Saturday 22 July: The Uxbridge victory gives the Tories clarity on how to succeed at a general election

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

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

459 thoughts on “Saturday 22 July: The Uxbridge victory gives the Tories clarity on how to succeed at a general election

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Patently Obvious

    Little Johnny was sitting in class doing math problems when his teacher picked him to answer a question,

    “Johnny, if there were 5 birds sitting on a fence and you shot one with your gun, how many would be left?”

    “None”, replied Johnny, “’cos the rest would fly away.”

    “Well the answer is 4,” said the teacher, “but I like the way you’re thinking.”

    Little Johnny says, “I have a question for you. If there were three women eating ice cream cones in a shop, one was licking her cone, the second was biting her cone, and the third is sucking her cone, which one is married?”

    “Well”, said the teacher nervously, “I going to guess the one sucking the cone.”

    “No,” said little Johnny, “the one with the wedding ring on her finger, but I like the way you’re thinking.”

  2. ‘Morning, Peeps. Dry and sunny for now, but the long-awaited rain is due to arrive at lunchtime and run through tomorrow. Janus Towers is in for a proper drenching! Max temp here today is forecast to be just 17°C. Global warming has obviously deserted us…

    Today’s first letter says it all for me:

    SIR – The anti-Ulez victory in Uxbridge makes clear the only way the Tories can win the next general election: the net zero targets and all the impositions that would hit voters’ pockets must be scrapped in favour of common-sense policies to grow the economy and make people’s lives easier.

    The ban on new petrol cars in 2030 must go, as must the push for expensive and inefficient heat pumps. Rishi Sunak should reshuffle his Cabinet to indicate this radical change in direction.

    Francis Bown
    London E3

    Every former conservative voter, desperate not to let the moronic Captain Sir Kneel Hindsight (still unable to say what a woman is) and his motley crew anywhere No 10, should send a copy of this to their MP. True, the rest of the government’s performance has been pretty dire but it might just save us from a fate that would be even worse than this shower.

      1. Morning Nan. Complete helplessness in the face of these sorts of situations is the norm. It’s almost impossible to even find anything to say that can make a difference. I’ll keep upticking Ann’s posts and any supporting her, though it is little enough!

      2. Morning Nan. Complete helplessness in the face of these sorts of situations is the norm. It’s almost impossibe to even to find anything to say that can make a difference. I’ll keep upticking Ann’s posts and any supporting her, though it is little enough!

  3. SIR – The decision to invite Mick Lynch, the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union, to a meeting of hospital consultants, and their acclamation of his call to bring down the Government, finally confirms that the British Medical Association has moved from being a body representing an honourable profession to just another militant union. It shows I was right in my decision earlier this year to resign my membership.

    Whether the general public still views consultants with the same respect remains to be seen. Sadly, medicine has moved from being a vocation and a profession to just another public sector job.

    Dr Robert Walker
    Workington, Cumbria

    I think I know the answer to your final paragraph, Dr Walker, and you and your colleagues are not going to like it. Indeed, the medical profession as a whole has done itself (not to mention some of its patients) immense damage by industrial action, and also its belief that hiding behind phones or at home post-covid is providing anything like an adequate service.

    As for the involvement of the Commie bastard Lynch, this is surely now a political strike in all but name, and I thought those had been outlawed some years ago. The hospital consultants will surely rue the day they decided to abandon what is left of our trust in them.

  4. The Uxbridge victory gives the Tories clarity on how to succeed at a general election

    Yes, openly lie about being against ULES, when they have let it rip throughout the country in their term in office.

  5. Ukraine’s counter-offensive is failing, with no easy fixes. Richard Kemp. 22 July 2023.

    With no significant breakthrough after six weeks, it is worth asking whether Ukraine’s counter-offensive can ever succeed, for it certainly doesn’t look to be succeeding now.

    Compare the glacial but costly progress today to the lightning victories at Kharkiv and Kherson last autumn. Back then Kyiv’s forces were advancing against a withdrawing enemy that was pulling back to redeploy troops, trading space for time. Having now built up their forces through mobilisation and dug extensive defence lines, this time the Russians aren’t going anywhere.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Mr S Redfern.

    There is a marked change in tone over the last few days from the DT. This is the second or possibly third recognition that the counter offensive is stuck.

    I want to remark particularly about the F16s, which many on the Live thread seem to regard as a game-changer . Some days ago I posted that the F16s were at least a generation behind the modern Russian fighter aircraft and , notwithstanding that I had that information from an informed source , was of course rubbished by the usual posters (and I personally doubt that F16s will be delivered and even if they are, combat maintainable).So on a personal level I am glad that Richard Kemp has confirmed that.

    But back to the bigger issue here and the needless continuing loss of life. Without wanting to put words into the opinion writers’ mouths,there does seem to be an emerging consensus even in the DT that Ukraine cannot prevail against Russia. Of course NATO could, assuming things didn’t go nuclear in which case no-one prevails, but NATO is not going to get involved.

    It is time to sit around the table and agree a deal which allows both parties to back-off before this wretched war of attrition claims even more lives than it already has.

    It won’t be easy and it won’t be palatable for many, but it will happen so better to make it sooner than later.

    Reality slowly dawning? Kemp is a sort of moderate Crettin-Gordon. One week overwhelming victory the next cautious optimism. I suppose that he will get there eventually when the body count becomes insupportable.

    The significance of Mr Redfern’s comment is that it’s at the top and it has not been swamped by 77 Brigade Trolls who in fact appear to be totally absent from the thread. The Spectator has had no gung ho article this week; even Galeotti; Warmonger-in-Chief confining himself to the Mi6 plan to recruit Russians. This soft pedalling is probably preparing the peasants for negotiations.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/21/ukraines-counter-offensive-is-failing-with-no-easy-fixes/

    1. Us peasants are way ahead of the overlords. I don’t know anyone who believed the official Western line that the “plucky Ukies” would prevail. We’d all be better off if there were a negotiated peace, and that it comes right now.

      1. It should have come 18 months ago but they wanted to get rid of old stock armaments and see a generation of young men killed.

    2. A comment like Mr Redfern’s not only attracts the trolls but many regular DT posters. One can simply state facts and the response will be to ask what the weather is like in Moscow. There is a complete detachment from the horrors of the war as there are no body bags returning to those who will not contemplate negotiations. The Ukes and the Russians, however, are not going to forget their losses. A great opportunity was missed after the wall came down to build links with Russia, for the good of everyone.

      1. Morning KP. This thread is particularly notable for its lack of Establishment Trolls. There still remain a couple of genuine Ukie supporters but they are a fraction of the usual numbers.

      2. It was too useful to Western govts to maintain the spectre of the Russian bogeyman in people’s minds.

  6. Morning, all Y’all.
    Not raining for the moment, and 13C. What was that about summer?

    1. That’ll teach you to be careful when you blink; I’m afraid you’ve missed it.

  7. The false political mission which some would set for the European Community is to turn it into an inward looking and protectionist United States of Europe. A Europe in which individual nations each with its own living democracy would be subordinated within an artificial federal structure which is inevitably bureaucratic.
    For a community lacking a common language can have no public opinion to which the bureaucrats are accountable.
    ____
    1991 Mar 8 Fr, Margaret Thatcher.
    Speech at Hoover Institution Lunch.

          1. That was then. I confess so was I having been stationed in Germany and seeing how it thrived.

            We didn’t know that Heath lied, unlike today, we trusted politicians.

          2. The change in direction of the EEC in the 1980s – the emergence of the idea of the EEC as a single political entity – changed her attitude.

          3. So was I, JBF, ‘cos at the time I had no idea that Ted and his cronies were systematically lying to us, the extent of which only emerged after the event. Stupidly, I thought our government would be on our side, instead of selling us down the river.

          1. The Single European Act, 1986. In later years, she claimed to have been misled over the SEA. I find that hard to believe – I think it unlikely that Mrs T of all people would not have looked for the small print. However, the direction of the EEC became clear in 1988, hence her Bruges speech which so upset the men in grey suits and led to her downfall.

  8. 374729+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Letters: The Uxbridge victory gives the Tories clarity on how to succeed at a general election

    Our own worst enemy is a large segment of ourselves, we seemingly continually settle for short term gain ( party first and before Country) at the cost of long term pain.

