Saturday 27 January: Tory MPs’ shameful disloyalty will prove the biggest vote-loser of all

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

544 thoughts on “Saturday 27 January: Tory MPs’ shameful disloyalty will prove the biggest vote-loser of all

  1. Huge expose by Alison Pearson of a CoE school which allowed a boy to join as a girl aged 4, and kept the boy’s true sex secret. Three years later, it’s all gone wrong (as literally any sane person could have predicted), with horrific consequences for the three girls who were in a friendship group with this pretend girl.

    Quote from the school governor with responsibility for “safeguarding” (sic) and a comment from Alison after:

    “ “The school would like to reassure you that actions followed are in line with the advice given by the Department for Education alongside the guidance for Church of England schools.” The governor said he had “every confidence that the school will do their utmost to provide the other children with the support required to navigate this sensitive situation in an inclusive and caring way”. “We hope,” he concluded, “that you will be able to work with the school to support its inclusive Christian ethos.” Amy and James were stunned. “He was clearly implying our attitude wasn’t very Christian,” Amy told me. ‘I was only holding Bobby’s hand because I thought she was a girl’

    “The governor said the school’s ethos was ‘inclusive’, but it didn’t include all the previously happy children whose mental health has been damaged by all the deceit, did it? Inclusive seems to mean excluding all the normal children because they don’t matter as much as one trans child.””

    Edit. This mangling of pronouns is really beginning to get my goat. It’s one school, singular. A school cannot do “their” anything. Members of school can; but not a school itself.

    1. Good morning MiR, and everyone.
      Some little children look so adorable/cute/feminine with their blonde curls (etc) that the mother may attempt to prolong the illusion of a girl. Edit: I have removed most of this comment because.
      It is possible that the mother of the boy-girl had tragically lost a baby girl, and the boy baby was used to compensate; he consciously or subconsciously went along with his mum’s wishes, until boyishness took over. Thus the school may have been trying to help the mother, knowing that she had issues, and some influential friends.

      1. A child called Arthur comes to our table tennis club. He has a long pony tail down to his waist.

      2. Mothers oodling over their small sons’ long flowing hair never fails to turn my stomach. When my children were small I was constantly having to bite my tongue so as not to favour them with my opinion. I suppose nowadays some of them are trying the trans story on their boys.
        And then there was the mother who said to me that she really couldn’t imagine why everyone kept thinking her little girl was a boy. “Maybe it’s because you dress her in her elder brothers’ hand-downs and her hair is cut short!?” I did NOT say….

  2. Good morning all.
    A cool 1°C outside with calm air, no rain and an overcast sky giving little hint of the approaching dawn.

  3. Is Sunak’s Britain worth fighting for? 27 January 2024.

    So, who would fight for Great Britain? My ancestors, probably much like yours, did. But that was a nation which has been consciously dismantled. It is a country which today cannot and will not defend its border, allows itself to slide into criminality and persecutes the law-abiding, and whose very history is incessantly undermined. It allowed the flower of its youth to be sexually abused in towns across the land for fear of being accused of racism. Its veterans sleep rough while those arriving illegally are put up indefinitely in hotels. It is a country in ideological thrall to concepts designed to hollow out national resilience and to place us in permacrisis, thereby making us all the easier to govern by diktat.

    It is a nation whose priorities are so perversely backwards that the answer to ‘who would fight for it?’ must now surely be ‘hardly anyone’.

    Amen to that!

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/is-sunaks-britain-worth-fighting-for/

  4. We don’t have a “recruitment” crisis. We have a man-made crisis whereby we incentivise people not to work else they get their benefits withdrawn. So logically people won’t work. Edit. On rereading the letter, it doesn’t make sense. Is Melvyn referring to a military recruitment crisis? I thought he was referring to too many immigrants. Oh, Terriblegraph! Truly Terrible.

    “ – I disagree with Isabel Oakeshott (“Britain will lose the next world war. It’s too woke to fight”, Comment, January 26).

    I believe that, if the country faces an existential threat, the overwhelming majority will stand firm to defend our democracy and freedom, and put our petty differences to one side. This was shown to be the case in both world wars in the 20th century. The present recruitment crisis does, however, need to be addressed quickly.

    Melvyn Holmes”

    1. I believe that, if the country faces an existential threat, the overwhelming majority will stand firm to defend our democracy and freedom, and put our petty differences to one side.

      There is no Democracy and no Freedom to defend Melvyn. The petty differences are huge chasms of belief that nothing can bridge!

      1. I believe that,if the country faces an existential threat…

        If? The threat is real and internal with its HQ at Westminster.

    2. What Melvyn Holmes needs to realise is that the population of the UK has fundamentally changed since 1945. There is a sizeable number who have no feeling of allegiance to the UK (quite the opposite, in fact), whilst the majority indigenous population is constantly being told how racist and worthless we are. Pride in our country is being undermined, even actively attacked. Morale and self-belief were high during both world wars. The same could not be said now.

  5. The West’s enemies are using the international system to undermine our allies. 27 January 2024.

    On the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) failed to throw out an absurd case brought last year by South Africa accusing Israel of “genocide”. Hamas, whose murderous pogrom on October 7 started the current conflict, hailed the decision as “important”, saying that it “contributes to isolating” the Jewish state. As the terrorist group celebrated this grotesque moral inversion, it showered Israel with rockets.

    They all do this of course. It’s a part of the game. Anything may be twisted to form some malign accusation. What for example of the farcical charges against Vladimir Putin for abducting children from Ukraine?. A perfectly acceptable, indeed admirable, move to evacuate them from a war zone.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/01/26/the-wests-enemies-are-using-the-international-system-to-und/

  6. Good morning, all. Bright and clear with evidence of a light frost on the roof of the shed.

    Tucker speaking with AG of Texas, Ken Paxton, about Biden. A few months ago Paxton was under threat of impeachment because of his conservative views.

    Do we really know who is running the UK? No elected party that wanted to remain in power would behave as the Tories are behaving. The Tory party has literally been sacrificed on the altar of globalism and most of the Tory MPs do not seem to care about that outcome nor the fate of the UK and its people. The Tories deserve everything that is coming their way but the people do not deserve Starmer and his henchmen.

    https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1751125681990250861

  7. Morning, all Y’all. Sunny night followed by sunny morning. That will have consolidated yesterday’s snow nicely.

  8. SIR – One question arising from the horrendous killings which took place in Nottingham last year (Letters, January 26) is whether at the time Nottinghamshire police employed facial recognition video surveillance. If there was no such technology in place, surely what happened must at the very least require the authorities to consider deploying it in all our major cities. There must be a high probability that, if the technology had been deployed, the killer would have been apprehended before he went on so cruelly to destroy the lives of three people. If the technology was in place, it prompts the question: why was the killer not apprehended earlier?

    Charles Samek KC
    London EC4

    Another individual who doesn’t understand that facial recognition only works when several factors are in place, including high quality reference images of the target individual in the facial recognition database, as well as images, of adequate quality, of the incident. If there is no suitable reference image, facial recognition cannot work. Facial recognition, like Artificial Intelligence, has significant limitations, it is not a catch all panacea. There was a human rights outcry a few weeks ago when it was disclosed the police were accessing the passport database for reference images.

  9. Hand up those who came to the conclusion that the CV-19 episode was a scam on a number of levels? Taxpayers’ money being ‘transferred’ to others’ bank accounts being one particular level of activity.

