Saturday 26 November: Confusing energy bills will only make it harder for households to budget this winter

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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646 thoughts on “Saturday 26 November: Confusing energy bills will only make it harder for households to budget this winter”

  5. Heard on the tv this morning that government is concerned that people are dipping into their pension pots to support themselves and their children through these difficult times.

    They might leave themselves with not enough money when they retire if they spend it all now.

    You couldn’t make it up really.

      1. Araminta, as Professor Schwab said ” You will own nothing and you will be happy”

        The first step in renting rather than owning came from BMW, where heated seats have to be paid for by monthly

        subscription otherwise they are switched off.

        If this is successful expect other car manufacturers to try similar.

        You read it here first !!

        1. Of course. Anything computerised can be controlled from outside. Vide smart meters etc. I am glad I have a car old enough to be totally mechanical.

    2. Hence Canada’s promotion of euthanasia which, once it becomes accepted over there, will be rolled out elsewhere in the West.

  6. Good morrow,, Gentlefolks, a surgical story today:

    The Operation & The Roses

    A sexually active middle-aged woman informed her plastic surgeon that she wanted her vaginal lips reduced in size because over the years they’d become loose and floppy. Out of embarrassment, she insisted that the surgery be kept secret and, of course, the surgeon agreed.

    Awakening from the anaesthetic, she found 3 roses carefully placed beside her on the bed.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a832c23a8fccd2188d007838bfa3bdb0f8e95225da1222af9d2c128ac9484ecc.jpg

    Outraged, she immediately called in the surgeon. “I thought I specifically asked you not to tell anyone about my operation”!

    The surgeon told her he had carried out her wish for confidentiality and that the first rose was from him. “I felt so sad for you, because you went through this all by yourself.”

    “The second rose is from my nurse. She assisted me in the surgery and understood perfectly, as she had the same procedure done some time ago.”

    “And what about the third rose?” she asked.

    “That’s from a man in the burns unit – he wanted to thank you for his new ears.”

  7. Boris Johnson launches appeal for medical supplies for Ukraine. 26 November 2022.

    The former prime minister asks the ‘great British public’ to ‘dig deep’ this Christmas and help Ukrainian medics battling to save lives.

    We have a Health System that has collapsed and is on life support! Perhaps he should bugger off to Ukraine and live there!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/11/26/boris-johnson-launches-appeal-medical-supplies-ukraine/

    2. The man is an unmitigated fool, who doesn’t understand the reason behind a conflict, in which we have NO part.

      1. He was also a lazy bar-steward who did nothing of use with a huge majority during his time in No 10. Having achieved the job he lusted after and thought was his birthright his only contribution was that of supreme indolence.

        ‘Morning, Nanners.

      1. Boris was being all gung-ho a week or two back on twitter. I replied that the warmongering gimp should grab a weapon and head off to the fight and let us know how he got on. Apparently, this broke twitter roolz and I was put on the naughty step.

        Mind you, if he can’t take the horror of being called a warmongering gimp I’m not sure he has the moral fibre to actually confront opposing forces head on.

      2. Boris was being all gung-ho a week or two back on twitter. I replied that the warmongering gimp should grab a weapon and head off to the fight and let us know how he got on. Apparently, this broke twitter roolz and I was put on the naughty step.

        Mind you, if he can’t take the horror of being called a warmongering gimp I’m not sure he has the moral fibre to actually confront opposing forces head on.

  9. Minister becomes eighth Tory MP to announce they are stepping down at next election – as it happened. 26 November 2022.

    The levelling up minister Dehenna Davison, seen as one of the rising stars of the Conservative party, has announced that she is standing down at the next election.

    The rats are starting to swim for it!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/nov/25/steve-barclay-nurses-strike-keir-starmer-nicola-sturgeon-uk-politics-live

  15. Morning all 😊
    12 weeks of contentment ended Friday night.
    I thought I was going to die as my heart went into meltdown. Racing at record beats per minute.
    12 weeks almost to the day since I had my cardioversion. And now I’m back to where I was two years ago. Atrial fibrillation is back with a vengeance. I sent an email to the cardiology department. Secretary rang me back saying this has been noted and passed on to the cardiologist. It’s not possible to email my GP it seems our local practice doesn’t have the facilities. So I printed a copy addressed it to my GP and marked it urgent. He could have re-prescribed Digoxin but he wasn’t available. And won’t be until Tuesday!!!
    Oh well I’ll just have to grin and bloody put up with it for another 6 months before the NHS spring into action.

      1. Nurses are on strike Obs.
        I’ve just taken a 10 mg bisoprolol. Which was a massive increase on my pre-prescibe 2 mg I use to take. But wax given when I was in A&E last August. Such a large dose might make me feel dizzy, so I’ll stay in bed.

      1. This is how daft things have become in your old country Sos.
        I discovered that two of our, i thought ‘retired’ GPs are now practicing in our village privately. One was our own GP for more than 30 years. The other, the father of one of our eldest sons best mates.
        But having said that our neighbours who live in rural France for 80% of the year tell me that they also have problems seeing local doctors. So when they need specialist treatment they fly back here to attend appointments at private practices.

          1. I can never remember where it is they live. But it’s very remote.
            I ask again and make a written note.

        1. Sometimes, you’re too caring about others. Laudable, but don’t neglect your own.

          Love and hugs.

    4. Sorry to hear this, Eddy. My brother-in-law had his cardioversion a couple of months ago and, so far, it seems to have worked. There has been the occasional afib but nothing serious. The consultant seems content to use medication for now, but has suggested that a procedure called ablation might have to be considered if the afib becomes more frequent. Apparently this is normally more effective than cardioversion, although I imagine that they would want to avoid this if at all possible in view of he time and expense involved.

      Incidentally, he was advised to avoid alcohol, but last week he gave in and had a modest glass of wine. This set it off again, so I think he is now resigned to being alcohol-free for the forseeable.

      1. I’ll stick with the odd bout of angina in my two-thirds of a heart I have left.

        Rather than use the GTN spray (instant headache) I just take a dose of neat whisky to open up ALL the minor veins and relieve pressure on that poor damaged heart.

        Physician, heal thyself!

    5. Pay a private GP to get a diagnosis and an NHS referal. Might be quicker that way. Best of luck.

      1. I think I could ring and get a home visit Phiz.
        I’ll be alright if I take it easy.
        Thanks anyway.
        I’m just really cheesed off the cardioversion hasn’t worked.

        1. Commiserations. My operation was only partially successful and they refused to do a more invasive one.

    7. How fast is record beats. I get up to a debilitating 130 beats per minute after light extended exertion and in hot conditions. After 20+ years thinking I had “diagnosed” atrial fibrillation, a Cardiologist after examining my recent ECGs told my GP “this man does not have Atrial Fibrillation.” I was overjoyed. I still get Atenolol, Losartan Potassium and Amlodipine and rarely get high blood pressure. My infrequent rapid heart beats, after rest, last only a few hours at most.

    8. Hi Eddy. Sorry to hear that. Alf had AF from 2009 to 2014 – maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that- but in the end had cardiac ablation under local anaesthetic. Seems to have cured it. You should ask your GP about it. It’s apparently usually done under local anaesthetic at St George’s but Alf was told our local hospital could do it under local, I.E., one day visit. If you look at the British Heart Foundation website they used to have a video of it being done, hope it’s still there. Don’t let the AF go on for too long. Twice when Alf was taken to A&E they asked why he’d waited so long to call them. One of his attacks went on for 17 hours! Well done with the bisoprolol.

      1. Spot on I can relate to that exactly.
        A year after I was first diagnosed with (seven years ago next January) Afib, I went to Hammersmith to have an ablation. It was working until I had the first covid (in 2020) jab. After about 6 weeks it had calmed down. Until I had the second covid jab. It set it off again. I then had to wait 12 months for the cardioversion and after only 12 weeks it’s stopped working.
        I’m so disappointed. But there are so many people who are far worse off than me.
        And I thank all of you for your support and concern 😇🙂

        1. It’s one of the great advantages of this site, Eddy. People care and would like to help, even though distance, or not knowing where you are, presents difficulties. I found this out last Saturday when I was convinced that the ‘Black Dog’ depression was about to make me take my life. NoTTLers rallied round and called me back from the brink and for that, I’m profoundly grateful.

          1. We are all very pleased you didn’t.
            We all have moments of despair Tom. We wouldn’t be human without it. Better as you did, to make them moments of discussion. 🤩

          2. I just hope, Eddy that you never find yourself there. There may not be a bunch of good-hearted NoTTLers around to lift and bring you back.

    10. Ouch. Really sorry to hear about this setback. I do hope you get treatment as quickly as possible – it’s awful the way you and many others have been messed around.

  16. Sunak and Hunt, civil servants for a Davos government. 26 November 2022.

    Is the Conservative Party just another hollowed-out institution about to be sacrificed for the globalist agenda? Yes, it has always represented big money, landowners and international elites. But this was counterbalanced by the party’s huge grass-roots membership, now, it seems, gone for ever.

    In the 1950s the party boasted around 2.8million members. There were more than 1,000 constitutional clubs up and down the country. Most constituencies had full-time party agents. The Tory Party was anchored in the character, culture and values of Britain. It was the party I joined. As of September 2022 it had just 172,000 members.

    To destroy the party, you had to destroy the membership. It has taken nearly 60 years, but now the job is done.

    In selecting Rishi Sunak the Tory kingmakers disenfranchised the last remaining members and so finally abolished the party. At the next election the Conservatives will have almost no trust, no campaigners, no democratic authority and drastically fewer votes.

    They don’t seem to care. But after a palace coup, victor’s justice follows. And that is what is coming. Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, in mysterious lock-step with other governments who echo the globalist agenda, will quickly accelerate the work of building-back-better. You know the routine – Net Zero, more tax, more state control, cultural Marxism and so on.

    Make no mistake, they are sincere. Sunak, Hunt and party grandees weren’t bribed, blackmailed or ordered to act by Klaus Schwab. That is not how it works. They believe in what they are doing. Ambition, entitlement (they know best), conformity, peer pressure and the lucrative jobs or appointments that await team players keep the rest in line.

    Hunt and Sunak don’t see globalism as the scorched-earth policy that it is. They see it as the answer to the everything-crisis. They are surrounded by indoctrinated civil servants, academics, advisers, think tanks who drown them in a never-ending flow of (modelled) doomsday research and technocratic people-management and processing solutions to these spurious crises. It’s all part of the Westminster/global echo chamber. The PM and Chancellor are group thinkers by nature and don’t want to go down in history as the team who destroyed the planet. So a central bank cryptocurrency, universal basic income and technocratic eco-tyranny makes perfect sense.

    Sunak and Hunt are in effect half-competent useful idiots for Davos. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

    How did it come to this? For the last 100 years the science of persuasion or, to be blunt, brainwashing, along with institutional and family breakdown has developed apace. IT and social media were the game-changer, at the same time as the rapid expansion of the State. It all came together during the Covid catastrophe. It was a master class. Fear is the disruptor that activates the fight-or-flight state in which the human mind becomes highly suggestible. Then the messaging tidal wave of death and misery flooded in through the MSM, social media and every outlet controlled by the global network. Mass safetyism psychosis followed. Fear of not conforming.

