Saturday 4 March: People won’t forget how lockdown rules made them feel like criminals

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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419 thoughts on “Saturday 4 March: People won’t forget how lockdown rules made them feel like criminals”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, A Fairy Tale for Saturday:

    King Arthur and the Witch:

    Do not take this story lightly!

    Young King Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighbouring kingdom. The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur’s youth and ideals. So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question. Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and, if after a year, he still had no answer, he would be put to death.

    The question?
    What do women really want?

    Such a question would perplex even the most knowledgeable man, and to young Arthur, it seemed an impossible query. But, since it was better than death, he accepted the monarch’s proposition to have an answer by year’s end.

    He returned to his kingdom and began to poll everyone: the princess, the priests, the wise men and even the court jester. He spoke with everyone, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer.

    Many people advised him to consult the old witch, for only she would have the answer.

    But the price would be high; as the witch was famous throughout the kingdom for the exorbitant prices she charged.

    The last day of the year arrived and Arthur had no choice but to talk to the witch. She agreed to answer the question, but he would have to agree to her price first.

    The old witch wanted to marry Sir Lancelot, the most noble of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur’s closest friend!

    Young Arthur was horrified. She was hunchbacked and hideous, had only one tooth, smelled like sewage, made obscene noises, etc. He had never encountered such a repugnant creature in all his life.

    He refused to force his friend to marry her and endure such a terrible burden; but Lancelot, learning of the proposal, spoke with Arthur

    He said nothing was too big of a sacrifice compared to Arthur’s life and the preservation of the Round Table.

    Hence, a wedding was proclaimed and the witch answered Arthur’s question thus:

    What a woman really wants, she answered…

    …is to be in charge of her own life.

    Everyone in the kingdom instantly knew that the witch had uttered a great truth and that Arthur’s life would be spared.

    And so it was, the neighbouring monarch granted Arthur his freedom and Lancelot and the witch had a wonderful wedding.

    The honeymoon hour approached and Lancelot, steeling himself for a horrific experience, entered the bedroom. But what a sight awaited him. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen lay before him on the bed. The astounded Lancelot asked what had happened

    The beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she appeared as a witch, she would henceforth, be her horrible deformed self only half the time and the beautiful maiden the other half.

    Which would he prefer? Beautiful during the day – or night?

    Lancelot pondered the predicament. During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends, but at night, in the privacy of his castle, an old witch? Or, would he prefer having a hideous witch during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous intimate moments?

    What would YOU do?

    What Lancelot chose is below.

    BUT….make YOUR choice before you scroll down below.

    OKAY?
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    Noble Lancelot said that he would allow HER to make the choice herself.

    Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time because he had respected her enough to let her be in charge of her own life

    Now…what is the moral to this story?

    The moral is…
    If you don’t let a woman have her own way…things are going to get ugly

    2. Yet again a wonderful start to the day, Tom. And I remembered to change to “Oldest” from “Latest”. I’ll continue on here briefly until the “woke” LGBTXYZ stories start. Enjoy your day, everyone.

    3. Wife of Bath’s tale?
      (I’m too lazy to look it up. And the book is in a box …. somewhere in the Dower House.)

    1. Kurten made his debut on RT’s flagship CrossTalk discussion show yesterday. Acquitted himself very well. It’s on Rumble.

  6. ‘Morning All

    Medley part 1

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5cc03b5a6472c6e4e97de90e04571a7327914297ef07d2ebe50a99addf076410.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/85b3a6c7b93b8737cd3fb466ed4563ddea5b79ef662860ac64144f11b970be63.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/29793891fdbde352032723c32dcbcb0b53218f13014c07b4f15644264fdb992c.jpg

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    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/391d8cd995e2b41b1ac7b1f6686bbdc186b2eb470391dbea1e8ae01dfc1862a6.jpg

    1. Part 2

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ded770c36cbe05ccbbbbb61b23859cdb3a9d762785af0010b2dadfede0ef0e6d.jpg

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c2787924b8cc7bdf4d523dc340c506ee253be11729e92aa76674929fda5e9369.jpg

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      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4366437f14b4922aa6f363656317dc3ea93197fcbf2e54e8f8b72711075c6aa1.jpg

  7. The sinister cruelty of lockdown has been laid bare. Spiked 4 February 2023.

    Ms Oakeshott is a backstabber and a money-grubber for revealing these WhatsApp messages, some are saying. Oh stop it. Nothing could be more in the public interest than knowing the thinking behind an ideology and a policy that wrecked civil liberty, suspended democracy, sickened the elderly, hurt the working classes, quarantined the developing world, and led to a suspension of that most key of civilised endeavours: the education of children. A pandemic hit, and the political elite, and the media elite, opted for social tyranny, censorship, non-debate, classism and fearmongering over taking a more rational, liberal, focused approach to the risk of disease. We need to know all about this, so that we might guard against it in the future.

    The future? We can see it now over Ukraine.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/03/03/the-sinister-cruelty-of-lockdown-has-been-laid-bare/

    1. Poor Brendan,the ultra establishment Oakshott is a brave rebel??
      She’s had these messages for months if not years
      Why Now??
      Cui Bono??
      All part of another psyop against us,selective information hiding the worst of it
      Poison clotshots anyone??
      The role of Gates??
      The sap is being played I’m not buying it see Kurten video below
      Edit
      ‘Morning Minty

    1. Unfortunately, Gates and other little helpers of Satan have the answer to that – cricket factories.

  10. Good morning all. For a short while at least as I’m having a trip through to Nottingham to see what is on at the Royal Concert Hall and possibly get some tickets.

    Barely a tad above 0°C but at least dry if a bit dull at the moment.

  11. Russian Embassy in London accuses Britain of fabricating the Salisbury poisoning incident. 4 February 2023.

    “In 2018, this provocation could still look like a single incident used to dismantle the construct that was present at that time in relations between our countries. Now we understand that London was not interested in searching for the truth. The British fabricated the chemical incident in Salisbury in order to start preparing their population and their allies for a confrontation that has now turned into a military-political plane in Ukraine”.

    Though I don’t doubt that the incident was fabricated by the UK I think the embassy is going way too far to say it was preparation for the war in Ukraine. That could not be foreseen four years ahead. The Skripal’s themselves are the real victims here, though not of the Russians. They have almost certainly been murdered by their supposed saviours.

    https://euroweeklynews.com/2023/03/04/russian-embassy-in-london-accuses-britain-of-fabricating-the-salisbury-poisoning-incident/

    2. I thought Angela Merkel had admitted that the agreement in 2014 that was supposed to protect the Donbass (and did not) was only to buy themselves time before war with Russia?
      If that is true, then the Russian accusation makes a lot more sense.
      I think it’s all a bit theatrical anyway, a show put on to impress us plebs, and stir us up to go and die so that they can cull the population a bit.
      Russia is going full steam ahead with a digital currency. Now tell me that they aren’t working together at the highest level.

  12. Russian Embassy in London accuses Britain of fabricating the Salisbury poisoning incident. 4 February 2023.

    “In 2018, this provocation could still look like a single incident used to dismantle the construct that was present at that time in relations between our countries. Now we understand that London was not interested in searching for the truth. The British fabricated the chemical incident in Salisbury in order to start preparing their population and their allies for a confrontation that has now turned into a military-political plane in Ukraine”.

    Though I don’t doubt that the incident was fabricated by the UK I think the embassy is going way too far to say it was preparation for the war in Ukraine. That could not be foreseen four years ahead. The Skripal’s themselves are the real victims here though not of the Russians. They have almost certainly been murdered by their supposed saviours.

    https://euroweeklynews.com/2023/03/04/russian-embassy-in-london-accuses-britain-of-fabricating-the-salisbury-poisoning-incident/

  16. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: As Florida governor and Donald Trump rival Ron DeSantis steps up his bid to win the White House… At last a true conservative who believes in Brexit, low taxes, strong borders – and is blisteringly anti-woke… shame he’s not British!
    *
    *
    Certainly, I can’t imagine DeSantis approving of Rishi Sunak’s over-hyped ‘Windsor Framework’, which still leaves Northern Ireland subject to some EU laws and the European Court as final arbiter.

    They should have called it the ‘Barbara Windsor Framework’ — all front and no knickers.
    *
    *
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-11818629/At-true-conservative-believes-Brexit-low-taxes-strong-borders.html

  17. 371777+ up ticks,

    Morning Each

    Saturday 4 March: People won’t forget how lockdown rules made them feel like criminals

    Maybe so, maybe so, it will linger for a while.

    Saturday 4 March: People won’t forget how lockdown rules made them feel like criminals but that will only last in many a case until
    election day then the wail of the lab/lib/con/current ukip coalition siren
    will ring in many an ear

    Pro westminster political syndrome is strong among the electorate, shortly when this foreign war ends much of the domestic one will be witnessed in ALL its odious glory, will it change the voting pattern, very doubtful, the electorates children has suffered mass paedophilia, actions, ongoing, mass politically orchestrated immigration, ongoing etc,etc, ALL via the polling booth and the voters actions therein.

    We really are getting what was voted for after listening to a political cartel whos history carries baggage of cottaging, paedophilia, out & out treachery & treason, downright lying and taking advantage repeatedly of those suffering from weak minded idiocy.

    Add to that, they have run and nurtured an orchestrated plague tagged covid with malicious intent causing death & serious ongoing injuries.

    Very sad to say the innocents are receiving and suffering from what the majority voted for, AGAIN.

  18. 371777+ up ticks,

    Morning Each

    Saturday 4 March: People won’t forget how lockdown rules made them feel like criminals

    Maybe so, maybe so, it will linger for a while.

    Saturday 4 March: People won’t forget how lockdown rules made them feel like criminals but that will only last in many a case until
    election day then the wail of the lab/lib/con/current ukip coalition siren
    will ring in many an ear

    Pro westminster political syndrome is strong among the electorate, shortly when this foreign war ends much of the domestic one will be witnessed in ALL its odious glory, will it change the voting pattern, very doubtful, the electorates children has suffered mass paedophilia, actions, ongoing, mass politically orchestrated immigration, ongoing etc,etc, ALL via the polling booth and the voters actions therein.

    We really are getting what was voted for after listening to a political cartel whos history carries baggage of cottaging, paedophilia, out & out treachery & treason, downright lying and taking advantage repeatedly of those suffering from weak minded idiocy.

    Add to that, they have run and nurtured an orchestrated plague tagged covid with malicious intent causing death & serious ongoing injuries.

    Very sad to say the innocents are receiving and suffering from what the majority voted for, AGAIN.

    3. Lads ? There’s a better four letter description that that.
      Not far from Hemel the locals are having problems in Dunstable with illegal immigrants making life difficult during their exercise strolls around town, and a park nearby by the hotel they have been allowed to stay in for seemingly eternity.

  21. ‘Morning, Peeps. Another dull day, but to be brightened by a substantial breakfast (brunch, probably) to celebrate a mere 46th WA.

    Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – An unfortunate side effect of the publication of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages in your Lockdown Files (report, March 3) is being reminded of the ridiculous measures imposed on the British population.

    I recall a sunny day in Camden where people sitting “socially distanced” by the canal were eating their takeaway food from the market venues, which had been permitted to reopen. A phalanx of police officers proceeded along the towpath ordering those enjoying some brief fresh air and sunshine to return home or face arrest.

    These injustices must never be allowed to happen again.

    Nicholas Higgs
    London W1

    Quite so, Mr Higgs. My abiding memory of the new police state was a woman shop owner being severely chastised by an idiot copper who objected to her chalked ‘distancing’ lines on the pavement outside her premises. The other was a couple of similarly crazed individuals going through a shopping trolley in a supermarket car park in the hope of finding Easter eggs as evidence of non-essential purchases.

      1. Thanks Sue, although I know I’m out-ranked by some other Nottlrs. I would like it to stay that way, but tempus fugit and all that…

    3. The most disgusting thing thing – amidst a plethora of disgusting actions – was the sheeplike behaviour of the GBP.
      I could not believe that the former British Bulldog was reduced to whimpering in a mask that ‘the government knows best’ and was happily ratting on anyone who didn’t share the group think.
      And we think we are superior to the Germans of the 1930s (“Of course that couldn’t happen here”.)

      1. That, for me, was the saddest revelation. I had always wondered how the Nazis managed to gain the stranglehold with their regime. The lockdown showed me exactly how.

    7. 46 years Well done both.
      Our 50th next year. I can hardly believe it.
      Friends in Oz told us people out and about being fined 5 thousands dollars for lockdown breaches. They were allowed to shop but only close to home for basics.

