Saturday 23 December: Striking doctors have alienated patients and harmed their cause

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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356 thoughts on “Saturday 23 December: Striking doctors have alienated patients and harmed their cause”

  1. Repeat

    Good morrow, Gentlefolk. today’s story

    Be Careful What You Think
    This woman goes to her doctor complaining of stomach pains, so the doctor lays her down and conducts an examination of her stomach area. Once he’s finished, he asks the woman, “Well, I hope you don’t mind changing nappies!”
    “Ooh! Ooh!” says the excited woman. “Am I pregnant?! Am I going to have a baby?!”
    “No,” the doctor says. “You have colon cancer!”

  3. Good morning, chums. Enjoy your weekend. Then we have Christmas (Monday) and Boxing Day (Tuesday).

      1. Yes, we won’t be able to buy enough groceries for 30 people on Monday, shocking!
        The poor supermarket workers! – in France and Germany, they will get three consecutive days off, in Britain only one.

          2. Meanwhile, NYC is trying to force the food chain Chick Fil-A to open on a Sunday. The chain, owned by God fearing Christians, famously closes all branches on a Sunday. I expect NYC will lose out on chicken options on the sabbath.

    1. Myrhh is mine; its bitter perfume
      Breathes a life of gathering gloom
      Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
      Sealed in a stone cold tomb

      At the carol service I went to last night, the minister talked about the wise men looking up, seeing a star and following it, even though it was not clear where it was going…a Christmas message for all the congregation.

      1. They used to sing this in the 60s:

        We three kings of Orient Are
        One on a bicycle one in a car
        One on a scooter tooting his hooter
        Following Ringo Starr

  6. SIR – Analysis from the College of Policing purports to show that prison does not stop criminals from reoffending (report, December 22).

    It found that 54 per cent of jailed criminals reoffended, compared with 46 per cent of those handed suspended prison terms, community service, fines or probation.

    Could this be because the imprisoned cohort are more likely, on average, to be hardened criminals, and so less likely to be deterred from reoffending?

    Michael Hughes
    Birmingham

    SIR – I was pleased to see that the College of Policing research acknowledged the importance of education, training, family and other relationships as supportive factors in reducing reoffending.

    As well as acting as a deterrent, a fundamental purpose of custodial sentencing is to support the rehabilitation of offenders. This can only be achieved by demonstrating to prisoners that there is a viable alternative to their lifestyles.

    Targeted learning plus the support of family and other significant relationships can enable offenders to see that a crime-free lifestyle is an achievable option.

    Stuart Harrington
    Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset

    BTL
    Barrie Newton
    49 MIN AGO
    “Analysis from the College of Policing purports to show that prison does not stop criminals from reoffending.”
    Depends on how you run the prison.
    The old Naval Detention Quarters certainly worked.
    The recipe was considerable discomfort and being run ragged throughout your waking hours.
    A cell without heating, a wooden bed, a wooden pillow, one blanket, one book : the Bible.
    Maximum. sentence, if I remember correctly, was 48 days but usually it was 14 or 21 days. That was enough to ensure the defaulter would not reoffend. Very little expense was involved.
    Of course, in around the 60’s the bleeding hearts got in there and today’s discipline, I understand, is of a most caring nature.

    Rusty Nail
    50 MIN AGO
    With regards the merits of rehabilitation, training and support for prison offenders. Seems that quite a few prisons are turning into boarding homes if HMP Five Wells in Northamptonshire, is anything to go by!
    Offenders are now called “Residents”
    No bars on windows
    Access to showers, tablets and phones in their dorms (not cells)
    Central Heating
    Fitness and Crafts Centres
    Sports fields
    Canteen etc.
    One wonders who is better off, the decent citizen trying to make a living out in the “free” world; or being looked after courtesy of the Taxpayer for a few years at a time!
    Oh and let us not forget those poor unfortunate migrants bound up in 4* hotels with all the comforts of home!
    Merry Christmas (or should I say, Happy Holidays! Wouldn’t want to cause offence now would I, might end up in prison. Merry Christmas!)

    1. What Rusty Nail omits is that the ‘residents’ can buy, from outside suppliers, fresh fruit and veg, bread, confectionery, toiletries and other goods, paid for from the activities that they undertake and for which they are remunerated. This is is part of the idea that they must be prepared for the outside world by knowing how to ‘budget’ and live like responsible citizens.

      1. Nice to know we’ve all got somewhere warm where we can go and be looked after when the energy bills get too high…

  8. Putin ally ‘behind bomb’ that killed Wagner boss. 23 December 2023.

    A plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary boss, was brought down by a bomb planted under its wing in a plot orchestrated by Vladimir Putin’s oldest ally, according to a new report.

    Nikolai Patrushev, a former KGB officer, the powerful head of Russia’s security council, personally oversaw the planning of the operation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Western intelligence sources and a former Russian intelligence officer.

    This “report” is by the WSJ who have had no access to the bodies or the plane, know no one involved and have no evidence to support their assertions. I would also be interested to know how a bomb could be affixed to the underside of a plane’s wing without it being noticed or stay there during flight.

    So far as I am aware no May Day call was made which inclines to the official narrative that it was an internal explosion that disabled the crew instantly and prevented their communicating with the ground. Why has the WSJ ignored this possibility? After all it could still be a hostile act? The answer must lie in the nature of the story itself. To concede that the explosion was internal is to admit to the possibility, however unlikely, of it being true whereas the plane wing is an unequivocal assassination.

    This said there must be a strong suspicion that Prigozhin was eliminated and if not with Vlad’s approval at least to his relief. It is just too much of a coincidence to be true. He was a serious danger to the stability of the State and if he wasn’t knocked off one wonders why not.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/22/putin-ordered-death-of-wagner-boss-prighozin/

  9. SIR – In your report (December 21) on Ireland’s attempt to prevent the UK from ending vexatious prosecution of service veterans, you correctly note that “ECHR rules for the right to life and prohibition of torture require member states to investigate death and serious harm”. The key term here is “investigate” – something the Defence Committee closely examined with expert legal witnesses during its 2017 inquiry hearings.

    We found that a statute of limitation is permissible under international law, if two conditions are met. First, it must cover all former parties to the Northern Ireland conflict: applying it only to service personnel would be deemed unacceptable state impunity. Indeed, that principle has been conceded already in the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, limiting time served in prison for Troubles-related offences – including murder – to only two years, whether carried out by terrorist paramilitaries or by soldiers.

    Secondly, we learnt that the ECHR requirement for an adequate investigation does not necessitate a subsequent prosecution. Instead, it can be met absolutely by a “truth recovery process” coupled with a guarantee of immunity, as was successfully operated in post-apartheid South Africa. We argued – and the Government agreed – that what had been good enough for Nelson Mandela should be good enough for the rest of us.

    Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach, wants the human rights court to endorse a double-standard and overrule our legislation. We should certainly not comply, in the unlikely event of it finding in his favour.

    Sir Julian Lewis MP (Con)
    Chairman, Defence Committee, 2015-19
    London SW1

    Anastasias Revenge
    6 HRS AGO
    Sir Julian Lewis MP (Con) – well said sir! Why our government legal team failed to immediately come up with those points you made is more than mystifying – a cynic might conclude that they would want Leo to win.

    1. Q: Why our government legal team failed to immediately come up with those points?

      A: £££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££

      Morning Michael and all.

  10. Wordle 917 5/6

    Got it in five – great!

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

    2. Easy four
      Wordle 917 4/6

      🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
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      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  11. Alexander Horne
    Ireland could regret its attack on the Troubles law
    22 December 2023, 12:24pm

    The Irish government has controversially announced that it will bring an inter-state claim against the UK in the European Court of Human Rights over the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar rather piously claimed that he had ‘no option’ but to bring the case, since the Act breaches the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

    The Legacy Act, which has few friends in Northern Ireland, is designed to stop the commencement of new Troubles-era cases and inquests. It offers a conditional amnesty to former members of the security forces and to ex-paramilitaries alike – provided that they co-operate with investigations run by a new body, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) – headed by a retired judge, Sir Declan Morgan.

    A domestic court challenge against the policy has already been commenced at the High Court in Belfast. This case, which may eventually end up in the UK Supreme Court, will air exactly the sort of human rights challenges that could be heard in Strasbourg. The crux of the case relates to the procedural obligation on states, under the ECHR, to hold an investigation which is independent of those implicated in the event, effective (in the sense of being capable of identifying and punishing perpetrators), prompt and reasonably expeditious, with a ‘sufficient element of public scrutiny’ and the involvement of a victim’s next-of-kin to the extent necessary to safeguard their interests.