    Of course, £10Billion is small beer when compared to the cost of the potions plus the support teams of inoculators and the testers employed to perform the dodgy PCR tests etc.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bed6c3f148e6c21c7baab21344c9d7f4b8bc4247b73ddfd0937326a387b3aeaa.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1a8944109a3022d25fbf0323edb9ecad2154e0f57ca604ce6bb96224dd3116f9.png

    Daily Sceptics has the story here

    1. It was just as the ‘conspiracy theorists’ said it was from the off which is why I am now a conspiracy realist.

    2. When PPE becomes “out of date” is that due to the deterioration of the material its self or the sterilisation?
      If the latter, could in not be re-sterilised?

      1. I guess the best-before date is a random one created by the manufacturer. At a place my brother worked, they slavishly renewed all first aid kits when the expiry date arrived. He took the old stuff home and continues to use it occasionally as required.

    3. The waste of money, the lack of spending controls, the complete lack of accountability and responsibility is typical of the state. Imagine if the civil servant signing the cheques were actually accountable for the delivery of the product?

      Suddenly they’d be far, far more careful with it.

    4. “Other PPE was not defective, but the department will not be able to use it before its expiry date.”

      It sounds like the date of the next plague is already known.

  10. Nottlers will remember that we pointed out that Mr Keegan had managed to keep below the radar whilst the Post Office scandal was going on.

    Who is Mr Keegan?

    He is married to Gillian Keegan, the Secretary of State for Education.

    Once the inquiry into Horizon commenced, he left Fujitsu, and for some unexplained reason was given a job in the Cabinet Office.

    Wow ! What a surprise ! We wonder who pushed hard for his employment?

    A quote from the BBC website:

    “During Mr Keegan’s time as CEO, flaws in the Horizon computer system began coming to light. In January 2015, the Commons business committee launched in inquiry into Horizon and the Post Office’s scheme, hearing evidence from then Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells that the system was robust”.

    Now it would appear from the BBC that the Cabinet don’t want him. We wonder what his next well paid job will be?

      1. Eddy, bear in mind that the Sunday Times has pointed out that neither Mr Keegan or Ms. Vennells has been interviewed under caution either by the Police or any other body.

        Crooks or Entitled crooks?

  11. Good day all,

    A bit of frost on the cars and rooftops at McPhee Towers. It looks like a cloudy day coming up, wind in the south, 0℃ rising to 6℃.

    What a bunch of crooks. They must think we’re fools.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a12ce45899acf5a6505713f2d8a3c5dcaeb29f7eb9be07ab915d856684d791c2.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/climate-change-push-up-home-insurance-bills-20pc/

    Climate change could push up home insurance costs by up to 20pc next year, according to the UK’s biggest accountancy firm.

    Mohammad Khan, head of general insurance at PwC UK, said the increase in the number and severity of weather events means that insurers will need to increase the prices charged to consumers in order to cover the rising cost of claims.

    “We are having weather events more often and they are more severe. You can call it climate change or not but that is a fact and insurers have to factor that into their pricing. That is why premiums are going up,” Mr Khan said.

    “This is exacerbated by the continuing increase in the cost of materials required to fix houses when events such as storms, water leaks and fires occur. Many customers could be looking at price increases of between 5pc and 20pc.”

    Referencing storm Henk, which has left parts of the country flooded this month, he added: “Combined with Storm Babet in October 2023, these losses will be just within many insurers’ expected total weather losses – although for a few it may push them above what they expected.”

    It’s not ‘climate change’ doing the pushing, it’s insurance company bosses. What we have had is normal winter weather for an archipelago situated on the North-East side of the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing unusual has happened. Besides, it’s best to treat with a bucketful of salt anything said by someone with a name like Mohammed Khan (any relation?) who works for a corporation such as PwC which is well-embedded with the WEF.

    1. ‘King outrageous. A few years ago one of the insurance representatives I spoke to insisted that we took out extra cover incase of flooding.
      We live halfway up a faily steep hill and the river is half a mile away.
      We’d have to revert to pre BC conditions before we were even likely to be flooded.
      Corporate greed excels everywhere.

    2. Thank Goodness that the local council put out that “Flood”, otherwise I might have driven down the road

    3. If they cleared the ditches, dredged flood prone rivers and stopped building on meadows and flood plains the flooding would reset to a 100 year event. But they don’t want that do they…

    1. I also knew one really nice chap his name was Moshe Frei. Google him.
      He was a diamond merchant at Hatten Garden. His wife was a lovely lady as well.

        1. I even worked at his HQ for a few days fixing worn out furniture.
          It was mind-blowing to see all the dealing going on and the abundance of cash on the tables.

    2. Everyone should read the attached article. Just a couple of heart rending accounts related to the treatment of millions of fellow humans. The last paragraph is misplaced though. The so-called refugees are not fleeing persecution and threats of death but, aided and abetted by France and other EU organisations, illegally taking advantage of Britain’s compassion and largesse.

  12. Good morning all,

    Cold night , heavy frost, and amazing golden orange red purple sky earlier .

    Pair of bullfinches still visiting the bird table same time each morning, as regular as clockwork, why is that?

          1. “A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
            Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
            A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons
            Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
            A Dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate
            Predicts the ruin of the State.
            A Horse misus’d upon the Road
            Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
            Each outcry of the hunted Hare
            A fiber from the Brain does tear.”

            ― William Blake

    1. Back to grey skies here. The bullfinches come for their breakfast. Beautiful birds- I haven’t seen one here for ages.

  13. 382481 up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    January: Tory MPs’ shameful disloyalty will prove the biggest vote-loser of all

    This “shameful disloyalty” has been in place since the take down of Mrs Thatcher near four decades ago, but the lab/lib/con Country destructive voting mode is still strictly adhered too.

    You DO NOT side with the political aggressor
    via the polling booth as has been taking place these past forty years, examples being the cottager from the bog anthony charlie, lynton,
    brown the twat, leg over clegg, the wretch cameron, treacherous treasa and currently a WEF top ranker.
    The stand out achievements so far suffered via the polling stations are, over these last 40 years inclusive of mass occupation via mass illegal immigration, mass foreign paedophilia, mass knife / gun killings mass felonies via the Dover daily intake.

    The polling station results signify more of the same is needed.

    More sinister, now coming to light is the covid
    highly suss culling campaign, main, only, suspects being the ruling
    political / pharmaceutical hierarchy.

    We are without doubt living through a period of
    DIY self annihilation.

    1. I have grave reservations about the Reform Party but the more important thing is that the Conservative Party is annihilated.

      1. 3828 up ticks,

        Morning R,
        if inclusive of lab/lib con/ current ukip I am in complete agreement.

      1. Senior Service took a Player down Park Drive, to the Embassy down Piccadilly, and laid her on a Gold Leaf.
        He took out his Rothman’s King Size and stuffed it up her Virginia.
        Nine months later, out popped a little Cadet.
        Who says, Senior Service doesn’t satisfy?

        Senior Service came across two little cadets crying their eyes out. He asked them, “Why are you crying?”

        They sniffed, “Kensitas!”

        School playground jokes from Donkey’s Yonks back!

        1. Good morning Grizzly

          In my playground the hero was Peter Stuyvesant who took Miss Player from Kent down Park Lane etc. and the punch line was : It all goes to show that Senior Service Satisfies.

          1. Good morning, Rastus.

            That’s because Peter Stuyvesant was too posh to go to my school. He grew up and founded New Amsterdam.

        2. Good morning Grizzly

          In my playground the hero was Peter Stuyvesant who took Miss Player from Kent down Park Lane etc. and the punch line was : It all goes to show that Senior Service Satisfies.

        1. Players Navy Cut. Later she changed to Embassy. She chain smoked after my dad died. I thought that was the normal way to light them.

