Saturday 24 February: Democracies that value freedom must find the strength to see Ukraine to victory

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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606 thoughts on “Saturday 24 February: Democracies that value freedom must find the strength to see Ukraine to victory”

  1. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story

    PUTTING THE CAT OUT

    We were dressed and ready to go out for a Dinner & Theatre evening.

    We turned on a ‘night light’, turned the answering machine on, covered our pet budgie and put the cat in the back garden. We phoned the local Taxi company and requested a taxi. The taxi arrived and we opened the front door to leave the house.

    As we walked out the door, the cat we had put out in the yard scooted back into the house.
    We didn’t want the cat shut in the house because she always tries to get at the budgie. My wife walked on out to the taxi, while I went back inside to get the cat. The cat ran upstairs, with me in hot pursuit.

    Waiting in the cab, my wife didn’t want the driver to know that the house will be empty for the night. So she explained to the taxi driver that I would be out soon. “He’s just going upstairs to say Goodbye to my mother.”

    A few minutes later, I got into the cab. “Sorry I took so long,” I said, as we drove away.
    “That stupid bitch was hiding under the bed. I had to poke her arse with a coat hanger to get her to come out! She tried to take off, so I grabbed her by the neck. Then, I had to wrap her in a blanket to keep her from scratching me. But it worked! I hauled her fat arse downstairs and threw her out into the back garden! She’d better not shït in the vegetable garden again!”

    The silence in the Taxi was deafening.

  3. Morning all. I’ve just come back from walking the dog – a good frost out there. Early match today – part of me is hoping it will be cancelled.

        1. Yup.
          That’s why the West cannot go to war against Russia. We’re all out of bangy stuff.

    2. Good morning, Citroen1. It’s about time that cartoonists started to criticise the set-up with Zelensky in Ukraine.

  6. What I will share, before I get started later (don’t want to get everyone too wound up too early) is a comment below this Spiked article on last week’s appalling events in Parliament:
    https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/23/the-cowardice-of-our-elites-is-emboldening-islamism/

    This comment gave me pause for thought. I have hitherto accepted the “official narrative”, that what Hoyle did was because of the [undoubted and undeniable] threats from the mob outside Parliament. But maybe we’ve fallen for a classic “bate and switch” – and let’s face it, Labour has form on this.

    “ I can’t believe Tom Slater is accepting things at face value with Hoyle’s attempt to change tack. I don’t accept the premise that Lindsay Hoyle’s actions were influenced by alleged threats to MPs or Parliament, or had anything to do with Islamist extremism. The fact is Hoyle changed his story to reflect that. It wasn’t the explanation given earlier in the day for allowing Labour to stuff its amendment into the SNP’s opposition day. Remember, Hoyle said to the House:

    “Finally, I should tell the House that in my opinion the operation of Standing Order No. 31, which governs the way amendments to Opposition day motions are dealt with, reflects an outdated approach that restricts the options that can be put to the House. It is my intention to ask the Procedure Committee to consider its operation.”

    Not one word of threats, intimidation or a risk to Members or Parliament itself. And it followed Hoyle being hounded into his office by Starmer and Labour’s Chief Whip, as Chris Bryant filibustered in the Commons Chamber.

    I’m guessing they won’t release details of the timings when the police advice was apparently sought and given. They are hoping no one will ask to see if the chronology stacks up with what we are being told. I firmly believe what happened was naked politicking by Labour to avoid a damaging public split. Only when the outrage became clear did this Islamist threat get concocted to shut down complaints and dissent, and try to get Hoyle off the hook for his partisan attempt to help Labour. Anyone attacking Hoyle would be positioned as disregarding the safety and security of MPs, following the deaths of two in the last decade.

    This Islamist ‘threat’ is a red herring of whale size proportions. It is as outrageous as it is cynical.”

  8. Good morning all – it’s my last day in Kenya – I fly back to Nairobi this afternoon and a night in a hotel at the airport ready for the flight to Heathrow tomorrow. Just having a bit of time relaxing.

    1. Sad to be leaving? From here, seems like you had a grand visit, Jules! Got the next one pencilled in yet?

      1. Not heard that for a while!
        A quote from Wiki:-

        Personal life
        Steele and Winifred Anne Donoghue or Donoughue (born 1936) married at St Patrick’s Catholic Church, Soho Square, London, in spring 1960.[58]

        The couple have one daughter.[59][60]

  9. Good morning, chums. Only just made it with Wordle today.

    Wordle 980 6/6

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

  11. SIR –Blah blah blah blah blah blah

    blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

    Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah !

    Hamish de Bretton-Gordon
    Tisbury, Wiltshire

    1. Hamish must have employed a ghost writer. That’s more lucid and informative than his usual dribbling.

  13. Good morning all and the 77th,

    Clear, cold and frosty at McPhee Towers but clouding over slowly, wind light and variable, 0℃ rising to 6℃.

    The headline is raise the higher rate threshold to £70,000 but he has nothing to say about the the tax victimisation of single-income families or those with large income imbalances between husband and wife, or the vicious removal of personal allowance above £100k, or the additional rate or, indeed, working towards a flat tax rate. Nevertheless, there is some good stuff here even if it doesn’t go far enough.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a188273903b2624c85a71a8f209792afcb5630f513af30fe2ff7619f7ffdbbc6.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/23/reform-raise-40p-income-tax-threshold-70k/

    Although I believe political parties themselves are the source of much of what has gone wrong and they need to go so that we can return to the true constitution, It’ll get my vote.

    The DT gives us the opportunity to have some fun at the bottom of the article:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c2ec8361feaf0345f941f7d24ee32250bebd1b8f422e227b60fec706e23bea5a.png

    I’ll give them some suggestions.

    1. Can’t use the form, it just goes to large and larger print without accepting any changes – Time to ‘Reform’ it!

    2. I wonder what the current tax thresholds would be had not Brown hit on his marvelous wheeze of Fiscal Drag?

    3. Get the un-British concept of ‘hate crime’ out of the law.
      Ban Common Purpose graduates from management roles in public services and prune the public sector.
      Stop diverting public money to ‘charities’
      Stop Net Zero
      Pull the UK out of the WHO and UN
      Drop the whole climate change fraud.
      Start towing the boats back to France.
      Return to sound money
      Ban new mosque building, halal slaughter and religious face veils.

  14. Islamists ‘control’ Sadiq Khan and London, says Lee Anderson

    Labour backlash as former Conservative deputy chairman claims the capital has been ‘taken over’ following weekly pro-Palestinian protests

    Camilla Turner, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT and Dominic Penna, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    23 February 2024 • 11:25pm

    A top Conservative MP sparked a furious backlash from the Labour Party on Friday as he claimed Islamists had “got control” of Sadiq Khan and London.

    Lee Anderson, a former deputy chairman of the Tory Party, claimed the capital had been “taken over” following a wave of weekly pro-Palestinian protests over the war in Gaza.

    Mr Anderson was responding to an article for The Telegraph by Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, in which she wrote “the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge” of the country.

    She made the remarks after the Commons Speaker sparked anger over a Gaza ceasefire vote by allowing a vote on a Labour amendment, leading to accusations that he had given in to extremists.

    It later emerged that pro-Palestinian protestors had wanted to force parliament into lockdown. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) had wanted people to enter parliament to lobby MPs to vote in favour of a ceasefire, but they
    were stopped by security.

    Ben Jamal, leader of the PSC, told a crowd: “We want so many of you to come that they will have to lock the doors of parliament itself”, The Times reported.

    In an interview with GB News, Mr Anderson said: “I don’t actually believe that these Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is that they’ve got control of Khan, they’ve got control of London.

    “He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates… If you let Labour in through the back door, expect more of this, expect our cities to be taken over by these lunatics.”

    Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said: “Divisive and dangerous. The Conservatives have gone beyond the dog-whistle playbook of previous mayoral elections to outright racism and Islamophobia. Enough is enough.”

    Florence Eshalomi, the shadow minister for democracy, added: “I hope that Conservative Campaign Headquarters will look into this urgently.”

    A London Labour source said: “This sort of vile Islamophobia is exactly how the Tories campaigned against Sadiq Khan in 2016. Surely they will not tolerate it this time round?”

    The Home Secretary has rejected Mrs Braverman’s claim that Islamists are in charge of Britain. James Cleverly said he “can understand her frustration” but insisted that we live in a “high-functioning democracy”.

    When asked if his predecessor at the Home Office was right to claim that Islamists are running the country, Mr Cleverly told Times Radio: “No. I can understand her frustration but we do still live in one of the greatest countries in the world if not the greatest country in the world.

    “We have a high-functioning democracy. We live by the rule of law. And I don’t think it is right or appropriate to imply anything other than that.”

    Mrs Braverman’s column was also attacked by the London mayor who said she was “doing her best to outflank Enoch Powell”, the Right-wing former Conservative MP famous for his “Rivers of Blood” speech.

    Mr Powell became a political pariah in the years after his 1968 speech in which he railed against the social consequences of immigration from the Commonwealth and new race relations laws.

    Mr Khan wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Mrs Braverman’s remarks were a “poisonous attempt to drive a wedge between our communities” and an attempt to “serve her own naked ambition”.

    Mrs Braverman wrote: ‘The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now’ CREDIT: Paul Grover for The Telegraph
    Meanwhile, Lord Mann, the government’s anti-Semitism tsar, also criticised Mrs Braverman, claiming that she “ignored” his advice on how to tackle anti-Jewish hate while she was home secretary, adding that her “inaction” while she was in office was “part of the problem”.

    Mrs Braverman declined to respond to the criticism levelled at her by Mr Khan and Lord Mann. She was sacked by Mr Sunak in November 2023 after she accused police of “playing favourites” with pro-Palestinian protesters.

    She used her Telegraph column to accuse political leaders of “burying their heads in the sand”, and preferring to believe in the “illusion” of a successful multicultural society and remaining terrified of being called racist if they challenged them.

    “But the law has not changed, mass extremism parades itself proudly, campuses remain dangerous places for Jews, and Labour is still rotten to the core,” she said.

    Sir Lindsay initially defended his decision, saying he had broken with convention to allow MPs to vote on the widest possible range of amendments, citing threats that politicians had received over their stance on Israel and Gaza.

    But on Thursday, he admitted he had made a “wrong decision” in his effort to protect MPs as he fought to keep his job.

    Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Commons leader, and some Tory rebels are now trying to oust the Speaker by forcing a no-confidence vote. By Friday evening, over 70 MPs had signed a motion declaring no confidence in Sir Lindsay.

    **********************************
    Jo Green
    10 HRS AGO
    Difference between Cleverly & Suella: Braverman’s got balls

    Mark Hunter
    2 MIN AGO
    And would anyone be surprised if the PSC was receiving direct funding from the tax payer due to its status as a listed charity?

    Dick Stockley
    3 MIN AGO
    Islam is not an apolitical religion it believes in taking over the world by force. Kafirs must convert or die. Every Muslim believes it because if you don’t you’re not a Muslim. Why doesn’t a journalist ask Sadiq khan in public? If he wants to be allowed into the mosque he has no choice but agree

    2. “When asked if his predecessor at the Home Office was right to claim that Islamists are running the country, Mr Cleverly told Times Radio: “No. I can understand her frustration but we do still live in one of the greatest countries in the world if not the greatest country in the world.

      “We have a high-functioning democracy. We live by the rule of law. And I don’t think it is right or appropriate to imply anything other than that.””

      What IS he smoking?

      3. There is effectively no law and order in large swathes of Britain, including the countryside and city ghettos.

    3. Dick Stockley forgets about taqiyya. Khan would lie through his teeth to further the cause of islam and his fellow muslims would know he was lying so he’d still be welcome at Friday prayers.

  15. Why the West must seize Russia’s central bank assets. 24 February 2024.

    We can do more. I am calling on the Government to urgently secure an international agreement on the seizing of Russian central bank assets. Russia committed a crime of aggression, it is right that their frozen funds pay for the defence and reconstruction of Ukraine. We must also pursue a Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression to hold Putin and the Troika to account. We cannot allow them to try to rewrite history, they must be held accountable.

    Yes. It used to be called theft! Leaving this aside it would destroy faith in the Wests economic guarantees. These are already fragile. No depositor is going to feel easy putting his cash where it might be sequestered on a whim.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/02/24/west-seize-russia-central-bank-assets-ukraine-war/

    1. I’ll bet, Minty, that when they go to freeze the assets, the account will have been emptied.

    2. The comments make depressing reading – lots of armchair strategists with absolutely no idea of the history here! The dimwit who wrote the article refers to deaths over the two years of conflict, seemingly unaware of the death toll since 2014?