    The treacherous ersatz tories nave 20/20 vision for the future
    we are sampling some of it now and if it isn’t using the
    Third Reich as a template via the WEF / NWO with royal seal
    I know not.

    Mass orchestrated upheaval of peoples, the life termination of aged & infirm peoples, the damping down of law enforcement, etc and the final lookalike Reich, the inhouse (hotels) waiting army of Kapos.

    The really sinister thing is that, before family, Country, patriotism, the lab/lib/con WEF / NWO coalition supporting minions ( the majority voter) are going for it.

  9. Russian tycoon loses fight over detained £38m superyacht. 22 July 2023.

    The judge heard how following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the National Crime Agency and Border Force Maritime Intelligence Bureau investigated vessels with connections to Russia – and the Phi had been identified as a “vessel of interest”.

    Mr Shapps detained the boat on the grounds that it was “owned, controlled or operated by a person connected with Russia”, and decided that detaining the superyacht was in the public interest.

    Sir Ross concluded that while the detention of the superyacht did interfere with Mr Naumenko’s “property rights”, the public interest in the UK having as “deep an impact as possible” on Russia through a sanctions regime was greater.

    So much for the independence of the Judiciary! This judgement is openly admittedly to be political not lawful. The seizure of Private Property by the State for political ends can never be justified. It overturns a major principle on which the British State itself is founded. That all are subject to the Law regardless of their status. In this case the State has become the Law. No different to any totalitarian regime of any time and place.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/21/russian-tycoon-loses-fight-over-detained-superyacht/

    1. When will it start upon all the Russian owned residences in the UK and confiscate them “…on the grounds that they are owned, controlled or operated by a person connected with Russia

      1. Great idea !

        That could provide plenty of accommodation for the healthy young men pouring across the Channel

        1. Nah, Janet. Stuff ’em all in barges and moor them off Rockall.

          Feed ’em once a week on Haggis and Neeps..

          End of…

        2. …1,162 of them have left a safe country (France, of course) just from the18th to the 20th of July in order to break into this country. Strangely, the media seems to have lost interest, and Nigel has been rather pre-occupied with other matters.

    2. Oh well, it will give banks an excuse to seize property and/or close accounts of anyone with a nice word to say about Russia.
      p.s. I will live dangerously and state that Catherine the Great earned her title. And that Boris was not Godunov.

  10. I freely acknowledge that socialists and statists often begin by finding injustices and wanting to remove them. But they go on to the notion that only state ownership and state regulation can solve such problems. You can only believe that by ignoring the lessons of history, the lessons of politics and the lessons of economics.
    After the experience of this century and the testimony of Eastern Europe, intellectual irresponsibility on this scale is also moral irresponsibility.
    We knew that communism was spiritually bankrupt—and we said so. We knew that the Stalinist system would always produce misery and tyranny, but could never produce prosperity and dignity—and we said so.
    We knew that the “captive nations” under communism wanted and deserved to be free—and we said so. We even to dared use the phrase “captive nations”.
    And the more we told the truth, the more we restored our own peoples’ self confidence and the hopes of those still living under tyranny.
    ____
    1991 Mar 8 Fr, Margaret Thatcher.
    Speech at Hoover Institution Lunch.

  11. Good morning, all. Grey and rain over night. More due around 11 am. Great time with elder son. What a lovely man he is.

    Don’t suppose I missed any news. Is Fishi still there?

    1. I am so pathetic that I’m looking forward to a day of sorting out books.
      Once books are in place, I feel I have really settled into a house.
      In between running up and down stairs with books, I will take a breather to admire new curtains.
      I cannot believe that my life on this planet is now so small.

      1. You keep going with your home-building, Anne.

        Very laudable to want a safe haven to retire to.

  12. And… what?
    You recently signed the petition “Produce a Farmland Protection Policy to regulate the loss of farmland to solar”:
    https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/606663
    On Wednesday 19 July, MPs debated the matter of planning and solar farms. During the debate, MPs raised concerns about the installation of large-scale solar farms, especially on agricultural land.
    • Watch the debate
    • Read a transcript of the debate
    The debate was led by Dr Caroline Johnson MP. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Andrew Bowie MP, responded on behalf of the Government.
    What are Westminster Hall debates?
    Westminster Hall is the second Chamber of the House of Commons.
    Westminster Hall debates give MPs an opportunity to raise local or national issues and receive a response from a government minister. Any MP can take part in a Westminster Hall debate.
    Debates in Westminster Hall take place on ‘general debate’ motions expressed in neutral terms. These motions are worded ‘That this House has considered [a specific matter]’.
    Get involved in the work of the UK Parliament
    Sign up to the Your UK Parliament newsletter for the latest information on how to get involved and make a difference.
    Thanks,
    The Petitions team
    UK Government and Parliament

        1. TVs House Cards famous quote from Francis Urquhart. “Everyone has their price Maddie”.

    1. Shapps will be involved in this. His constituency has submitted plans to build a massive solar farm. Kicking the farmer off his leased agricultural land probably own by Brocket Hall. Remember the insurance fraud and the cars in the lake.
      The farm land is very close to Shaw’s Corner.
      If people really want solar panels instead of polluting our green environment, let them put them on their own house roofs out of harm’s way.

  13. 374729+ up ticks,

    The real cause is that a thick solid headed electoral voter, example being the electoral majority voter, weights twice as much as a
    decent normal voter, plus the foreign invading potential troop
    numbers has brought this calamity to a head, WE ARE FREAKING SINKING.

    Huge rockfall at Broadchurch cliffs sparks fears of further collapse
    Thousands of tons of mud and rock collapse from 600ft sandstone cliff in Dorset, with expected heavy rain threatening more danger

    1. Similar areas of coast line in Norfolk are suffering from the same effects.
      People are losing their homes.

      1. 374729+ up ticks,

        Morning RE,
        We are, as a Country, spiritually and commonsensical rapidly sinking, many of the indigenous have NO homes to lose courtesy of the lab/lib/con mass
        government controlled morally illegal
        coalition party, treacherous followers & voters.

        1. What also makes me amused is the way we brits never even try contravene regulations.
          Looking at scenes at Dover earlier, the French are as usual giving Brits hell as the leave the UK to holiday in Europe.
          Easily to avoid. Fly to your destination. Travel back by railway or bus to Calais and rubber boat it back to Dover. No passports needed welcome pack available, just do it.
          It will offend nobody.

  14. Good morning, chums. iMac developments today. Instead of constant messages of “connection lost” and then “connected”, this morning there was no connection at all. I have idea what happened so I switched the iMac off and then on again. Then I accidentally clicked on history and somehow it appeared that I was constantly connected. Was this a fortuitously example of the problem solving itself? Well, just as I was typing this a “connection lost” message appeared but rapidly I was reconnected. And it’s just happened again. So it looks as if I am back to square one with the IiMac. Healthwise, however, I think I am almost back to normal.

      1. More like you’ve a dodgy iMac, Elsie – get rid and buy a Microsoft version, I can supply discs for Win 7 Professional and Office 2016 free of charge together with the ‘Key’.

    1. Are you sure it isn’t a router problem rather than the Mac?
      We are constantly being cut off for short spells as they upgrade the systems.

      1. Sos, I also own a Microsoft laptop, but this has no problem connections at all – and both use the same router. ?!?

          1. Very good, Sos, but I shall wait to see if Grizzly can solve my problem first.

  15. Morning all 🙂😊
    Grey again no rain yet but still better than 43c
    Live music all afternoon and evening at a fairly local pub, eldest playing lead in their band later. Mostly under cover. Not much parking, could be dropped off. But we’ll see if we can get there.
    Uxbridge ? That was caused by votes against that nasty little mayor.

    1. Pure ignorance on the part of the Eejits lauding the outcome as beneficial to them.

    2. There are at least 5 people mentioned in that article who have no place and no right to be upright on this planet.

  16. Ref the thread below:

    M Thatcher’s treachery:

    ” By helping to bring about the Single European Act in February 1986 (the first significant change to the Treaties of Rome of 1957) she was, in fact, a central architect of European integration.”

    1. Had she not been ousted by then, I’m sure she would have resisted Maastricht.

        1. Alright, Bill, I understand that you’re ant-Thatcher but she did a power of good and we need another like her.

          1. What on earth makes you think that?

            She was a fine leader. Her one fault was not to prevent the UK’s descent into the infernal EUSSR.

          2. What on earth makes you think that?

            Could be the way you fought hard to shew she was up for the EU.