    But wasn’t this really just a speeding-up of what had been happening for decades, especially in politics? As the opinion-forming classes came to be dominated and influenced in turn by a smaller and smaller group of wealthy and powerful individuals, running global corporations and supranational organisations, the market of ideas has been closed down. If you want to do business you must slowly accept the new world that is being set up. And politicians, who are more narcissistic and sociopathic than ever, are happy to do so.

    Compare the Conservatives’ reaction to last month’s events with Gordon Brown’s accession in 2007, which Boris Johnson called a ‘palace coup’. He, in common with almost every other Tory MP and commentator, was outraged and demanded a general election. In fact Brown had more legitimacy than Sunak on almost every measure. Yet now, the same Tory chorus of outrage is silent and many openly back the new and illegitimate PM. To see the hypocrisy is a circus of the macabre.

    One way of illustrating how this has happened is to examine the journey of one particular Sunak supporter; former Tory leader and Thatcherite firebrand William Hague. Remember his 2001 speech?

    ‘Let me take you on a journey to a foreign land, to Britain after a second term of Tony Blair . . . the Chancellor returning from Brussels carrying instructions to raise taxes still further. Control over our own economy given away. The jail doors opening as thousands more serious criminals walk out early to offend again. Police morale at a new low. The price gauge on the petrol pump spinning ever faster as fuel taxes rise still further.’ Hague also talked a lot about democracy and the ‘sheer, unadulterated hypocrisy’ of those who ‘say one thing and do another’, referring to people who ‘are driven in cars 250 yards to give speeches telling other people not to drive’.

    Today William Hague is a solemn advocate for the COP meetings, where people fly thousands of miles to tell other people not to fly. He also calls for tax rises, voted to remain in the EU, thinks Sunak brings hope and stability and that Tory members shouldn’t be allowed to vote for their leader anyway.
    And, as an artistic detail, it was reported that Jeremy Hunt was seen returning from Brussels the day before he was appointed Chancellor.

    Whether they know it or not, our politicians have become permanent civil servants for a global government. Their views have changed to conform to the new globalist ideology and they really don’t like us. It simply doesn’t matter that the Tories will be wiped out at the next election. Just another once-great institution will have served its purpose.

    Many still can’t grasp this and their reasoning is valid. After all, why would you ‘kill your own customers’? Or voters indeed?
    This view fails to understand the power of ideas; especially ideas which have taken on the proportions of a full-blown psychosis. History is littered with people who have killed their own customers and destroyed their entire countries for the sake of an idea.

    So Hunt and Sunak will rest easy when their party is destroyed at the next election. They agree with most of what Labour thinks anyway.

    I realise that much which is written here implies some dark, shadowy figure pulling the strings. After all, aren’t useful idiots useful to someone? But I suggest this is the wrong question. Far better to know what is being done and how. Then one has a far better chance of stopping it.

    Well worth a read which is why I put the whole up though I would take issue with the authors conclusion that it is all by a natural political process. It seems quite obvious to me that most of it was engineered.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/sunak-and-hunt-civil-servants-for-a-davos-government/

    1. Agreed, it may not be a single ‘dark, shadowy figure’ but it is the WEF and it’s adherents in the UN who are eager to follow the Schwabstika as the western world is driven to destruction.

  17. ‘Morning, Peeps. Dry at the mo – as is the weather – but the monsoon is due to return tomorrow.

    I found this on GBN, and it makes interesting reading on the subject of lockdowns:

    Covid lockdown was ‘COMPLETE FAILURE of government’ and ‘radical experiment’ says Lord Sumption

    The former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption launched a scathing attack on the Government

    George McMillanSENIOR DIGITAL PRODUCER

    PUBLISHED Friday 25 November 2022 – 17:55

    The Government had no right to impose a lockdown during the Covid pandemic and embarked on “radical experiment with human life” without Parliamentary scrutiny, according to former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption.

    In a blistering attack he told GB News on Friday: “The National Audit Office, last July, gave us fairly up to date estimates of the costs of the lockdown. They put the cost to the Government at £376 billion. That’s an enormous sum.

    “It’s by far the biggest contributor to our current financial crisis. That’s fair to say that some part of that £376 billion pounds would have been incurred even if we hadn’t locked people down.

    “About a quarter of it, a bit less than a quarter, has been spent, for example, on improving health services, but the greater part wouldn’t have been incurred, it would have been avoided if we hadn’t locked people down.

    “This is an example, it’s the most dramatic example, of what Rishi Sunak said in an interview in the Spectator a few weeks ago when he pointed out the complete failure of the Government even to consider the collateral costs of lockdown before making the decision. There never was a cost benefit analysis, in spite of voices like Sunak’s own.

    “You really can’t embark on a radical experiment with human life like this without actually working out the consequences.”
    During an interview with Phillip Davies and Esther McVey on GB News, he continued: “When you look at the balance of factors, I don’t think there was ever the slightest prospect, even in an age of human rights, that the courts were going to take over the Government’s function in measuring the consequences

    “The really critical issue was whether the Government had the power to do these things at all without any effective parliamentary supervision.

    “My view is that they did not. They should have used an Emergency Powers Act called the Civil Contingencies Act, which would have enabled Parliament to control the basis on which this was continuing, and how long it was continuing, and on what terms.

    “They didn’t do that. The courts, I think, shamefully failed to intervene to make them.”

    He added: “In other countries courts did intervene. The Spanish courts famously said, you can’t do something as serious as this without using emergency powers that give the parliament the right to supervise at every stage. Our courts did not do the same.

    “The French courts intervened repeatedly. They had a fast track process to knock down any excessive measures taken by the government, which they used several times. The German courts stood up for the right of protests, ours did not.

    “The deafening silence of the human rights lobby in the face of this really is quite remarkable.”

    Lord Sumption told GB News: “To my mind, the biggest governmental failure on this was the refusal of the Government to consider most of the relevant factors. And it was a refusal, it wasn’t just carelessness, as Rishi Sunak has made clear, the official line was not even to recognise that the collateral costs were there, let alone that they were serious.”

    Lord Sumption was also asked about a proposal in Scotland to stop jury trials for sex offences.

    On this he told GB News: “Well, the experience of other countries like New Zealand, who have introduced an option by defendants to opt for trial by judges rather than by juries, suggests that the more serious the offences, the more likely the offender is to do better.

    “And in a judge-only trial, so I suspect they may will find that the result of this change is in fact to reduce the conviction rate, because juries have a well established dislike of sexual offenders, especially when it involves young or vulnerable people, which sometimes blinds them to the weakness of the evidence, particularly in very old cases.

    “I think that we have to have juries because they inspire public confidence. Public Confidence is absolutely fundamental in the criminal law.

    “But I do think we’ve got to be aware of the price we pay for having juries, which is that you have people convicted by a tribunal that doesn’t actually have to give its reasons and that can lead to really quite serious injustice.”

      1. I’m sure you are right. Besides, within the Bigoted Broadcasting Corporation I imagine that GBN is regarded as the enemy!

    2. Judge only trial only works if the judges themselves do not have a political agenda, far too many do.

        1. He and his old flat mate fiddled with the treason act, so that he could start the process of wrecking our country.

    3. Good stuff, but he’s stuck on the legalistic aspect (unsurprisingly). Above that, it was morally wrong. The legal aspects of other countries’ responses he mentions didn’t stop them from imposing draconian and anti-human measures.

    4. “There never was a cost benefit analysis, in spite of voices like Sunak’s own.”

      If the creep didn’t like it, he should have resigned.

  18. 368408+ up ticks,

    Morning Each

    These payments are acting as relief ( safety ) valves to stem the urgent need for civil unrest ( a bloody revolution)
    the herd is getting a pacifying piece of the rake off.

    Give a little take a lot, reverse milking,

    Take the mass erection of the money mills, the only wind
    you can depend on is the herds wind of ill fortune, and the politico / friends wind of good fortunes being made.

    In short, via the polling booth this Countries milking teats
    have got to be seriously red raw.

    Health warning,
    In regards to lab/lib/con/ukip candidates / sitting MPs
    wearing sheepskins, check the contents

  19. SIR – Is it really necessary for the Government to spend £25 million of taxpayers’ money on an information campaign telling us how to save energy?

    Turning off radiators in empty rooms, switching off heating when going out, taking showers instead of baths – have we become such a hapless nation that we need to be asked to do these things?

    Peter Rosie
    Ringwood, Hampshire

    The Nanny State simply can’t help itself, these days it is inherent in everything it does. It goes hand in hand with banning things and generally wrecking the economy and our way of life…

    1. Most of this advice is puerile drivel that will have no significant effect on your bills!

      1. It isn’t meant to affect the public’s bills, the advertising revenues are paid to the media in return for “favourable attitudes” in

        their reporting of government action or inaction.

        The same goes for some large commercial organisations who have mysterious and rather pointless advertising campaigns.

  20. Off out now for the first Christmas charity fair for three years. It’s in a nice warm venue anyway.

    2. Happy hedgehogging (presumably), and I hope it’s a nice change from the logistics of worrying about your husband.

      1. Yes – it went well and it was good to be back there after an absence of three years. Husband phoned me after I was home and he sounded a bit brighter. Will be going in to see him this afternoon.

  22. Someone bright explain this to me: why, if you earn twice as much, do you not take home twice as much?

    1. Progressive “fair” taxes.
      But you don’t spend twice as much on a cucumber at Tescos.

    2. You only take home twice as much and more often even more, if your a politician.
      If you are, you don’t actually in the sense of the word, ‘earn’ anything at all.
      Produce nothing but take home everything that sticks to you.

  23. SIR – Our latest energy bill has indicated a 35 per cent decrease in consumption over the past year. This was on top of the previous year’s savings. How disappointing, then, to see that the cost has risen by £140 a month during the same period. However, as pensioners, my partner and I have received £250 each for our annual winter fuel allowance, the £400 subsidy from the Government and a £150 council tax refund. The final result: little change. The Government’s energy policies amount to giving with one hand and taking with the other. Is anyone going to sort this out?

    Paul Caruana
    Truro, Cornwall

    Mr Caruana, another poor individual who doesn’t realise the Government doesn’t “give”, it simply redistributes, from other taxpayers, to you.

    1. Morning, Bob! Piddling down here again, but I’m happy because I got out and made the most of the good weather yesterday. 🙂

  25. Bugger, bugger and treble bugger. Put all the loaf ingredients in the Kenwood mixer Turned on – blasting sound. The speed control has packed up. And the damned machine is ONLY 45 years old…. Grrr. Trying to find a local repairer…..

    Still – it mixed the dough quicker than ever before – only has one speed. The fastest!

    1. ‘Morning, Bill.

      A common fault on the older Kenwoods. I am but a mere amateur but was able to buy the part and fit it myself. It lasted until we disposed of it some years later via Flebay.