        2. Where I grew up the old lady who lived next to our house, always had a cigarette in her mouth.
          And she lived into her early 90s.
          She never spoke to us. I suppose with her ‘fag’ in mouth it would have been difficult.

        3. When brother Richard was thirteen
          He was a Boy Scout, keen and clean
          He got presented to the Queen
          And then he went and spoiled it all when he offered her a Woodbine
          Nevertheless despite their sins
          Bless my kiths and bless my kins
          There they perch for all to see
          Up my, up my family tree

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdX1j4eQsJo

          1. If you could see your ancestors all standing in a row,
            Would you be proud of them or not, or don’t you really know?
            Some strange discoveries are made when climbing family trees,
            And some of them you know do not particularly please.
            If you could see your ancestors all standing in a row,
            There might be some of them perhaps, you wouldn’t care to know.
            But here’s another question which requires a different view.
            If you could meet your ancestors, would they be proud of you?
            (from Edith Fletcher’s pedigree book)

      1. I smoked a variety here, in France and Spain but I have COPD and lose breath very easily.

  14. Lots of Kindertransport stories in the papers. A moment of intense pride, that the country of my birth readily took in so many children back in the day, before fighting an awful war. A tribute to the inherent humanity and decency of the British, now exploited by people smugglers – I really resent that the British have had their decency and humanity exploited like that.

  15. Morning all 🙂😊
    Sun’s up again but frosty.
    I just hope quite a few of our obviously complacent and self important politicians lose their jobs.
    Quite a number of them are obviously only interested in what they can personally gain from being a politician. It’s no good to any member of the public when people in politics only represent themselves.

      1. Ours was recently on QT and he seems to have changed his position on illegal invaders since he replied to my letter a couple of years ago. When he told me that the UK has always had a welcoming attitude towards people who were forced out of their country by aggression war and other unfortunate occurrences.
        Perhaps he’s realised that 99.99 % of the invaders have never suffered and had targeted our country because our politicians are too stupid to stop this.
        And my neighbour wrote to him about his absence from voting opportunities. He Just came back with silly excuses. Understandably I guess, he was a corporate lawyer.
        I won’t be voting for him that’s for sure. If there are no independent candidates. NOTA. in felt tip.

        1. I made a comment on Thursday on the Scottish Covid joke enquiry and said that I am effectively disenfranchised. Not in a million years could I vote for a thick-headed muzzie, and his and the Nikeliars crew, nor the loonie green two, and Labour! Well, what an I say?

          1. My pollution station is well with in walking distance. Not far from our local. Which is handy.

  16. Two poignant stories. But Ruth is wrong about Rwanda and the barge – this country has had enough. We welcomed the Jews escaping from Hitler but the invaders arriving now are a different matter.

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

    POLICE STOP
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/70cb47942bf7463bf0f319138b7e5364fc4ff7bc047298e4db3859ba8ba6f163.jpg

    An elderly man is stopped by the police around 2 a.m. and is asked where he is going at this time of night.
    The man replies, “I am on my way to a lecture about alcohol abuse and the effects it has on the human body, as well as smoking and staying out late.”
    The officer then asks, “Really? Who is giving that lecture at this time of night?”
    The man replies, “That would be my wife.”

    1. I know what he means. 😆😁😉

      A friend of ours was pulled over, and the copper adked if he’d been drinking.
      No he said I haven’t.
      Then can you please explain why you are driving so slowly and weaving around on the road ?
      I’m trying to avoid the pot holes officer.

  18. Reposted from late last night.

    Saturday 27th January, 2024

    Citroën 1

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e281877e66f9640965428cfaf7612b736a56b10f037dc7830d6ff3f7e0f8aba9.png

    and enjoy the distinction of 76 of these!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/765a6ae67132e329961369ba89587241cbf02e8606006709800b35319a4e28b0.png

    And very many happy returns,

    With best wishes,

    Caroline and Rastus

    (Have a really upmarket day!)

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/54a245ca00c77e0ab511cf95ebe8f93102045a1614fd1cab50556279da1b2dd0.png

    1. He seems to be Awol today! Perhaps he’ll turn up later to read the good wishes…..
      Happy Birthday Citroen!

  19. SIR – A neighbour in the 1970s was a classical music impresario, and had a parrot with a wide musical repertoire. On one occasion, while the neighbour was giving Bernard Haitink a lift home from a concert, the parrot, sitting behind, launched into the Toreador’s song from Carmen. “Perfect pitch!” exclaimed the conductor, adding after a pause: “And tone”.

    Dominic Weston Smith
    Faringdon, Oxfordshire

    My much missed late African Grey had a wonderful musical ear .. I was the only member of the family who could whistle ( apart from my late
    father . who used to tease me by saying “Whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men”

    Anyway , my parrot learnt to whistle the Largo from the New World Symphony, then Morning from Pier Gynt , and many others … copied from me .

    He remembered so many nice sounds and words and late pet dog names and cats … including alarms , other birds , snoring etc . He never swore and always said Night night at the right time .. He was 36 years old when he died 4 years ago . I

    I haven’t whistled again since he died .

    1. That’s a nice story, Belle. What was the parrot’s name? Neighbours in Nigeria had a Grey, whose name was Ackoo – “Parrot”, in Hausa. Lovely bird, it was.

      1. Our bird here in the UK was called Happy..

        The bird we inherited from a Shell bod when we were in Nigeria was called George.. the previous owner taught it to say shoot, bang bang , kill , and divorce divorce, overseas BBC news beeps , this is London , and Lily Bolero .

        Might have been in the Biafran war .. dunno, but it was a very clever African Grey, we had to rehome him when we left Nigeria

        1. The African Grey is the most intelligent of parrots, as far as I recall.
          I’d love one, but the cats might not approve…

    2. Many years ago a pub near RAF Finingley had a parrot, kept in a large cage, that liked to eat Jam sandwiches. The most striking thing about this bird was that it was completely naked except for the top of its head where it was impossible for the parrot to pluck out its remaining feathers!

      1. Believe a bored parrot pulls out their feathers for entertainment – or, has mites and itches like a bastard.

        1. DSA is currently in negotiations about closure. The fate of the last Vulcan is in the balance.

    3. My grandfather had a Parrott.
      He, the Parrott was very cheeky.
      I had no idea where he got that from.
      The bird died when I was about 5 years old.

  20. 382481+ up ticks,

    The plotters, the coup and Farage’s path to the Tory throne
    Does Canada offer a blueprint for the predicted Conservative electoral wipeout – and a saviour to ‘unite the Right’ rising from the flames?

    This is on par with one anthony cnarlie lynton
    wanting to be Capo Dei Capi in the NWO.

  21. MI6 former deputy chief concerned UK too exposed to Chinese spies.

    “A former deputy head of MI6, Nigel Inkster, says the British foreign intelligence service is not equipped to handle covert threats from China. Mr Inkster said his concerns stemmed from the basis that MI6 “clearly does have difficulties, in terms of language expertise and collective general historical and cultural awareness” when it comes to China……..Mr Inkster said the UK’s blind spot extended to “all the UK intelligence community”, which includes the domestic counter-intelligence MI5 and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).”

    It is not only cultural awareness of China which is lacking, nor is it limited to the intelligence community. Many of those charged with dealing with overseas organisations from politicians to civil servants are woefully ignorant of language, culture and history. Indeed some of them are just plain woefully ignorant.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/27/mi6-former-deputy-chief-concerned-uk-too-exposed-to-chinese/

    1. Good morning, Lovely Verity

      I saw Jake Thackray a few times. Once was in a folk club pub in Weymouth: I was driving along looking for the pub and I stopped a man who was walking along and asked him for directions – the man was Jake Thackray so I gave him a lift!

