approac is Orwellian, a perversion of a language. I know they’re thick, but they need to be told that ‘they’ is a plural, not a singular reference.

      If they don’t know what they are, then they should be called ‘toddler’, as children have no concept of self before the age of 3 either. Immaturity and egotism are also characteristics of the very young as well.

      I get it, they feel rootless and don’t know who they are. They’re looking for an identity that suits their confusion. That’s called growing up. The problem these kids have is no one has told them no. No one has said no to their arrogance, no one has bounded their behaviour. They have done what they like, when they like, how they like.

    4. I fail to see how iel (il), ielle (elle), iels (ils) and ielles (elles) are gender neutral. surely gender neutral would have been something new (eg ull) and only one singular and one plural version (ull and ulls).

  10. Massive explosions rip through Russian separatist city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine hours after car bomb and mass evacuation of 700,000 civilians. 19 February 2021.

    Two new blasts have been heard in eastern Ukraine just hours after a car bomb saw the mass evacuation of 700,000 civilians from the region amid fears of a looming Russian attack in the country.

    The explosions, which have been ‘linked to a gas pipeline’, were heard in the Russian separatist city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, one of the main cities in Ukraine’s breakaway region of People’s Republic of Luhansk, according to reports.

    The latest blasts comes just hours after an explosion, which was claimed to be a car bomb, rocked Donetsk in what appeared to be the start of Putin’s long-awaited false flag operation.

    The only False Flags being waved here are by Biden and his Cronies. They have the experience and its graduated nature suggest careful provocation to elicit a response from the Russians; beside which no one blows up their own infrastructure for such a purpose!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10527897/Ukraine-crisis-Pro-Moscow-rebels-start-evacuating-civilians.html

    1. Plenty of examples of that happening, with, for example, Russia shelling a Russian village as an excuse to start the 1939 Russo-Finnish war and Hitler burning the Reichstag.

      I doubt very much that Putin cares about a few deaths or damage in Ukraine, even in the Russian-sponsored breakaway regions, as his record of causing conflict shows.

  11. Right I’m off downtown fellow Nottlers. If there’s a Nuclear Strike while I’m gone reserve me a place on tomorrow page!

  12. Morning, all Y’all.
    Still, bright moonlit night last night, fantastically bright. -10C this morning, and sunny. It’s beautiful over the snow!
    Hope y’all didn’t get blown away yesterday, either by the wind or the fear-factor – the press (again! Spit!) talking up the storm, people voluntarily locking themselves down and yet … not so bad after all. Project Fear is alive & well, it seems.

  13. Good morning, all. Gale? What gale? Very bright moon all night. Sunny and a bit breezy.

    Any news?

    Oh, I see that three people died in the storm. Covid-related, no doubt. Meanwhile 1,400 people just died of death.

          1. Heaven must be very crowded and judging by some who claim to have gone before us……not a very nice place to be. I’ll give it a swerve. But don’t get cross 🤭

          2. Morning! Possibly Hell is even more crowded, or maybe the Buddhists are right and human souls are recycled. Hitler came back as a Pretty Boy.

          3. Man and wife discussing reincarnation . Wife says “I’d like to come back as a pig” Husband replied “You haven’t quite grasped the subject have you?”

  14. BUGGER! Just had phone call from Stepson who was supposedly sectioned on Thursday! He’s at a neighbour’s flat on, he claims, weekend leave from the hospital.
    Have tried phoning hospital, but no one answering. Looks like my plans for a weekend in the “garden” adding to the Lower Wall have just been kicked into touch.

      2. It was only because the hospital phoned MB on Thursday that he discovered he had an appointment yesterday.
        Letter still hasn’t arrived.

        1. I received a text from the NHS titled ‘MESSAGE’.

          It asked me to tap through the link to see what is was. My phone is dumb not smart so i couldn’t do it.

          I wrote the link out and googled it.

          It took me to an NHS website where i was able to access the ‘MESSAGE’.

          It was a letter in letter format that advised me of a telephone appointment on the 21st February.

          The actual letter arrived the next day.

    5. Clucking Bell. I am so sorry for you, BoB.
      All I can suggest is that you just keep ringing the hospital. Do you have contact details for his psychiatrist? Or even the secretary.
      May I mention the words social worker?

      1. Managed to phone the hospital up and the nurse said they were about to look for him!

        Drove into Derby, picked him up after letting see the progress on his bathroom, still not finished, and then drove him to the hospital.
        Much relief all round.

  16. Morning all. 😃
    Well that’s over for the time being, but what happened to my delivery I was expecting the replacement drive belt for our tumble dryer as promised. No post at all but I did see a lady dropping those plastic charity bags for surplus clothing. She braved the wind and rain. But I suspect she didn’t have a union boss wagging fingers and fists at her.
    And most of the day we had power cuts in our area. They actually started on Thursday evening. No fore warning or explanation. And not due to the storm.
    Strange as it may sound when the electricity was switched back on at around 15:20 I actually managed to bake the best sourdough loaf of my 6 years of bread making, it almost filled the oven. 🤗🤩

    1. I do like sourdough bread! heavy and moist and tasty! No added sugar, so diet-freindly, too.
      Maybe you had a forced opportunity to leave it to prove longer than usual?

      1. I simply can’t get on with sourdough. I have tried to make it – total disaster every time!

      2. Previously I found there is a very fine line between success and failure. It’s not easy to get the timing right many efforts have looked okay but have collapsed when transferring from proving basket to oven.
        You’re probably right, but I think it still could have had an extra half an hour to rise. But it’s the best sofar and very tasty Obs. Especially surrounding bacon 🥓 and eggs 🥚 😋 in a breakfast sandwich 🥪

        1. Caroline makes a gluten-free sourdough bread which takes a long time to rise which she says is delicious. Most gluten-free bread is disgusting but the gluten-free cakes that my lovely wife bakes are very good indeed.

          1. You are both making me very very hungry. I’m off to lunch in half an hour and i can’t wait ! Not had any breakfast in anticipation.

    2. On Wednesday night I was late going to bed just after 11pm. I had struggled up the stairs twice as I had forgotten my glasses . Just as I got back to the top of the stairs for a second time the door bell rang followed by a knock on the door. I struggled down to the door with some apprehension. When I opened the door I was confronted by a soaking wet man with a black bag. I thought he might be looking for a bed for the night. He produced a package from his bag and pointed to the label on a pizza parcel which had my house’s code but also the name of another street in town. I couldn’t help the poor soul but felt sorry for him as I couldn’t direct him to the proper address.

  17. Good Moaning.
    I would sooooooo like to be surprised, but this cynical old bat is past being shocked by any manifestation of human greed and stupidity. DM article about the Capt. Tom charity.

    “Ms Ingram-Moore was appointed as a trustee of the charity on February 1, 2021, but resigned on March 15, with her husband Colin becoming a trustee on the same date, a position he still holds, according to reports.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10528535/Charity-set-Captain-Sir-Tom-Moores-tried-appoint-daughter-CEO-150-000.html

    1. Call me cynical, but I thought there was something fishy about the whole thing from the word go..

      1. The whole thing was a cynical exploitation of the sentimental gullibility of decent but stupid people.

        The same hype was used at the time of the death of the Princess of Wales. I do not like the Prince of Wales – he is a bumbling oaf and always has been – but his first wife was the first to commit adultery and she had several lovers while he only had one – his affair with his future wife and the love of his life whom he was not allowed to marry when he should have done so.

        I must say if a daughter of mine married a man as dull and hubristic as the Prince of Wales I would worry for her happiness and I certainly would have feared for my sons had ‘Lady Di’ been my daughter-in-law!

        But the great unthinking masses are as easily convinced that Diana was a beacon of wronged innocence as they are prepared to accept the bogus propaganda spewed out by the PTB about Covid and global warming.

      2. Snap. There have been too many of these pop-up charities in response to a specific event.
        £millions raised and then it goes very quiet.

  18. Heavy rainfall and sleet yesterday afternoon. This morning is bright and clear. No sign of snow. We seem to have missed both storms, pretty much. Scotland is a country of mini- and micro- climates.

    2. I remember wonderful early summers on the Moray coast. Sun, warm, and the sea like liquid nitrogen…

  20. ‘Morning, Peeps. Rather late on parade today following a clear-up after storm Eu. Armageddon! (according to those whimps in the media) I think I am grateful for my survival.

    SIR – Under the Freedom of Information Act I asked how much it had cost to send a Christmas card from Scotland’s First Minister to everyone at high risk of contracting Covid-19. The answer was £182,549.07, excluding VAT.

    It had been explained that the purpose of the card was to “provide urgent public safety advice around meeting others over the festive period”. The advice in the card was in fact just the usual stuff, said many times before, with no relevance to omicron in particular.

    It seemed another attempt by the First Minister to promote herself and the SNP. What a waste of our money.

    Dr J R Drummond
    Cellardyke, Fife

    Good work Dr D, but have you not already realised that the Scottish Nasty Party wastes money? It’s what they do.
    Besides, a socialist paradise don’t come cheap you know!

  21. Good morning to all! Nice day here in West Sussex. Damage from yesterday was one greenhouse, a lean two that I had built against my bedroom window so I could look into it and enjoy the plants, panel blown out, the roof window blown out and the door blown off. Not a good thing, I hope it can be repaired. Brand new too so no plants in it yet. Next door neighbour has two trees down, one hit a window, but fortunately no real damage. And the mobile phone network here isn’t working, which I don’t exactly count as dreadful, bloody things!