  17. Parliament has taken the knee to the Islamists who rule by fear

    This week’s shambles was merely a symptom of a wider malaise: too many in the West feel the need to apologise for our values

    CHARLES MOORE
    23 February 2024 • 7:00pm

    On June 9 2020, Sir Keir Starmer’s office released a photograph of the Labour leader and his deputy, Angela Rayner, “taking the knee”, in a room in Parliament. It was timed to coincide with the funeral of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

    It was literally, metaphorically, and even geographically, a misstep. Kneeling is an act of obeisance, the deferential acceptance of a higher authority. The Leader of the Opposition was making that obeisance in a Parliament whose elected Members are supposed to take the knee to no earthly power.

    My impression at the time was that Sir Keir did not fully understand this.

    He probably thought he was expressing simple solidarity with victims of racism, but in fact he ceded a dangerous amount of power to an ideology which is itself racist (anti-white and anti-Semitic) and pursues methods that are quasi-revolutionary. Although purging his party of the extremists empowered by Jeremy Corbyn, he was also, unintentionally, giving them aid and comfort.

    Little short of four years on, we have the scenes in the House of Commons on Wednesday. The most striking thing about Mr Speaker Hoyle’s action that day was not so much that he defied long-established conventions by handing to Labour an Opposition Day reserved for the SNP – though that was bad – but why he did so.

    I am not referring here to the view that Sir Lindsay was trying to save his own job in what might soon be a Labour-controlled House of Commons. I do not know his private motives. I am talking about his publicly stated reasons.

    Mr Speaker said he wanted to “prevent further division”. He was worried about the safety of MPs. As he confusedly put it, when he returned to apologise to the House later, “I take very seriously… the danger – that is why I wanted everybody to be able to express their views. I am very, very concerned about the security of all Members.”

    It is not the Speaker’s job to “prevent further division”. It is to facilitate division in an orderly way. Indeed, the official word used to describe a vote in Parliament is “a division”. Dividing the House is how parliamentary democracy proceeds. Yet the Speaker himself was frightened. Why?

    Because, if we take Sir Lindsay at his word, he feared for “the security of all Members”.

    He had been told by some, mostly Labour MPs, that they had been threatened in their constituencies and online. Outside in Parliament Square, a large crowd was calling for whatever ceasefire motion would be most horrible for Israel. He was trying to give time for whatever amendment would cause jittery MPs the least aggro.

    The consequence was that a relatively anodyne Labour amendment was passed, with the other parties going on strike in protest at Sir Lindsay’s handling.

    The wider effect was that it looked as if Parliament was cowering in terror. The mob, online or out of doors, was affecting what could be said, just as it had intended.

    It is striking that the mass lobbies of MPs taking place at present are almost all about Gaza.

    The plight of Israel and of Gaza is indeed important, but is it really the issue that dominates the minds of most voters? As voters are saying in the current by-election campaign, “This is Rochdale, not Gaza.” After all, Britain has no direct responsibility for that terrible conflict.

    Why am I relating Sir Lindsay’s fiasco on Gaza to Sir Keir’s kneeling at the fate of George Floyd? Because, with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, which bent his knee in the summer of 2020, fear entered the bloodstream of our body politic – fear that if we do not defer to extremism, we might not survive.

    The fear is partly of disgrace. This is an era in which the mere accusation of racism can ruin a career, silence a writer, cancel a private bank account. It is also actual physical fear.

    In this space three weeks ago, I wrote about the plight of Mike Freer, the Conservative MP for Finchley, who has decided to retire because of the blizzard of threats, insults and worse. His constituency office had been set alight and he was stalked by the Islamist who ended up murdering his parliamentary colleague, Sir David Amess. All the worst threats related to his support for Israel (which makes him, in Islamist minds, a racist).

    Because Labour MPs more often sit for seats with big Muslim votes, they receive Gaza-related threats more often than Mr Freer’s fellow Conservatives do. Many, especially moderate Muslim ones, are under intense pressure to support Islamist efforts to help efface the memory of the Hamas massacres and disable Israel’s military campaign.

    Immediately after those October massacres, Sir Keir came out strongly in condemnation and boldly in support of Israel’s right of self-defence. But subsequent events, such as the debacle over Labour’s Rochdale candidate, prove how difficult such a stance is within his party. Did his toughness come too late?

    When Sir Keir rightly attacked anti-Semitism in his party, he did not analyse its nature clearly enough. It is not like the old Right-wing anti-Semitism which regarded Jews as creepy foreigners. Rather it a lethally political cocktail of two things – whites on the hard Left who hate anything white, Western or British, and Islamists who, for pseudo-religious reasons, see Jews as the eternal enemy and imagine Allah is telling them to take Palestine by slaughter.

    This was not a case, as Sir Keir seemed to think, of getting rid of a few hateful nutcases (though Corbyn’s Labour certainly contained some): it required, and requires, a confrontation with an entire ideology.

    To speak only of Labour’s “anti-Semitism problem” is to miss the point. It is a subset of Labour’s Muslim problem – its inability to distinguish clearly between most Muslim fellow-citizens, who are much like everyone else, and the extreme activists who infiltrate marches, charities, clubs, schools, universities, youth groups and political parties, and whip up hatred on social media. Politicians – mostly white – repeatedly make the mistake of identifying such noxious characters as “speaking for Muslims”.

    And even today, when the Conservatives have been in office so long, only a handful of Cabinet ministers – Michael Gove, Oliver Dowden, Kemi Badenoch, Grant Shapps and Rishi Sunak himself – are surefooted on this subject. The Tories have suffered much less grass-roots party infiltration than Labour, but many of them are equally inclined to appeasement because of ignorance and fear.

    Central to BLM, as to Islamism, as to the eco-fanaticism of Just Stop Oil, is the idea that our Western democratic way of life is a greedy, racist, “phobic” fraud. Although some extremists are godless and others are religious fanatics, all unite around a story of exploitation, “colonialism” and victimhood. So self-righteous are they that they take positive pride in besetting not only Parliament but even MPs’ private houses.

    They have been brilliant at making people who reject their version of history very uncomfortable, thus inhibiting free speech.

    Even in my rough old trade of newspapers, which lives by that freedom, we find ourselves having to navigate ever more carefully a regulatory, legal and cultural environment that is windy about any strong statement in any area of life which might provoke extremist wrath.

    In a sense, Mr Speaker is right. The security of MPs, and therefore of a free country, is under threat. But the remedy is the opposite of the one he sought, which invites even more intimidation. Don’t take the knee; fight back.

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

    Andy RoadKing
    12 HRS AGO
    I don’t know anyone who wants mass immigration.
    I don’t know anyone who wants Net Zero.
    I don’t know anyone who wants the highest taxes in seventy years.
    I don’t know anyone who wants manufacturing destroyed.
    I don’t know anyone who wants farming destroyed.
    I don’t know anyone who wants children brainwashed, abused and mutilated.
    Why, why, why are our politicians inflicting all the things the country never voted for on us?
    On whose behalf are they doing this for?

    1. Bloody good thing that Parliament didn’t take that cowardly approach back in summer 1939.
      When, inevitably, the boil needs lanced, the later that is done the worse it is for everybody.

        1. Whose fault is it that a large crowd of threatening rioters were a) there in the first place and b) had been allowed to know that they were untouchable?

    2. This is the nub of the issue. “ The most striking thing about Mr Speaker Hoyle’s action that day was not so much that he defied long-established conventions by handing to Labour an Opposition Day reserved for the SNP – though that was bad – but why he did so.

      I am not referring here to the view that Sir Lindsay was trying to save his own job in what might soon be a Labour-controlled House of Commons. I do not know his private motives. I am talking about his publicly stated reasons.”

    3. its inability to distinguish clearly between most Muslim fellow-citizens, who are much like everyone else

      Except that they are not. The only Muslims the bien-pensant ever meet are not representative of the vast majority of Muslims who inhabit our cities in large enclaves where Islam tolerates no questioning and where no other religion or politic is permitted freedom of speech or action.
      If you don’t believe me take a large poster of a Mohammed cartoon to any of our numerous Muslim ghettoes and see how you get on.

    5. Why did the Speaker not call the police and have the square cleared and the light show removed from the tower – now it’s shown that Parliament is an appeasing and impotent coward, this will lead to a lot of trouble in the future.
      “Nipping in the bud” was not coined for no reason.

    6. This jars with the comment further up the thread highlighted by More Info Required. Here Hoyle claims his actions were due to fears for ‘the security of all members’. Earlier Hoyle made a comment reflecting his frustration with “…in my opinion the operation of Standing Order 31…reflects an outdated approach that restricts the options…it is my intention to ask the Procedure Committee to consider its operation.”

      As MIR mentioned, it would be interesting to see the timeline of events, rather than have the supine meeja regurgitate their political chums press release.

      The Westminster/Whitehall bubble know that the idea of politicians coming under pressure from islamist nutters is a viable meeja supported squirrel, as so many of the electorate can attest to such pressures on their own turf.

      God knows, I’m no fan of the Scottish Nationalist Party’s constant grievances, but on this occasion they might have a point regarding perceived chicanery from Hoyle and Labour.

      However, the saddest thing is that, much like fox hunting, a disproportionate amount of Parliamentary is spent on political fripperies, rather than on running the country.

    7. “… distinguish clearly between most Muslim fellow-citizens, who are much like everyone else, and the extreme activists who infiltrate marches, charities, clubs, schools, universities, youth groups and political parties, and whip up hatred on social media.” Therein lies the heart of the problem. Our “muslim fellow citizens” are not “much like everyone else”. The “extreme activists” are just more open about demanding what they want. The avowed aim of islam (remember it means “submission” is to make all kuffars submit. To destroy churches and turn them into mosques. To behead the kuffar or make him pay jizya as a dhimmi. Erdogan said that there is no extreme islam, there is only islam and that fact needs to be hammered home on every possible occasion.

      Edited to remove unwanted line breaks.

  18. To the title:
    I remembe when I used to buy the Telegraph.

    There was news in it.
    Common-sense conservativism, as well as Conservatism. There something to agree with, something to dispute.

    But clapping like seals at our treasure being sent to bleed what’s left of Ukrainian manhood so that American corps can buy up their farmland…

    God help us.

  19. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b7071809bf51b53e16fd531c2f5f16328fa265f4/338_148_3216_1930/master/3216.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=b05dea60fc972cd39c88e0df65b6c78b
    An Amur leopard and her three cubs are seen in a camera trap image. Rangers from Suiyang Bureau of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park found the image. This marked the first camera trap record of four Amur leopards in a frame. The cubs were thought to be one year old and all four appeared in good health. With fewer than 200 left in the wild, the Amur leopard could be the most endangered big cat.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bd10b1e01cff22cee7d315d611057435abd00803/0_0_1282_869/master/1282.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=b86e22fca53a37bb9e3aebd977a2e5d0
    A Cantor’s giant softshell turtle on the Chandragiri river in Kerala in India. The first-ever breeding population of an incredibly rare turtle has been discovered in India thanks to the detective work of British academics. A team of conservationists led by the University of Portsmouth used knowledge from communities to uncover the nesting site of the secretive Cantor’s giant softshell turtle which is native to the rivers of south and south-east Asia.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8cc5768f532af96af28bd8688a0ec5eead437c7e/0_0_2312_1541/master/2312.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=f850c1d7a635bb3494220fa2643324b3
    Protected wild goats climb the steep cliffs to feed at Munzur Valley National Park in Tunceli, Turkey.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d1866b3e5498c9a3d93a94502fcbbcf080d15836/0_0_5650_3767/master/5650.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=e9f71e4357616232920fdcef9e2b8a0c
    A red fox tracks its prey for an hour across the snow-covered landscape in the Göle district of Ardahan, Turkey

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b66d317736db4b0969c38cb2f9c2b62be7e3bbb6/0_0_4255_2837/master/4255.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=1587f91233ab5bfc74d4e7407ee37f0e
    A wild elephant crossing a road in Habarana, Sri Lanka

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7da0deed9a4ff0f63db0edf441bc1eaa6164d20e/0_0_4411_2942/master/4411.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=01d12c1205b2df5a966ee12743ca4532
    A honeybee collects nectar in mild weather, Brandenburg, Germany

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/efe7aab0fff07a333fb52f89f1d0d18c9a8f232b/0_0_4124_2749/master/4124.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=39d22c4683d227c9a4d4a93b5695017f
    An orange-bellied leafbird rests on a crabapple flower branch in Nanzhu Forest Park in Renhuai, China

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d2c989047690a75fa7f88abaa28b14bc65a9f7c7/0_0_5568_3712/master/5568.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=046d8ae8321433b34215b66b32ac34b4
    A herd of wild elephants searches for food near Amsoi village in the Morigaon district of Assam, India

  20. Good Moaning.
    Thanks to the Speaker’s ineptitude, it has been revealed that Labour needs the votes of religious nutters to win the general election.
    I wonder if Labour supporting women – who will be reduced to second class citizens if such a belief system holds sway – think about their daughters’ futures?