    Normally, in cases involving individual claims, a domestic court challenge would be allowed to reach its final conclusion before a case could be heard in Strasbourg. The government’s argument is that the Act provides a ‘robust and effective framework’ to allow the ICRIR to discharge the UK’s legal obligations under the Human Rights Act and the ECHR.

    Inter-state cases before the European Court of Human Rights are rare. The Council of Europe notes that there have been around 30 such cases since the ECHR entered into force in 1953. The case is being brought under Article 33, which allows ‘any High Contracting Party’ to refer to the Court any alleged breach of the provisions of the Convention and the Protocols thereto by another High Contracting Party’.

    The Irish government’s decision to bring a case now is both unfortunate and ill-judged. While the Act may well be a rather flawed compromise, which will satisfy few victims of the Troubles, it is also an attempt to draw a line under events which occurred many years ago and which are unlikely to ever be resolved in a satisfactory way. The UK government is probably also correct in saying that the Act will enable more victims and survivors to obtain more information, and rather faster than can be achieved under current mechanisms. By pouring fuel on these smouldering embers, the Irish government has done no one any favours.

    Some have argued that post-Brexit, a united Ireland is inevitable. Yet this action hardly seems designed to improve community relations. It is likely to inflame unionists and keep rancorous disputes alive for many more years. The bitter pill of the Legacies Act may have satisfied no one, but it was at least even handed in offending everyone.

    As Eliot Wilson observed yesterday, the Irish government’s actions are also liable to result in charges of hypocrisy in circumstances where Dublin has not even engaged with the ICRIR, and the Irish government has made no effort since 1998 to pursue prosecutions for past offences over which it might have jurisdiction. Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, has already said that the Irish government ‘should urgently clarify the number of criminal prosecutions brought in Ireland since 1998 relating to Troubles cases.’

    The Irish claim is being portrayed as an attempt to block, or overturn, the Legacies Act. However, the legal position is rather more complicated. The Strasbourg Court has no power to override UK domestic legislation, even if it were to find against the UK government. Nonetheless, it might conclude that the blanket amnesty provided by the Act is contrary to the above mentioned procedural obligations set out in earlier judgments.

    This would mean that continuing to operate the scheme would put the UK in breach of international law, and that it would be under an international law obligation to remedy the breach, either by amending, or withdrawing the legislation. But any final judgment may be years away. What’s more, as the prisoners’ voting rights saga demonstrated, compliance with contentious Strasbourg judgments is not always immediate and may result in a messy compromise. Those who have lost family members during the Troubles may well end up unsatisfied with the final outcome, even if the Irish claim is successful.

    The proposed case comes at a very awkward time for the British government. Rishi Sunak is already facing calls from his colleagues to exit the ECHR. This politicised claim is likely to exacerbate these problems. Former home secretary Suella Braverman is on manoeuvers arguing that this sort of Strasbourg caselaw is an ‘obstacle to justice and fairness’ and ‘another reason we need to leave the ECHR.’

    Unlike the government’s pernicious Rwanda removals scheme, a challenge to the Legacies Act, which is in reality designed to protect British veterans from being pursued for actions which occurred many decades ago, will present any future government with far more of a challenge. No British government will want to see British servicemen investigated, while republican paramilitaries continue to go unpunished. Should Keir Starmer (who joined the club of political leaders in military fatigues this week) win the next election, this is not an issue he will wish to inherit.

    LP Hartley, who died in the same year as Bloody Sunday, famously wrote ‘the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.’ While events in the past may never be forgiven, if we ever want to see reconciliation and an end to the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, we may simply have to accept that some undeserving individuals will never face justice.

    Alexander Horne is a barrister and visiting professor at Durham University. He was previously a senior parliamentary lawyer.

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

    Jolly Radical
    19 hours ago
    We’re at a point similar to the English civil war, where the country has to decide whether it’s governed by a parliament or by unelected institutions.

    At least in the 17th century those institutions were inside the country. Today they’re in Ireland and Belgium.

    @PhilKean1
    19 hours ago
    .
    [] – Ireland shields under what remains of Britain’s Military umbrella.
    [] – Irish citizens given privileged citizenship, Welfare, voting and residency rights in the UK.
    [] – Ireland joining the then Common Market on the coat-tails of Britain’s entry.
    [] – Ireland in receipt of over £1 billion pounds of British economic aid when the Euro currency collapsed.
    [] – Britain by FAR Ireland’s biggest export market for farm and dairy produce.
    [] – Tony Blair’s Labour regime accepted hundreds of thousands of Irish “Travellers” that had been legislated out of Southern Ireland.
    [] – British fighter jets police Ireland’s airspace.

    And yet all we ever seem to get is vitriol and betrayal.

  12. Good morning all,

    A bit of light streaking the Eastern sky at McPhee Towers but it’s shaping up to be a cloudy day, breezy from the West, 9℃≫10℃.

    The Poles gave up this chap when they allowed Tusk back into government.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e5bc35e54295a16275f8cc49c2d22e42a4a298180ff44263dc86727a859708d7.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/12/22/migrants-destroying-european-culture-poland-ex-pm/

    Following elections in October, earlier this month Mr Morawiecki’s conservative Law and Justice Party was removed from government and replaced by a three-party coalition, consisting of the liberal Civic Coalition, the New Left and agrarian Third Way, all led by prime minister Donald Tusk.

    The previous Polish government fought bitterly against the EU’s migration plans, in particular the clause that would relocate migrants from border countries to other EU member states.

    Mr Morawiecki described illegal migration as a long-term “threat” to European civilisation and said: “We do not agree on any form of compulsory distribution of migrants across member states. We do not agree to compulsory distribution of migrants into Poland specifically, of course, or paying for not accepting those migrants.

    “This is one of the biggest threats going forward for the European Union because I think that accepting one or two million illegal migrants can be the beginning of a huge wave that can pose a very serious threat to the whole of the European Union, and the stability of the European Union, and for the security of the European Union.”

    I think the Poles are going to bitterly regret what they have done at their recent election.

    I note that this piece is written by Steven Edginton who is one of the best young journalists on the DT. He came to my attention through the DT’s Off Script series of video interviews with various prominent people which he had been doing. It’s good to see him in print as well. He has never, I believe, been anywhere near any university course.

  13. Good morning all,

    A bit of light streaking the Eastern sky at McPhee Towers but it’s shaping up to be a cloudy day, breezy from the West, 9℃≫10℃.

    The Poles gave up this chap when they allowed Tusk back into government.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e5bc35e54295a16275f8cc49c2d22e42a4a298180ff44263dc86727a859708d7.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/12/22/migrants-destroying-european-culture-poland-ex-pm/

    Following elections in October, earlier this month Mr Morawiecki’s conservative Law and Justice Party was removed from government and replaced by a three-party coalition, consisting of the liberal Civic Coalition, the New Left and agrarian Third Way, all led by prime minister Donald Tusk.

    The previous Polish government fought bitterly against the EU’s migration plans, in particular the clause that would relocate migrants from border countries to other EU member states.

    Mr Morawiecki described illegal migration as a long-term “threat” to European civilisation and said: “We do not agree on any form of compulsory distribution of migrants across member states. We do not agree to compulsory distribution of migrants into Poland specifically, of course, or paying for not accepting those migrants.

    “This is one of the biggest threats going forward for the European Union because I think that accepting one or two million illegal migrants can be the beginning of a huge wave that can pose a very serious threat to the whole of the European Union, and the stability of the European Union, and for the security of the European Union.”

    I think the Poles are going to bitterly regret what they have done at their recent election.

    I note that this piece is written by Steven Edginton who is one of the best young journalists on the DT. He came to my attention through the DT’s Off Script series of video interviews with various prominent people which he had been doing. It’s good to see him in print as well. He has never, I believe, been anywhere near any university course.

  14. Rupert Darwall
    What’s the true cost of Britain’s biggest offshore wind farm?
    22 December 2023, 7:14pm

    The world’s largest offshore wind farm is coming to Britain but there will be only one winner from the scheme – and it isn’t electricity consumers. Wind energy giant Ørsted had raised doubts about the Hornsea 3 offshore project earlier this year. But after securing more generous subsidy arrangements from the government, the Danish firm is pressing ahead with the project. Soon, another 230 turbines will fill the North Sea due east of Hull.