    Looking at the Telegraph, disgracefully there is not a word of what is happening in Canada with Trudy the dictator. So here is a link to Fox News where it is, rightfully, headline news and correctly called a “tyrannical crackdown.”
    https://www.foxnews.com/

    1. Trudy…Eunice…that’s a couple of bitches we really could do without.

      Hope your lean-to is repairable.

  23. Curling final has just finished on BBC. GB lost. Commentator was Steve Cram assisted by Rhona Martin a former gold medal winner. Steve Cram, you may remember, used to be a runner. He then became a commentator, despite his poor diction and lack of knowledge, empathy and personality. I saw him when he was commentating at the Sydney Olympics. He arrived late at the studio and appeared to be inebriated. His speech seemed to confirm that impression.
    Now he is employed by the BBC to commentate on a sport of which he knows nothing.
    This happens in the BBC. The BBC fired Hugh Porter as cycling commentator. Mr Porter knew and understood everything about cycling, and could convey the nuances clearly to his listeners. The BBC hired the Ubiquitous Dyke to cover cycling, with Chris Hoy to assist. It was ludicrous. The UD would ask Chris a question and she would then repeat the answer. He was more patient with the idiot person than I could ever have been.
    Oh, and Mr Porter was fired for being too old.

    1. Do you remember that the late A.A.Gill who was once married to the EU fanatic Amber Rudd caused deep offence when he described this particular journalist as The Dyke on a Bike.?

    2. I saw a hilarious video this morning of a mounted police section sliding a full bucket of water down the corridor between stables and using stable brooms like curling brushes. It slid down the corridor until it reached a police horse who then took a drink out of it.

  24. We are still in the EU in France so in Brittany we have not been hit by the storm so it’s EU – NICE. But for many of you in the UK it has, since Brexit, been clear that it is EU – NASTY.

    1. The Left/Right paradigm dates from the French Revolution.
      Time it was put down; preferably not humanely.

        1. Good morning, Bill

          Some of your best friends are French!

          Your attitude reminds me of my father who always said that he abominated the Irish but his very best friends were Irishmen.

      2. What do you call them then? Communists? Fascists? Thugs? Illiberal scum? ‘The ‘Conservative’ party’?

        The ideology of the Left has always been adopted by power crazed psychotics who want to control other people. They call themselves liberals, progressives, think themselves kind when really they’re just labelling, abusive, destructive authoritarian fascists.

    2. People think that such evil things only happen in ‘nasty’ countries. But really, all it takes is a thug drunk on power.

    3. 1967 – 1968 my second year at university. I spent the summer vac working on an old rig in the North Sea which gave me enough money to buy this. (stock photo of the same model 1958 MGA 1500 Old English White Paintwork)
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/10407819ac9e63b4ede30a31cf5aab3f1f4ecc8363c4da7941d3d6a28e2879b4.jpg

      I then drove down to the South of Spain with the then girlfriend who, thank God, decided not to marry me and she married a chap who became the CEO of a leading international computer company and a multi-millionaire so everyone was happy!

      2. It’s still registered with the DVLA Richard I know some one who has one, i’ll try to find out the reg.

        Vehicle Details
        Vehicle make MG
        Date of first registration July 2015
        Year of manufacture 1959
        Cylinder capacity 1500 cc
        CO₂ emissions 0 g/km
        Fuel type PETROL
        Euro status Not available
        Real Driving Emissions (RDE) Not available
        Export marker No
        Vehicle status SORN
        Vehicle colour WHITE
        Vehicle type approval Not available
        Wheelplan 2 AXLE RIGID BODY
        Revenue weight Not available
        Date of last V5C (logbook) issued 20 May 2021

          1. Unfortunately no longer exists

            Vehicle details could not be found
            You searched for PJG122

            My old MG BGT is still around
            Vehicle Details
            Vehicle make MG
            Date of first registration March 1970
            Year of manufacture 1970
            Cylinder capacity 1798 cc
            CO₂ emissions Not available
            Fuel type PETROL
            Euro status Not available
            Real Driving Emissions (RDE) Not available
            Export marker No
            Vehicle status Taxed
            Vehicle colour ORANGE
            Vehicle type approval Not available
            Wheelplan 2 AXLE RIGID BODY
            Revenue weight Not available
            Date of last V5C (logbook) issued 14 August 2012

    4. Any year before the accursed year when Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister and set about wrecking Britain would do.

      1. Oh I don’t know – the Major years weren’t good either. Not as bad as was to come, agreed, but the foundations were being built.

  33. The parable of passing by on the other side is being played out all around us at the moment in the homes of our nation. “I can’t do anything about it so I won’t look.” And so the crossing of the road to avoid the sight of a catastrophe is made. No matter for some that the evidence is now so overwhelming that mass murder has been ,and is, taking place, and that a small group of wicked people are trying to execute on a long-planned effort to enslave or liquidate the rest of us.

    No, it is not business as usual. The longer our people take to wake up and get out in the street to exercise their God-given rights to free expression and assembly the harder it will become though we shall eventually prevail. At the present rate that may not be in my lifetime. Yesterday saw an elderly lady in a wheelchair crushed by police horses in Ottowa and she died. The police position was that she was on a bicycle! It is a bloody vignette that sums up the character of the evil we face.

    In late 2020 Robert Kennedy Jnr recorded a message that applies absolutely today. The man is one of the great Americans, and hated by the legacy media for it. His book “The Real Anthony Fauci” dissects the whole tower of corruption and despite efforts to suppress it has been 4 months a bestseller. Blue Tara has reposted a link to the speech here:

    https://www.tarableu.com/the-most-important-battle-in-history/

  34. Nicked

    Lord Frost in today’s DT:

    “
    Adopting the Davos fallacy is to disempower and ultimately dismantle
    ourselves as a country. It is the way of the globalisers – those who
    were quite happy to offshore business to China, who favour unlimited
    migration, who don’t think that national identity and history much
    matter, and who think economic and political judgments are better made
    by international institutions than by national democracies. In a classic
    case of Orwell’s “transferred nationalism”, some make up for the
    psychological void left by their lack of belief in national identity by a
    fixation with identity politics – an obsession which, if taken to
    extremes, risks destroying the cohesion and sense of fairness that
    democracies need to survive.”

    1. I notice that he has been coming out with a lot of genuine Conservative remarks lately. I wonder if he has ambitions to be PM?

        1. I’ve always considered that hope was in the box the suggestion that it was the worst sin.

          That hope didn’t escape is a paradox – with no hope there is only certainty, for good or ill.

  35. Your/You’re……

    A car full of Irish nuns is sitting at a traffic light in downtown Dublin,
    when a bunch of rowdy drunks pull up alongside of them.

    “Hey, show us yer tits, ya bloody penguins!” shouts one of the drunks.

    Quite shocked, Mother Superior turns to Sister Mary Immaculata and says, “I
    don’t think they know who we are; show them your cross.”

    Sister Mary Immaculata rolls down her window and shouts, “Piss off, ya fookin’
    little wankers, before I come over there and rip yer balls off!”

    Sister Mary Immaculata then rolls up her window, looks back at Mother
    Superior, quite innocently, and asks, “Did that sound cross enough.

    2. Funny……..like the one where the tuns were driving along on dark road and a gremlin lands on the bonnet of their car and blocks the view the MS in the back shouts to the sister in the passenger seat show him your cross sister, show him your cross ! ………..she opens the window and shouts fuck off yer humpty backed ugly little devil

    1. Lothian police did something similar to a drunk bloke many years ago, I was told*. It was winter and it was cold. He was put out of the car near Ratho. His body was found a couple of days later. No one was ever charged.
      * Might just be a rumour.

      1. According to Brian Peckford, the last living member of the committee that wrote the Canadian Constitution. Trudeau invoking emergency powers is illegal. I would assume Mr Peckford should know better than anyone else in Canada. It would explain why the police are dumping people rather than charging them if what the above individual says, is true. And if Mr Peckford is correct, I assume that things will get very nasty for Trudeau once all this gets to the courts. Trudeau is essentially a dictator that has seized power illegally. I hope he ends up in jail.

        1. ‘I hope he ends up in jail.’
          Ah, he’d be constantly dropping the soap in the shower wing.

  37. At 9.15 I looked at the rain forecast – it was due to start at 11.30.

    I did a Robert and went out straightaway – filled and unloaded ten barrow loads of logs. Each load = 1 cwt. Thus ½ ton.lifted twice! Two years ago I could not have done on load without a break. I feel rather chuffed.

    3. Well done!
      The weather here has turned very wet, but at least it’s only rain and not the horrible wet snow of an hour & a half ago.

  38. A Clear Definition of Politics

    A Russian Jew named Jacob was finally allowed to emigrate to Israel.

    At the Moscow airport, a customs inspector found a statue of Lenin in his luggage and asked, “What is this?”

    Jacob replied, “Wrong question, comrade. You should have asked, ‘Who is this?.’ This is Comrade Lenin. He laid the foundations of Socialism and created the future prosperity of the Russian people. I am taking it with me as a memory of our dear hero.”

    The Russian customs official sent him on his way.

    At Tel Aviv airport, the Israeli customs official also asked, “What is this? “Wrong question, sir. You should be asking ‘Who is this?’, This, my friend, is Lenin, the bastard who caused me, a Jew, to leave Russia. I take this statue as a reminder to curse him every day.”

    The Israeli official sent him on his way.

    When he settled in his new home, Jacob placed the statue on a table.

    The following evening, he invited friends and relatives to dinner.