    1. Morning! Labour supporting women are in the same camp as Gays for Palestine. They believe that intersectional power structures make the Musulman an ally and fellow traveller in the fight against the toxic legacy of the Dead White Male. Mad, the lot of ‘em!

    2. By “religious nutters” you mean fifth columnists, those who would steal power and utterly destroy the UK.

  21. Good morning all.
    A bit late on parade I’m afraid. A disturbed night.

    A chilly -3°C start, bright but with a dense freezing fog keeping the sun out.

  22. 383837+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Saturday 24 February: Democracies that value freedom must find the strength to see Ukraine to victory

    Put all nations boots on the ground, introduce some nuclear material to the mix every little helps is the depopulation mindset of the
    WEF / NWO.

    Behold the squirrel mum feeding its young over yonder.

    What excessive deaths is that then ?

    1. Now ogga, you know that the relevant counting office waved its magic wand last week and there are no excess deaths now!

      People working in that office did that – nobody forced them to. What is wrong with them? Don’t they themselves have any friends or relatives who have dropped dead or got chronic health conditions since the jabs?

    1. 383837+ up ticks,

      Morning FM,

      I would say with a great deal of honesty it was time for the whole country to go to town, in a no uncertain manner.

    1. Odd how surprised the medical profession is by all these sudden issues immediately after an experimental untested vaccine.

  25. Good morning all , 4c , and rather wet.

    Last night was cold , air frost etc

    Pip spaniel wanted to go into the garden after midnight .. He started to bark , HE IS NOT A YAPPY DOG, but he was fixated by the sight of a large hedgehog under the bird table .

    I do hope hedgehog went back to its warm nest , Pip was excited .. he wouldn’t harm the hog , but chases around the garden searching for them . Hogs do move very quickly.

    1. Good Morning Belle and all other NOTTLERS. It’s precisely 0c here which is surprising. But the sun is out and I expect it is going to be a nice day.

      Watched a channel 4 report just now of Liz Truss at the CPAC convention in the USA. It reminded me of precisely why I don’t watch TV in the UK, it is nothing but socialist propaganda and spin and pretty disgusting. Gives me the feeling that I’m watching something dirty that contaminates minds, a mind parasite.

    2. Does he have a specific hedgehog bark? Several of my dogs have had one (not Kadi, as far as I know, because he hasn’t encountered a hog yet), so I always knew that they’d found a hog and I’d go out to stop them either trying to pick it up (my rather dim Paterdale cross) or dancing around it (my border terrier cross and Oscar).

    1. Mongo has one. It lifts his ears up 1cm and no higher. This is usually followed by a sudden turn toward you, jaws opening, tongue lolling and eyes popping open.

  27. What is it that everyone has against Prince Harry, personally? Yes, his wife is crass, and yes, he seems to have cloth ears, but that surely doesn’t warrant all the hatred and bile heaped on the man’s head.

    1. Quite a topic there and probably a number of reasons. But Harry’s attacks on the Royal family have upset many in UK and we have felt that many of his actions are driven by a scheming wife. A woman who has benefited greatly from the marriage but casts herself as a victim from her California mansion. Morning!

      1. How do, Capt. Kaypea!
        Over here, we mostly miss it (as in avoid, rather than miss out). But it’s disturbing, all the same.

    2. I agree Ober. It has become repellent. The reporting on his visit to his father was disgusting. He came for all sorts of negative reasons or so you would believe from the malicious reporting. But if he had stayed away he would have been beaten from pillar to post for not turning up. He couldn’t win either way. Personally I hope he stays out of the country. But I would also prefer he not be used as the nations ‘whipping boy’ for all ills. And the pouncing on him with glee to report every bit of trivia as his ruination/punishment/suffering really needs to stop, it is sadistic and rather twisted.

    5. For some reason the British media want us to hate him. The public is being manipulated once again. Even on here it would seem we are very selective as to when we want to believe the media when it confirms our prejudices.

    7. He seems stupid, spoilt, unrealistic and conceited. However, he’s not a member of my family, and I don’t have to put up with him, therefore I don’t really think about him much. He’s gone from the UK so he’s not in our faces every day. I don’t like the pile-on in the Daily Mail comments that happens every time H or M is mentioned either. I can only assume that people’s lives are so stressed and unhappy that they gain relief from it. But the DM definitely encourages it – that website gets more and more toxic all the time.

    8. I don’t have anything against him. He’s an overprivileged idiot, but I have nothing to do with him.

  29. 383837+ up ticks,

    Health Secretary Victoria Atkins: ‘The Labour Party is writing women out of our vocabulary’
    Three months into her role, the former barrister talks NHS strikes, female-only spaces and why she’ll never give up the school run

    Realising the lab parties islamic bent it is only ro be expected.

  30. Re the letters referring to Shippam’s paste .

    I remember my mother spreading fish paste on buttered toast, then topping with creamy scrambled egg , with a few chopped capers .

    We loved that , it was so tasty .

    Years later when the folks emigrated to SA in the 1960’s , and when I visited .. a wonderful concoction called Anchovette appeared to the delicacy that everyone craved . Every coffee lounge offered Anchovette on toast .. it was such a very tasty fishy flavour , as nice as Marmite on toast .

    When my siblings visited me here in the UK they would bring me a couple of large jars of Anchovette .

    What an uproar , noises were heard loudly when Anchovette vanished from South African shelves ..

    https://www.iol.co.za/sunday-tribune/lifestyle/your-cries-have-been-heard-iconic-fish-paste-brands-redro-and-pecks-anchovette-are-back-on-sa-shelves-6f5ea755-bcae-480e-a556-8559b02c917f#:~:text=Pick%20n%20Pay%20has%20confirmed,Foods%20had%20discontinued%20the%20products.

    “Your cries have been heard! Iconic fish paste brands Redro and Peck’s Anchovette are back on SA shelves”

    The fish flavour is delicious , and paste spread on buttered toast is delicious, perhaps even topped with a squirt of lemon juice!

        1. The Triumph Herald has been one of the recurring pointless topics of BTLs the DT Letters Page

    2. Norway and Sweden still do fish and “caviar” in toothpaste tubes, for smearing on bread.

    3. I Iove the flavour of anchovies.
      A few years ago we went the Atlantic coast of Spain. It was late in the evening and most restaurants were closing. But after finding one on the sea front, they had freshly caught anchovies on the menu. Deep fried in batter, and a lovely bottle of white wine. I’d still be there if only…..

      1. I haven’t yet had the pleasure of fresh anchovies. I do keep a bottle of anchovy sauce in the fridge for all sorts of uses. The bottled ones go great in a beef stew.

        2. Obviously life size and not as salty but the flavour is there.
          I love sea food. Another very tasty dish is Cataplana. Portugal.
          I’ve sat with two mates, on beach at the mouth of the Murray at Goolwa eating raw cockles with a bottle of cold white wine.

          1. Mouthwatering. When he took it out the oven i said ‘whow!’

            My anchovy sauce is Geo Watkins.

            Carl should use the mushroom stalks to make his own mushroom ketchup.

      2. It is traditional to bury some inside a steak-and-kidney pie to give a subtle seasoning that does not taste at all fishy.

          4. Oh that’s where you get all those clever tricks from.
            My sister and her business partner use to run a catering company.
            Exclusive and Celeb dinner parties.

          5. I actually use it seldomly, and mainly when I’m researching old-fashioned English classics. I have a library of around 150 cookery books from all over the world.

    5. I love P.G. Wodehouse’s books and I love characters such as Bertie Wooster who lived in terror of domineering women.

      Bertie, rather as I do, enjoys quoting from Shakespeare and other poets sometimes getting it a bit wrong.

      When comparing his stepfather with his usurping murderous stepfather, Claudius, Hamlet uses these terms to describe his father:

      See what a grace was seated on his brow:
      Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,
      An eye like Mars to threaten or command,

      Bertie’s version was an eye like Ma’s!

  33. Morning all 🙂😊
    Well I wasn’t expecting fog this morning.
    And I’m not sure I agree with today’s headline at all. They’ll be changing the word Ukraine to Hamas soon.

      1. Un fortunately Grizz, those are the only type of brain cells they do have, leading to swathes of fatherless children across the country.

        1. When watching the racing I am subject to the adverts. Today I noticed a couple with a black bloke and a white woman (you very rarely see white couples unless they are elderly). My first thought was, “how unusual. Black fathers have usually effed off.”

  35. SWMBO just plaved a YT video of a US Senate committee on glowbawl warming.
    The speaker asked “What’s the percentage CO2 in the atmosphere now?”, and answers (after a long bout of cajoling) were somewhere like 35%. Silence when they were told 0,04% – and these are the people who are deciding what else to destroy to save CO2 emissions – they don’t even know the most fundamental fact!
    Hands up who is surprised…

    1. I had similar figures quoted to me by members of our bowls club. They were dumbfounded when I told them the truth.

    2. Net Zero is not based on science it is based on the state taking money from the people and manipulating the gullible into thinking their enforced deprivations are helping save the world.

      If the full truth about carbon dioxide came out the whole scam would collapse which is why scientists who know the truth are silenced and given no platforms in the MSM and why people who do not agree with the accepted narrative are dismissed as:

      extreme right, conspiracy theorists, bigots, climate deniers, idiots, liars, spreaders of misinformation or disinformation, anti-vax, Fascists, Nazis, of being simultaneousIy, both Islamophobes or anti-Semites etc. etc.

      And so the list goes on whether it applies to the case in point or not. Add your own insults!

      1. I think the root cause of the CO2 scam is the need to create ‘assets’ out of thin air.
        If you suddenly give a tree an arbitrary value as a ‘carbon sink’ far beyond its worth as timber, then you’ve got another financial tool that can be used by central banks.
        These ‘assets’ are going to be needed when Exter’s pyramid comes down so that all the debts can be ‘paid off’ and the financial system re-set. I think that is how it is going to go.

      2. It is, and always has been, a tax scam.

        This is why ‘The Science’ is promoted over and above science. Confront any Lefty with the facts and they fall apart as cognitive dissonance breaks them.

      2. That means that 79% of the planet’s entire atmosphere is a “greenhouse” gas!

        I’m not following your logic, Joey.

        1. Nitrogen as a gas does not have a greenhouse effect. It’s nitrogen in compounds, particularly nitrous oxide, that has an especially powerful warming influence. The nitrogen in the atmosphere is largely inert and harmless.

          Nitrogen is a key contributor to climate change

          When nitrogen in its active form, such as in fertiliser, is exposed to soil, microbial reactions take place that release nitrous oxide. This gas is 300 times more potent at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. It also remains active in the atmosphere for more than 100 years. Algal blooms in lakes and waterways, often caused by fertilizer run-off, also emit greenhouse gases.

          Another issue is agricultural ammonia emissions. This is a gaseous form of nitrogen, which is emitted into the atmosphere from the housing, storage and spreading of animal manure and the spreading of synthetic fertilizer. While ammonia is not a greenhouse gas, when it’s released into the air, it acts as a base for emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.

          https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/four-reasons-why-world-needs-limit-nitrogen-pollution#:~:text=This%20is%20a%20gaseous%20form,oxide%2C%20a%20potent%20greenhouse%20gas.

    4. To contribute to Glowball Warming CO2 has to absorb solar energy and thus increase in temperature.
      HOWEVER, the solar energy absorbed by CO2 is restricted to a fairly narrow frequency band which represents only a small portion of total solar energy.
      Atmospheric CO2 is already VERY close to absorbing the bulk of solar energy that is available in that narrow band so the amount of glowball warming CO2 can engender is NOT dependent on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and any further increase in CO2 levels will, effectively, be chasing “The Law Of Diminishing Returns”.

    1. Of course Norwich is used as a sort of acronym such as the innocent SWALK (Sealed With a Loving Kiss) and the less inncocent BURMA (Be Undressed and Ready My Angel) or SIAM (Sexual Intercourse At Midnight) but Bill’s local city has to be spelt Korwich.. (Knickers Off Ready When I Come Home).

      The K in Knee or Knowledge is silent but in this case K takes the place of KN and is pronounced N.

