Saturday 22 March: How was Britain’s biggest airport brought to a standstill by a single fire?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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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.

476 thoughts on “Saturday 22 March: How was Britain’s biggest airport brought to a standstill by a single fire?”

  3. Good morning all!
    An almost warm 10°C outside but overcast after some overnight rain. More rain forecast for mid-day.

  5. Morning, all Y'all.
    Sunny. Beautiful clear night last night, so many stars to see.

  7. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,372 5/6

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  8. A repost of my response to OLT regarding the letter from Anthony Omo, Director of Fitness to Practise, General Medical Council London NW1:-

    Who remembers,
    "Omo washes not only clean,
    Not only white,
    But BRIGHT!
    Omo adds bright-bright-brightness"?

    2. A box of Omo in the window in the married quarters would convey a certain message

      Old man out or
      on my own
      😁

  10. 'Morning All
    Weekend Medley
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fd604e9efc95cd730e3b9f9238474c93f9758d48c6d529eeb5dd0d162730fa1.jpg
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      1. Yanks call insects 'bugs'.

        I never understood that since I was always told that 'bugs' are germs.

        3. Not quite. Certain insects are bugs, not all insects are bugs. Any little critter, including spiders are bugs. I have never heard Butterflies called bugs in the USA. It's all a bit arbitrary.

        4. Living in Norway, many Weegies like to speak English to me, but use Merkin. So, I’ve got used to it…

  11. Tried Wordle this morning for the first time in weeks.
    Wordle 1,372 3/6

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    It works.

  12. Good morning, all. Light rain overnight and now broken overcast.

    Re the Heathrow fiasco: if this revelation is correct i.e. the 'green' biomass standby takes some time to start generating power as opposed to almost instant generation from diesel back-up, then a head or two should roll. Starting with Miliband's.

    In my earlier life, BT had either diesel generators in telephone exchanges or connection points outside for mobile generators and while time was of the essence the exchange batteries were designed to hold service for some hours. The on-site generators were regularly routine tested and the test result logged. Noisy buggers but effective.

    Can we expect a massive 'drains up' and "lessons will be learned" or will the very apt, 'gaslighting', continue?

    https://x.com/teachertwit2/status/1903081635156820248

  13. 403660+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Saturday 22 March: How was Britain’s biggest airport brought to a standstill by a single fire?

    Reality,
    I have worked on sub stations up & down these Isles
    installing pipework conduit systems for CO2 dispersal.
    so I would NOT rule out, as an easy route to take, the
    enemy enemas within these Isles have taken advantage of the criminal lack of safeguarding these establishments should have in place.

    A great many people will NOT ACCEPT the fact we are at war WITHIN our borders going on daily, troops incoming via Dover,NOT DRs & nurses but the elements that cause the need for indigenous peoples to urgently NEED the attention of DRs & nurses.

    These political kapos are successfully using the Ukraine issue as deflection all the while the English
    soil beneath YOUR feet is given over to those of a foreign nature, up until now with YOUR concent via the polling stations,

    Tell me is the ruling political S(TOOL) taking violin lessons?

    1. No surprise there! He's an oaf who seems to think it's progress to shut down our industry and buy from China instead. It's not green – just greenwashing.

  15. Morning all! 🌄 I got logged out of Disqus somehow on my phone and had to resort to going in through Google. But I seem to be in now.

    1. Same here, last night.
      Problem was, I couldn't remember the password, as I never normally need it, and what's left of my brane doesn't have space for information not used.

      1. I never remember passwords – I use a password manager on my laptop. It sets them and saves them so that I don't have to. But on my phone they were normally all just plumbed in.

          1. My elder son has a scheme to help with passwords. He selects one combination of letters, numbers etc. Which he remembers. (Lucky man – but he is only 59!!)

            Then to that combination he adds "bank", "phone" any short bit to indicate what it is one wants to open. He is very happy with it.

          2. I used to be happy with a similar system, too. Those were the days! Now I keep getting irritated when told a password has to be of a certain length, contain at least one special character, be capitalised (or not)… argh!

      3. The only password I remember is the simple one that opens my laptop and also the password manager. All the others are gobbledegook and I don’t have to know them.
        The one for our Internet access is a long string of letters and numbers – it’s a bit chaotic if that one gets shut out. I do have that one written down in a notebook. I had to resort to that when I set up my new Kindle.

  16. A handy definition, just to confirm what NOTTLers already know.

    Anarcho-tyranny
    A combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety. It is characteristic of anarcho-tyranny that it not only fails to punish criminals and enforce legitimate order but also criminalizes the innocent, and in this respect its failures bring the country, or important parts of it, close to a state of anarchy.

  17. Dreich morning here.
    Wordle 1,372 4/6
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    1. Wordle 1,372 4/6

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      Does anyone remember the word from yesterday? I got home late, too tired even to guess what it was.

  18. Rape culture exists at 1,600 primary schools, report finds.

    Testimony features sexual harassment, groping, inappropriate touching and forced penetration
    560
    Albert Tait. Flora Prideaux
    22 March 2025 5:00am GMT

    Rape culture exists in more than 1,600 primary schools in the UK and Ireland, an investigation by a campaign group has found.

    The Everyone’s Invited list names 1,664 primary schools where pupils aged five to 11 have submitted anonymous testimonies alleging rape culture.

    This includes experiences of sexual harassment, groping, inappropriate touching and forced penetration during primary school.

    The report claimed that almost half of schoolchildren under seven are showing signs of misogynistic behaviour, and that “misogynistic rhetoric and harmful gender norms” are ingrained from as early as nursery.

    It also found that more than 60 per cent of teachers reported that children under nine had been exposed to pornography.
    ‘Smashed my head against sink’

    Several testimonies from pupils are included in the report.

    One read: “When I was five, another five-year-old boy at primary school started calling me beautiful and sexy (which I didn’t even know what it meant at the time).

    “One day, he followed me into the toilets and smashed my head against the sink.

    “I told my mum, and the school phoned her to tell her we were ‘just playing’ and said they would keep an eye on him.

    “One day, he called me sexy then pushed me into the toilets again and tried to push my head down a toilet while grabbing me.

    “I told a teacher after and they put me and the boy in the same room together. A teacher tried to downplay it, and say it wasn’t that bad (basically gaslighting a six-year-old for the sake of keeping their reputation).

    “The boy wasn’t expelled. I left school, and learnt that he did it to another girl after I had left.”

    Another read: “When I was 10, a boy told me one of the boys was going to lick my vagina. A boy said they would pay another boy £20 to rape me. I didn’t know what rape meant.

    “I didn’t tell anyone. One of the boys in my year told their mum, who told mine. I went in for a meeting with the headteacher. She told me, ‘As women, we have to accept what men say to us’.”

    The charity, which is dedicated to eradicating rape culture, has called for relationship and sex education to begin in nursery or reception.
    ‘Challenging and uncomfortable’

    It was founded in June 2020 by Soma Sara, a former private school pupil and sex abuse survivor, and has previously exposed the issue of sexual abuse in schools and colleges.

    The charity’s report acknowledged that primary school teachers often faced “challenging and uncomfortable situations within the classroom” but found that 80 per cent of those surveyed felt ill-equipped to address these issues.

    It added: “Many are not trained beyond the legal minimum in safeguarding, which leaves them ill-equipped to respond to disclosures of sexual violence.”

    A recent report by the National Police Chiefs’ Council found that child sexual abuse and exploitation had increased by 400 per cent from 2013 to 2024.

    More than half of the alleged offenders in cases of sexual violence were children themselves, it added.

    The report concluded that rape culture was “endemic” in primary schools.

    It emphasised the role of the online world in the increase of violence, saying phones gave children access “to the most extreme content possible with a click of the finger”.

    So much for the sexual revolution…

    1. More than twenty years ago, we pulled our son out of an English state primary school because Pakistani boys were trying to kiss him in the playground and the teachers told us it was nothing, just children playing. Teachers don't want to face up to dealing with racist sexual harassment, unless a white kid is the aggressor and a darker skinned kid the victim; they've got a narrative for that.

      1. "… Pakistani boys were trying to kiss him in the playground …"

        Were these Paki children simply defying their parents' loathing of homosexuality?

      1. $03660+ ticks,

        Morning OLT,

        Could prove a good thing to awaken the indigenous to the dangers WE ALL face, to what they, joe public, has put in place over these last four decades.

      2. Rupert doesn't have to worry. Went to all the right schools is definitely upper middle class, right accent. A successful businessman and an MP. He can say exactly what Tommy says, and does, and he will be as safe as houses.

  21. Moment of frisson this morning, chez Thomas. Normally, when we get up at 7.15ish – there are two ginger cats beating down the front door. This morning, only Pickles. I called Gus – normally that results in an appearance in a minute or two. No reply. At 8.15, he sauntered in and ate a hearty breakfast. Then went out again! Cats, eh?

    1. Jessie starts her day and ours by jumping on us in bed. Ziggy likes to join in when I go to the loo.
      They both love a cuddle and a warm lap.

      1. Our two – now 4½ – are decidedly outdoor cats who will tolerate armchairs, beds, sofas when it suits them. Definitely NOT lapcats (unfortunately).

          1. I do miss a lapful of cat. When they were little, they couldn’t get enough of it. Once they went outdoors – that was it.

        2. In a few years time…. our thug of a cat ("is that really a cat? It looks more like a panther..!" and "that is the largest cat we have ever had in the cattery!" and "look at the size of those paws! They are like dinner plates!") would bring pheasants home and try and haul them through the cat flap, turned into an affectionate lap cat in his later years. It turned out he liked his comforts, even devising strategies to oust our elder son out of a comfy chair so that he could install himself instead.