    2. The blob got it past her by telling her that it was all about free trade, of which she was such an advocate. Two degrees, poor judgement. (Cf. the poll tax.)

  17. Good morning all,

    Grey skies, heavy rain promised by midday, wind Sou’-Sou’-West, 14℃ and it’s not going to get much warmer today, maybe a degree or two. I wonder what the met office will say about this July? Will it descrbe it as ‘one of the coolest on record’, or will it just say nothing? I suspect the latter.

    The good thing to come out of the by-elections is that Tory cabinet members are now urging Wishy-Washy to abandon current Net Zero policies. While not exactly calling for the erasure of Net Zero and indeed, the Climate Change Act (which they should be), it is to be welcomed as a small step in the right direction, a foot in the door for the sane among us who can at least recognise that large victories are usually won by small increments.

    1. The met office will still make wooly statements about some metric being the hottest ever. This morning, it was that the Atlantic airmass (I think) is 5 deg warmer than normal and all the ice is disappearing. Well, as our winds are coming off the Ocean at the mo, I might suggest they are telling porkies.

      1. And there’s the small matter of the seasonal Arctic ice melt lagging behind schedule due to the weather.

        1. We have wind from the arctic just now, which is why the temperatures don’t get over 15C, and it rains constantly.

      2. Yesterday on TV there was a man explaining how firemen were being given extra training to deal with the

        additional fires caused by Global Warming.

        Looking at the outside thermometer this morning I’m surprised.

        1. Its as if floods, fires and pestilence never happened before. Nothing to do with and extra 5 billion humans appearing in the last 100 years. I remember from my youth seeing vast bushfires burning in Africa. They were part of the natural process of renewal and the locals were not so stupid as to build mansions in those areas.

        2. One has the feeling that the BBC is almost disappointed that there have been so few heath and moorland fires in the UK this year. Scotland had some during the dry spring but the rain has since seen to them.

    2. As I learnt yesterday, from some Professor, this cold weather in July is actually “asymptomatic global warming”!

      1. 374729+ up ticks,

        Afternoon WS,

        probably to signifie he is a member of the political cabbage clan.

      2. 374729+ up ticks,

        Afternoon WS,

        probably to signifie he is a member of the political cabbage clan.

  18. 374729+ up ticks,

    May one ask,

    I this the same farage chap that ALL brexit party candidates were banking on in the general election of 2019 ?

  19. I reckon I know the feeling that makes some NoTTLers retreat and take a long period of absence from NoTTL.

    There is the feeling that truth and the country are fast disappearing down past the U-bend and no-one else around us is getting the slightest bit worked up about it. Particularly infuriating is the way relatives and (previous?) friends are inhaling the lies/propaganda of the MSM. Worse is the feeling that whereas we have more-or-less stayed true to the beliefs/values we’ve held for 30-70 years, those around us have changed their positions (moving leftwards/progressive) steadily …. and, worst of all, won’t even acknowledge that they’ve done so.

    BTW, one can add to relatives and friends who’ve changed position another group: Conservative MPs ….

    Sometimes, one feels so powerless. My comforts remain 1. reading NoTTL and 2. reading the BTL comments in the Telegraph (my £29 a year sub is great value) and the occasional article in that paper.

      1. I’m feeling pretty isolated within my immediate family and amongst neighbours, all of whom seem to readily inhale MSM propaganda and will wear masks and have their boosters when so directed.

        1. I just keep off anthing political with friends and famly – they can have their jabs and their climate change – I’m sticking to mine.

        2. I expect that they are not aware that Astra Zeneca has been quietly dropped because their jabs were causing clots.

          1. I just can’t believe how lucky I was to have escaped any kind of reaction to my two AZ shots – maybe I got a placebo?

          2. Post – AZ jabs, I have yet to regain 100% feeling in the fourth and fifth fingers of my right hand. But I’ve adapted. I will admit that Mendelssohn’s Wedding March was surprisingly difficult this afternoon. I managed it, and had glowing praise after, but it was always touch and go as to whether I’d hit all the right notes. I must have played it hundreds of times, mostly with feet, but today my ‘manuals only’ arrangement was harder than it ought to be.

          3. Are you able to use your ‘new’ feet at all on the pedals?
            The AZ jabs seemed to be worse for younger people – and of course that was flagged up fairly quickly and then they were quietly withdrawn. But there’s been a shocking silence about the harms caused by the Pfizer and Moderna jabs.

            Eric Clapton also lost feeling in his fingers – not sure if he regained it.

          4. Hi Jools, The answer is ‘not really’. It prolly irritates me more than the punters, who are largely oblivious to the fact that the ‘bass line’ of hymns is played on the pedals by most decent organists, which generally means it adds a further note, an octave below the note in the score. If you think of the pedals as a large keyboard, you have two points of contact for each foot; the heel and the toe. But to achieve this, you need articulated ankle joints. If you think about it, ankles are really complicated joints. In their place, my new feet are rigidly attached to an aluminium tube which passes for a calf. On the plus side, if I’d agreed to the ankle operation thast was offered, I’d have been out of action for twice as long, and my biological ankles would have been just as rigid as my metal ones.

            Sometimes, depending rather on the key a hymn is in, I’ll draw the pedal stops for the last verse, and throw my prostheses in the general direction of the correct note. Sometimes, it works.

            Voluntaries – I have a huge amount of ‘three stave’ stuff which was in my repertoire. Some of it I can bluff my way through, playing the pedal part with my left hsnd, the upper stave with my right hand, and as much of the left hand stave as I can reach with either thumb. But it’s not ideal.

            Still, my current 5 year contract, since I was kicked out of he Verger’s Cottage, has 26 months to run. Beyond that, I’ve no idea what will happen. Numbers are so small, we may not exist as a parish in our present form. Perhaps they’ll extend it. But I went to the Istitution and Induction of our former Curate at St Mark, Farnborough, last Tuesday. It was a sea change. “What’s wrong with these people?” I asked one of the small supporting contingent from our parish. “They’re all welcoming, and smiling…” But the thing is, should I cease to be Director of Music at my current parish, St Mark’s is on a busy bus route, and is therefore accessible by public transport, even on Sundays. I may h ave seen the future…

            Their organ doesn’t work. So they use recorded accompaniments. They’re fine, as long as everyone listens – since there isn’t a live organist who could adjust the tempo when things go awry. But, in fairness, ‘Lord of the Dance’ at Saturday’s wedding had the congregation singing one or two beats ahead of the organ. Perhaps they were eager to get to the reception…

            Thanks for asking.

          5. Thanks for the explanation, Geoff. Whatever the future brings, don’t lose your sense of humour!

          6. Can’t argue, Big Sis. it seems inevitable that your problems are reklated to lockdowns and non-availability of medics, face to face. But do you also think that your current condition is an adverse reaction to AZ?

          7. Yes, I do- as are my husband’s problems. The lack of care for us both and the continuing indifference doesn’t help.
            We went up to bed at 7 as we were both worn out. My phone rang at 8- woke me up and now am back down again. Can’t take another pill for a couple of hours though. Pain is awful.
            Skin cancer is just that but the bunglers who treated me last year- well, the less said the better.

          8. Catching up with replies. I’m so sorry, Ann, that you are in this situation. It would be bad enough in ‘normal times’, but I doubt whether we shall ever see those again.

            I’m rubbish at prayer, but, when it’s really mattered, it’s been answered. You’re already in mine. But – since I churn out the weekly parish newsletter – I’d happily add you and DH to the weekly prayer list. If you’d like this, ping me your names, and I’ll do the rest.

            Our tiny, post-Covid convregations will do their stuff.

          9. Thanks Geofff. Just the knowledge that you are praying for us is fine. Thank you for your kind thoughts.

        3. Don’t they realise that it is one of the left’s tactics – to set family against family, and thus destroy the family unit.

          Typical Marxist communism.

      2. I’m feeling pretty isolated within my immediate family and amongst neighbours, all of whom seem to readily inhale MSM propaganda and will wear masks and have their boosters when so directed.

      3. Long time no post on account of being ridiculously busy with both family and work. Currently on holiday in the Austrian Tyrol with all my girls (3 daughters plus the boss) for perhaps the last. Enjoying an enforced rest as I slipped over and dislocated my shoulder earlier in the week! A nice Austrian Doctor put it back in for me.