    1. Wordle 980 5/6

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

    1. We agree, but when the police have been pressured for years to give Muslims an easy ride there was obviously doubt in many MPs minds about whether the police would adequately protect them

  42. *****************************

    NJ Ratnieks
    10 MIN AGO
    In Los Angeles, so much copper cable has been stolen that 3,000 street lights are now not functioning- leading to increased crime. It is reckoned the cable will have netted $15,000 to the thieves but will cost $20 million to reinstall. EV chargers are also targeted and many cities are not getting chargers in “the wring side of town” as they are going to be stripped within a few days.
    The boom in scrap metal prices caused by the simple fact that the “electric revolution” demands a supply of metals and minerals that would normally take many years to meet as the time spent to plan and get permissions and then construct mines, is many years and demand cannot be met like turning on a tap. In fact, the demand can never be met- this has been demonstrated but the electric juggernaut rolls on relentlessly ignoring economic reality.
    The fact is, the lunatic demands of politicians will never be met- but the unintended consequences will be many and alarming.

    1. It’s no use using science and common sense as politicians have such thick skins and heads that are devoid of understanding.

    2. We can meet demand. There is enough copper. Heck, there are hills in UAE that are as brown as the people there so full of metals are they. The problem is we’re just not thinking it through. It’s more reliance on foreign countries – unstable, dangerous ones. Maybe that’s why the Left are trying to important so many muslims.

      But the state is shortsighted, ignorant and arrogant. Remember the German ministers laughing at Trump? Oh, look kids!

  43. 383837+ up ticks,

    Health Secretary set to back decriminalisation of abortion
    Victoria Atkins says her record speaks for itself as MPs prepare for historic vote to change law

    It stands to reason this could become part & parcel of the existing
    culling campaign, as in, kill a unit before birth

    1. Don’t get me started on this.

      Why this, and why now?

      Who in this country is calling for this (except MPs)? Nobody, that’s who.

      They want to kill our children. It will be “Medical Assistance in Dying” next. As proto-typed in Canada.

      1. The same people who called for gay marriage to be legalised. It’s the next rung on the Globalist Ladder. Add assisted suicide to the list, too.

  44. Reform are raising the right issues in increasing the tax code but it needs root and branch reform. Real change. It’s some 17,000 pages. Singapore’s is only 250. Switzerland’s about the same.

    We need a single flat rate of tax. National insurance should be hypothecated and healthcare re-worked to an insurance model *internally*, with no additional cost to the customer. All other taxes should be scrapped, especially those on energy and fuel. No tax should be added to another. Business taxes should be basically eradicated. Any exceptions or loopholes abandoned and taxes simplpy lowered. The state must stop trying to pick winners. It can’t. The market does that.

    No more trying to punish Amazon while pretending tax, parking charges, council pavementing all crush the high street. On the one hand they keep demanding people spend, then the state makes that hard by ‘green’ policy. There’s no end to the stupidity. Every single thing the government has done for the last 25 miserable years has been the exact opposite of what they should have.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/23/reform-raise-40p-income-tax-threshold-70k/

      1. Yep. I honestly don’t understand why they did it? Electoral advantage? Malice? A desperate pathetic way of feeding their chums (and wives, in the case of Blair) cash?

        Every single thing. Every one. Not just marginally daft, but the exact oppopsite decision. The environment moron – forgotten her name blithering on that wind would be the cheapest fuel ever… after massively increasing subsidy for it. Subsidy that goes on our damned bills! Are they thick? Why the mendacity? They freeze the tax band to hammer workers, then increase welfare and are surprised people stop working. They give pensioners a bit more money through the triple lock, but by freezing the bands that money is just clawed back in tax.

        Everything is back to front. Why?

      2. Someone I know, who should have known better, insisted that Brown was responsible for index-linked gilts. Turns out it was a Tory Treasury Secretary name of Lawson.

        1. Many of the things Brown used were grotesque offspring of ideas and legislation originally passed by the Conservatives.

      3. Another thing that politicians never address is taxing interest payments you receive from a bank or building society when the rate of inflation is higher than the rate of interest you receive.

        Say, for example, I receive 2% on a capital sum of £50,000 I could be taxed on this at up to 45% on the £1,000 leaving me with £550 net whilke the government pockets £450. However if inflation is running at 5% my capital will have reduced in value from £50,000 to £47,500.

        So, in addition to losing £2,500 I have to add to my loss £450 in the tax I have had to pay.

      1. In my mind this is how it would work:

        Hospitals and doctors do the work and then submit the costs to the department for health.

        The department for health is rearranged to process those costs (as any other insurance provider). It doesn’t get paid by the Treasury until the claim is processed.

        Hospitals don’t get paid, civil servants don’t get paid _until they’ve done the work_. They are forced into a market. This is how insurance ompanies work – they demand efficiencies.

        The trusts are shut down as the pointless nonsense they are because efficient hospitals do their own work. If hospitals suddenly say ‘oh, we’ll just hire a thousand form fillers then’… fine – but they can’t pay for them because there will be no money until they do the work.

        1. At a quick look that is how the Canadian system is organized.

          The government runs the provincial insurance scheme which is the only way that resident Healthcare can be funded. Doctors do the work then send their bill to the insurer for payment. Non residents do not have the government coverage so unless the doctor is feeling altruistic, out comes the credit card.

          The big downside here is that the government controls the amount of money going to the insurer and that controls the amount of healthcare available. Some socialist decided that there can be no queue jumping so privately paid healthcare is actually illegal.

      2. Good morning JB, and everyone.
        All bureaucracy can be managed via Artificial Intelligence, known as AI. Yes, it’s not a panacea and needs some human ‘input’ at the moment. It may be pleasant to talk to an office human about some trivial matter, but when the call ends, ask yourself if AI would have been more efficient and helpful. A vast proprtion of taxation is currently expended on people in pantomime horse roles. Yes, the implementation process will take a while, but God alone knows what work today’s children will be doing in ten or twenty years. Apart from plumbing, care homes and AI systems design.

        1. You say that, I had someone yesterday ask why a computer can’t work out what has changed on a page and update a script accordingly.

          People just don’t understand the amount of work involved and think our current ‘clever search engines’ are somehow magical.

  45. Wasn’t he the useless [expletive] who along with May forced net zero on us?

    Abandoning the tax scam of green and allowing the country to recover is a stroke of a pen away, as is repealing the diversity nonsense, the idiocy of ‘rights’. The state doesn’t want to. It wants these absurd nonsense because it all helps keep the country down.

    Aside from intentional punishment, from deliberate, malicious spite I see no reason for this absurd, destructive regulation.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/18/high-energy-costs-are-choice-and-act-of-national-self-harm/

    1. Medicare, for Australia NZ and permanent residents.
      Our eldest was born under that fantastic system, 1978 in Adelaide.
      At the Mathew Flinders Medical centre. His name is Mathew.

  47. HMS Ellesmere (FY 204).
    A/S trawler (Lake)

    Complement:
    37 (37 dead – no survivors).

    At 23.40 hours on 24th February 1945 HMS Ellesmere (FY 204) (Lt T.H. Lloyd-Jones, RNVR) was hit by a Gnat torpedo from U-1203 (Sigurd Seeger) about 60 miles northwest of Brest. The armed trawler was escorting Appian Flight Q, a convoy of 21 landing craft en route to Malta, off its port bow when the vessel disappeared in a violent explosion. HMS Bideford (U 43) (A/LtCdr A.H. Pierce, OBE, RNR), the only other escort of convoy and HMS LCI(L)-299 (Lt C.T. Doyle, RNVR) immediately investigated the sinking position but no survivors were found, only splintered rafts and an upturned whaler were seen.

    Type VIIC U-Boat U-1203 surrendered on 9th May 1945 in the Lofjord near Trondheim, Norway, and was then transferred to Loch Ryan, Scotland on 29th May 1945.
    Operation Deadlight:
    Sunk on 8th December, 1945 in position 55.50N, 10.05W.

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/warships/br/hms_ellesmere.jpg

  48. Laurie Wastell
    The shamelessness of Hope not Hate
    24 February 2024, 8:33am

    You would think that a group called ‘Hope not Hate’ would have a lot of important things to talk about at the moment. It could look at how the threat of Islamist extremism is corrupting our democracy, for instance. It might raise the alarm about the MPs unwilling to vote with their conscience when it comes to Gaza because they are ‘terrified’. Or point to Mike Freer, who after years of death threats was recently forced to resign as an MP. Hope not Hate might also have investigated the appalling ‘hate marches’ we’ve seen since 7 October, which brought anti-Semitic slogans and chants of ‘jihad’ to the streets of London – or the people with links to Hamas that have helped organise them. There’s certainly been no shortage of hate in Britain this past year.

    So when Hope not Hate announced ‘This is BIG’ on Thursday, the self-professed campaign to ‘defend, champion and promote democracy and the rule of law’ could conceivably have been talking about any of these outrages. Instead, Hope not Hate had something far juicier to reveal, something that would really have the chattering classes reaching for their smelling salts. It turns out a right-leaning millionaire, according to its ground-breaking new investigation, sometimes likes tweets criticising immigration.

    Hope not Hate looked at the Twitter / X account of Sir Paul Marshall, the multi-millionaire owner of UnHerd and majority shareholder in GB News. They found – shock horror – that he had liked tweets expressing various right-wing views: criticising Sadiq Khan; praising Hungarian PM Viktor Orban and generally being negative about Islam and mass migration into Europe.

    Marshall’s ‘shocking’, ‘extreme tweets’, complained Hope not Hate researcher Gregory Davis, suggests ‘that he holds a deeply disturbing view of modern Britain.’ Davis says that this is a particularly ‘alarming prospect’ given that the media mogul ‘is believed to be preparing a bid to buy The Telegraph and The Spectator’. Marshall, for what it’s worth, commented that the posts he had liked were ‘a small and unrepresentative sample of over 5,000 posts’ which ‘does not represent his views’.

    This rather pathetic ‘investigation’ – a collaboration with Global’s News Agents podcast – consisted simply of trawling through his Twitter likes and reposts. It didn’t even find any tweets he’d written himself, as the investigation suggests – and it goes without saying that liking or retweeting an article or video does not necessarily mean that someone endorses it.

    The bigger problem though is that Hope not Hate’s censorious handwringing about right-wing extremism also actively undermines Britain’s efforts to tackle Islamism, which has long been known to be the far bigger threat.

    This was made abundantly clear by last year’s Shawcross Review into Prevent, which found that the government counter-extremism programme was neglecting to focus on Islamist extremism, instead having a disproportionate focus on extremism on the right. Part of the reason, it seems, was that the Prevent programme had been advised by left-wing activist groups, including Hope not Hate.

    Sir William Shawcross noted that officials had been shown material from a 2020 Hope not Hate report, supposedly on the ‘Extreme Right-Wing’, that ‘included pro-Brexit and centre-right commentators’, such as Rod Liddle, Melanie Philips and Douglas Murray, whom it accused of ‘mainstreaming’ far-right ideas. This was a running theme, with Prevent’s approach to right-wing extremism being ‘so broad it has included mildly controversial or provocative forms of mainstream, right-wing leaning commentary that have no meaningful connection to terrorism or radicalisation’. All in all, he concluded, ‘Prevent has a double standard when dealing with the Extreme Right-Wing and Islamism’.

    One year on from his report, Shawcross says that Prevent is still failing to get to grips with Islamism. While MI5 data shows that 75 per cent of its caseload is focused on Islamist threats, the latest figures for referrals to the Prevent programme showed just 11 per cent related to Islamist terrorism. Clearly, the proportion of Prevent referrals are significantly at odds with the relative threats posed by Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorism. Shawcross is clear about why: ‘One of the reasons why there is sometimes a reluctance to address the Islamist threat is that people are frightened of being called Islamophobic or racist’, he told the Telegraph this week. ‘It’s become a hugely effective form of censorship.’

    Such taboos have long been behind our political class’s craven approach to Islamist terror. It will be to Britain’s eternal shame that after the death of David Amess, butchered in his constituency surgery by Islamist Ali Harbi Ali, our political response was channelled away from that thorny, vital issue and towards the triviality of ‘online safety’. The likes of Hope not Hate, who shamelessly bleat about tweets while parliament is bullied by Islamist threats, are a big reason why that happens.

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

    Fanny Craddock
    2 hours ago edited
    Hate not Hate is a very nasty group. They gleefully pictured themselves outside JKR’s house in Edinburgh revealing the address. This is a woman who has done more than most to stand up for the assault on women’s rights by the far left woke mob.