    1. As Bill said on Thursday when the judge said he would not give his judgement until the following day:

      "He will be got at."

      He clearly was.

      1. And, as expected, the DT has piled in taking the side against Tommy Robinson.

        But not all the DT readership are against him!.

        Here is the top BTL :

        jonathan bateman

        This article was bought to you be the British government thought control department.

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/21/the-daily-t-elon-musk-wrong-about-tommy-robinson/

        The Daily T: Why Elon Musk is wrong about Tommy Robinson
        As a judge rules the EDL co-founder must stay in prison isolation for his own safety, we go in search of the real Tommy Robinson

        1. There's seems to be a definite theme amongst the "most liked" comments that the DT is talking rubbish [polite version]. Here's another BTL that they won't like! "Two tier justice. Why is Tommy not in an open prison where most civil cases are held? Why is his sentence not reduced because of the states inability to keep him safe without subjecting him to the most onerous conditions? Answer he must be made an example of for voicing over the last couple of decades what has been happening amongst the Pakistani community and how all governments have turned a blind eye. Tommy Robinson is the conscience of the UK and the government do not want to be reminded of their very guilty secret. The guilty secret being that some political groups were prepared sacrifice young white girls in exchange for votes."

  23. 403660+ up ticks,

    Every day he spends in incarceration is a slap in the mouth to every free born Englishman via the
    political "YOU will do as we say, or else " brigade.

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021

    ·
    15h

    They intend to break Tommy over the coming months. His crime? Proving his innocence with a documentary film.

    Next up is his trial under the Terrorism Act. His crime? Protecting rape gang victims annonimity by refusing to give the cops the password to his phone.

    There will be no jury only a judge. He has never been convicted of anything by a jury.

    Tommy Robinson loses bid to bring legal challenge over prison segregation – The Independent, https://apple.news/AcKgJh9qaR0CFM …

    Translate post

    English
    Tommy Robinson loses bid to bring legal challenge over prison segregation — The Independent
    Tommy Robinson loses bid to bring legal challenge over prison segregation — The Independent

    Robinson is currently in prison at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes.

    http://apple.news

  26. SIR – In the week that Heathrow Airport was put out of action by a substation fire, we received a letter from BT telling us that our copper landline was going to be replaced with, in effect, an internet-based telephone service. The letter went on to say that, in the event of a power cut or loss of internet connectivity, the phone would not work — even for 999 calls.

    Is this country asleep at the wheel? We need to wake up an have a serious conversation about the resilience of our infrastructure — now.

    John Froggatt
    Loughborough, Leicestershire.

    The problem is, John, that between 1066 and the 1940s, British people had hearts of oak. They were inventive, resilient and had formidable minds and resolve. Since then their progeny have become softer, feebler and more stupid at an ever-increasing rate. Those cretins responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure of the UK (and elsewhere) in recent times were never fit-for-purpose.

    The scary thing is that these imbeciles are now breeding more and more witless morons. These dullard offspring will ensure the complete demise of the species. Trouble is that too few recognise this and continue to sit with their thumbs up their arses hoping it will all go away and things will somehow improve.

    They won't!

    1. Rolls Royce build Nuclear Powered Generating Devices, but Millitwat would not allow it

    1. She is rather pretty though! Yep, shallow me! Who is the MP [?] doing the educating? Fine effort but I'm amazed he wasn't shouted down.

    2. The problem with the treasury might possibly be due to the fact that a large majority of the people who now work there have never been near a farm and have no idea at all how things actually work. And of course a lot of them in these times seem to have originated from other far off countries.

      2. The problem with the treasury might possibly be due to the fact that a large majority of the people who now work shirk ……

    3. The vicious harridan in No. 11 and the psychopath in No. 10 understand fully what is going on. The whole point of this is to force farmers to sell their land off cheaply to house builders and wind farm operators.

  28. Morning all 🙂😊
    Are the government deciding on the weather as well now. Grey boring and wet. But related to their glowball warming adgenda. Slightly warmer.
    And The Fire ! Did the Dopey Wokies net zeroists take the away the standy diesel generators and replace them with standby self igniting batteries ?
    Or as many plonkers are suggesting on social media Vlad did it 🥱
    Just askin'

    1. I think they replaced the generator with a stand-alone bio mass generator.
      Top up the re-purposed dust bin with rotting potatoes and wood chips ….. and watch Heathrow grind to a halt.

  29. J & Z came to us as rescues – they settled in and took over. We were told they were a bonded pair and needed to be together- but they don't actually like each very much. Ziggy doesn't like it if Jessie gets too close. They chase each other around and sometimes fight. They do eat side by side though. Always Ziggy on the left and Jessie on the right. We don't know their ages but somewhere between 8 and 12.

  30. Findus sleeps in the large conservatory. This morning he was patrolling the large patio doors 'chattering' in frustration at a blackbird outside. He has always been more of an outdoor cat but we have — so far — kept him inside until he gets his bearings. I shall introduce him to the garden in due course wearing a harness until he becomes accustomed to his new surroundings. The proximity of a fairly busy road worries us a bit.

    He has taken very well to the interior of the house and has explored every nook and cranny, and has numerous places he loves to doss down. This morning he attempted to trip me up (as usual) as he purred loudly while I provided his breakfast.

    1. If he knows where to sleep and where his food is, you can let him out without a qualm.

      1. I tried to keep the girls in for a few days after they moved in here – but I forgot to lock the catflap! Jessie found it and out she went – but she knew where to come back.

  33. They don't show her response to the facts presented to her.

    Perhaps she replied:

    "Thank you for putting me straight on the figures. Yes £400,000 over 10 years works out at £40,000 pa but the government could help the farmer by putting a compulsory purchase order on two fifths of the farm, pay him the agricultural rather than the market rate, and get the farm below the tax threshold.

    Of course this could reduce his income by two fifths from £50,000 pa to £30,000pa but he should be grateful to the government for saving him tax."

  34. They don't show her response to the facts presented to her.

    Perhaps she replied:

    "Thank you for putting me straight on the figures. Yes £400,000 over 10 years works out at £40,000 pa but the government could help the farmer by putting a compulsory purchase on two fifths of the farm, pay him the agricultural rather than the market rate, and get the farm below the tax threshold.

    Of course this could reduce his income by two fifths from £50,000 pa to £30,000pa but he should be grateful to the government for saving him tax."

  35. Because the agenda is to bring Britain to its knees and impose the new world order, not to "save the planet."

    1. And they feel particularly threatened by Britain because we have been so successful. Hence the consistent concerted attacks on us in particular.

  37. Morning all, cloudy and cool. Rather nice actually. I trust that everyone is OK or, at least, stable. Which for some of us old farts is good! 😊

    Someone asked where Rupert Lowe was. Sorry I can't remember who, but I thought people would like to know that according to the latest news he is in Florida. So we all know what that means. May he come back with good news, a promise of a brighter future to create a true opposition to the blob.

    I noticed too, in todays Telegraph, that there is a discussion about Tommy Robinson. I haven't listened to it because I'm tired of the usual propaganda. But what is encouraging is that almost 100% of the comments below the line are pro-Tommy. When even the middle class gets behind a working class oink, then we know he has won the fight. He is becoming a national hero, not just a hero of the working class.

  38. This pronoun fiddling is ridiculous in any language

    Latin is not gender neutral, and therefore doesn’t cater for those who identify as ‘nonbinary’

    William Sitwell, Saturday, March 22, 2025.

    Did I mention I wasn’t too keen on Latin? I’m still battling to come up for air after the pile-on you beasts gave me recently when I cried hurrah at the news that the Labour government had cut the £4million Latin Excellence Programme in state schools.

    Well, now one of our most prestigious educational establishments has issued an edict that positively defaces the very columns of that ancient language. Each year, since its founding eight centuries ago, Oxford University has conferred its degrees on graduating students in Latin. But now it has been deemed wrong that the wording used in this ceremony is not inclusive. Specifically, it is not gender neutral, and therefore doesn’t cater for those who identify as “non-binary”.

    And so changes are afoot. Indeed, using correct and ancient procedure, a gazette has been issued to alert faculties that a gender-neutral degree ceremony is necessary. Dons will soon vote to change the Latin ceremonial text, unchanged since about the time King John affixed his seal to Magna Carta. Unchanged for some 800 years until it was decreed in 2025 that a message of congratulations grammatically gendered masculine or feminine might offend people who very possibly couldn’t understand the words anyway, having completed a degree in the forward-thinking subfields of LGBTQ+ histories and gender as a plural category of historical analysis at the university’s Centre for Women’s, Gender and Queer Histories, for which the study of Latin may have been deemed non-essential.

    Consider the low blow of being conferred a degree with the Latin word (for masters) or (doctors), both of which are uniformly, violently, masculine.
    One would have to rush to one’s gender-neutral toilet to sob gently, before repairing to a café to be consoled by family and friends over sips of, doubtless, alcohol-free, fermented botanicals and resuscitating bites of vegan jackfruit wraps.

    Like him or not, Billy Sitwell invariably hits the nail on the head.

    1. Urth user fond of lying only believes in the word of the Brussels mafiosi. It's her way of life.

    2. Aren't there a few people in the USA who set great store by having fought for the right to leave the British Empire? Never mind – they can celebrate Commonwealth Day instead of Independence Day!

      1. Not really, not now a days. The only ones I have ever come across on that score are the tedious Irish Americans who try to outdo real Irish people in their faux hatred of the British. Tiresome people.

    3. Clever. The King has outflanked Starmer and if this goes through, proves the superior value of the monarchy that Starmer is trying to destroy.