    The news this week is being hailed as a boost for Britain’s net zero strategy but don’t be deceived: the true cost of this scheme will be enormous. Last year, Ørsted won a contract for difference – which is designed to give a guaranteed price for energy – for the project with an inflation proof price of £37.55 per Megawatt hour (MWh) in 2012 money (£50.06 in today’s terms). But even generous inflation-proofing would not be enough to guarantee a profit. As a result, Ørsted was wary about giving the wind farm the green light.

    Now, following further talks with the government, Ørsted says the company has been handed ‘flexibility’ to reduce the amount of generating capacity covered under the previous agreement by 25 per cent. So far, ministers have been mum about what this means for the price of electricity Ørsted expects to receive. One thing that seems likely is that it will not be the price Ørsted bid.

    After the £37.55 strike price was announced last year, it was greeted like the Second Coming. ‘Offshore wind is now the cheapest form of electricity in this country,’ Boris Johnson gushed in one of his last public appearances as prime minister in September 2022. ‘Offshore wind is nine times cheaper than gas,’ Johnson claimed. He wasn’t the only one. In May, Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons that the cost of offshore wind had fallen from £140 per MWh to £40 per MWh. Both Sunak and Johnson were deluded.

    Contracts for difference, which the government uses to subsidise renewable energy, are valuable options that the government uses to entice wind developers. Because of the way these contracts are allocated by the government, wind investors are incentivised to low ball the strike prices they offer. Thus moral hazard is hard wired into the allocation mechanism. For this reason, falling strike prices in successive allocation rounds reveal nothing about the cost trajectory of offshore wind.

    Yet ministers and civil servants, lubricated by highly effective wind lobbying and wall-to-wall pro-wind media coverage, chose to interpret falling strike price bids for offshore wind projects as evidence that wind was getting ridiculously cheap. Ministers’ jingoistic triumphalism about the miracles of British offshore wind is a wind lobby-fed fantasy that has little basis in reality.

    In 2017, the government under Theresa May commissioned Sir Dieter Helm, one of Britain’s best known energy economists, to undertake a cost of energy review. Helm’s conclusions were damning. ‘The status quo is not going to be a good place to be in the medium and longer term,’ Helm concluded. ‘It is not sustainable, and therefore it will not be sustained.’

    Helm specifically warned against the danger of energy policy being captured by vested interests. ‘Energy policy has been partly captured,’ he wrote, ‘with the result that our decarbonisation is slower and more costly than it need be; our security of supply is weaker than it should be; and households and industry pay too much for their energy.’

    The only thing Helm got wrong was his suggestion that policy capture was partial. Energy policy is as close to being 100 per cent captured as it’s possible to get.

    It’s not just the government that’s been captured. Shadow net zero secretary Ed Miliband has ensured that Labour is also full of hot air when it comes to talking about the wind industry. After no offshore wind projects qualified for the fifth allocation round in September, Big Wind blamed the government’s budget parameters for being ‘too low and too tight.’ Up piped Miliband, describing the tight pricing as a ‘one billion pound Tory bombshell that will push bills up for hardworking families’. ‘The Conservatives have now trashed the industry that was meant to be the crown jewels of the British energy system,’ he said. Only in the upside-down world of renewable energy does pushing up wind energy prices cut them.

    The systematic deception over the high costs of wind energy has grave implications for Britain’s future prosperity. The economic justification for writing net zero into law was that the costs of renewable energy had fallen much faster than anticipated. As a result, Britain’s net zero experiment is based on a falsehood. The costs of net zero are going to be far higher than the government believes. It will inflict great and unnecessary hardship on British families; it will make British firms less competitive and weaken the economy, in turn leading to prolonged public sector austerity and higher taxes for longer.

    To reach net zero, the government has placed a huge bet on offshore wind. Big Wind knows that the government has left itself with no other options. The grid is to be decarbonised by 2035 – or by 2030 under Labour. New gas-fired power stations are uninvestable, as they have been for some time. What’s more, analysis of offshore wind accounts by Professor Gordon Hughes shows that for projects initiated from 2017, per MWh maintenance costs could exceed guaranteed prices from their twelfth year of operation. To keep their turbines turning, Big Wind will tell ministers they need more money. Lots of it. This week’s bail out is set to be the first of many. It’s Rishi Sunak’s Christmas present to the British people, as we witness the unravelling of the biggest public policy disaster in a generation.

    Rupert Darwall is a senior fellow of the RealClear Foundation and author of The Folly of Climate Leadership: Net Zero and Britain’s Disastrous Energy Policies

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

    Andrew Hotston
    11 hours ago
    The scale of the scam being inflicted on the population of Britain is almost too huge to contemplate.
    The Net Zero cultists truly believe they are enriching us by making us very much poorer. When reality finally bites it is going to be very painful indeed for everyone except the super-rich like Sunak.
    However, to a great extent the public is to blame. It takes a special kind of stupid to fall for the blatant lies that we have been told over the last thirty or more years.

    Nikephoros Phokas
    12 hours ago
    It simply cannot happen. The Grid is decades away from being able to cope. Just ask any electrician or power engineer.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/whats-the-true-cost-of-britains-biggest-offshore-wind-farm/

  15. Andrew Tettenborn
    Why was this Christian teacher hounded for her views on LGBT issues?
    22 December 2023, 5:14pm

    Who’d be a teacher these days? Until about 50 years ago, your outlook didn’t matter very much provided you were reasonably competent. Today the profession is coming close to saying that anyone who doesn’t profess progressive and morally relativistic views shouldn’t bother applying.

    Glawdys Leger, an experienced Catholic teacher in a Church of England state school, expressed her views on LGBT issues during a religious education lesson. Leger also raised objections to teaching LGBT material. She was sacked by Bishop Justus CofE School in Bromley, south London, in May 2022, but her troubles didn’t end there. Leger also had her case sent to the statutory teachers’ disciplinary body, the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA), for disciplinary action which could have led to her being banned for life from teaching in any school in the UK.

    In a decision on Wednesday, much to her relief, the TRA declined to ban her from the classroom. As a result, she remains free to teach.

    A happy ending? Unfortunately, not. Although it did not disqualify her, the TRA found Leger guilty of unacceptable professional conduct. There seems little doubt that this will make it harder for her to get a job in future.

    Public confidence in the profession, the body added, ‘could be seriously weakened if conduct such as that found against Ms Leger were not treated with the utmost seriousness when regulating the conduct of the profession.’ This is worrying for any number of reasons.

    The TRA comes across as a depressingly managerialist and blinkered organisation with little understanding that children at school, not to mention society as a whole, might actually benefit from classes being exposed to provocative viewpoints and the rough and tumble of moral and political argument. The TRA’s report talks of the importance of ‘showing tolerance of and respect for the rights of others’, but what about tolerance for Leger’s deeply-held religious views?

    Equally disconcerting is that the body in charge of the school in question was not a collection of functionaries from some grey and faceless local authority, but the Aquinas Trust, a CofE education outfit, which, according to its website, has values ‘founded on Christian principles.’ Things are coming to a pretty pass when even an organisation of this sort finds itself embroiled in such a row. Organisations like the Aquinas Trust need to be reminded of their own values and the need to be faithful to them.

    But we also need to think carefully about the TRA, with its broad remit to deal with what it sees as good professional practice. The reason schools are subjected to a body like this is, one suspects, largely connected with a perceived need for professionalisation: if doctors or lawyers have their professional bodies, teaching must have its regulator too. But does education really need close controls of this sort? Put bluntly, cack-handed doctors or venal lawyers are an immeasurably greater threat than teachers with opinions seen as unorthodox or harmful. There is a strong case for cutting back the powers of the TRA and having it as a mere regulator of last resort for really serious matters. Schools themselves should be trusted to determine whether a teacher’s views, or classroom manner, are suitable for its pupils. If it is happy with a particular teacher, it should not be the business of a body such as the TRA to tell it that it is not allowed to appoint them.

    There is, after all, a desperate shortage of experienced classroom teachers – especially of modern languages, which ironically was Leger’s speciality. The last thing schools still recovering from the effects of Covid need is artificial bureaucratic obstacles to the hiring of competent ones from self-important bodies like the TRA.

    Andrew Tettenborn is a professor of law at Swansea Law School

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

    Blindsideflanker
    14 hours ago edited
    It seems to me the head teacher Michelle Ferguson at Bishop Justus school needs to be confronted. Time to put the person who initiated this under the spotlight , so far these people are getting off scot-free having wrecked someone else’s life.