    It is to the shame of our authorities that they listen to this vile cult

    Moira Girvan
    2 hours ago edited
    Probably one of the most sinister and malign of the many far left organisation in Britain. Who are they and where do they get their money from? If any ‘charity’ required to be investigated from top to bottom – come on somebody – it’s this gang of activists posing as ‘caring progressives’. The polar opposite in fact. ‘Chilling’ doesn’t quite cover it.

    Whats Up
    an hour ago
    “Hope not Hate” like “Work makes you Free”. Orwellian double-speak from the cultural Marxists

    steve3005
    2 hours ago
    I’m sure this bunch of leftie loons are affiliated to the Stop Funding Hate lot that ran (still runs?) a campaign against GBN. It was a problem for a while, with craven big advertisers pulling their adverts from the channel, but I see advertisers are returning.

    If the funding of these organisations was revealed, I’m pretty sure we would find malignant foreign enemies of our country.

    1. “Extreme right wing” that included pro- Brexit…….

      Now we’ve been told Prevents own definition of extreme right wing.

      1. Debunking the myth of the “far-Right”.

        There is no “far-Right”, “extreme-Right” (or “hard-Right” come to that). This invented comical fiction is nothing more than an illusion, created by socialists, to distinguish themselves from their ideological enemies who they have chosen to label as “fascists”. The fact is, though, that both socialists and fascists are products of the far-Left wing of the spectrum of political ideology. Whilst the mobs of Antifa, and their ilk, are generally accepted to be liberals on the far-Left (which, indubitably, does exist), the exact same can be said of their ideological opposites, whom they have conveniently dubbed “fascists”.

        Those who revel in mob-handedness, ergo those who believe that the only way to enforce their own agendæ is by rioting in the name of ‘the People’, may exist in a number of different forms, creeds and calling, many of which are a polar opposite of others. No matter how much each of those groups hate, loathe, detest or simply name-call one another, the irrebuttable (irrefutable) fact is that they are all of a totalitarian bent and all come from the Left.

        Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin all despised capitalism; Hitler and Stalin even formed the Nazi-Soviet Pact to counter it. Their creeds of communism and fascism shared similar beliefs: both demanding totalitarian state control, subjugation of the Jews, and a complete loathing of individualism.

        On the true Right of the political pendulum is conservatism, which values the rights of the individual, encourages innovation and a hard work ethic, and values freedom. True conservatives and capitalists do not form gangs, march, and seek to terrorise those who do not espouse their beliefs. They are patriots who simply get on with working hard to better themselves, their families and their country.

        By all means allow the ragtag mobs of socialists, communists and fascists of the far-Left annihilate one another in their quest for liberal superiority. Just don’t let them refer to peaceful, innovative and entrepreneurial conservatives and capitalists as the “far-Right” or “fascists”. They are far from it.

        ©Grizzly 2023

        1. It’s just another selection of pointless Dopey Wokey phrases for the opposite of their own symptoms. Normal is the old fashioned word that is deliberately overlooked.

        2. Being called “far-Right” is simply an absurdity.

          Being labelled ‘far-Right’ is preposterously idiotic. If you are on the Right of the political spectrum it means you shower, work, know the words to the national anthem, belong to a family, voted Brexit, eat meat, and prefer single-sex lavatories. Have I missed anything?

          Oh yes, I’ve missed a lot. It also means you love life, liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. You are an independent, self-sufficient and self-reliant individualist who has aspirations and are innovative. You are a knowledgable, entrepreneurial, enterprising and hard-working individual who enjoys low taxation and small government. Moreover, your preference is a free-market economy, and you do not go in for mob-handedness, rioting and civil disorder. You expect these positive attributes to be encouraged and rewarded. Your self-esteem, your family, your locality and your country come first, and you are prepared to kill (and die) to defend them.

          In a nutshell, you are NORMAL.

          Therefore it logically follows that to be ridiculously labelled as being ‘far-Right’ means that you must be extremely free, extremely happy, extremely independent, extremely self-sufficient, extremely self-reliant and an extreme individualist; who is extremely aspirational, extremely innovative, extremely knowledgable, extremely entrepreneurial, extremely enterprising, extremely hard-working, and enjoys extremely low taxation and extremely small government, etc.

          If that is the case, then you may call me extremely ‘far-Right’ until the cows come home.

          ©Grizzly 2023

        3. If you haven’t already done so please send the above to DT Letters if it isn’t printed then perhaps a BTL Comment when appropriate – I’m sure it will garner hundreds of upvotes.

          Afternoon Grizz & All…

          1. Afternoon, SR, and thanks. Unfortunately I attempted to send it to the DT last year, just after I wrote it, but it was summarily ignored.

            As for posting it as a BTL comment, I don’t subscribe to the online DT, only a “virtual newspaper” version. I may try again.

    3. Hate no hope are a hard Left bunch who, like all Lefties are fascists. They hate, unrelentingly anything that disagrees with their world view. As that view changes on a whim faster than the weather their default position is one of abject malice.

      They are bigots, authoritarian, vicious, abusive vermin.

    4. I hope Islam is eventually recognised as the tyranny that it is and treated as such, I’d hate to be wrong.

      1. I hope the so called ‘british’ supporters are tried for treason as well. Because that is what is going on right now.

      2. Might happen when masked med toting AK47s are marching up Oxford street chanting slogans in arabic. Until then, no.

    5. “…it goes without saying that liking or retweeting an article or video does not necessarily mean that someone endorses it.”

      Does that mean we have to lay off Naz Shah?

  50. Just had a glance at Tommy Steele’s Wiki entry and I am impressed. I remember his early songs and thought he was just another (v. good) pop singer. It turns out he is also a gifted sculptor, artist, actor and author. Married to the same woman for nearly 64 years. 87 years old and having survived serious childhood and adult illnesses he is still active.

    Well done Tommy – you have my fullest respect.

    https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.wqmV_Ail3db9_qJuKE54IQHaHd?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain

      1. Didn’t he have a little white bull … Always had a soft spot for Tommy, glad to know he has done so well

  51. L’ancien pilote brésilien Wilson Fittipaldi est mort. Frog news.

    He’ll be winging his way to heaven then.

        1. Good grief, BoB, that is the road that I walked along on the way to my secondary school in California (a district in Derby).

      1. A friend visiting yesterday told me via a family friend in California that a lot Americans are now carrying weapons on the streets. They believe that civil war could erupt if Biden stays in the White House. And hope Trump can save the nation. Not sure that will ever happen but who knows ?

          1. I think California has experienced the effects of the Biden regime and is coming to appreciate what it means.

    2. Nigel Forage is nothing but hot air. That’s why he likes having his own news program.

    3. Not only does he hang on the fringes of the Conservative Party, he’s been angling for a position in the U.S. as ambassador. He won’t be coming to save us.

        1. Aye, he’s a good raconteur. Very good with the crowds. But he doesn’t deliver. I wonder where we’d be now if he hadn’t shot UKIP through the heart and marched the Brexit Party candidates back down the hill.

  54. 383837+ up ticks,

    King hails Ukrainian resilience against Russia’s ‘indescribable aggression’

    What is this bloke up to, shouldn’t he be in his counting house.

    Along with his sprog he will be setting up a t-shirt company next.

  56. Just looking in (ha ha). Left eye still 95% blurred. Stayed in bed this morning in the hope that sleep would work its magic. Failed again.

    No news I see – apart from Friday Prayers becoming mandatory The Muslipolitan Police (to be renamed the Religious Police) will LOVE that.

    I’ll be back later.

      1. Not at all. They are not cats that lie down together (they did as babies, of course). They each have their own preferred places around the house – but they willingly swap them. To my surprise – they are now 3½ – they lead completely independent lives. They hunt very successfully but always alone.

  58. Most people are unaware that the percentage of CO₂ in the Earth’s atmosphere is so small that it is deemed insignificant in the well known school scientific experiment using a candle and bell jar (N=80%,O₂=20%, other gases=0%).

    It is not surprising therefore that the latest lunar explorative vehicle has discovered an obscure lunar orbiting satellite that accounts for most of our moon’s precipitation:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ec165f6c8e364031c4f949016d2457986203a9c577ccec05ac360b671111976d.gif

    1. Perhaps you should have pointed out that the question was which was more important, ignorance or indifference? 🙂

  60. Hello all!

    Now that MOH has also retired, we will be looking to move westwards, which is something we always intended to do. We thought we had a few years to look, but retirement has come some years sooner than we expected.

    The trouble is that you really need to know a place quite well before you move to it. We are starting to do some more serious research now, so I wonder if anyone knows things about the area around Bridport, Dorset that are not otherwise that easy to find out (not which is most expensive or downtrodden area, local facilities etc. because that is relatively easy to find, but things that really only locals are aware of).

    I would be most grateful for any suggestions. :o)

    1. Well done Mr D.

      Stay away from anywhere with social housing.

      Belle is probably the best person to ask.

  61. Seems that Mother-in-Law has been taken to hospital as an emergency admission. Came over all dizzy, and toppled over at home. No ambulance for some hours, but her GP lives next door, and so assistance was at hand. Now being investigated for stroke. Fingers crossed…

    2. Thank God you have a GP next door. Could not be more fortuitous Under the circumstances. Sincerely hope that she recovers quickly Ober.

    3. Sorry to hear that, Oberst but it seems she is being treated quickly so hopefully, all will be well soon. It’s always hard on the relatives who are in foreign parts.

    4. I’ll keep fingers crossed that your mother-in-law is getting well looked after with effective treatment in the hospital. A worrying time for you.
      We have a GP next door, though I hope we are never in the situation to need her help because of poor ambulance times.

      1. Her eyes are all to c*ck, seeing massively double unless she closes one eye. Might have something to do with it. We’ll see. (“joke” intended)

    6. Sorry to hear that. Must be very worrying for you and SWMBO. Lucky to have a GP so close. Ambulance (or ambwlans) times here are horrendously long. People have died waiting. We are better off driving the patient to A&E!

      1. Thanks for your concern, Conners. It’s worrying for all. MiL is well loved, we cannot afford to lose her.
        MiL has 2 GPs living in the next-door house! (Husband & wife), so they could use the right language to hurry the ambulances up a lot.
        What kind of service is that, when you need an insider to get an ambulance to an emergency in the same day? I’d have said that she’s cut herself, and there’s blood spurting everywhere…

    2. It is illegal under international law to seize the assets of another country.

      Were we to seize Russian assets we would be pariahs and lose oversea investments in perpetuity. The same applies to the wretched EU and the decadent Biden regime.

    4. Doesn’t inspire me (and nor does Charlie boy). Is Charlie praying for them facing towards Mecca?

    5. Not convinced the Russian attack was “unprovoked”.
      Like Israel smashing Hamasites in Gaza just now, there’s always a back story.

      1. Good then it means I can evade censorship by posting a link to NOTTLERS that is from a blocked site. Cool!

    2. Works for me. Mind I can open the RT site too. At first it was only when I was at work but my phone no longer seems to distinguish.

  64. Interesting answer by Liz Truss on a US TV program

    Concerned Citizen
    @BGatesIsaPyscho
    🚨🌎🇬🇧 Holy Crapballs
    Did a former UK Prime Minister just call out the Deep State & Central Bankers?
    Steve Bannon to Liz Truss – “are you a conspiracy theorist?”
    Truss – “what I found was once I got to the top of the tree (UK Prime Minister) is that the Governor of the Bank of England COULDN’T be sacked – but the PM could”
    Central Banks & those that own them have forever ruled the World – people are finally realising…….

      1. He tried to establish a new way to pay for oil. Guess who didn’t like that. And then Nato destroyed his water pipes and pumping stations. And someone shoved a dagger up his backside.

  67. Lee Anderson has Tory whip withdrawn after saying Sadiq Khan ‘controlled by Islamists’

    Simon Hart, the Chief Whip, says action taken following MP’s refusal to apologise for comments about London Mayor

    Will Hazell, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    24 February 2024 • 3:18pm

    Lee Anderson has had the Conservative whip withdrawn after claiming that “Islamists” have “got control” of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.

    On Saturday afternoon, a spokesman for Simon Hart, the Chief Whip, said: “Following his refusal to apologise for comments made yesterday, the Chief Whip has suspended the Conservative whip from Lee Anderson MP.”

    Speaking on GB News, Mr Anderson had said: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London. He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates.”
    *
    *
    *
    **************************

    C Baker
    32 MIN AGO
    Suspended for daring to utter the clear unvarnished truth.

    James Nash
    18 MIN AGO
    Reply to C Baker
    And the Tories wonder why their electoral support is fast disappearing.

    Sally-Ann Holland
    30 MIN AGO
    He’s not wrong though. This suspension just shows how terrified they all of are of offending the hate-filled Muslim mob. Roll on the inevitable civil war.

