Saturday 25 February: Russia will have to be punished for its barbaric assault on Ukraine

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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468 thoughts on “Saturday 25 February: Russia will have to be punished for its barbaric assault on Ukraine”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s thoughts:

    Eight Thoughts To Ponder

    Number 8
    Life is sexually transmitted.

    Number 7
    Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

    Number 6
    Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see a gleam in his eyes, do some baking.

    Number 5
    Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years

    Number 4
    Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospitals, dying of nothing.

    Number 3
    All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

    Number 2
    In the 60’s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

    And Finally the Number 1 Thought
    Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers– what you do today, might burn your arse tomorrow.

    …and as someone recently said to me:
    “Don’t worry about old age–it doesn’t last that long.”

    1. Morning Tim. Good start to the day again.

      Our daughter came home from school one day, teenage, and told us that “Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease”. Priceless.

  3. I can’t remember what time I went to bed yesterday, ’twas early, and I think I missed most of Friday and didn’t get up until 03:30 this Saturday morning.

      1. I wish it were that easy, Minty, I’ve felt so tired since they took me of Warfarin and substituted Clopidogrel, to be taken in the morning rather than the Warfarin, which I took before bed.

        1. Regular drinking can affect the quality of your sleep making you feel tired and sluggish. This is because drinking disrupts your sleep cycle.

          Some people may find alcohol helps them get to sleep initially, but this is outweighed by the negative effect on sleep quality through the night.

          The alcohol in your system will mean you spend less time in the important Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep,2 with the end result that you wake up feeling less refreshed. Even just a couple of drinks will have an effect.

          https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts/health-effects-of-alcohol/effects-on-the-body/alcohol-and-sleep/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIi-LKmoyw_QIVBLDtCh1SgQD-EAAYASAAEgIqn_D_BwE

          1. Wise words, if they applied, Minty, I have severely limited my alcohol intake since I arrived here in Moffat.

  4. Good Morning all.

    I have been applying for a Grant of Probate to transfer the assets of my late wife. While using Excel to add up the numbers I typed in my own Date of Birth (8.1.1941), subtracted it from today’s date and it showed that next Monday 27th February I shall be exactly 30,000 days old. Makes ya think, don’t it.

    Meanwhile here are a few funnies that came in this morning from my sister-in-law in Canada: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8fa359b9287aaed414f58bc8275919109c2dcdecbdf66e65bf678bed68f7895f.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/462be299752f79441bc536dc22775e04515740df43de5f96de25f9b2007de657.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/773947e800f7b3b79cd307019b359d2e0119b16dc9dc2b5be8e3858256e348d1.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/750afacad449fa67edd1445706602c6b4a9122dbaf9eff9e6ada358eb466325d.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a7b55e8eb282f55dffa73b38added278ab985eecedf68fd284b0c0d1772db4ee.jpg

      3. Thanks for that. I can confirm that it is correct since I have long kept a running total of my age, in days, in my diary. Today I am 26,301days old.
        [I passed the 25,000 days landmark on 4th August 2019].

          1. I take it that there’s nothing more important happening in the world, right now, for you to be motivated to comment upon, Joey?

  5. SIR – I cannot agree with Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who warns against punishing Russia when the conflict in Ukraine ends.

    No, Russia will have to pay to restore Ukraine to how it was before the illegal invasion – otherwise there is no deterrent against a repeat, in Ukraine or elsewhere.

    John Hinchsliff
    Longridge, Lancashire

    Are we paying to restore Iraq, Libya or Syria?

    1. We are paying for millions of their displaced & unhappy citizens.

      Russia & Hungary are the ones who have given to help restore the Christian Churches in Syria (that we bombed & destroyed).

      Good morning Minty

  9. Rishi Sunak to secure new Brexit deal this weekend. 25 February 2023.

    Rishi Sunak is hoping to secure a Brexit deal this weekend after Downing Street claimed he had gained last-minute concessions from Brussels.

    No 10 said the Government had achieved a string of “positive breakthroughs” during intensive discussions over the past week to address problems faced by businesses as a result of the post-Brexit rules governing Northern Ireland.

    Problems. Problems. How to make a complete betrayal look like something else!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/24/rishi-sunak-secure-new-brexit-deal-weekend/

    3. King Charles might be in attendance to meet with Ursula von der Leyden at the highlight of the negotiations as they are finalised. Sky news has said he will not talk in the negotiations .
      If he is there it will be used by Sunak to pass the blame on to the King for weakening the UK with a faulty deal..

  10. ‘Morning All

    Saturday Medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f1f941bea5bbbf87b07559aa2e3e99f216bea898c66c946b701e034d4b2211ab.jpg

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    https://i.imgflip.com/7ccyj4.jpg

  11. 3712552+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    ,This war is truly concealing / deflecting an awful lot of home front devious undercurrent, and now selective blame.

    Saturday 25 February: Russia will have to be punished for its barbaric assault on Ukraine,

    Oh look over there / LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU.

    May one ask will this be before or after the killing / maiming spree past and current within the United Kingdom,overseen by the all party (coalition) political fraternity / pharmaceuticals.

    As in, is Mr Putin to blame for actions taken in the past by blair (not in the park toilet) and co in Iraq, these political finger pointing creatures are surely to be questioned and if found at fault incarcerated in regards to the defence of the BRITISH REALM.

  12. The decline of Western Christianity makes us vulnerable to dictators and dogmatists. 25 February 2023.

    For many years now, the Russian president has deployed his faith for political purposes, both domestic – he has the Russian Orthodox Church and its Patriarch, Kirill, firmly under his thumb – and foreign. Putin said, in 2013: “We see many Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilisation. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual.”

    He was at it again this week, in his big speech on the anniversary of his bungled invasion of Ukraine. The West’s attitude, he said, “is all about the destruction of the family, of cultural and national identity, perversion and abuse of children, including paedophilia, all of which are declared normal in their life … Millions of people in the West realise they are being led to a spiritual disaster. Frankly, the elite appear to have gone crazy…”

    All this of course is perfectly true! It is telling that no leader in the West could or would say these things.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/24/decline-western-christianity-makes-us-vulnerable-dictators-dogmatists/

  13. ‘Morning, Peeps. Dry with some sun – ideal for our planned trim of a large oak…hence short visit for now.

    Simone Segouin, French Resistance fighter celebrated as ‘The Girl Partisan of Chartres’ – obituary

    Robert Capa’s photographs for Life magazine of her in shorts, brandishing her machine gun, turned her into a symbol of female defiance

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    23 February 2023 • 2:56pm

    Simone Segouin, who has died aged 97, was a French Resistance fighter who was immortalised in photographs taken by Robert Capa and became a symbol of female defiance.

    She was born into a farming family on October 3 1925, in Thivars, near Chartres, a tomboyish only daughter with three brothers, and was largely brought up by her father, a decorated veteran of the First World War.

    When Germany invaded France in 1940 the 14-year-old Simone left school to work on the family farm, and in 1943 she joined the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP – “Free-shooters and Partisans”) – an alliance of militant communists and nationalists like Simone.

    She was given false identity papers as Nicole Minet from Dunkirk (where records had been destroyed in the bombing at the start of the war, making it difficult to check details on identity cards).

    On her first mission she stole a German military bicycle, which she re-sprayed as her “reconnaissance vehicle”, and was soon involved in delivering messages between FTP hide-outs.