        Back to business – what I find helps keep me sane asides from NoTTL is the Planet Normal Podcast and I have also found the Weekly Sceptic can be quite entertaining. I have also become an avid fan of the Headliners show on GB News – all assist in the maintenance of my sanity. – Wibble!

        1. Good to see from you, man.
          Hope the shoulder doesn’t impair the imbibing of alcohol – that part of the world is good for grape & grain-based varieties!
          Enjoy!
          Cheersh!

      4. Nor is the reaction to wokeism, with the destruction of Bud Light.
        There are like-minded souls out there, but like typical Right-wingers, they don’t make a fuss or marching about it.

        1. Had a long chat with my elder son on my b’day the other day – he’s as sceptical as I am about most things including climate, covid and the jabs, which he avoided.

    1. Capitulation is the easier option, I wonder were we would all be now if our parents and grandparents had adopted the same attitude ?
      Not here at all I guess.

    2. One common factor with issues such as Covid, Brexit, Ukraine and global warming is that many choose to turn the debate into a moral one. The issue itself becomes secondary.They will seek a position which exemplifies their own perceived moral superiority while also giving an opportunity to condemn and demonise those who hold contrary views.
      Pro Brexit? Xenophobe!
      Ukraine Nazis? Putin lover!
      Climate sceptic? Science denier!
      Covid realist? Granny killer!

  20. My prayer for this weekend:

    Those cheating barstewards, the Aussies, will be crushed at Old Trafford, to be followed by similar at The Oval. I don’t mind if 11 of them have to undertake “concussion protocols” at The Oval (Mark Wood, you have my permission to bowl 3 short balls per over).

    1. I’ve enjoyed this Ashes series tremendously. I just hope the weather doesn’t stop us getting level, and then a decider at the Oval.

          1. Do you have to join them by watching their antics on what is supposed to be a sport’s field and not a political platform?

            Sorry if you think that’s a little harsh, it’s just the way I see it, and why I don’t watch the six nations rugby anymore.

          2. I don’t know what you mean, Tom. I’d rather tear my eyeballs out than watch women’s so-called football!

          3. Good to know, Sue. Don’t tear your eyes out, just don’t watch.

            Boycotting is the best answer to these media louts.

          4. #metoo. And just wait till the lady cricketers get equal pay with the men, per that idiotic recent report.

      1. I gave up, thinking the Japanese team were mainly young boys.
        Then came England, their opponents seem to enjoy diving rather than playing football.

    1. A bit rich coming from the DM isn’t it? Or is it the Express that does the heatwave/flood news?

    2. Sensible?

      Before the Just Stop Oil brigade daub my house with orange paint, let me make one thing clear. My purpose in relating this story is not to play down the seriousness of global warming, much less to suggest that it isn’t happening.

      1. The article, as such articles go, is sensibly written with reasons to defend his view.

        1. Moderated comments haven’t been reviewed or published for over 2 HOURS. Are they asleep?

          1. I seldom read the comments in the DM other than a few of the best and worst to get a feel for the tenor, because there are too many trolls who don’t debate at all, merely insult other commenters or blame Brexit and similar, even if totally irrelevant to the article..

          2. I’m just asking if the Met office has it’s blue maps ready for winter, to shew us the steady progress of the glaciers that will overwhelm us this coming winter.

  21. Good morning, all. Lost broadband around 7:30, now OK. Early forecast of rain turned out to be incorrect.

    Here’s Redacted’s Clayton Morris reporting on Disney’s journey from Woke to Broke. As Morris’s co-presenter summarises, Disney appears to want to pander to minorities e.g. a transvestite Princess at a Disney Park, that are incapable of providing the financial returns necessary for commercial success. Madness!

    Clayton Morris re Disney

    1. The first feed seems to be two gormless women recommending various cosmetics and then Jordon Peterson just goes on too long.

      I gave up on both.

  22. David Cameron: ‘I hope I’m a better husband now than when I was PM’. 22 July 2023.

    In an interview from his holiday home in Cornwall, where he was staying with his wife Samantha and three children, a tanned Mr Cameron reflected on that tumultuous period, telling The Times: “I hope I’m a better parent and husband than perhaps I was.

    If only he’d been a better Prime Minister than either!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/21/david-cameron-conservatives-better-husband-than-when-pm/

    1. 374729+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,

      His views on animal husbandry leaves a great deal to be desired, on approaching a pig s head on a platter with his sexual member in his hand at some tory (ino) party black mass do, was I believe, a sight to behold.

    1. There was a prog on R Wales today, hosted by the increasingly nauseous Vordeman and a minor actor. They talked to a mother who had adopted 4 children and was very proud of their differences (from normal). Several were mixed race, they all were neuro divergent (nuts in old money) , two had declared themselves non binary and one trans. She made the point that they seemed to suffer from mental ‘elf. No sh*te sherlock! A couple of clips around the ear if they ever mention their crazy thoughts might put them on the right track. There really is no hope when adults will not educate their charges.

    2. Mmm. Because that’s how ladies behave.

      Edit. Oh my. What a lovely beard that lady has.

  23. The Tories’ only hope of winning is to put the ordinary voter ahead of net-zero dogma

    Politicians have adopted a tactic of the banking world, and developed ways to avoid speaking to the public

    CHARLES MOORE • 22nd July 2023

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/16aff23212ff3d4f1cdeae6d77bf8f0f2df1fc09596db922dcca24495d6b3afd.jpg

    This column’s law is that all British general election results are, whatever one’s own political views, deserved. The Conservatives deserved to win in 1979, Labour in 1997. In 2010, Labour deserved to lose but the Tories didn’t deserve to win outright. In a sense, the electorate is always right.

    This rule applies less to by-elections, because they let voters exaggerate. Nevertheless, all three by-election results on Thursday were deserved. In Somerton and Frome and in Selby and Ainsty, natural Conservatives rightly felt deeply disappointed by this Conservative Government. They therefore backed the likeliest local opponent – Liberal Democrat in the first, Labour in the second. In what felt like tactical voting, Labour lost its deposit where the Lib Dems won, and vice versa.

    As for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Tory disappointment was a factor, but voters had a different ruler to rebel against – Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London. The issue was Ulez, a system that target-bombs poorer people by taxing (and often fining) the owners of older cars. Labour deserved to lose, and did.

    The voters in the three different constituencies chose three different parties to win. Although the situation is much worse for the Conservatives than for the other two, these results do suggest an electorate which has not yet made up its mind.

    Is there any overall way of capturing what is upsetting people?

    It relates to the sense that the consumer or, to put it grandly, the citizen, does not come first in the minds of politicians, bureaucrats, public services and big businesses.

    “My heart goes out to the patients,” I heard a man on the radio say this week. Yet he was an NHS consultant on strike. It is hard to see how his heart could really be going out to them all that far, since he (probably already earning a six-figure sum) is choosing to hurt patients by his action. Even when not striking, the NHS is so constructed that the consumer – the patient – is the powerless one. That, not lack of money, is why there is a waiting list seven-and-a-half million long.

    Or take the case of Nigel Farage and Coutts bank. As well as being an issue of free speech, it is also a question of professionalism and consideration for the customer. The bank’s internal dossier against Mr Farage, extracted in this paper on Wednesday, was a prejudiced ragbag of comments about his opinions. It expresses shock, for example, that he “believes that people who oppose same-sex marriage, such as Christian and Muslim communities, should be allowed to speak out about their beliefs”.

    It also accuses him of having “Thatcherite beliefs”. (Note for younger readers who may be shielded from this information at school: Margaret Thatcher was a 20th-century prime minister so extreme that she won, with large majorities, all three of the general elections in which she led her party.)

    What professional banking reason is there for collecting pages of such stuff? Do banks do this to normal customers? Is it for banks to judge, snoop and even sneak on their customers? They prate of their “values”, yet they leaked information about the state of a customer’s finances which managed to be both confidential and untrue at the same time. In order to be “inclusive”, they try to exclude, and cannot see the comic contradiction. They behave like the woke equivalent of the police “canteen culture” – biased against large sections of the public whom they are supposed to serve.

    In the wake of the Coutts scandal this week, I talked to a senior banker unhappy with the current trends. He tells me most banks nowadays have what they call “channel strategies”. This jargon means, in plain English, “ways to avoid speaking to customers”.

    As readers will know, such strategies are highly successful. If something is amiss with your bank, finding a useful employee on the phone is as likely as seeing a uniformed policeman patrolling your street. Banks devote huge effort to keeping account-holders at bay.

