Saturday 6 April: Royal Mail’s failure to deliver letters on time turns NHS care into a lottery

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its commenting facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

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

747 thoughts on “Saturday 6 April: Royal Mail’s failure to deliver letters on time turns NHS care into a lottery”

  1. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) Story
    THIS IS VERY TRUE!

    Speakers ON! Click the link below.

    Age Activated Attention Disorder

    I laughed at this until I realized that this is exactly what I do.

    Now finally somebody has made a clip of it.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6oHBG3ABUJU&vq=medium

    “Be who you are and say what you feel because the people who mind don’t matter, and the people who matter don’t mind.” (Dr Seuss)

    3. I wonder if the director is the same Steve Pemberton as the actor who was in ‘Whitechapel’ and ‘Benidorm’?

      1. Quite likely. He was also one of the team that made the sketch sitcom ‘The League of Gentlemen’, where he played Pauline who ran the Jobcentre, among many other creations. He lives not far from Borehamwood.

  5. Wordle 1,022 4/6

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

    Good morning, chums, I hope you slept well. A sunny day today so it’s clearly going to be washing day.

    1. Good morning Ma’am. If you put your washing on a line in Devon at the moment it would end up across the Channel in ten minutes!

    1. ‘We must protect our genetic data from Chinese scientists, who could use it for targeted bioweapons’.

      This is what ‘gain of function’ was really about.

    2. I suspect that Covid was an attempt at DNA manipulation for population control which escaped the lab before it was fully tested. Didn’t hear much about the Far East and Africa being affected. Perhaps it was aimed mainly at white Caucasians?

      1. Arab and African uptake of the ‘vaccines’ was low. Some of the convoys carrying the ‘medicine’ to outlying districts were attacked.

      2. Allegedly due to the use of Hydroxychloroquine as an anti-malarial drug and Ivermectin to combat parasites.

  7. £20k tax-free Isa allowance ‘hard to justify’

    The tax-free Isa allowance has been criticised as “expensive” and “poorly targeted” by a leading think tank.

    Isas (individual savings accounts) were first introduced in 1999 by then chancellor Gordon Brown to increase the numbers of lower and middle income people saving for the future. But in a report published April 6, the Resolution Foundation think tank said that it was now “difficult to justify” the expense of the Isa allowance, which lets savers stash away up to £20,000 every tax year without paying tax on the returns. The think tank also argued that Isas have done little to address the problem of low savings in Britain. This is because Isas provide the most tax relief to those on higher incomes who typically have the biggest savings pots, it argued.

    In 2018-20, the richest tenth of working families owned almost a third of all Isa savings, according to data from HM Revenue and Customs.
    Meanwhile around two thirds of those earning below £10,000 had less than £5,000 in their Isa.

    Only around 1pc of families save enough each month to exceed the £20,000 annual allowance, Resolution Foundation’s analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics found. Today the UK has one of the lowest savings rates in the G20, according to data from the OECD.

    As interest rates have soared, so has the cost of Isas in terms of lost tax revenue. In 2023-24, Isas cost £6.7bn in tax relief, up from £3.7bn in 2021-22. Last year, the Resolution Foundation suggested capping Isas £100,000 to reduce the amount of forgone tax.

    Others have argued that a cap would discourage savings by making Isas more complicated. Tom Selby, of AJ Bell, said: “The UK needs to focus on building a savings culture and encouraging people to plan for their financial future. Slashing the Isa allowance or introducing a cap on Isa savings would be retrograde steps that would send a damaging anti-savings message to Brits and add unwelcome complexity to the system.”

    Molly Broome, of the Resolution Foundation, said: “The Government’s flagship UK Isa policy, designed to promote saving, may be well-intentioned – but it disregards the fact that Isas are expensive, poorly targeted, and unlikely to increase long-term saving.”

    The think tank argued that tax reliefs are largely ineffective at encouraging long-term saving, instead incentivising richer people to move their money and maximise returns. It said that the behavioural interventions were more effective, citing auto-enrolment as an example.

    Today the rules are changing so savers can stash away up to £20,000 in as many of the same type of Isa as they want. This compares to previously when savers were limited to opening one of each type, each year. In the Spring Budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled a new “British Isa” which, if implemented, would give savers an additional £5,000 on top of the existing £20,000 annual allowance.

    Here we go. Not content with wrecking our private pension system they’re now going after the ISA savings system. It’s almost as if they don’t want people to save and become financially resilient.

    1. It’s almost as if they don’t want people to save and become financially resilient.

      They don’t. Lol!

      1. Dependence on the state is the priority of these scum in office even if the state is completely incapable of serving those who depend on it!

    4. Those with lots of money have spare income after paying taxes and exorbitant bills? Well I never! Whoda thunk it?

  8. NoTTLers figured out this yonks ago. A resounding endorsement of Reform…

    True blue Tories ‘banned from standing in the general election’

    No 10 accused of purging ‘high-quality’ Right-wing candidates with traditional Conservative values to ensure party is dominated by centrists

    Gordon Rayner, ASSOCIATE EDITOR and Allison Pearson
    5 April 2024 • 7:28pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/04/05/TELEMMGLPICT000372774602_17123398220830_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqkOwR0iP77jSmoq9t8DUmdreHsZFrEmHQDi0eQN40zhg.jpeg?imwidth=960
    Former diplomat Aman Bhogal who contested Upper Bann seat in Northern Ireland in 2015 but has not been selected since, said CCHQ was involved in a ‘stitch-up’

    Downing Street has been accused of blocking “true blue” Conservative candidates from standing in the general election as it wages a battle for the future of the Tory Party.

    Those on the Right of the party believe Rishi Sunak is trying to purge it of those who support low-tax, small-state conservatism so that it will be dominated by centrists after the election.

    It would mean that if the Conservatives lose the election and Mr Sunak resigns, he will have already ensured it cannot move to the Right by packing the parliamentary party with One Nation Tories who would reject Right-wing leadership candidates.

    Some Tory MPs have expressed despair that high-quality applicants for the list of approved parliamentary candidates are being rejected because of their traditional Conservative values, while those who believe in high taxation and high public spending are put through, even if they lack the requisite skills to be an MP.

    It is the latest evidence of the civil war raging within the Conservative Party between those who believe it must move to the Right to combat the growing threat of Reform UK and those who believe the only way to remain electable is to occupy the centre ground.

    Applicants who have spoken to The Telegraph describe those in charge of the selection process as “yellow Tories” whose preference is for candidates largely indistinguishable from Liberal Democrats.

    They describe a clear anti-Brexit bias among those who interview applicants and complain that rather than being grilled on Conservative values, they are asked multiple questions about promoting diversity.

    If the Tories lose the election and Sunak quits as party leader, he can determine what his successor inherits by controlling the list of potential parliamentary candidates

    Aman Bhogal, a former diplomat who contested the Upper Bann seat in Northern Ireland in 2015 but has not been selected since, said the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) was involved in a “stitch-up” by blocking Right-wingers from making it onto constituency shortlists.

    He said: “In the past, you were asked to talk about your Conservative values and your Conservative ideals, but that has all changed. Now it’s ‘tell us about how you have promoted diversity and how you have addressed white privilege’.”

    CCHQ is in charge of the approved candidates list, with a handful of people wielding immense control over who is accepted and who is rejected.

    Among those who would like to be a Tory MP is Lord Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, who has made it clear he would renounce his peerage to sit in the Commons.

    Although he has not made any public comment, The Telegraph understands he has been blocked by CCHQ from applying for seats in the Commons.

    Lord Frost is a critic of the party’s policy direction under the Prime Minister, and one Sunak loyalist suggested he was not being considered because “he is a member of the House of Lords who is also trying to remove the Party leader”.

    David Campbell Bannerman, a former Conservative MEP who has been on the approved list of candidates since 2019, says he is being blocked from progressing to the long list for any particular seat “because I wasn’t being nice enough about Rishi Sunak”.

    He said: “The whole thing is fixed. It’s pretty blatant and undemocratic. The members have woken up to it and are pushing back against it because they are not getting the choice of candidates that they want.

    “This is not about me but about the wider system. It is happening to a whole range of good candidates who are left mystified, let down and driven out of the party. It’s all about power and control and a lack of democracy letting the people down.”

    Another candidate who has been overlooked said: “Essentially, true blue Conservative candidates are just campaign fodder, people who will shove leaflets through doors – CCHQ has no serious intention of letting them stand in a winnable seat, if at all. They only want candidates who are One Nation Conservatives and it’s no wonder we are getting a low calibre of new MPs coming through.

    “When I applied for a seat, the chairman of the local association rang me and said they wanted me to be their candidate, but of course, I was blocked by CCHQ.

    “If, like me, you’re pro-Brexit, tough on immigration and want low tax, CCHQ see you as a repulsive headbanger. Too many in the party might as well be Liberal Democrats.”

    Problems with the selection process have been blamed for MP defections in recent years, including former Totnes MP Sarah Wollaston and former South Cambridgeshire MP Heidi Allen, both of whom jumped ship to Change UK and then the Lib Dems, and former Wokingham MP Phillip Lee, who defected to the Lib Dems.

    To date, 63 Conservative MPs have announced they are standing down at the election. The record number of Conservatives who have stood down from Parliament in a single term is 75, which was set in the run-up to the 1997 election.

    A YouGov poll earlier this month suggested the Tories could suffer their biggest-ever electoral defeat, with Mr Sunak on course to retain just 155 seats, ten fewer than Sir John Major was left with after Labour’s 1997 landslide.

    A CCHQ source said: “These claims have no basis in fact. It’s obviously a bit difficult for candidates who attack the party leader to be selected given they will be asking constituents to cast their votes for him to be Prime Minister.

    “But the idea that people are not being put forward because of some ideological bent is totally false. This is the PM who is cutting taxes, bringing in major immigration curbs, curbing the excessive elements of net zero and trying to get illegal immigrants sent to Rwanda. That’s hardly some Left-wing agenda.”

    https://cf.eip.telegraph.co.uk/illustrator-embed/content/779281db6e74ef9ccdfbf716105ca0d240288bde/1712325688892.jpg

    ‘CCHQ is obsessed with diversity’
    By Gordon Rayner, Associate Editor

    When Gary Pound* made his way to the basement of Conservative Campaign Headquarters for his candidate selection interview, he was preparing himself for questions about law and order, immigration and taxation.

    He need not have bothered. During a one-hour interrogation in a glass-walled box, the primary focus was on diversity, not politics.

    Mr Pound had once been considered such an outstanding candidate that he was on a priority list, making him eligible to apply for any vacant constituency. This time, though, he did not make it onto the list at all.

    “They were just obsessed with diversity,” said Mr Pound, a successful businessman who has been a committed and active member of the Conservative Party since university. “They wanted to know what I had done to promote diversity within the party and within politics generally.

    “Most Conservatives are meritocrats so they just want the best people, regardless of their sex or ethnicity, but it’s clear they are no longer picking people on merit.

    “It also seemed clear that if you voted for Brexit, like me, your card was marked.

    “It seems the party is being purged of true believers in Conservative values, and the people that should be Liberal Democrats who have infiltrated the party are taking over.”

    MPs and party insiders have expressed deep misgivings about the candidate selection process, which has long-term implications for the Tory Party and the direction it is taking.

    The growing row over who will stand in the next election is regarded by some as a symptom of how dysfunctional the Conservative Party has become as different factions wrestle for control over its uncertain future.

    Even if he loses the election and quits as party leader, Rishi Sunak can determine what sort of party his successor inherits by controlling the list of potential parliamentary candidates.

    Constituency associations have the final say over who stands as their parliamentary candidate, usually choosing from a short list of three or four, but CCHQ can block Right-wing candidates so that only One Nation Conservatives, as the centrists call themselves, are put forward.

    The CCHQ gatekeepers include Gareth Fox, chief of staff to the chairman of the candidates committee, a Remainer who was tasked by David Cameron with making the party more diverse, and Baroness Jenkin of Kennington, who co-founded Women2Win with Theresa May almost 20 years ago with the aim of increasing the number of female Tory MPs.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/04/05/TELEMMGLPICT000332849586_17123409358480_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqFV_pTJ0WPUdy6nqFsOz2QgNw8cYP-SLHPyE6nYvScZY.jpeg?imwidth=960
    Baroness Jenkin of Kennington is one of the CCHQ gatekeepers CREDIT: Julian Simmonds for The Telegraph

    Other influential figures include Matt Wright, chairman of the candidates committee; Matt Lane, director of candidates, and long-term No 10 fixer Dougie Smith, who helps to vet candidates and acts as a liaison between Downing Street and the candidates committee.

    Would-be MPs must submit a written application, which is followed by due diligence checks and then an interview in front of a Parliamentary Assessment Board, usually comprising two people, one of whom may be a sitting MP.

    Those who pass are entered onto the approved list of candidates, which is subdivided into those on the comprehensive list, who can apply for any seat that comes up; the key list, who can usually only apply for the seat where they live, and the development list, which means they will be considered for unwinnable seats where they can gain experience of campaigning.

    So far, 63 Conservative MPs have already announced they will step down at the election, meaning candidates are now being selected to stand in their constituencies.

    People who apply to be considered for a particular seat are considered by the candidates committee, which produces a long list and then works with the local association to whittle the list down to a shortlist of three or four in a process known as sifting.

    Aman Bhogal, a 39-year-old former diplomat and founder of the Global Britain Centre, which campaigns for free trade and free enterprise post-Brexit, also believes he has been snubbed because of his Brexiteer credentials.

    He said: “I joined the party when I was still at school and I once worked out that I have spent about 14,000 hours campaigning by knocking on doors, distributing leaflets and so on.

    “In the past when I have been interviewed by a Parliamentary Assessment Board I have been asked about my Conservative ideals, but now it’s all about diversity.

    “You are asked how you would promote inter-racial harmony and the answer they’re looking for is that you would take the knee with Black Lives Matter.

    “It’s rotten and it’s shoddy. Along with a lot of other people I am thinking of switching to Reform.”

    https://cf.eip.telegraph.co.uk/illustrator-embed/content/14de64869ec56226fc534fe91aecf3c283a9035d/1711633560986.jpg

    Mr Bhogal said that after trying and failing to get onto the shortlist for 15 different constituencies, he met Mr Fox and Mr Lane to ask them what he was doing wrong.

    He said: “I was told my application was perfect and what they call my political footprint was spot on, but that I wasn’t getting people to call in and support me.

    “They said, ‘who do you know in the Cabinet?’ and told me to get Cabinet ministers to call association chairmen putting me forward. I walked out very saddened.”

    Mr Bhogal believes he has been blocked because he campaigned for Brexit and backed Liz Truss for the Tory leadership.

