Sunday 12 February: The war in Ukraine highlights the need to boost Britain’s defence budget

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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506 thoughts on “Sunday 12 February: The war in Ukraine highlights the need to boost Britain’s defence budget”

        1. Just what I did today. I couldn’t get to sleep until around 3 am so switched off my alarm at 6 am and had a lie-in until 8.15 am.

  5. Tampons offered in men’s toilets at Labour-run Welsh Parliament

    Critics say move is a ‘virtue-signalling’ waste of taxpayer cash in Wales by First Minister Mark Drakeford

    By Ewan Somerville
    11 February 2023 • 7:00pm
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    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2023/02/11/TELEMMGLPICT000324937556_1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqFznMNng-LuZY6jp-3OYF6HqJ93JRoQBdcQgh8mtCags.jpeg?imwidth=1280
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    Drakeford isn’t ‘the only one in the village’, he’s the only one in the Principality.

    1. Yo Citroen

      Gollox,

      I wondered why the ‘free cigarettes’ in the Cludge smelt and tasted funny

      2. You jest: I remember us doing that years ago when a friend suffered a nose bleed.
        (Lilets smallest size, if I don’t disremember.)

    3. They seem to be in a plastic box. Why doesn’t someone with a bit of nous pick up the box and move it into the ladies’ loo?

    4. There’s been a container for what I presume must be used ST’s in the men’s lavatory at our supermarket for years.
      Bizarre.

    5. If I had been a member of the Welsh pretendy parliament, I would walk out of those bogs with a tampon stuffed up each nostril and then make a speech, thanking whoever put them there, and telling them that they were the best remedy for epistaxis I had ever come across. They would remain in situ for the rest of every session thereafter.

    7. I’m not sure why they are offered for free. Can’t women buy their own? We don’t provide free razors for civil servants do we? So why do we provide free tampons to anyone?

      And yes I know women can get caught out by their periods starting unexpectedly. But we managed before.

  8. Prevent anti-terror body links Jacob Rees-Mogg to far-Right extremists: Senior Tory rages at system ‘infected by wokery’ and says situation is ‘dangerously serious’ claiming he was targeted because of his support for Brexit
    The Government’s Prevent programme linked him to far-right extremists
    Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed he was flagged because of his role as a Brexiteer

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11740655/Jacob-Rees-Mogg-claims-support-Brexit-led-anti-terror-body-link-far-right-extremists.html#newcomment

      1. I thought it had already been created. Remember the injunction to dob in your neighbour during Co-vid?

    2. Far Right Extremist now just means a normal person concerned about all the insanity being imposed upon them.

  9. Insolent, unproductive and dominated by HR, the Civil Service thinks it rules Britain. 12 February 2023.

    Some were not just indifferent to their bosses’ wishes, but actively hostile. Home Office workers talked openly of refusing to implement government policy on deportations, going so far as to challenge ministers in court through their trade union.

    It is perhaps no coincidence that mutterings about alleged bullying seem always to involve Eurosceptic ministers who are seeking to shift the culture in their departments: Priti Patel and, of course, Raab himself, the accusations against whom stem initially from his time as Brexit minister.

    It does of course run Britain The problem is that it is incompetent and plagued by Cultural Marxism. It is not just the Civil Service though. The NHS and the Police are fellow travellers. It pervades every aspect of Public Life in the UK. Local Councils, Quango’s, City Mayors. Whatever! There is no escaping it.

    It’s worth considering how it came to this. It is the result of years of affirmative action in recruitment. It wasn’t called that of course. It was entitled the search for equality and diversity. The result long term was a precipitous decline in both its effectiveness and neutrality. From Servant it has become the Master. It is probably the country’s greatest single problem. It is strangling the State! Not one MP of any Party is interested in it!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/11/insolent-unproductive-dominated-hr-civil-service-thinks-rules/

  10. Tavistock scandal ‘on a par with East German doping of athletes’

    New book on NHS child gender clinic reveals how staff ‘regret’ routinely referring under-16s for puberty blockers

    Glen Keogh
    Saturday February 11 2023, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times

    More than 1,000 children were referred for puberty blockers at an experimental gender clinic where concerns were ignored to preserve a “gold dust” NHS contract, a new book claims.

    Former clinicians at the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, have detailed how some “incredibly complex” children were placed on medication after one face-to-face assessment, despite many having a variety of mental health or family background problems.

    More than a third of young people referred to the service had moderate to severe autistic traits, compared with fewer than 2 per cent of children in the general population. Some identified not just as a different gender, but a different ethnic background, such as Japanese or Korean. One young person had “three different alter egos, two of whom spoke in an Australian accent”.

    In the book, former clinicians at the Gids service speak for the first time in detail of their “regret” about the practice of routinely referring under-16s for puberty-blocking and cross-hormone treatment with no concrete data on the long-term effects. They compare it to the Mid Staffs hospital scandal of the 2000s and the doping of East German athletes in the 1960s and 1970s.

    The claims come in Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes, which will be released this month.

    Barnes, a BBC Newsnight journalist, spoke to dozens of clinicians who worked at Gids, governors at the trust and children and their parents who used the service.

    She details how:
    • Children as young as three, already living as the opposite gender with a changed name, appearance and pronouns, were referred to the service.

    • The clinic accounted for almost 30 per cent of the Tavistock NHS Trust’s income by 2021 and staff said it resembled a “tech start-up” with regular trips to international conferences.

    • In 2016, Susie Green, former head of the pro-trans charity Mermaids, emailed Dr Polly Carmichael, who was then the head of Gids, asking to cut the time children had to spend on puberty blockers before irreversible cross-sex hormones could be introduced.

    • Staff raised concerns when, on behalf of families, Green requested children’s clinicians to be changed to someone believed to be more likely to prescribe hormones.

    • In her first interview since winning an employment tribunal case after she raised concerns about the safety of children, the trust’s head of safeguarding, Sonia Appleby, said anyone who spoke out was “demonised”.

    • Former therapists involved in prescribing puberty blockers now admit they do not know “how many children [have since] changed their mind” on transitioning.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fcc674198-aa08-11ed-8a03-b2faadede0c5.jpg?crop=5545%2C3696%2C1408%2C1651&resize=1269
    Hannah Barnes’s book on the Tavistock is published this month

    Founded in 1989, Gids, formerly the UK’s only dedicated gender identity clinic for children and young people, was told to shut last year after an independent review led by Dr Hilary Cass concluded that young people were left at “considerable risk” of poor mental health and distress. A Care Quality Commission report had rated the service “inadequate” and criticised its record-keeping.