    No HS2…No EU Blindsideflanker
    14 hours ago
    It all started from one complaint by one mother, which no doubt could have been dealt with easily, without all this trouble…but no that was the catalyst, which was used as an excuse to terrify every other teacher into compliance, with the perverts who run the Blob……there is nothing mistaken or accidental here, this is war against normality.

    SaveTheWest
    13 hours ago
    Today the profession is coming close to saying that anyone who doesn’t profess progressive and morally relativistic views shouldn’t bother applying.

    But you’re contributing this moral miasma by claiming that these enemies of freedom and sense are the “progressive” ones. They are not progressive. They are deeply regressive, repressive, and reactionary. Stop calling them by their own lying name for themselves.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-was-this-christian-teacher-hounded-for-her-views-on-lgb

    1. SaveTheWest is right, it is the marxist viewpoint. I follow a Chinese American woman on Twitt called Xi Van Fleet, who is on a mission to warn people in the west about the marxist takeover. She sees the parallels with what happened in China, where immoral behaviour was encouraged by the CCP before they gained power. Once the CCP were ensconced in the government, they rounded up all the moral degenerates and shot them, of course.

  19. Costly heat pumps
    SIR – I share the concerns about the proposed “boiler tax”, designed to encourage the uptake of heat pumps, which has already raised the price of boilers by as much as £120 (report, December 22).

    My partner tried to get a quote for a heat pump for her 15th-century cottage, but the firm said it was not feasible and, in any case, would have cost three times more to run than her current oil-fired boiler.

    The Prime Minister should insist that Downing Street has heat pumps installed, then publish the total cost of the conversion per square metre of floor area. This should be combined with an evaluation of running costs and comfort.

    John Knox
    North Ferriby, East Yorkshire

    No Mr Knox, putting heat pumps in 10 Downing Street would be of no use as the taxpayer would pay for them. Far better would be to require every MP who voted for Net Zero to install heat pumps in their personal homes and their taxpayer funded scam second properties.

  20. Costly heat pumps
    SIR – I share the concerns about the proposed “boiler tax”, designed to encourage the uptake of heat pumps, which has already raised the price of boilers by as much as £120 (report, December 22).

    My partner tried to get a quote for a heat pump for her 15th-century cottage, but the firm said it was not feasible and, in any case, would have cost three times more to run than her current oil-fired boiler.

    The Prime Minister should insist that Downing Street has heat pumps installed, then publish the total cost of the conversion per square metre of floor area. This should be combined with an evaluation of running costs and comfort.

    John Knox
    North Ferriby, East Yorkshire

    No Mr Knox, putting heat pumps in 10 Downing Street would be of no use as the taxpayer would pay for them. Far better would be to require every MP who voted for Net Zero to install heat pumps in their personal homes and their taxpayer funded scam second properties.

  21. Primary school closes after pro-Palestinian protest outside gates

    Parents at Barclay Primary say they were upset pupils were not allowed to show support for Gaza

    Henry Bodkin and Ewan Somerville • 21 December 2023 • 6:13pm

    A school has been forced to close early for Christmas by a pro-Palestine protest after parents were threatened with referral to Prevent. Barclay Primary School, in east London, warned of “escalating threats against staff” following a row over a pupil who refused to take off a Palestinian badge on his coat.

    The boy, whose mother is from Gaza, was forced to eat lunch and play away from other pupils, and was eventually excluded from the school, according to his family. They have said he was trying to show “empathy” for family members killed in the conflict in Gaza and have accused the school of Islamophobia and “criminalising” their son.

    The school, one of the largest primaries in the country, said it was merely enforcing its “apolitical” code of behaviour, and claimed it had been the victim of “malicious fabrications” spread on social and other media. Barclay Primary sent a letter to parents on Nov 17, seen by The Telegraph, warning that pupils had attended Children In Need day dressed in Palestinian colours.

    The letter warned against adults using children as “political pawns”, and concluded: “Extremist or divisive comments can and will lead to formal meetings with the school, referrals to the Prevent team or the hate crime team in Waltham Forest.” Prevent is the Government’s multi-agency programme to tackle the ideological causes of terrorism.

    A letter from the school to parents on Oct 16, days after the Hamas massacre, complained about comments posted in parents’ WhatsApp groups, and also made reference to Prevent. Last month, dozens of parents responded with a joint letter accusing the school’s leadership of being “selectively” apolitical, citing a letter from the school in March 2022 which appeared to express solidarity with Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

    The row came to a head this week with a planned protest at the school gates on Thursday morning, prompting Barclay Primary School to announce it was closing early for Christmas. The demonstration attracted more than 100 protesters chanting slogans both relating to the boy in question and more generally about Israel’s war in Gaza. Most of the lampposts in the streets surrounding the school in Leyton have been hung with Palestinian flags.

    Speaking outside the school gates, the pupil’s father claimed his son, who has now not attended the school for weeks, had been given an adult’s jacket and “paraded” in front of the other children. “We’re really angry. We’ve lost family members [in Gaza]”, he said. “I think this is because of discrimination and Islamophobia.”

    He claimed the school’s October threat to involve Prevent stemmed from a message his wife posted on one of the parents’ WhatsApp groups in the run-up to Children In Need day, asking fellow parents to remember the young people killed in Gaza.

    The mother said: “It is disheartening to witness such a lack of empathy and understanding, especially in times of crisis. The additional burden of family pressures from Gaza has only added to our stress as parents.”

    She claimed her son had been “traumatised” after being “emotionally abused through a series of punishments”. Both parents have claimed an arrangement for homework to be sent to the boy while he was excluded had broken down.

    In a statement on Wednesday, Lion Academy Trust, the school’s parent body, denied any mistreatment of the pupil, saying the allegation had been investigated by external safeguarding authorities and “found to be false”.

    “In the light of escalating threats against staff and the school, based on malicious fabrications being broadcast by various media outlets, the Lion Academy Trust will be closing the school from 20th December 2023 to all parents and pupils for the Christmas break,” a statement read.

    “This decision has been made after careful reflection and because we need the school to be a safe place for the children and staff. It is very unfortunate and distressing that misinformation is being used to target a primary school.

    “We are bound by our legal duty under Prevent and whilst we have never reported anyone to Prevent at the school, and would not wish to do so, we are seeking to be transparent by making individuals aware of the school’s legal obligations.”

    The protest was organised following numerous videos posted on the social media platform TikTok by a user calling himself Zaki who has more than 80,000 followers.

    In one clip, he discusses a trustee of Lion Academy who is also a director of an orthodox Jewish primary school. This was referred to in a further letter to parents from the school on Dec 18 entitled “False and Malicious allegations being made on social media platforms”.

    In some of his other videos, Zaki has described cutting off male friends for going to watch the recent Barbie movie, asking: “Are you gay?”, and saying: “Our ancestors fought wars and built empires just for you to sit in a cinema in pink outfits and watch a movie that victimises and villainises and slanders the existence of men.”

    Barclay Primary School was at the centre of another row with Muslim parents in 2015 when it banned pupils from fasting during Ramadan.

    The trust did not respond to a request by The Telegraph to respond to specific allegations made by parents.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/21/school-close-early-christmas-threat-palestine-parents

    Sooner or later, one of these demonstrations will turn very ugly and everything will change. Hopefully…

    BTW, when ‘Zaki’ talks of empires, he’s not referring to ours. He is an aggressive Muslim, however correct he might be about Western attitudes to men.
    https://www.tiktok.com/@iamzxki/video/7314638324805750049

    1. As the number of Muslims increases in the UK, this type of protest will become more and more widespread.

          1. He’s just what’s needed – to bring the pot to the boil and expose the menace for what it is for the benefit of those who cannot see.

  23. 379761+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Saturday 23 December: Striking doctors have alienated patients and harmed their cause

    Yet another faction of society that has been choreographed via the RESET agenda to successfully alienate the peoples.

    The current governing parties, are to all intents & purposes WEF tools of people manipulation, culling and shaping the herd to conform in regards to the NWO.

    Very sad to say but to continue to follow the same voting pattern is to show a strong urge to become a fully fledged
    ZOM ( abb. zombie)

        1. I had to look it up, I’d not heard it until now. Here is the German Embassy in US comment on it, what a wonderful word, and there are so many to whom it applies!