    Then, after weapons training, she was taking part in combat missions, helping to derail a train and blow up bridges. Asked after the war whether she had ever killed someone, she recalled that on July 14 1944 she and two comrades had taken part in an ambush: “Two German soldiers went by on a bike, and the three of us fired at the same time, so I don’t know who exactly killed them.”

    tmg.video.placeholder.alt FiG2J1Dvi9Y
    In August 1944 she was involved in the liberation of her home village of Thivars where she was spotted by the Hollywood director George Stevens, then serving in a US Army film unit, after she helped to capture 25 German soldiers. His film footage released after the Liberation showed a defiant teenager, in blue shorts, a black-and-white top with a red sash and a khaki cap, toting her Schmeisser MP 40.

    She went on to help in the liberation of Chartres, and it was on August 25, during a visit to the city by the Free French leader General de Gaulle, that she was spotted eating a baguette, her machine gun by her side, by the American reporter Jack Belden and the photographer Robert Capa. They spoke to her as women who had taken up with German soldiers during the occupation were being dragged into the streets to have their hair forcibly shaved off.

    A month later, in September 1944, Capa’s photographs of “Nicole” in shorts and a beret, brandishing her machine gun, appeared in a Life magazine feature written by Belden under the headline “The Girl Partisan of Chartres”. The images were subsequently syndicated around the world.

    “I could find no trace of what is conventionally called toughness in Nicole,” Belden reported. “After routine farm life, she finds her present job thrilling and exhilarating. Now that the war is passing beyond her own home district she does not think of going back to the farm. She wants to go on with the Partisans and help free the rest of France.”

    Indeed by this time, Simone Seguin had joined de Gaulle as he headed towards Paris, where she took part in the battles for the city as the outnumbered German garrison fought a hopeless rearguard action.

    Meanwhile, she had fallen in love with Roland Boursier, a dashing FTP commander who had recruited her in 1943 to act as his runner. “I studied her for a while to see what were her feelings,” Boursier said later. “When I discovered she had French feelings I told her little by little about the work I was doing. I asked her if she would be scared to do such work. She said, ‘No. It would please me to kill Boche.’ ”

    They had a long relationship which produced six children, though they never married.

    In 1946 Simone Segouin was promoted to second lieutenant and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. She went on to become a paediatric nurse in Chartres and later settled in nearby Courville-sur-Eure, where a street is named after her.

    The photographs taken by Robert Capa helped to publicise the role of female resistance fighters and change attitudes in France. In 1945 French women voted for the first time in local and national elections.

    In 2021, Simone Segouin was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.

    “I was fighting for the resistance, that’s all,” she explained. “If I had to start over, I would, because I have no regrets. The Germans were our enemies, we were French.”

    Simone Segouin, born October 3 1925, died February 21 2023

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/be09f12e882c7e70f4ebcf00a44af7320578092d9f4908e49f8adf3117034a63.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b83d19b878ac8b19ff2469911428a7a9feaef11e2081e24dde9e88017903bf07.jpg
    Simone Segouin photographed by Robert Capa during the battles for Paris, August 1944
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9990a8b46715ddb2b518db8cf5b3ca8cbbeeb0fbdffe2be7efc0e18027d58246.jpg

    * * *

    An excellent tribute from from a BTLer:

    Ian Cowie
    23 HRS AGO
    What a wonderful and courageous lady. She was fighting for her country’s freedom at an age when her modern counterparts are vexing about personal pronouns and their safe spaces. The woke may seek to rewrite history but that will never change the invaluable part that ladies like Simone played in the allied victory.

  14. Prince Harry plans ‘intimate’ chat with Spare readers

    Of course it will be “an intimate chat” there is only one reader

    (and Ginge ‘knows’ her intimately !)

    1. Yo, Mr Effort.

      If only that were the case. Apparently there are millions of quarter-wits out there who queued up to buy that colossal waste of ink and paper.

      Stupidity is an unquantifiable resource. There is no SI unit or standard to define it.

    1. The First No Oil XRists did say
      Was to certain poor sods going to work that day,
      In roads where they lay bleating like sheep
      That cold winter’s night that was so deep
      “No Oil No Oil No Oil No Oil”
      Send them to a ‘ucking Jail
      They look-ed up and saw a fire
      Shining in the West beyond them far
      And so the earth it was set alight
      And so it continued both day and night
      “No Oil No Oil No Oil No Oil”

  17. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b1d14c37afb6dfbb345f8d853a60b473becf5d0ea4cdccbd14332425a0cc5666.png A massive specialist prison to house hundreds of gangsters and terrorists*?

    Accuse me of having too much common sense many draconian tendencies, but wouldn’t it be much cheaper — not to mention, safer for the public — to shoot this scum instead?

    [*Gangsters and terrorists, by definition, are dedicated to achieving their nefarious ends by not permitting their victims a fair trial.]

    1. …and they are rapidly – and rabidly – deploying through Mexico and over the border into the USA with Biden’s blessing.

      Somewhat similar if you substitute jihadis and France for Mexico and UK for USA and Sunak for Biden.

      The WEF, Gates et al, will have lots to answer for, when they are finally brought to book.

    2. I’ve always found it ironic that those who break the law, thus becoming outlaws, always insist that they want the protection of the law when they are arrested and sent for trial.

  19. SIR – Last year my daughter moved to a house fitted with an air source heat pump (Letters, February 24).

    It was recently serviced at a cost of £400. Shortly after, it developed a fault. Eventually someone from the company that carried out the service attended and rapidly replaced a small electrical component. The call-out charge was £200 and the price of the component was listed as £95. This was duly paid. That evening my son-in-law found the packaging for the component, which had been carelessly dropped. It bore a price tag of £17.50.

    The fault persists.

    Ian Parry
    Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

    This is rip-off Britain, Mr Parry. Did your son expect anything better? Besides, heat pumps are unaffordable for most to buy and service. When will people realise this?

    1. Perhaps people should consider longer why some houses are actually up for sale. Ask more questions.
      And Mr Parry your your daughter will also be continually topping up her hot water by use of the emersion heater.

    1. 371552+ up ticks,

      Morning Bob

      What have our politicians done to the Uk?

      That should be asked of their current supporters.

      1. What have our politicians done to the UK ?
        Effed up every single thing they come into contact with. But it’s everyone else’s fault of course.

        1. 371552+ up ticks,

          Morning RE,
          They are successfully working to their own agenda, plain to see, that agenda is supported by the peoples.

          “Our MP” wrong, it is not a loving pet, it’s our area MP, in by elections is good for the area, short term thinking,long term damage.

          The electorate majority really are to blame via the polling booth for their continuing repeat performance.

    3. …and nobody called the police? Mind there seemed to be only one privileged whitey, trying to uphold law and order.

      2. Quite frankly, I would take the view that it is rude to interfere with hallowed customs.
        I’m white, so it would be judgemental of me to have an opinion on the matter.

    4. Each generation becomes exponentially more stupid than the one before; and, as a direct consequence, an increasingly stupid public votes into power an increasingly stupid set of politicians.

    6. Blair and Andrew Neather wanted to flood the country with foreigners to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’.

      This is the end result: savages. Those men should be burned alive.

  21. SIR – Thank heavens Puffin has partially backed down over the censorship of Roald Dahl’s books, and will continue to publish the original versions.