      2. ‘Morning, Hugh.

        One of my brothers is a big fan of Flebay. A few years ago he needed a cement mixer to mix concrete for a conservatory base he was building. Buying one on Flebay was cheaper than hiring one locally. So he bought one, used it for a few weeks, then sold it again on Flebay for a huge profit!

          1. Nah! I’m the only one. The others are just teddies. I’m the eldest of five (four boys, one girl) but one brother left this world four years ago at the age of 65.

    2. ‘Morning, Bill.

      A common fault on the older Kenwoods. I am but a mere amateur but was able to buy the part and fit it myself. It lasted until we disposed of it some years later via Flebay.

    3. Only 45 years? Pffft. Planned obsolescence has evidently been going for longer than I thought. 🤣

        1. You’re making a good job of NOT complaining, Bill.

          As for simply removing the casing get a small apt screwdriver, depending on the cases screw, that old they’re probably slotted, unscrew them all (don’t lose any) and the pull the cover off. Look for anything that might be blackened and buy and fit a new part. Simple – even for us oldies.

          1. You may say that, I couldn’t possibly comment.

            Some people have manual skills: others don’t. I don’t. I spent half an hour once before trying to get the case off the mixer. No success.

            Stick to what you are good at – that’s my motto. I just have to find something to be good at….

          2. That’s a good point, Soliciting doesn’t have many life-skills to carry over into old age and the desire to ‘fix’ things.

    7. Bad luck. I can recommend the Panasonic SD2500 Bread maker. Have been using one for over 20 years….very easy to use pop all the ingredients into the tin, press a couple of buttons and Bob’s your uncle or in this case the loaf of your choice. Said machine will also make jam (but not at the same time as a loaf!)

      PS We have a Swan brand electric coffee percolator which is still going strong (or medium if you prefer) after 47 years…..

      1. I am old fashioned (Surely not, I hear you cry). Nothing would persuade me to have a bread maker. But thanks for the tip.

        1. I use a bread maker to make my gluten free loaves – perfect every time and cheaper than buying the cardboard replicas from supermarkets

          3. Just have the spinach with a poached egg on top and mash piped around it, You can’t beat Ouef Florentine.

  27. SIR – When I was a primary school pupil in the 1950s my times tables were drilled into me, and I am thankful for it.

    However, I still remember a question in my 11-plus examination that asked: “Which number multiplied by itself makes 169?”

    I was mentally working my way through the 12 times table when my class teacher whispered: “Thirteen thirteens”.

    Mary Moore
    Croydon, Surrey

    Same here. I can remember doing the 14, 15 and 16 times tables, but somehow the 13 times wasn’t included. I have often wondered why…

    1. I’m quite proud that I can still instantly answer any questions on times tables. But as most of us were taught only up to twelve. 😉🙃

    2. I was taught to break the sum as follows to make it easier to do in one’s head :

      13 x 17

      10 x 17 = 170
      3 x 17 = 51 +

      13 x 17 = 221

  28. A rather poor batch of letters today, but this one made me smile:

    SIR – I’ve made a point of being particularly naughty this year, in the hope that Father Christmas will bring me a sack full of coal.

    Martin Bastone
    East Grinstead, West Sussex

      1. Why would anyone wish to take a business call out of work hours whilst ‘dressing for dinner’?

        1. I know one woman who carries her telephone everywhere. It’s permanently clamped to her ear – she can be running a marathon and she’ll still have her phone with her.

          I see that as appalling training of your colleagues as having such a single point of failure is inherently weak. Not allowing and encouraging people to think for themselves and solve their own problems is also stupid.

          But yes, lots of people do take calls outside of hours. The Warqueen during particularly big client projects does. When they’re paying you £300K a day you tend to be on call.

    5. A lady of a certain age and class would generally take breakfast in her bedroom; after glancing at a newspaper or two and opening some correspondence, and possibly a telephone call, in due course she would ring for her maid, in order to be dressed.
      Hence, ‘dressing time’.

      1. Which, as I’ve mentioned earlier to a previous suggestion, would not be a suitable time to take a business call.

      2. In the old-fashioned grand houses, before a dinner bell was rung, an earlier bell would warn, “Time to dress for dinner” but George would know this having lived the life of luxury that was the habit of the rich.

        It certainly wasn’t for ‘supper’ or ‘tea’.

    6. Dressing time is the time from when you hear her husband drive up to the house and you getting out the back door

    7. After one has shagged the brains of the other party out, there’s dressing time, before one goes home to one’s spouse…

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    2. £20 per month?! For waffling articles about windmills and how people want them? For Ambrose Pritchard to look at reality and write about the exact opposite?

      Heck, the comments are sometimes more interesting than the article.

          1. Here’s an example:

            Christopher Gill, not just leave the ECHR but also the ECJ and repeal the Human Rights Act, leaving no loophole for lawyers drawing Legal Aid to appeal against the deportation of illegal criminals.

            Like 58

    3. We were given a renewal notice asking for £185 pa.

      As I said in a post here yesterday:

      My subscription to the online DT ran out today.

      A few weeks ago the DT warned me that my sub was about to expire and told me the renewal would cost me £185.

      I thought I would wait Mr Micawber like to see if something better did not turn up and indeed it has done.

      We have just re-subscribed to the DT at a price of £69 as a Black Friday DT offer – added to which the DT is going to send us a DT coffee mug in the post.

      The alternative is to sign on for a three month trial period for £1 but you will then be debited for a further £185 if you forget to cancel your direct debit.

      So: if you want to get a year’s sub (and a free DT mug!) to the DT sign on today and don’t pay the £185 .

      I don’t know if the Black Friday £69 pa deal is available today

  31. 368408+ up ticks,

    Continue to give the electoral majority the shout and the following generation will do exactly what the area imam
    orders them to do.

    Princess of Wales exclusive: Not enough is being done to help the next generation
    The Princess says she is determined to improve the lives of under-5s and ‘shine a light’ on crucial early years education

    Be aware that a spotlight could reveal some very nasty scurrying, imported via the lab/lib/con coalition,
    foreign paedophiles, thereby giving the party a bad name

    1. What does the Princess of Wales mean by ‘helping the next generation’? If she is talking about more government funding then she should be advised to keep out of politics – her father-in-law will probably self-destruct if he keeps on meddling in political matters.

  32. 368408+ up ticks,

    Invasions supervised by proven political complete arseholes kill kids, a tidal wave of potential patients on every tide, there is no room in education,accommodation, incarceration and MEDICATION no matter what origin the child is a child, is a child, is a child.

    May one ask,
    Who keeps returning these political creatures to power ?
    Ogga1,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    19m
    How can the NHS be the second biggest area of government spending (after social security & pensions) & not have enough hospitals & doctors to treat s a sick child?

    More money is spent on the NHS now than ever before. It can’t be down to lack of money.

    ‘They said they had no space’: Family says boy, 5, died after he was sent home from hospital – Sky News,
    ‘They said they had no space’: Family says boy, 5, died after he was sent home from hospital —
    ‘They said they had no space’: Family says boy, 5, died after he was sent home from hospital —

    The grieving family of a five-year-old boy who died after being sent home from hospital have told Sky News he would still be alive if they had been listened to.

    apple.news

    1. Ots not lack of space. I think it because so many NHS trained staff have gone over to the rapidly growing private sector. Even the hospital porter’s.

        2. I was very impressed when at the NNUH. The bloke (and blokess) pushing my bed around were proud to be called porters.

          1. In my day it was just the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, in Unthank Road, my brother and I were often prowling outside the Nurse’s home.

            The Kiddie Horspiddle was the Jenny Lind, where I had a hernia fixed when I was 3 (1947).

          8. And at about that time they got rid of a second-rate golf course to build a third-rate university not far from the Unthank Road!

  33. Headline in the DT today:

    Europe’s largest electric car battery refinery given go-ahead in boost to UK industry
    Planning permission paves the way for the creation of 1,000 jobs.

    Top BTL post:

    Hugh Tredegar12 HRS AGO

    A battery in an electric car, lets say an average Tesla, is made of 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic ……. one thousand pounds of minerals, that had to be mined, and processed, into a battery, that stores electricity ….. generated by oil, gas, coal, or water ….

    That is the truth, about the lie, of “green energy.

    * * *

    Bravo, Sir!

    1. They’re gonna need more kiddy slaves to dig out the minerals.
      Do Banoil realise what they are doing?

  34. I see Princess Woke Wales is banging on about how terribly badly children are treated.

    I thought that the royal family was not supposed to interfere in political (or other contentious) isshoos.

    1. Good morning Mr T, and everyone.
      Conscience. There are fathers who go abroad and leave their family without a smoke detector; there are parents who are unable to use bleach or to open the windows, so a 2 year old child dies of a respiratory illness.
      There are even parents who send young children to boarding school to get them out of the way!
      If there were an international table of ‘child treatment’, the UK would have a low score.

          5. Most of the ‘kids’ nowadays look as if they have come up from a mine or down a chimney. Must be Climate Change – or sumfink.

      3. My BTL comment in the ‘Letters’ page – and a rebuttal:

        The Princess of Wales is concentrating her efforts to make Under 5s have better lives and a better future
        No effort for pensioners then, who have made that future, and those children, possible.

        ANDREW SCOLEY

        Perhaps you’d like to have a go at that problem. I think she is right to be trying to her best for the young age group, she can’t do everything.

        2 HRS AGO
        Reply to ANDREW SCOLEY

        Being one, I’d rather concentrate on helping Pensioners and let the Grandmas and Grandpas have enough time, energy and money to help their grandchildren.

      4. I was sent away to boarding school at the age of 8. I was miserable and homesick for the first few weeks but I soon settled down and made the best of it. My parents were not being cruel – they were just doing what the other parents in their set did with their little boys and girls.

        As the man said:

        Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all!

        1. I went at 10½. I was miserable and homesick for the next eight years. It never got better. I just got used to it – and hated it.

          1. I left home aged 8 to go to boarding school. After that, I was only a visitor at my parents house, during school holidays. After that, university, and my own place.
            Wonder what it’s like to grow up with your parents?

    2. Given the maount of cash poured into children, either through education or opportunity you start to wonder why outcomes are so appalling.

      And then you see that the money doesn’t actually go anywhere, and isn’t really needed because the state always misspends it.

      Children were doing fine when parents were responsible for them. When schools taught without interference. When kids weren’t worried about getting stabbed by a black kid over drugs. When there were places to play. When the police could clip a kid around the head rather than fill in fifty forms, when parents comprised a man and a woman who were home owners and one worked, rather than going to child care all day while both parents are forced to work due to oppressive taxes.

      The failure is government. Start, middle and end, the state has set about destroying society and the bedrock of society is the family. When the state sought to destroy and replace the family society collapsed and the cycle has only meant more money poured into the pit of the state to be incinerated on incompetence ever since.

      1. And yet the answer to all our problems, if you listen to the “Left” is more of the stuff that’s an expensive failure

        1. …and Einstein had it right when he said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

      2. I agree, Wibbles, there are certain things that haven’t improved in age.

        Time to bring back old-fashioned ideas like respect and the rule of law.