    He said: “Bear in mind that two-thirds of the party members voted for Liz Truss to be leader, so if they are alienating all of those people that’s not creating a unified party at all.”

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Even Thatcher wouldn’t get on the list in today’s Tory party
    Read more

    The process of sifting candidates can be short-circuited by CCHQ in the case of a by-election when a candidate needs to be chosen quickly. In those circumstances, CCHQ can impose a shortlist on an association, which might contain only one truly viable candidate, meaning the system can be gamed.

    One person on the approved list of candidates claimed some MPs who have already decided to stand down are being told to wait until the election is called before announcing their retirement so CCHQ can use the by-election rules to impose its own candidates on local associations.

    Some of those might include current MPs tempted to do a “chicken run” to a safer seat than their own, or MPs whose seats are being abolished under boundary changes that will take effect at the election.

    A Tory councillor who holds a Cabinet position on his local authority said: “There is a gulf between what the membership wants and what the party hierarchy wants.

    “The odd thing when I applied was the number of ex-Liberal Democrats that were applying, and it was quite clear that that was the type of person they were looking for.”

    Wendy Whittaker-Large, a property investor from Cheshire who was rejected after saying she was a small state, low-tax Tory, agrees. She said: “The people who were getting through were those who believe in high taxes and high public spending – basically Lib Dems.”

    A scientist who was taken off the list after 10 years said they were told by Mr Fox that they “were not political enough” after saying they did not agree with the Government’s response to Covid.

    A barrister who was rejected by CCHQ said: “The Left wing of the party is in charge and they won’t let anyone else in. But the mistake is that the country and the party need both wings of the party.”

    *Some names have been changed to protect the anonymity of those who spoke to the Telegraph

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

    Capt Flint
    8 HRS AGO
    Reply to – view message
    A good boost to Reform and a good 8 on the Richter scale would be if Lord Frost went over to Reform and who could blame him after the way CCHQ have treated him. Best if Richard and Nigel started talking to him if not already. EDITED

    Roger That
    5 HRS AGO
    Reply to Justin Lee
    After reading this, I just joined the Reform party. £25 well spent.

    Andy McCarthy
    11 HRS AGO
    I didn’t read it all.
    I think I didn’t need to.
    THE TORIES ARE DEAD.
    VOTE REFORM NOW!!!!
    Don’t Lat Labour get – in with a split vote.
    VOTE REFORM NOW!!!!

    1. Morning Citroen.Yes of course. We knew CCHQ had been nobbled long ago. In fact I think I posted a comment at the time forecasting its purpose.

    2. Good morning Citroen 1

      Your post appeared as I was writing mine!

      As I posted above, the good news is that this must surely herald the long-overdue annihilation of the Conservative Party.

    3. ‘tell us about how you have promoted diversity and how you have addressed white privilege’. If this is correct the Conservative Party is now Neo-Marxist.

  10. The good news is that this must surely mark the long overdue death of the Conservative Party. Let us hope there will be many right of centre MPs who decide to defect to Reform because Reform may well be the main opposition to Labour after the general election.

    Even a young Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t get on the candidate list in today’s Tory Party
    Excellent Conservatives are being overlooked in favour of midwit ministerial favourites
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/05/young-margaret-thatcher-tory-candidate-list-today/

    True blue Tories ‘banned from standing in the general election’
    No 10 accused of purging ‘high-quality’ Right-wing candidates with traditional Conservative values to ensure party is dominated by centrists
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/05/true-blue-tories-banned-standing-general-election/

    1. Morning Rastus.
      I’ve lost count of the times I’ve argued with Conservative Tories who argue former and real conservatives like me should rejoin to ‘take back the party’ from the LibDem interlopers. It cannot be retaken because just like the CoE hierarchy, candidate selection is controlled by a hostile hierarchy. The only solution is to do as I did after 1990 and leave to support a party that really cares about this country, ie UKIP then and now Reform. People like Lord Frost need to defect and drive the stake deeper into the Tory party’s heart.

      1. What is Lord Frost waiting for? He has been completely betrayed by Johnson, Gove and Johnson.

        And when will Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Davis, Suella Braverman and all the well right of centre disaffected Tory MPs decide that they must leave.

        Jacob Rees-Mogg is a sad character. He is torn between his support for the party he has always loved and his growing awareness that it has become rotten to its very core. He should heed Oscar Wilde’s words:

        “Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
        By each let this be heard,
        Some do it with a bitter look,
        Some with a flattering word,
        The coward does it with a kiss,
        The brave man with a sword!

        Come on Jacob – it is your duty. Not that Sunak has any of Julius Caesar’s qualities but it is your duty to follow the noblest Roman of them all, Brutus, and wield the knife yourself for the common good and plunge it into Sunak’s guts:

        All the conspirators save only he
        Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
        He only in a general honest thought
        And common good to all, made one of them.
        His life was gentle, and the elements
        So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
        And say to all the world, “This was a man.”

      2. That argument is akin to stay in the EU to reform it from within! We all know reform is impossible on both counts.

    2. BTL Comments on Alison Pearson’s article:-

      Chester Drawers
      9 MIN AGO
      Alison forgot to mention that Davina Dripping-Wet, who got a 2:1 in PPE from Oxford, is the daughter of Tory donor Sir Lionel Dripping-Wet, and currently works as a SPAD to a minor government minister, and knows all the ‘right’ (but not as in ‘wing’) people, so obviously a better choice than self made businessman and believer in a small state, Fred Born-in-a-council-house.
      Vote Reform.

      Reply by Allison Pearson.
      Allison Pearson
      Telegraph author
      7 MIN AGO
      Reply to Chester Drawers
      Perfect, Chester. Brilliant! And almost certainly true x

      Reply by Chester Drawers.
      Chester Drawers
      3 MIN AGO
      Reply to Allison Pearson
      Thank you Alison. I for one really appreciate that you engage with your readers.

  11. Even a young Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t get on the candidate list in today’s Tory Party

    Excellent Conservatives are being overlooked in favour of midwit ministerial favourites

    ALLISON PEARSON
    5 April 2024 • 8:28pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/04/05/TELEMMGLPICT000372818957_17123452019780_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJweqM6CxDWAPMVhIsyZ6WJrU.jpeg?imwidth=960

    As the country hurtles towards the alarming prospect of a Labour government so dominant the Opposition should comfortably fit in three minibuses, true-blue Conservatives find themselves crying out for a Mrs Thatcher to take the wheel. How cruelly ironic, then, to discover that were Margaret Hilda Roberts to put herself forward as a candidate today, she would be rejected by Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ). Too Thatcherite, don’t you know.

    Astonishingly, a Telegraph investigation has revealed that excellent candidates who share the beliefs that used to unite the Tory faithful are being overlooked in favour of midwit ministerial favourites and Sunak sycophants who wouldn’t know a tough immigration policy if it mugged them.

    CCHQ denies this. But successful small-business people, a barrister and an epidemiologist are among those who have told us that, during their assessment at Tory central office, they gathered their sort was not wanted. Even though it was precisely their sort – pro-Brexit, strong borders, smaller state, low taxation – that secured a great election victory in 2019.

    And, no, this is not just sour grapes. Passionate Tories with impeccable credentials, like Aman Bhogal and David Campbell Bannerman (a former member of the European Parliament for goodness’ sake), find themselves sidelined in favour of Davina Dripping-Wett, a parliamentary aide with no proven experience but a willingness to genuflect before the leftist creed of diversity and inclusion that is cordially loathed by any actual Conservative.

    Ms Dripping-Wett is allowed to contest a seat because she is easily controlled by the cabal of senior Tory Social Democrats who, we are told, are plotting to exclude the Right of the party after the general election annihilation. A bit like putting the cowboy builders who left a gaping hole in your roof, and brown stuff spewing out of your sewer, in charge of future restorations.

    With Reform UK surging in the polls on a centre-Right manifesto, and with clear evidence in recent by-elections that lifelong Tories feel too betrayed by vapid Lib-Demmery to vote Conservative, you might have thought it would be a teeny bit tone deaf to install yet more “One Nation” types as candidates. But no. Incredibly, that is the yellow Tories’ plan. And they are getting away with it on the sly. Like a magician’s audience, Tory party members are given the illusion of choice, but on too many occasions the “correct card” has been picked for them.

    Another cunning ruse is to leave a lot of current “safe” seats without a candidate (Basildon and Billericay, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Chatham and Aylesford, Solihull West etc) unfilled for months. An endangered minister, no matter how useless or unpopular, will be parachuted in at the last minute. What’s that, you can’t stand Jeremy Hunt? Tough.

    True blues aren’t allowed anywhere near a members’ vote, just in case the silly old Conservatives make the “wrong” decision.

    One Telegraph reader who has asked not to be identified has told me he has the enthusiastic support of his local association, but CCHQ has blocked him from the approved candidates list. There are words for this, and none of them is democracy.

    Give us policies we want
    Once the trounced Rishi has departed for California, the centrist MPs who, if things go according to plan, will dominate what is left of the parliamentary party, will block any leadership candidates on the Right. Even though they are the ones who will take us out of the ECHR and slash legal immigration – the policies most Conservatives, indeed most people, in Britain want.

    How arrogant, how repellently devious and condescendingly de haut-en-bas. What a final kick in the teeth for Conservatives who have generously donated money and time to advance a cause that is precious to them, but nothing more than a vehicle to power for the believe-nothing, Nick Clegg tribute band.

    As for Lord Frost, I can hardly express the depths of my disgust at CCHQ’s alleged treatment of him. There is a reason why Conservative gatherings around the country are packed when David Frost is the guest. He speaks for millions of us who feel politically homeless. In his weekly column in this newspaper, more in sadness than in anger, Lord Frost has patiently tried to give Downing Street constructive advice on how to avoid driving the party off a cliff. He says nothing that the opinion polls aren’t already shouting. He cares about the future of his party, and his country. Nonetheless, it seems he has been banned from putting himself forward as a candidate by a couple of cocky, unelected Sunak apparatchiks who exercise vast influence over the composition of the parliamentary party. The same geniuses who picked the online-dating flasher William Wragg.

    Given a choice between Lord Frost and Davina Dripping-Wett, who are disillusioned Conservatives more likely to turn out to vote for? But they won’t be given that choice. On purpose. Because internal party victory is now more important than trying to win the great ideological struggle.

    Remember this: “The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?’”

    Now, that was a prime minister. If the yellow Tories reckon they can get away with banning true-blue Maggies from standing as Conservatives, they better think again. We see your game. And we are going to take her party back.

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

    J Murray
    10 HRS AGO
    Allison, we have long known that the Woke lefties have infiltrated every institution within the UK to gain unelected power.
    Th fact they have so successfully infiltrated and taken control of Conservative Central Office confirms it….

    N G C P Banbury
    10 HRS AGO
    100 years ago the once powerful Liberal Party abandoned its raison d’être and was annihilated, never to recover. The same is now happening to the Conservative Party which was arguably the most successful political machine in British history. The so called leaders of the party are just hammering in the last few nails into its coffin. Reform here I come.

    1. The Conservative Party has abandoned conservatism in the same way The Labour Party has abandoned the working class.

    2. It is a pity that a serious and urgently needed debate on the future intentions of the Conservative Party should descend to identity politics – a sort of tribal name-tossing, with the sheep-like Orwellian comfort chant “Thatcher Good; Lib Dem baaaaad”. One Nation Conservatives have been redefined to encompass wokism, which they never were in the days when Thatcher called them Wets.

      My understanding of traditional Conservatism has nothing to do with pandering to the Free Market global spivs making fortunes by closing down and asset-stripping anything of value that remains of our civilisation. It is that the job of Government is to enable as many as possible to make best use of their unique talents, finding their own niches of excellence, for the good of all of us, and that the best mechanism for regulating this is the market place, which Government is at liberty to manipulate in the national and public interest, and to leave well alone when this interference turns out counter-productive. Taxes are a necessary evil, but they should be spent wisely and without waste or bling to maximise value and leave the impression in all taxpayers that it is money well spent.

      The closest I found to sense in the polemic above was that it is long time we looked at our politics and politicians on merit rather than identity group. I would happily vote for a red-blooded Socialist if I felt that he or she (and not it) would do the country some good. I see precious little merit though in what passes for “Socialism” any more than what passes for “Conservativism” or “Liberal Democracy” or “Greenism” for that matter. As for “Reform”, scrape away at the rhino hide of its protest vote, and we find the same people and the same presumptions I have had to endure over recent decades from all the others. Nothing will change; nothing will be reformed except to make something rotten even more so. I wish I could see merit, I really would, but no – it’s all identity sloganizing (sic), since that’s what gets votes, it seems.

      I would never stand for office myself, because I am a rubbish politician. If I think the electorate is stupid, it would be dishonest for me not to say it, if asked. If I am not asked, then we will never get to the nub of the problem. So I am best off in my hermitage, avoiding it all as much as I can in the time I have left.

      1. I don’t agree, Jeremy. If you simply stay in your hermitage and (presumably) don’t even bother to vote you will get the worst of all worlds. Reform may well not be perfect, but it is a first step in the right direction and certainly a better choice than Conservative, Labour, Liberal, Greens, etc.

        1. And at least they are all afraid of Reform. They’re not really afraid of each other – just the opposite. The uni-party indeed. In fact, many of the Tory advisors have switched to advising Labour instead. Rats jumping ship and then jumping onto the adjacent ship.

        2. We’ll see what candidate they put up, and whether they are actually going in the right direction.

    3. The only solution is to crush the Conservative Party, and start again. It will take too long to repair it.
      Whether the replacement is Reform, or another Tory party, who knows? But who to front the organisation? Full democracy required, at the lowest level, and no hierarchy of important people to decide for you, you being too stupid to know what’s good for you.

    4. The only solution is to crush the Conservative Party, and start again. It will take too long to repair it.
      Whether the replacement is Reform, or another Tory party, who knows? But who to front the organisation? Full democracy required, at the lowest level, and no hierarchy of important people to decide for you, you being too stupid to know what’s good for you.

    5. The only complaint I have about Allison Pearson’s article is that she claims that excellent Conservative candidates are being replaced by “mid-wit” Ministerial favourites, by which she seems to mean “half-wit” Ministerial favourites. Nonsense, Allison, the word is “witless”.

  14. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/05/us-federal-reserve-may-doom-joe-biden-presidency-election/

    It is no secret that one of President Biden’s key weaknesses in the upcoming presidential election is the economy. A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll in March put Trump at 40pc, just ahead of Biden on 38pc. The same poll showed many Americans remain undecided; among those surveyed inflation and the economy were listed as the most important issues determining their vote.

    As such, a core problem for Biden is the recent price rises and resultant cost of living crisis. In the past few months, political strategists have marvelled at the fact that the economy under Biden was growing (at 3.2pc in the fourth quarter of 2024) but polling on Biden’s performance on the economy was dismal.