      1. …and how many PEOPLE have died from it?

        The last count I heard was ONE – in Cambodia, a country not noted for its health and hygiene.

  23. Good Moaning.
    Apologies in advance. A long article from Allison Pearson.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/04/lockdown-sceptics-like-demonised-right/

    Lockdown sceptics like me were demonised – but we were right

    The Telegraph’s exposé has shone a light on the over-zealous Covid regulations and cruelty that politicians and their egos inflicted on us

    4 March 2023 • 7:00am

    ‘Don’t tell me thousands more would have died if we hadn’t locked down because thousands more are dying because we had lockdown… Will they be putting their names on the National Covid Memorial wall?’ Credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images

    It almost seems as if we dreamt it. So surreal was that period, so dementedly bonkers in many ways, so full of strange unease, so randomly cruel, so wrong. Desperately wrong. I felt it at the time, and I was attacked for saying so. I nearly lost my mind as I absorbed the pain of all the devastated people who wrote to me. (I remember shouting down the phone at a GP practice manager in the West Country on behalf of an elderly reader who had been stuck in her house alone for almost a year and was desperate for a Covid jab.)

    I was spied on, reported, publicly denounced, called a murderer, banned and shadow banned. At times, it felt like we were living in East Germany under the Stasi. Our blessed, free country had become an island of hysterics, snitches and obsessive Dettol wipers. Driving in my car one morning to take the dog for a walk in woods two miles up the road, I thought, “Am I allowed to do this?”

    Am I allowed to do this? Dear God. Where had Britain gone?

    And now, vindication. So much that we “conspiracy theorists” suspected turns out to be true, from the Wuhan Covid-19 lab leak (“racist” back in 2020 but now highly likely says the FBI) to Matt Hancock’s imaginary “protective ring” around care homes to the brutal collateral reckoning for lockdown. Vindication is bittersweet, alas, because you cannot mend all the people they broke (over a million children with mental health problems, millions more awaiting hospital treatment – where do you begin?) nor bring back those who died without a loved one to gentle their passing.

    And don’t tell me thousands more would have died if we hadn’t locked down because thousands more are dying because we had lockdown. Men and women in their thirties, forties and fifties with families; fit, younger people whom the virus could not harm, now presenting with incurable cancers. Will they be putting their names on the National Covid Memorial wall? They should.

    Human beings have an astonishing capacity to forget, especially when something is embarrassing to look back on or when it makes us feel a bit stupid.

    “The tingle of a remembered shame,” George Eliot called it. But we should force ourselves to remember, I think. The Lockdown Files, drawing on the WhatsApp messages vouchsafed to the superb investigative journalist Isabel Oakeshott by Matt Hancock, the former health secretary of state, and published this week by The Daily Telegraph, are an extraordinary aide-memoire to the madness we all lived through. They also provide a remarkable insight into the behaviour of those running the country at the time. What a bunch of arrogant, clueless, emotionally stunted authoritarians they turn out to be for the most part.

    The biggest shock revealed by The Telegraph scoop is quite how often our leaders, who always claimed to be guided by “the science”, were making decisions on the hoof.

    Astonished, we read conversation after conversation where, it becomes clear, that decisions affecting the suffering of the elderly entombed in care homes, of children shut out of schools and playgrounds is filtered through the prism of something called “Comms”.

    So, when Boris Johnson asks his top team whether masks in schools are necessary, Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, replies: “No strong reason against in corridors etc, and no strong reason for. The downsides are in the classroom because of the potential to interfere with teaching.”

    But Lee Cain, the PM’s director of Comms, is not happy. Scotland has just confirmed masks in schools so England is under pressure to follow suit lest Nicola Sturgeon gain the advantage. “Why do we want to have the fight on not having masks in certain school settings?” asks Cain.

    Oh, I don’t know, Lee. Maybe because imposing an unevidenced and alienating NPI (non-pharmaceutical intervention) on vulnerable adolescents is a really bad idea? Perhaps because forcing children into futile masks for protection against a virus they largely don’t need protecting against is just a repugnant piece of political power play. Perhaps because, with their young worlds turned upside-down, the reassurance of seeing smiling faces would have been really nice. Finally, as that WhatsApp conclave of geniuses somehow failed to foresee, permitting masks in school corridors would be the gateway to the teaching unions demanding (and getting) masks in classrooms.

    (While the big boys’ club was throwing kids under the devolution bus, a group of mums who founded an organisation called Us For Them to stick up for children’s rights, were fighting furiously to get the school mask mandates withdrawn under threat of pre-action letters. They succeeded, twice. So often during the pandemic, it took the defiance of ordinary men and women – parents, publicans, restaurateurs, shop owners, small business people – to restore some sense to the senseless edicts.)

    The Lockdown Files reveal that Matt Hancock and other key players often had a callous disregard for everything except their own egos. (Look at Simon Case, the country’s most senior civil servant, gleefully joking about the prospect of seeing “some of the faces of those moving from first-class plane seats” into shoe-box hotel rooms. Never mind the inconvenience and expense for legitimate travellers, many of them trying to reach terrified relatives before suddenly being forced into quarantine by a government with a whim of iron.)

    Children’s wellbeing? Forget it. Hancock, we learn, launched a disgraceful “rearguard action” to close schools when Gavin Williamson, then-education secretary, was, to his credit, battling to keep them open. In one WhatsApp, Hancock talks of “preventing a policy car crash when the kids spread the disease in January”. Had the health secretary consulted widely with proper epidemiologists, instead of obsessing over his willy-waving, 100,000-tests-a-day target, he might have learnt that youngsters getting the virus was not a problem provided the vulnerable were protected. (In fact, kids getting Covid was a positive because the resolution of the crisis lay in achieving widespread immunity not in endless, extortionate and increasingly pointless testing.) Keeping children out of education for another two months (until March 2021) turned out to be the real car crash.

    One of the few people to emerge with any credit from this fiasco is Boris Johnson. His large, freedom-loving spirit was a poor fit for the narrow groupthink that took over No 10. Frequently, the prime minister was the only one asking the questions any normal person would want answering. When he finds out that the risk of the over-65s dying from Covid is akin to the danger of perishing while going down stairs, he points out, “And we don’t stop older people from using stairs”. Later, he said that if he was an 80-year-old and had to choose “between destroying the economy and risking my exposure to a disease that I had a 94 per cent chance of surviving I know what I would prefer”.

    Boris was bang on. By pausing society, we may have bought a bit more life for those of 82.4 years (the average age of Covid death) and over, but what the hell were we doing to the rest of the population? To even pose such a question was to elicit the shrieked response, “You want people to die!” But how many self-isolating octogenarians would rather have taken a relatively small risk and enjoyed the company of family and friends in the twilight of their days? The state denied them the dignity of that choice. (The prime minister should, of course, have had the courage of his convictions and cancelled the second lockdown when he twigged it was based on out-of-date data.)

    Ironically, Downing Street had become a prisoner of the public’s fear. That sense of dread which, as Laura Dodsworth points out in her definitive book, State of Fear, was itself created by government scientists “using a battery of weapons from distorted statistics, ‘nudges’ and misleading adverts on TV to control the public in order to make them comply with lockdown requirements”. So people were convinced that Covid was a uniquely ruthless killer.

    Another name that kept leaping out at me from The Lockdown Files was Helen Whateley, then-social care minister. Perhaps it’s because Helen was a rare female voice at the centre of power, and the mother of three young children, that she kept urging more compassion on her gung-ho boss. Couldn’t kids be excluded from the totally random “Rule of Six” so more families could see grandparents? No, said Matt Hancock – it didn’t work with the Comms, which needed to be kept simple so the plebs wouldn’t think they had any leeway with the rules. Restrictions on visitors to care homes were “inhumane”, Whately said, warning the health secretary against “preventing husbands seeing wives for months and months”. The elderly were at risk of “just giving up” because they had been isolated for so long. Too bad. Hancock did nothing to alleviate the misery experienced by tens of thousands as they enacted a pitiful pantomime of intimacy through care-home windows and Perspex screens. (Visits to care homes and hospitals only returned to something like normality in July 2021 and, appallingly, many are still fortresses.)

    I supported the first mini-lockdown. Three weeks to flatten the curve (“squash the sombrero” in Boris’s ebullient phrase) seemed fair enough when we were dealing with a novel virus. But, as time went on, and the restrictions bit deeper, I began to shout at the TV during the Downing Street press briefings. Why did no one ask why having a “substantial meal” with alcohol in a pub protected you against Covid in a way that standing at the bar eating a bag of crisps did not? Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary at the time, explained that “a Cornish pasty on its own” would not constitute a substantial meal, “unless it came on a plate, to a table, with a side of chips or salad”. This gave rise to one of the great dilemmas of the pandemic: The Scotch Egg Question. Food minister George Eustice said a scotch egg “probably would count” as a substantial meal, but a No 10 spokesman hastily over-ruled that deplorable, devil-may-care attitude, sternly insisting that “bar snacks do not count”.

    Grown men, our democratically elected representatives no less, actually said ludicrous things like that with a straight face. On the basis of no scientific evidence whatsoever. It was farcical.

    The farce insulted our intelligence, but it was the cruelty I abhorred. Common sense and basic human decency had been overridden, leading to the isolation of the most vulnerable (the very people we were meant to be “saving”); so many lonely deaths, so many families damaged, so many self-harming teenagers. Every day, my Telegraph inbox filled up with devastating stories. A 14-year-old boy who, pre-lockdown had been fit and sporty, admitted with anorexia to a psychiatric unit because he was so terrified of the weight he’d put on. The five-year-old who developed nervous tics. A dad-to-be pleading to be let in to the maternity unit where his wife was miscarrying their first child.

    A close friend was ticked off by a nurse for not wearing plastic gloves and a mask when she stroked her father’s brow as he lay dying. What possible harm could her bare hand on his dear forehead have done, her kiss on his cheek? None. Yet simple human comfort was overruled by “Covid-19 guidance for a healthcare in-patient setting”. With such scary ease did we lose our moral bearings and slip into monstrosity.

    Then there was dear Robert Styler, barred from visiting Josephine, his wife of 60 years, in her care home. Josie got confused and upset seeing her husband on FaceTime. Why, Robert wanted to know, was he, who was self-isolating, not allowed to enter the premises to comfort the mother of his children while the staff traipsed in and out from busy family homes? On the Planet Normal podcast, Liam Halligan and I campaigned for Robert and Josie to be reunited. And they were. One last dinner (and dance) before Josephine died. I wept for them. And for all the other Roberts and Josephines. At times, I felt almost unhinged by all that sorrow. And now, through all those casual, bantering WhatsApp messages, we can see the political expediency which lay behind huge decisions that caused so much individual suffering. So, yes, I raged against the dying of the light of reason. I couldn’t bear it.

    To speak out, however, was to be demonised as a “Covidiot” and worse. The Left of the Labour Party, still smarting from the recent defeat of Jeremy Corbyn, redirected all its fire-breathing zealotry into advancing the cause of “zero Covid”, the better to undermine the hated Tories. I regularly found myself under attack, and trending (not in a good way) on Twitter. Once, it was for the heresy of suggesting that we should allow young people to get Covid and build up natural immunity which could then help protect their grandparents. Prior to the pandemic, that had been an uncontroversial precept of epidemiology. As Martin Kulldorff, former professor at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, observed drily this week at a Covid hearing in the House of Representatives, “I guess we knew about it [natural immunity] since 430 B.C. – the Athenian plague – until 2020. And then we didn’t know about it for three years, and now we know about it again.”

    I was naïve enough to be shocked when I discovered that a Conservative MP, Neil O’Brien, had set up (at the behest, it was alleged, of certain ministers) a McCarthyite website to monitor the work of journalists like me who took a sceptical attitude to lockdown. How could that be happening in a free society? While I undoubtedly got certain things wrong, especially in the early days, I was repulsed by the way that Matt Hancock assumed the moral high ground, bulldozing over any criticism of his own highly questionable decisions. Intoxicated by his new totalitarian powers. Mr Hancock, I felt, was getting away with murder.

    So when Matt Hancock accused Isabel Oakeshott of a “massive betrayal” for handing over his WhatsApp messages to The Telegraph, I laughed.

    The Covid Inquiry, which began this week, with a dismaying lack of lockdown sceptics among its “core participants” had better buck up its ideas, or else. (At first, the inquiry wasn’t even going to consider the damage done to children, if you can believe it.

    Anne Longworth, the Children’s Commissioner, has not been included and there is still not a single witness from the hospitality sector.) If the Establishment was hoping for a whitewash, the Lockdown Files will make that very hard indeed.