      BTW did you read my mother’s account of going out to the Sudan?

  22. Better Surveillance

    Sir – One question arising from the horrendous killings which took place in Nottingham last year (Letters, January 26) is whether at the time Nottinghamshire police employed facial recognition video surveillance.

    If there was no such technology in place, surely what happened must at the very least require the authorities to consider deploying it in all our major cities. There must be a high probability that, if the technology had been deployed, the killer would have been apprehended before he went on so cruelly to destroy the lives of three people.

    If the technology was in place, it prompts the question: why was the killer not apprehended earlier?

    Charles Samek KC
    London EC4

    Remind me never to retain you as my brief, you dozy Silk! What use is facial recognition software if all the fucking scrotes wear face masks and ‘hoodies’?

    1. What Charlie boy doesn’t realise is that all that surveillance isn’t there solely to deter or catch criminals. It’s there to monitor everyone.

    2. Clarkson’s farm has a comical moment where Clarkson is talking to Kaleb Cooper and explains ‘If you get mugged, they won’t have anything about it. If you make a cheeky left, you’ll get a fine within minutes.’

      The apparatus of the state always exists FOR the state. It’s not there for the citizen.

      The problem in Nottingham is simple – foreigners.

    1. It just gets worse and worse – there need to be arrests and prison sentences for the really guilty – perverting the course of justice?

    2. He seems to struggle when he doesn’t have an editor.

      We know the Post office sacked Second Sight. It was in the TV show.

      The only way this ends positively if when every single MP or favoured civil servant in post at the time is bankrupted, their property sold and sent to jail. That would be justice.

      But it won’t happen. Nothing will. The state will get away with it as it always does. They always do. That’s the difference between the honest and the state machine. It protects it’s own from corruption, fraud, incompetence, failure, stupidity and waste. If it didn’t, the whole house of cards would collapse.

    3. How inconvenient. (comment below the post) “Hmm and all whilst Tony Blair was pm and guess who was head of CPS no wonder there is a quietness from the Left benches.”

  23. Trump has captured the new conservative zeitgeist

    It’s not enough to master policy or parrot the usual arguments. You have to give voters what they want

    DAVID FROST • 25 January 2024 • 6:38pm

    Have you ever had the feeling that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, because nothing ever changes? That certain policies get implemented even when they are unpopular? That “they”, “the establishment”, “the elite” know how things should be done?

    It’s easy to rail against the elite, but rarer to get actual evidence that they really do think differently from the rest of us. This month we got that, in the form of a Rasmussen poll in America, picked up here by Toby Young’s Daily Sceptic website. This poll specifically looked at the opinions of the elite – defined as people with a postgrad degree, earning $150,000 annually, and living in dense cities. That’s about 1 per cent of Americans.

    The results are pretty striking. Nearly half of the elite think there is “too much freedom” in America, while only 16 per cent of Americans as a whole think that. Seventy-seven per cent support rationing of energy and meat (all Americans: 28 per cent). Well over two thirds would ban gas stoves and petrol cars, and over half would ban non-essential air travel and air conditioning (all Americans: 13 and 25 per cent). Seventy per cent of the elite trust the government, more than twice as many as ordinary Americans. And finally, though hardly surprisingly, while only 40 per cent of Americans approve of President Biden, 84 per cent of the elite do.

    Look no further for what has driven Donald Trump to all but tying up the Republican presidential nomination this week. He’s appealing to those many Americans who think that the people in charge of the country just don’t share their aspirations and are not in touch with the realities of their lives.

    This poll suggests they aren’t wrong to think that. To outsiders, one of the most baffling features of the past year is the way that Trump became more popular as the number of court cases against him increased. Yet if you see the governing establishment as wholly different from you, motivated by quite different values, you are more likely to see Trump as a genuine victim of that system, and hence as the only real opportunity to change it.

    However things play out for Trump in the months to come, and I certainly see him as a distinctly mixed candidate, it’s obvious from his campaign that technocracy is just not a winning proposition on the Right. Instead, the rocket motor comes from anti-system politics, populism if you will, and from fundamentals like immigration control.

    Nikki Haley is a pretty good traditional Republican figure – a believer in free markets at home and in American leadership abroad. In the past she might have won. But Republican voters now want something different, not a more competent version of the past: they think that’s what got them where they are now.

    It’s also clear that populism is more than just policy. Ron DeSantis offered Trumpism without Trump. His record in Florida – on resisting lockdowns and masks, on putting parents back in charge of education, of resisting the diversity and “woke” agenda – is almost entirely admirable. Only four states out of 50 have a lower tax burden. Three hundred thousand people moved to Florida just last year. Yet none of this was enough at the national level. Somehow he didn’t cut through and didn’t convince that he had what it took to be president. In short, personality matters.

    Earnest political analysts tend to think it’s unreasonable to vote on that basis. I don’t really agree. Yes, obviously Republicans want a Republican, but they also want the kind of Republican who can deliver change rather than give in to resistance.

    So they want someone who is prepared to kick around the bureaucracies, to appeal over their heads to the public, and who doesn’t see it as a killer argument when someone says “well we have always done it like this” or “a court might disagree with you”. Perhaps Republican voters are right to sense that Trump’s very brashness, his indifference to convention, is precisely what may make him able to break the mould and make things happen.

    And therefore the ability to connect with the general public is vital. If you are uncomfortable with actual voters, like both Haley and DeSantis in different ways, then you are unlikely to cut it in democratic politics. Trump’s worst enemies don’t deny his ability here. Indeed, that is why they fear him. His humour, his one-liners, cheap though they are sometimes, his ability to capture the essence of an issue – this is vital in a political world where you need to grab people’s attention. I’d love to hear it if he were ever to come up with a nickname for Keir Starmer.

    All these things come together in one thing: leadership, the ability to articulate a vision, to show where you want to take the country, and to capture it in ways people can readily understand. Some people, like Trump, have it, and some people don’t.

    Oh, and there is one other thing we can learn from American politics. Don’t elect a Leftist who’s claiming to be a moderate. You just might find they turn out to be a woke diversity obsessional, a believer in open borders, an open-the-spending-taps socialist, after all, when it’s too late.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/25/trump-has-captured-the-new-conservative-zeitgeist/

    The Rasmussen poll, if repeated here, might produce different results. More than half the population appears to believe there’s too much freedom…

    1. This is because they want the other side to have less freedom, fewer choices, fewer options. They expect to carry on as they do.

      That’s always the problem with the statist Left. They always want more power.

    1. Good, so let’s not sacrifice the ones we have got to fight some non-existent threat in some bankers’ war.

    2. So many errors in the article that don’t address the facts.

      The population was 56million. Families raised children. Yes, people were having fewer children but that’s a natural cycle as people are healthier and live longer in more technical jobs.

      Then Blair got in and wanted a voting block. Brown and he massively expanded welfare and set about destroying the family with taxation and policy.

      Suddenly, an underclass of wasters appeared without fathers, without income, without jobs to do, without discipline, structure, rigor or respect. But these people needed to be supported as well and because they were vicious, nasty, uneducated and poor they voted Labour.

      Then Blair and Neather set about ‘rubbing the Right’s nose in diversity’ and ten million aliens appeared in cities. All welfare dependent. Some worked, but in low skill jobs and they didn’t integrate at all.

      Suddenly society was riven. The workers, the specialists, the tax paying middle class white majority found itself overrun by an alien culture that was outbreeding them – because money was no issue for them, they didn’t have mortgages or have to worry about earning it.