    Now, however, we will have to witness schools trying to decide whether to use the snowflake editions or the full-fat ones. Couldn’t Puffin just have admitted that it was wrong?

    David Watt
    Alton, Hampshire

    I think we know which versions most schools will use – if they don’t drop the books altogether. So Puffin’s wokery will prevail after all.

  22. Morning all 😉 😊
    Forecast seems to have changed overnight, as it so often does, from bright and sunny to 70% chance of rain.
    I’ll check later to find if the seaweed nailed to the shed is damp.
    And comment on today’s headline from the telegraph……really ?

    1. But Zelensky’s assault on the 14,000 Russian speakers will be ignored?

      You betcha, unless Russia wins – which they will.

      1. Exactly Tom nobody in my family believed what I’ve told them, the brain washing has worked. Again.

    2. The ongoing problem is as ever, that actions will always speak louder than words. What the world needs is these new nazis locking up for the rest of their lives.

    2. You’re meant to do the rehearsal before the wedding, Delboy36, not the other way round. Lol.

  28. “Russia will have to pay to restore Ukraine to how it was before the illegal invasion.”

    What – to one of the most corrupt of countries, with the Azov Brigade bombing East Ukraine and commiting atrocities on the population there beyond belief?

    1. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Are we going to pay for the mess we left in Libya or a whole host of countries we have interfered in and damaged, almost beyond repair? Thought not!

  29. Good morning all

    Dull day, slight breeze and 4c.

    Son no 1 off to Weymouth to take part in the Saturday 5k Parkrun .. his timings are good, usually 22 minutes 20.

    Moh asleep, the cricket in NZ is worth watching.. so was late to bed.

    1. She came, she saw, she conquered.
      Now she’s getting much more than the basic state pension. But still moaning.
      As they all do.

        1. That’s been going on for years.
          Two kids and a council flat.
          In the 90s Labour once tried to make the absent fathers take financial and moral responsibility for their children.
          Labour gave up.

        2. Yo T_B

          Please do not say she is a “single mother working the system !”

          The mention of that word will make her faint

          She she is a “single mother abusing the system !”

    2. Nice work for thems that can get it.

      I slog my guys out 60+ hours a week to pay for this. But i have a job that requires me to sit and think and take responsibility so it’s well paid. Imagine if you had to work 60 hours a week on minimum wage to pay for this.

      1. Hence my question. The west’s actions seem to be predicated on the assumption that Ukraine will prevail. I am less optimistic.

        1. Purely on the numbers, Russia will prevail – only do it quickly and stop the Western Propaganda.

          1. I agree, on the assumption that the war will be decided on attrition of human resources. Which is the real issue behind my original question – what is Sunak’s plan when Ukraine runs out of soldiers.

        2. The reality Richard, is that Russia has already won. A good source for the truth is ‘The Duran’ which you can find on You Tube. Talking heads but very informative about what is happening on the ground and with the state of play with regards to t6he progress of the war.

  33. I see that bloke A Allan is getting a bit over-verbose:-

    A Allan
    12 MIN AGO
    I have completely lost any faith in government pronouncements.

    The last word is totally unnecessary.

    1. He looks really old in that picture, the white hair. He must have a hair do for his photoshoot walkabouts.

        1. He may have the skin condition rosacea – my DIL has this condition, she is not a drinker! – but drinking can make rosacea worse.

      2. He is two years younger than I am and yet my wife assures me that he looks years older!

    2. He looks really old in that picture, the white hair. He must have a hair do for his photoshoot walkabouts.

    4. I have to agree that it is a blatant lie. I often wonder how much his advisors tell him. It seems to me likely he has been “captured” by the same sort of civil servants who work incessantly against any government that is centre right. In 2019, the most recent year I could find for information, he attended 521 public events. It strikes me that it does not leave much time in a day to study or read for yourself with such a schedule. Then there are the dispatch boxes, which come every day and take a couple of hours, at least, to get through. Of course, there are other things that need to be attended to in the day. So it seems to me that the king can do no other than listen to advisors. Trapped, it seems to me, in a bubble, not of his own making.

    5. Look at that man’s face in the photo. He doesn’t look remotely like king material to me!

  35. Bonjour a tous et a toutes.
    To the title – A long time ago I lived in Paris for a few years and I had Romanian expat friends – well Transylvanian, really. They had had to leave Romania in a hurry… a little matter about having been discovered involved in a plot against Ceaucescu.
    But they had eyes and ears in Romania and some friends had sent them an article about poverty in Paris.
    Some wag had taken a picture of the queue outside the very high class baker Fauchon and posted it as evidence of shortages in the capitalist world.
    Now to the title. Sorry a long-winded morning.
    This punishment of Russia is going to lead to a collapse of the debt-ridden West. We won’t buy their oil and gas. (Nor will we exploit our own, BTW). We won’t buy their fertiliser and their wheat and we will do what we can to stop others buying it – which won’t be much because India and China are already shrugging their shoulders about what we want.
    This won’t affect us in the UK because we don’t get much from them anyway. But the rise in gobal prices will sorely affect us far more than the commodity-rich Russia we are trying to punish.
    And as our leaders quaff champagne and we scramble for necessities, some wag will no doubt post a picture of a queue in some place we “sanction” for unapproved trade and boast how successful and necessary these punishments are.

    1. Peter Lavelle on RT has said a few times on his CrossTalk show that he thinks when Ukraine is well and truly lost, the US will claim victory anyway because the Russian forces didn’t get as far as the English Channel! His point being of course that however far they have to stretch a point, the US can’t admit defeat. He may be right?

    1. California has long been a Demonrat busted flush.

      When is the next big earthquake due – big enough to slide the whole of Ca into the Pacific, Demonrats and all.

    2. Having lived in California for most of my life I have To say that what has happened to the state is entirely the fault of the Democratic Party and its irrational left wing ideology. 50 years ago and up until the 80s, it was truly the Golden State, a place that everyone wanted to live in or, at least visit. Then the woke came along and turned it into a cess pit. San Francisco was the most visited City in the USA for its beauty, places to see, and friendly atmosphere. Currently there are 10 thousand people living on the streets, around 60% of them are alcoholics and drug addicts. More than half of the 10 thousand are psychotic. These people do everything on the streets to the point that now the city stinks of human waste. Needless to say, tourism has dropped off and the people that live there live in fear to walk the streets or have their homes invaded. It has become a lawless city. Other cities are in as dire straights as San Francisco, I single it out because it is the city I know. Things in the state have reached such a pass that rental vans, for moving, are in short supply because people are fleeing the state for the first time in its history but no one wants to go there, hence people are not renting the vans to return them. What has happened to California is entirely man made and can be laid firmly at the feet of the Democratic Party who, rather than trying to fix things make the situation worse by more and more socialist legislation. It is a lesson for us and as such, all of us should dread a Labour victory at the next general election. The politics of the Democrats and the Labour Party differ only in respect to the fact they thrive in different countries and must cater to that fact. In ideology they differ not at all.

  38. 371552+ up ticks,

    May one ask,

    Would veteran Tommy Atkins, concrete pillow possessor underneath the arches be within his rights regarding callback to arms to reply BOLLOCKS.

    3. Excellent way of treating them, though. None of this TV, drugs, mobile phones, ordering takeaways…that goes on in Blighty.