    Data shows 354 children under 16 consented to puberty blockers at University College London Hospital Trust and Leeds Children’s Hospital between 2012 and 2021 after being seen by therapists and psychologists at the clinic. Between 2009 and 2017, 1,261 children and teenagers were referred for medical intervention. Gids said the “vast majority” were prescribed the blocker.

    After initially treating just a handful of patients each year, referrals to Gids increased dramatically. In 2009-10 it received 97. By 2019-20 it received 2,748 — a rise of more than 2,700 per cent. The youngest child known to have been referred to endocrinologists at the University College London Hospital Trust was seven. The child was later treated privately.

    The numbers far exceeded what had been planned for and many staff members felt overwhelmed.

    Therapists who worked at the clinic have spoken of staff trying to do the best for young people but assessments quickly began to feel rushed. A number of young people have reported that they felt Gids staff listened to them and have spoken positively of their treatment there.

    But Dr Anna Hutchinson, a senior clinical psychologist at Gids, said the service was soon “accepting everyone”. She said puberty blockers were supposed to be prescribed to children to give them “time to think” about whether they wanted to transition fully, but she realised that almost all went on to take cross-sex hormones, such as testosterone and oestrogen, which have irreversible consequences.

    Hutchinson told Barnes this was a “holy f***” moment. “It totally exploded the idea that when we were offering the puberty blockers, we were actually offering time to think,” she said.

    “Because what are the chances of 100 per cent of people, offered time to think, thinking the same thing? If the service was getting this wrong, it was getting it wrong with some of the most vulnerable children and young people.”

    She now believes that “some of those kids would not have identified as trans had they not been put on the medical pathway”.

    “Of course, that doesn’t mean to say that identifying as trans is a bad outcome,” she said. “But what is a bad outcome is creating a cohort of people who are medically dependent who’d never needed to be. And not only medically dependent, but perhaps — we don’t yet know — medically damaged.”

    She describes the service as “scandalous in its negligence and scale”.

    In 2011, Gids began an “early intervention” study in which 44 patients aged 12 to 15 took part to see the longer-term effects of puberty blockers. But in April 2014 the practice of prescribing blockers to under-16s was introduced across the service before the data on their effects was available. A lower age limit of 12 was removed as Gids relied on a “stage, not age” approach based on where a child was in their development.

    There are concerns about whether puberty blockers “temporarily or permanently” disrupt the development of children’s brains, as well as potentially stunting growth and affecting bone strength. Little is known about the long-term side effects.

    Anastassis Spiliadis, a family therapist, told Barnes of the impact of outside groups, and parents, on decisions to refer often vulnerable children for puberty blockers.

    He said in his four years at the service, on two occasions he decided that children from complex family set-ups and backgrounds should not be placed on blockers. However, the families complained and “both ended up on the blocker”.

    Parents who complained were referred to “clinicians who we all knew it was much easier to get on hormones through them, rather than other clinicians”, he said.

    There were also concerns that parents were pushing children into transitioning, in cases of fabricated or induced illness (FII), previously known as Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy.

    In one case, he said, the child told him, “my mum wants this for me”, or “my mum wants the blocker more than I do”. He said there was sexual abuse and domestic violence in the family and he and a colleague agreed that they would not be putting the young person forward for puberty blockers. However, this decision was allegedly overruled by Carmichael.

    On other occasions a change in clinician would be requested by Green, the Mermaids chief, Spiliadis said.

    “I remember thinking and talking to Paul [Jenkins, the Tavistock chief] and saying that this is really inappropriate — how come a person who’s the director, or the CEO of a charity, is entitled to request a change of clinicians on behalf of a family?”

    On his time at Gids, Spiliadis added: “We’re like, ‘Oh my God, will we look back in ten, 20 years and be like, what did we do?’”

    Matt Bristow, a former Gids clinician, added: “Despite the obvious complexity of all these cases — sexual abuse, trauma, potential FII — the answer was always the same. That the young people eventually get put on the blocker unless they themselves say they don’t want it.”

    Whistleblowers also allege the clinic, which treated under-18s suffering from gender dysphoria, was “institutionally homophobic” and bowed to pressure from parents who preferred their children to be transgender rather than gay. When homosexual clinicians raised concerns it was becoming a “conversion therapy for gay kids”, they were ignored because they were deemed subjective, it is claimed.

    Barnes’s book refers to the financial benefits the Gids service brought to the Tavistock trust at a time when NHS services were under immense financial pressure.

    Dr David Bell, a psychiatrist and former staff governor at the trust who wrote a critical report on the service in 2019 after being approached by a number of concerned employees, said the Gids national contract with the NHS — where it did not have to compete with another service — was “gold dust”.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fde900cce-aa08-11ed-8a03-b2faadede0c5.jpg?crop=2500%2C1667%2C106%2C1627&resize=1269
    Dr David Bell said concerns were kept quiet because of Gids’s financial benefits

    “Bell argued that knowledge of Gids’s economic importance had made it difficult for those with legitimate criticisms to raise them,” Barnes writes.

    Spiliadis added that, after not even having an office when he arrived, Gids “eventually took over a whole floor”. “But because it was bringing in so much money they [senior trust staff] could not challenge it,” he added.

    Hutchinson said that with high pay, trips to transgender conferences in Europe and as far afield as Buenos Aires, the culture of Gids “more closely resembled a tech start-up than the NHS”.

    As well as criticisms, a 2019 review by the medical director, Dinesh Sinha, following Bell’s report also heard positive testimony from staff members, who said they did not see any problems with Gids’ safeguarding practices.

    But Sinha did not raise concerns passed to him during the course of his review with Appleby, the safeguarding head. When she finally saw the transcripts she said it was not only a “tragedy for the patients involved” but a “tragedy for the organisation — that so many of these narratives had been muzzled, and the people who had raised these concerns were demonised”.

    Bristow said Sinha’s report was a “whitewash”.

    The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust said: “Gids works on a case-by-case basis with every young person and their family, working thoughtfully and holistically with them to explore their situation, with no expectation of what the right outcome for them might be. Only the minority of young people seen in the service are referred for any physical interventions. At the Tavistock and Portman we wholeheartedly support our staff to raise concerns, and have recently strengthened our mechanisms for doing so. Concerns relating to young people’s wellbeing are taken seriously and investigated.”