      The welfare class grew and grew at an incredible rate and yet more and more and more were poured in, another 10 million, then another and another. Dissent, and rational arguments against this genocide were crushed by the hilarious race relations act, the ‘diversity’ act and the hateful human wrongs act.

      There are plenty of people who could fight for this country – the legions of aliens forced on us, the underclass of feral yobs. The problem is, because of political and statist malice they have no allegiance, no ties, no care, no value for this country. In fact, many of them actively hate it as the vile pakistinian slime are showing. Far from fighting for it, they’re trying to destroy it and turn into the toilet they came from – as they have never really left it.

      There’s people who love this nation but they’ve been derided, insulted, abused, harrassed, mocked, kicked and jailed by a state machine devoted to destroying them.

      1. Agreed, but we all know that our pathetic politicos like home made martyrs and general martyrdom in all of their invented situations.

    3. Probably caused by the huge increases in costs of living for our hard working mortgage commited and heavily tax younger generations.
      Not applicable to those who don’t make any contributions but accept everything and more that they can get just by turning up.
      Our youngest son is still within call-up age. I’ll lock him in a cupboard or send off the stay with friends in oz.

      1. Our younger son is also within the age range. My only hope would be that his extremely poor eyesight might exempt him. Other son is in Canada, so might be ok.

    4. Coupled of course with rapidly rising birth rate of the never ending arrival of the Doveristas and similar species

    5. I have three granddaughters and one grandson.
      Why would we, or their parents, wish to throw them into the meat grinder for the lying poltroons of Westminster?

    6. I thought we were an equal opportunity combattant. Women played an important part in the last war on the Home Front, now they’ll be expected to do it on the Front Line.

  24. For those of you who have the DT print version today (and for you rich ones who subscribe online) Michael Deacon is very funny today about “trigger” warnings ad luvvies.

    Clouding over. Frost gone (rather like his Lordship….)

    1. No I chose a clock as my gift.
      They had a habit of presenting the retirement gift at a company meeting andI chose the wall clock because it was the biggest item I could chose. Pick that up and present that you barsteward!

  25. Morning all! For your delight and rumination, three videos. The first is supposed to be about Tucker Carlson, but not really. It is about the ‘5 eyes’ and disinformation by Justin Trudeau. It is well worth your time. Second is about casualties in the Ukrainian army and the utter corruption of the system there. Hiding deaths and the regime keeping the money that should go to widows etc. Third is a short, Tommy Robinson commenting on war with Russia. Hope you find them useful.

    Tucker DESTROYS Justin Trudeau after Prime Minister caught abusing Canadians rights
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZmHrMN6pv4

    “Most of them are Dead!” Ukraine’s military CAUGHT hiding the truth about dead soldiers
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SElL3J-hc3M

    Tommy Robinson talks about Russia
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFwyo4sA7nE

    1. The Canadian government are to appeal against the Federal Judge’s decision. That appeal will succeed (you read it here first) because the Canuck PTB will choose the “right” appeal court judges.

      Problem solved.

      1. I’m sure he can have the system rigged but then when Pierre Poilievre comes into power he should have Judy up on treason charges.

        1. Too much to do unraveling some of the woke crap that has been imposed upon us. What would you do – chase the pampered prince or untangle the eco nut job legislation that is impoverishing Canadians and preventing exploitation of our extensive natural resources?

      2. The Supreme court is stacked with liberals that owe Trudeau for their nice cushy sinecure.

        Apparently the court cannot just hear appeals, there has to be just cause for the appeal. Freeland announced the appeal within an hour of the ruling being delivered, nowhere near enough time to read, analyze and find cause for appeal.

        Most conservatives have already reached the same conclusion as you have.

    2. Not a lot to argue about in those 3 clips.
      I’m wondering if son will mention our upcoming elections when he visits this Spring – it would be so tempting to mention the Turdeau news, knowing he has been indoctrinated by the wife boss and her family into believing Canada’s WEF Turdeau is almost God.
      It was strange that TR’s numerous ‘f’ words were simply absent on the captions, rather than being replaced by a row of ****.

    3. We don’t hear much from that first video over here in Canada. I guess that the governments $600 million bribe to the Canadian media is paying dividends.

      The federal court finding that Trudeau acted illegally with the emergency measures has completely disappeared from the media and parliament is not sitting at the moment so no awkward questions in the house. Even so, you would expect the opposition to be screaming for a resignation.

      The only fallout has been that the then Jusice Minister has resigned his seat.

    1. All you have to do is watch a few rounds of the podcast “Whatever” on You Tube and all will become clear to you.

    1. “Of course; that couldn’t happen here. British sense of fair play, Mother of Parliaments ……” yada, yada, yada.
      Still, we’re quite safe. Sergeant Bojo has volunteered to stick it to the Russkies.

  26. The letter that did not get printed today

    Sir – The first thirteen letters today relate to things happening in Woke Britain, the remainder makes chatting about the
    ubiquitous Triumph Herald a matter of great importance

    Herbaceous Sponworgel

    Boredstiff SW1

  27. Just dug the car out of the snow, and reminded myself of the first thing I learned about snow when we came to Norway some 27 years ago: Shift the snow as soon as possible, don’t leave it to form a glacier… a lesson I learned every year since! Snow fell yesterday, froze overnight, and is now like araldite. Took forever. What a dumbass, eh?

      1. Looks like a lovely village, we will have to go there next time were oopp narth.
        One of my nephews lives in Pry-Dale. He’ll be here for lunch tomorrow staying with his parents close by.

    1. Snow you have snow? A bit of climate warming over here with just few snowbanks left. It’s quite nice.

      1. More snow than for the last 10-15 years… colder than a witche’s, as well. Below -30 a couple weeks ago…

  28. ps: Slurping coffee, sitting in the sofa surrounded by massive snoring moggies! They are nice!

    1. I hope the staff didn’t bring the cold in with him because he will learn staff can be replaced.

    2. I wish we were allowed to keep pets – I’d have a Moggie and an African Grey (except he’d outlive me) Aftercare required.

  29. Good Moaning.
    Curses. Drat. Knickers and Spit.
    Before the birds start nesting, MB is nobly clearing the leggy shrubs concealing 3 fence panels.
    That means I now have to spend the relatively dry weather painting the fence. Deep joy.

    1. I dug out some off cuts of T&G yesterday I’m going to make some more nest boxes.
      We use to have Pipistrelle Bats and Tawny owls in our garden, but when the new neighbours moved in they are scared of the dark and have been leaving their garden lights on for weeks on end.

      1. No chance of either bats or owls in our garden these days. Neighbours directly behind us and 2 houses either side have ‘security’ lights (not tilted down) which light up our bedroom like Blackpool bl***y illuminations. Constantly on and off through the night, especially when it is windy. Sorely tempted to get our own, similarly angled to show them what it’s like.

        1. It’s all reach a limit of stupity.
          We have some friends in Mill Hill and their Dopey neighbours did the same thing. So one of their younger family put up a largish mirror to reflect the lights back in their direction. The perpetrators soon got the message.
          May you should Try that 😉

        2. Can you not go and speak with them? Ask them nicely if they wouldn’t mind angling down and all that…?
          If not…air gun.

    2. I have never painted fence panels and they have all gone a lovely silvery natural colour and ours have been up 25 years. Once you start painting them you’ll never stop.

      1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/24608c2277313fe03efc7457c91c61b05d58a852cbb10017fdaaa988a8b515bb.jpg

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1d7002a60feeeb9eae88a612444c38f557023436132e08df76e97ab01a75a6ee.jpg As you say, Alf, nothing beats natural wood. Here is a sign that I carved out of oak 40 years ago (1984). The owner wanted the wording picked out in white enamel. I visited the sign, in situ, 30 years later (2014) and discovered that the timber was still intact, though weathered beautifully, and the owner had re-painted the wording every five-years-or-so.