    I am filled with pride at the incredible forensic work of my colleagues. This is what journalism does at its very best; not just speaking truth to power, but rubbing power’s nose in its lies.

    On Thursday, I received an email from dear Robert Styler. “Today is my 86th birthday and what a present this week’s Lockdown Files is from all of you at The Telegraph. If you feel smug, you have every right to be. What a vindication for your hard work and judgment.

    “It was so brave of Isabel Oakeshott and all the team to see this through in spite of the fact that the Blob would have delighted in suffocating you. I think the Covid Inquiry is done and dusted by The Telegraph. They can put the whitewash bucket back in the shed!”

    The Lockdown Files are not a betrayal. They are a declaration of loyalty to the public which has the right to know.

    The Telegraph published them for all the Roberts and Josephines, for the children who couldn’t go to school, for those who couldn’t kiss their parents goodbye. They must never be allowed to do that to us again. Never, never, ever.”

    2. Nothing on the £Billions wasted on ‘useless’ protective equipment and dubious PCR tests and whisper it quietly the bizarre procurement arrangements that greatly benefitted a few….

    3. Hello Anne

      To think we had Covid marshalls in this rural village , kids playground closed , we were shouted for driving back to our village via the scenic route , blue lighted by the police and stopped and threatened with a fine .. we were four miles away from home .

      Dystopian nightmare .. rural villages were like the villages of the damned .. older populations , keep the pressure off the NhS.

      We were all F######## scared stiff.. and no wonder alot of us suffered in many different ways , before the bleeding Covid jab , which made matters even worse , for me that is .. and perhaps Moh .

    4. Very disappointing piece from Allison Pearson. It seems that certain things still must not be said. The above is just pushing the narrative that it was all down to bungling, and all Matt Hancock’s fault.
      What about the identical policies being pushed through in other Western countries at the same time?
      What about Midazolam, ordered in advance?
      What about the pre-printed signs that popped up overnight in every Western country, telling people not to use dirty old cash?
      And all these excess deaths due to lockdowns! Really, Allison? Really? Can’t you think of even one other factor that might be causing excess deaths that started in 2021?

    5. Very disappointing piece from Allison Pearson. It seems that certain things still must not be said. The above is just pushing the narrative that it was all down to bungling, and all Matt Hancock’s fault.
      What about the identical policies being pushed through in other Western countries at the same time?
      What about Midazolam, ordered in advance?
      What about the pre-printed signs that popped up overnight in every Western country, telling people not to use dirty old cash?
      And all these excess deaths due to lockdowns! Really, Allison? Really? Can’t you think of even one other factor that might be causing excess deaths that started in 2021?

  24. Good morning my friends.

    An interesting article from The Conservative Woman which shows that the EU has won conclusively in the Northern Ireland negotiations and thatSunak has either been completely outwitted or that he has quite deliberately sold Britain down the river:

    Brexit in name only – no wonder the Remainers are cock-a-hoop
    By Patrick Clarke
    –

    March 4, 2023

    ON THE face of it, the grandiosely named ‘Windsor Framework’ is a major step forward in how Brexit will apply practically in Northern Ireland. So many politicians we might have expected to be critical of it have either given cautious approval, expressed weary resignation or focused on presentational aspects of it regarding the constitutional issues which flow from King Charles III’s audience with Ursula von der Leyen which implies his approval of this deal.

    Anything which ends, or greatly cuts, the trade barrier down the Irish Sea and the excessive bureaucratic meddling of EU officials in enforcing it has to be welcomed. The vast majority of goods entering Northern Ireland from the mainland are clearly intended solely for use in Northern Ireland, and at last all sides recognise that fact with the provisions in the Framework for so-called Green and Red Lane procedures for customs checks.

    The Framework is also a pragmatic recognition that there are two traditions in Northern Ireland, a Unionist tradition which looks across to the British mainland and a Nationalist one which looks south to the Republic of Ireland.

    However the uncomfortable implication for the United Kingdom as a whole is that these arrangements in effect ensure that Brexit will largely be Brexit In Name Only (BRINO). That is implicit since the EU have already declared that the arrangements can work only if any divergences in taxation or regulations between London and Brussels are of a modest nature, such as VAT levels never falling below the minimum for EU members.

    This is because the ‘Green Lane’ aspect of the new trading arrangement hinges on what the EU define as ‘Trusted Trader’ status being given to the firms trading with Northern Ireland from the British mainland. The EU’s version of the Windsor Framework makes clear the Trusted Trader scheme can be suspended unilaterally by the EU if it determines that is necessary for the protection of the EU Single Market.

    For the EU, the UK remains within the original Northern Ireland Protocol. It even declares that ‘the Windsor Framework has been fully carried out within the framework of the 2020 Withdrawal Agreement, of which the Protocol is an integral part’. For the EU, the European Court of Justice will remain the final arbiter of Single Market issues. That came directly from the lips of von der Leyen at the presentation which concluded her meeting with Prime Minister Sunak. This means potential EU fines for supposed UK breaches of Single Market regulations in Northern Ireland, or retaliatory sanctions in other areas. That will also act as a considerable deterrent to the so-called Stormont brake being activated, as those same forces would be triggered too.

    There will also be a natural political imperative for British ministers not to appear to be treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK. So in reality the Windsor Framework gives the EU their device of choice to keep the UK anchored to Brussels.

    Indeed, paragraph 52 of the Framework raises that very point: that the UK Government will ensure that any risks arising from regulatory divergence from the EU will be monitored and tackled. So the chance that the UK might, at some point, have different laws from the EU is described as a ‘risk’. Although the focus is on internal divergence that can happen only by diverging from the EU.

    So much for all the fine talk during the Referendum of Britain becoming ‘Singapore on Thames’ and using its new-found freedom to gain a competitive edge over the EU, which let us remember has become an increasingly shrinking part of the world economy in recent years.

    Plans for the UK to join the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) appear to be drifting on to the back burner. The CPTPP at least has the merits of being a genuine trading bloc consisting of some of the world’s most thriving economies and unlike the EU has no plans to mutate into a superstate with its own army, embassies, flag and anthem.

    The Retained EU Law Bill, the mechanism for repealing many EU laws incorporated into UK law, is similarly bogged down in a hostile House of Lords.

    No wonder the Remainer/Rejoiner Establishment throughout British politics, the media, the civil service et al are cock-a-hoop. If this is where Brexit is to be parked by a supposedly pro-Brexit administration, it doesn’t take much to guess where the direction of travel will be when it is replaced by an incoming Starmer or other pro-EU administration. Everything suitably parked and ready for increasingly closer ties with the EU at the earliest opportunity.

    Leading Brexit supporters by contrast appear wrong-footed, either muted in their opposition or even ready to support the Windsor Framework. Steve Baker has spoken of the impact the Brexit struggle has had on his mental health, Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Davis and other ERG members are prepared to support the measure, Richard Tice of Reform UK largely speaks only of his disappointment with the measure. Nigel Farage has expressed his concerns. So far, he has left it at that. From Boris Johnson, remarkably out of character, we have only silence.

    Above all, no one wants to torpedo the potential for power-sharing to be revived at Stormont, and most Northern Ireland businesses seem satisfied with the new measures.

    The objections I have raised, however, are far more than mere semantics. Economically the UK will remain largely shackled to a trading bloc increasingly in decline, which will not hesitate to use the UK as its whipping boy whenever it suits the EU.

    The public voted definitively for Brexit three times in just over three years: in the 2016 Referendum, in the 2019 European elections which saw the Brexit Party top the polls and Brexit-supporting parties get the majority share of the overall vote, and of course in the 2019 ‘Get Brexit Done’ General Election. The public were promised ‘we would take back control’, but the Establishment will have none of it, and have been content to see perfectly laudable Brexit aspirations wither by their association with an increasingly toxic, out of touch, governing party in Westminster.

    The Windsor Framework is a stark reminder of who still holds the real power in the UK-EU relationship and that genuine sovereignty has not been recovered by the UK. The UK government basically had to ask the EU for their permission for going ahead with arrangements to facilitate trade within two parts of the United Kingdom, instead of announcing their own plans such as those contained in the now aborted Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. That subservient relationship will become increasingly clear in the coming years.

    Some might ask why I care so much about sovereignty. Possibly the best answer was provided by Michael Foot in probably the best speech of his career in the 1975 Referendum on staying in the EU (then called the European Community) when he said that sovereignty wasn’t just an abstract notion. Sovereignty was also about democracy: ‘When Roy Jenkins tells us “We don’t need to cling to sovereignty”, I say that we do need to cling to democracy, and we need to cling to the democratic institutions which we have fashioned to serve ourselves in this country.’

    Perhaps we should have listened to Foot more carefully. He was speaking far more sense about our future than we could have then imagined.

    This article appeared on Patrick Clarke’s Column on March 2, 2023, and is republished by kind permission.

    1. I had put the link up, Richard with a comment

      …and no Article 16 – another sham scam

      But seeing you have covered it exhaustively, I have deleted mine.

      1. Good morning Tom.

        Hope all is well.

        As predicted the Covid scandal has blown up at just the right moment to knock The Windsor Surrender off the front pages.

        How long will it take people to work out that Sunak’s pathetic capitulation has given the EU their biggest victory yet over Brexit?

    2. I think the vile and hatefilled Brussels mafiosi are determined to sink our country in their own version of WW3.

      1. WW2 simply wasn’t worth the effort, was it? We should have let them stew under the Germans, like they are doing now.

  25. 371777+ up ticks,

    Fact,

    ·

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    15h
    This female academic is a crackpot. Universities are the new lunatic asylums.

    I say that NOT because she wants to demonstrate & debate naked – that wouldn’t bother me in the slightest & it would certainly have livened up the many debates I took part in over the years.

    My starting point in every debate was that the EU was an economic & democratic disaster for Britain. I never lost an argument on that basis, & I could expand on that as long as the audience could endure it.

    I never went up against anyone who could give genuine reasons why we were better off in the EU. They could only offer the fear factor of leaving something we’d been part of for so long.
    …more
    Who hates my naked protests most? Oddly enough it’s feminists — inews
    Who hates my naked protests most? Oddly enough it’s feminists — inews

    Challenge the cult of female modesty and you challenge a whole system of beliefs that hampers freedom and happiness

    apple.news

    https://gettr.com/post/p2adrvd6ac4

    1. Saw video that ages ago.
      Not a bad body on her though. Were I younger I’d be inclined to say yes!

  26. Moaning all,

    Cloody, Nerth-East wind, tomperature 4 degrés at McPhee Tours. Off to the gordon contre for some ordure.

    Real bit of ordure for the day is the prospect of Stanley Johnson, eugenisist and depopulationist, perhaps being elevated to the House of Lords by his fat son. Also a gong of sorts for his sister. It’s in the Peterborough column.

    1. God I loathe the Johnson clan. The egregious former PM; his disgusting father; the self-obsessed sister – plus the other lesser siblings who think they are God’s gift…..

      2. The sort of people who turning up at a long established queue, barge straight to the front demanding attention.

        1. Who is Buggins?

          What is he?

          Where is he?

          It must surely be his turn now. He couldn’t be worse than Sunak, Truss, Johnson, May or Cameron.

          2. Buggins’ turn or Buggins’s turn is a humorous, disparaging British term for appointment to a position by rotation or seniority rather than by merit.[1]

            This practice in the British Royal Navy was a concern of the reforming Admiral Fisher (1841 –1920) who wrote, “Going by seniority saves so much trouble. ‘Buggins’s turn’ has been our ruin and will be disastrous hereafter!”[2]

            Buggins previously appeared in an epigram of Robert Herrick.[3]
            Upon Buggins
            Buggins is Drunke all night, all day he sleepes;
            This is the Levell-coyle that Buggins keeps.

            Level-coil was an old party game in which the players changed seats.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buggins%27_turn

          3. My experiences, as an SD, seem to have been driven and restricted by Juniority Belle! But I still enjoyed every minute!

      3. They won’t last. The next generation will disappear in a pool of self-indulgence and nepotism. The death knell will be one of them launching a career as a professional photographer or actor.

    2. He’s all for eugenics is he? So not all bad then. I’m all for eugenics. The world would be a far more pleasant place if population was halved. The correct half being removed of course.

  27. Morning all 😉 😊
    Bright but no sun.
    After a good nights rest I have to get all my equipment to the front of the house to cut not just ours but our neighbours grass. It’s something we have done for each other for a long time. And he’s 82 now.
    But lockdown ?
    Let’s face the facts, it was just something else’s our parliament effed up. They can’t help themselves. I’m still annoyed with our MP who found something better to do when he and many others had the opportunity to vote against all these illegal people still arriving in England. 7 million a day has been the estimated costs.
    I hope he loses his seat over it.