    The Tavistock said it had records of only one patient being referred for medical intervention after one assessment and this person had gone through a detailed assessment at another gender service.

    Mermaids declined to comment.

    2. So, Mengele wasn’t an outlier after all? In fact, he was pretty well the norm, when you look at these people.

  12. 370963+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Sunday 12 February: The war in Ukraine highlights the need to boost Britain’s defence budget,

    Surely priorities dictate the war in Ukraine highlights the treacherous incompetence of the United Kingdoms political overseers.

    The only boosting that urgently needs doing is in the shape of MASS BOOSTING a selected patriotic fringe party ( reclaim) for instance as a bona fide peoples defence against the WeF political weevils currently overseeing these Isles,supported by a legion of dangerous idiots.

    What more could these political cretins wish for than a win double, as in pricks in arms, potential killers, and arms in the arms of pricks, potential killers, this applies to any conflict lacking in exhaustive peace negotiations

    When the dust settles check how many political overseers suffered a fatal overdose of lead.

  13. Zelensky plays his fawning Western suitors like a violin. 12 February 2023.

    One reason sanctions tend not to work is that they frequently backfire and damage the sanctioner as much as the sanctioned. When push comes to shove, few are prepared to take the required degree of economic punishment.

    The bottom line is that Putin’s war has been accommodated to the point where it ceases to have any significant effect on the developed world. It’s shameful, but there it is.

    I don’t know about the numbers; they can after all be juggled to say whatever the PTB think they should say, my own view is the sanctions are making financial mincemeat of ordinary people in the West.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/02/11/zelensky-plays-fawning-western-suitors-like-violin/

  14. Zelensky plays his fawning Western suitors like a violin. 12 February 2023.

    One reason sanctions tend not to work is that they frequently backfire and damage the sanctioner as much as the sanctioned. When push comes to shove, few are prepared to take the required degree of economic punishment.

    The bottom line is that Putin’s war has been accommodated to the point where it ceases to have any significant effect on the developed world. It’s shameful, but there it is.

    I don’t know about the numbers; they can after all be juggled to say whatever the PTB think they should say, my own view is the sanctions are making financial mincemeat of ordinary people in the West.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/02/11/zelensky-plays-fawning-western-suitors-like-violin/

  16. Yo all

    I have noticed lattley that mi posts have lotsa spellin misstakes.

    Hoopefully that wil be ficksed soon

    I am of to get ooe ‘i’ decataracteded tody, at 1130

    It has been a long wait since I went for a review on Thursday. Buck up NHS

    HOPEfuuly ‘I’ number Tow will be ficksed in a foortnite

    1. Good morning OLT

      As you are an RN veteran , I am as sure as eggs is eggs that the system fast forwards cataract ops like yours and other procedures .

      Glad you are being sorted today, clever people these eye experts .

      Take care . TTFN.

    3. Morning OLT. Have you ever noticed that spelling mistakes occur in your comments after you have posted them?

    4. Morning OLT. Have you ever noticed that spelling mistakes occur in your comments after you have posted them?

    5. My typiong has gone off too. I put it down to my new patop which has A KEboard which is a triumph of ARTISTIC TYLE OVER Praticality….

  17. Good Moaning.
    I think I can safely say that over the coming week, my appearances will be sporadic and possibly disappear for a while.
    How will you all cope?

    4. It is kind of you to think of us, but we will be buoyed up by regular thoughts of “Thank God I am not moving house.”

      Good luck with it all. Nearly at the finishing post now…

      2. This morning I’ve made the definitive statement.
        Cooking and baking stuff is packed away.
        From now on, it will be tea, toast and take aways. (And coffee – lorra lorra coffee.)

  18. The retreat from globalism. Spiked. 12 February 2023.

    In the wake of liberal globalism’s failings, a nationalist tide is rising today, not only in China and Russia but also throughout the West. It is a dynamic eerily similar to 100 years ago, when war, pandemic and economic insecurity brought national tensions to the surface. Yet today’s undoubted turn against globalism need not herald a return to the dark days of aggressive nationalism. Instead, we are seeing the rise of a new community-based and self-governing model of localism.

    This is a piece of Black Propaganda to counter the hostility that Globalism is facing from ordinary people. In reality it is more powerful that it has ever been. It controls the UK through its Civil Service and the EU through its unelected executive. It is also waging war, using these as tools, against the only anti-globalist country in Europe. It does not yet quite dominate the United States and if de Santis becomes President it may be postponed for at least another four years. We can only hope!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/12/the-retreat-from-globalism/v

    1. “Globalism” is a bit of a slippery term. If one is talking about global trade, that did more to lift people out of poverty than anything else since the war.
      That kind of globalism was deliberately destroyed, it did not “fail.”

    2. What a lot of bunkum. Globalism marches on, gathering pace as it goes and we are merely incidentals.

          3. I have one that has thick cardboard covers and lovely colourful pictures; it’s Cecil Aldin’s Dogs and Hounds.

  20. Good morning all.
    A bit late today but it’s a dull grey 2½°C outside at the moment, but sunshine is forecast.

  21. ‘Morning, Peeps. Dry, overcast, mild – again.

    SIR – February 19 will mark the seventh anniversary of the death of my wife, Kim Briggs.

    One week earlier, Kim, mother to our two children, suffered catastrophic and fatal brain injuries when she was hit by a cyclist riding a track bike without brakes while she was crossing a road in central London.

    One week after her death, the police informed me that the bike was illegal for road use but that, “under the law as it stands, we have nothing with which to charge the cyclist”.

    Eventually the Crown Prosecution Service charged the cyclist with a Victorian law designed for horse riders: “Causing injury by means of wanton and furious riding.” Unlike an equivalent motoring offence, this does not mention causing death and the maximum possible penalty is just 24 months in prison.

    I have been calling for “Causing Death or Serious Injury by Dangerous or Careless Cycling” to be incorporated into the Road Traffic Act, carrying the same penalties as it would for motorists.

    Last year Grant Shapps, who was then the Transport Secretary, twice confirmed the legislation would be brought forward. This was further underlined to me in a letter from Baroness Vere, the transport minister. Since this time, nothing has happened.

    I find it confusing that the Department for Transport now appears to be dragging its feet. I do hope the aforementioned progress and public ambition has not been spiked by fringe elements of the powerful cycling lobby. Previously, a minister suggested I may have to “wait for another Kim Briggs to get this over the line”. Since Kim’s death, there have actually been four similar fatalities, with almost identical chaotic legal processes requiring the use of “Wanton and Furious Riding”.