        1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/99075a9e618ec97c3a4fbe0dc0f888934293c21389172a0f10acab2bc04e444b.jpg

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/966809662a95c6add70d4d6ab47204039da5dc325bf1e0b6ca601d7dbef6b382.jpg

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/67d70fe54e6072c355254ed9d40dc106f0c6ea831ad373b5c25ca01776f529c4.jpg On other signs, I routed out the lettering by hand and either left it as it was, or used a pyrography kit to burn inside the lettering for a different effect. Both techniques are far better than painting it.

      1. I have has experience of the USA legal system first hand. It has been utterly corrupt for years. Corruption is what you get when judges are political appointees. I knew three lawyers who had quite practicing law because they were so disgusted with the system.

        1. As many may have noticed, It
          has started to happen here now.
          She is a brave lady, I hope she stays safe.

    1. Since the outset I think a lot of people had the opinion those vile lying bastards were out to get him.
      Not a good example of western politics.

      1. Of course they are out to get him, they are worried that their candidate will make another fool of himself (again) in the build up to the election and they are trying to bring down Trump.

        1. I don’t think it’s what the American people want. But it should not be allowed for anyone to behave as was described by the lawyer. The police should be able to stop such obvious lying and cheating.

    1. Well goodness me.
      In the same week that the corporate media is warmongering for all they’re worth, a slew of good memes appears, designed to appeal to our demographic and glorifying war.

      The left still can’t meme, but it seems that the 77th brigade can…

  30. Texas has started the fight to save the US from illegal migration. Douglas Murray. 27 January 2024.

    For a generation, American politicians have put off dealing with illegal migration. They see it as too difficult a problem to tackle and too easy to leave for their successors. As cities like New York start to implode under the burden, you might have thought that Democrats would wake up. But far from it. They seem intent on letting the lawlessness continue.

    We should wish the Lone Star state success in its lonely fight. Because the future of the United States – and the free world – turns on this. Because, in the end, you either have a border or you don’t. You either have laws or you don’t. And if you don’t – then one day, perhaps not so far off, you won’t have a country.

    The Americans have time and space on their side. We are already finished!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/26/texas-has-started-fight-to-save-us-from-illegal-migration/

    1. It’s all worrying. There are 30 million of them. 30 million foreigners. Some, certainly contribute, are law abiding and decent but far, far too many are indolent, welfare dependent and dangerous.

    1. The Marlin Luanda was transporting Russian lighter fuel when it was attacked late on Friday.

      This is of course nonsense. Even if the “Journalist” is unaware that it probably means lighter grade crude. It would still be ilegal to transport it due to sanctions.

    2. The Marlin Luanda was transporting Russian lighter fuel when it was attacked late on Friday.

      This is of course nonsense. Even if the “Journalist” is unaware that it probably means lighter grade crude. It would still be ilegal to transport it due to sanctions.

  31. The world’s governments; the WEF; the UN; the WHO; the Global Corporations …

    “We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying.”

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    1. The problem is not that they lie. It’s that we cannot stop them from doing so. A government controlled by the people is a good government.

  32. Just finished lunch.

    Salmon and prawn en Croûte in a Champagne sauce from Donald Russel (they were on special offer).

    Chiffonade of leeks with a Miso crumb and buttered parsley carrots. I made my own Hollandaise courtesy of a G Ramsey recipe. A handful of chopped Dill added.

    Absolutely delicious. I even emailed them to tell them so.

    I have made Salmon en Croûte at home before same as Beef Wellingtons but Donald Russell removes all the hard work.

      1. Um…nice.

        I wanted to treat myself as i have a bland white bread diet for the next two days then fasting for a day prior to my procedure.

        1. My total food intake over the past week has been:

          Saturday: Home-made Scotch egg and pease pudding.
          Sunday: Pizza [home-made bread base, tomato purée, mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, garlic, anchovies, pepperoni sausage, parmesan cheese].
          Monday: NO FOOD TODAY!
          Tuesday: Home-made lamb curry, roasted cauliflower, raita, mango chutney.
          Wednesday: NO FOOD TODAY!
          Thursday: Beef-and-onion stir-fry with mushrooms, green pepper, garlic, sesame seeds, oyster sauce, soy sauce.
          Friday: NO FOOD TODAY!

    1. I am always wary of ready-made (usually highly-processed) food, which usually contains many things —preservatives, for example — that I never use in my home-made stuff.

      1. There is a small amount of palm oil and xanthum gum in the bechamel but i don’t care any more. Tasted great though.

        1. Ya rotter! We’ve just had Ayrshire back bacon rolls and a cup of tea! Husband has been preparing a Lamb a la big Al curry since he got up!

          1. Slow-cooker here! He’s just had to take out the lamb as it’s cooked, so he’s slung in some small tatties!

          2. I can’t wait! It’s been quite a self indulgent weekend, as I had cauliflower cheese last night! And aloo curry….yum!

          3. I spent several hours preparing a hot chilli con carne (four large portions) and enjoyed one with rice, sour cream a wedge of lemon and a glass of Argentinian Malbec for supper. It was delicious. Tomorrow I shall decant the cooled chilli con carne into separate bags to transfer to the freezer for future Saturday night meals.

    2. We’re going Greek tomorrow with moussaka for lunch.
      Youger sister and BiL from Thart Narfolk and two othe family members arriving around 1 ish.
      Another packed house.

        1. I did have a panic when I thought we’d run out, but luckily found the beer-glass of senf where the DT had tidied it away.

  33. What war could mean for life in modern Britain. 27 January 2024.

    It is 2034, and Britain is at war with Russia. After an uneasy peace with Ukraine, Moscow has sent forces into the Baltics, clashing with British troops based there to protect Nato’s eastern flank.

    As fighting intensifies, cross-Channel shipping is attacked by Russian submarines, and long-range conventional missiles strike Dover and Southampton. Meanwhile, the Kremlin scrambles a Russian invasion force.

    This is of course an absurd scenario since it implies the complete defeat of NATO on the mainland. A force that far outweighs any possible Russian opposition. Nevertheless the article is yet another attempt at warmongering. It is difficult to see how anyone could deny that this sudden outpouring is centrally organised. It is too wide spread to be coincidence. Its purpose? That’s tricky. It cannot be for the reason given here. The UK’s regular forces are actually being reduced and ten years is a lifetime. Vlad will probably be dead and a war with China is not to be lightly dismissed in the interim. More likely is that it is public preparation for a direct intervention in Ukraine. The fearmongering to occupy the Public Mind is of course a constant!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/27/what-would-happen-britain-at-war/

    1. Yes Araminta, it could be preparation for an adventure into Ukraine, or it

      could be the Elite producing a smokescreen to cover the top management of the Post Office.

      There’s already been suggestions that all further investigations into wrong doing should be

      delayed until after the next election.

      1. Agreed. A friend in Wales has texted me saying that Sweden has told its citizens to ‘prepare for war’.

        I’ve texted back saying that such rubbish has not come from any government; its is nothing more than sabre-rattling journalists playing agent provocateur.

  34. Tory capitulation to the soft-Left orthodoxy has ruined Britain. Janet Daley. 27 January 2024.

    Rishi Sunak is doomed and the party that he leads may not survive his electoral collapse. That is the consensus accepted with varying degrees of despair, or glee, within conservative circles. There are two quite separate grounds for this belief. One is a personal judgment on the Prime Minister himself, who is seen as the chief assassin of a leader who had won a spectacular general election victory, Boris Johnson, and then as the usurper of a subsequent leader, Liz Truss, who had been duly elected by the party’s membership. That history, which effectively robs Mr Sunak’s position of democratic legitimacy, is an original sin that can never be expunged.