    5. Some years ago, when MB went on one of his ‘flowers and lizards’ trips, he and his group had to nip over the border into El Salvador.
      The guide warned the group to be very circumspect. MB said it was a horrible, menacing place full of furtive, aggressive little men with big guns.
      Possibly El Salvador knows how to deal with its own crims.

      2. I would have thought, Annie, that your niece could make her fortune by remove all those tattoos. After which the El Salvador authorities could inject them all with Covid-19 jabs, thus making room for more criminals/terrorists and saving the El Salvador taxpayers a small fortune.

  40. Eurovision tickets to be allocated to displaced Ukrainians in UK. 25 February 2023.

    Thousands of tickets for the Eurovision song contest are to be allocated to Ukrainians who have fled to the UK.

    The international music show will take place at the M&S Bank Arena Liverpool in May after the city was chosen to host the competition on behalf of the 2022 winner, Ukraine, which is unable to host the event after the Russian invasion.

    As part of the UK’s commitment to honour Ukraine at the song contest, about 3,000 tickets will be made available to displaced Ukrainians so they can attend the live shows.

    We ought to make this compulsory for them all! It would stop the Cross Channel traffic overnight. Lol!

    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/feb/25/eurovision-tickets-to-be-allocated-to-displaced-ukrainians-in-uk

  41. Humza Yousaf ‘skipped gay marriage vote following pressure from mosque’
    Minister alleges SNP leadership frontrunner asked Alex Salmond for permission to duck the final vote, which he vigorously denies
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/24/snp-humza-yousaf-leadership-candidate-gay-marriage-vote/

    Nothing new here.

    But remember Tony Blair was even more in your face about such matters :

    “I am against abortion as a Christian but I would vote for it if that was the Party’s policy”

    Politicians are no longer expected to act on their beliefs – Sunak believes in low taxes but is happy to be imposing the highest level of taxation for 75 years.

      1. In November 2016, Yousaf was fined £300 and had six penalty points added to his driving licence, after being caught by police driving a friend’s car without being insured to drive it.

    1. Oh dear. I’m not a Famous Five person but I read the Malory Towers books. Don’t recall whether there was anything non-PC about them but I expect there was. These things pass me by because it just isn’t my mindset. At the time I thought public school stories were my lesson on how the other half lived.

      2. A Dance to the Music of Time was a sequence of novels written by Anthony Powell an old Etonian and they gave an insight into the public school culture. These books became very much in vogue and they were televised in the 1990s.

        Another sequence of novels was written by Simon Raven, a sexually very ambivalent Old Carthusian, which gave a seedier account of characters such as Fielding Gray who infested such society. This sequence was Alms for Oblivion and those who enjoyed Powell’s novels would probably enjoy Raven’s.

      3. A case of perception. I used to think the children who read famous five books were posh. We didn’t have books in my house.

      4. I read the Malory Towers books and another one called The Naughtiest Girl in the School- I think she was my role model 😉

  44. Just back from Fakenham. Cold and drizzly and a nasty sub-gale blowing. Got jigsaws from church. Nice piece of hake from Willy Weston (who is here on Saturdays as well as market day Thursdays. Lidl and Tesco full of vegetables. Masks on view – Bird ‘Flu, doncha know. One child dies in Cambodia and Narfurk people take precautions.

    Delicious cup of proper coffee on our return. Gus sleeps. Pickles – bored – went out; he may be some time!

    Crosswords call.

      1. Good Lord – you ask me? I leave all that tedious stuff to Cook!!

        Very quickly, is, I believe the secret. Fear not – Phil will be along with his “tips” before you can say “fishbone”…!!

        1. No! No masks required here. Unlike last year when we had to wear it on the plane (unless you were nibbling or drinking so I made them last)

  45. Good Moaning.
    And talking of moaning … the past weeks/months have caught up with me.
    Maybe a weekend of pottering around and not flying up and down stairs to the attic with boxes might be a good idea.
    I’ve discovered – in a bad way – muscles I didn’t know existed.

      1. MR isn’t mad…any excuse to get out of the house and away from The Mad Catman of Fulmodeston

      2. MR could save the fees by nipping down to the Dower House to shift furniture, books, boxes of toot and assembling shelves etc….
        Thinking about it, the petrol would probably cost much the same.

      1. My niece was a very fit young girl and she won blues at Oxford in both gymnastics and and rowing. She met her fiancé at primary school the age of 5 and they have now been married for over 40 years.

        I went to the stag night of Joe, her about-to-be husband who had just qualified as a GP. Joe had rowed in the Cambridge Goldie Boat and so was no mean athlete himself. He was asked by his best man: “Joe, what will it be like to be married to a woman even fitter than yourself?” His reply: “She’s got muscles in places where I haven’t even got places!”

    6. I sympathise wholeheartedly with your predicament – at least my discovery of previously unsuspected muscles is fun (I’m getting better at the tango, but my goodness it’s a hard taskmaster).

      Epsom salts in a nice hot bath, with refreshments served by a willing minion, is the way to go. 😉

  46. Am pasting this for any non-subscribers who want to waste some time before the Rugby and Racing start on the telly. Much of it repeats points that have been made before but it is a good read. [I have not tried to correct the DT’s appalling sub-editing]

    Justin Trudeau, Canada’s clown prince, is the future of the woke West

    Shallow, shameless, self-aggrandising – and obsessed with moral posturing – the Canadian PM should serve as a warning

    JORDAN PETERSON REX MURPHY
    24 February 2023 • 5:20pm

    What in the world, you might be asking, is up with Canada? How did a country famed for its sensible, moderate attitudes and customs transform itself into the front rank of the woke phalanx?

    We are an immense country – one infinitely rich, blessed by nature (with the possible exception of winter) and mostly pristine. Yet on almost every front, we are becoming an embarrassment – to ourselves and, increasingly, to the world.

    We have fallen, for instance, one-quarter behind our American counterparts in terms of incomes – the wealth that offers security, opportunity and educational resources to our children. We’ve done so while creating an economy that will lag behind most of our peers in the developing world for the next four decades.

    And, for what? Ostensibly, so that our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the political elite – including the opposition – can claim to be saving the planet.

    Trudeau, and his deputy Chrystia Freeland, make it express policy to continually forgo stellar opportunities for national economic development. Our allies Germany and Japan recently came cap-in-hand to Ottawa in some desperation to offer us multi-decade deals amounting to tens of billions of dollars, with no strings attached. Our PM’s response? Let us paraphrase:

    “You are free nations, and admirable and reliable friends, and your people clearly need energy and resources, but we here in Canada feel that such endeavours are now immoral. So we can’t make a ‘business case’ for that. Alas, therefore, I must send you packing, ignoring entirely our history of mutual cooperation throughout the post-WWII period, and ensuring that you spend all that money supporting dictatorships (Qatar, in the specific case of Germany) or maintaining your dependence on Russia (even though that country is at war with our ally, Ukraine). And now let me laud(?) my moral virtue over you.”

    All such deals since then have fallen like the ripest of plums into the comparatively deserving hands of our American allies.

    An ideology of no ideology

    It is a singularly appalling feature of an age burdened with deep nonsense and flat-out idiocies – the intellectual dust bowl of transgender ideology, the unnecessarily punitive burden of carbon taxes, the incessant narcissistic laments of Meghan Markle – that declarations on the part of political leaders that would have produced a tsunami in the not so distant days when reason still had a purchase on public discourse now cause scarcely a ripple.