    2. Before Rastus mentions it …

      “That truth should be silent I had almost forgot. (Enobarbus)”

    5. OK, so Khan has been outed as a possible supporter of islamist ideals but why hasn’t he been outed as a globalist? Is being chairman of the C40 cities group and supporter of the totalitarian ideas of that globalist cabal more or less offensive than being in thrall to islamists? Both are abhorrent to all decent minded folk.

      1. I wonder which one is playing the other for fools?
        What do the Globalists gain by cosying up to Islam and facilitating their expansion?
        Or, is it that Islamists are using the Globalists to further their aims and that Globalists will be dropped when it suits them?

    6. Khan is a muslim. It’s obvious he’s going to support islam. The fact that islam is disastrous for this formerly Christian, civilised European country is a message that needs to get out.

  68. Right finally back from my match, against top of the league (and do bear in mind we play at the lowest end of the London league imaginable- it’s hard to play lower).

    We drew 1-1 eventually after having our first equaliser disallowed for a rule that I’ve never seen applied at the level we play at.

    Basically to score a goal of a penalty corner, the first shot on goal must hit the backboard (and not be dangerous, obvs). And that’s what our shot did. But it was a little raised – but not dangerous – and the umpire determined it to have been higher than 460 mm (that’s 18” in old money) when it crossed the goal line. Well it may have been 18 1/4” but it certainly wasn’t 20” or even 24” . I’ve never seen anything like it.

    They were pretty pissed off when we did score (another) equalizer and you could see the umpire’s mind turning as to how they could disallow it.

    Like i say. Ffs. We are low, low, low league. It really doesn’t matter.

    1. Never heard that rule, MIR – but then, it’s 50 years since I last played any kind of football. Even so, looks well dodgy.

  69. 38383837+ up ticks,

    Does this mean he has topped the political creep ( bog man) who crept into a public park crapper on a cottaging expedition then crept out to do a bit of PM ing, has topped that creature ?

    Surely that has to be admired in some twisted manner.

    Starmer has brought shame upon Labour
    He has put maintaining the facade of unity within his party ahead of the principle that Parliament cannot be seen to be intimidated

  70. Just sent:

    lee.anderson.mp@parliament.uk

    Sir,

    I am writing to thank you for the words you have spoken regarding the odious Mayor of London. You have merely said what huge numbers of British people have know for many years.
    I now see the usurper your party likes to call a Prime Minister has once again run scared from Labour and the LibDems and suspended the party whip. Cowardice is, I’m afraid, one of the less attractive features of the modern Conservative Party, and I suppose now nothing to be surprised at.

    Stay strong, and know that you speak for millions of British people.

    Yours Sincerely,
    GQ.

    1. Lee Anderson could (and should) have left the Conservatives for Reform many months ago. But he chose to slag off Reform instead. Looking like a bit of a Charlie now.

    2. I have also written to him , rather more emotionally than you .

      I am shocked and frightened by the knee jerk response the Sunak snake has given .

      What else is there to say , we have been warned and shown that we are losing our strength as English women and men .. politicians are grinding us up and trashing our feelings .

          2. How are you, Sos? Hope HG is keeping you under control and that you are still taking life slowly!!

    3. Only played hockey once when I was at school and I wasn’t aware of the fine detail. When I hit a shot that whistled past the teachers head I was sent off and never invited to play again.

  75. Exbury Gardens last September:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dfdcac201258dcddd9c20d9121bd31cd94b6399e2c8676009bd82aa35c8c91dd.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9456fd43a0fd7f1c3630ab0833c895ac9d670a35f2e24e15aa5de4886d6e1cf6.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eddc6ca6e57f3ec1927d15b3b0a4840e3b3eb7c84d385d0639390425bcc4f5be.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ac7f00cc3e1c52a47a4ec9307a7482f9ea67649369b664da1fa0bb163803215b.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f9cb9fd3ff87095f6f7f6f029780f1780374bad7b77168621c8027ad8f467db9.jpg

  76. A squeaky Bogey Five!

    Wordle 980 5/6
    ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
    🟨⬜⬜🟩⬜
    ⬜🟨🟨🟩⬜
    ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Par four, though I was beginning to think it was one of those with multiple possibilities.

      Wordle 980 4/6

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

      1. A lucky guess gave me a par as well.

        Wordle 980 4/6

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

    2. I woz robbed.

      Wordle 980 5/6

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

      1. Metoo.
        Wordle 980 5/6

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

  77. Sunak taking Khan’s side over Anderson’s should, with a bit of luck, kill off the Conservative Party for good.

    If, as it appears, the Conservatives are incapable of seeing the threat of Islamism and punish those who can it then the Conservative Party should not win a single seat at the next general election.

    Sunak has surrender in his blood and in his genes. Look how he caved in to the EU over the Great Windsor Betrayal of Northern Ireland remaining an integral part of the UK now he is all agog to cave in to Islam.

    1. They want Starmer to win the next election, because he will implement the authoritarian laws that the Cons don’t want to (but can’t find it in themselves to oppose).

      1. I want the Conservative Party wiped off the face of British politics.

        They have made dangerous enemies of their greatest supporters and they deserve to be turned on and slain!

        1. “If you can meet with Politics and Religion,
          And treat those two impostors just the same …”

    2. Sunack’s response is confirmation that globalist ideology trumps all, including ancient religious doubts and concerns. I wonder what Khan’s co-religionists will think of him when they find out what he has in store for them should his C40 cities plans come to fruition.

  78. Trudeau is in “change the conversation” mode after more details about the 60 million given to contractors for a $80 000 app.

    So far this week he has given away 2 billion for housing schemes, 500 million for a new pharmacare scheme, 3 billion to Ukraine and in his spare time has insulted everyone in Alberta. Not bad for a weeks work but the trouble is that the focus has now switched to the abysmal lack of defense ability on our northern border.

    He is in Ukraine today for his latest photo op. I don’t suppose anyone has connections with the Russians do they?

  79. If Andrew Bridgen hadn’t quite burnt his bridges with the Tory party this interview with Jim Ferguson (about 45 minutes) will have demolished them. No punches pulled.

    I see that there are some comments below re Sunak: Bridgen wades into Sunak. A number of revelations; one concerning the Intelligence Services and what they knew, and when, could finish a number of careers.

    An excellent interview.

    https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1761393940874293335

  84. ‘Night All

    “……This is very urgent business ladies and gentlemen, I beseech
    you. Resist it while you still can and before the right to complain has
    been taken away from you, which will be the next thing. You will be told
    you can’t complain because you’re ‘Islamophobic’. The term has already
    been introduced into the culture as if it was an accusation of race
    hatred, for example, or bigotry, whereas it’s only an objection to the
    preaching of a very extreme and absolutist religion. Watch out for these
    symptoms. They’re the symptoms of surrender, very often ecumenically
    offered by men of god in other robes, Christian and Jewish and smarmy
    ecumenical. These are the ones who will open the gates for the
    barbarians. The barbarians never take a city until someone holds the gates open for them. And it’s your own preachers who will do it for you, your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you. Resist, resist it while you can.”

    – Christopher Hitchins (2009)
    Says it all really………..

    1. I am a woman , and the thought of Islam or any other controlling cruel religion fills me with nightmares and images ..

      I was a young English child living with my parents in Islamic countries and I saw things a child should never see .

      Beatings , amputated limbs , scarring , riots , our junior school bus was protected by armed guards , noise from minarets , flies , putrid water , diseased people , leprosy , the whole lot .. and overwhelming poverty amongst those who worshipped Islam .

      We will be reduced in status if we don’t stand up to their nonsense here in the UK .. and see how idle the Emirs in the Gulf states survive .. on slavedom yes the imported people who do not worship Islam ..

      Sunak knows a lot more than we do and with all these blighters being imported across the channel to Dover for so called labour market , they are like parasites feeding off our own culture and what our hard working ancestors created.

      1. May I…..Our Self-sacrificing and hard working ancestors TB 🤗
        Oh how I hate our politicians.
        Our bloody political classes should be all lined up and shot no mercy.

    2. Too late, Christopher. The gates have been held wide for too long and the enemy is not only within, it is in positions of power.

  85. ANDERSON, Lee B
    6:01 PM (12 minutes ago)
    to me

    Thank you for emailing Lee Anderson – Member of Parliament for Ashfield.

    ​This is an automatic response to confirm that I have received your email. You should not take this as a response to the content of your correspondence.​

  86. That’s me for today. I DO hope to feel brighter tomorrow. The better side won. Can’t remember a match where one side knocked the ball on so MANY times.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain – prolly.

    2. How is this being allowed to happen? Our so-called Police should be clearing them off the road and charging them all with obstruction. I trust the MPs will kick up an enormous fuss on Monday.

  89. Well the true meaning of diversity at Murrayfield tonight. ‘Calcutta’ Cup. Scotland and South Africa (Afrikaans) Welsh assistance Scotland 30 England 21.

    2. It has always meant more to them for some reason
      Not sure what happened to the England squad, must be a lot of injuries, or something

        1. I never saw much of the game, England started quite well, then baby grandson wanted to hear nursery rhymes on Alexa
          That was much more fun

  91. Evening, all. Been a lovely blue sky with scarcely a cloud today – no wonder there was a frost last night.

    As for the deluded headline letter writer – words fail me. Ukraine is as corrupt as they come and hardly a democracy. Anyway, shouldn’t we put our own undemocratic house in order first?

    1. Heyup!
      Yes, a beautiful afternoon after the freezing fog departed.
      Got some pottering about gone up the “garden”, largely sorting some copper pipes and wire for the scrapman, but when the sun dipped behind a cloudbank at about half past 4, the temperature dropped rapidly.

      1. It was sunny almost all day (made a change from the recent deluges). I did have a bit of a potter in the garden (and went for two walks, one with Kadi and one where I left him alone in the house to see how he coped), but Saturday is racing day so not much time outdoors.

          1. He seemed to be okay (although mightily glad to see me – but then, he was like that even when Oscar kept him company). At least he hadn’t chewed or ripped anything. The acid test will be tomorrow when I have to leave him for an hour or two before the house/dog-sitter arrives.

    3. The political class think they’re virtuous. They honestly can’t see a problem with how they behave.

  92. I love walking on a beach after a good storm. This is Highcliffe back in February 2022. The building is Highcliffe Castle:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ec208cd82ef33323121b100a924c964723fe4402af952f927dfc9da31ad8e7b7.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/282d706e35a8dd46008b117f232fe17e5e73ff31be0431fd39a929b30cc897bc.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e64425ebb41be729f84e21d203587e77bbff300885530fde3d1fd865421a98d.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/85a72dc11f096720e1dd7a17678d1e111fb24c7ac09e215c690f7398b86550c3.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/34a152324f0a583e04b832da5a6621cb4427035915ff9acb3ccbbedb7555cb0e.jpg

    2. Lovely. Know it well. A cousin of mine lived in Highcliffe. From her back garden gate it was a short walk down to the beach. When she passed away, the house was sold as soon as it was put on the market.

    3. The 2nd piccy shows what I thought was a seal (not a navy one), but then turned out to be a surfer (perhaps?).

      1. There was surfers there that day making the most of it. There’s usually not much surf in the Solent.

        1. I remember fossilling above the beach there. Some cracking shark teeth and I seem to remember a beautiful gastropod that was beautifully spined and curly. Too delicate, unfortunately, to still be with me.

  94. Indeed.
    Read all the Biggles books when I was nobbut a lad. He did seem to do an indecent amount of ejaculating in company, as I recall.

  96. Well, chums, I’m off to bed now so I’ll wish you a Good Night”, restful sleep, and hope to see you all tomorrow.

  97. Sadiq Khan shared a platform with five Islamic extremists at a political meeting where women were told to use a separate entrance, the Evening Standard can reveal.

    Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London took part with an activist who has threatened “fire throughout the world”, a supporter of terror group Hamas, a preacher who backs an Islamic state and a Muslim leader accused of advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it stopped arms being smuggled into Gaza.

    Invitations said “all welcome” but made clear that women would be segregated at the door, stating: “Ladies’ entrance on Lessingham Avenue next to the snooker club.”

    Also on the platform was a controversial Surrey vicar and conspiracy theorist who has claimed Israel could have been responsible for the terrorist attack on New York’s Twin Towers.

    The three-hour conference, headlined “Palestine — the suffering still goes on”, took place on September 19, 2004 at Tooting Islamic Centre.

    It was organised by a pro-Palestinian group called Friends of Al-Aqsa, which made headlines this January when its bank account was closed without explanation by the Co-op Bank.

    The disclosure comes at a critical time for Mr Khan’s mayoral ambitions, with his campaign dogged by questions about his past willingness to share platforms with radical figures.