  28. Morning folks

    Re the ‘Mishandling’ of the Pandemic and the Hancock messages.: a BTL comment:

    “Are we being set up ? Let slip some selected govt comms.Get the media to whip it up.Eventually admit you got a few things wrong and then explain no choice but to hand over management of pandemic, along with other G7 countries ,to an independent global body ; Gates WHO “…..

        1. Morning (just), Elsie. I hope that you’re in fine fettle?
          I’ve been busy making a beef casserole for tomorrow’s lunch; savoy cabbage, carrots and creamed potatoes to complete the plate.

          1. Very fettled, thanks. I was planning to wash some clothes and hang them out to dry. But the dry day turned out to be light drizzle. Undeterred, I washed the clothes and hung them over the radiators to dry.

    2. A sense of precaution is an essential condition of sanity. Or so I was told.

  32. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ac75ea1d255267baf8bb11b79a9dce007f70f4b0/0_0_2421_1632/master/2421.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=0fb4ced753672aae6d162c6b5db626ff
    A fox among blooming daffodils on the banks of the Dodder River in Dublin, Ireland

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a2998a8500f6c352b525586b764c6846303ea3e3/0_0_1728_1265/master/1728.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=d419bdb8f484add9ba9b05344c75c7d2
    A kingfisher leaves the water while hunting on the Dodder River in Dublin, Ireland

    1. A fox among blooming daffodils – no need to swear, even though they are rather pretty.

    1. I went to a friend’s funeral on Thursday 2nd March the first date available for cremation almost 7 weeks after he died on 14th January. I wondered if this delay was due to the higher than average excess deaths we’ve been reading about?

      1. Or a result of more muslims in the country? They get priority in death, as in life, in this country.

  34. Good morning, all.

    I’m sure we NoTTLers were already completely sceptical about the snivel serpent “impartiality” (huh!), but it is looking like Whitehall’s bias are becoming more widely discussed now:

    YOUR ONGOING BETRAYAL – Friday 3rd March 2023
    Whitehall: at last proven not to be ‘impartial’ by Vivian Evans

    Sorry: I have again broken my vow to forsake ‘MSM News’ for Lent, but there’s one news item which is too precious and important not to take a closer look at it. Firstly, check out the print editions’ front pages for today. The headline by Auntie B’s ‘staff’: “Newspaper headlines: MI5 Manchester failings and Hancock ‘betrayed’” (link), nudges us into ‘right-think’ about yon ‘Lockdown Files’ while the good old Star relishes the opportunity to play with words, nudge-nudge wink-wink, with their front page about pussies.

    There is one paper though which provides the true bombshell: the DM. Scroll down somewhat and you’ll find that Starmer has appointed a certain lady as his new chief-of-staff. That is proper news because the lady in question is none other than the impeccable Ms Sue Gray who conducted the infamous inquiry into ‘Party Gate’. I find the choice of words a bit unfortunate – ‘enforcer? Really? – but see this:

    “Sir Keir said he was ‘delighted’ that Cabinet Office enforcer Sue Gray had accepted the key role. With Labour riding high in the polls, Sir Keir has been hunting for a mandarin with experience at the highest levels of Whitehall.” (link)

    There are quite a few questions which should interest us. Some are more general, others are more particular, the latter of which are raised by the DM. We’re told, for example, that she resigned on 1st March and apparently took up her new job with Starmer yesterday. How seamless! However, sweetly demonstrating that ‘it’s alright when we do it’, there’s this:

    “When Ms Gray was in charge of ethics at the Cabinet Office, she forced the head of the Downing Street honours team, Laura Wyld, to wait almost a year before she took up a seat in the Lords.” (link)

    One rule for ‘us’, innit like … There’s one more point to be added: 9this and other emphases are mine):

    “Sir Keir is thought to have set his sights on Ms Gray after being turned down by the Treasury mandarin sacked by Liz Truss, Tom Scholar. A Government source said: ‘He’s been fishing in the civil service pool for some time.’ (link)

    So ‘sources’ were aware of Starmer’s ‘fishing expeditions’? Did they chat about that, using WhatsApp? This open up the can of worms which is the relationship between Whitehall mandarins and Labour. If someone as senior as Ms Gray can seamlessly, from one day to the next, take up such important position with Labour, it is quite legitimate to ask about the many tentacles connecting yon opposition party to the oh-so ‘impartial’ civil service and the Whitehall corridors of power.

    It is also quite legitimate to cry, as Tories do, that the Partygate investigation was a Labour plot to oust BJ:

    “Senior Conservatives say Ms Gray’s desire to work for Labour discredits her report into lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street, published less than a year ago, and raises concerns about her passing sensitive information on the Government to the opposition in the future.” (link)

    Only ‘in the future’? What about the past, of all Tory governments? You might like to read the non-paywalled opinion pieces by the DM’s commentator, Andrew Pierce (link) and especially by Steven Pollard who doesn’t mince words

    “Not much shocks me after spending nearly 40 years writing about Westminster and Whitehall. From venality to stupidity, corruption to mendacity, I’ve seen it all. But yesterday’s appointment by Sir Keir Starmer of Sue Gray, the civil servant who led the Partygate inquiry, as his chief of staff is not just shocking. It is grotesque, appalling and cynical. It is a betrayal of the fundamental principle of neutrality that the civil service is meant to embody.” (link)

    Surprisingly, Remain Central is also shocked, publishing both a report and an opinion piece on this issue. Firstly, from their report:

    “Rishi Sunak is concerned that Sue Gray could use “privileged information” to benefit the Labour Party after she left one of the most senior roles in government to serve as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Gray, who led the investigation into the Downing Street parties scandal, has shocked Whitehall by quitting her role as a permanent secretary to take charge of the Labour Party’s preparations for government. […] Officials who have worked closely with Gray expressed their concern at the move and its impact on the perception of civil service impartiality.” (link, paywalled)

    Well, it’s good to know that at least some ‘officials’ are concerned about how her move ‘impacts the perception of impartiality’. Sorry, chaps and chappettes, Ms Gray’s move simply reinforces my long-held view that Whitehall is biased and has been working tirelessly for a Labour government ever since the Leave vote in 2016. Still, some mandarins are now desperately trying to save their reputation of ‘impartiality’:

    “The Cabinet Office said that it was “reviewing the circumstances” of her resignation amid concerns that she breached civil service impartiality rules by holding secret talks with Labour. Starmer is understood to have personally initiated contact with Gray several months ago after identifying her as the best person for the job.” (link, paywalled)

    In their editorial, Remain Central’s editors moan that “Sue Gray’s decision to become Labour’s chief of staff harms civil service neutrality and casts doubt on the probity of the Partygate inquiry” (link, paywalled). However, I find it interesting that Ms Gray’s Partygate Inquiry is being used to query Ms Gray’s ‘neutrality’. Much as the Tories and BJ aficionados want to roll back time, the actual issue which ought to concern even the Westminster swamp dwellers is that The Times repeats the ‘concerns’ regarding her breach of impartiality:

    “From a position of supposed neutrality, she is taking up one of the most overtly political roles in the country as right-hand woman to the leader of the opposition. Already, her credibility is said to have been harmed by this “bolt from the blue”. The Cabinet Office is “reviewing the circumstances” of her resignation amid concerns that she breached impartiality rules by holding secret talks with Labour.” (link, paywalled)

    Are Whitehall mandarins, in concert with their editorial mouthpieces in the Westminster MSM, hoping to make her into a scapegoat? Isn’t homing in on Partygate a lovely deflection from the real issue: that Whitehall is not impartial? Do we believe that nobody in that swamp knew anything about those secret talks? Really?

    Why does nobody in the Westminster MSM ask which other mandarins have been in secret talks with Starmer? The former Treasury mandarin, Mr Scholar, has already been mentioned. What about the HO’s Mr Rycroft, who has been doing his ‘impartial’ best to scupper any attempts by Tory ministers to deal with illegal migrants?

    I’m not holding my breath, expecting yon lot to dig deeper into the Whitehall-Labour connections. It would be too much to hope that Parliament take on an investigation into the pernicious role played by those ‘unbiased’ Whitehall chiefs. Obviously, our ‘generation smartphone journalists’ are incapable of looking deeper into this incestuous quagmire of lefty mandarins and Labour politicians: they might lose their access to ‘sources’.

    That’s all I have for today. I’m not gloating, but I do feel vindicated: my mistrust of the impartial mandarins has been proven, once and for all. Have a good day.

    Edit: Here is a link to the article, for anyone who want to follow the links referred to in thearticle:

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-ongoing-betrayal-friday-3rd-march-2023/#comment-154086

    1. Good morning HL

      I feel sick to the stomach reading and listening to the complicity and vendetta organised and aimed against this elected government .

      My views are similar to yours although you have a clearer insight into the rat infested media proclamations .

      I am feeling very down in the dumps by the shenanigans we are all being confronted with .

      What on earth do we do as our poor country is being sold out and now going from rack to ruin ?

      1. Hello MaggieBelle,

        We don’t vote for Lib/Lab/Con again, for starters.

        Edit: and stop foreigners (and that includes people with “British” passports whose family have not been here for at least four generations) from holding high office.

      2. Maggie, illegitimi non carborundum.
        First check on line what your local mp has been upto recently. Then write to them asking for an explanation for their idleness. And why we are still being overload with illegal immigrants. At a cost of 7 million a day.
        Publish the reply.
        They don’t like it up them.

        1. The media has gone very quiet re the number of illegals who arrived in February .. Why, I bet we are 3,000 now since January .

          We are seeing more strange arrivals , and now feel as if Dorset is being dumped on .

        1. And the millions they rake off and take home in ‘expenses’ HL.
          Mostly more than doubling the salaries.
          No wonder they got rid of Elizabeth Filkin.

      2. And Habitual and pathological liars Obs, don’t let any of them get aways from that label.

    3. Of course Starmer’s own lockdown breach was quickly glossed over. Did even James Delingpole write about that? I can’t remember. It was his son, Ivo Delingpole, who shot the footage through the window.

  35. Sorry.

    A mistaken post deleted.

    I was trying to e-mail a Birthday greeting to my eldest niece, Susannah, who is 66 today

  36. Good morning Maggiebelle.

    Is this what often happens in Dorset?

    Blandford Forum is not that far from Wool. What a Wessex Tale! The couple must have been quite hardy to have given such a public display on such an unlikely object.

    Country Matters
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11819657/Man-sex-wife-bollard-erected-stop-parking-campervan.html
    Man had sex with his wife on bollard in protest after it had been erected by neighbour to stop him parking his campervan in her space
    Lee Craig McConnell, from Dorset, consistently parked in a neighbours’ space
    The woman installed CCTV and a bollard in an attempt to stop the 28-year-old
    McConnell pleaded guilty to indecent exposure after having sex on the bollard

      2. Thomas Hardy wrote the Wessex Tales – maybe my pun was too obscure!

        Incidentally have you read a novel called Peeping Tom which is a very scurrilous novel by Howard Jacobson which presents Hardy is a rather peculiar light.

        1. No I got it Richard, and I have not read Peeping Tom but I will give it a read.

    2. Good heavens ,

      So many people are cramped up tight into useless badly planned housing developments , that cars and motor bikes and campervans cause huge problems .

      Crumbs , I bet there was a real rumpus .. and how very uncomfortable .

    2. Year 2323

      The World Economic Forum’s , (WEF) World Engineering Forecast newspaper headline

      HS2 delays being considered to cut rising costs anounced in Country No 73, formerly know as United Kingdom

    3. Delays always raise costs. Always. The only cure for rising costs is cancellation.

  38. Apologies if this piece by John Ward has already been posted:

    Naming Names….. a fun game for all the family that’s guaranteed to break the ice at awkward Chattering Class supper parties.

    Jacques Attali is something of a politico-philosopher superstar in France. An Algerian who studied at the Enarc League of French universities, he received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Paris Dauphine in 1972. A sort of shadowy Nosforatu, he has advised François Mitterrand, François Hollande, Nicola Sarkozy and Emmanuel Macron during four decades of massive political influence. But the thing with Attali is that – while he is famous for his prescience – one is left with the feeling that he is either very clever indeed…or he has fulfilled his own prophecies by rewiring the French political class in order to have them accept his own Great Reset views.