    3. Her wokeness is trotting out usual mantra that the taxpayer should take on the role of early years parenting. She will be asking the state to feed them next, oh hang on…

  35. Reeves: Oxford college roasted my grammar so I went elsewhere

    RACHEL REEVES has said she didn’t apply to one of Oxford University’s most prestigious colleges because they corrected her grammar on the phone.

    The shadow chancellor, 43, was a pupil in Bromley, south-east London, when she plucked up the courage to call Christ Church about applying to the university. Writing in The Daily Telegraph today, she said that when she called and said: “Me and a friend would like to come to your open day”, she was corrected by an “admissions lady” who said “emphatically” that she should have said: “My friend and I.”

    Ms Reeves said: “Did she not know how difficult it had been to make that phone call? I had nobody else to make that call for me, please try and make me feel like I might be welcome there! So anyway I didn’t apply to Christ Church, I applied for New College because they didn’t correct my grammar on the phone.”

    Ms Reeves, who is the daughter of two teachers, was educated at Cator Park School for Girls, a state school in Bromley, where she said “going to university wasn’t normal”. She was accepted to study philosophy, politics and economics at New College.

    A spokesperson for Christ Church said: “Christ Church is fully committed to building an environment that is inclusive and welcoming to all students and staff, as well as to increasing access to the university and the College for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and under-represented groups.”

    Three cheers for that “admissions lady” in standing up for … high standards. The cretinous Reeves is typical of those who wish to trash Standard (proper) English. I suppose that, like most of her ilk, she would prefer to use vapid and idiotic Americanese gibberish.

        2. There were 180 boys at my school, Bungay Grammar School (1955-1959) so classes were on average just 30 boys, until you got to the sixth form when there were only about 10-15 boys. Most teachers (all male except the Art Teacher) had served in WWII and thus could expand on their knowledge and make lessons interesting and made one keen to learn.

        3. Wouldn’t you say that schools with low exam results are tailor-made for the education of socialists?

    2. Oh thank you for that, Grizz! She is a pathetic little whinger who go ‘where she is today’ on the back of her ability to look a bit good on camera! A lot like her predecessor!

    4. How pathetic. How ignorant. What was she trying to illustrate here, the fact that she hadn’t been taught proper English, even when her parents were “teachers”, or is she “demonstrating” prejudice (was going to say discrimination but the meaning has been corrupted) on the part of Oxford?

    5. When teaching I found that dimmer students found it difficult to grasp terms such as ‘subject pronoun’ and ‘object pronoun’ – however most of them spoke relatively accurately.

      One of my colleagues, a Geography teacher, invariably got ‘me’ and ‘I’ wrong so he would say something like : Shirley and me went into Lyme Regis yesterday or He gave the present to Shirley and I. The rule which all my pupils learnt was ‘Kill Shirley’. Take Shirley out of the sentence and you will immediately hear whether it is right or wrong. Shirley and me went into Lyme Regis and He gave the present to Shirley and I illustrate the point.

      2. The ‘I’ before ‘me’ rule:
        I have been phoned by the manager.
        The manager has phoned me.

    6. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
      Hebrews 13,2.

      The irony is that those who went to Oxbridge rarely if ever miss an opportunity to inform other people of that detail.

      1. Is that similar to the way that Lefties invariably turn the conversation around to (Left-wing) politics at every available opportunity?

      2. Nope; when you apply to Oxford or Cambridge, you’re being assessed from the first moment until the decision. You wouldn’t walk into a job interview with a sloppy CV and expect to get the job.

    7. I never credited Christ Church with so much good judgement. If you’re 18 years old, don’t know the difference between “I” and “me” and get upset when someone tells you, then what on EARTH makes you think Rachel Reeves, that you are qualified to study at Oxford?

    1. I don’t know about, “when the English begin to hate……” but Flanders and Swan have it about right:

      The English
      (Flanders & Swan)

      The rottenest bits of these islands of ours
      We’ve left in the hands of three unfriendly powers
      Examine the Irishman, Welshman or Scot
      You’ll find he’s a stinker as likely as not

      The English the English the English are best
      I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest

      The Scotsman is mean as we’re all well aware
      He’s boney and blotchy and covered with hair
      He eats salty porridge, he works all the day
      And hasn’t got bishops to show him the way

      The English the English the English are best
      I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest

      The Irishman now our contempt is beneath
      He sleeps in his boots and he lies through his teeth
      He blows up policemen or so I have heard
      And blames it on Cromwell and William the Third

      The English are moral the English are good
      And clever and modest and misunderstood

      The Welshman’s dishonest, he cheats when he can
      He’s little and dark more like monkey than man
      He works underground with a lamp on his hat
      And sings far too loud, far too often and flat

      The English the English the English are best
      I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest

      And crossing the channel one cannot say much
      For the French or the Spanish, the Danish or Dutch
      The Germans are German, the Russians are red
      And the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed

      The English are noble, the English are nice
      And worth any other at double the price

      And all the world over each nation’s the same
      They’ve simply no notion of playing the game
      They argue with umpires, they cheer when they’ve won
      And they practice before hand which spoils all the fun

      The English the English the English are best
      I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest

      It’s not that they’re wicked or naturally bad
      It’s just that they’re foreign that makes them so mad
      The English are all that a nation should be
      And the pride of the English are Chipper and me

      The English the English the English are best
      I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest

      1. 368408+ up ticks,

        Morning A,
        Place your diddery do, (not that one) on
        the post, twitter will explain ALL.

    3. I am sure it is, ogga. We have to deal with them first, before we sort out the problems they have deliberately made for us.

    4. Pity our side can’t spell…

      Not my original comment, but the Queen’s! Many years ago, when Rastus was a student at UEA, he joined a pro-monarchy demonstration at the time of the Queen’s visit in 1968. The students wrote a long banner, which was meant to read: “No to anarchy, yes to monarchy”. Unfortunately, they started writing at opposite ends of the banner and didn’t have enough room for the R in Monarchy, so the line read: “Yes to monachy”.

      When the Queen saw this banner, she smiled wryly and said: “Pity our side can’t spell”.

      You can see the banner clearly in this video, at 2.12 – and glimpses before. Apparently Rastus is holding the banner,

      https://eafa.ehost.uea.ac.uk/work/?id=1110935&regenerate=true&regenerate=true

      1. When the Raleigh cycle company refurbished its factory and office block in the mid-1990s it was re-opened in a ceremony by the visiting HRH The Duchess of Kent. A plaque had been ordered from a local Nottingham firm to commemorate the occasion. On the plaque was recorded the name “Dutchess of Kent”. An irate Purchasing Director rang the firm (it was a Saturday morning) and told them that if a replacement plaque, correctly spelt, wasn’t delivered to the factory within the hour; then the misspelt one would be sent to The Nottingham Evening Post with the full intention of giving that firm adverse publicity. A replacement plaque, correctly spelt, arrived within the hour.

      3. Since leaving UEA my spelling has improved and now that Charles is king I am not convinced that anarchy is not preferable to ‘monachy.’ The clip does not include a skirmish between the supporters of The Queen and the Anarchists in which I pursue a hirsute afro style curly-headed anarchist (who flees in terror) with my banner which, by then has a caret between the a and the c and an r inserted.

        1. Mirror time. (sorry)

          In any case, do you really believe that Charles enjoys being constantly in the public eye?

          By all accounts he values the outdoor life, riding, gardening and looking after his estates.

          1. That’s by his accounts! He’s also jealous of his dignity and his royal status, and he gives every indication of being a Malthusian.

  37. I think someone at Broadcasting House must be on to us nottlers.

    Yesterday, I wrote this “Instead, it’s 6.30am and time to make a pot of tea before the Today Programme says “misogyny””.

    This morning, guess what was the pretty well first word I heard when turning on the radio? No time for tea then.

    1. When I was at UEA I sailed in a sailing team against Essex University. They named their 420 class dinghies: Miss Conception, Miss Anthropy, Miss Behaviour, Miss Apprehension, Miss Carriage and Miss Ogyny.

      1. When I was teaching in Manchester we decided to give our 4th year streams names instead of being 1, 2, 3 and 4. As it was Lit we thought 4 Novel, 4 Poem, 4 Story and then we arrived at 4 Play. The idea was abandoned and we stuck with the streaming numbers 😉

        1. A great pal of the MR’s (whom she taught) had two daughters. I could never remember their names. So I called them Number One and Number Two – and, indeed, when she arrived, Number Three.

          Thirty years on – when they phone or write, they still identify themselves by numbers!!

        2. When I was at school a group of boys formed a pop group and called themselves the Four Skins.

  39. Putin talks to mothers of soldiers fighting in Ukraine in staged meeting. 26 November 2022

    Vladimir Putin has met with a handpicked cadre of mothers of soldiers fighting in Ukraine for a carefully staged meeting meant to calm public anger over mobilisation.

    While dozens of ordinary mothers have gone public saying they were snubbed by the Kremlin, Putin sat down with a former government official, the mother of a senior military and police official from Chechnya, and other women active in pro-war NGOs financed by the state.

    The Guardian has managed to confirm the identifies of at least three of the women who met with Putin on Friday in a highly publicised meeting at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo on the outskirts of Moscow.

    Of course it was a staged meeting! No politician is going to appear in a public forum with the attendees screaming at him. You have to contrast this to the British experience where NO politician will accept responsibility for the losses of UK servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/25/putin-talks-to-mothers-of-soldiers-fighting-in-ukraine-in-staged-meeting

    1. Our politicians have no sense of responsibility. They only re log in to reality close to an election. …….and then relax.
      Not just politicians but civil servants and a well known horrible journalist.

    2. Of course, a typical Graudian bit of hype propaganda. They are so stupidly lefty and can’t see how right-thinking people laugh.

  40. Putin talks to mothers of soldiers fighting in Ukraine in staged meeting. 26 November 2022

    Vladimir Putin has met with a handpicked cadre of mothers of soldiers fighting in Ukraine for a carefully staged meeting meant to calm public anger over mobilisation.

    While dozens of ordinary mothers have gone public saying they were snubbed by the Kremlin, Putin sat down with a former government official, the mother of a senior military and police official from Chechnya, and other women active in pro-war NGOs financed by the state.

    The Guardian has managed to confirm the identifies of at least three of the women who met with Putin on Friday in a highly publicised meeting at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo on the outskirts of Moscow.

    Of course it was a staged meeting! No politician is going to appear in a public forum with the attendees screaming at him. You have to contrast this to the British experience where NO politician will accept responsibility for the losses of UK servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/25/putin-talks-to-mothers-of-soldiers-fighting-in-ukraine-in-staged-meeting

    1. Oh how sad.

      The earlier implication in the sodding meeja was that someone white and brutal had killed him.