          “Do you ever look at someone and feel like punching them in the face? Well, Germans have a unique word for that face: a Backpfeifengesicht — a face that’s badly in need of a fist.

          This is one of those strange words that’s uniquely German with no English equivalent. The word Backpfeife means “punch/slap” (on the cheek/face) and Gesicht means “face”. The word Backpfeifengesicht therefore means something along the lines of “a face that’s begging to be slapped” – or punched. Or hurt. You get the picture.”

          https://germanyinusa.com/2019/02/22/word-of-the-week-backpfeifengesicht/

    2. The WEF boys supporting each other. All in the club. I suppose we should be thankful it’s not an hereditary peerage.

    5. You can still be a royalist and despise the monarch; you can still be an Anglican and hold the Archbishop of Canterbury in complete contempt.

    6. I was a royalist, but Charlie has put the kybosh on that. I’m still a regular church goer, despite Welby’s worst efforts.

  25. Good morning all.
    A light drizzle, light breezes and a still mild 5°C.

    I’ve a run to Belper for a vegetable shop and, hopefully, to pick up a couple of last minute presents.

  26. Morning all 🙂😊
    Happy Christmas to you all and a better and Happier New Year, if it’s possible.
    Have a lovely time yawl. 🥂🍾🍷🍹🍻

  27. I seem to recall Nottle was broadly in agreement that this was nearer the truth.

    The documentary that dares question everything you think you know about the police killing of a black man that convulsed the world

    The right to a fair trial is the cornerstone of any civilised democracy. This film has led many to question whether or not Chauvin and his fellow arresting officers truly received one after so much violence and hysteria convulsed the globe during that hot, disturbing summer.

    Watch the documentary at thefallofminneapolis.com

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12895515/Documentary-dares-question-George-Floyd-killing.html

  28. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6f4cd9e318d8ed467a7aa93e67164b637f96bcbd/0_0_5572_3135/master/5572.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=ef402ea14cfe7aa7470cc6372c894dfa

    Drivers in Kruger national park, South Africa, were held up by a lion who decided the road would be a good place to take a nap. The lion with the darker mane was fast asleep until the arrival of his lighter-maned sibling, who woke him up by urinating on him – much to the amusement of the watching motorists.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b4612a2c7914c4ad0a54ed889394fdae24ead5ae/0_0_4903_3232/master/4903.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=f95d8595a1816ec6514b770825c92d01

    A grey seal pup and its mother rest on Horsey Gap beach, on the Norfolk coast.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/cf3ae9d401e0128cd649eafb801de071b0a34474/0_0_3613_2710/master/3613.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=75c86345515e6fd02f6c165d276d90c3

    A pair of goldfinches visit a garden pool to look for seeds fallen from nearby feeders in Aberystwyth, Wales. The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch has shown a 10% increase in goldfinch numbers in the UK over the past decade.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e6f4ce4aa861872cd3225ef8b18d224f877b18e7/0_0_5966_3979/master/5966.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=5c7e5f358f2d5517416ea66b071799d5

    A white-tailed eagle and a golden eagle fight in Skellefteå, northern Sweden. The golden eagle is the smaller species, but on this occasion it was victorious.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/576b19263986a4e68bbfe7e34c605932ad10e35f/673_426_3665_2199/master/3665.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=f82604b0ed7ad79c7c11823136b78c72

    A majestic spoonbill shows off its plumage in Tampa Bay, Florida, US. In the 19th century they were hunted extensively for their feathers.

  29. Good morning. From Twitt:

    OSINTdefender
    @sentdefender
    Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea has practically Collapsed as France, Spain, and Italy have all announced their Withdrawal from the U.S. Command Structure for the Operation, with the Three Nations stating they will only conduct further Maritime Operations under the Command of NATO and/or the European Union and not the United States.

    1. “Don’t harass people featured on this account, their lives are miserable enough as it is.”………

    5. It’s horrible to be callous, especially at this time of year, especially to a young woman, but she got what she deserved for her political dogma and stupidity. This needs to happen again and again, sadly, before these fools will wake up.

  35. America, but it applies here too.

    Except that we’ve learned in recent years that when the Left’s theories are contradicted by the real world, they stick with the theory. If the laboratory mice aren’t behaving as predicted, the problem isn’t the theory; it’s the mice.

    The Fed should have long ago tossed out the Phillips Curve sophistry. They’ve completely misdiagnosed the inflation problem. Bidenflation wasn’t caused by too many people working or any sudden spurt of economic production since 2021. It was fueled by runaway government spending, debt and a vastly expanded Fed balance sheet, which pipelined excess dollars into the economy. And so the Fed seemed to be squelching private-sector growth at the same time we need more of it.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/the-tyranny-of-the-phillips-curve/

      2. “O Judgment ! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason !”
        [Julius Caesar]

    3. There may be some method in his madness!

      As the Head of the Church of England The Idiot King feels that if Welby can destroy the CofE completely it will mean less work for the monarchy to do.

      The Idiot King cares even less for the Church of England than for his subjects whom he wishes to freeze to death or burn to death in their spontaneously combusting electric cars which do not work while he has his own private jet and has probably offered one to Welby to go with the knighthood.

      Welby’s knighthood for the Idiot King will have the same effect as Cameron’s appointment has had on Sunak. Both have shown themselves be dolts without judgment or common sense.

      The sooner he abdicates the better.

  38. ‘Morning All

    Late on parade,the cider slipped down far too easily last night

    Christmas you say………

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f6aab1f32469124c3283b98dc8011c20cead62b7e1b0f11f6b174ed1d4294cb3.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/789c01140119591b4c6ae1aa9c080f41a225adbaa498ef8d58c9c64facd2a949.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/429bfd7b696a82c2bef42d2614325e4c260951b3385e0a27b4379c9a454cfadf.jpg

    Rest of the medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/62620f9ecc253cb442be4ae957dddaf686be0e48607c251e17193b20d269e9a7.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2ef47fdeadc1658ab80fba1536bfafbf55d999d57b20e9cf5d29fa20e0ce52b9.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48c798965c9e814284724c189b5c88060fc1a5fda739afb87fb65b38c9c45679.jpg

    Finally one worthy of Sir Jasper

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/591124ec8e924f25adc393bd423216499d33a10dbddbd4f65a47b3cb5faead8d.jpg

      1. It’s nearly as bad as ‘Here, here!’! I had to restrain myself from posting ‘Where, where?’ to a comment in the DT this am.! Well, it is Christmas…

    2. Song lyrics from the 60s and 70s. I can still sing along word perfect to American Pie. Don’t often hit the right notes but I know the words.

  39. Just back from Martins Farm with the Chrishmus chicken. Big queue – including a solitary goose who seemed to be wondering where his mates were…..

    The MR is going to soak the fowl in brine for 4 hours tomorrow. Interesting…! And then cook it, I expect!!

    Still blowing a hooley. I opened the car door and the wind immediately blew it shut. Still, the gales should start to dry the land a bit. Many of the fields hereabouts are badly puddled and farmers can’t get the machinery on the land.

    1. Enjoy your chicken. My mum used to dunk the bird into cold water, then pour boiling water over it immediately prior to cooking. Old Jewish trick (her neighbours were Jewish, and I sometimes wondered about ourselves as well).

      Our fields are sodden and the water meadows are doing what they should do, flood. Perhaps it is a government trick, geo-engineering of the weather to prevent farmers from progressing their year as they should. Once a conspiracy theorist always a conspiracy theorist!

  41. S.S. Dumfries.

    Complement:
    59 (0 dead and 59 survivors).
    8,258 tons of iron ore

    At 11.50 hours on 23rd December 1944 the Dumfries (Master Robert Blackey) in convoy MKS-71 was torpedoed and sunk by U-322 (Gerhard Wysk) south of St. Catherine´s Point, Isle of Wight. The master and seven crew members were picked up by HMS Balsam (K 72) (LtCdr Sir J.H.S. Fayer, DSC, RNVR) and landed at Portsmouth. 41 crew members, eight gunners and two passengers were picked up by HMS Pearl (T 22) (T/Lt B.G. Barfoot, RNVR) and landed at Southampton.

    Type VIIC/41 U-Boat U-322 was sunk on 29th December 1944 in the English Channel south of Weymouth by depth charges from the Canadian corvette HMCS Calgary. 52 dead (all hands lost).