    One cardinal stage-act in this carnival of jester-thought? Let us return to 2015, when the soon-to-be prime minister of a once balanced and confident country emitted the following apercu, his distilled ‘insight’ into the true nature of the Canada he was about to rule: “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada…” This is what makes us, Trudeau continued, the world’s “first post-national state.”

    The epithet, “post-national,” is one with profound implications. It nonetheless barely pricked up the ears of those operating in once-vigilant newsrooms. The few who did hear, in those infant days of the Trudeau Enlightenment, fell all over themselves, in a veritable rhapsody of appreciative commentary. Seldom had we heard a slogan so creative, so progressive, so humane, so compassionate.

    Where were the thoughtful, asking questions about just exactly what a “post-national” state might be; the doubt that such an entity was possible, even by definition? Can states, as states, exist without a national identity? Can mere aggregations of convenience, with fealty, no central purpose or point, no shared, deep history, really be called states at all?

    What then serves to unify, to guide, and to inspire hope, on both the psychological and collective fronts? Because, in the absence of such unity, we are in conflict, lost and hopeless.

    This statement of core belief (and, most truly, belief in nothing) indicated more than indifference to the country itself: it provided proof positive of Trudeau’s utterly juvenile understanding of the deep and wide history of the country he was offering so graciously to rule. Trudeau glossed over the deep and centuries-old rootedness of Newfoundlanders and other East Coast denizens – to whom place, connection and belonging are part of their DNA, as well as denying the clearly defined allegiance of the Francophones inhabiting his own native province of Quebec, who have fought desperately and successfully to maintain their truly unique culture.

    Every Canadian province, and the northern territories, are characterised by this same deep sense of ‘home,’ and, as oil-rich Alberta’s stalwart former leader Peter Lougheed insisted: connection to the province – the local place of being – is a precondition for, a spur to, an accelerant of, the love for and broader sense of belonging, to the greater generality of Canada itself.

    Trudeau conflated the endless void expanse of his own ignorance with the hypothetical identitylessness of the land he now and so ineptly and catastrophically leads.

    All of this was passed over – and by those who should have known better.

    It has been made increasingly clear to Canadians, desperate though they may be to believe otherwise, that our vast and mostly empty country – with its backward ways, its quaint and provincial (in the sense of isolated and parochial) parliament, and its tiny population – doesn’t merit any real consideration on the part of the oh-so-impressive global citizens who now masquerade as its leaders. Too many important decisions are made elsewhere, on an international scale – on the faux-aristocratic stages where the truly important players strut and posture.

    What do those who parade in such forums often believe? Here’s a start: the planet is a hapless, virginal princess; society, a malevolent and cruel patriarch, motivated by power, raping and pillaging; the individual, another mouth of many devouring mouths to feed, hell-bent on riding the giant of patriarchy to the brink of impending apocalypse.

    What other ideas congregate with these devilishly one-sided notions? How about the appalling claim that “the planet has too many people on it.” It would, after all, take five planets to sustain the world population at the current standard of living the West enjoys – or so the story goes.

    And what should become of those obviously excess people? They should cease clamouring to enjoy the material benefits and opportunities for our children enjoyed by those in the West for the last eighty years.

    The new maxim: it’s impossible to make everyone rich, so the moral thing is to reduce their cost to the planet, and whether by accident or design, make them poor.

    Nature abhors a vacuum

    Canada, according to Trudeau, is a vacancy, bereft of civil history; a nothing place, waiting to be filled in. But nature abhors a vacuum, and that emptiness cries out to be filled. And who shall guide the “infilling?” Well obviously, Trudeau himself, along with his mentors and minions.

    With what? Not from ideas emerging from the country itself, and its deep culture. Instead, with the glib, shallow, self-aggrandising platitudes of a metropolitan elite, guilty (and perhaps with good reason) about their undeserved wealth and “privilege,” looking for the easiest road to consequently necessary atonement.

    Looking for the wisdom of some high collegium, composed of the richest and most powerful this sad planet has currently to offer. Let us all go to Davos, the luxury campus of the self-interested; that largely unelected, autocratic and self-congratulatory forum.

    Canada, after all (and the West, more broadly), has no centre, no being, no foundation, no destiny. It is the neo-colonial remnant of a fundamentally deplorable history: one characterised by naught but oppression, prejudice, exploitation and ethnocentrism, if not outright racism. No angels hover ahead; instead, we are left with Bill Gates.

    Green fingers

    Trudeau is a carbon tax advocate. He has announced plans to scuttle the oil and gas industry in Alberta, impose mandatory and severe fertiliser restrictions on Canadian farmers, and effectively handicap the forest industry.

    In case it needs to be said: we, in this country, are not suffering from a shortage of forests. Canada has, by some accounts, over 400 million trees. It has been argued there a more trees in the Northern Hemisphere than there were a century ago. Yet none of that seems to matter: not while our erstwhile leader continually parades his environmental concerns.

    It’s important to note here the counter-evidence to this zero-sum dystopian nightmare insisted upon by the anti-industrial moralists: insofar as the “planet” has interests at all (and it doesn’t, being both entirely unconscious and uncaring) those would be best served by making everyone poor rich as rapidly as possible, instead of the reverse.

    Why? Because as people drag themselves out of poverty (or as governments get out of their way so they can possibly do so) their sense of time expands, and they start to naturally concern themselves not so much with “what do I eat and feed my family with today?” but with “what kind of world, local and global, do I want to see for my children and grandchildren?”

    The great Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg, among others, has argued in painstaking and painful detail that all the trillions of dollars spent on so-called renewables has had an negligible impact, and may even have made things worse. Consider, once again, the sad case of Germany since its “green revolution” – a country paying many times more for more unreliable power and dangerously beholden to the Russians.

    Despite all this, we continue to insist upon the destruction of the very agricultural and industrial infrastructure that raised the common man out of destitution, driven by an ignorance so profound that the darkness of night is a thousand suns by contrast; driven by an envy of success so deep that Lucifer himself would weep to see it.

    And if our politicians in the West fail? Off to Brussels or Davos with them, to take up the international jobs truly most meet for those for whom leadership of a mere party of even country is simply nowhere near enough.

    In the case of Canada, those now-elevated but departed leaders will leave behind a country whose economy will have been for many decades crippled by the laws designed precisely to bring about that crippling; a people who will be rendered cynical for a very long time when they finally awaken to the magnitude of the crime committed in the name of the planet; a parliament gutted of its authority – a nation divided.

    And a planet not only not improved but clearly worsened, even by the standards of its so-called saviours.

    We in Canada are in fact much better, not much worse, than our leaders. We are steeped in history – and one most fundamentally pro-human, pro-freedom and pro-responsibility. We are united by a set of fundamentally valid core values. We are a nation. We have our traditions, and loyalties, and a muted admiration for the many who sacrificed what was necessary to build this country. These were men and women who voyaged so dangerously on the turbulent seas, and broke and ploughed the oft-intransigent earth; who sent their sons to combat; who did their silent duty in the name of the family. These were the people whose names we most often do not know, who built a strong and enduring country, a beacon to people around the world (for all its faults), deeply loyal to neighbourhood, town, province and country; possessed of unostentatious regard for their fellow Canadians and allegiance to the principles of divine intrinsic individual worth and responsibility for brotherhood.