    Speakers on the bill included Daud Abdullah, who led a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2005 when he was deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain.

    In 2009 Dr Abdullah signed the Istanbul Declaration — a document that was widely interpreted as calling for violence against Israel and condoning attacks on British forces.

    efending himself in a letter to the Guardian, Dr Abdullah said: “I do not advocate attacks on any religious community, including Jewish communities, and I do not advocate attacks on British military forces.”

    Read more Sadiq: I will keep tax as low as I can but I can’t promise freeze
    Another speaker was Ibrahim Hewitt, who wrote a notorious pamphlet that branded homosexuality a “great sin” and suggested adulterers should be “stoned to death”.

    Mr Hewitt spoke as chair of Interpal, a charity that says it provides humanitarian and emergency aid to people in the Middle East. However, in 2003 Interpal was designated as a “global terrorist” organisation by the US Treasury which claimed it was “utilised to hide the flow of money to Hamas”.

    The designation remains in force in the US, although Interpal and Mr Hewitt strongly deny the allegations. Dr Azzam Tamimi, another speaker, has said he wants Israel destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state.

    n 2006 he was among speakers who used blood-curdling language at a protest in London against the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Dr Tamimi told Sky News: “Fire will be throughout the world if they don’t stop.”

    Next on the bill was radical Tooting imam Suliman Gani, who has called women “subservient” to men and has condemned gay people.

    Mr Khan told the Evening Standard debate last night that he “fell out” with Mr Gani, who recently posted selfies with Tories including mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith, minister Jane Ellison and MP Tania Mathias.

    Mr Khan has said it is only natural that he engaged regularly with an imam in his constituency.

    After him was Ismail Adam Patel, the founder of event organiser Friends of Al-Aqsa, a group that has published work by Paul Eisen, whom the Guardian has called a Holocaust denier.

    Mr Patel was a leading supporter of controversial “blood libel” cleric Raed Salah, who won an appeal against being deported from Britain in 2012, according to the Jewish Chronicle, and has said that “Hamas is no terrorist organisation”.

    Also on the bill was the Rev Stephen Sizer, a Church of England vicar who was banned from using social media by his bishop last year after he posted a link to an internet article blaming Israel for the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001. He later apologised.

    The final speaker was not an extremist but the respected Sir Iqbal Sacranie, knighted in 2005 while serving as secretary general of the MCB.

    Paul Scully, Tory MP for Sutton & Cheam, said: “Once again Sadiq Khan’s judgment is being found utterly lacking. How can he possibly hope to represent all Londoners if he took part in a political meeting where women were sent around to a back entrance?”

    A spokesperson for Mr Khan said: “Sadiq would always prefer men and women not to be separated at events he attends, but he respects the freedom of Londoners’ faiths. Politicians from all parties attend events at temples, synagogues, gurdwaras and mosques where men and women sit separately.

    “Sadiq attended events like this to speak about the human rights of Palestinians in his capacity as a human rights lawyer, a campaigner for mainstream civil liberty organisations and as a candidate and eventually MP. It was his job to speak out about human rights.”

    Mr Khan was chair of Liberty at the time and a human rights lawyer.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/mayor/sadiq-khan-shared-platform-with-five-islamic-extremists-a3231436.html

    1. When we lived in Bow, the “Indo-PAK social club” on Mile End Road had separate entrances for men and women. So, not new in Londonistan.

    2. Paul Scully: Khan doesn’t want to represent all Londoners. Wake up and smell the pong – only Islamic Lodnoders.

    3. Does Paul Scully not know that women in islam are goods and chattels, their word is worth only a quarter of a man’s and they need to be subjugated (and can be beaten by sticks no thicker than their owner’s thumb)?

    4. It’s time this repulsive POS was removed from office for good.
      He’s done more underlying damage to London than hitler.

    5. “Freedom of Londoners’ faiths” – that doesn’t include white English Londoners, or any Londoners who aren’t moose limbs.

  98. I miss Oscar. I’m not sure about Kadi. He no longer dashes over to see if Oscar is still there in the morning, so presumably he has clocked that he’s gone. He keeps me to time giving the second meal, which I would rather have left out now Oscar no longer had to have his medication, but Kadi is not having that at any price! Apart from that, routine carries on more or less as normal. I think Kadi misses the cheese he used to get three times a day when I gave Oscar his painkillers and the Whirler reward that followed Oscar having drops in his eyes (also three times a day). On the plus side, he doesn’t have to share cuddles any more.

    1. You were damned good for that dog, Conners. It just shows what a big and compassionate heart you have. It’s good that there are folk like you in this world, it makes living here bearable.
      I dread anything happening to either of our two cats – they grew up together, and do everything together. If one were missing… Also, we love their furry personalities, they are quite different. We’d be in bits, too.

  100. Something to lighten the mood.

    Jeremy Clarkson targeted by hunt saboteurs over badger sett claims

    Animal rights activists claimed an illegal hunt took place on TV presenter’s 1,000 acre Cotswolds farm

    Steve Bird • 24 February 2024 • 5:08pm

    Jeremy Clarkson’s farm has been targeted by hunt saboteurs who reported him to police over claims badger setts on his land had been illegally blocked.

    The 63-year-old television presenter was visited by police this month after animal rights activists claimed an illegal hunt took place on his 1,000 acre Cotswolds property. The Telegraph can reveal that five separate videos were recorded which appear to show a badger sett blocked off with rocks in an apparent attempt to prevent a fox going to ground in the animals’ dens.

    Earlier this month the outspoken Top Gear and Grand Tour presenter wrote in his column in The Sun how “police came round” after officers received reports of “filling in badger setts”. He added: “Mercifully, however, I had the perfect excuse. I’ve shot all the badgers on the farm so why would I want to fill in their setts? And yes, before you ask, it was all legal.”

    Now, hunt saboteurs have admitted monitoring a hunt on his land in January and last week because the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? presenter has granted the hunt access to his land. The Cotswold Hunt Sabs wrote on their Facebook that Clarkson was a “pro-hunt landowner” who had a “strong hatred for badgers” so they were not “surprised” setts had been blocked. They added: “It’s a bit sad how desperate he is to be liked by his farmer buddies really.”

    Lynn Sawyer, of the Three Counties Hunt Saboteurs which was “hunt sabbing” at Clarkson’s farm, said the television presenter was targeted because he allows hunting on his farmland.

    Ms Sawyer, 56, claimed: “I found the setts handblocked. He may not have known it had been done. We are not picking on Clarkson. Instead we are trying to protect badgers from being persecuted and killed. We do not discriminate.”

    She filmed a number of setts where Cotswold stone appears to have been “rammed” into the entrance to the badgers’ dens. Ms Sawyer said hunt hounds may chase foxes into badger setts before a single hound is sent in to flush the animal out. By blocking off the sett, the fox cannot find a safe refuge, but it can also trap the badger.

    A Thames Valley Police spokesman said: “We received a report of illegal hunting and the blocking of badger setts on land near Chadlington at around 7.25pm on 25 January.”

    There is no suggestion that Clarkson himself filled in the setts.

    Clarkson bought the farm in 2008 where he films the Clarkson’s Farm television series which catalogues his trials and tribulations as a farmer. He renamed it Diddly Squat Farm due to its lack of productivity.

    Clarkson wrote that he would have been regarded a “social outcast” if word had got out that he had been filling in badger setts. He continued: “That is a serious criminal offence which can result in big fines and lengthy prison sentences.”

    Both badgers and their setts are protected under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 as amended by the Wildlife and Natural Environment Scotland Act 2011.

    Clarkson has previously estimated that there are 100 badgers on his property. One corpse he had tested on his television show was found to have tuberculosis. The Badger Trust accused his show of being “part of a long tradition of demonising badgers”.

    Three years ago, he complained that a fox had killed 34 of his hens, before saying he thought it would be “fun” to “invite the hunt and the antis and them have a massive battle” on his land. Although he has previously watched the Boxing Day hunt on his land, he has described huntsmen as “pompous”.

    He once said: “I’ve never really cared about the plight of what is basically an orange dog, but then I’ve never cared much for the idiots who charge around the countryside on horses. And I don’t think I’m alone on this. Most people are too busy to give a stuff, either way.”

    Clarkson was last week described as a “buffoon” by Chris Packham, the BBC presenter and environmentalist, after the farmer said he bought a “gas-guzzling” Range Rover “just to spite him”.

    Clarkson’s Farm is set to return to Prime Video in May.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/24/jeremy-clarkson-targeted-hunt-saboteurs-badger-sett-claims

    Packham, Moonbat and Clarkson in the same room might be worth watching…

    1. Asked the Warqueen. First, it’s a rag hunt. Second, the sett holes are covered to stop dogs diving into them and killing badgers – because hunting foxes and killing badgers is illegal.

      These Lefties want these laws and are surprised when they’re enacted. Cripes they’re thick.

      Worse, most Lefties live in cities and are, bluntly, thick. These are the same people who frantically demand vegebalist food yet have no idea how it is grown or usually where. If vegetablists could only eat pesticicide free, machine free food they’d die out.

      1. By a “rag hunt” I presume she means a trail hunt (where the hounds follow a scent that has been prelaid by dragging a nice stinky cloth along the trail).

    2. Had badgers on Firstborns farm. Bloody PITA, so they are, but draw the line at shooting them just for that. Moved them on, though: blocked their sett, and they dug themselves out through the roof and buggered off – like hairy sandbags with short legs.

      1. Plenty of comments BTL that suggest it was sabs that blocked the sett in a crude attempt to stitch him up.

        Others:
        “I love the way Clarkson lives inside Packham’s head.”
        “I look forward to Mrs Sawyer and friends disrupting a hare coursing event run by travellers.”

        1. I must admit, my first thought was that it was the sabs did it, to get at Clarkson. SWMBO will back me up, as I said it to her.

      2. Plenty of comments BTL that suggest it was sabs that blocked the sett in a crude attempt to stitch him up.

        Others:
        “I love the way Clarkson lives inside Packham’s head.”
        “I look forward to Mrs Sawyer and friends disrupting a hare coursing event run by travellers.”

  101. I am torn about getting another dog. If Kadi is happy, I’ll leave it until one finds me. I don’t want to be in the situation where I lose Kadi and there is no continuity. As he’s only 8 and a crossbreed (hopefully with hybrid vigour) I’d like to think there’s no rush.

      1. At my age? It would, in all probability, out live me. I dismissed getting a pup nearly three years ago and I’m no younger now.

  102. So from what Liz Truss is saying is that when she became Prime Minister she suddenly realised that she had no power, nor did her Chancellor.
    What I don’t understand was how come that she was so naive?

    1. The entire edifice of government is pointless. Comically, this is why we voted to leave the EU. To give them the power to make the changes we wanted.

  103. join us in becoming the Revolutionary Party. I confess I need help to ensure tat we do the right things in the right order.

    But for now Goodnight and God bless, Gentlefolk.

      1. No, Maggie, I’ve given up, as 95% of women seem to be on the take.

        But thanks for caring to ask.

    2. Telegraph comments are full of sound and fury over voting Reform. In reality what will happen is some folk will sensibly vote Reform but that won’t be enough to stop Tories getting into second place. In the majority it’ll be Labour significant majority, Tory, Reform/Liberal with a collapsing voter turnout – especially amongst Conservatives.

      Labour will form a party and continue the Tory agenda of high tax, big state declinism. The debt will continue to go up and eventually they’ll become so desperate for cash they’ll do something truly stupid that’ll wake up the dopey morons who vote because of someone’s hair dye or something. However chances are, like the Left in americaland they’ll panic and try to stop parliament having a say and soon after the public. Unemployment will soar, taxes will rocket – except in unionised public sector and that’ll be it for the nation.

      Reform winning votes won’t bother the Tories this time around and I am increasingly thinking Labour’s catastrophic stupidity will create an extreme backlash by a people made desperate.

      1. Soft times make for soft people.
        Soft people make for hard times.
        Hard times make for hard people.
        Hard people make for soft times
        Remember 1979, and the new Thatcher government, after the shite in the 1970s and late 1960s?

        1. Frustratingly I was born then, but I remember my Dad telling me he was working by candle light. I just thought he was really old.

          1. I remember the power cuts (candle-wax spilled in the carpet); food supplies down, eff-all gas & coal, railways always stopped… and endless union leaders on the news spouting crap whilst the Lab governmenr wrung its hands.
            Parents missed most of it, being in Nigeria. Life in the UK was shyte back then.