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

  42. 379761+ up ticks,

    May one ask

    What part of this comment does the indigenous United Kingdom majority voter NOT understand

    Dt,.
    Muslim migrants are destroying European culture, says Poland’s ex-PM
    Mateusz Morawiecki opposes the EU’s latest migration pact and wants to ‘preserve’

      1. 379761+ up ticks,

        Afternoon Mib,
        If I remember right Mr Gerard Batten tried to point out the ” road to freedom” in book form in 2014, then began successfully to put it into practice in 2018 only to be treacherously taken down in 2019 by the UKIP party NEC ( still operating) & farage.

        In short, we are suffering a plague of “party before Country” voters, the party first whatever the odious consequence.

    2. Yes, but Donald Tusk, the fanatical former EU president who is of the left, has been voted in as prime minister.

      What now?

      2. 379761+ up ticks,

        Afternoon R,
        What now? with the United Kingdoms
        current track record of continually voting in political shite, we should be the last to give guidance.

      3. Other countries will swing right and get more serious on these matters. We’ll no doubt follow behind eventually.

    3. The rest of the population has the same problem as you ogga1.

      Who do YOU vote for if you know all the other candidates are traitors.

      1. 379761+ up ticks,

        Evening Atg,
        Beg to differ Al but they don’t, was it not 48% that chose incarceration before freedom on the 24/6/2016 ?

        “Who do YOU vote for if you know all the other candidates are traitors”.
        NOT the best of the worst that’s for sure but sadly that is the pattern many are blindly following.

        My way,
        In regards to lab/lib/con/greens/ current ukip candidate names, NOTA.

        Enter and MASS support an independent after assessing their political stance.

        1. At the last election the turnout was 65% therefore the 48% is of what the 48% who voted or 48% of the electorate.
          By the by, if there was no independent who did you vote for? Or did you abstain or perhaps put yourself forward as a candidate?

          1. 379761+ up ticks,

            Atg,

            I was a “genuine UKIP” foot soldier,had been for many a year, this ceased to be so in 2019 otherwise all things UKIP.

            48% of the electorate voted continued incarceration, against 52% freedom, 24/6/16.

    1. I didn’t realise the seed cases were so large. The leaves are unusual too, very attractive.

  46. I just thought this was appropriate, not only to Australia but also most western countries.

    FW: MARVELS OF MODERN MEDECINE

    > An Israeli doctor says; “in Israel, medicine is so advanced that we cut
    > off a man’s testicles, put them on another man, and in 6 weeks, he was
    > looking for work”.
    >
    > The German doctor says;” That’s nothing, in Germany we took a part of a
    > man’s brain, put it in another man, and in 4 weeks he was looking for
    > work”.
    >
    > The Russian doctor says; “Gentlemen, we took half a heart from a man, put
    > it in another man’s chest, and in 2 weeks he was looking for work”.
    >
    > The Australian doctor laughs; “You are all behind us. We took a man with
    > no brains, no heart, and no balls and made him Prime Minister. Now,
    > the whole country is looking for work!”

    Happy Christmas.

      1. Another useless dick head PM how on earth did all this happened?
        As I mentioned a few weeks ago I was in Rhodesia when Wilson was dictating to Ian Smith aboard HMS Tiger. Then then blics took over and wrecked their own country, as they later did to SA.
        And right now are making an attempt to wreck the country they think they have escaped to. The old established sayings are so true. You can take one out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of them.
        This country has a serious problem. I expect one day aliens will arrive with forward and positive thinking on how to survive. And under instructions to the military, our political classes will destroy them.
        Happy Christmas to you and Caroline, Richard. Best wishes to you and your family for the New Year.
        We have our three son’s wives and grandchildren on Boxing day. As the saying in Jaws said.
        We’re gonna need a bigger (Boat) table.

    1. Everyone’s free to express an approved view. Joining the BLM riots was openly encouraged too.

        1. I very much wish that you hadn’t used that phrase in this instance. Some of us men on this ‘ere blog are of a sensitive disposition and might throw up. {:^))

    2. Alexander also criticised the Government’s new transgender guidance for schools – which urges schools to consider the role of social media on schoolchildren who ask to transition – in the days after he was unveiled as next year’s Eurovision contestant. He shared a post by LGBT activist Shon Faye to more than 750,000 Instagram followers on December 20, four days after it was announced that he would represent Britain in Malmo next May. Faye’s post called the guidance a “completely inappropriate framework”, adding: “Raising children into normative gender in a patriarchal capitalist society is far from neutral.”

      Twat…

      2. Perhaps he should go to Gaza to show his solidarity – I’m fairly sure they have at least one tall building still standing?

      3. Children under 21 have no idea of what they REALLLY want, After 21 make them pay for their own sex change operations

  50. Why does that worthless dork of a Top Cop allow this?

    Bedlam on Oxford Street amid Palestine protests

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/12/23/TELEMMGLPICT000360805071_17033401923940_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqwMpl-Jpdv5EMZZkofEupHOyEA__MmDc0hQxjdbkS2u8.jpeg?imwidth=680

    Protesters taker part in a demonstration outside Zara on Oxford St, which has now closed

    The marchers walked slowly along the most famous shopping street in the country in a bid to cause disruption.

    Holding placards declaring “no shopping while bombs are dropping” and “ceasefire now”, the protest made its way from Soho Square towards Oxford Circus, holding up dozens of buses and taxis.

    There were chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – interpreted by some as a call for the destruction of the state of Israel – and “stop bombing children” as the crowd of around 500 made its way past bemused shoppers busy finding the last of their Christmas gifts.

    Police maintained a low-key presence, with only a handful of officers visible as the march repeatedly came to a halt, before resuming its slow progress past Oxford Street’s busy shops.

    Organisers of the march, called by the feminist group Sisters Uncut, kept one lane of the street open, but the weight of numbers meant traffic had to be diverted.

    2. The lavatory seat was originally designed by an Irishman.

      Then an Englishman thought it might be better with a hole in it.

  53. ‘I’ll be back’ vows immigrant deported from UK for fifth time

    ‘Remorseless’ Czech national Christopher David has proved his presence in the country is not conducive to the public good, court hears

    Ella Nunn 22 December 2023 • 7:30pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/12/22/TELEMMGLPICT000360753446_17032720932910_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq-IWLY18X4-CzgyIcjLEAj0k9u7HhRJvuo-ZLenGRumA.jpeg?imwidth=680

    An immigrant is to be deported from the UK for the fifth time after changing his name to avoid being stopped at the border.

    Christopher David, 45, has made it past UK Border Force illegally at least four times since his first arrival in 2002 under a variety of aliases, racking up more than 41 convictions while in the country.

    When he was arrested again last month at his house in Bolton, Greater Manchester, David told investigators: “This is your government wasting money. I’ll be back, back and forth, back and forth.”

    Inquiries revealed he has 41 convictions in Britain for offences including dangerous driving, possession of crack cocaine and shoplifting.

    Bolton Crown Court heard that the Czech citizen had been known by “various aliases over the last 20 years” and was last deported in July.

    Changed name for new travel documents
    The factory worker arrived back in the UK in September after changing his name to Kristian David to obtain new travel documents.

    He flew in from Prague to Manchester before moving into a house in the Deane area of Bolton, where his family resides legally.

    He remained there for two months before being detained on Nov 20.

    Prosecutor Hunter Gray said at the hearing: “He has continuously proven his presence in the country is not conducive to the public good.”

    David had been jailed for 10 months last year for identical immigration offences. He is expected to serve eight of the 16 months of his latest sentence at Birmingham Prison before being sent back to the Czech Republic.

    It is not known if any extra security measures will be put in place to prevent him from returning.

    ‘He has not relied on people smugglers’
    Holly Nelson, David’s defence counsel, said that David had on one occasion come into the UK legally under freedom of movement laws when both countries were members of the European Union.

    She said: “He has not relied on people smugglers and so has not helped to fund organised crime in coming to the UK. It is not that he has been on a raft across the channel or on the back of a lorry, for example.”

    The defence also emphasised that David had tried to build a proper life in the UK with his wife, four children and two grandchildren.

    However, when sentencing David, Judge Timothy Clayson said: “This is a person who has quite simply decided that come what may he will flout the relevant immigration official’s decisions as he has said he would continue to do in the future. There is no remorse.”

    David admitted charges under the Immigration Act 1971 of knowingly entering the UK in breach of a deportation order and avoiding enforcement action by deceptive means and was jailed for 16 months.

    “There is a clear and substantial public interest in the expulsion from this country of foreign nationals whose presence in this country is not conducive for the public good and seek to be here in breach of immigration decisions,” Judge Clayson said.