    Nowadays, our main parties have developed the political version of “channel strategies”. True, they pay a lot of money for opinion-polling, but they nevertheless fail to put themselves in the shoes of those on whom their policies will be inflicted. Ministers ignore MPs. MPs do not scrutinise legislation. Those who have most influence over government are not voters, but pressure groups, “independent” public bodies, and even overseas organisations, particularly in relation to the environment.

    That is how net zero policies were concocted. The public, on the whole, do care about the environment. It does not follow that they are ready – or even, in many cases, able – to manage the shocking new costs of decarbonisation imposed by an arbitrarily chosen deadline – electric vehicles, heat pumps, green regulation, let alone Ulez.

    Speaking to the BBC in the wake of the by-election results, the Conservative party chairman, Greg Hands, criticised Ulez and said government must “go with the grain of human nature”. But then he ruined his own point by proudly reminding listeners that the Conservatives have vowed to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.

    Mr Hands sees this now seven-year deadline as an example of subtle gradualism. Actually, it is borderline crazy to set a statutory date for banning the sale of one of the most successful inventions in human history. When the internal combustion engine can be improved upon as a means of affordable transport and clean energy, people will buy its replacement. They must not be forced to get one that is inefficient or unaffordable.

    The year 2030 is not far off. At the next general election, motorists should ask Mr Hands and his Tory colleagues: “I need to buy a new car soon. Why will you be banning me from the one I can afford?” He will have no vote-winning answer. He should notice how net zero policies are cracking right across Europe, for democratic reasons.

    Although the anger against car restriction is biggest in cities, there is comparable feeling in rural areas, where fuel and heating costs are huge and public authorities seem to regard potholes as green allies. In the Somerton and Frome, Selby and Ainsty campaigns, such issues featured. Farmers now make up a tiny number of voters, but taking rural seats for granted is a grave error. Look at what is happening in the Netherlands.

    The dismal fact is that the Conservatives are bound, as a small minority of them positively like being, by the consequences of legislation like the Climate Change Act and – in the sphere of woke – the Equality Act. Even in the area of Brexit, which they achieved, they are badly hampered by the Northern Ireland Protocol. On immigration control, where Rishi Sunak really does want to make a difference, they shy off any challenge to the European Court of Human Rights.

    On all matters which affect the consumer/citizen, Sir Keir Starmer is instinctively weak. He is big on human rights, but not so hot on human beings. His main political rhetoric is of finger-wagging disapproval, not of empathy with citizens, though he is clever enough to have worked a bit on this in recent speeches. Yet he will probably win because the Tories have let these issues, for which they used to have such feel, slip through their hands.

    Unless Mr Sunak can outflank Labour on the side of the consumer over costs, taxes and controls, he will certainly lose. He should be the first leader in the Western world to say boo to the net-zero goose.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/21/net-zero-tories-only-hope-of-winning/

    1. When the internal combustion engine can be improved upon as a means of affordable transport and clean energy, people will buy its replacement. They must not be forced to get one that is inefficient or unaffordable.

      Or instantly self-combustible

    2. “”My heart goes out to the patients,” I heard a man on the radio say this week. Yet he was an NHS consultant on strike.” – what a pity the radio interviewer didn’t ask how that worked, then? Heart goes out to people suffering from his own deliberate actions. I’d certainly ask that, if I was the interviewer. Hypocritical shits, the lot of them.

      1. Especially all the elderly patients who’s annual pension payments don’t amount to any where near a few days salary received by a consultant surgeon.

    3. Has any government around the world where they are following the WEF climate agenda and inflicting it on their voters made themselves more popular or have they been thrown out at the next election?

      1. We are waiting for the election over here but scared that so many idiots will vote Trudeau back in.

    4. Sunak is the puppet of the WEF and he will do what Schwab tells him to do.

      Schwab will not allow him to abandon Net Zero so he won’t do it. He has been assured that when he loses his job as PM and MP he will be well set up with another job just as prestigious and far better paid than being PM of the UK.

      Net Zero or not Net Zero – it won’t make much difference to climate change and it won’t make much difference to Sunak as it is the proles who will bear the price.

      1. …it won’t make much difference.”

        It won’t make ANY difference as we shall all stand against it.

        1. Cometh the revolution, cometh the man.

          We shall see, hopefully in my lifetime.

      1. I don’t think so, BB2.

        If anything will spark revolution it is this interminable assault upon our freedoms.

        For me, it cannot come soon enough, I’d like to see it before I die.

      1. Your question is probably a whimsical one but, just in case not, the Bosch is a heat pump.

  24. I was attacked in San Francisco by a gang of homeless drug addicts. 22 July 2023.

    As San Francisco burns, its politicians prefer to focus on pushing divisive race politics, despite black people only making up 6 per cent of the city’s population.

    One such proposal the city is considering is handing every black resident $5 million in reparations for slavery, despite the state never having participated in this evil.

    Today the US, Tomorrow us! ,

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/22/attacked-in-san-francisco-by-gang-of-homeless-drug-addicts/

    1. I saw a lovely picture of a supermarket in SF the other day, every frozen food cabinet had a chain and lock on the doors. No self serve, find an assistant and they would unlock the cabinet and take your selected item to the checkout.

    2. Sunak will produce the money as he has done for other useless and expensive causes. He’s beggared the UK without improving the lot of the indigenes or that of the integrated immigrants but finds money for anyone who rocks up in a rubber boat or in the back of a lorry. He is proving to be a deliberately divisive PM who’s sole skills are negotiating U-turns and being untruthful.

  25. Ukrainian pilots to begin training on F-16 fighter jets ‘in weeks’. 22 July 2023.

    “It’s a matter of weeks, not months,” said US national security adviser Jake Sullivan. “We’re going to push as fast as possible.”

    Ukraine’s counter-offensive against Russian forces has stalled because of well-laid minefields and Russia’s air superiority.

    Ukrainian officials have said that they urgently need F-16 warplanes to give them a chance of winning control of the air, which Nato military doctrine says is vital for attacking forces.

    They are getting desperate!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/22/ukrainian-pilots-f16-training-weeks-not-months-says-us/

    1. …winning control of the air, which Nato military doctrine says is vital for attacking forces.

      Written as if this military tenet is a modern revelation. Churchill, Dowding, Park et al. on the British side knew and understood this fact in 1940, as did many on the German side. The Luftwaffe never gained air superiority over the UK let alone air supremacy and therefore could not initiate an invasion.
      Comparing the 1940 Battle of Britain with the 1944 Normandy invasion and the quantity, quality and variety of the Allies’ versus the German’s air power available in the latter conflict is an education in itself.

      1. Afternoon Korky. We have a couple of experienced military pilots on Nottl and they can perhaps correct me if I’m wrong, but learning to fly a fighter aircraft is not like passing your Driving Test. It takes many hundreds of hours of flying time to become an effective fighter pilot. Ten hours in a simulator is not going to achieve this!

        1. I doubt the Russian pilots are slouches. They will have been undergoing heavy training since the beginning if not before.

        2. I’m not up to scratch on modern jets other than the technology appears to be a challenge on its own, let alone throwing the aircraft around the sky. Can’t help having a feeling of ‘sacrificial lambs’ where the pilots are concerned.

        3. Correct. On my first operational type, the Harrier, the conversion course was six months long. It was followed by another 6-8 months of work-up training on my first squadron before being declared ‘combat-ready’. On my second operational type, the Tornado, the course length was also about six months ( split between two conversion units), followed by a similar squadron work up to ‘combat ready’.

          1. Gosh – when WW3 starts – none of the many pilots needed will have been trained before the war is over.

          2. That’s one of the problems, Bill.
            The attrition rate will be much faster than the replacement rate for pilots and tankies and the rest, so you need the war to be over before you run out of fighting folk.

        4. After initial flying training pilots AFAIK either go to fast jet training (another 2 years) or go to more mundane flying like transport. The fast jet trained ones then go to an OCU (Operation Conversion Unit) for the type of jet they will fly and only then go to a front line squadron _ I’m sure Fiscal McPhee will elaborate .
          Although the Ukranian pilots might have gone through the same course of training that doesn’t mean they are fit to fly something like the F16 – it’s not a case of ‘sit in here, off you go’

          1. Since I have time, happy to elaborate: When I went through training in the early 1970s it was a well-oiled machine. There was no waiting for training slots or delays between courses unlike as occurs today – from what I hear.