  40. Today i am making Chinese beef stir fry. The Wong Way.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/beef_hor_fun_19845

    An excellent tip from Andrew Wong on how to tenderise beef. If the meat turns out to be on the sinewy side, add 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda to the marinade to help tenderise it.

    This tip even works for topside and silverside beef. No need to use expensive steaks.

    2. Whilst I'm waiting for son to stack the logs I'm going to get something started for dinner.
      Fried onion, precooked chicken pieces, a pack of stir-fry veg and a jar of sauce.

    4. Funnily enough I cut a large chunk from a châteaubriand just the other day. I placed it in the freezer for two hours to stiffen it up and then sliced it thinly on my slicer. The slices then went back in the freezer while still part frozen.

      My intention is to make a Cantonese sizzling beef dish in a couple of weeks' time after using the Chinese tenderising method you mentioned. The YouTube beef tenderising method I shall use is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Szo0odIDo&list=WL&index=20&t=1s

    4. You're lucky. Mine curls up on the keyboard.
      When I had to work from home during the Damndemic I bought a sheet of perspex and propped it on a pile of books each side of the keyboard so I could carry on working.

    1. Getting young British men out of the way, but leaving the million or so new arrivals in the country, because they, of course, are not British citizens.

      1. This idea of sending indigenous fighting age young men overseas and out of the way whilst the Dover invasion numbers increase is being commented on more and more. People’s suspicions about this globalist government’s intentions and its adherence to the UN’s proposals on immigration are growing in concert with the numbers being imported. Conscription is almost certainly going to cause a major split between the people and those given responsibility, in the people’s hope and expectation that those chosen, will govern us with common sense, fairness and integrity.

    2. They want a European army – that's what this is really all about. So third rate minds can be in charge of slaughtering our young.

  44. Phew!
    I'ts warm outside! Especially when you've just split a barrowful of the logs that I'd sawm up yesterday evening.
    Now waiting for Graduate Son to get them stacked so I'll know how much more to cut.

  45. Quick and easy.

    Not keen on jars of sauce. I find them gloopy. I use pastes instead.

    1. Mutti do some nice passatas and tinned pulped, as well as whole, tomatoes. Very sweet tomatoes. I make all my tomato based sauces with them.

      1. I know Mutti are good but they are also expensive at £1.50 a tin. I pay 39p for tinned tomatoes.

        1. And you always banging on about it being worth paying the extra. Mutti are infinitely better than ANY tin costing 39p..

          Stupid boy. (And just think of the money you squander on fags – and cigarettes, too)

        2. I can taste the difference, Phizzee, happy tomatoes that volunteer for the tins and bottles.

      2. I grow my own and make passata from that.

        I know Mutti use San Marzano tomatoes which are an excellent variety but i can grow them myself cheaper.

        Also the Italians add sugar to their tinned tomato recipes.

        1. I've grown the San Marzano before, might be cheaper but it is labour intensive. I'm about to start off my Piccolo seeds.
          Mutti Polpa is 99.8% toms and 0.2% salt. Therefore a 400g tin would have 0.8g of salt. Not too bad.

          1. I Have some raised decking at the end of my garden. I grow chillis, tomatoes, herbs and other stuff. I like seeing the colourful fruits. It is also nice to just go out and pick a few things to make a lunch.

      3. I get Mutti here and they are very good. My favourite, though, is Cireo who do the same products.

        I've loved Cireo tomatoes since childhood. Cireo was the chappie who invented the canning process for tomatoes.

  46. David Shipley

    Tommy Robinson doesn’t know how lucky he is
    21 March 2025, 4:32pm

    Tommy Robinson has lost his attempt to force the prison service to move him out of segregation. Robinson’s lawyers said he is being held in ‘inhuman’ and ‘degrading’ conditions at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes. But the High Court ruled that Robinson, also known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was being kept away from other prisoners for his own safety.

    Robinson’s supporters have reacted with predictable fury. Are they right to be angry? Is Robinson the victim of a justice system determined to crush his will, which is treating him far more harshly than it does other prisoners? Based on my experience as a prisoner, as a prison inspector and someone who now studies and writes about the prison system, Robinson is actually rather lucky: in many ways, his treatment behind bars is far better than the typical inmate receives.

    Robinson was jailed on 28 October 2024 for repeatedly breaching an injunction preventing him from falsely claiming that a Syrian refugee had assaulted a young girl. The court order was made after Robinson lost a libel action brought by that refugee. Initially sent to HMP Belmarsh (a jail with a high Muslim population), he informed staff that ‘his conflict is with followers of Islam’ and was moved to HMP Woodhill on 1 November. Woodhill is a ‘B Cat’ ‘Training’ prison, housing B and C category prisoners. Robinson is categorised as ‘C’, meaning he isn’t suitable for the lowest security, open jails. His lawyers were not challenging that categorisation.

    When Robinson arrived at Woodhill, he was placed in a segregated wing, because the prison believed he might be at risk from other inmates. Around 35 per cent of prisoners at Woodhill are Muslim. The jail was also worried that other prisoners allowed to associate with him might be targeted. This wasn’t an unfounded concern: they was specific intelligence that two other prisoners were plotting to assault Robinson, and that a life sentence prisoner was planning to kill him.

    On 13 November, the prison offered Robinson a move to a ‘vulnerable prisoners’ unit in another jail. He refused as he didn’t want to, in his words, ‘live with sex offenders’, who typically make up a significant portion of the population on these wings.

    So, since November, Robinson has been on an unpopulated wing. Social isolation of this kind is very hard to deal with, and does impact a person’s mental health over time. But it seems the prison has done its best. Robinson has eight hours of visits a week. This is far more than typical; a convicted prisoner can expect two hours a week.

    Robinson is spending 21 hours locked in a cell. But, rather depressingly, he is not alone in doing so: many prisoners in this country spend up to 22 hours a day shut in their cells. At Woodhill’s last inspection, men were typically spending under three hours a day out of their cells. In any event, Robinson is now spending a few more hours out of his cell each day as he’s taken a ‘painting and decorating’ job. He’s also being visited every day by healthcare and chaplaincy staff, a level of attention which almost no other prisoners receive.

    I don’t wish to minimise the harm done by such long periods of time alone. When I was a prisoner at Wandsworth during the Covid lockdown, I saw what 23 or 24 hours a day ‘behind the door’ did to men, particularly those in single cells.

    Yet, while I’m often very critical of the Prison Service, it’s very hard to see what else they could do in the case of Tommy Robinson. Prisons are supposed to keep prisoners safe. As I’ve written before, they often fail at this, but that is supposed to be one of their purposes.

    In Tommy Robinson, they have a high-profile prisoner, who is the subject of credible death threats and yet refuses to be housed on a vulnerable prisoners wing. They’ve provided him with far more social visits than another prisoner in his situation would receive. The authorities seem determined to keep him safe from harm.

    So what else could they do in this situation? Robinson is not seeking recategorisation that might allow him to transfer to a lower category prison. Placing Robinson on a main wing might result in him being attacked or even killed. If that happened, then those claiming he’s being victimised by the British state would claim the attack as proof.

    Is Robinson a victim of the state? It certainly doesn’t seem so. While his conditions in jail are far from pleasant or healthy, that’s very much a reflection of the state of our prisons, rather than an indication that Robinson is being singled out. Robinson might not realise it, but he is being treated far better than most other inmates.

    WRITTEN BY
    David Shipley

    David Shipley is a former prisoner who writes, speaks and researches on prison and justice issues.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/tommy-robinson-doesnt-know-how-lucky-he-is/

    1. Unconvinced he should be in to start with, after watching that video. 'Silenced' I think it's called.

      1. During the recent hearing the judge allowed Robinson to talk to his lawyers and the prison governor broke the call. Judge was not happy and sent a message to the governor. It was a clear indicator that he is not being treated fairly.

    3. Good afternoon David

      Compared with some other Nottlers you are an ideal citizen as far as the government is concerned : you are much more willing to accept the official line than some of us here are.

      1. It's true that i don't readily accept as gospel postings on X, Facebook and suchlike which just happen to confirm my preconceptions and assumptions, especially those without a verifiable source, often misspelled and with a crudely angry and ranting tone to them. I've found too many to be utter fabrications or slapdash copies of the wild imaginings or deliberate misdirections of others, designed to inflame public opinion.

    4. It's a different view of the matter. Personally, I think some sort of community service or even an electronic tag curfew would have been more appropriate.

    7. Robinson was jailed on 28 October 2024 for repeatedly breaching an injunction preventing him from falsely claiming that a Syrian refugee had assaulted a young girl.

      Actually it wasn't a false claim. But the Syrian kids defenders ruined the kids life who came to the girls defense. Tommy has talked about that several times because he informally adopted the kid and looked after him for several years. It's something that you can see, when he talks about it, moves him to tears. The young girl was one of many threatened by the Syrian, but in this particular incident it was the boys younger sister. He threatened to rape and knife her, apparently.

      1. The main thrust of the article is not about whether or not Robinson should be in prison but that his treatment while there has not been unusually cruel or vindictive compared with that of other prisoners. On the contrary, he has been allowed concessions not granted to others.

        1. Which, if you were listening to his potential visitors,complain, they are continually being cut off from visiting him. Same with his privileges, constantly cut off. The judge was actually given a hint by the jail defying the court by cutting off Tommy’s conversation with the lawyers. It is easy in a court to produce a story that is false. Lawyers do it all the time. Unfortunately the judge fell for the lies of the government rather than the truth.

    8. Robinson was jailed on 28 October 2024 for repeatedly breaching an injunction preventing him from falsely claiming that a Syrian refugee had assaulted a young girl.