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

    Sky Dancer
    17 HRS AGO
    Report a Czech, that’s safe. Report on other ethnic immigrants, not so much.
    How many millions have been imported who are ” not conducive to the public good”?

  55. I’m beginning to warm to the new Government of Argentina. Folk are free to protest but:

    “Government spokesman Manuel Adorni said a heavy deployment of police, paramilitary officers and anti-riot forces, cost 60 million pesos, or about £57,500, at the official exchange rate.
    “The bill will be sent to the social movements” who will “bear the responsibility of the cost which should not fall on citizens”, he said.
    It would seem sensible to do the same in the UK….

    1. The right to protest does not convey the right to block roads or impede others. That’s the difference that isn’t enforced here in the UK. Hold your protests as you wish, but no marching in main streets or mobbing national monuments.

  57. I loved this letter .

    Yes and I laughed , and I am still smiling as I write this .

    A hatless home
    SIR – During the early years of the last century my father had an eccentric uncle who never wore a hat (Letters, December 21).

    He told me that many wrote to him with the address: Charle Bar t’At, Leeds. So rare were those who went bare-headed in the 1900s that the letters were delivered.

    Nick Kester
    Wattisfield, Suffolk

    Moh has a huge collection of flat caps for all seasons , and he never ever goes outside with out wearing his daily choice ..

    A few of his caps have been chewed by previous spaniels. Decades ago I bought him a lovely summer fedora that he loved to wear playing golf .. He looked as if he was on safari , beating off the sun!

    We were invited to a BBQ , ( I hate the things) hosted by some golfing friends years ago , he took his hat off, and put it down next to me as he wandered off indoors to do the usual… my attention was was taken up with something else , and his hat vanished , just like that..

    We believe that the rat that took it eyed it up .. and that was it .

    Hats , I cannot bear knitted hats with bobbles on , although Moh will wear what ever is available to keep himself warm .

      1. Grizzly ,

        Thank goodness you have appeared, just like that.

        My turkey and sausage meat are ordered and will be picked up tomorrow from butcher in town .

        Shopped in Tesco or fruit and veg etc and felt quite ill after I examined the contents of their sausages .

        Look at this https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/280002982?sc_cmp=ppc*GHS+-+Grocery+-+New*MPX_PMAX_All_OT_All+Products_Online+Budget_1009392**280002982*&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAp5qsBhAPEiwAP0qeJme6y4KN-JOIghApHbB8LwolgB9qPS02E2jsRuGLgBwLERm_QRJTjxoC83MQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

        6 Pork sausages with seasoning.
        Our sausages are made for us by a family run business who’ve taken pride in making sausages for more than 200 years. They are all made with 100% British pork which is hand trimmed by expertly trained butchers. The sausages are then seasoned and other carefully selected ingredients are added to enhance the rich, succulent flavour.
        A succulent, meaty sausage made with prime pork shoulder and belly, herbs, nutmeg and white pepper. PRIME CUTS OF PORK
        Pack size: 400G
        Ingredients
        INGREDIENTS: Pork (90%), Water, Rice Flour, Potato Starch, Salt, Acidity Regulator (Calcium Lactate), White Pepper, Sage, Stabilisers (Tetrasodium Diphosphate, Disodium Diphosphate), Coriander, Preservative (Sodium Metabisulphite), Nutmeg, Dextrose, Bamboo Fibre, Caramelised Sugar Syrup, Colour (Paprika Extract).

        Filled into alginate casings.

        Bamboo fibre ,, what are we , Panda’s?

        1. If you have a mincer, Maggie, just buy 1 kg of pork belly or shoulder (with a good fat content). Mince it coarsely then add 135g dried breadcrumbs, 300g cold water, 20g salt, 2g black pepper, 2g dried sage and mix it all in together with your hands. If you don’t own a sausage stuffer, simply weigh them into 200g portions and shape them by hand into round patties. Fry the ones you intend to eat straight away, both sides, and they will be the best sausages you have ever tasted. The raw ones you don’t eat straight away, separate with sheets of greaseproof paper and freeze until needed.

          3. Lovely recipe and thank you Grizz.

            Why are supermarkets using bamboo fibre and other horrible additives .

            I then started looking at other food like fresh beefburgers , same again , so if they are feeding their customers that sort of stuff what are they feeding our farm animals on?

            Is bamboo fiber healthy to eat?
            Bamboo fiber is also a good source of antioxidants, which can help to protect the body from free radical damage and reduce inflammation. Additionally, bamboo fiber is a good source of prebiotics, which can help to promote the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut and improve overall gut health.19 Jul 2022

            https://khni.kerry.com/news/blog/fibers-functionality-in-plant-based-meat-alternatives/#:~:text=Insoluble%20fibers%20like%20bamboo%20or,and%20particle%20size%20of%20fiber.

          4. Profit usurps every other consideration in the selling of food (and most other products). I only buy fresh ingredients and make all my own food. It doesn’t take much time and the results are more than worth the little effort involved.

    2. I have a vast collection of hats, caps, and varied headwear. On the rare occasions I appeared with head uncovered, people remarked, “oh, I didn’t recognise you without a hat!”

  58. I am watching the end of the Great Escape. I have never seen it before. 4-3 and the Allies have just had a goal disallowed. I wonder if they can possibly equalise???

          3. 🙂i am pretty useless when it comes to films! Have switched to a good book. I am not allowing myself to borrow any more library books until I have read all the books at home which I’ve never read. I an starting with “Things fall apart” by Chinua Achebe and will move onto “The Africa House” by Christina Lamb and then…there are about 100 of them.

            The idea is to gradually rid the house of accumulated stuff before we set off on our Great Adventure in 2027.

          4. There are very few in the house that I haven’t read, I get a lot of pleasure from re-reads when I had forgotten how good the originals were.
            I’m always surprised by how much shorter most of the older ones are compared with today’s 400+ pagers.
            I recommend Anthony Price, fairly short, good stories and intriguing plots.

          5. It used to be the case that there were few books in the house I hadn’t read, but of late I have been given several dozen and I have also acquired quite a few I fancied reading. I am going to have to make the effort to put in the time to reduce the pile over the holidays!

          6. 🙂i am pretty useless when it comes to films! Have switched to a good book. I am not allowing myself to borrow any more library books until I have read all the books at home which I’ve never read. I an starting with “Things fall apart” by Chinua Achebe and will move onto “The Africa House” by Christina Lamb and then…there are about 100 of them.

            The idea is to gradually rid the house of accumulated stuff before we set off on our Great Adventure in 2027.

  59. I ventured out into a drying, thanks to the wind, garden to do a spot of leaf gathering. Plenty about on the ground and they are now in my leaf mould thingy – roofers lath and chicken mesh lashed together – nothing elaborate but something to improve upon next year. As I worked here and there I came across these two hellebores in flower, I have a few more in my newish shady bed but only the small one planted earlier this year is in flower and it has some way to go before looking like these.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3b9ac0db2c3ccc9250d1d6cfd92acb73af25c489a090f14f40ba8bc2e2b94724.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d6013a83ae7a6cf7e80fdbee018812ed2e6930883f84096b96360180a2bd96f9.jpg

    1. They are lovely , such a nice surprise .

      When I was hand delivering cards to neighbours , one of the gardens actually has daffodils and narcissis in full flower, our temps recently have been 12c to 14c although breezy and no frost ,

      1. Clearing leaves from around my loganberry bush exposed 5′ long side shoots from the tied in stems. I tied in the stems sometime in September and they’ve put on that growth since.

        1. Digging out the last section of wall, I unearthed a load of snowdrop bulbs and, uncertain where to plant them, placed them in a plastic trough where they have sprouted but have still to start flowering.

      4. “our temps recently have been 12c to 14c” .

        Too chilly.

        Get properly warmed up with some temps of 34c or 36c.

  61. Sacré bleugh:

    More than 700 Airbus Atlantic staff fall ill with diarrhoea and vomiting after company’s Christmas dinner

    1. “Most countries don’t have a digital infrastructure”

      Tony reckons that this is bit of problem.
      Does he think that those without it should byte the bullet?

  63. Apropos the Oxford Street slammer mob – just imagine if a couple of hundred WASPs “protested” outside a halal butchers.