      1. They did.
        There was an elderly white bed-blocking so the poor gimmegrant couldn’t be treated promptly.

          1. I wonder how many infected/infectious gimmegrants are wandering the streets having crossed undetected and the first one will hear of them is when they appear at A&E

          2. And then be told that white people can’t be seen because the (envy of the World) NHS is “overwhelmed…

          3. None if they had been correctly vaccinated as children.

            In moments of jest or anger I occasionally use derogatory expressions, but preferably not in print.
            That dead person was somebody’s son, somebody’s brother and possibly somebody’s father. He (probably he) came to the UK for a better life, and it is not his fault that the British Government is composed of incompetent unintelligent donkeys.
            Edit: no disrespect to Equus africanus and its subspecies, nor any of the Equidae.

          4. Then he could have applied legally, with useful skills. Or stayed in France, or Germany, or Turkey or every country he passed through.

            He was a criminal who has no right to be here. They’ve proved themselves theives, rapists and paedophiles. They’re destroying property because they want more. I have no tolerance in me. The state, by forcing this tidal flood of filth into this country have exhausted it all.

          5. Agreed 100%. Tim needs to look at his sense of homeland values. Gimmegrunts are a blot on the landscape of my English Country and they have NO right to be here.

          6. And just what does the competence or otherwise of the British government have to do with the fact that this individual almost certainly arrived already carrying this highly infectious disease and almost certainly passed through numerous other countries where he could have tried for his better life?

          8. He could have stayed at home and then he wouldn’t potentially be infecting other sons/brothers/fathers.
            over here.

    3. How many does that leave? Half a million? It’s not our problem. He had a choice. Hopefully more of them go as well.

    5. So much now for diphtheria being a rare disease in the west, it is probably being spread by hundreds of invaders..

      If only they had believed their covid hysteria and made the invaders wear masks, this bacterial disease might not spread!

    1. ‘Woolies’ in the 1950s and 1960s was a wonderful arcade where you could purchase a million-and-one useful, varied, decent quality items at a reasonable price.

      ‘Woolies’ in the 1970s and 1980s was a cheap and nasty junk shop with few lines all of abysmal quality. I bet Frank Winfield Woolworth was gyrating in his grave by then.

        1. Tell him from me to get a grip – (but stand behind the door when you do)!!

          We ailing men don’t appreciate the work that the indoor staff do…

          KBO – both….

    2. Two parcels for Junior’s Christmas sat one in Shefflied, another in Soton MC. Not moving because the post office wants more money.

      Surely, to get more money they should do something better, provide a significantly improved service? Or do they just expect a 10% bigger pay bill? Who do they think will pay for that? Customers? Higher costs, less demand. Management? Yes, then they’ll keep their standard of living by cutting *their* costs and will sack people.

  44. Hi all we’ve just had a survey leaflet from the Con party poked through the door. one of the question:

    Have you, or a family member, benefited from Government assistance (e.g. Council tax rebate) to help with the cost of living crisis? . They just don’t get it, do they? For a start, who has caused the cost of living crisis? And where does “government assistance” come from?

    1. The old story of the mugger who steals £1,000 from you and expects you to be grateful if he gives you back £50.

    2. Ah, but th emore the government can do to help, the more it loks good. That it’s the source of all the mess is irrelevant. Stupid people – too many of them about – will associate the government with helping them pay their bills.

      Nudge unit in action there.

    3. Handouts work though don’t they?

      When it comes to election time the punters remember who gave them bigger and better handouts.

    4. And government conjuring money out of nothing to shower on people is only going to make inflation worse!

  45. I gather that the egregious Badbreath is cashing in (promptly) on Her Late Majesty.

    What a creep he is.

  46. Just been out with chainsaw finishing off reducing the elm I dropped yesterday into manageable pieces.
    12″ diameter at the bottom and 27′ up to the crown. I’d estimate it as being 35y old before it died off.
    I’ve now a stack of logs, possibly close to a ton, waiting for further cutting, chopping & stacking and a load of lighter branches & brash to sort out.

    One thing about dropping dead elms is that the brash is already seasoned and only needs a quick drying out before being usable as kindling.

    1. Talking about dropping dead elms, reminds that yesterday some told me that I was “drop dead gorgeous”. Or did he mean “Drop dead, gorgon”? Lol.

      1. If you had regaled him with your world famous crumble, even a cad would not equate you to a gorgon.

        1. Wasn’t the chap who wrote J’Accuse nicknnamed Gorgon after he invented the multi-headed shower?

    3. If we would get on and label the entire population and its institutions as such, a lot of time and money could be saved.

    4. Quelle sur fricken’ prise. Racist finds racism. A better idea would be to remove all the ethnics from the environment as it’s clearly not right for them.

    5. Stupid isn’t it. They/it probably don’t like the colour of the black uniform. Wearing a helmet and trousers. Ladders are slightly anti women.
      Perhaps the un male ‘members’ of the service should wear skirts, or everyone should in the service.

  49. Whilst driving down the lane just before, a little dog that resembled Dolly nearly dashed in front of my car.. it could’ve ended up as a pair of slippers- or one slipper as the sweet little thing was small . The owner was nearby and should’ve taken more care.

    1. I understand that Judy’s Dotty, upon hearing a car, cowers down on the road as a warning to Judy, in this case the miniature (chihuahua) is taking care of the owner.

      1. Our furry friends have lots many good points and exercise humans everyday is one of them ,

          2. I wake up at 6am to wrestling matches every morning. They only stopped when i fumbled my partial denture and Harry ran off with it.

      2. Harry has blown the myth that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. Because they are competitive Dolly has now learned the game of fetch.

        2. Throw a ball for Mongo and you’ll get a long look that says ‘Bloomin’ twit. Now you’re going to have to get it. What, did you expect ME to? You threw it!’

          2. Our old girl is getting a little bit like that now. She keeps her ball in her mouth and won’t always give it back to be thrown.

          3. An aunt of mine had a spaniel. She’d bring the ball. You’d throw it – she’d find and bring it back. The third time she watch =, looked at
            you and said, “It’s under the hedge, mate…you get it”

          4. Our doggo loves a search, as we see labs sniffing and checking at airports.
            All I have say to her is find it. And she never fails. A few years ago after watching a TV prog about truffle hunting. We bought some truffles and spent 15 minutes teaching her to find a small amount in our garden. Then took her to the local woods. Whilst distracting her buried the same small packet and she never missed a trick. But after her training we discovered that there were no truffles in the woods.

          5. Every dog we’ve ever owned has had that attitude.
            I’m not sure whether to be ashamed as failed owners, or be impressed that we’ve raised independently minded dogs.

    1. While one always hopes for the best, I do recall similar predictions in the 1980s about the complete end of the Labour Party – how it would destroy itself permanently.

      Seems to be still around…

      1. The entire system of government, the identikit globalist agenda, the posturing when in reality they all hold the exact same attitudes, values and opinions.

        They’re destroying themselves.

        1. You can imagine the squealing from the Left – an organisation that, with an 80 seat majority could have been oblliterated – at a Meloni figure. The entire state machine would turn on it. it would be hindered, stymied, briefed against, publicly foght, negative headlines, endless abuse, desperate muck raking, horrific insults, lies, spin and deceit.

          Which would only prove the decisions being made are the right ones.

          1. She fought all those negatives with a positive of her own. God, Family and Country. Win, win, win.

          2. That Johnson with an 80 seat majority based on his promise to get Brexit done has allowed a Brexit with the EU holding sway in Northern Ireland and EU fishing boats plundering our fishing waters shows that he is incompetent, devious, untrustworthy or a vehement remainer. The very last thing we need is the bonking greenster back again

        1. Such has been the Leftward shift in politics, that was Centre 30y ago with cross party support is now extreme Right Wing.

      3. Any chance Meloni and Co. could take over running Blighty?
        The Italians have done it before: admittedly, 2,000 years ago.

  53. Given the tremendously encouraging performance by the Engerland wendyball team yesterday, I repeat my question posed earlier in the week:

    Is this farrago competition fixed?

    2. Breaking News

      Rain expected in Qatar tomorrow so FIFA have cancelled all matches in case of a rainbow.

      1. Oh dear, hopefully it might dampen the rather annoying aspect of cheating by rolling around on the floor, if the player loses control of the ball or accidently has an ankle or shin tapped in a tackle. (It’s football).
        I’ve just seen a Saudi holding his head after heading the ball.
        More effing Cheating and diving in the Polish penalty area.
        Can’t see any female’s in the crowd supporting their men players. Perhaps they have experienced their reputation. Sarc.
        Come on Poland get a second before the ref awards another penalty for cheating.

        1. “…More effing Cheating and diving in the Polish penalty area….”

          It all rubs off, you see…

        3. “Can’t see any females in the crowd supporting their men players.”

          Ahem. Women are not allowed to watch football in Iran.

          Where’s Harry Kane’s armband about that?

  54. Phew! Another heavy job done!
    Yesterday S@H son did some concreting of the floor of the yard shed that he’s taken over and we had to get the mixer back up the garden, so he took the drum & stand up earlier, then the chassis & motor had to go up the slope from the road with him controlling it with the handles and me pulling it with a rope.

    1. Garn, you thrive on heavy work. D’ya feel like delivering a van load of logs to Mid-Suffolk?

      2. At the moment I’m trying to decide whether to go up to the shed and sharpen the 3 chainsaws (2 x Efco petrol and an Aldi battery,) up there.
        They are cutting ok at the moment, but it doesn’t take a lot for them to lose their edge.

        1. Do you use diamond abrasive chains?
          I bought one for my saw and it has given superb service.
          I only use it for wood and it cuts even oak as if it’s balsa.

      1. Me too. I had to have a lie down.

        I am still waiting for a delivery time for the 3 tons of logs I asked Robert to drop over….

  55. EU accuses US of PROFITEERING from Ukraine war through sales of guns and gas and threatens trade war . 26 November 2022.

    The EU has accused the US of profiteering from the Ukraine war by selling guns and gas at ramped up prices.

    Several high-ranking officials within the Bloc accused Joe Biden of capitalizing on the brutal Russian invasion by marking up the cost to import the vital products.

    One senior official told Politico they believe America was standing to gain the most from the continuation of the fighting, nine months after soldiers first invaded.

    You have to laugh. What do they think this war is about? Freedom and Democracy? Why do they think the US blew up the Baltic Pipeline? Russian Gas and Oil was the cheapest on the planet. It was undercutting the US!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11471383/EU-accuses-PROFITEERING-Ukraine-war-selling-higher-price-gas-weapons.html?ico=topics_pagination_desktop

    1. Gas is expensive because the entire state machine has fought energy self sufficiency for 3 decades. We could have had coal, nuclear on stand by and no price rigging, but the state wanted to make energy expensive and unreliable, so pursued a Hard Left energy policy.

  59. We shall be having Faisan Á La Normande for dinner.
    The pleasant is English and not from across the English Channel ( unlike the Guinea Fowl that is in the newly defrosted freezer- quite alone – apart from the company of a bag of frozen peas, 2 exmoor lamb chops and a pot of soup).
    The game taste of these pheasants will be balanced by the softness of the cream and apples but not forgetting the Calvados . Mind you, don’t quite know which wine will be suitable.