      Actually it wasn't a false claim. But the Syrian kids defenders ruined the kids life who came to the girls defense. Tommy has talked about that several times because he informally adopted the kid and looked after him for several years. It's something that you can see, when he talks about it, moves him to tears. The young girl was one of many threatened by the Syrian, but in this particular incident it was the boys younger sister. He threatened to rape and knife her, apparently.

    9. Robinson was jailed on 28 October 2024 for repeatedly breaching an injunction preventing him from falsely claiming that a Syrian refugee had assaulted a young girl.

      Actually it wasn't a false claim. But the Syrian kids defenders ruined the kids life who came to the girls defense. Tommy has talked about that several times because he informally adopted the kid and looked after him for several years. It's something that you can see, when he talks about it, moves him to tears. The young girl was one of many threatened by the Syrian, but in this particular incident it was the boys younger sister. He threatened to rape and knife her, apparently.

      1. The gist of the article counters the notion that Robinson is being treated unduly harshly while in prison. In the contrary, he has been allowed concessions not granted to others.

        1. The fact remains, that there are, on their own admission, muslim gangs and people wanting to kill him. That should surely have been dealt with.

        2. News is already leaking out of Chinese influence in at least one polling company.

      2. Given the chance he would.

        Unelected Carney has been spending a lot of our money, a move that many disagree with as parliament is not sitting and cannot approve (or otherwise) such major expenditures.

        Media are completely under liberal control, we hear nothing about Carneys failings, just what a wonderful CV he has and as for information on Carneys climate change thoughts, not a whisper.

        To really kill the conservatives chances in an election, Trump has stuck his nose into Canadian politics and the result has been a rebirth of the liberals as focus has been completely shifted away from the liberal record.

        Trumps latest contribution has been to say that he favours Carney over Poilievre – not for reasons of politics but because Poliviere apparently said something that Trump took as being nasty.

        Believe it or not, our opinion of Trump is not particularly favorable.

        1. Always easy to spend other peoples money, think that may have been a Thatcherism. I hope Canadians elect Poilievre, but it’s their business 🙂

          1. Thatcher's oft referenced quote was:

            "The Trouble with Socialism is eventually you tun out of other peoples money"

            About where Starmer and his crew are now.

          2. Exactly, jack! 🤗 I suspect those who could move their funds out of the UK have either done so or in the process of doing. £22BN blackhole my tush, certainly be one soon….

      4. As long as the Donald doesn't mention Canada becoming the 51st. state. They're a bit touchy on the subject.

        1. 😄 I think he was just teasing Trudeau/Carney. Wonder if he’d consider the UK instead…

          1. His rhetoric has gone way beyond just teasing. He appears to have a completely unhinged antipathy towards canada and is delighting in doing whatever he can to break Canada economically.

            Just wait until his attention turns to the UK, you might not be so inclined to call his actions just teasing then!

          2. He has already imposed tariffs. He wont do much else unless the moron in 10 downing St. really pisses him off. Which the idiot seems to be doing his best to do with his stupid grand standing over Ukraine.

          3. "The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada reports that there are more than 600 organized crime groups operating in Canada, many of which include drug trafficking in their operations. These groups are widely integrated with each other, and externally networked to 48 countries, with the US and Mexico representing the most common transnational interconnections. "

          4. Latest drug bust was about 40 kilograms of cocaine being shipped up from the US into Canada.

            Encouraging Carneys election will do nothing to stop drugs and crime, the liberals are enabling drug use and are very soft on crime. The only way to stop this is to get the conservatives elected, their party platform includes stop the safe drug supply racket and ending automatic bail for criminal offenders.

          6. No one knows.
            It was once thought that he just hated Trudeau and that's fair enough because everyone does. A recent suggestion is that he is getting back on canada for two of his hotels failed miserably. A Canadian newspaper tried to answer your question, interviewing many US politicians who are close to Trump, no one could give an answer that explains it.
            His rants against Canadian tariffs are questionable, he negotiated many of the tariffs that he now decrees.

            whatever the cause, the problems being caused to the auto industry are no joke, US and Canadian manufacturing is altpready shutting down.

          7. Dismal. If what you say is true, and I have no cause to disbelieve you, can only hope he does a 180 soon (as I think he may have done on other issues).

          8. He like Biden, is sliding into dementia, but his is of the aggressive kind (a known symptom). I will be surprised if he lasts the full 4 year term.

        2. So are most Americans, they realise that absorbing canada would result in democrat president's for ever.

  50. The old adage "mark what they do, not what they say" holds well against this rablle of a government.

    Starmer et al. bang on about improving education and generating high class and skilled jobs etc. Now the reality: when did advanced maths, computing and physics become elitist subjects of study? Do not these idiots understand that these subjects underpin almost everything else in a technological world? Anyone with a couple of functioning brain cells suspects that "Net Zero" will drive the UK back towards the Neolithic Age and these moves to reduce educational excellence in 'hard subjects' is further proof of that aim.

    https://x.com/NeilDotObrien/status/1903039969570017771

  51. I just read that a survey of Democrats has put Kamala Harris as the top pick as the democrats candidate in the next presidential election.

    Heavens to Betsy, are they really so deluded that they cannot see that their party needs to change.

    1. She could have that ghastly half-caste woman stirrer in congress (double barrelled – can't remember name just her teeth) as her running made

      1. Are you are referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

        There are a few points in her favour:
        – She has real work experience, maybe only as a bartender in New York but it's almost beter than nothing.
        – She is the age that the democrats should be recruiting into office. If they has someone of that age group running in the last election, they might have attracted the under 30 vote, something Biden, Trump or Bernie Sanders wouldn't be able to do.

        Note the few good points are far outweighed by her political leanings and actions, she would be an absolute disaster.

        1. Have you ever watched her at hearings? She is one of those people who is so truly thick she doesn't realize it. There are several like that and all of them Democrats. Another, even worse is Maxine Waters. Only worth $10 million since she got in 1991. Cant even rip off the taxpayers decently she's so dim.

          1. I am an old man (not as old as Bill Thomas but still ancient), I have only time to see excerpts from her speeches.

            with such fine democrats running, the only question is which republican will replace Trump in ths white housenin 29!

          2. I hope Vance. What would really rankle the Democrats would be Donald Trump Jr. That would put several of them in Arkham Asylum 😊

          4. Not all of them are Dems. There's Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blamed the California wild fires on "Jewish space lasers". Add in some of the religious freaks that Reepublicans in the south vote for, and you realise stupidity is not a party trait.

          5. I would not quite go along with that. At the moment the entire Democrat Party is acting like a bunch of complete idiots.

        2. That’s the one.

          ” she would be an absolute disaster.” Thus – a shoo-in.

    2. You would have thought they would have learned from the last election that she is unelectable.

      I guess you just can't fix stupid.

  52. Water Charges
    Warning: because of the formatting, DON'T read this post on a smartphone unless you turn it sideways to rotate the image.

    Several weeks ago I posted a photo of a highly-tattooed employee of south east water (that's right, no capital letters in the title) who, for some unknown reason, came to inspect my water meter. Men came and installed the third water meter that I have had since the early eighties – when we had 2 small children and used much more water. Before removing the old meter they took a reading on January 18th and billed me.

    I received my 4-month water bill an hour ago. I am an old widower living alone, use a dishwasher probably every 4 days and the washing machine every 7-8 days. Of course, I always use a shower, and don't know if the bath works any more. And no, I'm not a Dirty Old Man!

    Long story short, the 4-month bill was made up of Water IN and Water OUT, plus Standing Charges for 6 months.
    "That's odd," I thought. Here it is:

    Water In (4 months): 6 cubic metres @ £2.25/m3….£13.50
    Standing Charge (for 6 months)……………………………£16.24

    The Water Out is calculated as 92.5% of the Water Used – an accepted standard

    Water Out (4 months) 5.55m3 @£2.46/m3. ………..£13.66
    Standing Charge for 6 months…………………………….£33.36 (MUCHmore than the water)
    Total Bill……………………………………………………………£76.76

    So a £76.76 bill for 6m3 of water, in and out, works out at £12.79 per m3 – that's £12.79 a tonne delivered. As with electricity, it's the Standing Charge that's the killer. But I suppose that's a reasonable price, compared with what some other NoTTLers are paying.

    1. What no vat?

      In Canada they would add sales tax and carbon tax to the bill, not forgetting other mandatory fees such as delivery charge and debt reduction charges.

      Our condo building pays about $35,000 a year for water and sewage, that is shared among our 24 unit holders. All they do is pump water from lake ontario, add an obscene amount of chlorine before delivery and then dump waste back into the lake.

    1. Colossal Knob of Heathrow blackout.
      Though the original headline is a (deliberate?) double entendre.

    2. "Are you telling me that Heathow's energy backup plan is bssed on cow farts?"

    4. "Do you realise that I'm holding on to the high voltage power line feed to Heathrow airport and I can't feel a thing!"

    6. (I did it) My Way. Closing song at the last two funerals I attended, an omen, perhaps?

    1. Looks like a bunch of nurses and hospital workers possibly born brought up and educated in the Midlands.

  55. Lloyd Russell Moyne is the lefty token who if often on GB News as a panellist.

    My view is that he is a complete tick with a whiney voice and when I looked him up on Wikipedia the reasons for my instinctive negative views about him became evident.

  57. Something is rotten in Stratford-upon-Avon
    Douglas Murray

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Douglas-iStock.jpg
    Almost every nation has a national poet. The Russians have Pushkin. The Persians have Ferdowsi. The Albanians have Gjergj Fishta. But it would be a very odd thing if any of these peoples had their national poet taken away from them or were forced to have their national poet insulted. Indeed, it might be considered rather bad form if someone told the Russians that the author of Eugene Onegin should be held accountable for the era of serfdom. Or told the Persians that the author of the ‘Shahnameh’ should be as nought because his era did not have all our views on gay marriage.