    But there is a larger and more important reason for what is assumed to be the inevitable extinction of the Tory Party as it is now composed: that it has failed in the most critical areas of governmental responsibility, allowing essential public services to become dysfunctional while taxes rose to the highest levels in living memory. When the performance of those agencies for which the government is ultimately responsible – healthcare, policing, postal delivery, public transport – range from barely acceptable to not-fit-for-purpose, the party in power is inevitably (quite rightly) blamed. In this respect, the present Tory leadership is not unique.

    Another Telegraph convert to Nottlerism.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/27/tory-capitulation-to-soft-left-orthodoxy-has-ruined-britain/

  35. Just had the chainsaw down the road and now have a couple of van loads of logs to bring home when I eventually get space for them.

    1. Bob of Bonsall drives to New Forest for day out

      Tree-free area converted into Cricket pitch

  36. Afternoon Janet. It is true that it helps cover a multitude of sins but one cannot help but think that it is linked to Ukraine.

    1. Is it just possible that some folk have realised that our society is in bits and lacks cohesion and that some form of National Service might put some backbone into our young folk?

  37. Discuss..

    Who is guilty of Genocide? Is it Hamas who declare that their aim is to destroy the state of Israel and kill the Jews or is it Israel whose declared aim is to destroy Hamas?

    1. At this point neither has actually committed genocide but Hamas have it as their primary aim. In the period that Israel has supposedly committed genocide against the Arabs in Gaza, the latter have quadrupled in number, which makes it the most inefficient attempted genocide in the history of mankind. Overall, far greater numbers of Moslems have died at the hands of other Moslems than have ever been killed by Jews.

    2. Let’s keep it simple. 7 million Jews live in Israel, 70 million Brits (etc) are in UK. a factor of ten.

      1200+ men women children and babies (and pets) were massacred and butchered and burned and tortured and raped. Do the arithmetic. That’s equivalent to 12,000 people in the UK, mostly civilians. And the RoP monsters still have hostages.

    3. Let’s keep it simple. 7 million Jews live in Israel, 70 million Brits (etc) are in UK. a factor of ten.

      1200+ men women children and babies (and pets) were massacred and butchered and burned and tortured and raped. Do the arithmetic. That’s equivalent to 12,000 people in the UK, mostly civilians. And the RoP monsters still have hostages.

      1. I don’t think Israel wanted to kill Muslims. Muslims, however do want to kill Jews.

        To stop this invented ‘genocide’ all Muslims have to do is stop trying to kill Jews. It’s astonishing that inactivity solves all their perceived problems yet it is the ones thing they won’t countenance.

        1. Yes, I do agree. We all know that should there be a cease-fire the hamas-gaza-muslims would use it to their best advantage. The problem for the Israelis is the children are steeped in this hate-jews and all that goes with this stuff from birth.

    4. Not forgetting that Hamas are aiding the slaughter of Palestinians by attacking Israel and not evacuating their own people (all those westerners carrying Palestinian flags would surely contribute to an evacuation effort, just to the south of Gaza if nothing else).
      So if we are talking about the massacre of Palestinians since 7th October, I’d say both sides are equally to blame.

  38. G’day all. Many thanks for all your kind Birthday wishes. Not so much as a squeak from any of my four children or eight grandchildren. Bastards the lot of ’em (they don’t yet know how true that is). Until my appearance at about 07:45am 27th January 1948, everybody called me Veronica. Not many people know that. I am eternally grateful to my parents for changing their minds. I was born at No.2 Third Avenue, Sherwood Rise, Nottingham. I was ten years old before it dawned on me that I wasn’t born at 2/3rds Avenue.

    Good to see Nagsman up & about. She sounded much chirpier when we spoke earlier.

    https://cf.eip.telegraph.co.uk/responsive-image/content/2024/01/26/1706299409189.jpg

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F7e2cf5d1-fe28-45f1-a573-c4b2334061a4.jpg?crop=2702%2C1801%2C599%2C196&resize=1027.5

    1. Happy birthday! I have three older brothers. Mum expected a fourth and was going to name him Philip. Fortunately my parents too were normal well adjusted people.

      1. I had three brothers. One of them is called Philip.

        I can’t say my parents were “well-adjusted” people since they also called one “Keith” (glad it wasn’t me!).

    2. Happy Birthday Michael.

      Children eh?

      My youngest daughter sent me a Father’s Day Card inscribed:

      “You are my favourite Dad!”

      1. The only Birthday card I’ve seen is (in gaudy gold lettering) “Grumpy, but Gorgeous”….and it wasn’t from Uncle Bill.

        1. No chillies, Paul. I blotted much of the moisture from the buffalo mozzarella and I sautéed the mushrooms in a little butter and garlic to remove as much moisture as possible (hate a soggy pizza!).

          Tomato purée brushed on the home-made bread base, then mushrooms, mozzarella, anchovies, pepperoni and parmesan.

    1. No such party ever existed, the notion that it did exist is only testament to the power of propaganda.

    2. The OBR, just like the treasury, removes tax cuts from their calculations. They just don’t permit it as a factor. If they did, every answer would be ‘cut taxes’. That can’t be permitted.

  39. Texas, USA.
    I am lucky enough to know a family who live in the UK, but who have roots in Central America. Most of their relations have been heading North, to the USA, for months. Small towns are becoming depopulated as anyone who is young, healthy & keen to work has already gone. These youngsters are not welfare beggars; they come from a Latino, Catholic culture, can usually speak some basic english and have a family structure. In their less developed, relatively poor countries there are few opportunities and endemic corruption. In general these people are going to climb a few rungs, and will avoid Floydian eternal victimhood. Like Eastern Europeans, they are (mostly) prepared to work and will send remittances.

  40. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b61cc77bff18754efc8743c6fd3eda04c00386a444bcd0d054f9961967429370.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/27/terrorists-money-launderers-trespassers-social-housing/

    And the government says they might have to use conscription to fight against their – not my – enemies? I am too old but my sons are young, healthy intelligent Christian men.

    It is not just the Conservative Party which is dead – our country no longer exists.

      1. Remember the old song ‘Things ain’t what they used to be”?
        🎶They changed our bowlin’ alley into a place to worship alli. 🔊 🎶

    1. If they didn’t then pakistani muslim would be homeless, and the state can’t permit that. It prefers British veterans on the streets, not aggressive, abusive foreigners.

  41. My grandfather was on the first minesweeper at the head of the Normandy landings. Not just a weatherboy!

    1. In JHB I met and worked with one of the ex radio operators who served on board HMS Ark Royal.
      Cliff, he told me some stories. Good old boy.

  42. We have a sea border. All we need do is plant a gunboat in it and fire upon any who try to get in to the country.

    1. All the British people have to do is vote for a political party which would promise to introduce biometric ID and contributory benefits. And that is for starters.

      1. I’d never trust a government enough with biometric ID. They are too prone to mission creep.

    1. “Tribe”, eh? That’s you done for. Nothing like being in very old places to put ones transitory life into perspective.

      1. “By the sweat of your face You will eat bread Until you return to the ground, For from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”

          1. Prof Alice Roberts made me laugh a couple of years ago when she claimed that some bones found in, i think near Cheddar. Belonged to a person of African decent. The first one ever in the UK. Thousands of years ago nobody lived for more than 50 years. And walking from Africa to Cheddar even though the English channel didn’t exist would have taken an adult around 60 years to walk that far assuming they knew their destination.