    Those are core values, and they’re more real than anything else. Those are the principles that define us.

    And to let all that slip all away under the shallow, pathetic, shameless, self-aggrandising the leadership of the moment – that is farce, with tragedy as its aim.

    Oh, Canada indeed.

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

      1. Enough people need to wake up and vote for an alternative.
        Is there an alternative? Or are both left & right now fixed into wokeness?

          3. Fast forward 18 months and you will need to explain to them how G.B came to elect Keir Starmer.

        2. Klaus Schwab & WEF recruit and capture young people with political aspirations at an early age. They draw them into their web with the allure of rubbing shoulders with the current movers and shakers at Davos and indoctrination courses elsewhere. The Schwab/WEF gig has grown like topsy far beyond what was originally imagined, largely because of Schwab and his wife’s fanaticism (they don’t have anything else to do) and is wholly pernicious.

        3. People want Jordan Peterson to run. Wouldn’t win but he sure would get enough votes to put the wind up miss Trudi

      2. This is repeat of the mindless voting for the SNP in Scotland.
        Thinking about it, aren’t many Canadians of Scottish descent?

        1. Yes….but the Scottish Canadians tend to dominate in the Maritime Provinces which are less Trudeau-esque. (Co-author Rex Murphy is a Newfie columnist and very funny)

        2. It amused me the first time I heard a Canadian friend pronounce ‘house’ as ‘hoose’ 🙂

  47. Serious question. After the first Covid gene altering injection I had problems with my left shoulder. My chiropractor told me it was a known but unreported side effect of the Mrna treatment. It subsided after about 6 months. Recently I’ve had a similar pain in my left shoulder which I can’t attribute to any injury or recent activity. Looking up these symptoms it seems left shoulder pain can be associated with cardiac issues. I filled in the online form to arrange a doctor’s appointment and the response was to immediately contact 111 as it may be symptoms of a serious issue. I declined as I am in good shape, and have been for many years. The response was I was responsible for any consequences and could be at risk by declining. Have any Nottlers had any similar symptoms?

        1. No – he decided a couple of years ago he wasn’t going to fly any more so he’s at home. I’m on my own here and they are looking after me well.

          2. I resent being bossed around and treated like a criminal: a thoroughly negative experience for which I am paying.

      2. I find, when angina necessitates, that a slug (not much) of NEAT whisky, calms it down (opens up all the smaller veins, allowing more blood to get to the heart).

        Just saying, as it beats the hell out of using the GTN (instant headache) spray.

    2. If the medics are concerned, you should be too. They don’t usually give much of a flying one

    3. I have avoided such issues by not being Covid jabbed.

      Caroline has some friends who have had serious problems with their joints and limbs as a result of being Covid jabbed and she is still having to play at the funerals of those under the age of 60 who have died unexpectedly after been jabbed and re-jabbed.

      The treatment of Andrew Bridgen shows that the situation is the same in the UK – but nobody in government is prepared to examine the issue. I wonder why?

      1. Oddly, when I caught Covid in hospital at the end of last year, they didn’t offer a vaccination afterwards. But as I said, although I was sick from Emphysema stage 4 and complications brought about by the cancer. Having Covid on top of all that should have been a death sentence but I couldn’t tell that I was sick other than the normal, felt exactly the same.

        1. If it is not too rude a question and you can ignore me but when were you diagnosed with Emphysema stage 4?

          My father was diagnosed with Emphysema in his 40’s. He had worked in several industries including Walkers crisps. He did manage to get to 69. Then couldn’t breathe which caused a bleed on the brain. He never woke up.

          1. Hi Pip. Diagnosis was about the middle of this year. I am getting worse quicky and I hope the degeneration can be halted. At the beginning of this year I could go shopping. Now I find it difficult to even wash a couple of dishes. If I go anywhere which, now a days, is to the doctor or the hospital, I need a wheelchair because I can’t walk more than 40 feet. Nasty disease that killed both my grandfathers. It seems, in my case it is inherited. And no, I do not consider it rude for you to ask questions. 😊

    4. If the same pain has returned i would get it looked at if i were you. Or it could just be poor sleeping posture. Treat yourself to an orthopedic pillow.

    5. A 111 call might act as a simple triage. It can’t do any harm and it might do some good, notwithstanding your general fitness.

      1. He shouldn’t be talking about covid. We’ve done that. The ones who thought it conspiracy will agree. The ones who don’t won’t watch. The middle will feel cheated.

        He should be talking about the problem facing the country that Dominic Frisby talks about – the enforced decline fo the country: the betrayal of Brexit, the refusal to support farmers, the despeate eagerness to align with the EU on tax most especially. The continual fighting of councils and government at removing legislation.

        Every single thing the state is doing is wrong, deliberately so.

        1. Actually, Laurance Fox frequently talks about the decline of our country. In fact I would say he does in most of his programmes. This one was different in respect to the rather lengthy discussion about Covid.

    7. I haven’t been vaccinated. One of my friends who has, however, was admitted to A&E over the weekend with a fibrillating heart.

  48. Greetings all from Kenya. I’m making use of the manager’s WiFi as I’m the only guest here and getting very good service. Very dry here as the drought continues. No rain for months.

    2. I do hope the drought hasn’t savaged Kenya.

      Sainsbury stocks green French beans and brocolli spears from Kenya.

      Hope you are enjoying your visit.. ?

      11:22 24 Feb
      SHARED
      Cyclone Freddy makes landfall in Mozambique

      Sarah Keith-Lucas

      BBC Weather presenter

      Tropical Cyclone Freddy has made landfall in Mozambique.

      It has been restrengthening in the Mozambique Channel with winds up to 128km/h (80mph).

      After landfall, the storm system will be slow-moving in southern Mozambique producing up to 400mm of rain over the next few days.

      This is likely to lead to major flooding across the region which may well shift into Zimbabwe and north-east South Africa into next week.

    1. Yes, I do. Viewed on a tiny TV set. I even had a Mr Turnip string puppet for Christmas. Simple pleasures… Wasn’t there Mexican Pete the bandit in there somewhere?

    2. Very much so, Angie. Weren’t Hank (the cowboy) and his nemesis Mexican Pete also on Whirligig? Peter Ling who wrote the script also wrote “The Three Js” (John, Jimmy and Jacko) for the EAGLE comic.

  50. The West’s lack of a long-term plan for Ukraine creates room for China. 25 February 2023.

    China has produced a “peace plan” for Ukraine that is not worthy of the name, overlooking and excusing Russia’s unprovoked aggression. The plan’s suggestion that “all parties must … avoid fanning the flames and aggravating tensions” is a more-or-less explicit call on Western countries to stop providing weapons to Kyiv, even as Beijing seems to be considering supplying lethal aid to Moscow. Hearing Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of Nato, warn yesterday that doing so would represent a “very big mistake” and that “this is very serious” underlines the gravity of the moment. China, as Stoltenberg points out, would then be supporting an illegal war of aggression, violating the UN charter.