    Yet the English. Ah – the English. We are allowed to be treated with a unique type of disrespect. And so naturally that disrespect can even be levelled at our national poet.

    This reflection follows the news this week that Stratford-upon-Avon is to be ‘decolonised’. The impetus for this modern vandalism comes from ‘concerns’ that the birthplace of Shakespeare could be used to promote ‘white supremacy’.

    Why Stratford-upon-Avon should be seen to be a wellspring of this great bogeyman of our age is slightly unclear. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust owns a number of buildings associated with the playwright. Its archives include parish records relating to his birth and baptism. But now a research project between the Trust and someone called Dr Helen Hopkins, of the University of Birmingham, has agreed that the Trust must be ‘decolonised’.

    For anyone lucky enough not to have come across this pseudo-academic term, ‘decolonisation’ pretends to consist of an effort to ‘move away from western perspectives’. Again it is worth pointing out how absurd, as well as one-sided, such efforts are. Nobody would say that Ferdowsi must be taken away from his eastern perspectives, or that Pushkin should be removed from his Russian perspectives. But when it comes to taking western writers away from their ‘western perspectives’? There lies one of the great academic boondoggles of our time.

    The ostensible aim in Stratford-upon-Avon is to ‘create a more inclusive museum experience’, to explore ‘the continued impact of Empire’ and ‘colonialism’ on the collection and to reveal how ‘Shakespeare’s work has played a part in this’. In an act of self-harm that would be admired by a samurai warrior, the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust has said that some items in its collections and archives might contain ‘language or depictions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful’.

    I should hope so. I for one am not keen that every item in every archive in the world should conform to the boring shibboleths of our time. If I were to look at an archive from the 16th and 17th centuries I would be disappointed if I found works which could have been written by a DEI committee in 2020.

    But our era is what it is – all its idiotic presumptuousness included. And at risk of citing Italy’s national poet and stirring up a whole other hornet’s nest of white supremacy, let me repeat a previous observation of mine about our era: that when it comes to our ignorance there is always another circle to this inferno. On this occasion that extra layer of hell comes from the fact that Dr Hopkins and the Shakespeare Trust have a problem with the idea – presented at Stratford – that Shakespeare is in some way a ‘universal’ genius.

    Readers might notice an interesting dilemma here. Because if these are the rules then Shakespeare and the English are rather stuck, aren’t we? On the one hand Shakespeare’s birthplace might present England’s national poet as ours and ours alone. It might present a view of his life and works which could be summed up by signs at Stratford saying: ‘Bog off, foreigners. Shakespeare is ours, and we better not find your mucky foreign fingers on him.’ That would probably stir the ire of a few second-rate academics.

    As it happens, the claim that Shakespeare is not only ours, but also in fact the possession of the whole world is also a crime. This set-up would appear to put the nation’s heritage and the legacy of our national poet in the position that chess players inform me is known as ‘zugzwang’: where you have to move but where every possible move will only make your position worse. Say that Shakespeare is English and you lose. Say that he is universal and you lose. It is almost as though this game is rigged, isn’t it?

    And so the project being foisted upon Stratford argues that the claim that Shakespeare is one of the ‘greatest’ writers is itself white supremacist and must be challenged. The suggestion that Shakespeare presents any kind of pinnacle of world culture must also be removed because it is apparently ‘western centric’. One of the only practical suggestions for how to solve this is to make the collection more ‘universal’. So far this effort has included events at Stratford celebrating the works of the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and a Bollywood-themed dance class.

    To belabour a point, I should think it rather odd if academics went to Rabindranath Tagore’s birthplace and said it needed a bit more Shakespeare in the mix. As it would be likewise strange to go to the home of Bollywood and note that the place was rather lacking in Morris dancers. But of course that would not be done. Because that way around would be deemed ‘colonialist’. What, then, is this process that is being forced upon us? ‘Anti-colonialist’? For how long?

    Not for the first time I am forced to wonder about the ideas being pushed upon our culture – including the idea that the pinnacles of human achievement are no pinnacles if they come from us.

    Fortunately we have the Bard to guide us. And so I can confidently say that Shakespeare is to Dr Hopkins and the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust as Hyperion to a satyr. They should look it up.

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

    Anitawales
    2 days ago edited
    'It is almost as though this game is rigged, isn’t it?'

    It most certainly is rigged, Douglas. It is an extension of a psychological trick employed by critical race theory. They accuse you of racism. You retort that you are not a racist, and have never exhibited any evidence of being one. They shoot back that ahhh- you are white and are therefore afflicted with 'unconscious bias'. You are a screaming racist without knowing it. This is immutable.

    There is no argument one can construct against something you do not know you are doing. There is no salvation, no redemption, and therefore no forgiveness. All you can do is pay eternal penance and subject yourself to eternal admonishment. Oh and pay oodles of reparations.

    We are all now invited to consider that we are all colonialists without ever realising it. It is a branch of the same scam, which does not seek equality but seeks revenge. Oh, and reparations.

    It is high time this poisonous thinking is surgically removed from our institutions. It is nihilistic and will destroy our society. It is doing so already, if we care to look.

    commenteer Anitawales
    2 days ago
    The answer, surely, is to proclaim, "Yes, I'm racist. That's because white European men for the last four hundred years have been much superior to any other race. And I'm proud of it." If enough people joined in, the nonsense could at least be mitigated.

    Anglomicronesian commenteer
    2 days ago
    If former colonies had built upon the inheritance we left – in the main good infrastructure, governance, etc. – over the past 60- 70-odd years, all such countries would be doing well. Much easier for leaders to steal a country’s wealth and continue to blame the whites.

    Blindsideflanker Anitawales
    2 days ago edited
    What you are describing is the Maoist struggle sessions

    Struggle sessions were usually conducted at the workplace, classrooms and auditoriums, where "students were pitted against their teachers, friends and spouses were pressured to betray one another, [and] children were manipulated into exposing their parents", causing a breakdown in interpersonal relationships and social trust

    Spectator User
    2 days ago
    How do these idiots get into positions where they can foist this idiocy on us in the first place?

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/article/something-is-rotten-in-stratford-upon-avon/

    1. Oh yes, I know – but I would prefer to keep my memory honed. I get irritated that the ever-changing requirements plus lack of telling us what they are when required to enter a password (I can generally guess if I know them) virtually forces us to outsource our working memory. Grrr! (🤣🤣 I am.a grumpy old woman today!)

      1. That’s why I can’t waste energy on remembering them all – a different one for all the different sites. Life’s too short!

  60. I use bottled passata when I'm making pork-and-tomato sausages (a Midlands favourite).

  61. I told you that decades ago.

    Frank Zappa was bang on the money when he declared, “Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.” I cannot refute that logic.

    Mankind has become moribund in its stupidity and it shows it, incessantly, by electing more and more stupid politicians, who make more and more stupid laws, and who govern them with more and more stupid decisions. Stupidity is the prime tool they use when formulating — and in order to effect — their insane policies.

  62. That's the second pint of homebrew cider poured. Quite dry, fasionably cloudy, and about 8%. Good flavour….
    Sun's been shining all day, some warmth in it now. A IR camera survey of both hives at Firstborn's place shows activity in both, one really quite a lot, the other the same as a fortnight ago. Planned the sorting out in the barn for Easter – need to get some shelf units, then good to go.

        1. Mine is in my mobile phone – a CAT(erpillar) branded one. Aimed at builders and the like, but the FLIR makes it especially useful. The cool bit of the FLIR is that it takes a visual spectrum pic as well, and you can slide one out from undet the other so you can see what bit is generating what colour. You see a summary top left in the picture.
          On the screen, it also shows a colour vs temperature bar for scaling. Dead impressed, me.

          1. The visual and IR pic are useful when tracing a pipe behind the plaster in your bathroom…

        2. I'd like to take the credit for the well-placed sunshine, but purely accidental.
          Tastes good, though!

  68. Brown hares engage in boxing on the South Downs near Arundel.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/244234d030405dc43ae1c8b91920e5c1f9f3919a/0_0_3066_2044/master/3066.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=a67d0119fd2e27ff0f087f934fa9812f Newborn Egyptian goslings take their first steps under the watchful eye of their mother in St James’s Park

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1923585832c466408684bc4fcef37b200976e311/0_0_5512_3600/master/5512.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=af3d505832f53d169e557ab796bc1ba3 A fallow deer shakes water from its coat following a hail shower in Phoenix park, Dublin

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1e67623e3bbc2b4d5243508a5972ba0f36c8938b/0_0_3375_2246/master/3375.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=ec5bd48c867db51cceab5c652eac8ea2 The Thames at Windsor.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/82584d87dea8e8c5f5b5c0651e07c24f42bb7ef5/0_0_4559_3042/master/4559.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=3be9768fc46802758678b13e23f9b416 Storks at the Knepp estate, West Sussex

      2. They got eliminated by my ham-fisted cut 'n paste.
        https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d53de55ae0ecbcc97cdbd3df953baadd5170c31f/0_0_2524_1616/master/2524.jpg?width=980&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=baee05fbcc97bcf4dda543edb2e406a1
        and I'll add a dormouse to cheer you up.
        https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e6e327094117d8b364dbfc30817cda023d518168/0_0_6000_4000/master/6000.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=bdb152c4f64767496b5a3ed8e958f8b6 A hibernating dormouse snoozes after being rescued by Kildare Wildlife Rescue, Ireland

  70. Michael Deacon
    Why shouldn’t this white German woman ‘identify as black’?

    I hope everyone will #BeKind and affirm her new identity. Especially those on the Left

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2025/03/21/TELEMMGLPICT000416852142_17425812809270_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqbFoXn4d1uVNGRa1pDHVYNP4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=680

    Martina Big. Tanning addict who was born white but now identifies as 'Black woman' is moving to Africa

    22 March 2025 6:00am GMT

    A 36-year-old glamour model from Germany has announced that she’s planning to emigrate to Africa – because she’s black. Admittedly she wasn’t born black. She was born with white skin, and blonde hair, to white parents. None the less, black is how she now identifies. To this end, she has had injections of a synthetic hormone called Melanotan, which has significantly darkened her pale skin. In addition, she has changed her name from Martina Adam to Malaika Kubwa, which is Swahili for “Big Angel”.