    A recent paper led by former treasury of the secretary Larry Summers has helped clear up the discrepancy. Summers and his co-authors show that if we adjust American inflation data to consider changes in methodology that have taken place over the past few decades, we see inflation not peaking at 9pc, as the official data indicates, but rather at 18pc. The paper also suggests that inflation measured in line with historical norms would have been 8pc at the end of 2023, not the 3pc shown in the official statistics.

    This explains why the average American voter is angry at Biden about the economy: prices are still rising at a rapid clip and living standards have been substantially eroded under his administration. This puts the Federal Reserve in a very unusual position this electoral cycle, because what the central bank does in the coming months could have a huge impact on the outcome of the election.

    Interesting to read that the USA has fiddled its measures of inflation as much as the UK.

    1. Anyone who makes a weekly shopping trip knows how high inflation is in reality.

  15. Good morning all. A bit of a disturbed night.
    Woke to pump bilges about 2:30, stall wide awake at 3 when the DT woke for the same reason, so I went down to do mugs of tea and were were sat up til just the back of 4!

    Dry start after the overnight rain, 7°C and a lot brighter.

    Talk TV has been investigating I see:-

    Police investigate suspected hate speech by preachers at UK mosques after TalkTV investigation
    https://talk.tv/top-stories/37768/police-investigating-hate-speech-at-uk-mosques

    1. That one will be shoved under the carpet by our known cowards. .
      They are more interested in nicking Tommy Robinson for the way he stirs his coffee.

      1. Good morning m’Dear.
        Blue with a light haze here.
        Forecast to cloud over at midday and start raining at 15:00.

          1. Nil here. It’s passing through a narrow arc across eastern Canada, Eastern USA and Mehico.

  17. There’s not much to write about this morning. I’m going down town. (Please don’t put up that stupid song Stephen) Hopefully things will have improved by the time I get back.

    1. You’d have to be away for a very long time for things to have improved (if they ever do).

      1. To be honest Michael, given the vibrancy and diversity of cities like London I was wondering when the grave robbing and bone grinding would start here.

        1. If and when it does start the media and the authorities will try to bury the news. Just as with the torso of the little black boy found in the Thames. It was obviously done for ritualistic purposes.

          1. All cultures are equal, Phizee, and don’t you forget it otherwise it’s hate speech.

          2. That was exactly what sprang into my mind.
            Presumably, the corpses are now better concealed.

    2. BTL Comments:-

      The White Soothsayer
      Las Palmas, Spain
      25 minutes ago
      Sierra Leone gained its independence from Britain in 1961. And as part of Op Palliser, the British military intervention in the Sierra Leone civil war, I can recall, quite vividly, loads of elderly folk, who knew what life was like before they gained independence, coming out to greet us, overjoyed and ecstatic at the though that we were coming back to recolonise them. And then the look of dismay on their faces when we explained that this was only a very temporary measure. I’ll let everyone out there, especially the Libbyleft who constantly decry the UK, join the dots on that one.
      Reply 228 7

      WiseWoman123
      London, United Kingdom
      13 minutes ago

      Sierra Leone is not the only African country where ordinary people wish to be “recolonised” when, in their own words, things worked, there was discipline, education was free…need I go on? They have been badly let down by their own “rulers” and they know it only too well.
      Reply 75 2

      nicensimple
      London, United Kingdom
      16 minutes ago

      the libby left will ignore the facts and make up some delusion.

      Reply 103 3

    3. They are robbing cemeteries for human bones to turn people into zombies? Sounds like Voodoo to me.

    4. As I am an evil, white colonialist, it would be judgmental of me to suggest this was not a positive development in humankind’s journey to enlightenment.

    5. The article says bones are used because they contain sulphur.
      Eggs contain sulphur. It would be much easier if they used eggs.

  19. BEEB SLAMMED FOR SPAFFING £3.2 MILLION ON LEFT BIASED BBC VERIFY

    BBC Verify may be an avid fact-checker on some more centre-right outlets, though they aren’t known to to be quite so thorough on their some of their own content. Perhaps that’s why they’ve ramped up spending on the department. According to an FOI request from Guido, the BBC has recently moved a number of staff from other areas of news into the BBC Verify Team. As of the beginning of February 2024 there are 63 people with combined salary costs of a whopping £3.2 million…

    Tory MP Andrew Percy blasted the revelation, saying:

    “It is staggering that the licence fee payer is shelling out millions of pounds for the laughingly labelled ‘BBC Verify’ team. Far from upholding high standards of journalism, BBC Verify has on too many occasions been biased and pushed out misleading information to viewers and readers, the very opposite of verification!”

    Now we know where the hike in the the licence fee is going…

    2. Ah but is it licence fee money or is it being paid for by one of the usual suspects. The Gates Foundation? The WEF? There are connections to both. I haven’t spotted any Soros entities yet but there’s a challenge for Polly.

    1. My fruiting cherry tree is now fully in bloom. Just in time to have the flowers knocked off by heavy rain and strong winds 🙁

  22. Variations on a theme.

    Wednesday

    Brexit freedoms

    SIR – Sherelle Jacobs says that pledges to scrap EU laws have been watered down (“Britain is now irrationally terrified of freedom. It should just rejoin the EU”, Comment, April 2). However, we have scrapped or reformed over 2,000 EU laws and another 1,000 are on the way out. Meanwhile, the EU has created nearly 8,000 new regulations in that time.

    Yes, I have paused our free-trade agreement negotiations with Canada, but that is a Brexit freedom. As Trade Secretary, I can do that if I do not believe a deal benefits the UK. If we were in the EU, the UK alone would never have been able to pause a trade agreement.

    In any case, we have just ratified our accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade bloc that includes Canada, and will be home to half of the world’s 2.3 billion middle-class consumers by 2030. Members of the CPTPP, more so than the EU, will set the terms of international trade in the future. Britain is in there early to ensure we steer those terms. Another Brexit freedom.

    People think Brexit isn’t working – and of course there is more to do – but I would encourage Ms Jacobs to read “Brexit: Fourth Anniversary”, which my department published this year. It compiles a list of statistics and successes comparing the UK with peer countries, and shows that Global Britain is thriving on the world stage.

    Kemi Badenoch MP (Con)
    Business and Trade Secretary
    London SW1
    __________________________________________________

    Friday

    Brexit in Brixham

    SIR – As the MP for South Devon, I was disappointed to read Sherelle Jacobs’s article (Comment, April 2) regarding Brexit, Brixham and the fishing industry, in which she did not point out that, since 2016, Brixham Fish Market has had record-breaking sales every year. Along with an increase of quota by 25 per cent and a £20 million levelling-up fund, she seems to have missed the fact that Brixham is booming.

    Of course, she is right that French customs officials have been fantastically petulant towards British exporters, but surely the answer is to use the terms of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, notably the specialised trade committees, to sort out infuriating but infrequent delays.

    Ministers are more powerful than any of their predecessors of the past 40 years; they need to use their power to help win back confidence that leaving the EU was the right course of action.

    Anthony Mangnall MP (Con)
    Totnes, Devon
    __________________________________________________

    Today

    Poultry bureaucracy

    SIR – If you wished to illustrate the success of a post-Brexit, deregulating Conservative Government, you couldn’t do any better than highlight the introduction of compulsory registration of a few domestic poultry with a government department (Letters, April 5).

    No doubt there will be an increase in civil servants tasked with monitoring compliance and accepting anonymous tip-offs from concerned neighbours, as well as receiving regular updates as individual birds die or are acquired.

    Surely such a scheme deserves to include regular health inspections of domestic flocks, no doubt with a suitable charge to the amateur hen keeper.

    Michael Staples
    Seaford, East Sussex
    _________________________

    SIR – We have two feral bantam chickens. One escaped from a neighbour, who no longer keeps hens, and the other from a property adjoining our paddock. We’ve had two hybrid chicks thanks to a visiting pheasant. We don’t own them, but should we register?

    George Acheson
    Fakenham, Norfolk

    1. Seems, then like the Curate’s egg: Good in parts. Good news from Brixham, and what dumbass wants every freacking domestic fowl registered – and why? Should they be fitted with ear tags, like cattle?

      1. So that they can declare ‘bird flu’ and cut off the supply of eggs and chicken whenever they want.

        1. The money-makers have spotted that people are happy to pay £3 for a box of eggs, same as a cup of coffee. They are being undercut therefore by this old couple in my village selling their eggs at the side of the road for £1.30.

          Denial of profits – the most important consideration when dealing with Americans, or making our systems compliant with their legal standards.

          1. That too. But history shows that grand plans to centralise food production lead to shortages and hunger, and I don’t see that this time will be any different…

        2. It is the “smart meter” approach to managing society. Everything we get up to must be subject to control from the centre, using overriding machinery. Of any activity you are likely to read – in the Guardian for instance – “but X is completely unregulated”. Can’t have that!

    2. Kemi Badenoch is just another ambitious fake conservative. I wouldn’t trust her further than I could throw her which isn’t far considering state of my shoulder at present!

  23. Morning, all Y’all, from a winter wonderland! Plenty fresh snow everywhere – again. Hoped winter was over, and it might be… +8C forecast for today.

  26. Morning all 🙂😊
    Bright and breezy. Heat wave later.
    The blame game eh !
    Every incident is magnified to its fullest extent. But the truth about late or missed NHS appointments really lies with their administration. Everything has changed beyond recognition. Why blame the good old posties, they still do their job as best as they can all weathers.
    The real problem as everyone knows, is Wastemonster and Whitehall. Both need a total clear out.

    1. I sent a signed-for letter to HMRC recently. It never got there but I did get a book of stamps as compo! I have a feeling that they just dump every 10th mailbag out with the rubbish..

      1. I discovered that special courier signed for letters to HMRC are rarely signed for – only about 1 in 10 – so even if they receive it you have no proof they have. HMRC and Royal Mail – a match made in Hell.

        1. I sent another to HMRC Spec Delivery. It was apparently delivered at 6:13 and the signature was just a squiggle. Im not confident it actually got there!

        2. My medicines are supposed to be signed for. They just leave them in the porch. Some of the meds are opioids.

      2. A friend told me that he has just had the same experience. He then sent the documents again by next day special tracked delivery. The tracking got to the ‘out for delivery’ stage but not beyond that.
        I’m waiting for a Royal Mail delivery today. yesterday I was notified by email that it would arrive between 09.48 and 12.48 but this morning that has become ‘by 7.30 PM’s ie a 3 hour window has become 12 hours. I know from past experience that I might find that the parcel doesn’t arrive at all today. In contrast, DPD has given me a 1 hour delivery window for another parcel and past experience suggests it will turn up then.

      3. Include a cheque for £1. They’ll cash that – so you know it has arrived.

      4. Email seems to be as bad. I sent an enquiry regarding my state pension to my MP over a month ago and he still hasn’t managed to reply.
        He must be too busy with his expenses claims.

    2. I’m surprised Whitehall hasn’t changed its name to something more ‘inclusive’. It should be leading by example, shurely.

          1. That was my first thought but I thought spectrum was even more diverse and inclusive.
            But ‘Traitors Gate’ would probably be more appropriate.

      2. Eddie Izzard Avenue?

        Surely there must be enough place names in the neighbourhood to allocate to the diversity-approved figureheads.

      5. Morning 🙂
        I only mention that with known accomplices in private conversations 😆😂

  27. A few years ago a poll in Jamaica revealed that 62% of Jamaicans wanted to be recolonised by Britain.

    1. Freddie went to see Montserrat at Covent Garden and fell instantly in love. That was his introduction to opera.

  29. Good Day all and the 77th,

    Light cloud at McPhee Towers, breeze wafting around between South and South-West, 13℃ to 16℃ today.

    Sometimes something is published which just beggars belief. This article about a piece of “think tank” research from the Resolution Foundation in the Money section is one such.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/044d482a88f098c97c4444418926dd08186567af3571890138f5b9c1d460bd9c.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/investing/isas/20k-isa-tax-free-allowance-hard-to-justify/

    “In 2018-20, the richest tenth of working families owned almost a third of all Isa savings, according to data from HM Revenue and Customs”.

    No shit, Sherlock.

    “Meanwhile around two thirds of those earning below £10,000 had less than £5,000 in their Isa”.

    I’m amazed anyone on such a low income even HAS an ISA.

    “Only around 1pc of families save enough each month to exceed the £20,000 annual allowance, Resolution Foundation’s analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics found”.

    No shit, Sherlock 2.0.

    “Today the UK has one of the lowest savings rates in the G20, according to data from the OECD”.

    Now, why do you think that is? Could it be something to do with the level of taxation, inflation and energy costs spiking?

    “In 2023-24, Isas cost £6.7bn in tax relief, up from £3.7bn in 2021-22”.

    You really do have to stop thinking in this way. It reveals an attitude that says all of our hard-earned money belongs to the Treasury which very generously lets us keep some of it for ourselves. ISAs didn’t ‘cost’ the treasury anything. The Treasury is prevented by them from stealing even more.

    Who are these geniuses at the Resolution Foundation who needed to do research to find this out? At least someone is quoted who has his head screwed on.

    ” ‘Tom Selby, of AJ Bell, said: “The UK needs to focus on building a savings culture and encouraging people to plan for their financial future. Slashing the Isa allowance or introducing a cap on Isa savings would be retrograde steps that would send a damaging anti-savings message to Brits and add unwelcome complexity to the system.’ ”

    He might have added that we need to make a start by drastically lowering taxes so that the majority of people actually have some surplus income to save. Perhaps he did and the DT reporter ignored that bit. It wouldn’t surprise me.

    1. Perhaps they could vary the ISA allowance according to how much in pension contributions somebody has been credited with in a given year?
      ISAs are often used to save for retirement by the self employed and those who aren’t getting tax relief on an extremely generous occupational pension .

    3. Jeremy Hunt’s existence is not hard to justify – it is impossible.

    4. The Resolution Foundation boss, Clive Cowdery, is on the board of Soros’ Institute for New Economic Thinking and was on the board of Soros’ Best for Britain.

      I think Resolution Insurance is probably a Soros creation.

      1. Resolution are also a hard Left communist bunch of twonks who couldn’t exist without public money.

        Note the language ‘It’s unaffordable’… to let people keep their own money. Same attitude of ‘unfunded tax cuts’. It’s not their money. It’s ours. Every damned penny.

        1. Most of Resolution Foundation’s funding comes from Clive Cowdery’s Resolution Life Assurance.

          Clive Cowdery is a very close friend of Soros and I suspect Resolution Life might be a Soros organisation in disguise.