    Spotting the statue, one of his cousins asked, “Who is this?.”

    Jacob replied, “Wrong question. You should have asked, ‘What is this?.’ This is five kilograms of solid gold that I managed to bring with me from Russia without having to pay any customs duty or tax.”

    The Moral: “Politics is when you can tell the same shit in different ways to fool different people and still come out smelling like a rose.

    2. GOLD LENIN

      It can’t have been a very big bust of Lenin, unless it was hollow (though he did say it was SOLID gold). Gold has a density of 19.3 grams per millilitre, so a 2.51 inch cube of gold weighs 5 kilograms.

      In Bond films you see people picking up quite large bars of gold and even putting them in suitcases. A maximum airline carry-on (holiday) suitcase that you can put in the overhead lockers measures 56 x 45 x 25 cm and holds 63 litres. Fill it with gold bars and it weighs 1.216 metric tonnes. Don’t try it.

      P.S. at today’s bullion price that suitcase-full would cost you £54,587,417.

  39. ‘Liberals’ are conspicuously silent on Canada’s descent into tyranny

    The actions of the Canadian PM and his cheerleaders towards the truckers’ convoy constitute a threat to democracy

    ELLA WHELAN • 18 February 2022 • 4:00pm

    The F word gets thrown around a lot these days. Right-wing politicians get milkshaked for being “fascists” and opponents of critical-race theory are said to be enabling fascism by questioning white privilege – you’re definitely a fascist if you think biological sex is real.

    When it comes to Trump, commentators are more liberal with the F-word than a market full of fish wives. After the January Capital Riots last year, one columnist wondered, “if Trump looks like a fascist and acts like a fascist, then maybe he is one”.

    But as real, material authoritarianism raises its head in Canada, many of those same laptop bombardiers keen to call out fascism wherever they see it seem conspicuously silent. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau might not exactly be Mussolini, but his decision to invoke the Emergencies Act against protesters in the nation’s capital is a watershed moment. With these new powers, Trudeau is effectively able to wage war on thousands of truckers and supporters camped out in Ottawa.

    Deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland smiled and chuckled as she told reporters that the law change allowed banks to freeze the accounts of protesters without any need for a court order, adding that vehicle insurance for anyone involved in the convoy could also be suspended. The interim police chief in Ottawa told a press conference last night that the police were working with social services to “remove” children from the area – as many of the truckers are accompanied by their families (pictures of trucker-installed bouncy castles and play areas were circulating over the weekend).

    In short, the Canadian government has granted itself the power to strip citizens of their money, their transport and their kids. Several organisers have been arrested, despite the fact that bar a few fringe incidents, the vast majority of the thousands-strong convoy has maintained a peaceful (if disruptive) approach to getting their voices heard.

    Just imagine the uproar that would ensue if Trump had taken children from Black Lives Matters protesters who took to the streets after the murder of George Floyd, or Boris Johnson had used the banks to starve out the costumed climate-changer obsessives who took over Trafalgar Square before the pandemic. You don’t even have to imagine it – when visiting Kenosha amid the riots and protests of 2020, Trump said “these are not acts of peaceful protest but really domestic terror”.

    In response, CNN ran analysis which argued that Trump’s naming of protesters who disagree with him as terrorists “puts him in the company of the world’s autocrats”. The T-word might not have spilled out of Trudeau’s mouth just yet, but his use of the Emergencies Act (last invoked by his father 50 years ago to combat a real terrorist threat) allows his government to broaden the Terrorist Financing Act, shutting down the fundraising sites used by the truckers’ “Freedom Convoy”.

    But while the silence surrounding Trudeau’s new measures is startling, his reach for such spectacularly authoritarian measures is no surprise. Trudeau’s political career has been defined by superficial and self-serving PR moves. From taking the knee and whipping himself in public to atone for his past sins of blackface to stumbling over the latest LGBTQ2 acronym to prove his commitment to gender ideology, the thing that Trudeau cares most about is his popularity within international bourgeois identity politics.

    Having gained online applause for labelling the truckers guilty of “antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia”, Trudeau is attempting to turn a populist revolt against vaccine mandates, endangered livelihoods and coronavirus regulations into a Punch-and-Judy culture war between the enlightened prime minister and a bigoted rabble who should know better.

    Many of those on the Freedom Convoy are truckers who worked throughout the pandemic – as it happens, many are vaccinated and argue that they followed restrictions at the time – who continued to cart around the goods and resources that Canadian society needed to stay afloat. Thanks to isolation and social distancing rules, many faced a lonely journey without rest stops or access to amenities that make the work of trucking bearable. Conversely many of those now labelling them “fascist” had the luxury of sitting at home waiting for their deliveries to arrive.

    Like the gilets-jaunes’ challenge to French green taxes and energy prices, or Brexit disrupting the status quo for the European elite, the trucker protest is making all the right people uncomfortable. No stranger to the F-word, Paul Mason’s latest article not only described the truckers as “21st-century fascism”, but challenged the Canadian government to “arm itself”. Whether or not you agree with the truckers’ aims, the hysterical response from Trudeau and his so-called liberal cheerleaders is the real threat to democracy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/18/liberals-conspicuously-silent-canadas-descent-tyranny/

        1. Not ONE of them are! The progressive force us backward. The liberals want oppression.

          It’s like the people’s democratic republic states. They’re all communist dictatorships. All Lefties are vile, spiteful, broken, twisted psychopaths.

      3. Funny that they call them ‘tools’, not powers. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we seek to deceive.

    2. I know a couple of young Canadian families (anglo-canadians). One cannot return to Canada because she/he/they would be locked up; no jabs and no intention of being jabbified.
      Half of the other family actively wants to return. Yup, slightly on the left and fully invaccinated, I mean doctrinated.

    3. The behaviour of Führer Trudeau and the want-to-be despots in Australia and New Zealand presages what is planned for the UK and Europe. Johnson has, for the moment, backed off but the intention from the globalists is clear even though they have been rumbled. It is the exposure of their evil intent that appears to be causing the hardening of their attempts of control. Fearful of the repercussions when they fail the globalists are becoming more violent and it looks as if bloodshed is not very far off. If the gloves come off everything is on the table and the likes of Trudeau et al. are doomed.

    3. Inevitable, once men were allowed to pretend to be women.
      I feel bad for the real women who worked so hard for a very long time to be good in their sport, for someone whose body was built with testosterone to take the medals.

    9. Thank goodness my interest is horse sports. The horses are mares, horses (stallions) or geldings and the jockeys participate on equal terms, whether male or female (except in France where female jockeys get a weight allowance, like mares).

    1. Picture……..take that, that and that……..you nasty right wing terrorist and provocateur.

      Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose………….Janice Joplin

    2. A few unconfirmed comments about that in some news sources.

      If true, what on earth was some little old lady doing getting mixed up in that lot? Any video I have seen of the horses had them right in the thick of the action, forcing a separate between police front line and the protesters. There is no way that anyone not involved should have been there.

      1. Perhaps she was on her way home – not too quickly, obviously, and got caught up.
        Or, maybe she wanted to demonstrate her support for Canadian democracy, just never expected that the fascists would set horses and police on the peaceful protesters?

      2. “Forcing a separate between police front line and the protesters”? Which, from the video I watched, was simply occupied (the separated space) was immediately occupied by the police advancing. So, in effect, the protestors were being pushed back by the police using horses.

        1. Exactly what I was going to write. The crowd wasn’t threatening in any way. The police just went in to bully them.

          Where are the liberals protesting the implied ageist discrimination? Or are only young stone and bottle throwing liberals allowed to protest?

      3. I understood, Richard that she was in a wheel-chair but the police say she was on a bicycle (or was that a unicycle).

        Police stories? Bah1

      1. Isn’t that the way it always is. Little story. I was born in Germany in 1948. Both my parents were members of the British army of occupation so I was looked after about 90% or so of the time by a German lady who was also our housekeeper. The result was I spoke German before I spoke English up to the age of 6, which is when we left Germany for Africa. Now, sadly, I don’t speak a word of the language but an odd thing. I would often dream in German until I was about 14, wake up and not have a clue what the dream was about. Unfortunately there was no translator in my dreams! I still remember her, Frau Laubie (spelling?). She was so distraught when we left she kidnapped me because she thought of me as her child.

    3. Johnson will probably take the same path if he looks like being defenestrated. The Ukraine business will give him added cover.

    5. Where is the Governor General to prorogue that Parliament as they did in Australia?

      FFS just do it – NOW!

      1. Selected by Trudeau, absolutely no chance that she will act against her paymaster.

        Trudeau may be abhorant but he has the press, judiciary and anyone else who could effect change behind him.

        And now there are rumours that the deputy pm wants to make emergency measures permanent.

        Does anyone know if north Korea is accepting asylum applications?

        1. My understanding, is, Richard that, as the Monarch’s representative, he/she is selected and sent by the Monarch.

  43. Well, back from Derby after delivering Stepson back to Hospital, and hasn’t the weather changed!
    Heavy sleet and it’s bloody freezing outside, so I wouldn’t have got much done up the “garden” anyway!
    Just going to have a mug of tea and and a bite to eat.

  44. Vladimir Putin has decided to attack Ukraine, says Joe Biden
    Blast in separatist-held city fuels fear Russia is plotting war pretext
    Charles Moore: West has forgotten why we don’t let enemies win
    Putin steels Russia for tough Western sanctions
    Sophia Gaston: Putin’s Ukraine gamble is beginning to backfire
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/02/19/russia-invade-ukraine-invasion-news-latest-putin-nato/

    I remember that soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the claimed end of the Cold War the journalists and PTB in the West were joyously talking about:

    THE PEACE DIVIDEND

    This being the money which we would no longer need to spend on weapons and armies and which we could spend on other things instead!