    What an inspiring story. All I can say is, I hope that everyone will affirm her identity. In particular, progressives.

    After all, it would be terrible if progressives were to say that she isn’t black. That you can’t just “identify” as something you’re not. That this woman must be delusional. That it’s obvious just from glancing at her that she isn’t what she claims to be. That she looks like a grotesque, even offensive parody of the real thing.

    They’d better not make any such comments. Because that would be hateful, bigoted and exclusionary. Yes, Malaika may have been AWAB (assigned white at birth). But it’s not her fault that she was born in the wrong body. So, in the spirit of tolerance and inclusion, we must all respect her racial identity.

    Incidentally, I was delighted to read that, as well as injecting the skin-darkening hormone, Malaika has undergone “lip augmentations”, and “plans to undergo a butt augmentation and surgery to ‘widen her nose’”. How wonderful that she’s been able to benefit from race-affirming surgery, so that she can be her true, authentic self.

    Of course, no doubt a small, embittered band of WERFs (white-exclusionary radical feminists) will ridicule Malaika’s claim that “doctors say that I am physically now a black woman”. Personally, though, I can’t understand how they can be so cruel and hurtful. Quite frankly, these bigots are on the wrong side of history.

    I just wish they would shut up and #BeKind.

    Where’s the ‘compassion’ for tax-payers?
    All week long, Left-wing MPs have been demanding that Liz Kendall abandon her proposed cuts to benefits. Again and again, they’ve angrily told the Work and Pensions Secretary to show some compassion, and think about how their poor, horrified constituents feel.

    These MPs are undoubtedly kind, caring people. I have just one small question for them.

    Who do they think pays for all these benefits?

    It’s not Ms Kendall. Nor is it Rachel Reeves. Nor is it Sir Keir Starmer. Ministers may be the ones who dole out the money. But I wouldn’t strictly call it theirs.

    Possibly some MPs have lost sight of this fact, but in reality, the money comes from taxes extracted from people who actually work for a living. People who slog away for long hours in not terribly glamorous jobs that they don’t necessarily enjoy all that much. This week, Left-wing MPs have focused entirely on the feelings of people whose benefits could be reduced. But what about the feelings of the people who fund those benefits?

    How do those people feel, at the end of another gruelling day, when they read that money deducted from their earnings has been handed to claimants who say they need it because they feel “anxious”, or have eczema? How do they feel when they learn that claimants can watch TikTok videos full of clever tips on how to claim the maximum possible amount of money? How do they feel when they learn that, last year, this country spent significantly more on sickness benefits (almost £65 billion) than it did on defence (£53.9 billion)? And, last but not least, how do they feel when they realise that, after tax, they aren’t necessarily much better off than they would be if they didn’t work at all, and just claimed benefits instead?

    Perhaps we should spare at least a little compassion for those people, too.

    Russell Brand’s wildest theory yet
    Russell Brand doesn’t seem to perform much comedy these days. Thankfully, however, he’s still able to make people laugh. Even if not always on purpose.

    This week he did it by tweeting what he apparently believed to be a genuine top-secret file about the assassination of President John F Kennedy. In reply, he swiftly received a large number of messages from people suggesting that, in all probability, the “file” was actually a spoof, written by a prankster. The main clue being that, in small type at the end, it claimed that JFK was shot by the star of the 1970s BBC sitcom The Good Life, Dame Penelope Keith.

    On the whole, I tend to suspect that Mr Brand hadn’t read that far down, because not even he, I feel, could seriously entertain the idea that, on November 22, 1963, the Surrey-born actress who would go on to play Margo Leadbetter leant out of the sixth-floor corner window of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas and fired a 6.5mm Carcano M38 rifle from a range of 265 feet at the then president of the United States. Not least because, at the time, she was busy appearing in Henry VI at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

    I note, incidentally, that Mr Brand now appears to have deleted his tweet. I hope this is because he recognised his mistake, and not because shadowy figures from the US government have silenced him.

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

    Livinina Knight-Mare
    7 hrs ago
    Reply to Emma Dixon – view message
    Reminds me of when, around 10 years ago when Wokeism was gaining intensity, my teenage son was asked for identity information as we were entering some or other public attraction (most likely an exhibition).

    He replied that he was a Black Woman, to an incredulous black woman with a clipboard. She tried arguing with him but he stuck to his guns.

    After all, if you can identify as a sex you’re patently not, why not an incongruous ethnicity?

    It was amusing and reassuring that my son wasn’t giving in to the brainwashing.

    Dr Moss
    9 hrs ago
    Absolutely brilliant parody. This will have the left, all agog with double standards and hypocrisy.

    2. Some of us, although no longer working for a living, are paying tax on our pension – just sayin'.

  71. Thunder and lightning in W6. We’ve just had a massive hailstorm. Didn’t last long but it was remarkably dense. I’d word it differently if I could think of a more suitable description. The thunder goes on.

    There’s a Chinese couple viewing the empty flat next door. They seem pleasant but of course they may not like the property.

      1. Of course. The Russkies. We used to have a disabled Russian guy living here. He liked to park his wheelchair in the entrance hall and chat to whoever was on duty at the front desk and anyone else who wanted to pitch in. He was a nice guy and lonely. Clearly gathering intelligence 😂😂.

  72. Good start – Wasn't what I thought..
    Wordle 1,372 4/6

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

    2. It was at Chicago 5 years ago. The dustcart starting revolving out of control – and each ty=urn brought it nearer and nearer to the plane. The chap on the road truck bided his time until he was in the right position to go for the runaway.

  75. Here's one for you: Just looked through Tom Hunn's (late of this site) recipe book, and there's a stage taht says "Add the marmite"!
    Never seen that in any recipe before! Good one, Tom!

          1. Just been showing grandchildren some videos on YouTube…Peter Gabriel, FYC….they weren’t impressed, but I am still, after all these years. Have a great evening, Grizz ☺️

          5. Thanks, but it was my birthday four weeks ago (22 Feb); however, I could not assemble my guests together at the same time until today. I don’t mind because it is now much better weather.

            I was 21 … 53 years ago!😲

          6. Ah you’re nobbut a minor still, Grizzly, I can give you a year (or two). Happy you had a lovely time, sun shining here all day too (on the righteous, obvs)….

  76. Meal just about ready for the guests at my Saturday night supper (my own belated birthday party).
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a4856cfe06cc14d85dbc9822854a968e411958dffe6daa152716d739561213b4.png Porchetta. [No inane comments, please, about the black spots on the crisp crackling. They are not burn marks; they are caramelised meat juices.]
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6bdd4cc1e7546a5ff22455b8c5cdf38fe2582faeb78e94f8f22f111010689ccd.png Pommes boulangère.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d30a7c068677086d64e74673bc8948af01f7efffa22dc5f7c0d7f3f780f8544.png English raspberry trifle.

    All this will be new to some of my Swedish guests. I wonder what they'll make of this pan-European supper?

    2. Yo Mr G

      That is the worst lookingbunch of bananas that I have ever seen.
      Still, if they are veggie-vegans that is OK

      1. I think you might have given me a greeting on my real birthday four weeks ago. 😊

  77. Phew! Husband went up the ladder to clean the camera lens in the swift box which is the one the first bird back uses. I don't like him going up there but it has made a difference and we should be able to watch the goings on in the box now – hopefully. Last year the first swift back arrived on 26th April, which was earlier than usual.

      1. He was just putting the screws back in to fix the front of the box on. Gives me the willies to see him up that ladder. He came back down safely.

          1. I took the photo on my phone. If you see the Kenya sunrise and tree you know I'm on the phone. I lost the elephant on there some time ago. On the laptop it's the elephant I've always used on here. Taken in Botswana in 2007.

      2. I share your concern. However, I still do this sort of thing on the basis that I'd rather do it and fall off and die than do nothing and wish that I could.

      3. Recommended adder angle for safety: 1 out: 4 up. That ladder looks far too upright for safety.

        4. It probably is, but if you look at the other photo I've just posted, you'll see why it could not be positioned further back.

  78. Wordle No. 1,372 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 22 Mar 2025

    Traipsing Birdie Three?

    1. Well done. Same here.

      Wordle 1,372 3/6

      🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩
      🟩⬜⬜🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Well done! Unremarkable par here……

      Wordle 1,372 4/6

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

    4. Wordle 1,372 4/6

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

      1. Pretty poor five for me 😟
        Wordle 1,372 5/6

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

    1. No. I have carved it and it is resting in the oven, covered in foil, at 85ºC, prior to an early supper.

      1. A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
        And no one can talk to a horse of course
        That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.

        I loved that program!

      1. No one seems to care , are they stupid , what is their end game .. Mm

        He is a younger than my sons, but my lads have more commonsense than that over educated little commie gobfest.

      2. Equally possibly and even more stupid of him, he hasn't seemed to have realised that most, if not all, of the fuel for our vehicles, diesel trains etc and especially aircraft, comes from the middle east.
        Aren't we very lucky that there, as yet, don't seem to be such over enthusiastic persons as him in those areas of the world.