    The logic here is quite lamentable. China is not yet supplying arms to Russia but if it did it would be making “a very big mistake” whereas the West, which is already doing so for Ukraine, is OK. This sort of two faced reasoning is of course normal in the diplomatic world. It does however tell us one thing; the West does not want peace.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2023/02/25/wests-lack-long-term-plan-ukraine-creates-room-china/

    1. Apparently the Chinese plan is remarkably reasonable. But it for self interest. They are worried about their market, Europe and the USA getting into financial difficulties and queering their pitch. This is especially important for the Chinese because they are experiencing financial difficulties because of the collapse of their real estate market and civil unrest in the country. There is a lot of unrest that is not being publicised in the West, the discontent is very worrying for the regime. So they need us to come to our senses. For information about Chinas difficulties, a useful source is China Unscripted, another bunch of talking heads on You Tube.

      1. My exercise bike you fool !

        5 miles every day before breakfast while reading last evenings Nottle.

  54. St. Peter was manning the Pearly Gates of Heaven when some Liverpool fans showed up. Having never seen anyone from Liverpool at heaven’s door St. Peter said he would have to check with God before he could let them in.

    After hearing the news, God instructed him to admit the 10 most virtuous from the group.
    

    A few minutes later Saint Peter returned to God breathless and said. They’re gone !

    What All of the Liverpool fans are gone? asked God.
    No replied Saint Peter, The Pearly Gates.

    2. Great one Pip. Made me laugh out loud. Had a miserable day so far so thanks for that😁

    3. Reminds me of a joke another Nottler posted a couple of years ago.

      Although Yul Brynner shaved his head and his face how could you tell he was a Liverpool fan by the fact that no Old Spice, Chanel or Givenchy could be found in his bathroom?

      Yul never wore Cologne!

  57. 371552+ up ticks,

    O Kingly one,

    To be, or not to be, that is the question”
    Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous English patriots and side with the WEF or not.

    THAT IS THE MAIN QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED BEFORE THE ARSE KICKING CAN COMMENCE.

  62. https://youtu.be/b6m29rSSmCM?t=579

    Harry Metcalfe points to another clear issue with the insane net zero/make energy expensive policy: starvation.

    In summary, the tomatoes and other salads would normally be grown in the UK. The government made energy expensive, then said ‘sod off’ to the food growers.

    The supermarkets refused to soak the costs of the government’s energy policy and so nothing is grown in the UK. A bad crop overseas and no surplus to sell results in shortages.

    1. MP’s won’t care. They type of place they dine in on expenses will have plenty of produce. Sounds like Soviet Russia to me.

    2. The self-abusers don’t think anything through.

      The link between causes and effects is completely beyond the understanding of most politicians, civil servants and greeniacs.

    1. I notice it doesn’t cover any of Scotland, which is considered a failing NHS in its own right.

  64. Well, a trip to Gregory’s sawmill at Tansley to pick up some t&g floorboarding followed by a quick shop in Matlock revealed a healthy stock of tomatoes in M&S, Iceland and the Co-op.
    So WTF is this tomato shortage I hear about???

  65. Watch: Wind turbine blade weighing 19 tonnes carried up mountain

    Footage shows the giant blade slowly swing from right to left

    It it were even contemplated in UK, it would takes weeks just to ensure the the person operating the steering wheel,
    gears and brakes was sufficiently of the correct Genre, (that maybe a Typo) Height, Effnicity, Religion, etc

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/02/24/watch-wind-turbine-blade-weighing-19-tonnes-carried-mountain/

    1. Not a problem taking that weight up the slope if they put BoB and his recent equipment in charge. Lol.

      1. Elsie…….

        B o B is a white MAN, speaks English, has a family, etc

        How can he possibly be in charge

  66. Rishi Sunak accused of ‘abusing King’s position’ to sell his Brexit deal

    DUP criticises PM’s aborted plan for the monarch to meet EU chiefs at Windsor Castle as part of Northern Ireland Protocol talks

    By Will Hazell, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    25 February 2023 • 1:46pm

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

    Janet Warrior
    1 HR AGO
    Our new King promised to avoid getting involved in politics so, unless Von Der Leyen is a head of state (she isn’t), there should be no such meetings at all. Just who is advising our government and our monarchy? Whoever they are they want sacking. As for Rishi – he is proving to be clueless.

    Steve Davies
    1 HR AGO
    Sunak has to be seen to doing something rather than looking like a spitting image puppet. He will go soft on China as that is what his father in law wants. He would sell his grandmother for fiver. Surely Richmond Yorkshire could do better than Sunak.

    2. I couldn’t believe that Sunak made a video to play to the participants in the Racing Staff Awards in York. Just because Catterick (racecourse) is in his constituency (or he fancied the publicity). Which other PMs had a racecourse in their constituency? Blair – Sedgefield – and Major – Huntingdon

  67. I’ve just been chatting with our neighbours just back their hideaway in France for a week or so.
    The froglès are taking the p eye ss about our shortage of tomatoes and veg.
    I told them to tell their own neighbours we don’t have a shortage of vegetables. Westminster and Whitehall are full of them.

  69. Without giving anything away, I think the Oirish native johnny knew he’d knocked on and hadn’t scored. His face as he “touched down” gave away his feelings…

  70. Moh and I travelled 12 miles to the huge B+Q in Poole this morning.

    The weather is very chilly.

    The store was very busy, loads of people zigzagging with big trolleys loaded up with timber and paint , and swish radiators which look so impractical, not the sort of radiators you can air clothes on .

    We were looking at prices of replacement Velux windows , bathroom taps ,front door knockers , ours is badly corroded.. the ones we looked at were rubbish, so we will search on line .

    We were amazed to see the display of goods for out door entertaining .. including huge jacuzzis and verandeh furniture , including pizza ovens … WHAT?

    I don’t want to be a killjoy, but I HATE BBqs.. and all the fiddling around warding off flies and wasps etc.

    Food prepared indoors but eaten outside is preferable .. , Moh and sons like stuff outside , it is a male thing , isn’t it .. fiddling with food on a BBQ is a rite of passage for them .. too much meat for my liking .

    1. Food prepared over hot charcoal tastes different to food prepared in a frying pan; likewise, roasted veg, and fish wrapped in foil with butter & scrummy stuff). We even have a pizza stone to prepare propoer pizza in a real pizza overn, not the electric one under the grill. It’s so much better, and doesn’t happen so often, so a bit special because of that. The burning off of dripped fat… Yum! And the washing up is easier, too.
      Wasps I can’t help with. Maybe you have a nest close by? Or sit in the Ohio-sized plume of smoke from the barbie warming up?

    2. I’ve told you before, Maggie-nificent, you hate barbecues because you’ve never had a proper one.😘

  71. Gareth RobertsGareth Roberts
    Is ‘woke’ dead?
    25 February 2023, 8:00am

    ******************************************************
    Top BTL comment

    Uppernorwood
    7 hours ago edited
    This whole analysis completely fails to understand the point that wokeness is being pushed by a minority who have strategically captured all the institutions.

    The public at large never supported it, so when they is a democratic measurement such as sales of a video game or tickets to see Top Gun, this suggests wokeness has no power.

    But the civil service, education establishment, museums, arts councils, tv and film studios, NHS, BBC, local councils and others are all highly woke at management level. Even most HR functions in private companies are woke.

    This is about 5% of the population at most, but they dictate 90% of the cultural and social decisions in the country.

    For example, a London Museum might have thousands of members, and hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, virtually none of whom support woke destruction of the cultural treasures held within. But the half a dozen or so people who actually control what goes on at the museum are woke, or at least cave in to the minority who put pressure on them. This won’t change as the decision making is not done democratically.