    5. The Resolution Foundation boss, Clive Cowdery, is on the board of Soros’ Institute for New Economic Thinking and was on the board of Soros’ Best for Britain.

      I think Resolution Insurance is probably a Soros creation.

    1. He has an antipodean accent? Pre-Covid I’d have said typical Aussie forthrightness.

        1. No way (I’ve lived in east and west Kent and in NW5). Definitely antipodean.

    4. I think he is an ex aviator , and has probably spent time down under .

      He has summarised the terrible state our precious Britain is in .

      He is a very angry man. His language is forgivable .

      Better than Victor Meldrew !!

    5. 385508+ up ticks,

      Morning Bob,

      When found ask him, or demand he becomes PM, his refusal will be highly offensive to the peoples of these Isles.

    9. Financial year finishes in April, so nobody has to make and submit their accounts in the runup to a public holiday, I believe.
      Norway has 01 Jan to 31 Dec… but it’s all done by computer, so it’s easy. Just had my tax accounts sent to me a couple weeks ago for my approval – I agreed, they owe me about £800 for last year.

    10. He’s not me… could easily be, though, except my jumper has Norwegian patterns!

  31. If that means they want to return to their country of origin, they can organise and pay for it them selves. But they probably won’t be allowed in.

    1. I think it means they want to go back to the social and political circumstances prevailing in the early 1960s, which I suspect most here would prefer as well.

      1. Or maybe being paid to go on a cruise and having free accommodation at the end of it and all expenses paid.
        Then moaning for ever. Perhaps not the moaning if they return to base.

      2. It took me a while to realise that was a song video, not… you know, the other sort.

  33. 385508+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    DT,
    Bombed, killed by flu and shot by Hamas: the youngest victims of the Israel-Gaza war
    As the Israel-Hamas war reaches the six-month mark, four families describe the harrowing consequences of being caught in
    the conflict

    Very sad to say this is the fall out of man made war, war for many is a lucrative business, deaths are stats.

    This news item IMHO is being used in one respect as chaff material taking the eye from what has / is taking place on the home front where four grieving families in Gaza is multiplied
    many times in the United Kingdom, via, in many cases the jab or job governance / pharmaceutical joint campaign

    Currently two wars are being waged here, one foreign and conventional the other ,as in the British Isles, of a very much more sinister manipulative nature.

    The enemy is concentrated in the westminster hub, their “troops”
    are in five * hotels maybe next door to you , with more arriving on a daily basis ALL financed by an ailing,failing, nations indigenous peoples.

    Well meant advice ,

    Open wide those sorrowful eyes being cast in Gaza’s direction,
    and view in reality what is happening on the Great British doorstep.

          3. No of course not KK, 😊😉why would I do that ?
            Look for Blood and Gold: The making of Spain with Simon Sebag Montefiore.
            He specifically mentioned these dreadful monsters at the Alhambra.

          4. Something gone wrong with Discuss it’s jumping from page to page.
            Of Course i didn’t mean you KK 😉😊.

    4. It was dull, chilly and overcast all morning, brightened up slightly after lunch and now it’s raining sticks and blowing a gale.

  35. If Aman Bhogal’s remark ‘tell us about how you have promoted diversity and how you have addressed white privilege’ in The Conservative Party MP selection process is true I must stress the significance here of these few words. The Conservative Party is now Neo-Marxist. I am aghast.

    They have sleepwalked into this over the past 14 years. They have overseen a Cultural Revolution in Britain. My past observation has been they are either gormlessly ignorant to what has been happening, living lives of privilege away from the ideas and harms of this revamped collectivism. Or they have been complicit. Mr Bhogal’s remark suggests the latter.

    I will not be going anywhere near that lot. To the rank and file Conservatives still oblivious to the magnitude of what has happened here and what they are up against; You need to catch up, your party is over. The Militant Tendency is now rooted and flowering.

    1. Promoted diversity? Appointed on merit. Addressed white privilege? Only appointed white working class kids (they are the bottom of the pile).

  36. Good morning all, dull breezy cloudy day . 16c.

    Poultry bureaucracy
    SIR – If you wished to illustrate the success of a post-Brexit, deregulating Conservative Government, you couldn’t do any better than highlight the introduction of compulsory registration of a few domestic poultry with a government department (Letters, April 5).

    No doubt there will be an increase in civil servants tasked with monitoring compliance and accepting anonymous tip-offs from concerned neighbours, as well as receiving regular updates as individual birds die or are acquired.

    Surely such a scheme deserves to include regular health inspections of domestic flocks, no doubt with a suitable charge to the amateur hen keeper.

    Michael Staples
    Seaford, East Sussex

    In this guide, poultry and other captive birds includes:

    chickens
    turkeys
    aviary birds
    birds of prey
    cassowaries
    ducks
    emus
    geese
    guinea fowls
    kiwis
    ostriches
    partridges
    pheasants
    pigeons
    psittacines (for example parrots, budgies and cockatiels)
    quails
    rheas
    You’re a bird keeper if you’re in charge of the day-to-day care of birds, including any you keep as pets.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/poultry-including-game-birds-registration-rules-and-forms

          1. “Brighter than politicans.”
            That’s setting the bar very low.

            Signed
            Cap’n Flint

      2. When people look back on our era in the future, this is going to become a cliché about the lunacy of it all. “In 2024 you had to register pet budgies with the Goverment!”

      3. I would be wary of registering it Scotland in case it was deemed to have said:

        “Pieces of hate” !

      4. Jake’s Bantam Cock at it again:

        He ravaged my fan-tailed pigeons
        And my lily-white columbine
        And while I was locking up the budgerigars
        He jumped my parrot from behind.
        She was standing on my shoulder at the time!

    3. My word wadda loada bolero.
      To all those who disagree with my references to the people in Wastemonster and Whitehall as idiots.
      How much more proof do we need ?

    5. A few lines from the song about the Bantam Cock which I posted above:

      And then upon the peace of my ducks and my geese
      He rudely did intrude
      With glazed eyes and open mouths they bore it all with fortitude
      And a little bit of gratitude

      Jake Thackray’s lyrics are brilliant. I have mentioned before that I once saw him perform in a folk music pub in Weymouth.

  37. Yo and Good Moaning to you all, from a Sunny Costa del Skeg

    If the post Office tried to extort money from me to receive a letter and said they would withold it until a ‘charge’ of £5.00 was paid, I would accuse them of theft.

    Is there a statute that makes their actions legal?

    The counterfeit stamp issue is a symptom, the fault is the poor design/manufacture of the bar-coded stamps

    The Post Office clearly cannot see above the Horizon

    We clearly must stamp out their poor behaviour!

      1. I think we can sound the Last Post on Royal Mail…it was good while it lasted but import the Third World, become the Third World.

          1. Our post is often so late (or doesn’t arrive at all) that I think he must be on the way here.

    2. Just excellent, what a bunch of deviants we have leading this country. Just passed my 79th b’day, not much of a future to worry about for me, but how I feel for my children and grandchildren.

    4. The conservative MP for Braintree (subsequently succeeded by James Cleverly) an American, Brooks Newmark, sent images of his genitals to a number of women. There is a long history of acts of perversion in politicians.

  40. Good morning.
    After yesterday’s confirmation that Russia/Iran are the enemy, and China is apparently not, today the Daily Mail is telling us to hate Iran because apparently Iran is personally harming each and every one of us.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13276575/Stabbings-kidnaps-terror-campaigns-Iran-mullahs-gangland-Britain.html
    What a surprise!
    Meanwhile the actual invasion carries on via Dover, but you’re not supposed to notice that.
    It’s all so 1984…

    1. They do have a propaganda problem though. They can’t criticise Iran for the appalling abuses because our friends in Saudi do exactly the same things.

      1. Are we still friends with Saudi, or as the Two Minute Hate told us they’re our enemy yet? The Saudis themselves showed pretty clearly whose side they were on last year, when they rolled out the red carpet+++ for Xi, and treated the Germans with contempt, not even meeting the plane, and the Americans likewise, with a very low key reception. Mind you, if you send Annalena Baerbock (Green Party) and Joe Biden respectively, what do you expect?

        2. Maybe the Saudis are having a sulk because we said hurty things about journalists and attaché cases?

        3. Saudi is only friends with countries that don’t tell them how to run their country, following the barbaric, backward, religion of peas. China sells lots to Saudi and says absolutely zilch, so they are friends. The West sells less and b!tches all the time, so not friends – except Saudi Aramco is run by Americans, US sell Saudi all the arms they may want…

        4. The Chinese have zero tolerance for Islam but I guess they’ve agreed with the House of Saud that each will refrain from criticising the other. Russia will stamp on Moslem terror while still criticising Israel for doing the same. In a sense, Arab-Chinese relations are honest, if distasteful.

  41. Well I’m back. Not much of a change. I’ve noticed a slight slackening in the Telegraphs propaganda output. I think that they might have figured out that the Conservative Party is no longer Conservative.

    1. Now is the time for all good men and women to turn off the life-support system and leave the Conservative Party to die as quickly as possible.

      I am not generally in favour of euthanasia but this must be done.

    3. Maybe there’s just no point, since the Cons will vanish up their own fundament at the election.

  42. Clayton and Natali Morris at Redacted News keep on coming up with the goods, don’t they? I don’t how many here will have already seen this yet but it’s a cracker on the nature of hybrid warfare, particularly cyber attacks, and particularly the suspected cyber attack on the Baltimore Bridge cargo ship.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCNI2PMe_mg

    1. Bollocks. It is impossible for this to have been a cyber attack. The ship’s navigation system is not connected to the internet, and cannot be taken control of from outside the ship. It is standard practice to deny liability. As usual a journalist is talking nonsense about something she knows nothing about. I have written an analysis on the collision on my new on-line magazine, Free Speech Backlash (freespeechbacklash.com) soon to be operational. I am a marine engineer and have investigated many a marine casualty for insurers and lawyers and have no doubt that this was simply an accident.

      1. Did it or could it use satellite navigation, and are there any circumstances where it can proceed under the maritime equivalent of a plane’s auto-pilot?

        1. Yes, ship’s have satellite navigation but they are not used when steering in and out of port. There is an auto-steering function but again, not used in and out of port. And for somebody to have used satnav to take control, they would have to take control over the satellite, effecting thousands of ships.

          1. That all sounds very logical to me.
            C0ck-up rather than conspiracy.
            I never ceased to be amazed at what I learn on NOTTL.

          3. That’s not altogether true. They only needed to spoof the GPS signal near the ship. Not that I am suggesting that happened, just that it’s possible.

          4. I don’t know about how to manipulate a satellite but cannot imaging that it can be done without it being notices. But as I say, satnav is not used when steering in and out of port and even if it was there would be an off course alarm as steering is also connected to a gyrocompass.

      2. I don’t think the navigation system was interfered with. All power went off suddenly when it was drifting towards the bridge. Without power, you cannot steer a ship, since it is the power of water from the propeller against the rudder that steers. You get little from the inertia.

        Someone with a pair of binoculars, a basic knowledge of boat dynamics and a remote device to power down could have done it.

        I tend to agree with you though. Considering a similar thing happened with the same ship somewhere in Asia, it more likely to be human error by a slipshod crew. Incompetence is more common than some folk realise.

        I worked on narrowboats and remember a boat skewering a great hole in a brand new Aluminium-hulled leisure cruiser called the Malibu. The yard had not bothered to put on a stern fender, leaving just a spike for’ard, and the guest with little cruising experience panicked and went hard forward instead of reversing back out of trouble. I have had my fair share of hitting bridges, but English canal bridges are rather more robust than the tin jobbies the Americans put up.

        1. jeremy, I spent 20 years at sea, 8 at chief engineer on large tankers and container ships. All ocean going ships have an emergency generator, which has to start up and supply within 45 seconds of a blackout though most start within 20 seconds. This does not supply enough power to run the main engine, but does supply the steering gear. Between blackout and collision the ship’s speed was between 8.8 and 7.6 knots, more than enough for the rudder to work. It is impossible for the blackout to have been caused remotely, impossible to prevent the emergency power starting remotely and impossible to prevent the crew steering the ship remotely. And even if by some magic it was, all these systems have a manual override.

          I don’t know what caused the accident, but almost certainly there was a fault on the electrical system and possibly one or more cock-ups down the line. No chance of anything else.

        1. I will. And if you follow the link I put on my previous post you can leave your email to be notified when the mag is up and running.

    2. What evidence is there of a cyber attack? Looked like a straightforward power failure, affecting the steering.

      1. Listen to what Lara Logan has to say. The trouble with identifying cyber attacks is that they are easily concealed by those who know how to execute them.

  43. ‘Morning All

    Reading the comments today is thoroughly depressing,government by crooks and perverts and just when you might hope the NWO monsters are dying off their spawn arise to torment us further……..

    https://twitter.com/IAmTheStorm__/status/1775991076517519503?t=G4GuXkZz5qePP7JVyaBqjA&s=19

    Rest

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ee83a1fe3a2d96327333ab292ecf7fa64a0c5c6fa99ac88da77fa5d7eb381a9.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48cda921e404dd03da63b4166611f0e8a94845806e5021ceef57fb0c6ae00515.jpg

    Add “disabled” for the full bingo card

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bb879838b9b86267338aff438207db2fff8dfaabbb8b13d2897d82ddc41f94a1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/07b28fe70c36d9b2faaa5f747e092198b30555dafa822819e4d39a2cdceaa5fa.jpg

    https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=568,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/160/509/703/original/02c129c78d081303.jpeg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75db807bbcf2b22e92aa33381d2ae4d3efde8d0720bd91ce19267956e88d099d.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2f1844a9f27d591ac4a27f65d445197e69c2651498bb6d087d5432fa6f72a74e.gif

    2. Vanessa Kerry looks very like her father but she looks evil as well as ugly.

      Does anyone have a concrete link to her uttering these words? I cannot believe that she actually put this on record.

      1. She has two children apparently. Perhaps she will offer them as sacrifices to her global intentions.

    3. Regarding The Independent piece, I did point out yesterday this exact thing to Bob3 of this parish “the effects of climate change on ethnic minorities” you say? A glorious piece of The New BBC. I’m surprised Trans was not in there or is that tomorrow?

    5. Vanessa Kerry’s father was falsely attributed with the declaration that billions of people must be sacrificed. As that manifest fabrication was exposed, the same lie is now being attached to his daughter. I wonder how much of what else is said about her is untrue.

      1. My take is that Donna @IAmTheStorm has tweeted a Rumble extract which attributes to Vanessa Kerry personally everything that the author despises about the World Economic Forum’s supposed intentions. If Kerry has not said any of these things, I would not be in the least bit surprised.

        1. Equally if she had, I wouldn’t be. She’s in post because of the beliefs of her father. She wanted this cushy job on a seven figure salary and her sort are everywhere, nepotism rules. She’s qualified doctor, isn’t she? Why wasn’t that enough for her?