        1. Very true – and yet another thing we cannot conceive of – how similar activities took places 6,000+ years ago all over Europe when there was no phone, internet… It must have been passed on by word of mouth.

  43. Came back from my match (we lost 1-2 but it was a reasonable game I suppose and the weather was nice) to find the telly on and the Bristol v Bath rugby match is on. I don’t normally watch club rugby but it’s a great match.

  44. ‘Disbelief’ as under-manned Royal Navy seeks to re-deploy officers to diversity and inclusion team. 27 January 2024.

    The Navy is advertising a role as a diversity and inclusion officer for those ranked Lieutenant Commander or Captain in the Royal Marines. The service is also looking for those ranked petty officers, chief petty officers, sergeants or colour sergeants to transfer to a senior diversity and inclusion policy position. Marines and those who are able seamen are invited to apply for a position in the Navy’s “climate assessment team”.

    No wonder no one wants to serve in this dysfunctional organisation. Vlad must laugh his socks off when he reads this guff.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/27/royal-navy-redeploys-sailors-marines-diversity-inclusion/

    1. Thank heaven I left before this lunacy really took hold – the RN today is a laughing stock!

      A BTL – “I’ve only read the first paragraph! There’s only so much lunacy and outrage one human can stomach.”

  45. “Wives catcalled and turned away from shopping malls for ‘exposing their shoulders’ as their husbands toil playing football in stifling heat in front of sparse crowds… what life’s really like for ex-Premier League WAGS in strict, Muslim Saudi”

    Oh, how sad.

    1. I don’t understand why any of our sports people go and play golf etc in any of these Arab countries. Its so unnatural to turn deserts into a golf course or a football ground. The damage all that does to our so called precious global environment is massive. All because they are trying to attract further income.
      Well infact I do understand. It’s caused by human greed.
      And dreadful for our rapidly deteriorating climate. They can’t have it both ways.

    1. They are just bouncing their projectiles before serving an ace…John McEnroe did it all the time.

        1. Something very attractive about short skirts. (Sighs…remembers the old days…sighs again).

          1. Not me, stupid boy, I’m talking about following her up to the top deck of A London Transport Omnibus.in the 60s.

  46. I was lucky to get a Double Bogey 6!

    Wordle 952 6/6
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨
    🟨⬜⬜🟨🟩
    🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
    🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
    🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Your heart starts to sink when you realise the number of possible words.

      Wordle 952 5/6

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

      1. Four here

        Wordle 952 4/6

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

        1. Gah!
          Wordle 952 6/6

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

  47. Five today.

    Wordle 952 5/6

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

  48. That’s me gone for this rather better day – much less breeze – still chilly, though. Cut back the raspberries. G & P thoroughly enjoyed that because it enabled them to get in the way. Better still, to go hunting in the wood next to our garden. Cat fans will know the pleasure that cats give by simply running about being “busy” then rushing up to check you are still there – and dashing off again! Both sound asleep again.

    Have a spiffing evening. There is quite a good docu on the Miners’ strike. Depressing the slavish attachment to the union by most of the miners.

    A demain.

  49. S.S. England.
    .
    Complement:
    21 (20 dead and 1 survivor).

    At 21.24 hours on 27th January 1940 the Danish neutral England was hit underneath the bridge by a G7e torpedo from U-20 (Harro von Klot-Heydenfeldt), broke in two and sank within 2 minutes about 15 miles southeast of Copinsay, Orkneys. The ship was sailing together with the Fredensborg and were both sunk by the same U-boat when they tried to assist the torpedoed Faro in heavy weather.

    Type IIB U-Boat U-20 was scuttled at 2130hrs on 10th September 1944 in the Black Sea north of Karasu, Turkey.

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/da/england.jpg

      1. Many, many freighters simply disappeared, some even within a convoy weren’t there in the morning.

        1. Yes, it’s just that both ships were trying to help another. A good tactic for the U-Boats I suppose.

    1. Kptlt. Harro von Clot Heydenfeldt joined them about five months later, when he was commanding U-102.

    2. Kptlt. Harro von Clot Heydenfeldt joined them about five months later, when he was commanding U-102.

    1. ‘Effin’ Vote-splitters, June, I’ve long advocated, as you have, that they resolve their difference and present a united mandate to the electorate,

    2. What I don’t quite follow is her speaking of the SDP, a dead parrot comes to mind. Tice, I agree should go. The honorary president of Reform should take charge.

  50. Walked down to where I’d been busy with the chainsaw earlier and did a bit of tidying up, then carried home half a dozen of the thinner bits for sawing up to fill the mushroom trayed.
    Then after a mug of tea went up for a bath and promptly fell asleep!

  51. Evening, all. I shan’t be around long; I’ll be having an early night as I have to be up early tomorrow.

    1. Sleep well. For some reason I’ve dozed 5 hours today despite 8 at night so will be dosing to sleep at a decent time.

    2. Good night, Conners – and Oscar and Kadi. Sleep well, and we all hope to see you back and refreshed tomorrow.

  52. The Dam Busters is on CH33 5-action – they’ve overdubbed the dogs name – it is now Trigger…..the bastards

      1. There is a sophisticated, contrapuntal arrangement of the Dam Busters march; I can’t find it.

        Have you any clues out there?

  53. Wordle 952 4/6

    This morning I couldn’t gain access to Wordle. So I tried again just now, and managed to do it in four:

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

    So now I will head for the hills. Good night, chums, sleep well and see you all tomorrow.

  54. Already for the 6 seater family lunch.
    We haven’t been together since before ‘king covid. Things didn’t work out, already booked, my elder sister is in Brighton enjoying a weekend with her daughter in-law and niece’s.
    It must be nearly bed time. Half an hour…..
    Night all.

  55. Lawyer threatened with arrest for driving van with anti-BBC and Gary Lineker slogans

    A lawyer was allegedly threatened with arrest for driving a van with “Gary Lineker is Hamas’s bitch” emblazoned on the side.
    Daniel Confino, the son of a Holocaust survivor, says he was ordered to move on by officers while staging a protest outside the BBC’s London headquarters earlier this month.
    The red camper van had “BBC is Lineker’s pimp” written on the other side.

    The Metrogestapo were only doing their job, said a spokesperthing from a bomb proof shelter in Whitehall.

      1. Alas, no. I don’t know what it is with Oscar; maybe it’s going to bed earlier and he thinks there’s something up. He gets me up every two hours to let him out Saturday night and Sunday morning 🙁

  56. 382481+ up ticks,

    Every right, of course they have,the governing cartel accommodated all type felons with accommodation / hotels/ houses, etc,
    how can they deny terrorist money launderers,
    they, the party would lose support / votes.

    Dt,

    Terrorist money launderers have right to social housing, Government says
    Consultation aiming to restrict eligibility rules does not bar those convicted under certain extremism charges

  57. Surprise, surprise.

    “British warships lack firepower to attack Houthi land targets.

    Britain’s warships cannot attack Houthi targets on land because they lack the firepower, in a situation described by former defence chiefs as a “scandal”. None of the Royal Navy’s destroyers or frigates have the ability to fire missiles at targets on land, leaving the US to carry out the majority of strikes on Houthi targets with support from RAF planes based 1,500 miles away. A British defence source said HMS Diamond, the destroyer stationed in the Red Sea, had not joined retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets because it did not have “the capability to fire to land targets”. ”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/27/british-warships-lack-firepower-attacks-houthi-red-sea/

    1. I wonder why we’re suddenly being asked to log in to NTTL, yet user name, e-mail address and password are ALL unknown to NTTL.

      ‘ Morning, Geoff and thank you.

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