            Having passed basic officer training we started Basic Flying Training School which could be shortened a bit for those who already had some flying experience ( in my case 230 hours in university air squadron and flying club aircraft). BFTS course (Jet Provost) was just over a year then it was off to Advanced Flying Training (swept wing jet – the Folland Gnat or Hawker Hunter) for 6 months. Then it was tactical and weapons training on Hawker Hunters for 5 months (tactical low flying, tactical formation, air combat, air-to-air and air-to-ground gunnery/rocketry/bombing). That turned a fast-jet pilot into an embryo fighter pilot. Then off to a front-line type OCU such as Harrier, F-4 Phantom or Lightning for six months or so before being posted to a squadron.

            Once with a squadron we were on probation during an operational work-up period and could not count ourselves as having ‘made it’ until we had passed a demanding ‘Operations Check’ and been declared ‘Combat Ready’. If I include the basic officer training, from ‘rookie’ to combat-ready fighter pilot was three and a half to four years.

            An experienced fighter pilot with one or more full tours (3 or more years on a squadron) under his belt could retrain to a different type with shortened courses but only if there was no significant role change (eg switching from air defence to ground attack). It could still take nine months to a year or more to be ‘combat ready’ on a different aircraft type. Assuming the Ukrainian pilots being trained on F-16s are already fully-trained fighter pilots that’s how long it would take in normal circumstances. In war, however, corners are cut.

            What I fear would happen to them is that they would be sent up against the Russian air force before they are fully ‘at one’ with their new (old) jets and so not yet able to fly them instinctively and by feel. It would be like the young men in the Battle of Britain who were thrown into combat with ‘ten hours on Spits’. It could be a turkey shoot for the Russians.

    2. F16s will not withstand.

      Watch them being shot out of the skies.

      The new F104 – the widowmaker.

      1. F104 was the original ‘widowmaker’ Tom , mostly down to the way Germans flew them

          1. Indeed – the Danes and Yanks didn’t have much of a problem flying them and our squadron had a few exchange visits with the Danes, our pilots flew their 2-seater and were quite impressed with the performance but it never came close to the Lightning for manoeuvrability due to their high wing loading

          1. Fighting Falcon. It bemuses me that the focus is on this 52-year-old design. It’s like the RN/RAF in the Falklands war saying what we need is Gloster Gladiators or Hawker Harts. Joking aside, it can only be because they are available since they are being/have been retired in numbers by the US Air Force, Air National Guard and other NATO air forces and they are therefore cheap (read expendable).

  26. Good afternoon all. Hope all is as well with your world as it can be. I know some of us Nottlers are having a really hard time of it lately and would like you to know you are constantly in my and Alf’s thoughts and prayers.

    OT (I think, not having been here this morning), in the Daily Wail there’s a piece about a “Christian father removing his 9 year old daughter from school after being horrified by what she was being taught in compulsory sex education lessons”.

    Good for him and I wish all parents would do the same en masse. It truly is disgusting what passes for sex education for these young children – there is plenty of time to hear about horrible practices in life. And the fact that these lessons are compulsory, with no parental right to know what the lessons consist of is dreadful. I’ve been wondering for ages why there hasn’t been a nationwide uprising against these so called lessons.

    1. French primary schools are not yet as bad as British ones but one of the best things we did was to take Christo at the age of 8 and Henry at 6 out of school. We homeschooled them ourselves as we sailed around the Med and then put them into boarding schools in England at 15 for their “A” level studies. Another sensible thing we did was to follow our doctor’s advice and refuse to have the Covid jabs. We shall soon be buying a new car – it will not be electric: it will be powered by fossil fuel.

      As teachers ourselves we know that children should not believe everything teachers tell them just as we should treat most things politicians tell us with cynicism and disbelief.

      1. You were very fortunate being able to home school your children, the vast majority do not have that luxury of course. We decided against the jabs following our own research, together with common sense (produce a “vaccine” for a novel virus within 8/9 months!), and extreme suspicion of the relentless and overwhelming psychological warfare waged in the U.K.- totally unprecedented) and do not regret our decisions. Sadly we cannot discuss what happened sensibly with either of our children and their families. Son hospitalised for 5 weeks (jab less beforehand but not now), d-i-l working in care homes and utterly convinced of all the advice, daughter and s-i-l and family all jabbed and had pleaded that we did too. It sure we will ever be able to.

        I do not believe anything our politicians say and have lost so much trust in the medical professionals.

        1. My sceptical elder son decided against the jabs; the younger one had his but I haven’t asked how many.

    1. They are both, subliminally advocating revolution.

      …and I cannot help but agree.

      Kick out and execute, Schwab, Soros, Gates et al – they all, just seek to destroy

    2. It’s only 19 minutes. James Lindsay is always worth listening to. He has in his own podcast series most skillfully dissected all manifestations of Marxism. Everything which besets us is traced back to Marx.

      This is an out-take from a 1 hr 50 minute conversation.

  27. 374729+ up ticks,

    First they meet them at Dover then they escort them to their
    R/R hotel prior to entering a camp, and the brainwashing campaign commences.

    ‘True blue’ Tory bootcamps planned to save party’s soul
    Training sessions ( English lessons) begin for the “new senior Conservatives in preparation for life as the opposition in the next general election

    Strength through joy via the WEF / NWO is the ultimate aim
    You will own nothing, you will have no need for anything, the United Kingdom electorate is already signing up with every vote.

  28. Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen from a very soggy East Dorset.
    It depresses my to see that the Uniparty won all three by-elections.

      1. Oh, I didn’t see that, I just thought they’d added 10 degrees on to the daily given temp.

    1. Air temperature is measured at a height of 1500mm above ground level, or at least that used to be the rule for weather stations.

      Nowadays they measure the temperature of the tarmac at airports and cite these readings in order to deceive and stoke fear.

    1. Is that that special high temperature ice caused by Climate Catastrophe?

    2. Oh dear that didn’t make the recent weather news. Perhaps it melted why they tried to disguise it.

  29. I’ll repost this from my other blog:

    Acting Sergeant George Harold Eardley VC, MM (6th May 1912 – 11th September 1991), 4th Battalion, King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, British Army.

    On 16th October 1944, Eardley’s platoon was ordered to clear some orchards east of Overloon, where a strong German force, including paratroop machine-gunners, was holding up the general advance. When 80 yards from the objective, the platoon encountered intense enemy fire which swept the area of advance and inflicted severe casualties.
    Eardley spotted the position of one machine-gun post and, although it was virtually suicidal ‘to emerge from cover, dashed forward with a Sten gun and killed all the occupants with automatic fire and a grenade. He then observed -the position Of the second post, which was firing rapidly and accurately. Having charged another 30 yards over open ground, he killed all the enemy in it, including an officer.
    Another section then attempted to move forward but, after losing half its men, was forced halt. Eardley ordered his own section to lie down and take cover while he crawled forward by himself to a third enemy position which he then destroyed with a grenade and Sten fire. The advance was then resumed successfully. Eardley’s feat was astonishing by any standards because the enemy-fire was so relentless and accurate that it seemed impossible for anyone to stay alive in it, let alone destroy its main sources.
    This was not the first time Eardley had shown outstanding courage and initiative. On 1st August 1944, at Beny-Bocage in Normandy, as a member of a reconnaissance patrol, he became separated from the others when a machine-gun opened up, as they were moving along a hedge. Eardley pretended to be hit. Then, when attention was diverted from him, he stalked the machine-gun post which he destroyed with two grenades and Sten gun fire. He was awarded the Military Medal.

    At the investiture for his VC at Buckingham Palace in February 1945, he was greeted warmly by King George VI who expressed his pleasure at meeting a VC who was still alive as so many were awarded posthumously. Eardley was offered a glass of sherry by King, and in the event had two; the King, however, confined himself to half a glass, saying he could not exceed it as he was on duty.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/George_Eardley_VC.jpg

  30. ‘Scarface’ serial killer among 17 Albanian murderers being deported. 22 July 2023.

    One of Albania’s worst serial murderers is among 17 convicted killers that The Sunday Telegraph can reveal are to be deported to their home country to serve out the remainder of their sentences under a new deal.