          1. Just in case you have not read the entire tweet, here it is in full:

            “John Kerry’s daughter Vanessa has celebrated her promotion to the World Economic Forum’s board of Agenda Contributors by urging the elitist organization to transform itself into a world government and seize total control of humanity, regardless of whether “we the people” consent.

            According to Vanessa Kerry, the time is ripe for a globalist coup d’etat which utilizes the control mechanisms in the World Health Organization’s pandemic treaty to create a world government that answers to nobody.

            Explaining that humanity has been “softened up” by the Covid pandemic, Kerry outlined disturbing plans to ramp up an agenda of fear-mongering propaganda about climate change to terrorize humanity into giving up the last of our rapidly diminishing freedoms.”

            I don’t believe for a moment that she even thinks this, but even if she does, I don’t believe she is stupid enough to actually say it.

            As for sacrificing her role as a qualified doctor, her words suggest she has a messiah complex, truly believing that she can improve the lives of millions, if not billions, by advocating and campaigning for environmental and health policies on behalf of a global organisation. When you have that much self-belief, treating up to maybe a few thousand patients in a US general hospital looks like small potatoes.

      2. Ah, a downvote. Somebody has the hard evidence I’ve yet to find that both Kerrys explicitly said that billions must die or be sacrificed. Please post the link for me.

    6. It’s funny that she’ll never volunteer for the demands made of others.

      Also, she has an incredibly low image of humanity. Left alone we create miraculous inventions that make our lives comically better. Why can’t she just leave people alone?

  44. I hear all Scottish schools are reverting from whiteboards to blackboards, and the chalk will be black.

  45. Starting my day with a rant.

    That despicable piece of doggy doo that calls itself a government have devalued yet another iece ofCanadian history. The anniversary of WW1 battles around Vimy Ridge and the anniversary has been held sacred by Canadians and the great sacrifice by so many is recognized. Our passports have had a picture of the Vimy Ridge memorial on one of its pages but turdboy has replaced that with some nondescript graphic.

    But now to further insult the past, we have some disgusting minister leading a group of pools and trannies following in the footsteps of one specific homo soldier from that era in an effort to celebrate the contribution of the lgbt alphabet people to the wars.

    No it doesn’t feel better, I am disgusted by this..

    1. Celebrating one soldier – I’m sure his gayness didn’t stop him doing what was right, but what about all he other poor b*stards taht went up the ridge and didn’t come down again?

    2. Been going on since the ’60s, starting with the removal of the old Canadian flag. None of it is accidental. A tragic shame that Diefenbaker lost the election.

  46. David Olusoga: Imperialism lasted centuries — we’re only a few years into righting injustices
    The TV star historian talks to Michael Odell about reparations for slavery, culture warriors, the BBC and why he wasn’t endorsing Harry and Meghan’s ‘fairytale’

    Perhaps you keep a number on your fridge for an emergency plumber or locksmith. But what about an emergency historian? Someone who breezes in, drops a tool bag then offers pithy solutions to current chaos and conflict? I think David Olusoga could be that guy. Throw any geopolitical conundrum at him, past or present, and he delivers an immediate and highly articulate prognosis.

    We are talking the same morning that the British Museum was reported to be in private talks with four unnamed foreign governments about returning historical artefacts and shortly after the Church of England announced plans to allocate £1 billion in reparations for wealth derived from the slave trade.

    “This is straightforward,” Olusoga says. “If you discovered a family heirloom that was stolen you’d return it right? And paying reparations is often presented as a modern, aberrant idea yet they were paid at the end of the First and Second World Wars.

    “In fact British slavery ended when approximately £17 billion in today’s money was paid to slave owners, including the families of David Cameron and George Orwell, for the loss of their human property. The Church of England derived a part of its vast wealth from the murder and exploitation of Africans and since religion is based on a structure of ethics and morals I’d say they are beholden more than most to come down on one side or another of that question.”

    Olusoga is a very impressive speaker but I feel duty bound to put the other side. Some will protest “but where will it all end?” or “it’s the thin end of the wedge”. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/david-olusoga-interview-historian-tv-book-author-00wt3fqfn

    Another biracial with a giant chip on his shoulder

    (With an absent father )

    The Times comments on the article keep being deleted !

    David Olusoga was born in Lagos, Nigeria, to a Nigerian father and British mother.[4] At five years old, Olusoga migrated to the UK with his mother and grew up in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear.[5] He was one of a very few non-white people living on a council estate. By the time he was 14, the National Front had attacked his house on more than one occasion, requiring police protection for him and his family. They were eventually forced to leave as a result of the racism.[6] He later attended the University of Liverpool to study the history of slavery,[7] and in 1994, graduated with a BA (Hons) History degree,[8] followed by a postgraduate course in broadcast journalism at Leeds Trinity University.[9]

    2. One bright spark in the financial Armageddon that is heading our way might be that the likes of David Olusoga will see their public sector salaries drying up and we shall never have to hear from them again!

    3. TV star Historian ???
      He would not have a job if it wasn’t for the bbc propaganda department.
      He’s just Another race baiting wonker with nothing better than moaning, to do.

    4. Loathes Britain. Hates whites (though his mother is white). Despises “imperialism”. Accepted an OBE.

        1. He will express undying hatred for anything that will get him a new commission for another series at the BBC

          1. Heard him on YT this morning, something SWMBO was watching. My God, not a chip on the shoulder, but a whole field of potatoes! Wonder how his Mum feels? Yet he grew up with all the priviledge of a white family…

    5. British slavery ended when billions were paid to David Cameron? History on Planet Ignoramus. Slavery in England was ended by William the Conqueror. Has it ended in Nigeria?

      1. 1065 – I’m an Anglo-Saxon slave.
        1067 – I’m a Norman serf.
        Spot the difference.

        1. This is true. And as Thomas Carlyle pointed out, slaves in the West Indies had a better standard of living than the British underclass of that era, who again were supposedly free.

    6. I wonder how much he owes in reparations for the slave trading carried out by his forebears?

    7. Oh I do so much hope he reads all the comments here and below. Not a nasty word,…… but. The truth is not in his beliefs or his comments, but staring him in the face.

    1. MOH strongly recommends this post if you have a self select ISA or SIPP.

      He says lots to consider !

    2. Just checked how much you can sell a sovereign for, £418!!!
      When I checked last week is was a mere £386!

  49. Some peeps think everyone should bury gold in the garden in case things get bad.

    But will that help if Tesco’s shelves are empty?

      1. If you have so much that you can’t sew it into your petticoats, then perhaps it should be stored in a vault in Switzerland…

        1. I got a big cheese to bank in Switzerland – the smell eventually became unbearable but it wasn’t my vault.

      1. From the DT..

        “Pepys returned to Brampton in October to recover the gold under cover of night. He found it, though not without scolding his wife and father again. Pepys found that he was 25 sovereigns short. Whether he later found the missing coins is not recorded: two years later, with his eyesight failing, he was forced to stop writing his diary. But if he didn’t, there is presumably a bonus awaiting anyone who buys Pepys House.”

      2. I remember he buried a couple of parmesan cheeses in his garden.
        What happened to them?

        4. “You can bury a cheese in the garden without digging a hole, Watson”
          “How can you do that Sherlock?”
          “It’s Emmental my dear Watson – it has inbuilt holes!”

    3. When the country is properly bankrupt and the state debased the currency to such an extent hyperinflation is rife people will fall back on barter, or precious metals and the cycle will continue – this time the power over the currency must be removed from political hands. Without money, they’re powerless.

      1. If things get that bad, won’t other peeps come looking for your stash of gold?

  50. Some peeps think everyone should bury gold in the garden in case things get bad.

    But will that help if Tesco’s shelves are empty?

  51. 385508+ up ticks,

    Ole bill, not the chorus line version, the toxic pharmaceutical one,
    order of the day is to his governing politico minions and their followers, first get the gullible fools to canter then via plausible lies & deceit bring them up to the full gallop using the aptly called “charge of the light brigade” syndrome.

    https://x.com/SandraWeeden/status/1776240581687038418

    3. Someone on Twitter calculated that if bird flu is 100 times worse, that means Neil Ferguson will be predicting 50 million deaths.

      I fear the ‘100 times worse’ refers to the lockdowns and regulations that they want to impose…

    4. These scientists have obviously never heard the story of the shepherd boy who cried wolf.

      1. They’re not scientists they’re quacks, also known as conspiracy theorists.

  52. Just in from clearing one of the rooms in Firstborn’s barn – we need to lay a new floor. Found a keg of homemade cider at the back, and am now supping happily! My goodness, talk about dry apple – and at about 4C, it’s wonderfully refreshing! Mmm… ;-))

  53. If you asked that tosser for a weather forecast, he’d bring slavery into it.

    1. Strange how several men in prominent positions, born of white mothers and black father’s. See the world in such a different light. It’s as if something has upset their marble collection.
      Seemingly Hate being another dominant factor.

      1. Likewise Megain Markle with white father and black(ish) mother. (I’ve been told I’m wrong but Doria looks mulatto to me.)

  54. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/478616365d9ffe3867d5deb2844cc142a64b638b/0_1312_3072_1843/master/3072.jpg?width=980&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=cfbd3854c26fec50d7b13c8c89fef92b
    Three polar bears paid a visit to a Polish research station on Svalbard earlier this week.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/58910c37c05ec647e4c9145ece8c2115cfdf99f1/0_1291_10821_6493/master/10821.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=c06f47b846856cfaa2b639c8e1f02653
    Waving not drowning … a grey seal pup basks in the bank holiday sunshine on St Leonards-on-Sea beach in East Sussex.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/36b21e3ec093a99648720b8825f3b142fe0ba851/0_0_5263_3509/master/5263.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=a874437f7a8db1d6a7aec9efa28cb7e7
    Blue-footed boobies with their chick in the Galapagos, Ecuador.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/adec3b888b210fd3ca1638f9fed576d1e683c0ff/0_0_8256_5504/master/8256.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=5bb473ef1bfeafbbd1361ca2cefe07ee
    A family of lions seek shelter from the blistering African sun in a tree in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2ddd0a62787d94e6e86deb831fd41c43b8d92d61/0_0_7806_5204/master/7806.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=97f7a9fcf4876e5c7098a9148e36eb71
    A herd of wild Asiatic elephants bathe at a wetland near the Brahmaputra river, Assam, India

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d18713e2fe05b391ad852710cfc3624d86c11c17/0_0_3300_2203/master/3300.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=2ca15f42c088af685912ba4698db8e77
    A smalltooth sawfish in Florida

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/cc4259e59f661c97147fa1fd956ed521e0c990ee/0_0_6031_4611/master/6031.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=0733ef21e45889eb588fc5d925532d6a
    An osprey gives the photographer a quizzical look as it carries its trout home for dinner in Rutland, UK

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/822ee9f98be4e5d2ca6ee718d5ef87e68a5a830b/0_0_3500_2333/master/3500.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=81b47f76c5315923d6b0151063b3dd74
    A small pearl-bordered fritillary butterfly in the UK.

    1. That fish with the saw on its nose is just the job to put in La Manche to pop the boats, alongside the team of trained swordfish. Molamola must put out the call.

  55. Shocking article in the Telegraph today regarding how MPs are selected. Proper Conservatives are being sidelined by the party in favour of diversity obsessed centrists. True blues who support Brexit and more economic independence are being actively blocked from standing to represent the party. Let’s hope the Conservative Party in its current soaked form is eviscerated. Vote Reform.

    1. This all started post Thatcher, The power must be returned to the local constituenciesto pick their own candidates. I left the party years ago because of this.

        1. Yes, I used to like him too but his actions over the years are at clear odds with the impression which he gives. He’s a traitor. He is meant to be from wealth but I wonder if it has been spent because he now comes across as some kind of upper-class Del boy. Like a little satellite around pots of wealth.

          2. I’ve been wondering if he and his wife have made any progress with her hospital procedure.

          3. I hope I’m not jumping in here, but Delboy had a meeting with their GP. He hadn’t received a letter from the consultant but should have done, and was going to contact him. The GP is to then contact Mr and Mrs. Delboy.

          4. That’s right, Sue. The GP will phone in two weeks to update and presumably tell us what happens next.

          6. Sorry to poke my nose in, Delboy. Nottlers do get concerned about others. C

          1. A boner is rather different to bona, although many might think that a boner is bona.

    2. This is thanks to Soros’ puppet David Cameron grabbing control of the selection system and handing it to Con Central.

      The result is that usually only Soros compliant policies and candidates are accepted.

      Rishi Sunak is one example. He would never have been parachuted in to Richmond North Yorkshire if it wasn’t for Soros’ plans for the Con Party and delivered by David Cameron.

    3. There seems to be little choice now for anyone with even just one brain cell to vote Reform. If enough people do, while they are never likely to be able to form a government (yet), they might just get enough MPs to be the tail that wags the dog. I’d like to see some true blue Tory MPs (and there are still some, believe it or not) in safe seats switch to Reform or stand as independents. That could make quite a difference.

      1. I agree Peta, but urge caution when it comes to Reform (though I will vote for them). Tice is no revolutionary and his disgraceful rejection of the only honest Tory MP Andre Bridgen clearly indicates that at heart he’s an establishment man.

        Nice to see you on here.

    4. I’m shocked that you are shocked jelly. It’s been going on for years.

    5. As inconceivable to the Tories as this may seem, no one wants them to be a clone of the Labour party. They might want to pretend they’re centrist with their big state, high tax, left wing ideology but it will ensure they remain unelected and replaced.

      1. And a Tory version of ‘centrist’ won’t be one which the electorate recognise. The new Tory centrist is firmly left – to anyone sane. Remember James Forsyth from the Spectator. He is an advisor to PM Sunak. And the Spectator thinks of itself as ‘centrist’ when it is increasingly to the left. The Conservatives have really lost their way.

      2. ‘Centrist’ is increasingly, a very very subjective word: a word relative only to the stance someone takes already.

  56. Last week:

    BBC weather app can make forecast look more pessimistic than reality
    Broadcaster says its smartphone service deliberately chooses the gloomiest weather each day for its ‘headline symbol’
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/31/bbc-weather-app-chooses-gloomiest-forecast-each-day/

    Here is another way it exaggerates. Today’s forecasts for the East Midlands from the BBC and the Met Office:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0516e2f6f44eb39ac0b2c48e8a63f5d561002d27fe3ee8f555bb69bd51ddcd1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f315b75c81d8f437307a6413161650d2b0318c100fc3b5bf75752ff93ce2231b.jpg

    1. We use this as a form of entertainment, by betting with each other how many degrees the BBC local area forecast will be different from the ITV local forecast.
      The BBC is always the gloomiest and most often wrong.
      Traffic forecasts for the local area the same.
      We went shopping to Bury St Edmunds this morning, lovely day, almost no traffic and a light @drying wind” as my granny would say.
      If we’d listened to the BBC, we would have stayed at home under the bed clothes!