    I was deeply cynical at the time and I don’t think events have proved my cynicism to have been very wrong.

    1. I’ve not been able to find the Lord Dannatt interview on BBC news last week, It was with Victoria Derbyshire i think it was Wednesday morning it seems to have been wiped from the system.
      He stated that whilst there is any form of Border dispute with a neighbour, the country concerned would not be allowed to became a member of NATO. Which of course rules out Ukraine whilst Vlad has his troops lined up.

    2. But there has been a massive peace dividend from military expenditure’s being far lower both in absolute terms and as a proportion of GDP. And that’s even with the massive waste of blood and treasure on adventures such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

      The stupidity was in assuming that Russia would not recover to be a threat and that other threats, notably China, wouldn’t arise. However things are different now. When the USSR collapsed our armed forces, of which I was then a part, were dedicated to protecting the U.K., Europe and our narrow interests abroad, all areas where we could easily define what we and others had to and would do. Now, the threats, notably from China, are too vague, far away or overwhelming yet our former allies are split and mostly unreliable.

      Whatever the military concerns, that peace dividend has been squandered on social government spending rather than paying off our debts and making our country economically competitive. Even worse, because once given public spending is almost impossible to rein back – not even Margaret Thatcher could do that – so ramping defence spending back up is almost impossible without a disaster first occurring.

        1. One can’t help but think that some of our former “allies” were more scroungers than anything. E.g. France has never actually given us anything or helped us, anywhere. In fact, just the opposite. Yet France was the first to bleat that we were not doing enough for them, while having a Vichy government…the “gall” of the French as a political country is unbelievable!

          1. I love France the country and a lot of the people are superb. But their hierarchy have a serious problem.
            On a visit to the Houses of Lords and commons a few years ago. We were told by the good humoured guide that when De Gaul was about to visit he refused to walk through the adjoining gallery because of the huge paintings on display depicting English victory over the French.

          2. Sorry – but de Gaulle was a cowardly, hypocritical liar. With a huge pomme frite on his shoulder.

          4. As have been many French leaders.
            Apparently they ushered him through a side entrance.
            The hooks are still in the wall of gallery where they were going to hang covers across the paintings.

        2. One can’t help but think that some of our former “allies” were more scroungers than anything. E.g. France has never actually given us anything or helped us, anywhere. In fact, just the opposite. Yet France was the first to bleat that we were not doing enough for them, while having the Vichy government…the “gall” of the French as a political country is unbelievable!

        3. The Brussels mafia worked a flanker on us all with the help of Heath. It makes you wonder what information and facts they actually had on him.

          3. I meant that his salary would not have been enough to buy him what he owned. Money from “interested parties” in the EU (or Common Market as it was called then).

    3. Of course West has forgotten why we don’t let enemies win – we have been overtaken by the Woke.

  45. And the sleet has turned into big, wet, horrible slushy snowflakes. Not nice at all.
    I think the fire will be lit early today.

        1. Lunch was King Scallops and a bottle of Sauvignon blanc. Heaven. Can’t wait til dinner time.

          *nods to Grizz. :@)

  50. Breaking story in the DM

    Jeffrey Epstein’s friend Jean-Luc Brunel in prison ‘suicide’: French modeling agent whom Virginia Roberts accused of procuring women for financier is dead after ‘hanging’
    Jean-Luc Brunel, 74, was found hanging in his cell in La Santé, Paris, at 1am during a night time check in
    The fashion agent was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport in December 2020 while trying to fly to Senegal
    He was suspected of being a member of infamous financier Jeffrey Epstein’s global underage sex ring
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10530247/Jeffrey-Epsteins-friend-Jean-Luc-Brunel-prison-suicide.html

    L’ Odeur de Rat

    I wonder if the man from the Pru has decided not to visit Ms Maxwell after all in order to try and sell her some more life assurance.

  51. Now St Paul’s Cathedral is joining in… There really is no hope.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/18/will-woke-crowd-address-history-slavery-africa/

    In its rush to appease cancel culture, St Paul’s Cathedral is turning a blind eye to one of history’s most infamous slave states

    Britain’s statue wars have reached St Paul’s Cathedral. A new artwork, has been unveiled this week in its crypt to mark the 125th anniversary of the fall of the Kingdom of Benin. Still Standing by Nigerian born artist Victor Ehikhamenor is a mixed media representation of Oba Ovonramwen, the ruler of the Kingdom of Benin at the time of its conquest by Britain in 1897. The object, a nearly 4 meter high tapestry or wall hanging made using rosary beads and Benin bronze ornaments, is meant to contextualise a brass memorial panel in the crypt to Admiral Sir Harry Holdsworth Rawson, who led the 1897 expedition.

    Why does the Admiral’s memorial brass apparently need contextualisation? In January 1897 James Phillips, Acting Consul General of the British territory of the Niger Coast Protectorate, led a party of nine white colonial officials and 250 or so African porters to the Kingdom of Benin. They were ambushed. Four of the colonialists, including Phillips, were killed on 6 January and a further three either died on that day or subsequent to being taken prisoner. Many African porters were killed.

    In retaliation the British launched a punitive expedition against the Kingdom of Benin led by Admiral Sir Harry Holdsworth Rawson. British forces captured Benin City and the palace of the Oba – or King – of Benin on 18 February 1897 and with it the territory of the Kingdom was incorporated into the British colony that would become Nigeria. The Oba’s palace and other ceremonial buildings were richly adorned with ornate ivory carvings and bronzes predominantly dating from the sixteenth century onwards. These were taken, along with a huge quantity of uncarved ivory, by the British forces with the justification that the sale of these items would defray the costs of the expedition. In truth, many of the looted items ended in the private possession of the British officers leading the expedition.

    The “return” of the looted items, many of which are now in European and American museums not least the Pitt Rivers, has become a cause celebre for progressive opinion. A $100 million project to build a museum in Benin City in Nigeria to house “returned” objects is now underway.

    Of course, the Benin raid clearly would not pass muster today. It is undeniable that many of those involved in the raid enriched themselves with it. But if we are to judge historical figures by contemporary standards this should also apply to the Oba of Benin.

    The Kingdom of Benin, right up to its downfall in 1897, held slaves and practiced human sacrifice. It grew rich on the back of the Atlantic slave trade. Its forces captured other Africans and sold them to European slave traders. As Professor Dan Hicks, who commissioned and curated the work now being displayed in St Paul’s acknowledges in his book The Brutish Museums: “The Kingdom grew in power and scope during its involvement in European and transatlantic trade from the 16th century, at first with Portuguese traders, and later British and French – central among which was the slave trade”.

    There is some debate as to the relative importance of the slave trade versus the trade in ivory – which is not exactly seen today as a noble undertaking either. What is clear is that slaving was at least as important to the rise of Benin than it was to the rise of Britain, and very probably considerably more so. Oba Ovonramwen was at the pinnacle of the Kingdom of Benin’s pyramid of exploitation. If it is inappropriate to commemorate Admiral Sir Harry Holdsworth Rawson in St Paul’s crypt without contextualisation, should the same not apply to the Oba?

    The Church of England has been wanting to make its amends for the 1897 Benin raid for quite a while. It had been “in discussions” with Nigeria to return two Benin busts in its possession. The trouble is that these were not looted in 1897, indeed they were not created until the early 1980s. The objects in question were a gift from the University of Nigeria to then Archbishop Robert Runcie and were then freshly minted. With the new installation in St Paul’s crypt perhaps the Anglican church has found a way to make good for a wrong it did not perpetrate and clear itself of moral taint.

    2. A friend of mine, Mike, who, as I did, used to teach in a small public school in the West of England, was the leading GB javelin thrower though, to his chagrin, he never went to the Olympics. But in order to be able to afford to compete he joined the RN as they were keen for the officers to have a high profile and paid them their salaries while they went to various competitions as amateurs. Mike is one of those annoying people who is brilliant at everything he touches and is the kindest most amusing and generous person you would ever meet.

      He has a Ph.D in Chemistry and he is an excellent guitar player. Indeed, his athletics coach asked him if he could give his son a place in his pop group and Mike did so to oblige him but this did not work out very well because this chap ponced about on stage and sang off key so finally Mike had to tell his coach: “I’m sorry Mr Jagger, but we can’t keep your son in the band.” But this did not damage their friendship and indeed the sacked singer went on to perform in another band but the group’s guitarist at the time, Brian Jones, was too stoned to play at a recoding session and so Mike was called in as a session musician and played on one of the Rolling Stones’s very early recordings.

      If there is any point to this rambling post it is that Mike is not impressed with how sport has developed since his day and I attach a couple of jokes which he e-mailed to me yesterday:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e11718089ca6d1bbe89bf7a9df7da4ccd94e17c5a6e54eca007658ba9830c3e4.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b24aa219fd72b74a9ed4e5b530a83b831ee12714bd981d2785fae0480b33e2ec.jpg

          1. Rastus, I first heard that when I was 11, and it took me a year to ‘get’ the joke! Soooo naive!

  53. Some Groaners

    Canadians are Americans with no Disneyland

    Belgium is a country invented by the British to annoy the French
    Charles de Gaulle

  54. From John Redwood.

    Posted: 18 Feb 2022 09:07 PM PST

    We
    were always told during our time in the EU by its UK advocates that Tax
    was a reserved matter which stayed under UK control. This was one of
    many untruths as proponents of the EU sought to play down the extent of
    the power transferred instead of arguing for a vision of a united Europe
    where enough power did rest with the centre to allow EU government. The
    EU required us to legislate for VAT, and set requirements on which
    items must be taxed and on minimum rates. It started to impose a number
    of new environmental taxes . It controlled customs duties. It used court
    decisions to circumscribe company taxation.