    Five-times killer Mane Driza, 45, who used the nickname of Al Pacino’s character Scarface is among the rogue’s gallery of murderers whose cumulative UK jail terms to which they were sentenced by British courts totals 336 years.

    He will be deported under an agreement ratified last week where Britain will pay Albania £4 million a year to take back 200 of the most dangerous Albanian criminals jailed for offences including murder, rape, burglary and drug dealing.

    They will be out in a couple of years and very probably back here! I console myself about all these things that are happening in the UK with the thought that none of it is of my doing. In fact it is in direct contravention of everything I believe, so I sleep fairly soundly on that score. Were it left to me. None of them would be going anywhere.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/22/serial-killer-mane-driza-among-albanian-murderers-deported/

  31. ‘Scarface’ serial killer among 17 Albanian murderers being deported. 22 July 2023.

    One of Albania’s worst serial murderers is among 17 convicted killers that The Sunday Telegraph can reveal are to be deported to their home country to serve out the remainder of their sentences under a new deal.

    Five-times killer Mane Driza, 45, who used the nickname of Al Pacino’s character Scarface is among the rogue’s gallery of murderers whose cumulative UK jail terms to which they were sentenced by British courts totals 336 years.

    He will be deported under an agreement ratified last week where Britain will pay Albania £4 million a year to take back 200 of the most dangerous Albanian criminals jailed for offences including murder, rape, burglary and drug dealing.

    They will be out in a couple of years and very probably back here! I console myself about all these things that are happening in the UK with the thought that none of it is of my doing. In fact it is in direct contravention of everything that I believe, so I sleep fairly soundly on that score. Were it left to me. None of them would be going anywhere.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/22/serial-killer-mane-driza-among-albanian-murderers-deported/

    1. Stand by for the Human rights lawyers queuing up to defend this poor refugee.

      1. If it carries on like this the ‘B’BC will have to start using green on their weather maps again.

        1. See ‘ ‘ have crept in… thought they were marks on my screen, but they didn’t rub off.

          1. I started typing ‘B’BC like that years ago so it’s now more or less habit.

          2. Welcome to my world.
            I sometimes wonder why I post on blogs full of clever people.

          3. Maybe because you are one yourself?
            It’s good you join us here. It’s good to have diverse opinions and experience.

        2. Wait until Winter and the Met’s blue maps shewing the glaciers that will soon overwhelm us.

        1. I’m wearing a fleece and have a rug over my knees and a warm laptop on it. OH has just brought me a nice hot mug of tea.

          1. That’s sad, N. Although he died quite a few years ago now, we still miss Magnificat.
            Firstborn has a tiny “give-away” tom, called Perkins – as he purrs like a diesel engine. Lovely wee creature, so he is. lovely warm paws. Likes to sleep on Firstborn’s chest.

        2. OH has his coat on. He said he’d put the heating on later when we sit down to watch something on telly.

          1. I’m very tempted to retire for some zeds.

            Hope you’re feeling better, Ann.

          2. Sadly not. Horrible night and today no better. Feel like shit to be honest. Oh well, KBO.

          3. No. Pills from GP but bugger all else. Shall call Monday if they don’t call first.

          4. The warm floor thermostat for the bathroom came on a couåle of days ago.

          5. We had the heating on for the evening. I put the electiric blanket on when i went to bed, and my warm dressing gown stayed on the bed when we settled down, as it does in the winter. I think the new Ice Age has started……

        3. Made that comment on the way to dinner – it’s 22 July, and we’re wearing wool sweater (SWMBO) and an old fleece (me). Only 1stborn has a tee shirt on (trousers too). Too freakin’ chilly. And wet.

          1. Okay…most…but we are fraying at the edges. I think it about time for a party. BTW. I’m normally in bed reading by 7pm so no hanky panky !……unless by appointment !

      2. It’s like March outside.
        The band set up out side at the pub will be playing to no one.

    1. The bus broke down the driver was under bonnet and the conductress said do you need a screw driver ?
      No thanks he replied we’re 40 minutes late already.

      1. Thousands – not daunted by the cold and wet.

        I killed 20 while laying the table for lunch….. There are fly swatters in every room.

        1. Lovely! We’re plagued here by carpet muncher moths. Not so many at once as your flies though.

          1. It is the first time our tomatoes have won anything! The peppers are, “Hot Wax” (though I expect you are familiar with that…!!)

    1. A bit ironic, a Muslim telling men to challenge misogynistic behaviour when his religion encourages and endorses it.

      1. With the Uxbridge result expect Mayor Khan to encourage the influx of many more Muslims into Uxbridge.

    1. That will go straight into the waste bin after I have well and truly mangled it.

  32. An effin’ Double Bogey Six.

    Wordle 763 6/6
    ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩
    🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩
    ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
    ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
    ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. You are not alone.

      Wordle 763 6/6

      ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Same here

        Wordle 763 6/6

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

    2. Five for me. Same problem.

      Wordle 763 5/6

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

  33. That’s me done for this cold, wintry and wet day. Still, the MR is pleased with her prize-winning entries.

    Have a spiffing evening – staying warm.

    A demain. Prolly.

  34. That’s us back from dinner out.
    Food perfect: simple, tasty, very-well cooked. Peasant food, made by a French lad who really has talent. SWMBO & I had Provencale stew (sounds better in French).
    Didn’t even cost very much… what’s not to like?

      1. Daub Provence – or something like that. Beef.
        Lovely big chunks that you could cut with a fork, a heavy but not cloying tomatoey sauce, carrots in the stew, and excellent mashed potato. Superb. Heavy and tasty and warming.

    1. At this time of the year, I am ready for a good hearty stew, but not prepared to slave in the kitchen with the oven on!!

        1. I made a beautiful stew last week out of brisket and although using a Knorr beef stock cube I add a teaspoon of Bovril

      1. It’s of great historical significance, a very small part of an enormous event.

          1. I knew any response by you would be the most flippant bordering on the fatuous!

      1. Correct – well, the month, anyway.

        When I saw this in a magazine recently and knowing what it depicted, my eye was drawn to the young woman near the front. My immediate thought was that she probably wouldn’t be smiling in the next year or two. Off they go on their great adventure, the summer sunshine almost mocking them. How many of those seeing them off cheered and how many silently wept, fearing the worst?

        I was drawn particularly to the detail – it’s a high quality print for the time. The older woman at the front and the young woman with the big hat further back both look pensive; the child on the left is looking directly at the photographer. Look very closely and the smiling woman at the front is actually looking a little sideways. Is she giving the porter the glad eye or simply trying to avoid bumping into him?

        The location is Newcastleton in Roxburghshire, on the Carlisle to Edinburgh railway (the Waverley route). The village is notable for having been built on a grid pattern by the Duke of Buccleuch, mimicking the model villages being built at the time for mill workers elsewhere in Scotland.

        The soldiers leaving were the Newcastleton Territorials. I found a 1914 photo of them. They numbered just twenty-two. How many returned?

        1. My guess was based on dress code, absence of motorised vehicles and of young men.

          My 40-year-old Irish grandfather – a surgeon – volunteered in August 1914. He served as a Captain in the RAMC at the battle of the Somme . . .

        2. Now that we know, the photo is much more than just a simple snap of a station.

    1. No idea, either. But some internet research has allowed me to identify this station as Newcastleton, Scottish Borders.

      There is an injured man with a bandage around his head and carrying a baby in the foreground, which leads me to suspect that this has something to do with the First World War.

      1. Correct location and yes, it’s WW1, but the soldiers are departing, not returning. And looking very closely at the photo (the image I have is of better quality than that posted here), the man with the small child in his left arm doesn’t have a bandage around his head but a high forehead with a square (and receding) hairline.

          1. I couldn’t find a decent image online using an ordinary search so I bought a copy from the copyright owners for the princely sum of 99p. It’s of very good quality, a .tif file. Uploading on here converts it to a .jpg of much lower definition.

  35. Lance-Sergeant John Daniel Baskeyfield VC (18th November 1922 – 20th September 1944), The South Staffordshire- Regiment (1st Airborne Division) (Stoke-on-Trent).

    War Office, 23rd November, 1944.

    The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the posthumous award of the VICTORIA CROSS to: –

    No. 5057916 Lance-Sergeant John Daniel Baskeyfield, The South Staffordshire- Regiment (1st Airborne Division) (Stoke-on-Trent).