    1. You beat me to it – I was going to post this! However, I disagree that the political elites do not know what they are doing, I think they know exactly what they are doing. It is all about control.

  58. Just in case anyone very sadly gets the Big C, think twice about a biopsy..

    One of my uncles has melanoma and the biopsy changed his melanoma condition from Stage 1B on Day 1 at the hospital to Stage 3 on Day 2.

    The melanoma was on his upper chest and the biopsy incision transferred melanoma cells into his lymph system which went straight to his left axial lymph nodes.

    1. Twelve years ago, I heard that they discovered a procedure to restore the hearing in my right ear, which was lost through a virus in 2002. The auditory nerve could be restored using stem cells. It restored 47% of the hearing to a deaf gerbil, whose hearing is similar to that of humans.

      It has gone no further because if just one of those stem cells gets into the bloodstream, the patient gets leukaemia.

      1. I’m deaf in the right ear (20 years in a ship’s engine room) and have lost high frequency hearing in the left. However, having been married for almost 40 years to a very talkative woman, I count my blessings.

    2. Investigations have a risk of making things worse.

      I remember an American surgical drama where a doctor who cut off a mole was reprimanded for inappropriate treatment.
      I also read that during an investigation with a proctoscope it is necessary to blow air against the bowel wall to get an acceptable image – but this may not neceaarily be an acceptable risk.

      Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle still applies during medical investigations.

    3. Sadly, I heard that melanoma has often metastasised before it’s visible with the eye.

      1. Yes, but he had a CT scan before the biopsy and there’s nothing in the left axial. Within 24 hours after the biopsy, his left axial lymphs were up like golf balls.

    5. I hope she washes the sand away before towelling herself. Just imagine the chafing.

  61. Russia inflicting illegal chemical attacks against Ukrainian soldiers. 6 April 2024.

    Russian troops are carrying out a systematic campaign of illegal chemical attacks against Ukrainian soldiers, according to a Telegraph investigation.

    The Telegraph spoke to a number of Ukrainian soldiers deployed in positions across the front line who detailed how their positions have been coming under near daily attacks from small drones dropping mainly tear gas but also other chemicals.

    The use of such gas, known as CS and commonly used by riot police, is banned during wartime under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

    There seems to have been a change of emphasis on the Telegraphs propaganda front. The larger picture about the war has disappeared and we are subject to nit picking complaints like this though supported by a whole raft of trolls in the comments. These are mostly infantile (they are probably machine generated) as with the two examples below. The numbers are sufficient to swamp any attempt at analysis by serious commentators who are doing serious damage to the narrative.

    S B Ranger

    Russia has no moral compass. We know that. The free West must contain and remove Putin by any means and quickly. We cannot afford to wait.

    John Noon.

    Putin is just a murderous criminal, he doesn’t obey any rules or conventions, he is no different from Stalin.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/04/06/russia-using-illegal-chemical-attacks-against-ukraine/

    1. If it’s ok to use CS gas on civilian disorder, it can’t be too lethal, surely?

      1. One would have thought not Ndovu. The whole thing stinks of manufacture.

      2. I seem to remember standing with other RAF recruits in a hut with our gasmasks on. The sergeant pops a cannister of CS gas and we had to, one by one, remove our gasmasks, state your name and number, then at a walk go to the door and leave.
        Didn’t cause any permanent damage.
        Probably.

        1. My limited understanding is that it’s an irritant, which can cause sore eyes etc, but is not permanently damaging.

          1. I was an NBC instructor. It was always classed as an irritand or riot control agent as you say. That was why it was invented. It only affects humans, not animals. Think police dogs and horses.

  62. #MeToo. I had a fold out trailer tent with an annex with fold out kitchenette. No flies on me. Everyone else in the family were queuing for hours for pizza. They got back with their cold overcooked food while i was just finishing a bottle of red after having steak and eggs.

  63. And lovely to see you again Tom :)) I agree with you about Tice up to a point and especially over Andrew Bridgen who is a courageous man, but he’s better than any of the alternatives even though it is a very low bar! I have been reasonably impressed with him on GBNews – more so than I thought I would be anyway.

  64. The way of the world…

    Our boys were brought up on these and we recently bought a copy for our younger son, who loves them. He is 28 and certainly not woke. There is hope!!!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/06/hilaire-belloc-children-poems-given-trigger-warning/

    Quoted from the article:

    Examples of ‘harmful’ phrases in Hilaire Belloc’s works
    The Dromedary in The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts
    “The Dromedary is a cheerful bird/I cannot say the same about the Kurd.”

    Introduction to The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts
    “The Moral of this priceless work/(If rightly understood)/Will make you from a little Turk/Unnaturally good.

    The Crocodile in More Beasts (For Worse Children)
    “the Ruminant is preferable surely to the Priest/Who battens on the woeful superstitions of the East”

    1. We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond; and on those faces there are no smiles. Hillaire Belloc.

    2. I was brought up on J Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons Series.

      I later found Hilaire Belloc and he is one of my favourite poets.

        1. My God – just IMAGINE the trigger warning on that book – if its publication were still allowed

          1. In the days when children were expected to grow up and become men and women Ruthless Rhymes were thought to just what was needed to knock the soppiness out of them!

            Willy in his Sunday sashes
            Fell into the fire and was burnt to ashes.
            Now even though the room grows chilly
            We haven’t the heart to poke poor Willy

          3. The Glesga’ version I knew as a nipper:

            Puir wee Wullie.
            Aw dressed up in his silk an’ sashes,
            Fell intae the fire an’ wiz burnt tae ashes.
            Though the nicht wiz cauld an’ chilly,
            Ah hadnae the hert tae poke wee Wullie.

          4. I used to like Grimms’ Fairy Tales – most of those were truly grim. Children like to be frightened when they know it’s not real life.

        3. My daughter, in Tasmania has all twelve books from my collection, every one complete with dust jacket. I expect her to pass them on to my Grand-daughter

    3. As you know I was brought up on the Cautionary Tales and can recite most of them by heart as can both Christo and Henry.
      My father, who would now be seen as a monstrous colonial villain, spent his working life in the Sudan and he particularly enjoyed the rhyme about Lord Uncle Tom and the reference to Uncle Tom’s white father’s rather easy pride. Liaisons with native women were generally frowned upon in the UK’s colonial service but the French were far more pragmatic about them.

      Lord Uncle Tom was different
      From what other Nobles are
      For they are yellow and pink, I think,
      But he was black as tar.

      He had his father’s debonair
      And rather easy pride;
      But his complexion and his hair
      Were from his mothers side.

      He often mingled in debate
      And latterly displayed
      Experience of peculiar weight
      Upon the cocoa trade.

      But now he speaks no more. The Bill
      Which he could not abide,
      It preyed upon his mind until
      He sickened, paled and died.

    4. This is not correct – it is not from the rhyme about the Crocodile but from the rhyme about the Llama:

      The llama is a fleecy sort of woolly hairy goat
      With an indolent expression and an undulating throat
      Like an unsuccessful literary man.
      And I know the place he lives in –
      Or at least I think I do,
      It is Ecuador, Brazil or Chile
      Possibly Peru
      You must find it in the atlas if you can.

      The Llama of the Pampasses you never should confound
      In spite of a deceptive similarity in sound
      With the Lama who is Lord of Turkestan
      For the former is a beautiful and valuable beast
      While the latter is not lovable nor useful in the least’
      And the ruminant is preferable surely to the priest
      Who battens on the woeful superstitions of the East
      The Mongol of the Monastery of Shan.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/10039748ca00bace40cd9b3fcb7cee697d9c0c3a048315f1709c4cf4fa01f740.jpg

      1. The one-L Lama, he’s a priest,

        The two-L Llama, he’s a beast,

        And I will bet a silk pyjama

        There isn’t any three -L Lllama.

  66. The Yanks are complaining about waiting time in their equivalent of A&E.

    In those in areas with speedy departments, you can be seen in one hour and forty minutes – while in more delayed areas it’s more than four hours.

    Aside from the annoyance, long wait times can cause life-threatening complications, putting patients’ health in jeopardy.

    The average nationwide time spent in the ED before getting discharged is two hours and 45 minutes.

    But nearly half of US states exceed this, with Maryland having the longest hospital wait times – 247 minutes, just over four hours.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13249085/ER-wait-times-country-Maryland.html

    No wonder the NHS is the envy of the world /sarc

    1. We have seen enormous billboards beside freeways in large cities that are carrying ads for local hospitals and they are advertising ER wait times as a matter of a few minutes not hours.

    2. December 2022 my wife and I waited for over 14 hours in A&E.
      Since that one we have had a 6 hour wait. Only to be sent home at 5:30 am with no further information or cause of problem at all.

      1. My OH was admitted in November ’22 for his heart problem – but he spent the night on a chair as there was no bed for him. Not sure if that counts as waiting time or not.

        1. The problem is Ellie patients think it’s only happening to them.
          But as you confirm from your own experiences, it’s happening all over the country.

        1. Have you ever felt like doing a Worral-Thompson and pinch a bit of cheese (every week for 6 months) ?

          4. There is a large specialist cheese shop, of long-standing, in Chesterfield market hall called “Davison’s Cheese Factor”. I’ve often shopped for cheese, I’ve also factored for it.

            This shop has a new, massive — and I mean massive (one-and a-half cubic feet) — lump of cheddar on the counter each day, from which staff sliced off chunks with a carving knife to fill bread cobs (rolls, baps, buns …) for a long queue of customers that stretched around the street outside. Most of those customers were young women from nearly office blocks.

          5. I once worked for a company that had workers slice the mould off the outside of 40lb blocks and repackaged it. As we know…mycellium isn’t just on the surface.

          7. Henry Antony Cardew Worrall Thompson? I can’t think of a more slimy, oleaginous, repulsive individual to be permitted near food, or on television.

          8. Wasn’t there a photo of him on the packaging of his eponymous branded sausages bearing the legend ‘Prick with a fork.etc…’

  68. “Planes collide at Heathrow: Virgin 787 jet hits wing of British Airways Airbus on the tarmac in front of stunned passengers”

    Comes from having a virgin pilot (why are you looking at me like that?).

    Expensive error, I would imagine…

      2. Very good. Go up one. The virgin (ho ho) was being “pushed back”

        Hors sujet – do you ever pop over the border into yer Spain? We used to do that several times a year when we lived in Laure-Minervois. Span was about 1½ hours away – and in the top right corner of Catalunya were several lovely villages with excellent, serious wine makers. Also a terrific olive oil co-op (wine, too) with a restaurant serving inexpensive, home-made food. Which one could eat on the terrace with a view of the Pyrenees….

        1. Yes, quite often, the nearest Spanish village/frontier commercial centre is also about an hour-and-a-half. Ciggies are half price, spirits are much cheaper though don’t buy many of those these days, petrol is also cheaper. There is a great butcher in the village about 8kms from the border and meat is super quality, only seasonal and also cheaper than in France. There is an excellent “cave” selling local wines and their own home-brewed cassis. We also found a couple of really nice restaurants in one of which we could, without trying too hard, spend all the money we were saving 🤣

          1. Gosh – sounds VERY familiar. Among our French village pals we had regular “blind” wine tastings (any excuse….) We would take newly acquired Spanish stuff, put the bottle in a sock and offer it to the local “experts”. Also with occasional bottles of decent English wine. They would ooh and aah and rave – until the sock came off – then they would be all chauvinistic!

          2. We’d never do that – our French friends tended to know their wines and in fact often recommended Spanish ones to us when we were going there! We once had a hog-roast summer lunch party, not the sort of “do” for which you’d lay on the vintage wines! Just before it we went shopping in Spain and I happened to notice in our wine shop some cases of a local Spanish wine we’d never heard of being offered for €2.50 a bottle so we asked to taste it. It was delicious and perfect for our party so we loaded up with cases of it. Our guests were mixed French and English, several with good palates and some of them said that they were surprised and delighted that we had served such a “good” wine for the occasion even if they didn’t know it 😆 To those we did confess :))

          3. We were very lucky to be the only foreigners as part of a “gang” from the quartier. Most had never known any English people properly. They were greatly into wine – the Minervois does have some very good producers. They were virulently against anything Spanish (even though they had liked the win when it was “unknown”). Our frontier was La Jonquera – where yer French go bonkers and destroy Spanish fruit and veg AND hooch because the prices were lower “because of unfair competition. I tried to explain about the Single Market and all that stuff. They hated the EUSSR!

          4. I’ve had some lovely Minervois wines. I did know that that area was the worst for the French going bonkers over Spanish imports! They really don’t like the EUSSR I know. When we first arrived in France in 1997 and got to know some farmers my husband, who had farmed in the UK, asked how they managed with all the EU regulations. They laughed and said that they called the the “British regulations”. Puzzled, my husband asked why. “Because the British are the only people stupid enough to follow them” was the response 😆 They had a point.

  69. S.S. Cuba.
    Troop Ship.

    Complement:
    265 (1 dead and 264 survivors).

    At 06.13 hours on 6th April 1945 the Cuba (Master J. Cailloce) in convoy VWP-116 was torpedoed and sunk by U-1195 (Ernst Cordes) southeast of the Isle of Wight. The U-boat was herself sunk after the attack, but the xB-Dienst reported her success. The wreck of the ship was later dispersed.
    One crew member was lost. The master, 221 crew members, 29 gunners, 10 army staff members and three signallers were picked up by HMCS Nene (K 270) (LtCdr R.F.J. Maberley, RNVR) and landed at Portsmouth.

    Type VIIC U-Boat U-1195 was sunk on 6th April 1945 in the English Channel south of Spithead Roads by depth charges from the British destroyer HMS Watchman. 32 dead and 18 survivors.

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/br/cuba.jpg

    1. When members of the public of our once-Great Britain sit with their thumbs up their arses and permit individuals from the colonies to take over all the offices of power, then they deserve all they get!

      1. The protests have now been stifled Grizz. My reckoning is that the powers that be have been threatened with mass riots if they even think of standing up to and against all this shiite.

  71. Going to school in France seems to be a dangerous business for teachers and pupils both.
    Earlier in the week we had the case of a young Muslim girl beaten into a coma by some of her co-religionists for being “too Westernised”, today there is news of a schoolboy in Viry Chatillon being beaten to death outside school by five balaclava wearing thugs.

    1. Both occurred in “low-income districts”, generally a euphemism for high immigrant neighbourhoods.

      edit for missing “l”

  74. A cheeping Bogey Five

    Wordle 1,022 5/6
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Dumb second choice. Otherwise a birdie.