    The first task must
    be to re-establish full control over our tax policy, and to make some
    tax changes that are desirable in themselves and important to show that
    we have regained control. This government that wishes to be green should
    take VAT off insulation materials, draught excluder, boiler controls,
    solar panels and other green goods. Stopped from doing so by the EU,
    what is now stopping them? It would be good to remove VAT from domestic
    fuel all the time the price is so high, to assist with the cost of
    living crisis.

    The government should review rules relating to
    Corporation tax that have been changed by European Court judgements, and
    reinstate the tax base Parliament thought it had legislated.

    The
    new Freeports should be given a better offer over Business rates. A
    Freeport should be created for Northern Ireland. There the Corporation
    Tax rate should be aligned with the Republic of Ireland at 15% to
    attract more investment to the Province.

    The Chancellor should
    review again the economic policy framework. The modifications to the
    Maastricht debt and deficit controls still leave in place versions of
    the old debt and deficit rules. These are leading to bad policy to hike
    the tax rates of NI and Corporation Tax. Instead we need to build the
    inflation target given to the Bank into the policy requirement of the
    Treasury, to engage them when the Bank creates too much money and credit
    as it did again in the later months of 2021. It should supplement it
    with a Growth Target. This would help avoid policy error going for too
    much austerity. As the last nine months have shown the way to get the
    deficit down more quickly is to grow faster, not to put up tax rates.We
    need to cancel the NI rise which is driven by the Maastricht debt
    criteria.

  55. Omicron’s mildness ‘a chance event’ – but future Covid strains could be more severe
    Government’s scientific advisers warn that ‘the loss of virulence as viruses evolve is a common misconception’
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/18/omicrons-mildness-chance-event-future-strains-could-severe/

    These bastards, the MSM and the PTB don’t ever want to let go and set us free. They have discovered power and it is like heroin and cocaine in its addictiveness to them.

    1. The insanity of the government in imposing masks, and vaccination passports has been recognised. Neither worked. Yet they still continue.
      These restrictions have empowered private organisations, such as theatres, and local councils, and public venues to insist on seeing vaccine passports and/or proof of negative tests. Will they give up on this in the future, even if thr government does?

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53166816

      1. One needs to refuse to wear a mask, show a pass or enter a premises as much as possible. The loss of revenues (and balancing fatness of bank accounts where money doesn’t get spent) will bankrupt many whose foolishness insists they continue with the farce.
        Good riddance.

        1. However, our case is that the tickets were bought before Covid and the event has been rearranged. Now it’s, “show us or clear off.”

        2. My savings account has certainly benefited from all the things I haven’t done.
          On the debit side, I am pining for art galleries, and I no longer know what is in fashion (don’t laugh, I shall seriously damage my credibility if I turn up at the office in something that was last fashionable in 2018).

          1. We haven’t been anywhere for the covid years, so there should be plenty of money in the bank. But… sewer collapse at home and then at Firstborn’s place has alleviated that problem.
            Still no effing money, and no bleedin’ fun, either.
            Oh, yes, and Covid shrank my trousers – so need more of those, too.
            Look forward to first trip to see Mother since Christmas 2019… and visits to pubs for pies and Brains SA. If the Welsh allow it.

          6. I was embarrassed some years ago in Siracusa, Sicilia, when Second Son said to me “Daddy, even the street bums dress better than you!”
            :-((

          8. I always say there is no point in my dressing up when I’m at home because here everybody knows me. Similarly, there is no point in my dressing up when I go away on holiday because there nobody knows me 🙂

          9. I have been spending my savings, but not on going out. I’ve bought new furniture and rugs and there are other things for the house I’ve signed up for (insulation of external walls and floor covering). I have come to the conclusion that there are no pockets in a shroud and I might as well enjoy my house – I could well be put back under house arrest in the future, so it might as well be as comfortable as possible!

    3. The ‘Today’ programme was at it again. It had an interview with David Nabarro of the WHO, saying that dropping final restrictions on isolation and testing would be unwise: “Covid is still a dangerous virus.”

      1. Seems to be no problem here.
        But hey, we’re weirdly brave and fierce Vikings, the virus wouldn’t dare attack us…

  56. Ukraine crisis: Multiple explosions heard in rebel-held city of Donetsk. 19 February. 2022

    Multiple explosions have been heard in the rebel-held Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

    A witness told Reuters they several explosions could be heard in the north of the city on Saturday morning.

    From this and other sources reporting heavy artillery fire and evacuations it looks as though the Ukies are attempting to provoke the Russians into retaliation. This because Biden cannot keep up the fearmongering for ever without looking ridiculous. His credibility from his previous forecasts of invasion is already on its knees. Only control of the MSM is keeping it afloat!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-donetsk-explosion-russia-update-b2018747.html

    1. Another view: an uplifting ‘whiff’ emanated from the Munich Security Conference in Germany this morning. US Vice-President Kamala Harris spoke extremely impressively about Putin’s threat to peace in and around Ukraine and there can have been no doubt as to the positive position of the United
      States. But why is Putin making all of this trouble for all of us? One only needs to glance at the 1920s and 1930s for an explanation of it, but not to Putin’s modern reasoning. Ukraine was part of ‘Joe’ Stalin’s Soviet Union. Collective Farms were imposed on Ukrainian farmers with the consequence that millions starved. Some survivors so loathed the monster and his monstrous system that they they joined the Germans against Stalin’s regime. Enmity ensued, but Ukraine gained its independence through Boris Yeltsin in 1991. Putin (though said to be Christian) evidently venerates Stalin more than Yeltsin. Ukrainians wish to remain independent and free. Let them remain so. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2c6be567739d0f25bf035a2742be5561be6b07b2e04591d512e52edd9d0dd69a.png

      1. Hi Geoffrey! Good to see from you! Hope you’re keeping well!
        Problem these days is, nobody believes government and their lickspittles in the mainstream media – they have been caught out lying and obfuscating too often to be trustworthy news sources. They may not tell lies, but lie by omission – for example, where are all the troubles in Canada at the moment? Not on the front pages, that’s for sure!

          1. I like Geoffrey. Not afraid to have his own opinions, however contrary. It’s good to be challenged, sharpens ones thought process.

      2. Harris is only in Munich because Biden is incapable of making a speech in public view without humiliating himself and the United States.

        During WW2 the Ukrainians made up most of the Hilfswillige to assist the Wehrmacht in their conquest of Russia. They also supplied most of the Guards for the Prisoner of War and Concentration Camps. Even now as can be seen from the Azov Battalion and linked forces within Ukraine they are enthusiastic Nazis!

        1. They were, indeed, nasty in the past. But that doesn’t make them so now and it certainly doesn’t give Russia an excuse to invade 80 years later.

          People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Stalin’s purges and his treatment of Jews and anyone who displeased him saw Russians gleefully killing and displacing massively more than Ukrainians ever did.

          Edited for autocorrect re-spellings

          1. They were, indeed, nasty in the past. But that doesn’t make them so now…

            Strange that you find yourself incapable of saying the same about Russia and even endorse Mr Woollards views about The Soviet Union above. I don’t think that I have ever read of Russians “gleefully” killing anyone. Perhaps that is because they are so used to seeing their own people murdered by Invaders and Foreigners that it has no appeal to them!

          2. Apart from maybe Stalin, who certainly seem to end up a genocidal manic.
            The western view for many years of Russian history has always been overshadowed by American propaganda. They never seem to realise that a finger pointed at Russia means three pointing back at themselves

          3. There is a lot of what you say about US propaganda.

            The US doesn’t have our more complex relationship with Russia, with and without the USSR. For example during WW2 there were many strikes led by communist union officials because the USSR was aligned with Germany, the numbers collapsing when the USSR became our allies, if only by having a common enemy. Then Stalin reneged on his commitments to us over post-war Eastern Europe, leaving us even more fearful of communism. However, arguably US propaganda turned more brits towards the USSR than against it, helped by the USSR’s propaganda, espionage and interference.

            We need a dispassionate and fair analysis of post-war Russia, but I rarely see one, here as much as in the MSM.

          4. Have a look at what Russians have done recently in Georgia and the areas of Ukraine they’ve seized already.

            Russians killed far more of their own last century than outsiders did. Ironic given that Stalin wasn’t Russian, but Georgian.

          5. Have a look at what the Americans have done to the Middle East and the UK to Libya and Syria. Oddly enough they are using exactly the same methods against Russia!

          6. Your first paragraph is spot on. Our involvement, particularly the invasions, were wrong. Naive idealism can be as damaging, if not more so, as forceful self-interest.

          7. Have a look at what the Americans have done to the Middle East and the UK to Libya and Syria. Oddly enough they are using exactly the same methods against Russia!

          8. I have a question Dale, which over a pint or two would probably end in an interesting conversation.
            Why this fixation with Russia? Bush.Jr and Blair are probably far more guilty than Putin, he atleast is concerned with his own borders.

          9. What fixation with Russia? I may have posted a lot today, but overall I’ve posted far less on Russia here than many over the past weeks. It has been the biggest topic of the MSM over the past week.