    How is that Spectator columnists still don’t understand this?

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-woke-dead/

    2. The all-pervasive accent and attitude of Common Purpose spreading its evil miasma across most organisations.

    1. I wish the last 35 years hadn’t happened. NpoBlair, no Brown, no scum trying to overturn democracy, no mass expansion of welfare, no gimmigrant criminals, streets not flood with savages, girs not raped by pakistani paedophile muslims, no Khan, no scum mandelson.

          2. There is some other fuckwit, then. I don’t know their names, because I have no interest in their stupid party. But SOME BIGWIG was in the press last week (or the last few weeks) insisting that his party would demand compulsory vaccination for children.

  74. Cambridge blocked white students from applying for one of its postgraduate courses

    The university since confirmed to The Telegraph it had reversed its position after concerns had been raised.

    By Ewan Somerville
    25 February 2023 • 4:00pm

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

    Bob Davey
    53 MIN AGO
    Pure and unadulterated racism for which they should be prosecuted.

    Eden Krane
    1 HR AGO
    Why weren’t these racists given the sack? Cambridge used to renowned for its intellectual excellence, but now it seems to be a hotbed of racists!

    Steven Gentle
    1 MIN AGO
    If I put on some black-face and sing “just stole a car – don’t need to buy a car” to the tune of the irritating TV ad will I stand a chance?

    2. A student was prevented from joining a course because they were white?

      I don’t understand this world. The Left have always been bitter, intolerant racists but this is absurd. Chances are though, the student won’t get any support or legal recourse.

    1. The two matches are chalk and cheese.

      However, on the positive side England don’t kick every time they get the ball and they actually pass it more, rather than use the heffalumps to try to smash the other heffalumps.

        1. That last one started at 39:17 and the ball was eventually fed in just before the clock went red.
          Dreadful waste of playing time.

      2. Too soon I did spoke, they naturally reverted to type.

        If this continues I hope they don’t get beyond the group stage of the world cup.

        A major clear out of players and coaching staff is required.

  76. The forgotten British dishes that are worth resurrecting
    This zero-waste fish soup, slow-cooked beer-braised beef and forgotten fruit pudding deserve a place on your table

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/columnists/forgotten-british-dishes-worth-resurrecting/

    Do try to read the comments … The blinking censor has been busy cancelling out Spotted Dick and Faggots etc

    The comments are still an enjoyable read . What a pity I am still banned from commenting on the DT

    2. Faggots, peas and mash, memories from childhood!! But I do a beer-braised beef during winter months so that is not forgotten.

          2. Who told you I had left the forum? Certainly not me. I await your hand-written apology…!!

  80. I am now leaving for the day – having been reduced to tears by LotL’s cruel comment!! (Not really…)

    One good match – one dire one. At least both were clean and reasonably well refereed. One question – since they were allowed to put the ball in crooked, has the “defending” pack ever won the ball by hooking?

    Have a smooth evening.

    A demain.

    1. A foreign language to me, Bill. Is a crooked hooker at a ball a dishonest prostitute at a party?

          2. I don’t mince my words.
            We are having a few drinks- it’s been a good day. My husband is home and doing well. He made himself an Asian soup today ( with Kimchi so strong wind warning.) He was able to stand unaided to take down the kitchen clock so we could change the battery and then walk to rehang it. He seems to be doing much better and, for that, I am truly thankful.

          3. Excellent, Ann!
            Worth a wee celebration – approaching normality.
            BTW, I like the use of Kimchi. Sauerkraut with flavour! I ate a whole jar not too long ago, still not forgiven 🙁
            and the family disapprove my choosing Lasagne & sauerkraut for dinner yesterday, but it is fabulous!

          4. I expect we could hear your posterior blasts and you could probably hear my husband’s. Thank goodness our immediate neighbours are somewhat deaf 😉

          9. So glad to hear that, Ann, will raise our glasses of wine tonight when we have salmon with roasted veg. Now how are you bearing up? Take care.

          10. Had a quiet day today- got a few little jobs done, a lot of reading and I slept in until 9. Am still somewhat weary but it’s better today!

          11. You should be kind to that Ann lady. She seems nice, and needs to be cut some slack, so she doesn’t get totally worn out. Let the lady have some time off now and then…

          12. I am being kind to me …a few glasses of Pinot and I made myself some pasta with broc and mushrooms. Nice. The main difference is that I am relaxed because this week is over.

          18. Jaffa cakes for me, and absolutely no milk. ruins the flavour, and if the flavour needs ruined, then the tea isn’t worth drinking.
            Sorry. Rude bugger, me.

    2. It was a day of two Farrells.
      Andy Farrell is currently the best coach in the world.
      Owen Farrell is currently a not-fit-for-purpose No10 (or 12).
      Andy Farrell, who the pink-gin soaked old farts at the RFU refused to have as England coach (League connections), has turned Ireland into the top team on the planet.
      Owen Farrell, who can do no wrong in the eyes of the same RFU farts, missed five out of six kicks and played like a clown.

      1. We only want the blokes we like, Grizz. Not those who can cut the mustard. That would curdle the port…

      2. A Farrell was pretty useless. What is the point of bringing on new players with only a couple of minutes left?

        2. At the time it was done, it would appear that a player could get 100 caps and never touch the ball!

      3. Owen was the pride and joy of St George’s school at Harpenden.
        I’ll bet he’s not very happy this evening.
        But a win is a win at the end of the day.

  83. SIR – I am not fussy about what kind of bread my bacon sandwich is made from (Letters, February 24), but I have to have vinegar on it.

    Is this a peculiarly Welsh thing?

    Colin Drury
    Dinas Powys, Glamorgan
    What?? Vinegar? Daft bugger!

          2. I must confess it’s not my favourite. Smells great but tastes of nothing. Hence the vinegar!!!

          3. I tasted cue for breakfast last week in Morocco. It was superb. The original fruit as opposed to tte supermarket brand.

          4. I didn’t much like tomatoes till o had them in a greek salad on one of the islands, many years ago. Proper tomatoes are delicious

  84. Not off to bed, but off for the rest of the evening.
    I’ve Just had another terrible half hour coughing fit. It leaves me with a bit of a headache.
    Tomorrow is another day. 😏

  86. Yahoo! Raise a glass, which I am sure most of you have handy! Guess who walked across the room just now and back with no walker or stick? The creature lives, it walks! Oh god, what an improvement!!
    If that physio turns up next week, he will probably have my husband galloping around the grass at the front.

      1. And he’s just gone to the loo unaided as well. I am so hopeful that we are over the worst.

    4. That is tremendous news, Ann! Well done that man. Unfortunately, I’ve given up alcohol for Lent (after my thoughts about the rectorette I really have to mortify the flesh!) but I’ll raise a glass of ginger beer 🙂

        1. He has been really good today. As soon as I reached for my coat he went and lay by the back door ready to have his lead put on! He is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

  87. Evening, all. Who is going to punish the Ukie leaders for their assault on the Russians of the Donbas?

  88. Right, after an emergency removal of the toilet pan, replacement of a couple of lengths of floorboard and refitting of aforesaid toilet pan, I’m now bathed and ready for bed.
    G’night all.

  92. Watching the cricket. Anyone else do Wordle today?

    Wordle 616 4/6

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

    1. Yes. Also par 4.

      Wordle 616 4/6

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

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