      1. Whites work wonders here, especially a dry Pinot Gris, as this aromatic variety will complement the sweetness of the apples in the mix. Roast pheasant partners very well with light, fruity varieties such as Pinot Noir, especially those from North America or New Zealand.

      2. We used to have a pub chant – one person would say the first line, the next person the first line and the second, the third person would say the first, second and third etc until the end when everyone would join in. Of course if you stumbled or slurred, you would have to down your drink. Can remember it I wonder? Here goes…

        One fat hen

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears, four running hares

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears, four running hares, five fat pheasants fixing for a fight

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears, four running hares, five fat pheasants fixing for a fight, six – “I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son”

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears, four running hares, five fat pheasants fixing for a fight, six – “I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son”, seven Sicilian sailors sailing the Seven Seas,

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears, four running hares, five fat pheasants fixing for a fight, six – “I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son”, seven Sicilian sailors sailing the Seven Seas,

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears, four running hares, five fat pheasants fixing for a fight, six – “I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son”, seven Sicilian sailors sailing the Seven Seas, eight slick sheet slitters slickly slitting sheets,

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears, four running hares, five fat pheasants fixing for a fight, six – “I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son”, seven Sicilian sailors sailing the Seven Seas, eight slick sheet slitters slickly slitting sheets, nine cocky sock cutters cockily cutting socks

        One fat hen and a couple of ducks, three brown bears, four running hares, five fat pheasants fixing for a fight, six – “I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son”, seven Sicilian sailors sailing the Seven Seas, eight slick sheet slitters slickly slitting sheets, nine cocky sock cutters cockily cutting socks, ten – Mrs Pudsey Wudsey had a flat cut punt, not a punt cut flat, but a flat cut punt.

  60. A man goes to see the Doctor and says, “Doc, I feel as lifeless as a Welsh resort in winter.”
    The doctor replies, “Goodness me, it sounds like you’re Rhyl.”

    2. A man is playing local cricket. He’s having an off day so the captain puts on the boundary. Not much happening as he notices one of his boot laces is undone. Rather than embarrassing the elderly couple sitting on a bench eating lunch, a couple of metres from the boundary, he turns around bends to tie his lace. Walk the batsmen hits a powerful six. And ripping through his whites it gets stuck in his bottom.
      He’s stretchered off to hospital. After examination the doc let’s him go home.
      Next morning he visits his GP. He writes
      prescription and tells him to keep taking pain killers.
      Get dressed says the doc. The guy says it’s not just the pain doc this has had a terrible psychological effect on me.
      The says I don’t understand. Well, the guy says all my friends have started to ridicule me. The doc says well how’s that……oh no he says don’t you bloody start.

      1. Golden Oldy time:
        After a wild party a lad awoke the next day with a sore behind and was puzzled to find a lettuce leaf in his behind.
        Unfortunately it was just the tip of the iceberg.

    1. 3 for me. Bet you started with my second guess.
      Wordle 525 3/6

      🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Wey hey. I got 2 yesterday 3 today but on a different ‘poster si I can’t put up me green blobs.

    3. An extraordinary record, RT; however, a ‘Hole in One’ defies rational explanation.

      Out of the blue, I understand that the chances are circa 1 in 2,700!

  62. Is it just me? Whenever I suddenly feel the need to sneeze, the tissues refuse to come out of the box. It never used to be like with man-size Kleenex.

      1. Disgusting. Tissues can go straight onto the fire. Handkerchiefs have to be sterilised and then washed. Ugh…

          2. All the hyper-hygiene is what is causing what were once trivial ailments to become much more deadly, because people are not being exposed to the weaker variants and building up their immune systems.

          3. True – BUT blowing your nose on to a hankie is disgusting for those staff who have to deal with laundry.

  63. A year after becoming a republic, Barbados pursues damages for sins of its colonial past
    Ministers call on Richard Drax, the UK owner of the largest former slave estate on the island, to atone for the deeds of his forefathers
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/25/year-becoming-republic-barbados-pursues-damages-sins-colonial/

    Our new monarch, who is preoccupied with his determination to put the poop into nincompoop, will doubtless be trying to persuade Sunak and Hunt to give billions of pounds to Barbados.

    BTL

    Haiti was the first Caribbean island to become independent in 1804.

    It is now one of the very poorest places in the world. And don’t forget Papa Doc, the Tonton Macoute and the vicious black magic of voodoo. Read Graham Greene’s The Comedians.

    Barbados was indeed lucky to have had the British – from whom the Bajans are owed nothing – as their colonial power because Britain brought wealth, stability, order and, above all cricket!

    1. By the same reasoning, we should be demanding reparations for Nazi atrocities from present-day Germans. But we don’t – that lesson was learnt by the trouble which was caused by the 1919 Versailles Treaty after WWI.

      1. Send them a bill for UK having to rebuild Coventry Cathedral and all east end and other homes destroyed. Yes, I know we did a lot of damage to Germany but, unless I am mistaking it, they started it.
        (Apologies- am in a bad mood.)

        1. It didn’t go down too well with the Germans in Basil Fawlty’s hotel when Basil said that!

      2. What about compensation from the Italians for the stress and hardship my ancestors endured under Caesar’s invasion of Britain?

      2. Any sensible government would say ‘we don’t need to, any failures you’ve had after office are your own.’

        Any sensible government, that is. We don’t have one. We have a bunch fo fools dictating how we’ll live.

    4. Everyone on the Island who comes from slave stock could be sent back to whichever African country their forbears originated.

      That would be sufficient reparation for the real Barbadians!

  64. Belarus foreign minister dies suddenly age 64 – one day after meeting Pope’s envoy amid speculation they were discussing secret peace plan to end Ukraine war ahead of meeting with Putin’s lapdog Lavrov
    Belarus foreign minister dies suddenly after speculation he’d been discussing secret peace
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

    Another victim of the Covid vaccine?

    2. The only news the bbc was interested earlier in was centered on one person, who has invented a story that the whole of the London fire service are racists and misogynistic bullies.

      1. Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, couldn’t help embellishing the story by adding in ‘homophobic’ to the list of slurs when he was interviewed by the BBC.

    4. That was my first thought. And people do die suddenly at that age – my father died in 1969 aged 64 whilst out in Leeds one afternoon from a ‘heart attack’, the first really cold day of that oncoming winter.

    5. That was my first thought. And people do die suddenly at that age – my father died in 1969 aged 64 whilst out in Leeds one afternoon from a ‘heart attack’, the first really cold day of that oncoming winter.

  65. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/lost-third-orders-tories-raised-taxes/

    ‘We lost a third of our orders after the Tories raised taxes’

    Small businesses were once the backbone of Britain – but now they involves sleepless nights and overdrawn bank accounts

    26 November 2022 • 12:00pm

    Small businesses were once the backbone of the UK economy. But the reality increasingly involves sleepless nights, relentless anxiety and overdrawn bank accounts, as inflation lays waste to the British entrepreneurial dream.

    Many survived months of lockdown only to emerge to be confronted with rising wholesale prices, huge jumps in energy costs and customers cutting back on non-essential spending.

    The fallout has hit business owners hard. Dr Jackie Mulligan, a member of the Government’s High Streets Task Force and founder of the shopping platform ShopAppy.com, warned that anxiety, depression and burnout were common among entrepreneurs.

    “Inflation has taken a sledgehammer to millions of small independent businesses and they’re being hit in the tills and their own pockets at the same time,” she said. “We spoke with one small business owner last week whose energy bills had jumped from £9,000 to £49,000 a year. There is no preparing yourself for that.”

    A quarter of small firms plan to close or downsize if the support they are receiving from the Government towards energy bills does not continue past April next year, according to the Federation of Small Businesses.

    Other policy changes are hitting businesses too. When Natalie Bamford, 37, and her husband set up Colleague Box, a corporate gift firm, in lockdown, business boomed.

    Within three months they had moved the operation from their spare room into a warehouse and turned over £1.3m in the first year. But inflation and the sweeping tax grabs announced in last week’s Autumn Statement have pumped the brakes on orders.

    “Christmas should be the best time for business, but about a third of our orders were pulled in the aftermath of the Chancellor’s announcement,” she said. “Companies either can’t afford it or they are choosing to give employees vouchers or money to help with living costs.”

    One of the orders lost was worth £80,000. Meanwhile, Ms Bamford and her husband are grappling with inflated utility bills and wholesale suppliers increasing their costs.

    She added: “Weathering these storms is taking its toll emotionally and physically, I’m not sure how much more I can take. This is the bleak and stark reality of how running a business makes you feel in this day and age. People think it’s dreamy being your own boss, but I am worrying all the time. We have employees and their families relying on us.”

    Small businesses account for more than 16 million British jobs, a responsibility weighing on bosses as the longest recession on record looms.

    The idea for Bear, a coffee shop chain in Derby, was thought up by Craig Bunting, 38, and his school friend while sitting in a garden shed in 2014. Two years later the pair opened their first shop and have since launched four more with 100 employees.

    “It feels like we have been chasing our tail a lot this year trying to navigate the economy,” Mr Bunting said.

    “The cost of living crisis adds an additional pressure for business owners – you need to manage rising bills while ­protecting the jobs of people who rely on the wages you pay them.”

    ‘It’s having an impact on my mental health’

    The threat of recession and less disposable income is throwing business plans into disarray.

    Barry Whitehouse, founder of The Artery, an art shop in Banbury, pivoted in lockdown and taught art classes online. But the cost of living crisis has thrown a curveball.

    Footfall is down 30pc on pre-pandemic levels and takings have fallen by a quarter as customers tighten their spending “We have plans to open more shops and have a vision that we believe in wholeheartedly.

    But there is no denying we are in tough trading times,” he said. “Two months ago there was £100 left in the overdraft. I work 14-hour days on less than minimum wage and it has absolutely had an impact on my mental and physical health.

    “People think having your own business means you must have a big cash cow, but the reality is we live off the love for what we do.” His high street has lost three independent shops this year. Mr Whitehouse believes not enough is being done to support small businesses.

    “My regular customers have been so supportive, but nothing is being done to encourage people to shop local. We all pay tax as small businesses, but we are not championed by the Government.”

    Last week Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, dramatically reduced the tax-free dividend allowance and froze the threshold at which business must pay VAT at £85,000 until 2026, ignoring calls for the tax to be cut in an attempt to help struggling small businesses.

    Martin McTague, of the FSB, said: “The slashing of dividend allowances is a bitter blow to hard-working owners of small companies.

    “Stealthily freezing the VAT threshold at a time of sky-high inflation will also drag more struggling small firms into scope for the tax, while disincentivising others from growing.”

    The Chancellor’s tax raid means a director earning £40,000 a year will be more than £500 worse off than an employee earning the same amount and paying income tax and National Insurance, according to the FSB.”

    1. The plan is proceeding steadily to impoverish the whole nation. So much for Fishy Rishy “steadying the ship”.

  66. As rain is forecast in Qatar today, FIFA are cancelling all World Cup matches in case there’s a rainbow!

      1. How come the Left have ‘requisitioned’ No.10 and No.11, without any referral to Tory party members – or the electorate?