            Normally I just ignore AS’s constant pro-Russian and anti-western propaganda and bile, but I’ve got fed up today. Most of his output begs to have its lies and distortions corrected with truth and balance.

            Look back over the past months and you will see that I’ve posted on a wide range of subjects.

            As it happens, I’d decided I’ve spent enough time here for a while, so this will be my last post for a while.

            On a final note, I’ve many times said that I admire much of what Putin has done and that in many ways I wish our leaders could be more like him. He does, though, IMO have many bad sides and actions, his bullying and damage to Ukraine being one

            Anyway, best wishes, D.

          10. Enjoy your break, I hope it’s brief.
            Differing opinions make the blog better not worse, even if they do get heated at times.

          12. Dale, my question was in no way critical, I was curious why you seemed to favour Ukraine.
            Its got a very turbulent history and not all of it good.

          13. “…anti-western propaganda and bile…”

            No, just honest assessments of the alarming decline of Western European civilisation.

        2. They were, indeed, nasty in the past. But that doesn’t make them so now and it certainly doesn’t give Russia an excuse to invade 80 years later.

          People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Stalin’s purges and his treatment of Jews and anyone who displeased him saw Russians gleefully killing and displacing massively more than Ukrainians ever did.

          Edited for autocorrect re-spellings

      3. The Holodomor was more than just collectivisation. Bad weather was also significant in reducing yields. However, the primary cause was Stalin’s taking the Ukraine’s grain to maintain rations in the cities and elsewhere in order to retain favour and power, leaving Ukrainians without even starvation rations. Mr Jones is a fascinating, if bleak and punctuated by nudity, film available on Amazon TV and elsewhere.

        Russia has a long history of false flag operations and false claims to justify invasion. For example, it shelled one of its own villages as a pretext for invading Finland in 1939 and, ironically, claiming to invade Poland in 1939 to protect Ukrainians from alleged Polish oppression.

        Edit: link to film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Jones_(2019_film)
        https://youtu.be/-o7VoM1jlOs

        1. Hi Geoffrey

          They are almost the first positive words that I have read about Harris!
          Well apart from CNN that is.
          Well

      4. Good afternoon, Geoffrey

        I have yet to come across anyone here who has a good word for either Nick Clegg or Justin Trudeau but I trust that you will be able to give us some paeans of praise for both of them.

        1. Were you a diplomat in a previous life?

          The art of diplomacy is the ability to tell someone to go to hell and they look forward to the journey. :@)

    2. Another view: an uplifting ‘whiff’ emanated from the Munich Security Conference in Germany this morning. US Vice-President Kamala Harris spoke extremely impressively about Putin’s threat to peace in and around Ukraine and there can have been no doubt as to the positive position of the United
      States. But why is Putin making all of this trouble for all of us? One only needs to glance at the 1920s and 1930s for an explanation of it, but not to Putin’s modern reasoning. Ukraine was part of ‘Joe’ Stalin’s Soviet Union. Collective Farms were imposed on Ukrainian farmers with the consequence that millions starved. Some survivors so loathed the monster and his monstrous system that they they joined the Germans against Stalin’s regime. Enmity ensued, but Ukraine gained its independence through Boris Yeltsin in 1991. Putin (though said to be Christian) evidently venerates Stalin more than Yeltsin. Ukrainians wish to remain independent and free. Let them remain so. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2c6be567739d0f25bf035a2742be5561be6b07b2e04591d512e52edd9d0dd69a.png

    3. Another view: an uplifting ‘whiff’ emanated from the Munich Security Conference in Germany this morning. US Vice-President Kamala Harris spoke extremely impressively about Putin’s threat to peace in and around Ukraine and there can have been no doubt as to the positive position of the United
      States. But why is Putin making all of this trouble for all of us? One only needs to glance at the 1920s and 1930s for an explanation of it, but not to Putin’s modern reasoning. Ukraine was part of ‘Joe’ Stalin’s Soviet Union. Collective Farms were imposed on Ukrainian farmers with the consequence that millions starved. Some survivors so loathed the monster and his monstrous system that they they joined the Germans against Stalin’s regime. Enmity ensued, but Ukraine gained its independence through Boris Yeltsin in 1991. Putin (though said to be Christian) evidently venerates Stalin more than Yeltsin. Ukrainians wish to remain independent and free. Let them remain so. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2c6be567739d0f25bf035a2742be5561be6b07b2e04591d512e52edd9d0dd69a.png

    4. Ukraine has its head in the bear’s mouth. The last thing it will be doing is prodding the bear.

      The real cause is Putin’s having half his army camped on the Ukraine’s borders and rattling their sabres like mad.

      1. The last thing it will be doing is prodding the bear.

        On the contrary that is exactly what it is doing and very probably the work of those you admire. Zelensky only partly controls the military forces in Ukraine. The rest, a mix of Nazis and Private armies do as they please for whoever pays them the most.

        1. I’m no admirer of ethnic Ukrainians – Ukraine has many significant minorities – but IMO Russians and their proxy forces in the Ukraine are worse. It may be a choice of bad or very bad, but give me Zelensky and his supporters over Putin and his supporters, you included, every time.

          1. …but give me Zelensky and his supporters over Putin and his supporters, you included, every time.

            Ah! ad Hominems ever the resource of the troll.

          3. Ukrainians: Nice enough people, I guess, but no world power.
            Russians: I know and work with several. Nice enough people, I guess, but no a world power.
            Perhaps that’s the issue.

  57. Some fresh one-liners!
    (c) Gary Delaney
    Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration which explains why Prince Andrew is so stupid.

    I’ve hired a proofreader for my tweets and I think he’s well worth the monkey.

    I watched a more realistic p0rn film where a woman waited in all day for the plumber and nobody came.

    I was in a cafe. I asked for a builder’s tea and a millionaire’s shortbread and they both told me to feck off.

    I went to the bakers and bought a tiger bread but he didn’t want it as he only eats gazelles and stuff.

    My little brother won a goldfish and the next morning he was floating dead in his little pond. So I had to look after the fish.

    My wife says she loves to be wooed so now whenever we have date night I have to dress up as a ghost.

    I bumped into someone from my flashers’ club in town earlier. It’s always nice to see a fellow member.

    I’m doing vagueanuary. I’ve given something up. I’m just not sure what it is.

    Actually Frankincense was the name of the perfume’s creator

  58. Australian Customs Officer: Ahh Ms. Guffre, welcome back to Australia
    Virginia Giuffre: Thanks it good to be home
    Australian Customs Officer: I hear you got a bit of a windfall?
    Virginia Giuffre: Yes I did. £12 million pounds. With my lawyer’s fee at 25 %, I did ok.
    Australian Customs Officer: Good. Do you have anything to declare
    Virginia Giuffre: Nothing
    Australian Customs Officer: Very well. Have a good day. Oh and don’t forget this envelope
    What’s in it?
    Australian Customs Officer: Oh, it’s just a tax bill for 80% from Her Majesties Australian Tax Office.

    1. Like a lot of taxes, they’re only paid by those who cannot afford to avoid them.

      As a very well off chum tells me, it costs £80 to park in the middle of a London street.

        1. A clamped car is difficult to steal, if one is sufficiently wealthy and has a fine car it might be cheap at the price!

  59. After turning down Justin Trudeau’s use of Martial law, Hunter Biden’s
    laptop, Hillary Clinton spying on a sitting US President and Ghislaine
    Maxwell’s customer list.

    Mastermind have finally accepted Corona pop flavours of the 1970s, as my
    specialist subject.

        1. I had an uncle who always had Davenports delivered, he did not like pubs, whereas my dad loved his ‘drop of wallop’ as he would say, in the local pub!

          1. My glorious maternal grandfather who was born in1890 and always wore plus fours, called it ‘wallop’! Thank you for that reminder, jill!

  60. The Telegraph Comment and a BTL Comment:-

    COMMENT
    The West needs to rediscover its confidence
    Free nations risk allowing themselves to be intimidated by powers that, even now, some refuse to admit are our enemies

    TELEGRAPH VIEW
    18 February 2022 • 10:00pm

    World leaders are meeting in Germany for the Munich security conference and there is little question which subject will dominate the agenda. For the first time in years, Russia is not sending a delegation. Already, politicians have been giving fine speeches denouncing the Kremlin’s challenge to the fundamental principles of the international order and promoting the unity of the West.

    Perhaps the shock of Vladimir Putin massing more than 150,000 troops on the Ukrainian border will indeed be enough to shake the Western powers out of years of complacency. Certainly, Germany can no longer hide its quasi-pacifism behind a cloak of virtue and maybe it will be embarrassed into finally meeting its commitments to the Nato alliance and ending its reliance on Russian gas. Perhaps Emmanuel Macron, too, will realise that there are some things more important than his battle for re-election.

    Yet the crisis afflicting the West runs deeper than that. The United States may still provide the bulk of Nato’s military power, but in recent years it has been unable or unwilling to offer the leadership the democratic world requires. The flight from Afghanistan damaged its prestige, and the quagmire of the Iraq war helped turn American public opinion away from overseas interventions. The EU imagines itself to be a power on the same level as Washington yet it has been largely irrelevant during the current crisis.

    There are also growing intellectual challenges to the resolve of the free world, which to some extent is losing the self-confidence that proved so critical to its victory in the Cold War. Some now argue, for example, that the rise of China, which has become more totalitarian as it has grown richer, disproves the idea that political and economic freedom must go hand in hand. The conviction that our values are both good and universal – and, by extension, that freedom should be defended everywhere – is increasingly questioned by moral relativists.