      Wordle 1,022 4/6

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

    2. Same here.
      Wordle 1,022 5/6

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

    1. I say, Squiffy, I don’t follow your banter! Could you slow it down for me please?

      1. Yep!
        And “Chuffed to NAAFI Breaks!”
        Also, when spelling out something, especially my name, I commence “I Spell” and then use phonetics, ending “Repeat Back”.

    1. The culprits are a protected species. They’ll simply pull the R card, and be allowed to carry on as they wish.

  78. That’s me done for this slightly less than heatwavish day. Sunny – but a very strong southerly wind which took the edge off the expected pleasure. Did some useful stuff in t’garden. Will repeat tomorrow.

    Have a jolly evening plotting your hate crimes.

    A demain.

    2. The cat looks pretty healthy to me. When we went to Petra there were cats all over the place, all of them ginger. We were advised not to touch them as they were covered in fleas but they still looked sleek and healthy. Climbing down from one of the high points I was followed by one which sat down next to me when I sat down for a breather and was clearly looking for cuddles so it got one!

      1. Staking their claim. I hope the place was exorcised after their departure. It makes my blood boil too.

    3. What planet are the church ‘leaders’ on to even remotely consider allowing such desecration in a Christian place of worship? Are they really so stupid and unaware of what the savages will do to them once they get into power?

    4. Let’s be charitable. Maybe the Bishop of Bristol thinks they are convertible to Christianity.

    5. I did three lots of washing today too, Maggie. And also spent an hour and a half in the front garden.

    2. Filthy, sub-human savages. Aided and abetted by our politicians, snivel serpents and the once-decent RNLI.

      1. Reminds me of the South African police who just shot the rapist scum to death.
        Excellent!

        1. If only we could do the same. They’re worse than cockroaches – at least we can try to eliminate them.

    3. Poor, sweet little girl whose life was ahead of her. This is so very unfair to our genuine innocents who have a real God-given right to be protected against barbarians.

      Remember the one about the man who went to the doc with a lettuce leaf poking out of his bottom?

    4. For those who don’t read as far as the 50th case, it’s worth quoting what Sue Reid actually wrote about Zubaidullah, otherwise you might form the impression that the Afghan is still here. I’m sure David Atherton’s editing was an honest attempt at brevity and his attempt to implicate the RNLI was an unintentional slip.

      To take just one case highlighted here. Afghan asylum seeker Rasuili Zubaidullah, 22, drugged, raped and killed a 13-year-old girl in Vienna, Austria, in 2020. He wrapped her body in a carpet and dumped it under a tree in the city centre.

      Weeks later, Zubaidullah sailed across the Channel on a trafficker’s boat and was settled in a hotel in Whitechapel, East London, at the taxpayer’s expense. It was only when the Austrian police traced his arrival into this country that he was deported to face justice.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13276809/SUE-REID-criminal-asylum-seekers-Britains-hospitality-appalling-crimes-paedophilia-rape-murder.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

    5. For those who don’t read as far as the 50th case, it’s worth quoting what Sue Reid actually wrote about Zubaidullah, otherwise you might form the impression that the Afghan is still here. I’m sure David Atherton’s editing was an honest attempt at brevity and his attempt to implicate the RNLI was an unintentional slip.

      To take just one case highlighted here. Afghan asylum seeker Rasuili Zubaidullah, 22, drugged, raped and killed a 13-year-old girl in Vienna, Austria, in 2020. He wrapped her body in a carpet and dumped it under a tree in the city centre.

      Weeks later, Zubaidullah sailed across the Channel on a trafficker’s boat and was settled in a hotel in Whitechapel, East London, at the taxpayer’s expense. It was only when the Austrian police traced his arrival into this country that he was deported to face justice.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13276809/SUE-REID-criminal-asylum-seekers-Britains-hospitality-appalling-crimes-paedophilia-rape-murder.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

  83. AH! That tasted nice!
    Defrosted some Basa fillets I’d picked up with flog it off cheap labels and cooked them with herbs and lemon slices.
    Served on a bed of rice & sweetcorn with an onion & herb white sauce and Hoisen sauce.

    1. They are quite nice but I don’t buy them since I learnt that they are farmed in contaminated and polluted rivers in Viet Nam. We’ve got sea bass tonight…….

      1. We’re having salmon fillets cooked in olive oil (and some herbs) with artichoke hearts and sliced red potatoes

        1. We quite often have salmon fillets – I like the ‘lightly smoked’ ones and do them in the oven with chopped leek and olive oil.

          1. Sounds good, though I am unfortunately unable to eat onions and leeks. (Oddly enough, I can tolerate some garlic)

          3. A shame indeed. When my brother wants to wind me up, he eats a cheese and raw onion sandwich. Staple food on a Sunday in my student house. Grated cheese (probably sweepings from the floor) and onions from Sheffield’s Castle Market. Yummy stuff. Washed down with whatever beers we found cheapest – strangely, there was always enough money in the weekly kitty for beer …..

          4. I’m not too keen on raw onion – a little goes a very long way – and the taste lasts for a very long time.

          5. I love it, but seldom dare to eat it now that I am dancing cheek to cheek every day… 🤣🤣

      2. I wouldn’t trust fish farmed in the far east (or any 3rd world sh**-hole), though I think most fish these days is ‘polluted’ to some degree.

      1. Stop it, Grizzly. I’ve just enjoyed tonight’s Spaghetti Bolognese with a small glass of Chilean Merlot. Looking at your saddle of monkfish has made me hungry again! Lol.

      2. Monkfish is one of my favourites and a complete one is nearly as ugly as Phizzee

          2. You, being another fish, I suspect you find all sorts of sea dwellers attractive.
            No doubt blowfish in particular.

    3. Meanwhile, at Mission Control, I finally roasted the half leg of lamb intended for Easter Sunday. Before it left the fridge unaided and leapt into the food waste bin. Yum…

    2. Reminds me of Hillary Cinton and her sometimes strange head movements. Drugs? Coke?

          1. Yes, it was. But very strange. Maybe their “live forever and rule the world” drugs have side effects?

          2. I seem to remember she had quite violent shaking fits. Not too long before she retired. I wonder how she is now.

        2. Yes, she did – I remember now although hers were less jerky and more shakey.

        1. All things are possible in this world. My husband for years has said ‘believe nothing of what you see, and only a fraction of what you hear.’

    3. Weird. I really, really wouldn’t want someone like that having anything to do with governing me.

    4. How bizarre. Nobody behaves like that, let alone someone who is a trustee of the WEF and a senior government figure. She looks as though her body has been taken over by the spirit of a hyperactive ten year old.

    5. Within the last month? But isn’t that a poppy she is wearing in her lapel?

      1. Indeed.
        Perhaps she forgot to remove it from when she last wore the outfit, easily done.

        When did you last change the dead bird on your hat?

    7. For heavens sake, a warning please for such grotesque pictures.

      Twitchy Freeloader is presenting a so called budget soon, they have been talking all week about the giveaways in an effort to solve the housing crisis they created. A billion here, five billion there is adding up so I guess we find out what it will cost us

      You would think that she could afford a new dress but that I’ll fitted red thing has been around for years.

    1. She’s the high profile one.

      Arrest all the rest, and leave her behind on her own, ideally stuck to the road.

      24 hours of sitting in her own excrement without food or water should be very unpleasant.

    4. To be charged with crimes against humanity by promoting the fake climate crisis crap, I hope.

      1. Yep, I agree. The best real arrest was the JSO bunch who came up against Paiute Tribal Rangers in Nevada. That was funny. The JSO bods probably had some romantic notion that the tribal folk are all hippy flower children in love with Gaia. Instead, they found themselves staring down the barrel of a gun.

      3. She (?) had deliberately placed herself on the outside of the group for a convenient and easy pick-up to be carted off.

  86. Lieutenant Cecil Harold Sewell VC (27th January 1895 – 29th August 1918), Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, attached to 3rd (Light) Battalion, Tank Corps.

    In 1918 he was a Lieutenant in the 3rd (Light) Battalion, in command of a section of four “Whippet” light tanks. On 29th August, near Bapaume, France, during the last “Big Push” (The Hundred Days Offensive) which eventually led to the Armistice, Lieutenant Sewell’s section was advancing towards the German lines in support of New Zealand troops. The official V.C. citation in the London Gazette of 29th October 1918 takes up the story. “When in command of a section of Whippet light tanks in action this officer displayed most conspicuous bravery and initiative in getting out of his own tank and crossing open ground under heavy shell and machine-gun fire to rescue the crew of another Whippet of his section which had side slipped into a large shell-hole, overturned and taken fire.” The tank’s door had become jammed against the side of the shell hole so Cecil Sewell dug away the earth so that the door could be opened and the crew was able to escape.

    Seeing one of his own crew lying wounded behind his tank, he again dashed across open ground to his assistance. He was hit in doing so, but succeeded in reaching the tank when a few minutes later he was again hit, fatally, in the act of dressing his wounded driver. During the whole of this period he was within full view and short range of the enemy machine guns and rifle-pits, and throughout, by his prompt and heroic action, showed an utter disregard for his own personal safety.

    He was buried where he fell, but in 1920 he was re-interred at Vaulx Hill Cemetery, France. His parents were presented with his VC by King George V at Buckingham Palace on 13th December 1918.

    https://i0.wp.com/victoriacrossonline.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/1-44.jpg?resize=270%2C452&ssl=1

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5bf384a8af92867dc2e05d0e013df4834ab2fc3942a5b9bf4d6c5c03efe85243.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fb70f5c7162330a8063d912567223b3b69e5f169322fb2e88b5a996b6eea405c.jpg

    1. He and his comrades gave their tomorrows and the political classes since have totally betrayed them.

  87. For all those still posting on the Spacca site, anyone else got access to their new Disqus profile?

    1. You can’t access your profile in the Speccie. Mine is unchanged here from Speccie days.

          4. No, I don’t. My profile here still has all my Speccie comments pre-March 4 plus the ones I’ve made here.

          5. Ok, well, I could post your details here, then delete them once you’ve saved the url.

          9. Yeah, but you can see all your comments on the Spacca & you’ll see notifications.

      1. Well, er, neither have I. It’s all a bit odd, really. I found it by fluke.

      2. Well, it still is.
        You’ll be pleased to know that the gallic menu botherer is still spamming the comments with his special brand of effluent.

      1. Sorry, I missed your reply as (too many tabs open). Are you posting under the same name there?

  88. French health service.

    I had to make an appointment for a blood test and asked for a 10 am.

    We are very sorry M sosraboc, but we can only offer you a 10.05, we apologise for your inconvenience.

    Disgraceful!

    1. Not so much disgraceful as demonstrating a total lack of brain cells, Sos.

      1. Why?
        Someone else had beaten me to the 10 am and they have two rooms going in tandem, ten minutes apart.
        They are efficient, painless and the results are posted to me the same day, for a morning appointment usually well before 4pm

      1. You would be surprised, they are quick to apologise when offering an alternative to what you wanted.
        BUT, if you try to demand something they can be very awkward.

        1. In my experience the automatic answer to any demand is “no”, then you just wait, smiling politely, until it turns to “yes” :))

  89. Evening, all. The Royal Mail’s failure to deliver letters in a timely or efficient fashion affects everything; bills delivered past their due payment date, bank mandates gone astray, appointments missed due to late letters …

    1. Yes and birthday cards .

      The mail system in South Africa is almost finished .. I send my Crimbo cards and b/day cards off in early October .. and I ask Moh to take a photo of me handing my cards into the post office desk to be checked and weighed and stamped .. The cards arrived in SA in late January !!

      For three years I have got photo evidence , but for years have sent my mail off early .

      Dare I suggest the fault might also be here in England ?

  90. Rishi Sunak being ‘propped up’ in Downing Street by 1922 Committee ‘stooges’, MPs claim

    Frustrated backbenchers claim some senior members of parliamentary group may have been ‘bought off with the promise of gongs and peerages’

    Camilla Turner, SUNDAY POLITICAL EDITOR
    6 April 2024 • 6:05pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/04/06/TELEMMGLPICT000372934336_17124227845170_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=960
    *
    *
    *********************

    Simon Bell
    1 HR AGO
    If they spent less time on Grindr and sharing pictures of their bits, they might have more of a finger on the pulse.

    Michael Hornby
    1 HR AGO
    Reply to Simon Bell
    Thought that was the idea of Grindr.

        1. The Clash are awesome (but still not quite as good as the Who) – London Calling is excellent and I can still remember Homer Simpson’s version of Rock the Casbah!

  93. Mere words are now criminal. We are inching towards totalitarianism

    Politics has become entangled with subjective experience, yet nobody seems to realise how dangerous this is

    JANET DALEY
    6 April 2024 • 1:03pm

    Politics is currently dominated by unusually intense moral debate. The coverage and analysis of the day-to-day events that constitute the business of governments – our own and those of other countries – is dominated by explicit questions of good and evil.

    There is nothing new about this in principle: political philosophy in every civilised society, even autocratic ones, has involved an attempt to institutionalise virtue. That was the whole point of legitimate rule. This idea prevailed even before the modern democratic era which embodied those ideals in official documents. From Plato and Pericles to Hume and Jefferson, the object of political life has been to create a social order, enshrined in a legal code, in which good behaviour (however that was defined) would overcome bad inclinations.

    But there is something absurdly surreal about the fact that the two stories dominating the heated arguments of the moment are so wildly different in their moral implications and importance – and that no one appears to think this odd or even worthy of comment. The first question is, what constitutes war crime, specifically genocide? And the second is: should it be a criminal offence to misgender someone? The first one, following a century in which there was calculated, documented murder of whole ethnic and national populations, is of huge and urgent significance.

    The second is ridiculous. Indeed by the standards of political discussion which prevailed until about twenty minutes ago, it is meaningless. (Who would have guessed that the word “misgendering” would become commonplace so readily that it could be written into law?) And yet somehow, these two matters are being treated with virtually identical solemnity and fervour by politicians themselves, and by those who influence and interpret their actions.

    This is particularly strange given the gravity of the first issue. Surely the need to address the questions raised by the wars in Gaza and Ukraine are so profound and critical that the decadence of the trumped-up “misgendering” farrago should have been obvious.

    How on earth did we get here? Could this be the logical conclusion of that 1970s feminist slogan, “the personal is political”? We have now apparently accepted without reservation that the private, subjective experience of individuals is a proper matter for the state: that hurt feelings are as much the concern of the law as murder or theft.