    This letter is co-signed by four family members who have all lost loved ones in a road collision with a cyclist leading to similar criminal proceedings.

    Matt Briggs (husband to Kim Briggs)
    Helen Bruton (niece to Jane Stone)
    Kathryn Evans (daughter to Mary Evans)
    Peter Walker (husband to Diana Walker)
    Chrstine Berridge (sister to Peter McCombie)

    The Briggs family deserves better than this, as we all do when it cones to broken promises. You can bet this would have gone through had it been a minister’s family member or that of a sleb. Pathetic. Electric scooters in public places here in Sussex are banned unless part of a scheme. They are still ridden with impunity because the police couldn’t care less. Expect more deaths and serious injuries.

    1. My deepest sympathy to all the relatives.
      On my walk to work, the cyclists use the footpath as an overtaking lane. They have no respect for the law, or for pedestrians’ safety. 1 cm appears to be an acceptable distance as they zoom past people.
      No cyclist EVER admits to terrifying pedestrians though. They all drive safely and responsibly according to them. Just as no dog owner ever admits that their pet bit anyone!

      1. Surely BB2, your best resort is a quick sideways step and, “Oh, Sorry, I knocked you off your velocipede and I hope that there is an ambulance along soon to pick up the bits, meantime i hope you fcuking die, you inconsiderate bastard”.

        1. The speed they go, I’d be strawberry jam on the pavement. They terrify me. I am so nervous now, that I get up at 5:30 am so that I can drive all the way to work and get a parking space there, rather than walk the last mile.

      2. Surely BB2, your best resort is a quick sideways step and, “Oh, Sorry, I knocked you off your velocipede and I hope that there is an ambulance along soon to pick up the bits, meantime i hope you fcuking die, you inconsiderate bastard”.

      3. I admit that Oscar bit me – although, to be fair, I think he was out of his head at the time due to the effects of the sedation he’d been given and he didn’t have a clue who I was. Thankfully, he is much more like his old self today (barking and threatening, but keeping his teeth to himself).

  23. When I got onto the DT letters page there is no Sunday letters page. Geoffrey has done a good job. I was on just after 6 and now at 8.48 and still no letters page.

    1. They probably can’t find any letters supporting their left wing editorial ideology since the paper swung, like the Conservative party, to the hard left.

        2. I was quite late to the party as we had guests, but after I’d phoned him and emailed with no success, Richard ‘phoned the police for a welfare check.

        1. Yes – he’s posted today’s funny and is back from Hospital this morning. He’s replied to my emails. Sounds a lot brighter.

  25. OT – re that “try” yesterday. When I played rugby, if you touched the corner flag you were in touch.

    Just saying. Didn’t alter the result, anyway.

    1. How can the BBC broadcast such BS? Everyone knows that if they were doctors or engineers, they would be able to get visas to come to Europe or the UK!
      They wouldn’t be paying thousands to come illegally. That’s what criminals do.

    2. I am shocked about what happened too. A 25 year old bearded man trying it on with a 15 year old girl in school uniform.

  27. Putin’s war has reinvigorated the west’s defence of liberty. That unity must not crack now. 12 February 2023.

    The democracies have confounded the Russian tyrant with their resolve to support Ukraine. That must be sustained in 2023

    It was an easy mistake for a tyrant to make. When Vladimir Putin launched his savage assault on Ukraine in February last year, he did not just misjudge its valiant people and their determination to fight for freedom. He also misread the western democracies.

    The Democracies? Liberty? Freedom? Do these people ever squirm while they are tapping this stuff out on their keyboards! All these conditions have been eradicated in the West! Voting has never meant less since North Korea adopted it! You can be arrested for your political or religious views. The unpleasant and unwelcome truth is that on personal level you are probably better off in Russia than in the West!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/12/putins-war-has-reinvigorated-the-wests-defence-of-liberty-that-unity-must-not-crack-now

    1. I see the Telegaffe today is banging the drum for more support for plucky little Ukraine [/sarc] – more drivel from Hamish de Feckwit too!

    1. ‘The “far-Right” demonstration became violet tonight.’

      I shudder to think how much injury will be caused and damage will be done when it turns ultra-violet!

    3. Dear God, are people really so slow on the uptake? Of COURSE the government want all this border-crossing, or they would have stopped it ages ago as opposed to facilitating it.

  30. Dalrymple in philosophical mood.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/to-matter-or-not-to-matter/

    The thought of our own insignificance when we look up at the stars is potentially a dangerous one, though I do not go so far as to say that it has actually been responsible in practice for any of the great crimes of mankind; for if we are totally insignificant, what does anything really matter? If nothing really matters, what does it matter how I behave? And if it does not matter how I behave, then I might as well do whatever I can to achieve my ends, to take maximum pleasure from my fleeting existence. If that involves harm to others, so be it; after all, nothing matters and everything will be the same in the end, indeed very soon by comparison with the age of the universe. Eat, drink, and rob and steal, then, for tomorrow I die.

  31. SIR – The idea of equipping Ukraine with F-16s or any other modern fighter is absurd. The time and cost involved in training the pilots to the required standard would be self defeating. America still owns many A-10s, robust “cheap and cheerful” CAS aircraft ideal for the war in Ukraine. These could be easily made available and the training burden would be minimal. The aircraft could be operational over the battle field within six months.

    Wg Cdr RAF Jeremy Parr (retd)
    Suckley, Worcestershire

    Wg Cdr Parr is spot on. The Fairchild A-10 Warthog is as tough as old boots and relatively uncomplicated. Pilot conversion would be straightforward. It was designed to mop up tanks in exactly this kind of warfare.

      1. I watched a clip of two Ukrainian soldiers near the front line strapping a grenade to a drone, flying over the enemy whilst tracking it, releasing the grenade over the target and flying their drone back. This is the kind of warfare that defeated the Russians in Afghanistan where they left all their tanks that the Amercans found when they tried their luck there.

      2. I’m with you bb2. Still can’t understand why we’re having anything to do with this. Every time we get involved in something that is no business of our thousands and thousands of people die.

  33. Listening to the appalling Lisa Nandy on Kuenssburg ..

    Labour are toxic , and if they are elected , this country will be a real busted flush , more of a mess than we are in already .

    1. I can’t help thinking “Good, let’s get it over with”.
      It can’t be any worse than this death by 1000 cuts

        1. It affects my UK family and I will almost certainly return in due course.
          France is going the same way, not quite as quickly but it is.