    Obviously, the doubters are wrong. Events in Ukraine are proof of that. The people of that country are seemingly willing to risk war with their more powerful neighbour in order to preserve their right to determine their nation’s future. There is also a tendency to exaggerate the strength of tyrants and their hold over their respective countries.

    But it would be useless to deny that the West has lost its way. It risks allowing itself to be intimidated by powers that, even now, some people refuse to admit are our enemies. It has been riven by divisions at the precise moment it needed to be united. There are now credible threats to the Western-led international order. How prepared are our leaders really to resist them?

    Robert Spowart 2 MIN AGO
    Message Actions

    Consider the question, “Does Western Society deserve to survive?”
    We have Scotland, a country where a parent giving their child a well deserved skelping of the backside is likely to be prosecuted, yet a country where hundreds of children are on puberty blockers and awaiting “gender change” surgery which is little more than surgical mutilation.
    We have a man, pretending to be a woman, gliding home in women’s swimming events without even exerting himself and other men also wiping the board in other women’s sports.
    We have the “I’m so sorry” movement, determined to shame anyone with a white skin for the long past wrongs of slavery, whilst simultaneously ignoring other slave traders such as the Black tribes who sold the slaves to the white slave traders and the Arabs who probably enslaved even more than the Atlantic Slave trade.
    I could go on, but you will get the idea. The West has emasculated its self and the Eastern Powers are going to take advantage.

    2. Yo B o B

      World leaders are meeting in Germany for the Munich security conference

      Why should Munich be singled for a conference on its’ security

      Why not Bonsall, or Matlock

      Totally unfair! or is it history repeating itself

      https://youtu.be/SetNFqcayeA

      2. There are indeed many parallels, for example that each was dealing with a power pushing to recover its empire lost after opposing the western powers for years. Like Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland, we won’t go to war over a country far away and of little interest to us. The worry is that things could escalate should the expanding powers, now Russia and China, take a lack of opposition as a sign that they can go further, with horrendous results.

        IMO Chamberlain gets a bad press, the image of him on those aircraft steps misrepresenting his true views and actions. He was just trying to calm a British public still reeling from the losses and disruption of WW1. In truth, he never trusted Hitler and the first thing he did on convening his cabinet was to tell them to prepare for war. He supported rearmament when Churchill, as the then chancellor, opposed it. He also made some good decisions, for example the build up of Fighter Command when the air staffs demanded bombers, not fighters.

  61. I am convinced that the older you get the bigger your feet get – I’ve been tripping over everything today, went A over T a couple of times stepping over things I knew needed some clearance

    2. Be careful FA

      Keep your cup of Tea levels up.. make sure you are drinking lots of liquids regulary, you might be dehydrated .

      I have to nag Moh to drink a bit more than he does ..

      I hope you weren’t hurt when you fell over .

      3. I must admit my liquid intake is below that recommended so any excuse to have a cuppa tea. Not hurt thankfully just felt a prat.

        1. Pratfall??
          Take care, man. Don’t dry out – results in headaches and loss of coordination…

    3. If it’s any consolation, my husband tripped over the bath mat twice today even though I’d warned him I hadn’t tidied up after my shower.

    6. Just a thought.
      How is your hearing, it might be a problem with the inner ear, just enough to affect your balance.

      2. Or a veinal occlusion which explains why i so often fell over. And there was me thinking it was the alcohol.

        The Doctor confirmed it.

    8. Were you wearing reading glasses? My sense of distance is all ahoy if I walk around in them or empty the dishwasher with ’em on.

    9. Were you wearing reading glasses? My sense of distance is all ahoy if I walk around in them or empty the dishwasher with ’em on.

  62. HAPPY HOUR – ?
    Cornish moaners are just ‘t***ers!’ says Tim Smit, creator of the Eden Project.
    https://www.google.com/search?q=Sir+Tim+has+faced+a+backlash+with+many+people+expressing+their+anger+on+social+media+about+his+portrayal+of+th
    Sir Tim has faced a backlash with many people expressing their anger on social media about his portrayal of the Cornish, ” who spend too much time looking back on imaginary “good old days”.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fcfbe5eb7d1d4a9298e2e81bc2409f0f8b8ccf09a2d18ee3e3affa2be3d7824.jpg
    “Well he can FK off anytime and take his ugly plastic crap with him…..

    1. To be fair, I think he might have had a sherbert or two, and was trying to defend the indefensible..I mean Rick Stein!

      1. I like Rick Stein, his TV programmes are gently entertaining and his food is good, not that we could afford his restaurant.

        1. He’s a pompous poseur! Thinks he’s so well educated and can’t even speak properly! Andhekeeps dragging in his awful snob of a son!

          4. I watch the scenery, the food, the preparations. I don’t mark him out of 10 for grammar etc.

    3. Saw an aerial view of the Eden Project a few days ago. And boy it was ugly. A blot on the landscape it was. We had been there quite a few years ago but to see the scale of it from the air was something else. Not sure if they’ve added to it since we were there but it looks awful.

    4. Him and Stein. Never been to the EP and never eaten at a Rick Stein’s eatery, but I met him on the Newquay and Plymouth to Gatwick flight and wasn’t keen on him.

      1. Yes, but perhaps now their cosy relationship with islamists might be disturbed. Pass the popcorn!

        1. There is not much LOL for gay people; if a member of the RoP succeeds in killing a gay man, the killer is guaranteed a place in paradise. (of course the victim may have been waiting there for a while, biding his time)

  64. Lunch by Garlands…My good friends Larry, Anita and Carol. Who sadly are retiring after 20 years at the end of April. I told them they couldn’t retire without my permission ! They do have a second home in the Phillipines. I’m going to ask them if they need a Pool boy.

    Scallops and Sauvignon Blanc.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3b9736a3e31da6732ce55cec8604b9749a1b13c4266d5f86bce253bef398efd8.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f38887200037b5fd27b3f73d96fbba10e777e78114331f64c4c7f3c3f58133a9.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0e52a1f9c17db557c2ac351bb77e521267c6464a0e145190d41f11cdcbfc2642.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4831c2e86a606a3d09e164bf230411dcd546b817e3d2577d219f91515a117fe2.jpg

      1. Delighted to see you looking so well, but what are those doilies all about?? On a savoury dish?? I’m horrified!

          1. No! I was so blinded by the doilies!! Just had another look! Beautiful jacket, Phizzee! And you do look well!

          2. Lol.

            The jacket is a rip off replica of the one Daniel Craig wore in Morocco in the film SPECTRE.

            I don’t think my sparkly sequin jacket is appropriate for lunch. :@)

      2. Thanks. It’s the Gin in my hand that does it. And the mostly successful operation so i can walk easier. Plus, Garlands was paying ! :@)

        1. Yo Fizz

          It’s the Gin in my hand that does it.

          Gin is much better from a glass (or bottle)

      1. Thanks. And now they are going to close…*sobs.

        Best place to eat in my town too.

        I popped in to Antonio’s which is my second favourite place to eat, after lunch. Tony and Larry are close friends and they and their families all holiday together. I said to the Spanish Ambassador as he likes to style himself that with Lauro’s closing i had no choice but to eat in his restaurant from now on ! Tapas it is.

          6. Did you see the print? It has relevence for me. Any time i am in a cocktail bar i always order ‘that’ drink. Also the restaurant did a charity night which was Bond Themed and we all got tuxed up.

            A memento from the good times there spent with friends. I’m sad now.

          7. I did, pet! I remember the photos you posted! Don’t be sad – tomorrow is another day!
            I liked the Marilyn one as well!

          16. I had to repost but if you google Ian Rawlings James Bond Licence to Thrill you will see it. It is a limited edition and the one in Lauro’s is the last one unsold.

    4. You look and sound in good form after your recent trauma, Phiz!
      It must be the Gin wot does it …

  65. A French modelling agent and a former associate of the late US financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in his prison cell in Paris.
    Jean-Luc Brunel was found hanged in his cell in La Santé prison on Saturday morning, French media report.
    He has been in custody since being placed under formal investigation in 2020, accused of sexual harassment and the rape of minors aged between 15 and 18 in France.
    Mr Brunel had denied any wrongdoing.
    Police have opened an inquiry into the circumstances of his death.
    Mr Brunel co-founded French modelling agency Karin Models in 1977, and MC2 Model Management in the US with funding from Epstein.

  67. That’s me for today. A day of two halves – morning OK – useful work done in log dept; arvo = rain. Gale beginning to renew itself – apparently it will be strong tomorrow and Monday. So we are preparing to lose the electricity.

    Have a jolly evening, while you can.

    A demain – fingers crossed.

  68. Another update about donations to the trucker fund on GiveSendGo…
    The point has often been made that the Canadian government and their friends in the legacy media are trying to persuade people that they have won, but this is by no means true.

    From GiveSendGo
    “Where’s the money?
    The questions keep on coming, so we want to answer!

    The number one question people are asking right now is, “Have the truckers received the funds?” Our answer is this: “Yes, the truckers have received some of the funds paid out to the ‘Adopt a Trucker’ campaign.”

    As this plays out with the Canadian government, there have been steps taken to prevent the funds from being “frozen”. Currently, the bulk of the funds are in an undisclosed U.S. bank.

    Right now, the teams involved are actively discussing the legal options for getting the funds where they need to go. (Thank you to those who’ve sent in suggestions, you’ve definitely had some creative ones!)