    A go-to guru on political talkshows in France, Attali predicted in 2014 that World War III would start with Ukraine. During the same video, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy feels emboldened enough to declare, “We will proceed together toward a new world order, and nobody, and I do mean nobody, will be able to oppose it.”

    Earlier – in 2009, a year before the Rockefeller Foundation’s “LOCKSTEP” scenario – Attali published an essay, “Change, as a Precaution,” in which he expressed the hope that the Bird Flu pandemic might evoke “Restructuring Fears.” Attali wrote: “History teaches us that humanity only evolves significantly when it is truly afraid.”

    As early as 1998, Jacques Attali described a future pandemic as a means to the end of establishing a world police force of “planetary power”. He then switches to a more personal pronoun, declaring “we will take planetary measures of containment, which will question nomadism and democracy.” In short, unmonitored travel and the ability to remove a régime by voting shall not be allowed.

    Other quotes from his writing both inform and horrify: ‘The first risk against which we will continue to want to protect ourselves is disease. The prevention will invade our entire existence’; ‘Every person will one day have the right to a decent income paid by the state independent of any activity: The Universal Income’.

    Has Attali been accurately predicting? Or has he himself been shaping? With an unequivocal recommendation from Attali, future President Emmanuel Macron joined Rothschild Bank, rising rapidly up the bank’s ranks to become a managing partner blessed with enormous wealth.

    Suffice to say that Attali’s futurology remains too accurate to support the idea of Nostradaman levels of divine inspiration alone:

    ‘Other weapons — chemical, biological, bacteriological, electronic, and nanotechnological — will then appear. As with the new civil technologies they will prefigure, scientists will strive to increase their power, their miniaturization, and their accuracy. Chemical arms will be capable of seeking out and killing leaders without being detected; pandemics could be ready for unleashing at will; complex genetic arms may one day be directed specifically against certain ethnic groups.’

    The jury is out on Monsieur Attali….but only to the extent that it’s unclear as to whether he led the charge or merely collaborated with those who share his views. Either way, the learning for the 1in8 trying to spread the word remains pretty much the same: to name names, show clearly how degenerate these “thinkers” are, and try to reinvigorate the values of a Past being denied in the Present by those who wish to own a Future solely for their own gratification.

    “Tomorrow belongs, Tomorrow belongs, Tomorrow belongs to me”

    Hitler Youth Party Song

    2. It would be interesting to have a breakdown of what people are in prison for and how long remains on their sentences.
      eg: Murder, rape, assault with knife/gun etc, burglary, fraud and more minor offences, eg oil protests, theft, criminal damage.
      If the minor offences were punished by public flogging, I suspect one would see a significant drop in those crimes and it would free places in prison too.

        1. I would certainly bring back capital punishment for the “bed-blockers” like Peter Sutcliffe, Harold Shipman, Myra Hindley, Ian Brady and their ilk.

      2. If deportation and effective refusal to let foreign criminals back into this country were actually carried out we would have plenty of room in our prisons. You only have to look at the demography of people in prison. That includes deportation of Begum-types.

      3. Are there people in jail for the oil protests? I thought plod were more interested in locking up those who opposed them?

    3. Then prison clearly doens’t work, does it? Our re-offending rate is through the roof. Career criminal with 30-50 convictions swamp our streets because judges don’t have to live near them.

      We need a tougher penal code.

      1. Like send them to a new Island prison on a remote Scottish Island, where their only hope of release is deportation back whence they came.

        Do it NOW!.

    1. Why was he here, let alone roaming.

      When I was a brattish child I would wander about around the beach collecting stones and making mud pies, fighting off the Germans in the bunkers.

      I wouldn’t let junior do that now. The country has been made too dangerous by Blair and Nether’s malice.

  43. 371777+ up ticks,

    breitbart,

    Stockholm Syndrome UK: Plurality Believe Govt ‘Not Strict Enough’ with Lockdowns

    Got to be lab/lib/con/current ukip member / voters looking for punishment after death, maybe drawn & quartered would suffice.

  44. The Salisbury spy poisonings five years on: Did UK’s response change Putin’s pathway to invading Ukraine? 4 March 2023.

    Mr Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer turned British double agent, had been targeted with the deadly nerve agent novichok in an assassination attempt, which Western officials have since claimed leads all the way back to the Kremlin.

    Though the pair survived the attack, Dawn Sturgess, a mother-of-three who came into contact with the nerve agent from a discarded perfume bottle – thought to have been used by the assassins to administer to the door handle of the Skripals’ home – later died from her exposure to the chemical.

    The UK official version of the Skripal Story is complete nonsense so when reporters write about it they tend to smooth out the irregularities. I doubt that they are even conscious of it in the majority of cases. Skripal was poisoned by the Russians. End of story.

    Here we see an example of it. The perfume bottle that Dawn Sturgess used was still sealed and could not possibly have been the one that was supposedly used to contaminate Sergei’s door handle. This might appear to be a quite minor point but the problem is that it is just one of many and by no means the worst. The whole thing has more holes than a truck load of Polo Mints.

    As to the incident making a difference to Putin’s decisions about Ukraine. I strongly doubt it. Where it might have made a difference is that it taught May and Boris Johnson that they could lie without fear of the consequences. The MSM would cover for them!

    https://news.sky.com/story/the-salisbury-spy-poisonings-five-years-on-did-uks-response-change-putins-pathway-to-invading-ukraine-12824757

  45. The Salisbury spy poisonings five years on: Did UK’s response change Putin’s pathway to invading Ukraine? 4 March 2023.

    Mr Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer turned British double agent, had been targeted with the deadly nerve agent novichok in an assassination attempt, which Western officials have since claimed leads all the way back to the Kremlin.

    Though the pair survived the attack, Dawn Sturgess, a mother-of-three who came into contact with the nerve agent from a discarded perfume bottle – thought to have been used by the assassins to administer to the door handle of the Skripals’ home – later died from her exposure to the chemical.

    The UK official version of the Skripal Story is complete nonsense so when reporters write about it they tend to smooth out the irregularities. I doubt that they are even conscious of it in the majority of cases. Skripal was poisoned by the Russians. End of story.

    Here we see an example of it. The perfume bottle that Dawn Sturgess used was still sealed and could not possibly have been the one that was supposedly used to contaminate Sergei’s door handle. This might appear to be a quite minor point but the problem is that it is just one of many and by no means the worst. The whole thing has more holes than a truck load of Polo Mints.

    As to the incident making a difference to Putin’s decisions amount Ukraine. I strongly doubt it. Where it might have made a difference is that it taught May and Boris Johnson that they could lie without fear of the consequences. The MSM would cover for them!

    https://news.sky.com/story/the-salisbury-spy-poisonings-five-years-on-did-uks-response-change-putins-pathway-to-invading-ukraine-12824757

  46. The Salisbury spy poisonings five years on: Did UK’s response change Putin’s pathway to invading Ukraine? 4 March 2023.

    Mr Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer turned British double agent, had been targeted with the deadly nerve agent novichok in an assassination attempt, which Western officials have since claimed leads all the way back to the Kremlin.

    Though the pair survived the attack, Dawn Sturgess, a mother-of-three who came into contact with the nerve agent from a discarded perfume bottle – thought to have been used by the assassins to administer to the door handle of the Skripals’ home – later died from her exposure to the chemical.

    The UK official version of the Skripal Story is complete nonsense so when reporters write about it they tend to smooth out the irregularities. I doubt that they are even conscious of it in the majority of cases. Skripal was poisoned by the Russians. End of story.

    Here we see an example of it. The perfume bottle that Dawn Sturgess used was still sealed and could not possibly have been the one that was supposedly used to contaminate Sergei’s door handle. This might appear to be a quite minor point but the problem is that it is just one of many and by no means the worst. The whole thing has more holes than a truck load of Polo Mints.

    As to the incident making a difference to Putin’s decisions amount Ukraine. I strongly doubt it. Where it might have made a difference is that it taught May and Boris Johnson that they could lie without fear of the consequences. The MSM would cover for them!

    https://news.sky.com/story/the-salisbury-spy-poisonings-five-years-on-did-uks-response-change-putins-pathway-to-invading-ukraine-12824757

    1. See how even rescued cats keep their distance from each other.

      Poor things…..

        1. Singly. Until they were about a year, they did most adventures in the garden together. Now, 2½, quite independent.

        2. Our two co-operate when hunting. Little Cat does the running about, Big Cat lies in wait until BAM! A paw the size of a spade fells the mouse/vole/rodent, and it’s all over apart from the crunching of bones and abandoning of guts somewhere yucky.

        1. Cats were loved by Mohammad so they have special status in Islam. It is said that a cat fell asleep on Mohammad’s sleeve and, because he had to move, he carefully cut of the sleeve so as to not disturb the cat. Then continued on his way to the next mass beheading of apostate Christians or filthy Jews. Kind to cats abhorrent to humans.

          Sorry, forgot to add, Turks do not mistreat dogs that much, unlike most Muslim cultures. They do have them as pets and there are shelters for them. Having a dog, other than a guard dog in Libya was unthinkable, they are regarded as evil. The story is that a dog prevented Mohammad from being visited by an angel. Dogs are therefore agents of Shaitan. Here is the proof
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVTzjyy7yDI

          1. The dogs made most of the finds in the rubble.
            But the world’s diversity divots are too busy in our NHS.

        1. 371777+ up ticks,

          Afternoon C,

          you need a deep bowl for genuine wholesome giraffe soup.

  50. A useful rebuttal to the climate grifters

    Execu�ve Summary

    Governments around the globe are taking ac�ons to implement fossil fuel-free or “Net Zero”

    energy systems without a thorough examina�on of the scien�fic basis for doing so. This paper

    undertakes that examina�on by reviewing the scien�fic support (or lack thereof) that has been

    used to jus�fy this transi�on to Net Zero. No atempt is made to address the significant

    economic, societal or environmental consequences of a near-total reliance on renewable energy

    and the required batery-backup that is necessary to transi�on to a fossil fuel free future.

    Two of the paper’s authors – Drs. William Happer and Richard Lindzen, professors emeri� at

    Princeton University and Massachusets Ins�tute of Technology, respec�vely – have spent

    decades studying and wri�ng about the physics of Earth’s atmosphere. The third, Gregory

    Wrightstone, a geologist of more than 40 years, has spent much of the last decade wri�ng and

    speaking about the interplay of geology, history and climate.

    The authors find that Net Zero – the global movement to eliminate fossil fuels and its emissions

    of CO2 and other greenhouse gases – to be scien�fically invalid and a threat to the lives of

    billions of people. Among the paper’s findings are:

    • Net Zero proponents regularly report that extreme weather is more severe and frequent

    because of climate change while the evidence shows no increase – and, in some cases, a

    decrease – in such events.

    • Computer models suppor�ng every government Net Zero regula�on and the trillions of

    dollars subsidizing renewables and electric cars, trucks, home hea�ng, appliances and

    many other products do not work.

    • Scien�fic research and studies that do not support the “consensus” narra�ve of harmful

    man-made global warming are rou�nely censored and excluded from government

    reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Na�onal

    Climate Assessment.

    • Conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that contradict the

    narra�ve of catastrophic global warming from fossil fuels are rewriten by government

    bureaucrats for public reports to support the false narra�ve of Net Zero.

    • The many benefits of modest warming and increasing carbon dioxide are rou�nely

    either eliminated or minimized in governmental reports.

    • Elimina�ng fossil fuels and implemen�ng Net Zero policies and ac�ons mean the

    elimina�on of fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fer�lizers and pes�cides that will result in

    about half the world’s popula�on not having enough food to eat. Many would starve.

    • The adop�on of Net Zero is the rejec�on of overwhelming scien�fic evidence that there

    is no risk of catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and CO2 .

    Net Zero, then, violates the tenets of the scien�fic method that for more than 300 years has

    underpinned the advancement of western civiliza�on.

    https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023-02-23-E-Challenging-Net-Zero-with-Science.pdf

  51. Laff Time

    https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1631929299472388096?s=20

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ab187904c3aec9ab0437748b1bad4a1f71ac6f583426e43442c4f1b4a3b7516.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b3a18ac65f9d84d43488cd0084d3e6e3281f241e37ed19774940f85428e2519e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff9b524d7b79b3cfd97a5b02b86db75d9fffa30b58d3c2ed7bdad8153e23c65e.jpg

    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/130/360/779/original/65f877a4ab88a1f5.png

    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/130/361/652/original/f444ad192a6a328b.png

      1. I think you may underestimate the vacuity of some people!

        You are prolly right.

      2. She’s dumb. Dogs are carnivores. They can eat vegetables – it’s good for them – but their diet must, first and foremost be meat.