      3. The fact that Reform is a completely busted flush is extremely depressing.

        The idiot Tice has come out in favour of Net Zero and is vigorously in support of the government’s determination not to investigate Covid gene therapy damage.

        I was disenfranchised by Blair after I had been resident in France for fifteen years and Cameron robbed me of my vote in the Brexit referendum even though he had promised it so I do not have a vote in either the UK or in France because I am not a French man. But where on earth can most Nottlers who are resident in the UK cast their votes?

        1. It’s the same here in Norway, Rastus. No vote in Norwegian general elections (but can vote in local) as not a ctizen. No vote in the UK as not resident. So, a pox on all their houses.

        2. I propose there oi an extra box on the ballot paper for NOTA.
          Totally unsatisfactory but if it was accompanied with the proviso that unless one candidate , including NOTA, gains 50% of those voting the election will be rerun with the two boxes that received the most votes.

  34. Good moaning all,

    A bit late on parade this morning. Back at McPhee Towers after a couple of nights in the Great Wen which took in the Celebration of Dissent (Once again, Well Done Kathy Gyngell). It’s a tad cloudy with a light breeze and 5℃ here in rural N W Hampshire. Out to the garden to do some more tidying and mulching.

    I had ignored the Kiyv Klown’s visit to Westminster Hall on Wednesday last but caught up with it earlier this morning when I watched Friday’s UK Column News. The whole business was so obviously choreographed and scripted with about 1500 performing seals stuffed into WH to oink and flap their flippers at him. And that Ghost of Kiyv helmet ‘gifted’ to speaker Hoyle. The Ghost never existed. He/she/it was a propaganda creation.

    He’s still asking for fighters-jets ( Why ‘jets’? Wouldn’t he be happy with fighter-props. BBMF has a few). The worry is that ‘the Potato in a Wig’ , as Katie Hopkins calls him, says that we have ‘at least’ 100 Typhoons and it’s time to send them to Ukraine. The problem with this is 1. They couldn’t be flown by Ukrainian pilots. 2. They are pretty much all we have.

    God save us from these fools.

  35. Shamima Begum isn’t a celebrity
    The Isis bride’s youth and looks should not blind us to her despicable actions

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/12/shamima-begum-isnt-celebrity/

    Why don’t they show a cover photo of her dressed in a full burka and wielding a machete?

    Is she always photographed in sunglasses to hide her evil eyes?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fb4911a03bbbf8baadf8a94d208f94f249a936090453f4f9f6cfcfd7e780cead.jpg

    1. Fortunately, even when dolled up in Western fashions, she cannot hide her true nature.
      There are sweet, feminine, kind women from all parts of the world. She is not one of them.

      3. She is not physically Unattractive, BUT, that picture displays a total lack of empathy with anyone other than herself.

  36. It’s nice to see a letter in the Gatesograph from someone in Pembrokeshire (Sally A Williams, Dinas Cross) which I know and love well. Sally’s nearest railway station will be Fishguard (Abergwaun) which is at the end of a single track line to the ferry port. Overlooking the harbour is the rather splendid Fishguard Bay Hotel, now sadly closed as a result of the plandemic and general mis-management. We held our wedding reception there in 1975 and we’ve stayed there often over the years. It was originally built as a railway hotel by GWR when the plan was to link London with Fishguard for a trans-Atlantic liner service operating out of Fishguard. Lower Fishguard was the village used for the 1970s film of Under Milk Wood starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/96e6d4daf71b9359c9bf985e65d18372056930e0284ede3023afa1f51528466e.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8fa29252d298cc8a2dc44c69abb4ef09f3586c9813f07db813d64d096494a089.jpg

    2. It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

          2. Oh? I didn’t realise that I wrote Under Milk Wood. I was always under the impression that Dylan Marlais Thomas wrote it, but what do I know?

          3. I never tire of it. Nor does SWMBO who comes from Pembrokeshire. She can recognise just about all the characters in it from people she has known in life.

  37. Morning all 😉 😊 late on parade today.
    Busy day yesterday, spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen of our eldest sons house talking to his in-laws. There must have 25 children around the same age some parents playing games in the large lounge. Our lovely grand daughter’s third birthday. It wasn’t like that in our day we all agreed.
    Home for a quick turnaround feed dog short walk. Then off to see a very good live band, 60s and 70s music not everyone’s cuppa of course. But a full house with many old creaking bones up and dancing, bumping their feet on the floor and wriggling in their seats. A great night. Lunchtime we are off out again for another family gathering. Number two son and his outlaws. It’s a celebration for their sons 3rd birthday. The little fella with leukemia. He has so many toys now we think they need to move house.
    Slayders.

    Interesting to find out the other grandfather worked alongside Hank (Shadows guitarist) Marvin’s brother in the late 50s 60s in Marketing.

  38. Re that “try” yesterday. Once again I was behind the times.

    The law that said touching the corner flag meant you were in touch was changed in 2014.

    1. When did they stop punishing scrum halves for not putting the ball in straight? A good hooker used to used to do well when winning a ball against the head.

      1. I’m so disillusioned by the lack of proper reffing, and terrible decisions and time-wasting that I’ve stopped watching it altogether! My dear father must be turning in his Greek grave!

      2. Scrum halves are routinely and deliberately permitted to chuck the ball directly to their waiting No 8 with aplomb. Yet woe betide the hooker who throws the ball to a lineout just a few seconds of a degree out of straight! Where is the sense in all that?

    2. When did they stop punishing scrum halves for not putting the ball in straight? A good hooker used to used to do well when winning a ball against the head.

    3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j3UYslPOP4 Just look how much the sport has deteriorated as a spectacle since it went professional. Watch any match from the pre-professional era, especially during the 1970s, and you will see a fast, running sport, played by consummately skilled amateurs, who provided a thrilling and memorable event. The sublimely-skilled Gareth Edwards was a prime example. Today’s excuse for rugby union is a pale pastiche of what it used to be.

      1. I remember reading some years back that the decline of Welsh Rugby began with the abolition of the Grammar Schools because the Comprehensive Schools that replaced them preferred football to Rugby.

        1. The secondary-modern that I attended had two thriving rugby teams: U13 and U15. It was the History master who managed those teams since the Games master was not interested in the sport. When the former left for a position at another school, both teams had to be disbanded and the rugby pitch was removed.

      2. I couldn’t agree more. They have ruined the sport I loved. Gareth Edwards is probably the greatest rugby player of all time. And not a big fellow either.