    What we need from you:

    We ask that you do not request a refund at this time as these funds will be needed for the truckers and their legal teams. Additionally, please be patient and pray for wisdom for all involved. We will keep you updated as we move forward.

    Thank you for all your prayers and support over these past few weeks!
    “But as for you, be strong and courageous, for your work will be rewarded.” ‭‭2 Chronicles‬ ‭15:7
    ‭‭Shine Brightly!”

      2. My Mother let me down bigly.
        All she did to save me from a common cold was rub Vick onto my chest and back.
        She should have tooled up and grabbed my piggy bank.

  70. LAST POST

    Re that little video by the Canadian telling the world that the Mounties just “arrest” people, then drive into the desert (or whatever the suburbs of Ottawa are called) and leave them to walk home without being charged with anything…..

    It struck me, while laying the table for supper (chicory and bacon in cheese sauce), that the vid may be a FAKE. That the PTB want people to believe it and “surrender” to the thugs in Stasi uniform….”peacefully”… then haul them before ,secret courts where they are banged up for years and years. Think Navalny….

    What a dreadful world it has become.

    2. I think they have put so many checkpoints up* that the people won’t find it easy to get back to the protest.

      *Being such a free and liberal counrty, you know.

    3. When did the Mounties ditch the red uniforms and turn scruffy? Standards of behaviour seem to plummet in tandem with attitudes to appearance.

    4. Not remotely like Navalny.
      Navalny had broken parole on numerous occasions prior to his arrest on his return to Moscow.
      The reason he was on the flight from Tomsk,where the fiasco started,was he was travelling to Moscow for another court appearance

  71. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
    Our system of government is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada and Head of State. The Governor General is the representative of The Queen in Canada.

    Perhaps Brenda should email her Governor General and suggest that the Trudeau brat should take indefinite leave in the Northern Territories …

  72. I don’t know if the Mods can do anything, but there’s a plague of prostitutes looking for Prince Andrew.

      2. Why should I worry?
        However many there are, I will never get up to as many as zero again.
        My concern is whether it might affect the blog badly.

      1. Yep, me too! Edinburgh to Newcastle several times, and Glasgow to Manchester! In a Mini!

        1. I was lucky on the Edinburgh to Newcastle route in winter, driving an Allegro….I was still a fairly inexperienced driver, not expecting patches of snow and ice on the road.

      2. 1976 Snake pass 1:00 am near blizzard conditions in a Morris Traveller Cross ply tyres, clueless and lucky to be alive – at daybreak the pass was closed for over a week …

      3. Apart from the fact that they are driving on the wrong side of the road that reminds me of taking my wife to Munich for an operation one winter – even with winter tyres it was the only time in 4 years that we had problems with the roads there!

    2. Dont worry they will soon have the power to order people off the roads. Freedom as we know it has ended. We will all have to do as we are told or else. Canada is a little ahead of us on this

  75. Re the prostibots:

    It’s interesting to note that the upvote seems to appear instantaneously after posting

  76. Again re the prostibots.
    Only one ever seems to appear at a time, that would suggest that disqus could do something about the problem.

    1. Disqus often seems to let me upvote twice. The first one doesn’t stay blue but turns black and then I can upvote again. Has it actually removed the first one? On Safari, on my phone, I can’t tell.

      2. Don’t ask me.
        There are quite a few people who regularly give up-votes, You’re one of the more prolific as is Sue M.
        It’s nice, because it shows that ones comments are read.

        2. I almost always upvote those who copy an paste letters and articles from the DT as a way of thanking them.

          Edit: And I just got a bot upvote as I posted my comment.

          3. I use them a lot. As a thank you, an acknowledgement instead of a reply or if I liked the comment or agreed with the point being made or I was amused by it.

        3. I almost always upvote those who copy an paste letters and articles from the DT as a way of thanking them.

          Edit: And I just got a bot upvote as I posted my comment.

        4. I almost always upvote those who copy an paste letters and articles from the DT as a way of thanking them.

          Edit: And I just got a bot upvote as I posted my comment.

    2. The instantaneous upvote only appears to arrive when one replies to a ‘descendant’ of an original comment or the original comment itself that has a foreign upvote.

        1. Could it be the bot meisters aren’t really interested in fleecing some poor sucker, but rather are engaged in a low level pathetic attempt to annoy contributors in order to erode the number of dissenting voices?

          2. No, they are fleecing. I just looked at Stacy’s disqus profile, and she invites boys to her dating site where there are apparently too many gorgeous women.

          3. I posted that picture of Phizzee and they immediately shut the site down.
            };-))
            Not true really!

    3. It seems to be an automatic response as it happens the minute you post- as soon as I hit post I will get an upvote from one of these automatic morons. Ready, steady, go…

    1. Meme writers, comedians and cartoonists are going to miss Boris when he goes.

      edit: and why is he not wearing a mask, while the soldiers are masked up??

  80. Evening, all. We had a bit of snow early on but then it rained and washed it away. Winds haven’t been as bad as predicted, but I still didn’t fancy doing anything outside – cold, damp weather plays hell with my arthritis.

  81. Off topic

    I was walking around the market as usual on a Saturday and noticed police without masks.
    After normal French polite conversation, good morning, how are you, etc. I asked them whether masks were still necessary.
    Several things were interesting for me.
    The police were happy to point out that apart from inside shops the masks were not needed and they laughed at the sheep who were wearing them when I immediately took mine off.
    They were happy to have a conversation and asked where I was from. I explained and we talked about our commune.
    They were pleased that I was “definatif” in France (that means one has moved lock stock and barrel) and we had a few minutes joking about life here.
    They wished me well as we moved mask-less into the central parts of the market.

    French police might well be willing to crack skulls when told to do so, but the bobby’s on the beat are police as I remember them from 50+ years ago in the UK.

  82. Bit fed up with the zombie sluts and will say g’night. A book to read and a search (probably futile) for a film to watch.

        1. ‘Tis me- honest. Trouble is- if people give up and sign off early, they’ll have achieved their goal- if it is to shut us up or shut us down.
          Edit- spoke too soon.

        2. ‘Tis me- honest. Trouble is- if people give up and sign off early, they’ll have achieved their goal- if it is to shut us up or shut us down.
          Edit- spoke too soon.

  83. Heyup! Power restored here at 8:25pm. Have just reestablished the wifi connection. Whazzup in the world?

      1. Just thought I’d give you an upvote from a real person! Edit – And, quick as a flash I’ve had a slut vote

  84. Re these bot votes… just ignore them; I know it’s annoying but if we simply ignore them and don’t even mention it, well, they might desist. Smiles wryly.

  86. Ministers are set to drop plans to ban imports of fur and foie gras in new animal welfare legislation ‘because of opposition within the Cabinet’
    The plans were set to be included in the new Animals Abroad Bill which aims to tackle animal cruelty and support conservation efforts in other countries
    Foie gras production and fur farming have been made illegal within the UK
    Bill has been delayed after concerns were raised by ministers in cabinet about consumer choice in the UK, and issues around how the ban could be enforced

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10530979/Ministers-drop-plans-ban-imports-fur-foie-gras-new-animal-welfare-legislation.html

    I do hope we find out who the callous b######s are who opposed the ban.

    2. Morning all.

      …”after concerns were raised by ministers in cabinet about consumer choice in the U.K.” …. Hah! Ministers couldn’t give a flying fig about consumer choice in the U.K. ashen it comes to the loony eco green policy.

  87. Is everyone asleep or hiding under the sofa because of these stupid pointless bots? Come on people- show some full metal.

          2. As part of my new “get rid of things that are falling apart” persona, I am desperately trying to throw out things that are frayed. Unfortunately, I get very attached to much loved, worn clothing and find that difficult!

          3. I understand- I have a few tee shirts that are old but worn and comfy. Some even have a few holes in. I love them though in the winter tend to wear them under sweaters. I have recently bought two new tees for the spring.

  88. Good night, everyone. Tonight I watched Fritz Lang’s classic “M” (1931) in the original German with English sub-titles, and in which Peter Lorre played the child murderer. The name of the first child he abducted and killed was called Elsie Beckman (played by Inge Landgut – are you reading this Grizzly?) and I wondered if this was an incident early in my life that I had forgotten. Then I realised that little 8-year-old Elsie would have been born in 1923, some 22 years before me. Lol.

  90. OK- the reason why these twerps, automatic bots are upvoting is because if they post- we can block them. We can’t, it seems, block them for voting. It’s bloody annoying but please, we are mainly sensible people, just ignore the stupid things.
    Where is discus? West coast USA? So these bots come in afternoon over there. Ignore the bloody things- please!!

      1. It’s probably quite easy to write a script to follow a disqus thread and upvote comments – no I cannot be bothered.

        Anyone with a disqus ID can post here.

        It doesn’t bother me too much, I lost interest in vote counts when someone ripped through all of the accounts and set them to very negative.

  91. Lalalala
    I may have solved this Geoff… post a daft comment, as I just did and you get the barmy upvote. Then hit edit and write what you want and they don’t respond. We shall see.

  92. I talk to the trees…
    I am right!! Type in some nonsense and put in your real post. Hit edit.

    1. Damn, wish I wasn’t using my old tablet, I miss all of these young lady upvotes.

      Couldn’t handle it anyway, the regular gym class instructor was missing this morning and we ended up with Mrs Superfit. Pain from ankles up!

    2. Sorry, M’Lady, it looks as if Shannon has rumbled your solution. PS – Isn’t it strange how all these young ladies use the same lipstick?

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