    Armed perlice would be there in strength…. Dozens of arrests. Tasers – pepper spray etc etc

  65. Biden’s climate hit-man John Kerry is still at it, it being the need to stop farmers farming. In one part of his speech he calls for farming to cease and in a later part he tries to express concern that people will starve if his expressed aims aren’t met. Confused? I’m not but I am aware of a twat who is. Who’s going to tell him… ?
    Kerry talks of predictions re climate change and his model for these predictions is hanging on his office wall. Courtesy of @stjohns1024 on X.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fed861b632e641171a180be00344a2d431c7e19d4bde774fcee790053ddf039.png

          2. Yup! just back from local care home gig – Isle View on FB 😘
            Bottle of single malt and some chocs – they shouldn’t because I can’t stand the stuff and I’m not allowed chocs 😥

  66. Re sunset: an hour and a quarter later there is still a faint glow on the horizon.

    (That’s enough weather: Ed)

  67. An uninspired Par Four.

    Wordle 917 4/6
    ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
    ⬜⬜🟩🟨🟩
    🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. A poor five here
      Wordle 917 5/6

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

        1. I hope you are feeling a lot better than you were a few weeks ago – we were very glad to see you back here. I wonder if you’ve been in touch with Plum lately?

    3. Me too.

      Wordle 917 4/6

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

    4. And me.

      Wordle 917 4/6

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

        1. I know it’s not logical to eat the meat of cattle, pigs, sheep etc……….. but somehow the thought of eating cat or dog meat is completely disgusting.

          Is it the cruel process? Are slaughterhouses in this country humane?

          I do eat and enjoy beef, lamb, pork, chicken………..

          1. As a child I loved tripe and onions, Sir Jasper. Never found a decent recipe for it as an adult, though. I must use my friend Google (or even Grizzly) to see if he can help.

          2. Went there many times in my halcyon courting days!! Actually, it was Cam Lings just around the corner from Barclays Bank, Colmore Row that was fined a couple of times back in the 60’s

          4. That must have been the place I was taken into for a meal on a family trip to Coventry in about 1960 or ’61.

    2. I searched eating pussy and got some results on oral thrush in adults.
      I didn’t know what birds had to do with eating cats!

    3. Must be a sleepy people with all that catnapping going on.
      A deceased friend, son of a Welsh farmer, told me it was common practice to drown a sack of kittens when there were too many of the poor blighters around the farm.

      1. True, I was brought up on that tradition, Beauchamp Arms, Buckenham Ferry, on the River Yare, Norfolk. Born 1944.

  71. Don’t listen to this chap.

    He’s a filthy racist.

    He doesn’t know what he’s talking about and even if his name does come from the Old Testament he is not a prophet.

    Hide his extreme right wing hatred behind a spoiler in case people see his words and wonder if he was right!.

    “We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.”

  72. That’s me for this enjoyable day. Martins Farm; three crosswords done; gorgeous sunset – and NO news….except yet more snaps of the Surprise Baby…!! Nice to know that many cards will not arrive until February….

    To Cromer tomorrow for the MR to have her leg amputated X-rayed. Then the countdown to Monday. To a chum on Tuesday for lunch.
    Then the real gales are supposed to strike. I expect there will be Big Wet Office danger notices…(yawn).

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    PS I expect you all saw what the former Polish PM had to say about the invading slammers. Would that someone had the balls to say that in this country.

  73. Any TV watchers:

    BBC4 is showing a documentary on the great freeze of 1962/3 .
    It’s very interesting, a sight into how we were, and best of all the diction is brilliant; one can understand every word of the commentary at normal volumes, unlike the garbage I changed channel from.

    1. A winter like that would be an excellent thing; it would totally shatter the greeniac idiocy.

      Bring one on and the sooner the better.

      1. It wouldn’t change the minds of the Net Zero fanatics.

        Hot weather – Climate Change.
        Cold weather – Climate Change.
        Wet weather – Climate Change.
        Dry weather – Climate Change.

        1. When they discovered that none of the “Green energy” worked it would be a salutary experience

  74. Leaving tomorrow morning to go to daughter’s house for a family Christmas celebration, but wanted to wish a Very Merry Christmas to all Nottlers and a big Thank you to Geoff and his merry band of moderators for making this all possible, and let us not forget absent friends, cheers….

    2. Have a wonderful family Christmas, and when it’s over may you all be looking forward to the same next year.

      1. Merry Christmas to you too and to your four legged friends, hope Father Christmas remembers them!!

        2. He has! Their presents are in their stockings, hanging up by the fireplace in the sitting room (so they can’t reach them!).

  75. Got up at around 3.30 am this morning, and haven’t had a catnap all day. So I’ll now head for bed because my eye lids are getting heavier by the minute. Good night, chums. See you all tomorrow.

  76. Nice comment that I found in my travels on Twitt;

    Dr. Michael Rectenwald
    @RecTheRegime
    Socialists think that the economy is a pie to be divided up and passed around. But the economy is not a pie. It’s an oven for baking pies. Socialists dismantle the oven and pass out the parts.

  77. “Good afternoon Mr. Quitter, we would like to make you a Knight of the Realm.”
    “What? The same ‘Honour’ you gave Bliar and Welby? Shove it, arseholes.

    2. “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member”. Groucho Marx (allegedly).

  78. Evening, all. Time was, doctors, like teachers, were supposed to have a vocation. Seems everything is just a job now and the money is the most important thing.

  79. I feel I should point out that starting a post with “The missis was just watching….” fools no one.

  80. Great party game for all the family for 3 or more players. (The more the merrier!)

    Equipment required.
    One hat
    One scarf
    One pair of gloves.
    One chopping board
    Knife, fork and dice
    One large bar of chocolate still wrapped up at the start.

    The rules are very simple. Sitting around a table with the Knife & fork and chocolate on the chopping board in the middle of the table. Players take it in turns to roll the dice. Whoever throws a six must don the hat scarf and gloves and attempt to cut off a square of chocolate to eat, using the knife and fork before another player throws a six at which point the regalia must be handed over to the new person who has thrown a six and the process is repeated until there is no more chocolate left…..

    Have fun.

  81. Just had call from pal who is terminal with COPD. Was taken into hospital last night and spent 12 hour on a trolley. Moved to ward this morning. After various tests etc was told about midday he was being discharged. Couldn’t get it done in time so it’s now tomorrow morning.

    Last week he phoned 111 at bout 2pm. Said they’d send an ambulance. It arrived at 4am.

    Our wonderful world class NHS working flat out for the benefit of the patient. ?????

      1. Whilst on the phone the nurse (?) offered him an amoxicillin. Told her he’d already had it. They don’t seem to record it.
        What a bloody shambles.

    2. It’s not unusual. I went to A&E about four weeks ago with BP over 220 and with a doctors letter. More than15 hours later I was admitted.
      And Still trying to recover.
      Oh well you work and pay in to the system for over 45 ‘king years. When all we really needed was to do, was arrive in a ‘king rubber boat. Who knew?

  82. Goodnight, all. I’m off to stoke the Rayburn and have an early night. I’m reading the lesson in church tomorrow morning so I don’t want to be bleary eyed and incapable!

        1. Morning TB🙂😊
          I just hope they ‘return to whence they came’.
          Or maybe we should ask before they touch us, if the medical staff that are treating us are muslim.
          Only a day or so ago that moron Vine brought on a debate about not eating turkey at Christmas.
          I couldn’t bring my self to watch it.

    1. A real gale blowing here .

      BBC 4 now , Liberace… truly wonderful playing Chopin … so relaxing . Previously, The Warsaw Concerto , light stuff, but enjoyable .

    3. I expect Klaus et al. will be happy.

      If the speech contains a plea(s) for austerity e.g. reductions in energy usage, meat/food consumption, personal travel by whatever mode of powered transport etc. then I do not think that that message will go down well. More especially, if in the near future he is seen to continue with his own extravagant lifestyle then even royalist zealots may realise this man is not for the people.
      His involvement with the WEF was foolish when he was young, to continue with this relationship could be disastrous for the monarchy. Cold and hungry people become angry and restless, this foolish man needs to read some history…

      3. He is more than stupid, he is fully on board with the depopulation agenda and the planned return to feudalism – a world in which he sees himself as one of the elites who will own everything while the serfs own nothing and are told to be happy.

    4. …and we’ll all turn a blind-eye and a deaf-ear to this Royal nonsense because the man’s a fool.

    5. My lovely husband likes to watch the (Queen’s speech) and has announced he is looking forward to KC3 tomorrow. I have never watched it (though was a staunch monarchist till a year ago) and am not starting now.

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