        Heck, have you looked at a dog’s mouth? Those are not thick molars in there. They’re rending, tearing brutes. I know as I cleaned Mongo’s teeth today and the brute cough/bit me. He didn’t mean to, it was a reflex but bloody hell even his blunt gnashers are sharp.

        1. My late hound liked the occasional salad, provided there was a proper oil/vinegar dressing.

          1. Yep, Mongo loves cheese. He’s a fan of the odd Guiness as well. His dinner is 10% pasta and 10% carrots, broccoli and cauliflower, peas, sweetcorn.

            This is why his farts can clear rooms.

          2. Thankfully Oscar likes cheese; it’s how I get him to take his pills (three quarters of an antibiotic twice a day, half a paracetamol three times a day). He loves cheese so much he never notices the medication.

        2. When Oscar was out of his head post the sedation, he bit me – I’ve still got a scar. He didn’t mean to do it, but even so it was quite a gash.

    1. Where are the bird protection people when you need them? This is shocking and callous behaviour by the eagle. Needs retraining.

      3. Show some sympathy! Don’t mock it! It’s bald – like some other creatures who will remain nameless.

  54. Would it not be fun if the Liebore Party entered Abbot, Double Lammy, Nugent and Ed Milliband in a

    ” Celebrity University Challenge”

    type quiz programme, against a team of just landed, non English speaking immigrants.

    The score Liebore -200, New Arrivals 375

    1. No, the bbc have fixed their diversity problems with no further embarrassing issues. With ……
      Mastermind.

      1. Strangely enough, I find ‘Clive’ far more acceptable than many of the contestants ,in
        Attire
        Speech
        Gender
        etc

  55. Well I’m completely knackered again. Just cutting the grass at the front. I had to take several breaks. And chats with passing acquaintances.
    I started watching a video about the disaster that happened in NZ during the Jacinda Ardern dictatorship. Wonderfully presented and an expert honest narrative. I’ll try and post it later.
    Feet up and a cuppa now.

  56. I have just finished scanning the print version of today’s DT.

    Page after page of WhatsAppGate, of course and lots of articles by “journalists” saying how terrible it all was and how shockingly the government behaved.

    Tellingly, however, there is not a WORD about how the DT (along with the rest of the press) never even thought of questioning policy at the time – let alone attacking HMG for getting everything wrong.

    There is a odour of sanctimoniousness that I find most unpleasant.

    2. We can’t trust the politicians nor believe the press. Life gets difficult.

      1. Can’t trust anyone these days- the govt., the NHS, the police, the media etc
        All corrupt and beneath contempt.

      2. When Blair removed the balance demand from climate change it was obviously a political weapon to force a narrative. That fact, of course, has never been publicised.

        The press cannot be trusted. The state cannot be trusted. This is why the online harm bill is full of things that alow government to remove sites that disagree with the narrative. That’s why they’re so eager to push it through. It’s bugger all to do with children or safety. it’s just about control.

        1. Questions for Geoff, Wibbles.

          We will be one of the sites that disagrees with the narrative.

          Do we have an alternative home to scuttle off to?

          Will it be on the ‘dark’ side of the ‘net?

          How will we connect?

    3. The press was told to frighten people and it did. Comically no one points out that the numbers were fiddled every week, that no paper presented a consistent, verifiable figure on a regular basis – nor compared that demographically and between age groups. It was all deliberately obfuscated to present the narrative the state wanted.

      1. And now the press is being told not to tell us of Sunak’s total betrayal of Northern Ireland with his Windsor Agreement when the truth is that the EU is not only in more control in NI than it was before and the ECJ is still the final arbiter.

        But this blanket Covid coverage has been seized upon very fortuitously to eliminate all press accounts of Sunak’s capitulation to the EU and his gross betrayal of the British people. We still have the Northern Ireland Protocol but we have lost Article 16 and the way to escape.

  57. “Parratt arranged the so-called Kiev melody for Birkbeck’s translation of the Kontakion of the Dead, which Queen Victoria heard sung at the funeral of her son-in-law Prince Henry of Battenberg, in 1896. She requested it for her own funeral, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, judged it at variance with the teaching of the Church of England against prayers for the dead.”

    Is this true, are hymns for the dead forbidden in the Anglican Church? That’s appalling if so.

    1. About the closest we get, I think, are the Kyrie eleison and Christe eleison. We regularly have Psalm 23 at funerals.

  59. Just spent 4 hours in the garden! Wonderful warm? day, blue skies and I even managed to break into a ‘glow’! I’ve split 2 very large hostas, and planted the other bits in other places, removed an enormous amount of moss from the front beds and discovered just how dry this winter has been! The lawn’ is a complete disaster area and is definitely more moss than grass! The birds are having a field day with nesting materials! Have sown some lupins, basil and sweet peas and put out the primulas, and new oregano, thyme and rosemary which I lost last year! Tea time now! Not quite up to BoBs work rate but not bad for an oldish gran!

      1. There isn’t any wind today so it’s been very pleasant. What a difference it makes to be warm! However, Uncle Bill following my hydrangea disaster last year, after you warned me not to prune, I will be patient!

        1. Apparently about a foot of snow this morning in Southern Ontario to go with the six inches of snow last night.

          I guess that we chose a good time to leave town, all we have to deal with in south carolina is a thick coat of pollen over everything.

          1. My town in NC used to offer $5 pollen rinses at car washes in pollen season. I drove a black Honda Pilot and it was tough to see any black at times.

      2. Very cold, gloomy and grey just a few miles further south. New boiler expected Wednesday (an arm and a leg), praise be.

    2. Gertcha, Gal, sounds like you’re doing a bonzer good job there. Keep it up and rescue the lawn later – or turn it into a tatty field!

    1. If you were poor and lived in Africa or anywhere in the Orient being colonised by the Brits was about the best thing that could happen to you.

    2. I fail to see what there is ot apologise for. Most people whinging about it know nothing about the era, or the events of the time. They just have a fixed image of what it was like and base their opinion on that, regardless of fact.

    3. My father was governor of the Northern Province of the Sudan.

      Since the British left the Sudan in the 1950s the country has suffered:

      * Endless civil war;
      * Genocide;
      * Plague;
      * Famine;
      * Religious persecution;
      * Total collapse of physical infrastructure;
      * The destruction of the medical facilities, educational facilities and jurisprudence that the British had brought;
      * Division and partition.

      I may be biased but my my father was a far more civilised, kindly, wise, humane and well-educated man than any of the savages who are now ruling the Sudan and he was a far more civilised, kindly, wise, humane and well-educated man than our disgusting new King.

      1. I was with you until your last sentence which is unwarranted. I believe that, in fact, from the point of view that we live in a constitutional monarchy, Elizabeth II was a disaster, much though I loved her as queen. But I do not criticise her doings or lack of them because the monarchy is not about the person but the principals upon which our country is built upon for over 1000 years.

        The constant attempt to undermine a particular monarch is to undermine our history, our democracy and all that has been painfully built up and learnt over centuries. Personally, I welcome a more assertive monarch, a yes man simply serves to weaken a cornerstone of our system which has the wisdom of being an evolved, organic system and because of that can adapt and grew, unlike a written constitution which is made to say things that were clearly never intended, such as the US Constitution. Our system is not something artificial but superior to all others because it is a living thing. When one part of that system becomes weak, like an atrophying limb, then the whole system becomes weakened and that is not a good thing.

        Attacking our monarchy and our monarch is to play into the hands of the left who wish for nothing more than the end of the monarchy because with its demise comes the end of England. You cannot be an innocent bystander in this, either you aid and abet or oppose the Woke and sorry, you cannot do this by half measures because we are in an ideological war and the enemy is utterly ruthless.

        2. We certainly differ on this point!

          And to quote from your post:

          “………. Attacking our monarchy and our monarch is to play into the hands of the left who wish for nothing more than the end of the monarchy because with its demise comes the end of England”.

          Charles is doing a pretty good effort to bring about the UK’s demise without the aid of any republicans. There would certainly be no place for the monarchy in the great reset and yet the King cosies up to Schwab and Co and the WEF.

          And the recent surrender of sovereignty by Sunak – endorsed by Charles by his meeting with Ursula Von der Lyen – is surely not something which will keep the kingdom together.

          But I am now a republican having been a staunch monarchist until the death of Queen Elizabeth II. As you know, new converts often have avid opinions and turn quite strongly against the institutions they used to support!

          1. Years ago when Moh was in the FAA, he had a course to do at RNAS station Yeovilton .. This was when Charles was also in the RN.

            Moh drove by car , parked up , Moh jumped out , and guess who was also in the car park next to us .. I got out of the passenger side to get into the drivers seat.. and I forget what happened , but I quickly kissed Moh goodbye .. the P of W rushed ahead and I had an image of a round shouldered very slim waisted pear shaped bryl creamed haired fellow in uniform , as was Moh (not brylcreamed ) who had seniority .

            My lasting image was of an unsmiling very serious Royal son .
            I have also been to a function where P Andrew attended and he seemed to be a barrel of laughs with an eye for the ladies .. He enjoyed the limelight , and played on it .

        3. And like you re Rastus, my problem is with your final sentence.
          Charles is part of the woke problem and certainly not a solution to it.

          1. You missed my point altogether. It is that no matter who the individual is it is the institution that matters but because of the nature of the institution tearing down the individual matters. If we had been doing that , historically speaking, the monarchy would have ended with King Steven or John or whomever and our history and institutions, consequently our freedoms built on that, the dynamic between the monarchy, the people and parliament would not have evolved and would not exist in the present day. We would probably be like the rest of Europe and that, looking at their histories, is not a good thing.

          2. The institution itself matters, hence my despising those such as Khan, who were so appallingly rude to the POTUS; but, if the individual representing the institution is Hell bent on tearing it apart then they are a significant problem.
            Charles is panning out as just such a problem.

          3. Sorry, but I completely fail to see that on the part of Charles. I think that borders on hysteria as a perception.

          4. His constitutional position changed when he became King, but he continues to carry on as if it makes no difference, if that is hysteria on my part, so be it.

            We must agree to differ here.

          6. Quite honestly, I just don’t see that. But perhaps it is because we the same age, his birthday is November 14, 1948, mine October 26 of the same year. We also seem to have the same interests and, as such, perhaps I ‘resonate’ more with his temperament. I thought it quite reasonable behaviour when he was accused of talking to plants in 1986, I do and did too. And, I thought the deliberate attempt to denigrate him on that score, wholly unreasonable. But it seems to me the attempt to pull him down has gone on for at least that long. It has been a determined denigration on the part of people when, in fact, often as not, he has been right and they have been wrong. He is right on the environment and right on agriculture as well as other things. I do not agree with his solutions but that is another issue. He has said he will not push his personal views as King and he hasn’t. What he says now is what the government says and that is what is expected of him. Perhaps your complaint should be against a government that ill advises him because as a Constitutional Monarch he is compelled to say what they want.

    4. My father was governor of the Northern Province of the Sudan.

      Since the British left the Sudan in the 1950s the country has suffered:

      * Endless civil war;
      * Genocide;
      * Plague;
      * Famine;
      * Religious persecution;
      * Total collapse of physical infrastructure;
      * The destruction of the medical facilities, educational facilities and jurisprudence that the British had brought;
      * Division and partition.

      I may be biased but my my father was a far more civilised, kindly, wise humane and well-educated man than any of the savages who are now ruling the Sudan and he was a far more civilised, kindly, wise humane and well-educated man than our disgusting new King.