  40. The same programme from which the Viking clip is taken. I fear that on this subject, migrants, that this is just the beginning. Resistance and therefor violence will increase.
    Migrant hotel riot sparked by video of 25 year old man ‘hassling’ 16-year-old girl for her number
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcnHNCR8WZA

    1. I do feel sorry for all those teachers, doctors and engineers who were kept awake by the fascists. Particularly those recently arrived from that war zone known as Egypt, you know, where 30,000 Brits will be going on holiday to later this year.

    2. If you read The Guardian or subscribe to The Guardian … you are:

      A. Brain Dead.
      B. Require help (even though you are beyond help).
      C. Dangerous (to yourself and everyone you come into contact with).

      2. Everyone that pops up from the Guardian, on the web, seems to be a thoroughly repugnant individual. But that seems to be a characteristic of the people on the left. Don’t watch TV but I would expect it is the same unpleasant people.

      3. When you read guardian comment threads you consistently find a sort of logic defying parallel dimension where everything is the fault of not following Left wing ideology.

        For example, unemployment is a result of not paying enough – not an abundance of supply.

        High prices area result of Brexit – not because the government has hiked taxes
        Energy costs are down to climate change – not because of a forced reduction in supply.
        Government debt is good, as long as it is used to provide government ‘services’ – regardless of what those services are, or whether they are needed at all.

        Immigration is good – as an almost fundamental principle, simply because the people they hate don’t want it – not because it is the root cause of state expansion, debt, unemployment, low wages, crumbling infrastructure, the failing NHS…

        Then there’s the contradictions in their groupthink.

        It’s like I imagine talking to a Party member would be like from Orwell’s 1984.

        I don’t think they’re stupid – the convoluted leaps of logic required to achieve their cognitive dissonance are impressive – but they are fundamentally deceitful – to themselves most of all.

    3. It seems once more that our publicly funded police are extremely anti public.

      They Are Not ‘cross channel migrants’ mateys, they are thousands of illegal immigrants who have no right whatsoever to be in the UK.

      1. It was always going to end this way. The police defying the public over a criminal migrant – it’d be a violent crime like rape or assault.

        This proves just how back to front the UK is.

        First, the criminal immigrants should not be in this country at all.

        Second, plod should be supporting the law abiding public.
        Third, the police should never, ever defend the criminal.

        Yet the state wants this destabilised nation. Is it all revenge for Brexit? To force a situation that could easily have been avoided?

    1. That fourth group have taken over the world, Paul. The bible was wrong: it wasn’t the ‘meek’ who inherited the earth, it was the stupid.

  42. Putin might be today’s Hitler, but history offers little guide as to what happens next. 12 February 2023.

    It seems plausible that the speed with which Britain sent military aid to Ukraine, and its having set the pace since, with anti-tank missiles, with the first pledge of tanks, and recently with the offer to train Ukrainian pilots, is because of a broad cultural and political consensus derived from the collective memory of appeasement. Consequently, opposition to today’s policy is muted. I hope and believe that we have got it right this time: appeasing Putin would have stored up even worse dangers in Europe and Asia.

    The headline is of course in direct contravention of Godwin’s Law which states that whenever a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress. This is because it is almost invariably the last argument offered when all others have failed. It should be apparent to the most prejudiced of commentators that, whatever his shortcomings, Vlad has nothing in common with the Fuhrer. There are no Jewish Pogroms or Concentration Camps in Russia. He is not at war with Ukraine over lebensraum. He does not have any racial or ethnic doctrine to expound. He does not think Russians are ubermensch.

    What we actually have here is propaganda at its most dismal! The very idea that he is about to unleash the Russian Army on further adventures after its performance in Ukraine is essentially ridiculous. It is stretched to the very utmost as it is! If a negotiated peace can be achieved against the wishes of the Americans it will still take twenty years to rebuild it!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/12/putin-might-todays-hitler-history-offers-little-guide-what-happens/

    2. What annoys me too is the constant insistence on the part of Western “experts” that as soon as Putin has finished with Ukraine he will turn his sights on Poland. It is complete nonsense. He isn’t even interested in Ukraine as a whole, he is interested in the Russian areas of Ukraine being given the right to vote who they want to go with. Off course we all know the answer to that, Russia. So the West will keep its lies up in order to justify its scurrilous position which is, ultimately, to have an exhausted Russia that they can rape and pillage for its resources and colonize with American firms, like they did in Iraq. Halliburton, Blackwater, Bechtel etc. The industrial buzzards of American power.

        1. They tried it on care and medical staff – thank goodness for Dr Steve James and his forthright speaking to Savage Jabbid! I think he saved us all there.

          But what other mandatory jabs will they bring in since this failure?

          1. The WHO will dictate next time and Sunak or Starmer will say “nothing to do with me, we must follow the diktats from on high.”
            Waking people up now is very important so that they resist WHO dictatorship.

        2. They tried it on care and medical staff – thank goodness for Dr Steve James and his forthright speaking to Savage Jabbid! I think he saved us all there.

          But what other mandatory jabs will they bring in since this failure?

        3. I’m not sure that Sunack has the political clout to try that ploy: the Tories are imploding, support is at rock-bottom and he would be hard pushed to force something that draconian on to the people.
          Starmer, however, is a very different kettle of fish and should he win a GE by a large margin nothing is off the table. The ‘scamdemic’ is long over and the data irrefutably indicates both the uselessness, and more importantly, the dangers of the “vaccine”, but when have the facts stopped totalitarians?

          2. They quietly stopped using the AZ jabs, without giving any reasons. Now from today the spring booster programme is finished and people under 50 are no longer to be offered any jabs. So that amounts pretty much to a suspension for younger people at any rate. They will try the boosters on the oldies again in the autumn no doubt.

          3. The whole programme should be suspended to at least investigate properly all the adverse effects recorded. But that would be admitting something was wrong and they won’t do that in spite of many medics protesting.

          4. They quietly stopped using the AZ jabs, without giving any reasons. Now from today the spring booster programme is finished and people under 50 are no longer to be offered any jabs. So that amounts pretty much to a suspension for younger people at any rate. They will try the boosters on the oldies again in the autumn no doubt.

          5. They quietly stopped using the AZ jabs, without giving any reasons. Now from today the spring booster programme is finished and people under 50 are no longer to be offered any jabs. So that amounts pretty much to a suspension for younger people at any rate. They will try the boosters on the oldies again in the autumn no doubt.