    3. Anyone with a modicum of general knowledge would have known that.
      Perhaps he's been reading Nottlers comments.

  81. From https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgm1krkxrxgo
    "Substations are designed to produce, convert, and distribute electricity at suitable voltage levels. Heathrow uses three electricity substations, each with a backup."
    Bullshit. Substations do transforming and switching, and clearly the backup didn't.
    Why do no journalists know anything?

    1. More to the point – where are the sub-editors de nos jours? They would have spotted that flaw in a trice. (A Milisecond!!)

  83. Britain's biggest 'baby deserts' are revealed amid terrifying threat of 'underpopulation': Interactive map shows how many children women have in YOUR area

    Women in England and Wales, on average, now only have 1.44 children.
    This is the lowest since records began in the 30s and half of levels seen during the mid-60s baby boom.
    Almost a third of all 591,000 babies born were to foreign mothers in 2023, the latest year with full data available.

    They've always said their wombs will conquer us.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14494041/britain-baby-deserts-interactive-map-women-children.html

      1. I fear so, because I'm willing to bet the cost of my supper that a very significant number of the births to so-called British mothers will be to second and third generation Afros, Caribs, and Sub continental Indo Pakis.

        2. Which includes my brother (at Shortlanesend) and his son (at Falmouth), both East Midlanders born and bred.

  87. This will cost the University and Colleges millions in cancelled bequests.

    Cambridge causes bitter row by linking scientists such as Stephen Hawking to slavery

    Exhibition suggesting funding from dark trade helped lauded figures is branded a ‘misreading of history’

    Craig Simpson
    22 March 2025 5:23pm GMT

    Cambridge University has become embroiled in a row over claims that scientists including the late Professor Stephen Hawking benefited from slavery.

    The university’s Fitzwilliam Museum is holding an exhibition titled Rise Up, which covers abolition movements, rebellions and modern-day “racist injustices”.

    It claims that figures including George Darwin, Charles Darwin’s son, were supported by investments in the slave trade.

    A catalogue that accompanies the exhibition also states that Hawking and others benefited from slavery-derived funds given to Cambridge two centuries before the physicist was born.

    But Cambridge professors and leading historians have hit back at the claims.

    Dons have insisted that the claims are based on a misreading of history and have asked Cambridge to correct the record – a request which the university has refused.

    The foreword to the exhibition book states that while “facts continue to matter” in discussions of slavery, “anger, frustration and sadness – historic and present – are also important considerations”.

    A central claim in the book is that “slave trade financial instruments shaped the intellectual life of the university by supporting the country’s most renowned mathematicians and scientists”.

    The museum itself welcomes visitors with a sign setting out its own links to the slave trade.

    Hawking, Darwin, physicist Arthur Eddington, and “father of the computer” Charles Babbage held Lucasian and Plumian professorships respectively.

    A catalogue for the exhibition also states that Hawking and others benefited from slavery-derived funds given to Cambridge
    The accompanying book for the exhibition in Cambridge states that funding for these positions was derived in part from the gift in 1768 of £3,500 from a mathematician and university vice-chancellor named Robert Smith.

    This was from stock bound up in “South Sea Annuities”, stock the Fitzwilliam has claimed was linked to investments in the slave trade.

    Leading British men of science are therefore linked to what the book exhibition terms “dark finance”, the exhibition material claims.

    The claims have been disputed by leading historians, including Lord Andrew Roberts, Sir Noel Malcolm and Cambridge professors David Abulafia, Lawrence Goldman and Robert Tombs.

    They argue that their own research has revealed South Sea Annuities to be unrelated to investments in the slave trade.

    ‘This case is doubly dispiriting’
    The group of academics have submitted a signed letter of protest to the director of the Fitzwilliam, Dr Luke Syson, urging him to take action over the alleged falsehoods.

    Dr Syon, whose foreword to the exhibition book sets out a commitment to tackle “unaltered power structures”, has refused their request.

    Prof Tombs said: “We are sadly accustomed to seeing our great institutions damaging themselves and the country that supports them.

    “This case is doubly dispiriting as a great university institution shows itself resistant to argument and indifferent to evidence.

    “There seems to be this unbelievable determination to tarnish the reputation of people we are proud of, even when they are completely innocent, like Stephen Hawking.”

    Fitzwilliam Museum

    The Rise Up exhibition was launched in February to document the history of black and white abolitionists, particularly those linked to Cambridge.

    The exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, which greets visitors with a trigger warning upon entering, gives an overview of life on plantations and the move toward abolition.

    It states that “some” African merchants participated in the slave trade.

    The book created for the exhibition, which also begins with a trigger warning about “violence against black people”, contains a number of academic contributions on the slave trade.

    The volume opens with a statement that the “fight for true equality, justice and repair continues”.

    ‘We welcome thoughtful discussion’
    A spokesman for Fitzwilliam Museum said: “We believe that it is profoundly damaging to ignore or minimise the impact of the Atlantic slave trade as a source of wealth for both individuals and institutions in 17th- and 18th-century Britain, and thereafter.

    “The academic research on this important matter presented in the Rise Up catalogue is factually correct.

    “But history should always be a place of debate and we therefore welcome thoughtful discussion and encourage multiple perspectives, which we see as essential to deepening understanding of these important and often challenging histories in all their nuance and complexity.

    “Among the aims of the Rise Up exhibition and catalogue are to explore the current complexities of historically tainted investments and to illuminate the contradictions in the biographies of individuals whose lives are considered here more completely than has usually been the case.”

    Under the directorship of Dr Syson, the Fitzwilliam rehung its art collection and introduced a warning suggesting that paintings of the British countryside can evoke dark “nationalist feelings”.

    Dr Syson said of the move in 2023: “I would love to think that there’s a way of telling these larger, more inclusive histories that doesn’t feel as if it requires a pushback from those who try to suggest that any interest at all in [this work is] what would now be called ‘woke’.”

    Signage states that pictures of “rolling English hills” can stir feelings of “pride towards a homeland”.

    The University of Cambridge was contacted for comment.

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

    New Exhibit
    SMUG GIT
    https://www.alainelkanninterviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Luke-Syson3.jpg Dr Luke Syson

    2. "A spokesman for Fitzwilliam Museum said: “We believe that it is profoundly damaging to ignore or minimise the impact of the Atlantic slave trade as a source of wealth for both individuals and institutions in 17th- and 18th-century Britain, and thereafter."

      SFW? Is the entire British nation expected to crawl on its hand and knees for entirety? The 'spokesman' should go on a quick tour of broken Britain and ask himself how many people benefited from it. From where I stand, we're hurtling towards third world status.

      What is wrong with these people? What drives them?

      1. A desire to bring to an end – very soon – everything that for hundreds of years of Britons have assumed was normal.

      2. What drives them ?
        Dopey Wokeyism it's become a disease. Almost of pandemic proportions.

      3. My father was a foundation scholar of St John's College, Cambridge.

        He must be turning in his grave. Cambridge has become a cess pit.

    3. So aren't the current academics at Cambridge still benefitting from these ill-gotten funds? They are all hypocrites.

  88. That's me for this disappointing day. Chilly and dull this morning – then rain all afternoon. Similar tomorrow – then a north wind on Monday for – you've guessed – a bonfire!

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

  90. ‘She’s on our property, I’ve got the deeds’: How the IOC’s new chief benefited from Zimbabwe’s land grab
    Robert Cary and his family fled their farm. Now, Kirsty Coventry leases part of the Cockington Estate

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/21/ioc-zimbabwe-land-kirsty-coventry-robert-mugabe-seb-coe/

    that man
    1 hr ago
    ‘Coventry and her family are “not the owners of the farm, in line with the law of the country”, which only grants leases.’

    —obfuscation by the IOC, which ignores the fact that the occupants are benefiting from the proceeds of crime. Frankly disgusting.

    Comment by Randi Helgeson.

    RH

    Randi Helgeson
    1 hr ago
    Now she is on a new gravy train she might give it back

    Comment by FRANK EVANS.

    FE

    FRANK EVANS
    1 hr ago
    Robert Mugabe was a vile dictator who used anti-white propaganda to further his own agendas.

    Rhodesia was once known as the "breadbasket of Africa": exporting wheat, tobacco, and maize, especially to other African nations. Today, though, Zimbabwe, is a net importer of foodstuffs from the West. edited

    Reply by Terence Brown.

    TB

    Terence Brown
    21 min ago
    A competent and skilled white elite have been replaced by an incompetent and thoroughly criminal black elite. Meanwhile the average person in Zimbabwe is no better off after all of the upheaval. Progress eh.

    1. Not only all of the above but our then stupid labour government, with Wilson's intervention in Rhodesia destroyed the whole way of life that was enjoyed by the vast majority of the population.
      And Mugabe murder 20 thousand of his own people because he knew that they would never vote for him.
      And lived a life of luxury.

    1. "Halal slaughter is when the animal has to be conscious to hear the prayer being recited as it is killed."

      Is that so it can say 'Amen' before having its throat slashed?

      1. But wherefore could not I pronounce “Amen?”I had most need of blessing, and “Amen”Stuck in my throat.
        [Macbeth]

    1. Off topic
      One of the less frequent posters was asking after you earlier, I suspect contact would be greatly appreciated.

      1. Thanks, Sos! I’ll scroll down and hopefully find who it is.

        I access Nottl on my phone and don’t seem to be able to search, so if anyone knows who it is I would be most grateful if you’d let me know.