  61. Edited version:

    A useful rebuttal to the climate grifters
    Executive Summary

    Governments around the globe are taking actions to implement fossil fuel-free or “Net Zero” energy systems without a thorough examination of the scientific basis for doing so. This paper undertakes that examination by reviewing the scientific support (or lack thereof) that has been used to justify this transition to Net Zero. No attempt is made to address the significant economic, societal or environmental consequences of a near-total reliance on renewable energy and the required battery-backup that is necessary to transition to a fossil fuel free future.
    Two of the paper’s authors – Drs. William Happer and Richard Lindzen, professors emeriti at Princeton University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively – have spent decades studying and writing about the physics of Earth’s atmosphere. The third, Gregory
    Wrightstone, a geologist of more than 40 years, has spent much of the last decade writing and speaking about the interplay of geology, history and climate.
    The authors find that Net Zero – the global movement to eliminate fossil fuels and its emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases – to be scientifically invalid and a threat to the lives of billions of people. Among the paper’s findings are:
    • Net Zero proponents regularly report that extreme weather is more severe and frequent because of climate change while the evidence shows no increase – and, in some cases, a decrease – in such events.
    • Computer models supporting every government Net Zero regulation and the trillions of dollars subsidizing renewables and electric cars, trucks, home heating, appliances and many other products do not work.
    • Scientific research and studies that do not support the “consensus” narrative of harmful man-made global warming are routinely censored and excluded from government reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Climate Assessment.
    • Conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that contradict the narrative of catastrophic global warming from fossil fuels are rewritten by government bureaucrats for public reports to support the false narrative of Net Zero.
    • The many benefits of modest warming and increasing carbon dioxide are routinely either eliminated or minimized in governmental reports.
    • Eliminating fossil fuels and implementing Net Zero policies and actions mean the elimination of fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides that will result in about half the world’s population not having enough food to eat. Many would starve.
    • The adoption of Net Zero is the rejection of overwhelming scientific evidence that there is no risk of catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and CO2 .
    Net Zero, then, violates the tenets of the scientific method that for more than 300 years has underpinned the advancement of western civilization.
    https://co2coalition.org/wp…

    1. I have my own version that I always want to troll these lefties with – but I know not how to do it,:

      Climate Change and You

      The climate ‘science’ is wrong. CO2 being 0.04% of the atmosphere is a cause for good, as it is essential for plant life.

      The atmosphere is 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen. The remaining 1% are various trace elements of which CO2 is but a small part.

      The greatest cause of any change in the Earth’s climate, is due to the cyclical nature of the Sun’s phases, which may lead to vast differences between ice ages and continual heatwaves.

      Please feel free to copy and paste this anywhere appropriate.

      1. When I was at my junior school we were told that the Rain Forests in South America, Africa and Asia were the lungs of the planet.
        Mankind and it’s corporate greed has leveled most of these forests or hacked and burnt the forest to destruction. And now those who consider themselves as corporate all controlling gods, are blaming every one else for the damage they have quite deliberately carried out.

  63. Get yer teeth into to this Nottlers 45 mins.
    Here is the NZ video I described earlier. It’s so relevant to what we are all experiencing in our own countries of western Cultures. And take serious notice of what the lady says about the police beating up the residents in NZ. And not being recognised as New Zealanders. I fear this is why all these foreign men have been boated into the UK. There has still been no positive explanation from our government for any of them being here.

    https://www.bitchute.com/video/BPzLxEtoOYZp/

      1. Sorry I can’t help you Sos.
        It’s all about the disgusting and deliberately and chemically
        manufactured covid death syndrome.

  67. Sadiq Khan plots to use Ulez cameras for future ‘pay-as-you-drive’ scheme

    Road user pricing plans are being lined up to replace current charges, but there are concerns it would lead to additional costs for drivers

    By Jack Simpson, TRANSPORT CORRESPONDENT
    4 March 2023 • 3:10pm

    Sadiq Khan is plotting to use the cameras bought to police Ulez to help run a future “pay-as-you-drive” scheme in London.

    In an answer to the London Assembly earlier this week, Mr Khan revealed that he had asked Transport for London to look into developing a scheme which would use more “sophisticated technology” to charge road users.

    He added: “ANPR cameras could form part of the potential operation of such a scheme but no proposals have been developed.”

    TfL plans to install 2,750 additional cameras across outer London ahead of August’s Ulez expansion, with 300 already put up across some boroughs.

    However, the Greater London Authority Conservatives has said the comments show that Mr Khan’s plans for a camera network is part of a long-term plan to impose road user charging.

    Road user charging plans are being lined up to eventually replace the Ulez and Congestion charges. It is expected that cameras and sensors will monitor the distance cars travel, where they travel to and their level of emissions, with drivers potentially charged by the mile.
    *
    *
    ***********************************

    Dark Destroyer
    1 HR AGO
    Khan must go. He is waging a war against motorists who no doubt he labels as far right, Covid denying, anti vaccine lunatics. He’s the real loony.

    Jasper Derbyshire
    56 MIN AGO
    Reply to Dark Destroyer – view message
    Is it just Khan though? He’s following the WEF playbook pretty closely.
    I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a secret whatsapp audit trail of messages between Ministers and Khan detailing the use of London as a testing ground for surveillance, control and taxation policies planned for the rest of us.

    2. Khan isn’t doing anything about the stench of kif, cigarettes and other noxious substances .. nor is he smelling the rubbish, the drains the stale stink of takeaway food fumes , the fat blocked drains , nor is he looking overhead and watching the activity in the sky as aircraft circle /stay in the load / take off .

      That man is a vicious pakki rat .. He is killing the heart and soul of a vibrant trading city .

    3. Khan is only obeying the globalist reset plans.
      They are not his ideas, it is happening all over

      1. Khan you can also join Charles and Sunak at the executioner’s block but I guess that you, 650 MPs and 800 + Lords will all be hanging on lamp-posts strung up with piano wire by then.

  68. Par Four today.

    Wordle 623 4/6
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
    🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. And me. Done this morning while my washing went around and around at the laundry.

      Wordle 623 4/6

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

    2. Yeah, par 4 here too.
      Wordle 623 4/6

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

  70. That’s me gone for this dreary Saturday. More of the same tomorrow and for the next week. Ugh.

    Have a jolly evening. Tell you what – WhatsApp someone…!!

    A demain.

  71. Apropos the earlier thread re prisoners:
    There are 8,554 people in prison in the UK serving a life sentence—more than France, Germany and Italy combined.
    As of 31 December 2022, there were 66 whole-life prisoners. The list of offenders with a whole-life term includes murderers Rosemary West, Levi Bellfield and Wayne Couzens.

    I very much doubt the world would be a much worse place if half of them died in the night and yet apologists for criminals are unhappy
    https://www.russellwebster.com/prtlife18/#:~:text=There%20are%208%2C554%20people%20in,France%2C%20Germany%20and%20Italy%20combined.

  72. Quietly thinking as I was washing up dishes – Sunak and King Charles, have you ever considered that you might have over-stepped the mark and the British Public are becoming more aware of your transgressions?

    This may well lead to a second civil war and there won’t be many cavaliers about to try and save your head Charles – what a way to go, the 2nd Charles to lose his head within 400 years and all because you, the WEF and Sunak betrayed the people – who are sovereign.

    I will happily wield the axe for both Charles and Sunak.

    Be afraid, be very afraid.

    1. I think when Charles had the option of being King George the whatever he should have grasped at it and tried to emulate a few of his ancestors bearing that name and title. Some but a few were sensible.

      The Charles’ otherwise were scoundrels.

      1. You forget that we live in the internet and 24 hour news world. Very few people had any idea, unless in the court, what Charles I and II were up to.
        Ditto George VI- he took that title after the abdication as a symbol of continuity; so people would identify him with his father George V.
        Again few people knew the private family names used in those days so being known as George VI would have been fine.
        I happen to like Charles II very much- a quote from the time….
        “Here lies our sovereign lord the King whose word no man relies on,
        He never says a foolish thing, nor ever does a wise one.”
        To which the King replied, ” Easily explained; my words are my own, the actions are those of my ministers. “

    2. With all due respect, Charles has kraut tendencies. (blood will out)

      Him and Ursula putting down the Northern Irish whilst ensconced in a Norman castle with a plate of Hobnobs , that sums it up.

  73. Quietly thinking as I was washing up dishes – Sunak and King Charles, have you ever considered that you might have over-stepped the mark and the British Public are becoming more aware of your transgressions?

    This may well lead to a second civil war and there won’t be many cavaliers about to try and save your head Charles – what a way to go, the 2nd Charles to lose his head within 400 years and all because you, the WEF and Sunak betrayed the people – who are sovereign.

    I will happily wield the axe for both Charles and Sunak.

    Be afraid, be very afraid.

  74. Just how darned petty and stupid can you get…

    Bank of England blocks private-school pupils from educational presentations

    Bank says that while anyone is welcome to visit its museum, presentations and group talks are reserved for state-educated pupils only

    By Camilla Turner, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    4 March 2023 • 6:00pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/03/04/TELEMMGLPICT000327514583_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq3480UNUU8UfSxDSaY1n7MGLvJF5WfpqnBZShRL_tOZw.jpeg?imwidth=680

    The Bank of England has been accused of “social discrimination” after blocking private-school pupils from attending its education presentations.

    The Bank’s museum, which is housed at its Threadneedle Street headquarters, is currently displaying an exhibition about its role in the slave trade.

    But it has come under fire for its policy towards children from fee-paying schools. The Bank says that while anyone is welcome to visit its museum, its presentations and group talks are reserved for state-educated pupils only.
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/04/bank-england-blocks-private-school-pupils-educational-presentations/

    1. Another bastion to fall before the executioner’s axe.

      As with the Stock Exchange, the Universities, the British Museum, The Royal Mint and many others, infiltrated with WEF and Common Purpose.

        1. The church, the NHS, the media, the civil service. Parliament of course. The long march through the institutions.

          1. Agreed, Sue, thank you, I’ve dealt with parliament and Khan elsewhere but it should be a lovely little list we end up with.

    3. Of course they are blocked.

      They are slightly less likely to accept all the woke nonsense being promulgated.

  75. Before all the people that so enthusiastically and passionately followed the rules and shouted at people for not wearing masks and standing to close to them that are now kicking off about Boris and Matt for the lockdowns and their handling of the pandemic,

    Shouldn’t they first be apologising to us tin foil hatters that took all of their insults that they threw at us at the time for merely pointing out that it was all a big con and by complying that you were aiding and abetting in the globalist coup that stole all our freedoms and destroyed Western economies?

    1. 371777+ up ticks,

      Evening B 3,
      A lot of us were hardened to the offensive patter having served an apprenticeship with the genuine UKIP, NOT today’s (ino) cartel.

  76. Imagine you are a 72 year old woman , living on your own in a glorious sought after location near Cape Town.

    Imagine 12 hour power outages .. in the heat , and your food going off in the fridge .. imagine the power outage that happens in the late afternoon for hours , sunset , security alarms not working , no lights , nothing apart from a head torch .. or phone light , but having to save the phone in case , and the night is long , the crickets , cicadas , gheckos, moths , frogs etc making a din .. and my poor sister lying there on her own wondering what on earth has happened to poor old South Africa .

    Similar reports from my second sister and brother and their families who live further north .

    Violence has increased 10 fold .. and you know what , when diversity here gets stronger here in the UK when the chimps are in charge of the Asylum, which they are already, we must be prepared to be decimated .

    Not everyone will be kind and nice like Clive Myrie .. the news reader .

    1. No, Maggie, we will not be prepared to be decimated. I’m sure many Ironmongers stock good, hard-edged and sharp axes. and one can always take a chain saw to their legs and necks.

      1. No one will care Tom, because our generation is getting old and feeble , and the new generations who have been fed nonsense at their Uni’s will exercise their right to free speech and denial of the truth .

    2. Fingers crossed for your sister, Belle. That situation would be stressful for anyone, never mind an elderly lady on her own.

      1. As load shedding continues, hospitals are seeking relief
        Eskom to implement Stage 5 load shedding from Thursday
        DA’s Cayla Murray turns songwriter as she pens ‘#LoadsheddingSong’ after recent Eskom events
        US issues security alert for its citizens in SA, tells them to have 72-hrs’ worth of food supply, water and medicines
        Eskom’s generation recovery plan is a 2-year plan, De Ruyter tells MPs
        Ministers occupying mansions worth R967m, while you paid R2.6m shielding them from load shedding
        Grid collapse catastrophic for SA, De Ruyter warns in affidavit
        READ: Ousted Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter’s answering affidavit in load shedding court case

        https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/eskom-turns-100-how-the-power-utility-went-from-darling-to-disaster-1701d253-94df-4051-82c3-f8cb44511d9c

    3. The last time I was in Cape Town, probably 15 years ago, I remember reading a local paper and looking at properties for sale. Location was probably the 1st selling point, but safety appeared to be up there with gated compounds, barred windows and security systems all highlighted.
      Would she not want to come to the UK, not that our country holds much attraction for normal people anymore.

      1. She has lived out there with the rest of my family since 1967.
        My mother was killed out there when she was driving her car 40 years ago.

        I decided I hated Africa after previous childhood experiences in other parts of Africa ..

        I stayed here and studied then met Moh .. I have only been back to see them all for holidays .

        All the things I feared about Africa , are now happening here .

        I was 12 / 13 years old , coming back after school hols with parents living in Nigeria sharing a BOAC Brittania aircraft with many Belgian priests and nuns, bandaged and wounded and their little dogs who were being evacuated from the Congo during the terrible massacres , plane had been diverted , then I was also at b/school with girls whose Brit parents were in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprisings.