    2. Cold, uncaring and clearly following an evil and unnecessary narrative and not paying attention to the real science and data. If the people fall for this and then see their children harmed, or worse killed, where will this PoS run and hide?

      1. If the vaccines worked and did no damage they wouldn’t need to blackmail people into having them.

        1. ‘They’ have already made the promises and received their kickbacks. Now they need to implement it. Using lies, blackmail and intimidation. If that doesn’t work they will either cut you off financially or by force. Arm yourselves.

    3. 370963+ up ticks,

      Afternoon Ftc,

      Has the political fraternity suffered any excess
      death as with the persecuted herd ? if not is it nearing the time this “leveling up ” the politico’s are always on about was triggered through the legal system.

      1. I suggest the question should be, did any of the political fraternity actually recieve a vaccine from AZ, Moderna, Phizer et al or just a saline solution for demonstration /propaganda purposes?

  45. I haven’t been on line as I was hospitalised on late friday evening due to a fall on the stairs while en-route to the free in-house laundry.

    Just released to-day and, since the nearest ‘proper’ hospital is Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary (25 miles away) they were cavilling about providing transport (we haven’t got enough money, they whinged, until I pointed out that they could waste money on ‘Diversity Managers’ and the like). So they provided patient transport and I’m home.

    My thanks to Richard (Tier5inmate), Jules and Sue MacFarlane for caring. Yesterday’s story follows

    1. We were glad to hear from Richard yesterday that he’d tracked you down to the hospital. We re all worried by your silence after the chat that evening that you were very depressed and possibly suicidal.

      We know you are lonely and sad but good to see you still haven’t lost your sense of humour and hope you are feeling a bit brighter now.

    2. Great to see you back here Tom.

      My goodness , you had us all worried again .

      I do hope they patched you up, and that you are continuing with your current medication .

      We all care , but you can be a very up and down charismatic fellow … bit similar to the weather x

      Hold on there and be careful , very careful.

    3. So no broken bones then or serious damage done? That’s really good. Probably a few bruises to come out though.

    4. We were all worried, Tom, For some reason Elsie Battleaxe thinks i have upset you. Thank you for the Birthday wishes.

        1. Elsie was quite upset with me but comments for Friday are closed. I didn’t get to see Elsie’s comment until scrolling back today because of the deluge of birthday greetings.

          All over nothing in my opinion. Pfftt.

    7. I would worry about that hospital, my wife was born there.

      That surely was bad timing for a fall.

    9. We were worried, Tom. Glad to hear you’re home, despite it’s shortcomings. R, J & SMcF are good people. Don’t forget that. We’re here for you. To a point. Should you return to the Famous Star, you’re on your own with that barmaid. Think P G Wodehouse and rays of sunshine…

    4. Good to see you back, Tom, and thanks so much for the laughs. Life isn’t the same without them. Hope you are not too sore from your fall over.

    1. As of 10 March last year, 2.8 million fled to Russia – a year ago, Russia was the biggest recipient of refugees by far. Almost twice as many as Poland (no.2 on the list) now have, in January this year.
      Interesting, that so many went East not West, to seek succour from the great bogeyman bear.

      2. They were trying to escape the Azov shelling of their apartment blocks. Don’t forget in other parts of Ukraine people were going to BBQ’s.

      4. This is true, but in Russia they are expected to work. There is no obliteration of culture or society. If they do not ‘become Russian’, they are, and remain second class citizens.

        Russia also has a tad more land mass than we do.

    1. In the 1930s an American car manufacturer installed a device linked to the speedometer when it hit 80 mph:

      This is St Christopher calling, St Christopher calling. You’re on your own now!

  49. Yvette Cooper: ‘We need a Catherine Cawood in every town’. 12 February 2023.

    Labour’s shadow home secretary believes the Happy Valley officer provides a model of community policing the country sorely needs.

    The answer, she argues – on a local level at least – is more Catherine Cawoods. “We need a Catherine Cawood in every town. Ed [her husband, former Labour Cabinet minister Ed Balls] has watched Happy Valley all the way through and I’ve watched intermittent episodes but she represents the best of the bobby on the beat – totally rooted in the local community. Someone who knows everyone. We have 6,000 fewer neighbourhood police on the street than we had in 2010 and 8,500 fewer police community support officers.”

    You have to laugh at the infantile imbecility of these people. Having destroyed what was; despite its faults, probably the best policing system in the world. They now wish to replace it with a character from a television programme!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/12/yvette-cooper-need-catherine-cawood-every-town/

    3. blame it all on Jack Warner

      PC49

      PC = Politically Correct, Not Police Constabl wearing a rainbow uniform and arresting people who Think Non Woke thoughts

    4. If anyone else does the Sunday Times ‘Where was I’ competition, the TV series above provides a clue. As does one of our regular posters, initials ‘HC’…

    1. I do like sheep of the week. My uncle calls them ‘monsters’. He much prefers his dairy cows.

    1. On the plus side the men’s downhill skiing and both biathlon pursuit races today were good value!!

        1. The “handbag” incident? It did not surprise me that one of the contestants was the petulant thug Farrell

    3. We have great running backs but they do not get a look in. Instead it is endless scrummaging and men with the agility of a shot rhinoceros bouncing off each other to no effect.

      Owen Farrell’s father who manages Ireland has achieved a better balance probably from having played in Rugby League.

      1. I found it remarkable when I worked out that Andy Farrell was only 15 when his son Owen was conceived.

    4. The first half of yesterday’s match was outstanding. The best 40 minutes of rugby I’ve seen.

  53. Regarding the devastation in Turkey it has been pointed out that Ambassadors from 10 countries were pulled out of Turkey by their governments the day before the eruptions. In addition the numerous pipelines crossing Turkey were closed down before the earthquakes.

    Politicians in Rumania say the Tectonic plates in the region affected were deliberately activated and disrupted by HAARP interventions. This is advanced technology known to have been developed in the US. There was no epicentre but numerous almost simultaneous centres of activity over a wide area.

    Erdogan it should be noted had objected to Sweden joining NATO and opposed the war in Ukraine, favouring a peace treaty with Russia in preference to bloodshed.

    Turkey has the largest Army in Europe and is equipped with modern weaponry.

  56. I’m sorry, I’m exhausted and cannot peruse more.

    I’m going to a bed that has a warm duvet and where I don’t have to rely upon piles of blankets to keep me part-way warm.

    I hope to be back later but no promises.