        2. Impressed that it was a woman who led that arse-kicking government. Where is she now that she’s needed?

    4. Nice idea, Tom, but you’re missing a vital point.

      Pretty much every political party has a handle which is diametrically opposed to its true position.

      Conservatives haven’t ‘conserved’ anything in 14 years of power.
      Labour despises the working man/person/whatever.
      Lib Dems are illiberal and undemocratic.

      On which basis, a Revolutionary Party woud shrug its shoulders and not change anything.

  104. Islam is ideal for inadequates; it tells the men they are the master race and everyone else is subordinate to them. Women are goods and chattels and kuffars are “lower than cattle”. As an ideology it has much in common with Nastyism.

  105. The entire gender or just Scully? If he’s a politician then that’s a given. They are the only job where knowing nothing is the requirement.

  107. I remember the three-day week in the ’70s when shops were shut because there was no electricity.

  108. Alas, they are fewer and farther apart. Even here in the sticks we have been invaded. It won’t be long before we’re outbred.

  111. When I took part in the Countryside Alliance rallies in London (hundreds of thousands strong and virtually no coverage by al Bebeera – what a surprise) there were only a handful of antis cringing behind the barricades looking pasty and wan.

  112. If I have to do long distances for that, I tend to take the motorhome and stay overnight. I no longer like driving long distances without an overnight stay to rest up.

    1. 200 mile round trip to Ayr today. On Tuesday, I have a late morning meeting in York, then an evening one in Dumfries, then home which will be about 330 miles.

  113. Extremists, every one (who took all their litter home). Fortunately, I was in Mongolia and couldn’t attend when the police bashed people’s heads in.

    1. I think for every immigrant brought in we should deport them and replace them with a dog. A proper dog, not some daft smaller than a cat thing. Dogs are much nicer and valuable than people.

  118. 383837+ up ticks,

    Bodyguards for MPs as extremism threat rises
    Israel-Hamas conflict is ‘generational moment’ of radicalisation, police chief warns as Sunak says protests being ‘hijacked’

    Could this be against the very foreign criminal elements, these political overseers and followers have introduced to these Isles, if so will these politico’s assure their regular voting minions of their personal safety by supplying protection for each.

    Also,

    While they surround themselves with foreign human Armour will they allow the indigenou
    s innocents of these Isles to make their own arrangements regarding guns etc,etc.

    1. Who is footing the bill for MP protection? Sunak can afford his own for starters given his ill gotten gains from Pharma investments made pre-Covid by lucky chance (sarc.)

    1. Yes. She was at the solicitor sorting out her husbands stuff (he died in October) and she had an aneurysm, and died. It was the day after I last spoke to her and I had no idea until today. They had no children and were 88 and 89. I’m devastated.

    2. I like Lee Anderson. Whether he remains in the “Conservative” Party is of no interest whatsoever. A year from now, that party will have ceased to exist. Hopefully.

        1. If Richard cares to hover his mouse over my avatar, my email address is there. My old address died, since no-one at Plusnet understood the first thing about hosting domains…

      3. Yeah, but then we’ll have a Labour government which will only speed up the destruction. Devil and Deep blue sea…

        1. Sadly, given the state of the Tories (INO) that is a purgatory we are compelled to go through.
          I just hope the country survives.

          1. Based on what Starmer has already said he’ll do, it won’t. He is planning to introduce digital ids.

  122. ‘Evening, all. Just back from Gunwharf Quays. Carole, my cousin , who lived most of her life on the South coast around Pompey and So’ton, moved to the IOW a few years ago. As did 2/3 of her family. Eldest is married with a family and living in Gloucester. The rest are now on the island. Youngest son married Sara there, 4½ years ago. Today was the first time I’ve seen any of them, since the wedding. They seem to have acquired a small human, name of Ava, in the meantime.

    Obviously, lockdown (expletives deleted) had an effect, but it’s weird to meet a new, mostly fully-formed relation. A very bright kid, she had a glowing report from the nursery. I’m returning to the island in June, by which time I expect Ava to be running the Council… 😊

    4. What a lovely experience for you Geoff, it is good to mingle with family old and new.

      The IOW is so near and yet so far , riddled with all sorts of travel problems .

      I haven’t been across since school days and Moh always seems reluctant to drive anywhere except to the golf club .

      1. You should take your car and drive to where you want to go, Maggie. You’d no doubt find he was willing to go with you (if you wanted him) after all, if you stood up to him.

      2. I’m back there in June, with all my remaining maternal cousins and families. We did this annually, pre-Covid. Sadly, we’ve lost one cousin to old age and his wife to dementia.

        Next cousin meet was scheduled for Stratford on Avon, before the world lost its marbles. I understand the attraction – the IoW is still in the 1950s. What’s not to like?

          1. Thanks, Phil. I’ll bear that in mind. June trip is with various cousins and families. Staying at the Luccombe Hall Hotel. It’s only five miles or so from the Yarbridge Inn, so that might be useful information…

      3. It’s a form of covert control, Belle. Surprise him and get yourself off there, you go where you want to go.

  123. Night all, …. time I fixed the new home made nesting box to its position, a job for the morning.
    I think I’ll include a, TO LET sign.
    The little creatures seem to be happily fliting around already.
    Oh and what’s all this about pensioners having their bank accounts examined in respect of checking for fraud?
    And probably by the same sly bastards who got rid of Elizabeth Filkin. Because she was on the
    ball at investigating their fake expenses claims.

  125. Britain’s America problem

    William Atkinson, CapX
    After spending a week cosying up to the American right at CPAC, Liz Truss is the latest Brit to be hypnotised by Old Glory. But this is nothing new. For years, we have allowed the US to encroach on our political, economic and cultural identity. We can’t forget that we are a very different country with a different set of problems. Worth a read.

    https://capx.co/britain-needs-to-decolonise-itself-from-america/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=83375984&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9liYdfxK9MXSRz9lXVfp54unLi4heSBhaVm-82ayO7iOsPU00YlCMVu64L9abP6EiD1CrUUqfnaHJZxtnQ4O1swBc6Dg&utm_content=83375984&utm_source=hs_email

    1. Has the whiff of snottiness about it, does that article. As much as I’m tired of America’s cultural domination, and certain aspects of their politics, it’s worth remembering that the United States grew out of the minds of Britons. It’s our child, even if it has been a bit wayward over the years. We most definitely aren’t more European. Our Establishment is. They can’t stand us, and long for the day when they can emulate Napoleon’s laws. Everything by the state, for the state. No, thank you.
      I’d argue that it’s the author who is mistaken; his beliefs are more akin to the modern British establishment. The old Establishment that ran the Empire was far closer in mindset to the conservatives across the pond than Mr. Atkinson is willing to conceive.

      1. I agree that in some ways we aren’t “more European”, if European means like the current EU dominated Europe.However, the notion of European goes back many centuries, before what became the US was even discovered. In many respects our and European respective histories and philosophies have been intertwined during these years, even if our legal systems were (and should still be) different.

        The US initially grew out of the minds of, largely, those Puritans who left England after the Restoration. As such it is not “our” child, except for the fact that the puritans were English, so the Judeo-Christian precepts underpinning our country formed a great part in underpinning the beliefs of the early settlers. However, there was also far more influence from settler s from other countries into the mindset of what became the American population. The history of the US is also completely different from ours, and with it the evolved moral and underlying values of the population and its politicians.

        The US has shown that it is more than “wayward”: I agree with the author’s comment that “Deluding ourselves into thinking our relationship special has allowed us to ignore our growing humiliation.” Politically we have been, and are used. There is no genuine reciprocity, and hasn’t been for over a century. The same is not true of the lovely people, with whom many of us share a great affinity

        Finally, while it is clear that the tradition European establishments’ notion of Empire and sense of responsibility towards the people of the countries concerned was not the same as the British, whether in terms of actions or politics, I cannot agree that the British Establishment that ran the Empire was close to anyone (including the conservatives) across the pond. US interference in the world has been conducted with a different aim and mindset than that of Britain in the days of the Empire, and it shows.

        1. Thanks for the generous reply. If we go back far enough, we can argue that America is European in nature (as are we), but I think that’s a bit of a stretch 400 years hence. The population at the time of Revolution was almost wholly British in ancestry (excepting natives and slaves). It was they that were the drivers of events there. Or at least a small number of them; the revolution wasn’t nearly as popular as many American revisionists like to make out. Germans made up the largest other group, but still a small minority. The Revolution was essentially a second civil war, across the pond. Its ideas were very much British in nature, a continuation of the arguments that were raging in England especially at that time. Having said that, I disagree with the portrayal of the ‘Founding Fathers’ as idealistic patriots; a number of them had far less lofty intentions when they stoked revolution.

          But to come back to the article, the reason I disagree with it is that it takes the American Establishment as America. Whereas I had the people in mind when I criticised it. Democrats and Republicans both are traitors to the people there and no more representative of the population than are Labour and Conservatives here. When I said that American conservatives (small c) are much closer to British conservatives than the author would like to admit, I was referring to the peoples and not the parties of our countries. Excluding the small number of gesticulating nutters on the right of politics over there, the average American conservative really isn’t that far departed from our own. I don’t believe that they ever have been.

          It’s the country that is the problem, rather than the people, for the most part. Their Establishment is truly awful, just as ours is.

          1. Having each elaborated our points of view, I think that we are far more in agreement. In fact, very shortly after positing I had added the following sentence at the end of the third paragraph: “The same is not true of the lovely people, with whom many of us share a great affinity”.

            Thank you too, for the pleasant conversation.

  126. Something totally different .. skip this or laugh !

    My first orgy at 48: ten to a bed and queues for the dominatrix
    We headed back downstairs, where the crowd seemed liberated and yet entirely mundane; they could have been talking about mortgages or school

    As the new editor of the Erotic Review, which I’m relaunching as a print magazine in March after 14 years off the presses, I am invited to all manner of book launches and gallery openings. I say yes to only a handful, but the invitation to a Killing Kittens party was too intriguing to refuse.

    This hedonistic events organisation, which started up in 2005, hosts as many as three gatherings a month in the UK alone and we were going to the “Country Mansion” — a masked black-tie sex party for more than 800 people.

    As a divorced mother of three teenagers in her late-forties, I’m open and curious about myself beyond the parameters of a 16-year heterosexual, monogamous marriage. People have been going to orgies for millennia, so perhaps I might love it. Perhaps anonymous nights like this might suit me and provide an answer to balancing single parenthood with pleasure.

    Yet as the taxi pulled up outside the stately pile near Wokingham, Berkshire, I realised I was nervous about what might happen, whether I’d hate it — or never want to leave.

    Dear readers .. the rest of the article is rather risque!!!! What can THE TIMES be thinking of?

    andy pontin
    3 HOURS AGO

    Please, no more sex party articles. Someone at the Time is pushing this niche lifestyle and there appears to be a very unhealthy interest amongst commissioning editors to keep these stories flowing.

    Needless to say, all the journalists claim they got up to nothing. If this behaviour is so normal and enjoyable, why not send the a named journalist who is happy to write about scrabbling around on the red sheets with a myriad of partners?

    If the Times can’t find a journalist to enjoy the full experience please stop bothering us with stories from sad, unfulfilled individuals who have never grown out if their teenage sex fantasies. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/my-first-orgy-sex-party-48-the-erotic-review-3f7vsd2jb

    1. It seems part of the determined efforts to break up what used to be the nuclear family, mum, dad and children. To detach people from one another, isolate us, then we’re more easily controlled. No like minded gatherings. Just what TPTB want.

        1. You are not alone, Maggie!! Gosh, I had Pampas Grass growing in my front garden, nobody told me what it meant!!

    3. I think I’ll skip that, thank you! Another reason not to pay for a newspaper subscription these days. I prefer to hand over my hard-earned to podcasters or independent news sites that I can rely on not to let the side down. We don’t need to know about the sordid goings on of a tiny minority, especially when the articles are framed to make us believe that everyone’s up to it and we’re the outsiders for not attending “a masked black-tie sex party for more than 800 people” – I didn’t bother to read further.
      Sorry for the rant, but this kind of crude (in more senses than one) propaganda gets right up my nose!

  127. Goodnight, all. The Rayburn is stoked and I’m off to my bed. I have an early start tomorrow as usual on a Sunday.

  129. Morning to everyone still awake. I’ve just got back from “lost in disco” – great fun even to a non-die hard discoteer like me.

  130. Morning all – having breakfast at the hotel in the airport complex. The shuttle service only takes a couple of minutes to the door.

    1. Morning Ellie it seems that you had a wonderful time. There have been a few programs on TV recently about the Kenyan Elephants 🐘. Lovely to watch although one had a terrible injury to his right leg and foot.
      Take care. 🙂

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