    Perhaps the only thing that these two disparate controversies have in common is the extent to which they rely on the definition of significant words. In the case of “genocide”, this is crucial. That is the name given to a uniquely heinous form of crime which has very specific criteria: it can only be legitimately used against a state or a military operation whose goal is to wipe out – eliminate by mass murder – an entire people. The obvious paradigmatic case of this was the killing of Jews during the Holocaust. It is now the stated aim of Hamas to eliminate Israelis – and, in some of the formulations, all Jews.

    To suggest that Israel’s response to this intention is, itself, a form of genocide is simply wrong. It is possible to describe Israel’s actions under Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership as ruthless and unethical but not as genocidal because the intention is to eliminate Hamas – which is a terrorist organisation – not the Palestinians as a people who are collateral damage.

    This distinction is at the heart of the difference between moral absolutes and political decisions. The Netanyahu policy may or may not be theoretically justified but it is unquestionably a political disaster. It has, in effect, created the appearance of a moral equivalence between the horrific initiating actions of Hamas and Israel’s response to those actions. Politics may be based on abstract values but it must come to terms with visible consequences in the real world. Arguing about what words mean can get you only so far when it comes to perceptions of events.

    Whereas, in the parallel universe of gender identity in which contrived outrage creates a simulacrum of political unrest, there is no difference between words and the real world. The words themselves are the crime. By prohibiting the uttering of wrong words, the intention is obviously to eliminate the possibility of wrong thoughts. Totalitarian regimes have always relied on the policing of language, refusing to accept any distinction between words and acts, which is why modern revolutionary republics place such emphasis on freedom of speech. What is happening before our eyes is nothing less than the criminalising of consciousness.

    Why are the official agencies of government so complacent about this? What counts as politics – and the legitimate domain of government – has become entangled with personal psychology and subjective experience which is not susceptible to any objective test.

    On the face of it, the moral injunction to “be kind” seems unimpeachable but kindness itself is subject to individual interpretation: one person’s show of kindness is another’s insulting condescension.

    Even more dangerously, what appears to be kindness at any given moment – for example, the indulgence of a child’s judgement about his sexuality – can be an irresponsible mistake which will bring untold future damage. So what is kindness? And what are the moral and practical risks of legislating to enforce it?

    Somehow we have arrived at a place that the West never expected to inhabit. A generation after the collapse of the most powerful totalitarian regime in modern history, the “free world” has apparently lost its grip on the relationship between moral values and political decisions which was once its greatest strength.

    The idea had seemed to win out against all the odds: that a government could uphold fundamental first principles of justice, liberty and the authority of the law while still responding realistically to changes in popular opinion and social conditions. This was a truly miraculous understanding of the relationship between morality and politics and, difficult as it might have been to manage, it seemed to deliver the life most people wanted.

    It’s hard to believe but we might be witnessing the end of it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/06/mere-words-now-criminal-inching-towards-totalitalitarianism/

    2. Surely there some sensible people out there who can see what is happening and can employ some armed men and women to get out there and take over and get rid of all of these hate filled monsters.

    1. “The Met

      The fourth series of the BBC documentary The Met showcase’s day-to-day policing in London. It shines a light on the stark realities colleagues face as they respond to incidents, track down criminals and protect victims across the capital. The BBC started filming in 2021 as the world began to recover from the worst phases of the Coronavirus pandemic and the Met faced one of its most challenging periods. Now and going forward is a time of rapid and significant change in the Met.”

      Fancy that.

  95. Removing earth? They’ve removed the hillside!

    Travellers ordered to stop removing tons of earth from Welsh hillside

    Blaenau Gwent council serves notice after residents complain work may cause landslip that would pose danger to community

    Alex Barton • 6 April 2024 • 6:03pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b7069660b40f51aaee47cf3712176c8794fbfbdac377d5e0cf0e6f13934df84e.jpg
    [CREDIT: Huw Fairclough/Getty Images Europe]
    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    A traveller group has been ordered to stop removing tons of earth from a hillside in the Welsh valleys.

    Blaenau Gwent council served a notice to the group on April 5 after residents complained that the work may pose a danger to the community. They claimed that the travellers’ use of heavy machinery could cause a landslip. It is thought that the group started removing the earth from a sloping field on Porters Road in Nantyglo, south Wales, on March 27.

    Stop notices are served by local authorities when there are concerns about a breach of planning rules. The notice will be in place for 28 days and the local authority said that it was “considering options for when it expires”.

    A Blaenau Gwent council spokesman told BBC: “We consider that there has been a breach of planning control by the unauthorised excavation of this land. This includes importation of material, creation of embankments and re-profiling of the area. The notice requires that the activity specified is stopped with immediate effect.”

    There are thought to be six caravans and one motorhome on the site. The council said that it had commissioned independent experts to assess the stability of the land but had concluded there was no immediate risk to properties in the area.

    Nearly 900 people have signed a petition calling for an end to the “unauthorised occupation” of the land. In a statement on the page, Jasmin Bell said: “This issue is not merely a question of legality; it directly impacts our lives, devalues our properties and infringes on our privacy.” She went on to say that the “encroachment” could decrease the value of their properties by up to 20 per cent.

    Ms Bell added: “This situation is not only financially damaging but also emotionally distressing as we feel that our right to privacy is being violated. We believe that everyone has the right to live peacefully without fear of unlawful encroachments on their property or invasion of their privacy.”

    She called on local authorities to act immediately.

    Angela Hathaway commented on the petition: “Why should people ride roughshod over planning regulation? If and when that land slips it will be the taxpayer picking up the tab. The council must act now and stop these unauthorised land works.”

    Jamie Nicholson said: “This is not just morally wrong but the risk of road collapse due to close excavation is massively increased. This is a very busy road they are digging alongside.”

    The settlers have created a GoFundMe page asking for help. Luke Salathiel wrote: “Our family and kids need somewhere to live to raise our family. The council is not providing us with the right needs so we are doing our own property up which we are entitled to do.

    “We are sick of living in need.”

    Gwent Police was contacted for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/06/travellers-ordered-to-stop-removing-earth-from-wales/

        1. They live completely outside the law in this part of the world. Even the Alsatians patrol in pairs in their “settlements”. They don’t travel, they build and are not subject to planning regulations.

          1. Yep, scum the lot of them. Ireland had the right idea when they kicked them out

  96. Removing earth? They’ve removed the hillside!

    Travellers ordered to stop removing tons of earth from Welsh hillside

    Blaenau Gwent council serves notice after residents complain work may cause landslip that would pose danger to community

    Alex Barton • 6 April 2024 • 6:03pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b7069660b40f51aaee47cf3712176c8794fbfbdac377d5e0cf0e6f13934df84e.jpg
    [CREDIT: Huw Fairclough/Getty Images Europe]
    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    A traveller group has been ordered to stop removing tons of earth from a hillside in the Welsh valleys.

    Blaenau Gwent council served a notice to the group on April 5 after residents complained that the work may pose a danger to the community. They claimed that the travellers’ use of heavy machinery could cause a landslip. It is thought that the group started removing the earth from a sloping field on Porters Road in Nantyglo, south Wales, on March 27.

    Stop notices are served by local authorities when there are concerns about a breach of planning rules. The notice will be in place for 28 days and the local authority said that it was “considering options for when it expires”.

    A Blaenau Gwent council spokesman told BBC: “We consider that there has been a breach of planning control by the unauthorised excavation of this land. This includes importation of material, creation of embankments and re-profiling of the area. The notice requires that the activity specified is stopped with immediate effect.”

    There are thought to be six caravans and one motorhome on the site. The council said that it had commissioned independent experts to assess the stability of the land but had concluded there was no immediate risk to properties in the area.

    Nearly 900 people have signed a petition calling for an end to the “unauthorised occupation” of the land. In a statement on the page, Jasmin Bell said: “This issue is not merely a question of legality; it directly impacts our lives, devalues our properties and infringes on our privacy.” She went on to say that the “encroachment” could decrease the value of their properties by up to 20 per cent.

    Ms Bell added: “This situation is not only financially damaging but also emotionally distressing as we feel that our right to privacy is being violated. We believe that everyone has the right to live peacefully without fear of unlawful encroachments on their property or invasion of their privacy.”

    She called on local authorities to act immediately.

    Angela Hathaway commented on the petition: “Why should people ride roughshod over planning regulation? If and when that land slips it will be the taxpayer picking up the tab. The council must act now and stop these unauthorised land works.”

    Jamie Nicholson said: “This is not just morally wrong but the risk of road collapse due to close excavation is massively increased. This is a very busy road they are digging alongside.”

    The settlers have created a GoFundMe page asking for help. Luke Salathiel wrote: “Our family and kids need somewhere to live to raise our family. The council is not providing us with the right needs so we are doing our own property up which we are entitled to do.

    “We are sick of living in need.”

    Gwent Police was contacted for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/06/travellers-ordered-to-stop-removing-earth-from-wales/

  97. Removing earth? They’ve removed the hillside!

    Travellers ordered to stop removing tons of earth from Welsh hillside

    Blaenau Gwent council serves notice after residents complain work may cause landslip that would pose danger to community

    Alex Barton • 6 April 2024 • 6:03pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b7069660b40f51aaee47cf3712176c8794fbfbdac377d5e0cf0e6f13934df84e.jpg
    [CREDIT: Huw Fairclough/Getty Images Europe]
    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    A traveller group has been ordered to stop removing tons of earth from a hillside in the Welsh valleys.

    Blaenau Gwent council served a notice to the group on April 5 after residents complained that the work may pose a danger to the community. They claimed that the travellers’ use of heavy machinery could cause a landslip. It is thought that the group started removing the earth from a sloping field on Porters Road in Nantyglo, south Wales, on March 27.

    Stop notices are served by local authorities when there are concerns about a breach of planning rules. The notice will be in place for 28 days and the local authority said that it was “considering options for when it expires”.

    A Blaenau Gwent council spokesman told BBC: “We consider that there has been a breach of planning control by the unauthorised excavation of this land. This includes importation of material, creation of embankments and re-profiling of the area. The notice requires that the activity specified is stopped with immediate effect.”

    There are thought to be six caravans and one motorhome on the site. The council said that it had commissioned independent experts to assess the stability of the land but had concluded there was no immediate risk to properties in the area.

    Nearly 900 people have signed a petition calling for an end to the “unauthorised occupation” of the land. In a statement on the page, Jasmin Bell said: “This issue is not merely a question of legality; it directly impacts our lives, devalues our properties and infringes on our privacy.” She went on to say that the “encroachment” could decrease the value of their properties by up to 20 per cent.

    Ms Bell added: “This situation is not only financially damaging but also emotionally distressing as we feel that our right to privacy is being violated. We believe that everyone has the right to live peacefully without fear of unlawful encroachments on their property or invasion of their privacy.”

    She called on local authorities to act immediately.

    Angela Hathaway commented on the petition: “Why should people ride roughshod over planning regulation? If and when that land slips it will be the taxpayer picking up the tab. The council must act now and stop these unauthorised land works.”

    Jamie Nicholson said: “This is not just morally wrong but the risk of road collapse due to close excavation is massively increased. This is a very busy road they are digging alongside.”

    The settlers have created a GoFundMe page asking for help. Luke Salathiel wrote: “Our family and kids need somewhere to live to raise our family. The council is not providing us with the right needs so we are doing our own property up which we are entitled to do.

    “We are sick of living in need.”

    Gwent Police was contacted for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/06/travellers-ordered-to-stop-removing-earth-from-wales/

  98. Thought for the day:
    If every “traveller” site was commandeered for illegal immigrants’ housing in caravans, would the human rights lawyers’ heads explode?

    2. Ich auch, BoB.. Another day is done so, I wish you goodnight and may God bless you all, Gentlefolk. Bis morgen früh.

  102. Good night, chums. Sleep well, and I hope to see you all bright and bushy-tailed tomorrow.

  104. According to virologist Dr Geert Vanden Bossche, the covid “Inevitable Immune Escape Pandemic” is imminent and all fully vaccinated individuals should prepare stocks of anti-virals now…..

    https://twitterDOTcom/gvdbossche?lang=en

    “Unvaccinated individuals will be unaffected by the coming immune pandemic tsunami.”

    Is Dr Vanden Bossche correct?

    Is the government war talk a distraction from a coming immune failure pandemic wipe out disaster for the fully vaccinated?

    1. 385509+ up ticks,

      Evening PP,

      Too bloody true it is.

      Use a bigger fear lie as cover for the near future, to dilute the lie repercussions of the distant future.

  105. According to virologist Dr Geert Vanden Bosche, the “Inevitable Immune Pandemic” is imminent and all fully vaccinated individuals should stock up with anti-virals now…..

    https://twitterDOTcom/gvdbossche?lang=en

    “Unvaccinated individuals will be unaffected by the coming immune pandemic tsunami.”

    Is Dr Vanden Bosche correct?

    Is all the government war talk a distraction from a coming immune failure pandemic disaster?

  106. I’ll be off to sleep soon as well.
    I’ve been watching nearly two hours of the life story of ABBA. More than 50 years. I don’t think anyone could deny that they were one if not the best singing group ever. I think they really did take it all. Now it’s history.

        1. Yes. It rather proves, at least to me, how popular they still are. I know all their songs word for word.

    1. Every British administration since 1990, except Truss, has been captured by Big Money interests at Davos.

      Just one example of many forming the overwhelming evidence for this inevitable conclusion. That’s why John Major, who lost $billions to Soros in 1992, was awarded a highly paid senior position in 1998 in a private equity fund where his supposed nemesis George Soros was the star private client invested heavily in buy out. The same private equity fund to which Tony Blair sold 31% of Qinetiq in 2003 for peanuts loaded up at the last moment with a new $7.5 billion MoD contract. The deeply cut price sale of Qinetiq incorporating $7.5 billion, in effect to Blair’s friend Soros, is probably the biggest fraud in Britain ever.

  112. Indeed they did! We do miss Laure and the chumship. We knew far more people better there than here in Narfurk!

    1. I’m not surprised. If you land up in a good one and make an effort to integrate, French villages are very cosy, friendly places to live. They are also extremely supportive as I discovered, in times of trouble be it natural hurricanes or personal ones!

  113. Not half. Eight years ago, my younger son (aged 45) was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He lived for two more years. My French pals were amazingly supportive throughout. I must have bored them rigid but they were always there for me. Rather like NoTTLers.

    1. So sorry to hear about your son. Same experience I had, first, when my husband lost a leg aged 82, then when he died four years later, I was totally supported throughout, not only morally but practically as well. Whatever I needed, I got.

      1. Goodness. Do you live there on your own now?
        I remember coming down to find the garden dealt with and various things harvested “because we knew you’d have other things on your mind”.

        1. Yes, I do live here on my own. In fact, my husband died in 2006 and then a couple of years later I met someone else. We were very happy together for a few years before he died suddenly in 2015.

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