        I suspect that I know the answer, but would like to hear it from others.

        1. We do not have democracy. Even the WEF is just a front for the world bankers [sic] who hold the ultimate financial and ideological power. Historical objections to usury mean that many of them are Jewish and when criticised they hide behind the accusation of antisemitism. As if Soros & co care a fig for the Torah.

          1. We have a parliamentary democracy. Not perfect, but Winston S. Churchill was able to navigate his way through it.

          2. The Vatican has been a scourge on humanity for as many years as the Jewish bankers. They and the Satanists have been planning to take our money and lives for centuries.

          1. Yes, because they can, Conners – and are facilitated by unelected powerful men – Soros, Schwab, Gates et al.

    2. Henry Wellcome was one of the band of 19th-Century millionaire philanthropists. When he died, his will created the Wellcome Foundation (for which I worked for 13 years until it was taken over by Glaxo), which researched, developed and produced pharmaceuticals. The chief shareholder was the Wellcome Trust, which he also set up as a charitable body to fund research to improve human and animal health, using income from the Foundation.

      The Wellcome Collection now describes its founder as “a man with enormous wealth, power and privilege” without describing what he did with that wealth. How churlish.

  68. That’s me for today. At least it stayed dry and not too breezy.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  70. Thought for the day:

    There is absolutely nothing wrong with socialism that a good hard dose of socialism would not cure!

    1. If only that were true. There are still those who think it has always failed and led to starvation when the radical versions were imposed because they were not radical enough.

      Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

      1. I think you may have missed my point.
        Socialism kills socialism, always has, always will.
        And that is because socialism doesn’t work, however radical the version applied.

          1. Indeed so, but until the hand that is placed in your pocket is amputated, socialism will persist.

  72. My 10-point plan to reform the broken NHS

    It is absurd that an organisation which is performing so catastrophically should continue to merit such kid-glove treatment

    ALLISON PEARSON • 22 November 2022 • 7:00pm

    The Prime Minister had a secret he’d rather people didn’t know about. Rishi Sunak is reportedly registered with a private GP practice that guarantees all patients with urgent concerns will be “seen on the day”. The West London clinic, which charges £250 for a half-hour consultation, also offers appointments in the evenings and at weekends. It’s an outrage that British people should have to be wealthy enough to afford a standard of medical care which is taken for granted in the rest of the developed world.

    In our rapidly undeveloping country, the Government just confirmed the pledge by former health secretary Thérèse Coffey that there should be an “expectation” that all patients get an appointment within two weeks. Coffey claimed it was “perfectly reasonable” for people to expect to see their GP within a fortnight. Only in the UK could a wholly unacceptable delay be sold to an acquiescent public as “perfectly reasonable”.

    In France, not only would you be seen by a doctor on the same day, you would have bloods taken and an MRI booked within 48 hours if required.

    The NHS-worshipping media class who attack the PM for going private prefers not to address what is truly unconscionable: in a healthcare system which this year cost the British taxpayer £151.8 billion, people with no ability to pay are suffering, even dying, for want of a hospital appointment.

    I have no problem with the PM and his family using a private GP when in London. Why would you? The Sunaks are freeing up places desperately needed by others.

    I am lucky enough to have seen a private GP myself. My first private appointment, with a doctor who has time to treat you as a person rather than a unit to be shunted along, was tinged with a kind of guilty sadness. This is how it used to be for everyone, I thought, remembering the GP who came to our house when I was eight years old and delirious with German measles. That is how it should be, but never is any more – unless you are rich.

    The only problem with Rishi Sunak is that if he is not using the health service most people have to use, he lacks a clear picture of just how appallingly broken it is. In a speech to the CBI, the PM spoke of plans to improve the NHS through “radical transparency about the performance of our healthcare system”. With more than seven million on a hospital waiting list, Sunak said: “We want to give patients genuine choice about where and when to access care.”

    This may shock you Prime Minister, but, despite previous assurances, the exact opposite of giving patients and GPs power to access secondary care is now putting public safety at risk. Thanks to NHS England (20,000 non-clinical staff collating data and setting targets in offices nowhere near a hospital), ours is the most micro-managed health system of any major nation. Not only is there no “radical transparency”, there is institutional obfuscation and a horrible new obstacle course.

    Dr Clare, a London GP, emailed me to say that she is inundated with patients who could have been treated quite easily. Long delays mean their condition has now deteriorated. They want to work, but they can’t until they have surgery (cataracts, hernia, new knees). In the good old days, Dr Clare used to dictate a referral letter to a named consultant at the local hospital. The patient swiftly received an appointment. Today, the GP is not allowed to refer directly at all. For many specialties, Clare has to use a triage system known as SPA (single point of access). “Someone, maybe an admin person, decides if the patient should be seen and by whom. To access this, I have to work through a complicated series of multiple-choice questions, at the end of which the computer pronounces what sort of specialist will see my patient and asks me if I agree. If I say no, the whole thing is cancelled. So I have to say yes, even if the treatment is inappropriate. The computer trumps my 30 years of experience as a GP.”

    Unbelievably, for other specialties Dr Clare is not allowed to refer at all. She must email a department asking for “advice and guidance”. After a delay, which can be a couple of months or more, the person who responds “may have decided to send an appointment to my patient, but usually not”. Clare has had patients with cardiac symptoms rejected and been told to manage them in the community. Even if a patient eventually hits the jackpot and is approved to see a specialist, Clare points to a worrying new phenomenon: there is now a waiting list for the waiting list.

    I have to tell you, Prime Minister, Dr Clare is a deeply honourable person as I’m sure your own father was when he practised as a GP. Very sadly, she has concluded this Kafkaesque process is deliberately designed to create a bottleneck which drastically reduces access to secondary care. In this devious way, the NHS keeps the numbers on its already shamefully long waiting list artificially depressed while patients suffer and wait. Many will die waiting.

    The correspondence I get every day from Telegraph readers bears that out. Hannah wrote to say she is trying to get her son referred for a hereditary problem which interferes with his eating and breathing. In September, the little boy was rushed to A&E where he saw a paediatrician who said his tonsils must come out immediately. Allegedly, Hannah’s son is now on an ENT urgent waiting list, but when she called recently she was told that an appointment would be coming out for a telephone consultation.

    “A TELEPHONE CONSULTATION with the ENT consultant – what will that do?” demands Hannah. “He won’t get a look at a two-and-a-half-year-old’s tonsils over video conferencing.”

    Hannah has been in this hellish limbo before with her elder son. “The consultant will ask me the same questions the paediatrician in A&E asked. We will then go on another waiting list for a face-to-face appointment. Next, we will join a waiting list for surgery. It will take 2.5 years till my son has his operation. But I can pay to see the same consultant privately next week.”

    That two-tier system which the Labour party shrieks about is already here. By leaking the news that Rishi Sunak reportedly uses a private GP, critics of the Government hoped to incite public anger against our Prime Minister and his huge personal wealth. Instead, most people shrug and think “If I had his money, I’d go private like a shot”.

    It’s a truism that governments think that reforming the NHS spells electoral disaster. That gives NHS management almost unlimited power. You could sense that in the way Jeremy Hunt used his otherwise abstemious Autumn Statement to bung the health service another £6 billion, over two years, with no conditions attached. The Chancellor added nervously that Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, had deemed it “sufficient”.

    It is absurd that an organisation which is performing so catastrophically badly should continue to merit such kid-glove treatment. The public is wising up to the almost criminal level of delusion. How is “our NHS” simultaneously “the envy of the world” yet always “10 days away from collapse”? Why are our cancer survival figures so wretched compared to comparable countries?

    The Government may think that, with only two years to a general election, it’s safer not to rock the boat. On the contrary; the sinking Tories have very little to lose. Why not get the public onside and outline some immediate reforms?

    Here are a few suggestions:

    1. Please stop calling it “our NHS” as if it commands popular affection. Hundreds of people are needlessly dying every week because the NHS is failing them.

    2. Too many of the NHS’s 1.2 million workforce make no contribution to the nation’s wellbeing. Health Secretary Steve Barclay is right to crack down on the number of employees in NHS England. Use the money saved to train more nurses, more doctors, more paramedics.

    3. Don’t let NHS England hire another consultancy to help with restructuring ever again. Those millions belong to the patients.

    4. Lift the absurd 7,500 annual cap on medical training places.

    5. Get rid of all diversity and inclusion officers. The NHS is already the most diverse organisation in the country.

    6. Bring back tax breaks for private health insurance. People would love to have the option of going private if it was affordable. Plus it would relieve pressure on the NHS.

    7. Issue a public apology to the 40,000-plus social care workers who quit their jobs when the Government made the Covid vaccination mandatory for them. Offer them their jobs back on increased pay as Italy’s prime minister Georgia Meloni has done. That should help unblock some of the 12,000 beds a day and ease hospital admissions.

    8. Give two of the UK’s leading oncologists, Prof Pat Price and Prof Karol Sikora, a billion quid apiece to buy all the scanners and staff they need to set up catch-up cancer centres. Tens of thousands of lives will be saved and, unlike NHS managers, Price and Sikora will make sure the money gets to the frontline.

    9. The NHS has texted me several reminders that I am over 50 and eligible for another Covid booster I don’t want. Bring that efficiency to life-threatening diseases.

    10. A Trip Advisor with reviews for hospitals wouldn’t be a bad idea.

    Let me have your ideas for the Prime Minister in the comment section below. Eventually, the UK will have to shift to a state-private funding model utilised by all the countries with successful health services. In the meantime, let’s not criticise Rishi Sunak (or anyone else) for using a private GP. Given the alternative, who wouldn’t?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/11/22/rishi-sunak-has-no-idea-how-appallingly-broken-nhs/

    1. he lacks a clear picture of just how appallingly broken it is.
      He could not give a flying fornication what its like because its for plebs.

      1. The more I see and hear of Sunak, the more he appalls me, not in the way that Mick Lynch does (see elsewhere) but in his utter blandness and shallowness. Here is man with, as they say, no hinterland. He has no beliefs, no roots in this country, no sympathy for its people, no sense of place or belonging. When the going gets tough, he’ll slide off to wherever his money can take him. It truly sticks in the throat to hear of his concerns over lockdown. He wrote the ****ing cheques, the hypocrite.

    2. Can’t argue with a word of that! My experience yesterday was an example. The NHS, in many cases, is not fit for purpose. I am happy and thrilled that others have had great and prompt treatment but, sadly, I suspect they are not the norm.

    3. Can’t argue with a word of that! My experience yesterday was an example. The NHS, in many cases, is not fit for purpose. I am happy and thrilled that others have had great and prompt treatment but, sadly, I suspect they are not the norm.

    5. Alison saying that Sunak seeing a private Doctor frees up appointments for others is simply not true. As with paying a Consultant privately and getting an appointment in a week it is the same with GP’s. Both GP’s and Consultants work for the NHS and both do private appointments. There are a finite amount of appointments available.