        1. Something strange happened mola you weren’t the only person who had disappeared 🤔 ???

    3. So true, I change a password and then find the old one and get locked out when I try to use it.

  95. I just tried to set up an account with a water company.
    I entered my email address and it said they would send me a code…all normal.
    Went to my email, saw the title of the email "Microsoft on behalf of (water company) Digital Identity.

    What has Microsoft to do with an English water company? Well, Microsoft is developing the digital identity that is planned to enslave us. Probably a digital identity has already been set up for all of us without our knowledge, and had I gone ahead with opening the account, the space for "water account" would have been filled in on "my" digital identity.
    For anyone who thinks this is no different to digital accounts that we have now – think again. This single digital identity will have spaces for all the information about you – your bank account, your health, your travel records, your education, criminal record etc – one single point to close down your life if you step out of line or "use too much carbon." It will be able to enforce food rationing and is crucial to the introduction of a central bank digital currency. No need for jails, this will be your digital prison.

    They are trying to get us using this digital identity without informed consent. I junked the email and will do without the account for now.

  96. There's a program on C5 about Osborne house in Victoria's riegn. All about their 9 children and her husband. The seemingly over enthusiastic presenters are all speaking as if they were actually there at time. It's a tad annoying.

    I'm orfff things to do. Not exciting. But family business.
    Night all, have fun…. hopefully back in the morning.
    😉😃

  97. Evening, all. Am absolutely shattered, so may not last long before I go to bed!

    I venture to suggest that the airport was brought to a standstill because those in charge were too busy virtue signalling about net zero to do due diligence and have nasty, smelly diesel back ups.

  98. ‘Exorbitant’ ticket fees turn England’s cathedrals into cash cows

    Here in France churches and cathedrals are always free to visit. Even Notre-Dame. The vast majority of the most important religious edifices were built before 1905 and thus confiscated that year, when the Church and State were formally separated. This means that financing the maintenance of these historical buildings now falls on the State and comes out of taxes.

    I note that in England the Catholic cathedrals boast that they are free to visit. Could there possibly be a correlation with the higher attendance levels in Catholic churches compared with C of E churches??? Looks like the C of E has a lot of thinking to do.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/exorbitant-ticket-prices-england-cathedrals-cash-cows/ ney/consumer-affairs/exorbitant-

    1. The CofE doesn't really like Christians. It's more interested in being woke and encouraging "diversity" and fighting "climate change" while trying to achieve "net zero". Why it can't just spread the Word and promulgate the Gospels I have no idea.

    2. The last time I went to Gloucester Cathedral ( a while ago certainly) it was free to visit but a suggested scale of donations. Not sure if it's a compulsory entry fee nowadays. It's well worth a visit and the upkeep must be horrendously costly.

    4. My wife and I visited Winchester recently. We went to the Cathedral with a view to having a look round. There was a board outside with admission charges (not suggested donations). For OAPs it was £12 each! Needless to say, we didn't go in.

      2. You should have timed it for a service, then you wouldn't have had to pay. I refuse to pay entrance fees to the House of God. Christ and the money-lenders in the Temple springs to mind.

      3. "My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves"
        [Matthew 20]

        And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
        And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:
        [God's Grandeur: Gerard Manley Hopkins]

      4. In times of stress/trouble i ask myself 'what would Jesus' do?'

        In this case the answer is obvious….kick over the board and stamp on it.

  99. Well – for dinner we had my version of Tom's Easy chicken breasts with creamy mushroom sauce -page 100 of his cook book. Very nice, though I should have used more cream. Definitely worth doing. We had a clink of glasses to Tom as well. I miss the old bu….er. Though he was so lonely and unhappy in his final year that for him death came as a relief, I think. I didn't blame Judy at all, he must have been difficult to live with and he drank far too much.

    1. I miss the old lad.
      WhenI had the call from Judy, that he'd passed, it came up on the screen as Tom. I was so delighted he'd called… Imagine the letdown when it wasn't him.
      RiP, Tom.

    2. I miss the old lad.
      WhenI had the call from Judy, that he'd passed, it came up on the screen as Tom. I was so delighted he'd called… Imagine the letdown when it wasn't him.
      RiP, Tom.

  100. Another clear sky with amazing stars and background. Really humbling – one isn't even a tiny part of the universe.
    G'night, all Y'all.

  101. Oh Paul! What a shock! When I ‘phoned him on the 1st Feb, and got no reply I just knew he’d died. It was as clear as a bell.

  102. Britain is turning into a battleground for the world's problems

    A clash between rival Eritrean groups has no place on the streets of Sheffield

    Isabel Oakeshott • 22 March 2025, 6:18pm GMT

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fc92a06b668b5ee897d42b96d8b4ab53a3481f30f0689caa90698aa57ab3e410.jpg [Revellers celebrating Eritrean independence Credit: Belinda Jiao]

    Shortly before Rishi Sunak called his snap election, there was a shocking outbreak of violence in Sheffield. As panicking politicians left parliament for their constituencies, a pitched battle between Eritreans brandishing brickbats and metal rods attracted next to no attention.

    This was no minor skirmish, but a street fight involving some 200 yobs of African origin who chose to mark "Eritrean Independence Day" by thrashing each other. Apparently, some were pro-government supporters while others supported exiled opposition leaders. None of it has anything whatsoever to do with Sheffield – but here they were in Yorkshire, smashing things up and hospitalising each other. What a disgrace!

    Almost a year on, police are still trying to trace 22 men in connection with this riot on May 25th last year. Last week, they issued an appeal for help. A further 18 alleged participants have already been charged with offences including violent disorder; possession of offensive weapons and wounding. Here's hoping detectives quickly find the missing men, because in just a few weeks' time, the same "community" may very well come to blows again.

    Behold what happens when countries like our own import vast numbers of people from war-torn regions and do not attach clear expectations of behaviour to the right to remain. So big and emboldened are certain groups of foreign nationals becoming that they now feel free to take to our streets to play out the bitter religious, political and tribal differences they supposedly wanted to leave behind.

    Other countries facing similar problems, including some of our European allies, go so far as to ban the flying of foreign flags on their shores to ensure immigrants know exactly where they are. In the UK, it seems anything goes. A fetishisation of "tolerance" and misguided fear of upsetting minorities has created a dangerously permissive attitude towards appalling behaviour by those who accept our hospitality and claim to want to make Britain their home. As Sheffield shows, this approach can only end in tears.

    Police have not released details of the asylum and immigration status of the 22 wanted men. It seems a very safe bet that a significant number are new or relatively recent arrivals, who have been heavily supported by the British taxpayer. Self-evidently they have now done what so many asylum seekers are able to do in a system that does not forcibly detain every illegal arrival: slipped further into the criminal underworld.

    If they are ever apprehended and found guilty, will they be deported? Not a chance! As the Telegraph regularly reports, the combination of our rabidly Left-wing judiciary and the European Convention on Human Rights makes it nigh-on impossible to get rid of even the most hardened foreign criminals.

    As hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world continue to pour into Britain, with particular ethnicities aggressively dominating certain areas, clashes between those who still feel far more Eritrean; Pakistani or Palestinian than they ever will feel British seem likely to become an ever more regular occurrence. Already, the politics of Pakistan and Gaza poisons too many elections. If what remains of our national identity is not to evaporate entirely, this must cease.

    In a few weeks, Eritrean Independence Day will come round again. In anticipation of more trouble, some countries have already banned any public "celebrations."

    A British government that truly puts this country first would go further, and make it crystal clear that foreign nationals who bring overseas political battles to our streets in any manner that breaks the law will be deported forthwith. They should have no right to appeal. People who feel so passionately about politics in their countries of origin that they are prepared to resort to fisticuffs and worse would obviously be better off back home.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/22/there-is-no-reason-for-people-to-riot-in-britain-over-forei

    Eritreans fighting it out in Sheffield? It used to be Yemenis v. Slovaks (well, that's how the media described it but we all know it was towelheads v. caravanners).

  103. Just a thought.
    The UK needs to pass legislation that prevents Sharia, in perpetuity, before it's too late.

    1. I think it's already too late. There are too many in positions of power for whom it is a goal.

    2. There is already a strong influence in political affairs by the few slammers that are elected. There will be no stopping them as all the leaders have submitted to islam apart from Reform (maybe)

  105. Well, it got a bit wet this afternoon, but I managed to get a start made on tidying the back of the van out.
    Hopefully I'll be able to get my camping gear in tomorrow for a couple of nights away picking up a few engineering bits for t'Lad from Frome.

    Still got a bit of wood to get sawn & split but that can wait a little while.
    Goodnight all, I'm off to bed.

  106. I am going to cut and run, folks. Feel shattered after a busy and stressful day. Deep breaths and tomorrow, hopefully, should be calmer.

    Goodnight, everyone.

    1. Good Night, Conners – and Kadi and Winston. I hope you sleep well tonight.

  107. Following Conway's example, I too have decided to have an early night. Good night to all my chums, sleep well, and see you all tomorrow.

    2. As nasty as the attack was, it would have been worth mentioning that it happened in 2010 with sentence passed in 2011. Some might come away with the impression this happened recently, rather than somewhat before the notion of two-tier justice had entered wider public consciousness.

      Before somebody accuses me of gutlessness, spinelessness, cowardice, appeasement, Islamophilia or some other epithet suggesting that I'm all too ready to forgive Muslim violence, I do not accept the judge's assessment of what he regarded as mitigating circumstances.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8937856/Muslim-women-not-used-to-drinking-walk-free-after-attack-on-woman.html

      1. I really appreciate your diligent fact-checking.

        I think many of us are too busy / distracted / angry to do it for ourselves, and it is so important.

        Thank you.

  110. Good night all , have been busy in the garden today, and listening to some good music this evening .. and steering clear of the news , ha ha .

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