    On 20 September 1944, during the battle of Arnhem, Lance-Sergeant Baskeyfield was the N.C.O. in charge of a 6-pounder anti-tank gun at Oosterbeek. The enemy developed a major attack on this sector with infantry, tanks and self-propelled guns with the obvious intent to break into and overrun the Battalion position. During the early stage of the action the crew commanded by this N.C.O. was responsible for the destruction of two Tiger tanks and at least one self propelled gun, thanks to the coolness and daring of this N.C.O., who, with complete disregard for his own safety, allowed each tank to come well within 100 yards of his gun before opening fire.

    In the course of this preliminary engagement Lance-Sergeant Baskeyfield was badly wounded in the leg and the remainder of his crew were either killed or badly wounded. During the brief respite after this engagement Lance-Sergeant Baskeyfield refused to be carried to the Regimental Aid Post and spent his time attending to his gun and shouting encouragement to his comrades in neighbouring trenches.

    After a short interval the enemy renewed the attack with even greater ferocity than before, under cover of intense mortar and shell fire. Manning his gun quite alone Lance-Sergeant Baskeyfield continued to fire round after round at the enemy until his gun was put out of action. By this time his activity was the main factor in keeping the enemy tanks at bay. The fact that the surviving men in his vicinity were held together and kept in action was undoubtedly due to his magnificent example and outstanding courage. Time after time enemy attacks were launched and driven off. Finally, when his gun was knocked out, Lance-Sergeant Baskeyfield crawled under intense enemy fire to another 6-pounder gun nearby, the crew of which had been killed, and proceeded to man it single-handed. With this gun he engaged an enemy self propelled gun which was approaching to attack. Another soldier crawled across the open ground to assist him but was killed almost at once. Lance-Sergeant Baskeyfield succeeded in firing two rounds at the self propelled gun, scoring one direct hit which rendered it ineffective. Whilst preparing to fire a third shot, however, he was killed by a shell from a supporting enemy tank.

    The superb gallantry of this N.C.O. is beyond praise. During the remaining days at Arnhem stories of his valour were a constant inspiration to all ranks. He spurned danger, ignored pain and, by his supreme fighting spirit, infected all who witnessed his conduct with the same aggressiveness and dogged devotion to duty which characterised his actions throughout.

    https://i0.wp.com/victoriacrossonline.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/1-13.jpg?resize=173%2C288&ssl=1

    1. Such a pity that such men don’t survive the action – except for the very few, as noted a bit earlier, where the King fed him sherry and remarked that it was nice to award a VC to someone still alive.
      More respect to the Lance-Sergeant. Only made 22.

      1. I would assume seeing mates you have lived with, trained with, got drunk, with, spent leaves with, and would quite literally have taken a bullet for slaughtered would make you more than a little angry.

    1. Frstborn commented in like manner earlier this evening. Good to see a picture, though.

      1. If the Grauniad posted pictures I would get myself another account and post it there. The abuse and ad hominin attacks make it worth while and brighten up a cold winter’s evening.

      1. To be fair most LimpDum voters haven’t the first idea what they stand for or what any of their odious policies are, they just see them as not being Tory or Labour.

      2. To be fair most LimpDum voters haven’t the first idea what they stand for or what any of their odious policies are, they just see them as not being Tory or Labour.

    1. Find a nature reserve or a piece of prime agricultural land, strip it and erect some Portakabins. With open-air latrines.

      1. Personally I am against keeping them here long enough to need any camps, but I do like the irony behind the Tweet.

    2. I am a Bathonian and have long felt that there is something in the water in the West Country that causes otherwise sensible people to submit to the faux greenery, cycle lanes, traffic jamming and ‘holier than thou’ hypocrisy of the Liberal Party.

  36. Indian authorities to Pfizer: “You can either lose 1.38 billion customers or allow an independent investigation to be conducted to determine if your products are safe and provides immunity.”

    Pfizer chose to give up the 1.38 billion customers.

    Let that sink in.

    1. That’s a significant statement, Johnny. Do you have a link to the source?

          1. I searched on Reuters.com, but it could not be found. Might have been deleted, might have been a bad search, who knows? I’ll try again after breakfast.

  37. We;ve got the heating on. Had fish ‘n’ chips for dinner. Now watching the cricket.

    1. The booing of the Belarusian player in feigned support of a Ukrainian opponent demonstrates the ignorance of the crowd. Belarus is now safe in the arms of Russia and has tactical nuclear weapons to protect itself from Poland, NATO and Ukraine. Belarus has always been a thriving manufacturing hub for Russia, is a prosperous and attractive country and tourist destination with mature and pragmatic leaders.

      Ukraine by contrast is a cesspit of corruption, has already lost its proxy war with Russia, presided over the deaths of its young men in the hundreds of thousands and risks losing its western parts to Poland. Putin is not interested in a third of Ukraine being grabbed by Poland provided the Poles do not enter the war in any guise.

      Putin will probably take what is left of Ukraine and place a demilitarised zone between it and western Ukraine/Poland.

      History will record that Biden is the most incompetent American president in its history as a constitutional republic. He has lost every war, humiliated his country at every turn, bankrupted the economy and wrecked relations with several nuclear powers.

      He has united Russia with China and India and encouraged Saudi Arabia to be allied to Iran. A total disaster and lesson to all that stolen elections never play out well in the long run.

      1. Lukashenko is a minor tyrant and not to be lauded. Nonetheless, people representing his country do not deserve to be booed merely for being Belarusian. It’s ill-mannered and almost certainly unmerited.

        1. I think you are mistaken. People should be judged by their policies and whether they represent the interests of their countries.

          Simply because a country allies with Russia does not make their leaders tyrants.

          If you seek tyrants you could look at Zelensky, an utterly corrupt place man fiddling billions in US Federal spending, achieving nothing for his paymasters on the battlefield and exposing western military as inept and its weaponry as good as useless in modern warfare.

          1. This is an.overview of Belarus.

            Belarus is an authoritarian state in which elections are openly rigged and civil liberties are severely restricted. In 2020, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who maintains a firm grip over the military and security forces, cracked down on a massive prodemocracy protest movement, that was sparked by his reelection in a fraudulent presidential poll. Since then, security forces have violently assaulted and arbitrarily detained journalists and ordinary citizens who challenge the regime, whether by means of protesting, reporting on events, or posting opinions online. The judiciary and other institutions lack independence and provide no check on Lukashenka’s power.

            https://freedomhouse.org/country/belarus/freedom-world/2022

      2. Lukashenko is a minor tyrant and not to be lauded. Nonetheless, people representing his country do not deserve to be booed merely for being Belarusian. It’s ill-mannered and almost certainly unmerited.

      3. In 2018, we were already told by the WEF that the plan was to shift power from the US to “a group of countries” i.e. BRICS.
        Everything that’s happening under Biden is being done on the instructions of the lizard elites; it’s the managed decline of the USA at the end of the petro-dollar fiat currency run, just as they presided over the dismantling of the British Empire after the war.
        The US has been on the road to bankruptcy ever since they started printing fiat dollars and looting the country. Biden is only the puppet figurehead during the final stages.

        They don’t care about thievery by the top Democrat cabal – that’s trivial in the bigger picture, and anyway, you need dishonest people by definition when you need them to betray their country.

  38. Before I head back up to bed- have been on the phone with my sister in law and niece.
    Sister in law was at Windsor last week to be invested as a judge and given a DBE. The King did it. I asked what he was like and she said he was lovely; charming and courteous and very entertaining. On the ball also.
    Niece is going to send photos of grand nephew which will be nice.
    I am going to take a pain killer (haha) shortly before I try to sleep again. It’s too early but I don’t give a damn.

    1. Sod the timing, what’s the worst that can happen?

      No don’t answer that, just be ax comfortable as you can be.

  39. That’s me for today, chums. Good night and sleep well. Tomorrow is another day.

    1. Warmer I hope. We’ve had the heating on this evening. Now in bed with the electric blanket on. And winter nightie.

  40. Dear God. I’ve just watched University Challenge with its new presenter. Let’s hope he lasts for only one series. What a horrible voice. His delivery is what you’d expect from an early evening game show on ITV. Gabble, gabble, gabble, constant slurring, the indefinite article pronounced as in ‘hay’ (but without the ‘h)’, the use of ‘gunna’ and more.

    Eeuch! I thought Radio 5 was bad enough, but it’s 1950s BBC compared with this. It’s the End of the World as We Know It!

Comments are closed.