  75. Rail strikes and NHS overload – prepare for a lockdown-style Christmas

    The holiday threatens to become one more marker in Britain’s long descent into institutionalised chaos

    ROSS CLARK • Tuesday 23rd November 2022 • 11:00am

    It is safe to say that if Mick Lynch had been a captain on the Western front in 1914 there would have been no Christmas truce. Rather, at the first sign of a German soldier singing Stille Nacht he would have sent his men over the top, all guns blazing.

    This was supposed to be the year that Christmas returned to normal after two years of Covid lockdowns and lockdown scares. Families and friends were going to be able to share a meal or a drink for the first time in three years.

    Some hope. Now, December is going to be a patchwork of rail strikes, which, thanks to the after-effects of trying to get trains back into position, will pretty well mean constant disruption.

    Lynch is destroying his own industry. With government budgets having to be cut, rail subsidies – which averaged over £5 billion a year even before the huge splurge of public money during the pandemic – are going to be one of the first things in the spotlight. If Lynch ends up getting his members yet another fat pay rise it will only be at the cost of thousands of jobs.

    But it isn’t just rail strikes that are threatening to make a misery of Christmas 2022. The holiday threatens to become one more marker in Britain’s long descent into institutionalised chaos. Yesterday the Government held a Cobra meeting to discuss the threat of mass strikes, energy shortages, floods, NHS overload and an escalation of war in Ukraine all occurring at once. How ironic had the Cobra meeting had to be cancelled due to a power blackout – which was looking a very real possibility at one stage, with National Grid issuing, and then withdrawing, a warning of outages.

    Britain has become like an old banger. For years it may have given someone trouble-free motoring, but suddenly it has reached the stage where every part starts to fail in succession, until it spends most of its life up on a ramp with puzzled mechanics trying to work out just what has gone wrong this time.

    As for yesterday’s power scare, it was down to wind turbines under-delivering on an unexpectedly windless day. It is astonishing that we have gone so many years building wind and solar farms, while closing reliable coal plants, with the Government failing to get on top of the obvious problem of the intermittency of wind and solar energy.

    That is how everything now seems to work, or not work, beneath Britain’s bonnet.

    We were supposed to have a pandemic preparedness plan, until it turned out we had no such thing. The Conservatives put it in their 2019 manifesto that public services would have to have a minimum service level on strike days – but then the Government failed to deliver the measure. Ministers never stop preaching about climate change and blame every adverse weather event on warming temperatures – but don’t have a strategy to cope with the climate we already have, let alone the one they are trying to warn us we will have in 50 years’ time. Still, we build houses and vital infrastructure on floodplains – and then seem surprised when they flood. As for the NHS, it is the same story every single winter – demand peaks and yet many beds are blocked by patients who haven’t been discharged into care homes.

    At least during Covid lockdowns we could live on the hope of life returning to normal. Now Covid has subsided we find ourselves in a purgatory of semi-lockdown, where every day another component of national life splutters or burns.

    During Covid, the late Queen cheered us with the words: “We’ll meet again”. Don’t take it for granted. The metaphor for life in Britain in 2022 is being thrown off a train at Watford Junction and left for eternity while we are told to wait for further announcements.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/23/rail-strikes-nhs-overload-prepare-lockdown-style-christmas/

    I was with Lynch on the sneaky sacking of the P&O crews but that’s as far as it goes. He’s revealed himself to be a 70s throwback, a dyed-in-the-wool, turned-from-the-sod, thick-as-sh!t socialist who has learned nothing from history. And there isn’t anyone in government or authority with the courage to face up to him.

    2. All the woe is of the government’s making. Failure to plan, head in the sand attitude, obstinate clinging to failed policies …

  76. Rail strikes and NHS overload – prepare for a lockdown-style Christmas

    The holiday threatens to become one more marker in Britain’s long descent into institutionalised chaos

    ROSS CLARK • Tuesday 23rd November 2022 • 11:00am

    It is safe to say that if Mick Lynch had been a captain on the Western front in 1914 there would have been no Christmas truce. Rather, at the first sign of a German soldier singing Stille Nacht he would have sent his men over the top, all guns blazing.

    This was supposed to be the year that Christmas returned to normal after two years of Covid lockdowns and lockdown scares. Families and friends were going to be able to share a meal or a drink for the first time in three years.

    Some hope. Now, December is going to be a patchwork of rail strikes, which, thanks to the after-effects of trying to get trains back into position, will pretty well mean constant disruption.

    Lynch is destroying his own industry. With government budgets having to be cut, rail subsidies – which averaged over £5 billion a year even before the huge splurge of public money during the pandemic – are going to be one of the first things in the spotlight. If Lynch ends up getting his members yet another fat pay rise it will only be at the cost of thousands of jobs.

    But it isn’t just rail strikes that are threatening to make a misery of Christmas 2022. The holiday threatens to become one more marker in Britain’s long descent into institutionalised chaos. Yesterday the Government held a Cobra meeting to discuss the threat of mass strikes, energy shortages, floods, NHS overload and an escalation of war in Ukraine all occurring at once. How ironic had the Cobra meeting had to be cancelled due to a power blackout – which was looking a very real possibility at one stage, with National Grid issuing, and then withdrawing, a warning of outages.

    Britain has become like an old banger. For years it may have given someone trouble-free motoring, but suddenly it has reached the stage where every part starts to fail in succession, until it spends most of its life up on a ramp with puzzled mechanics trying to work out just what has gone wrong this time.

    As for yesterday’s power scare, it was down to wind turbines under-delivering on an unexpectedly windless day. It is astonishing that we have gone so many years building wind and solar farms, while closing reliable coal plants, with the Government failing to get on top of the obvious problem of the intermittency of wind and solar energy.

    That is how everything now seems to work, or not work, beneath Britain’s bonnet.

    We were supposed to have a pandemic preparedness plan, until it turned out we had no such thing. The Conservatives put it in their 2019 manifesto that public services would have to have a minimum service level on strike days – but then the Government failed to deliver the measure. Ministers never stop preaching about climate change and blame every adverse weather event on warming temperatures – but don’t have a strategy to cope with the climate we already have, let alone the one they are trying to warn us we will have in 50 years’ time. Still, we build houses and vital infrastructure on floodplains – and then seem surprised when they flood. As for the NHS, it is the same story every single winter – demand peaks and yet many beds are blocked by patients who haven’t been discharged into care homes.

    At least during Covid lockdowns we could live on the hope of life returning to normal. Now Covid has subsided we find ourselves in a purgatory of semi-lockdown, where every day another component of national life splutters or burns.

    During Covid, the late Queen cheered us with the words: “We’ll meet again”. Don’t take it for granted. The metaphor for life in Britain in 2022 is being thrown off a train at Watford Junction and left for eternity while we are told to wait for further announcements.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/23/rail-strikes-nhs-overload-prepare-lockdown-style-christmas/

    I was with Lynch on the sneaky sacking of the P&O crews but that’s as far as it goes. He’s revealed himself to be a 70s throwback, a dyed-in-the-wool, turned-from-the-sod, thick-as-sh!t socialist who has learned nothing from history. And there isn’t anyone in government or authority with the courage to face up to him.

  78. Evening, all. I’ve just had a text that I need to send in my electricity reading. I have no idea what the bill will be what with the government giving me some of my own money back. I’d rather they just didn’t take the tax off me – that way I could spend it on what I want to. Incidentally, lucky Shropshire is to have a second “asylum seeker” refuge in a hotel near Oswestry. They will be single men (!) and have immediate access to GP services. That’s more than I get and I’ve paid into the system all my working life. Shropshire council is claiming they have not approved it (so why have we got it imposed on us?). Frankly, it’s disgusting.

    1. Perhaps Oswestry will have an outbreak of Diphtheria which is more dangerous than Covid for children. My town in North Yorkshire is at risk of that too after Jenrick’s decision to spread the invaders all through the United Kingdom. If Manston is empty where are the invaders being housed for initial inadequate checks before going to all parts of England mainly.

      1. Will we be rebuilding isolation hospitals?
        My father spent several weeks in one in 1928 when he – and many contemporaries – caught it.

        1. No money left for building hospitals, Anne. Any spare amount of our cash is sent to Ukraine in the form of weapons.

  79. Well the England rugby team have just proven that they can match the England football team at providing an hour and a half of complete boredom for their supporters.

    1. Perhaps they’re recent Slavic immigrants who don’t understand Roman script and Congleton’s one-way system.

  82. A better day today, my self medication has made things much better.
    I’d better be orff before I start enjoying 😉 my self 😏 😆
    Night all.

  84. Good night, everyone, and sleep well. Today I broke the back of this year’s Christmas card list by sticking all of my “old” stamps on envelopes and addressing them. And then I was told that the “Silly Sausage” Post Office has extended the validity of my collection of standard postage stamps from January 31st to July 31st. Aaargh!.

  86. Bugger! That’s me home and slightly pissed.
    Two pints of a rather nice fruity porter in the King’s Head, a walk across the fields for the Barley Mow for a pint of bitter and two pints of Bee Sting Perry.
    Barley Mow had a decent band in tonight too!

  87. Are we all nice and cosy and ready for bed .. ?

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1702017/Migrant-crisis-housed-military-homes-Britain-veterans-homeless

    Migrants ‘to be housed in military homes’ while 2,500 Brit veterans stay homeless
    Senior Home Office sources revealed a proposal could lead to 500 military homes being used to help the Government fight the wider logjam of asylum seekers awaiting decisions on their claims.

    The No Homeless Veterans campaign, which is backed by former Olympic athlete and ex-Army sergeant Dame Kelly Holmes, estimates there are currently more than 2,500 homeless veterans. And the Royal British Legion says as many as six per cent of rough sleepers are veterans, which would make the tally as high as 4,000.

    Steven Bentham-Bates, of the Help 4 Homeless Veterans charity, said: “The Government is spending £7million a day on people who have just arrived in this country, while charities like ours are forced to scratch around to help veterans who have put themselves in harm’s way and now find themselves homeless.

    “If I was a veteran sleeping rough, I’d be thinking why on earth did I bother going to fight for a country which turns its back on me?”

    1. The relaxation of our border controls is a deliberate measure directed by the globalist elite. Our government, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss and Boris Johnson are mere glove puppets of the globalists carrying out their instructions.

      The globalist intention is to so dilute our nation of majority indigenous peoples with a claim to our nationality based upon a number of factors such as patriotism, a sense of citizenship, a sense of national identity, a loyalty to our country, an investment in our nation and a love of our country, its history, achievements and prosperity.

      In fact these goons at WEF/UN/WHO wish to disinherit us in every sense of the word. We are facing the very worst of those evil cabals that have existed for centuries, from the aristocratic families so evident in the Italian Papacies to the later Jewish banking fraternities, the Freemasons and their groupings including Satanist brothers in arms.

      We risk losing everything we hold dear if we allow a small cabal of conniving British politicians to lead us to disinheritance. We must depose Sunak and his corrupt following at the soonest.

      Frankly, we need someone like President Trump to lead the way.

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