        All I hear and have witnessed is horrible .. including the Sudan and Egypt when we were evacuated in 1956.. I am sure I have PTSD..

        I was also on a married accompanied with Moh when he worked / flew helicopters in Nigeria . Our lovely bungalow in PH was riddled with bullet holes from battles during Biafran war , before our time of course .. but still the violence continued .

        1. I use to play golf with an ex chopper pilot who worked in Nigeria.
          I can’t remember his name, we use to call him Biggles.
          I might be able to find out tomorrow.

        2. Your OH probably had me in the chopper a few times if he ever did crew changes on seismic exploration ships in the 90s. Maybe even went to the same places when I was stationed in PH as relief manager at CoreLabs, a department of Western Atlas and Western Wireline, in the 80s and would go to the Presidential Hotel for an evening out.

          1. Late seventies, Mm. That is when we were there , for a year .. which was enough , then went offshore Shetland basine for 16 years , then here flying with the coastguard until he retired as they all had to at 58!

            Did you see this?

            Why is Britain experiencing so many earthquakes? Experts weigh in as tremors hit Wales, Cornwall and the Norfolk coast
            Several British earthquakes took place over the space of just three weeks
            The most powerful, a 3.8 magnitude tremor, hit south Wales on February 24
            MailOnline spoke to scientists to find out whether this activity is unusual

            https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11803371/Why-Britain-experiencing-earthquakes-Experts-weigh-in.html

          2. He might have driven me to Brae A or Brae B in the 80s when I was core-catching. The long Shetland chopper flights were horrible with the hoods on your survival suits had to be zipped up for the whole journey.

            As for the minor earthquakes in the UK, Belle, I think they’re the least of our worries, just the DM trying to scare you.

        3. Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English? is a 1978 memoir by the British journalist and war correspondent Edward Behr.

      2. Don’t be silly, she wouldn’t be allowed in, she’s leaving a “safe country” /sarc

        1. I fear that within a decade we may need a new Dad’s Army of retired former Forces Personnel to patrol the streets of our major cities to maintain control and order.

    5. I expect if home owners installed solar panels they would be stolen within days.
      One of my neices lives in Summeset West. She has three young daughters.
      Now divorced I’m still expecting her to return the UK.

  77. VERY LAST POST – article worth reading – if only others in Govt had the guts to say this:

    “There has been understandable alarm throughout the country about recent events at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield. I share it. West Yorkshire police recorded a non-crime hate incident after a boy dropped a copy of the Quran, which appeared to have been scuffed. The mother of the boy has said he is autistic. Appallingly, he has received death threats and there has been considerable unrest.

    I have already indicated my deep concern about this case and the way it has been handled, but it raises a number of broader issues.

    The education sector and police have a duty to prioritise the physical safety of children over the hurt feelings of adults. Schools answer to pupils and parents. They do not have to answer to self-appointed community activists. I will work with the Department for Education to issue new guidance spelling this out.

    Instead, a disturbing video showed a meeting — which looked more like a sharia law trial, inappropriately held at a mosque instead of a neutral setting, whereby the mother of one boy was made to account for his behaviour in front of an all-male crowd.

    We do not have blasphemy laws in Great Britain, and must not be complicit in the attempts to impose them on this country. There is no right not to be offended. There is no legal obligation to be reverent towards any religion. The lodestar of our democracy is freedom of speech. Nobody can demand respect for their belief system, even if it is a religion. People are legally entitled to reject — and to leave — any religion. There is no apostasy law in this country. The act of accusing someone of apostasy or blasphemy is effectively inciting violence upon that person.

    Everyone who lives here has to accept this country’s pluralism and freedom of speech and belief. One person’s freedom to, for example, convert from Islam to Christianity is the same freedom that allows a Muslim to say that Jesus was a prophet but not God Incarnate.

    This freedom is absolute. It doesn’t vary case by case. It can’t be disapplied at a local level. And no one living in this country can legitimately claim that this doesn’t apply to them because they belong to a different tradition.

    All of this is typically understood. If I told a socialist they should politely endorse my sincerely held conservative beliefs, he or she would laugh in my face — and rightly so. Roman Catholics readily understand that people are going to criticise the Pope or mock the concept of transubstantiation.

    Yet things are going in the wrong direction. We see that in the monstrous way that JK Rowling and others have been treated for daring to challenge radical gender ideology. And there is a particular issue with attitudes towards Islam.

    The overwhelming majority of Muslims are tolerant, peaceful and embrace our values. But some Muslims and non-Muslims alike — as well as Islamist extremists — believe that Islam should enjoy a special status, protected from disrespect.

    There is a long, ignoble history of that, which goes back at least as far as the furore over The Satanic Verses. It is rooted in a view — actually a bigoted one — that Muslims are uniquely incapable of controlling themselves if they feel provoked. And it has excused agitators using fear to force people to bend to their demands.

    In June last year, a cinema chain cancelled all UK screenings of The Lady of Heaven after threatening behaviour by groups of Muslim men outside cinemas. A teacher from Batley who showed his students a Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Muhammad is still living in hiding, following angry protests outside the school and online threats from local community leaders.

    The way to ensure community cohesion and peace is not to cave into bullies, nor to demand that people aren’t “unnecessarily offensive”. The right approach is to defend our pluralist, free society very robustly indeed.

    I am not happy with the way non-crime hate incidents are recorded and I will soon be announcing new guidance for police.

    Timidity does not make us safer; it weakens us. A fear of being seen as “Islamophobic” led to the grooming gangs scandal. It led the Prevent counterterrorism programme to fail to recognise the scale of the threat of Islamist extremism, to deny the individual culpability of extremists, and actively to co-operate with extremist groups. It fails to protect people from the mob.

    Enough. It is high time for leaders — real leaders, not self-appointed hot-heads — to stand up for our free society. It is this country’s sacred promise to everyone who lives here, whatever their background. Every organisation that answers to me as home secretary will be in no doubt of where I stand.

    Suella Braverman is home secretary

    1. A good article except:

      The overwhelming majority of Muslims are tolerant, peaceful and embrace our values.

      BULLSHIT!

      1. I like what she says very much. Nobody else has ever dared to even hint at what she says. And I think, on balance, the majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Unfortunately HMG and all those in a position of authority have been too cowardly to make such a stand or statement. I hope she means it.

        Appeasement has been the line since as far back as I can remember, thenFinsbury Park cleric Abu Hamsar preaching in the street with adherents’ bums in the air and police did nothing to stop it. That was back in early 2000 IIRC. If that had been stamped on right away things may not have progressed as far as they have.

        1. I’m not suggesting that they are, but never ever forget that if they eventually become the majority YOU will have to change, whether you believe or not. And if it takes terrorism to ensure it happens they are not going to be on your side fighting it, quite the opposite in fact.

          1. I’m aware of that sos and if it comes to that the only people to blame are the PTB. Beyond that it’s something over which I have no control whatsoever and I pray fervently that it never does happen.

          2. And one should recall that an objective poll of “moderate” slammers found that 70% of them thought that murdering whites was perfectly OK. Thought they wouldn’t do it themselves…ahem.

        2. We dodged a bullet when we didn’t cave in to their demands for blasphemy laws protecting their ideology back in the 80s (I think). The majority of muslims may not be active terrorists, but they would protect those who are and fully sympathise with the ends (islam taking over).

      2. They all read the same book.
        Which obviously has huge restrictions on their mindset.

    2. “The overwhelming majority of Muslims are tolerant, peaceful and embrace our values.” No they aren’t and no they don’t Suella. The koran tells them that women are worth less than men and that kuffars are lower than cattle. It also enjoins them to join holy jihad and kill the kuffar. That is neither tolerant nor embracing our values. As for homosexuals – the same applies. Islam means submission and until that is fully understood we are sleepwalking (or being marched) into the Caliphate.

  78. That’s me for the night – it’s exhausting fomenting civil disorder but someone has to do it.

    Goodnight and God bless, Gentlefolk. Let’s see where we are, on a peaceful Sunday Morn.

      1. I’m thinking more on a personal level, Maggie, even though I may not have much longer left.,I would love to spend my last few years in company of a woman much my own age for companion-ship and the ability to slip quietly into that long goodnight with a hug and a kiss.

  79. Just had a laugh courtesy of DM.

    “Prince Harry lays bare being diagnosed with PTSD after Diana’s death. Duke tells “toxic trauma” expert Gabor Maté he tries not to “pass on negative experiences” from his own childhood to Archie and Lilibet”. What an absolute hoot.

    Those poor children. Just think of what they will face as they’re growing up, the things all the other kids will say to them. I feel so sorry for them.

    1. What on earth makes you think those children will ever mix with anyone other than other over-privileged brats?

    2. Harry has too much time on his hands, pity he doesn’t have a proper job to keep him busy and stop all the navel gazing.

  80. Well that was a pleasant afternoon in Nottingham.
    A bit of a long bus ride each way, but a couple of pints in Ye Old Trip and a bit of shopping, then into the Boat in Cromford for a last pint before walking up home.

    Also picked up a ticket for a BBC Phil concert next weekend. Sadly as the DT will be at work in Crich Tramway Museum, it’s their opening day for the 2023 season, I’ll be by myself.

    3. Oh dear. YOTTJ is a Greene King pub. When I lived and worked in East Anglia, Greene King was A Good Thing. The Dog and Partridge, being next to the brewery, was a case in point. Yet 10 miles up the road in Thetford, GK IPA was… er… meh. It didn’t travel well. .

      1. The bitter had to be topped up with a bottle of Abbott
        Geoff did you see my reply ref the Bridge Tavern in Thetford?

      2. The bitter had to be topped up with a bottle of Abbott
        Geoff did you see my reply ref the Bridge Tavern in Thetford?

      3. Greene King. Poacher turned Gamekeeper. Had a great pint of Harveys Old Ale today.

      4. Ironic really, Geoff, since IPA was designed to travel long and uncomfortable.
        Morning!

  81. Evening, all. I’d like to think the headline was true, but alas voters have short memories.

      1. Try and read the post I made earlier.
        It tells the story of the out and goddamn lies we’ve all been told.
        4 hours ago now.

          1. And our habitually lying government overcharging for domestic energy and fuel by lying that its in short supply.
            Then raking in billions of tax from the company profits.
            Just to pay for the illegal invaders.
            Who’s arrivals they can’t and never will be able to justify.
            Even More lies from Whitehall and Westminster.
            We even managed to buy tomatoes from Aldi yesterday. 🍅 😉

          2. Morning TB I’ve been through the 2010 Mid Herts GC diary. I can’t find or remember the name of the pilot.
            He did work for the John Lang group of companies.
            I’ll try to contact someone who might know. The annoying thing is I can see his face in my memory.

      1. No sign of a riding helmet in Black History Month then or are they waiting for whitey to invent it for them.

  85. From another site on Rumble: Moderna statement about the Covid-19 ‘vaccination’: “we delivered the fraud that the government ordered”. Big Pharma, always deflecting.

    This is the problem when large mega corporations are granted relief from prosecution should their products fail. I hope an exception can be made in law that the bastards at Moderna and Pfizer are no longer exempt from prosecution for the damage their products have caused. The big Pharma companies should on their own admission be prosecuted initially for ‘delivering the fraud the government ordered’.

    It follows that the government(s) initiating such a massive fraud should be meted justice.

  86. From another site on Rumble: Moderna statement about the Covid-19 ‘vaccination’: “we delivered the fraud that the government ordered”. Big Pharma, always deflecting.

    This is the problem when large mega corporations are granted relief from prosecution should their products fail. I hope an exception can be made in law that the bastards at Moderna and Pfizer are no longer exempt from prosecution for the damage their products have caused. The big Pharma companies should on their own admission be prosecuted initially for ‘delivering the fraud the government ordered’.

    It follows that the government(s) initiating such a massive fraud should be meted justice.

  87. Sunday 5th March, 2023

    Sue MacFarlane

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

    and Many more Happy Birthdays and all the kicks you want on the Route 66

    With very best wishes,

    Caroline and Rastus.

    You are one day younger than our niece Susie and when she was little sister Belinda used to love this song by the Everly Brothers. Last year we posted Sweet Sue for you – this time here’s Don and Phil:

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

  88. I think I went to bed too early.

    🎶Happy birthday to you 🎶 Sue Mac 🤩
    🍾🥂 have a lovely day.

        1. Thank you Belle! It is indeed, and I spend a few happy hours in the garden yesterday under blu skies and sunshine!💕

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