    1. Hospital isn’t a place conducive to rest and relaxation! Have a good rest, Tom! Sorry missed your call!

  57. Kevin Sinfield has got his work cut out to sort out and marshal England’s defence. Bringing on Dad’s Army (Cole and Vunipola) to provide a massive gap for Italy’s attack to run straight through (like a virus negotiating the massive holes in a face-nappy) was a retrograde step. Shirley there are better (and much younger) props out there to choose from!

  58. I am seriously beginning to wonder whether there is any point to a scrum any more. They take ages to set up – and re-set etc etc. The ball is fed directly to the back row. Both No 9s were facing that direction when they “put the ball in” to the hooker. All a hooker does is to chuck the ball in at lineouts. I reckon at least 20 minutes were spent wasted on scrums. Tedious, pointless and very off-putting for even the most devoted fan.

    The beginning of the second half showed up England’s weakness against fast, imaginative play….which, unfortunately petered out.

    1. I found the game boring due to so many stoppages and scrums and whatnot. I don’t understand the rules, admittedly, but there were so many stoppages. Boring. Rules rule, ok.

      1. An elderly fogeyish solicitor writes:

        It is all due to anxiety in the RFU – and the game generally – about litigation arising from incidents during a game.

      2. I’m going to have to be a pedant here, vw! Rugby has Laws, not rules! My father had a wonderful little book called ‘Why the whistle went’! I spent many hours studying it when I was much younger! However, there are so many new interpretations, I might as well not have bothered!

        1. I’m trying to remember whether the commentators talked about rules or laws but … anyway well done for having studied them at all!

          2. I suspect that may just have been watching grown men playing with their odd shaped balls……

      1. Too right – we discussed this yesterday. Subs for injuries = 100% Just to “refresh” a side – zero.

      1. Tut tut Shame on you. I’ll give you a clue – probably not more than 15 miles from your abode!

        1. I’ve walked the coastal path from Morston, via Blakeney, Cley-next-the-sea, Salthouse, Kelling, Weybourne and Sheringham numerous times.

  61. A pallid Par Four . . .

    Wordle 603 4/6
    🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
    🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. A pleasant birdie after yesterday’s double bogie.
      Wordle 603 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟨🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. Three again. Can’t last.

      Wordle 603 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  62. That’s me done for today. Grey skies all day. Sort of mild = less cold. Disappointing rugby. I do not think either the Irish or the French have anything to fear.

    Have a jolly evening

    A demain.

  64. Evening, all. Apologies for not posting the answers to the quiz yesterday. I had planned to go to a matinee performance of Cosi Fan Tutte, but it was cancelled and I ended up having to attend the evening performance. As a consequence, I was very late getting back and didn’t log in. Well done to Grizz who got most of the answers except 4 and 11 (4 stumped most of us!) and got number 9 wrong. Will put up the answers on a separate post.

    Our useless virtue signallers in Wastemonster need to have the notice “The first duty of government is defence of the realm” nailed to their tender bits.

      1. I put the questions up just before I signed off on Friday (or, more likely, early Saturday morning!).

          1. Much better, thank you, Sue. I think it was the sedation – he didn’t know where he was or who I was and reverted to old, bad memories as he was probably in pain. Kadi is now trying to “protect” Oscar when I have to put drops in Oscar’s eyes (and he objects to it – he’s already managed to lose one of his contact lenses; I found it on the kitchen floor).

          2. Confused dog – not a good look! Hector has 3 tiny coedine a day but if the timing is off he gets a bit spaced out!

          3. Oscar has to have half a paracetamol three times a day – no longer a problem as I squeeze grated cheese round it and the gannet never notices anything amiss. It’s just the drops that require me to have at least three hands; one to hold his head still, one to keep his eyelids open and the third to actually squeeze the bottle to get the drops in his eyes. I think most of the liquid has gone on his nose and down his cheeks. He can really scrunch his eyes up when he tries!

      2. Before I retire for the night, here’s a quiz for you – the answers
        are all sums of money pre-decimal. Work out the total in pounds,
        shillings and pence:
        1 A stone
        2 A bicycle
        3 A singer
        4 Part of a monkey’s leg
        5 A man’s name
        6 A pet pig
        7 Sun-Moon-Pluto
        8 A leather worker
        9 50% panties
        10 Royal headdress
        11 Hit repeatedly
        12 An unwell sea creature.

        No prizes it’s just a bit of fun.

  65. Here, behind the spoiler, are the answers to the quiz:


    1 £14
    2 1 1/4d
    3 £10
    4 1/2d – [ape knee!]
    5 1/-
    6 £1 1s
    7 3/4d
    8 6d
    9 10/-
    10 5/-
    11 £1
    12 £6

    TOTAL £26 17s 8d

    1. People have been predicting that the next scare story would be aliens!
      These aliens certainly do have good timing, arriving on earth just as the dollar is about to lose its reserve currency status!

      I think this is just the latest pointer that the Chinese and the WEF are not a million miles away from each other.

      1. Does every man in the world have a model railway?
        Just curious.
        I love them (the railways!), though I wouldn’t build one myself.

        2. Those don’t, want one.

          More seriously I am losing my manual dexterity to essential tremor. Therefore I am building my models when I can, while I can.

  68. Well, the forecast sun didn’t appear, it’s been cloudy all day, but I got 3 x large builder’s buckets of log sawn, split & stacked. A smaller lot of logs sawn and waiting to be split & stacked once I’ve space to stack them and I got a decent start made on sorting out that large elm I dropped a couple of days ago.
    Also sawn a lot of smaller stuff, up to 1½ to 2″, that I’ve loaded into mushroom trays for stacking for the small open fire.
    Counting the rings on the trees I’ve recently felled, I’ve done a 20yo sycamore and 2 x elms of about 32 to 35 years.
    Still got a lot to sort out, including the last of the big elms that came down in the strong winds a while ago.

    Then I might JUST get some wall building done!!!

    2. Investments are mad eon the basis of short and long term trends. You don’t invest ethically unless you are prepareed to lose it.

      A lot of people – MPs mostly – get to make a lot of money from the tax payer being forced to pay for failed industry that cannot pay for itself – such as unreliables.

    1. Would he mind picking up Oscar for reprogramming?

      He sat by the door until the Warqueen got in. Attempting to close it while she was in the ruddy driveway had him growling then crying followed by pacing back and forth for an hour.

        1. How is Oscar doing, any improvement? Hope so, it’s always a worry when our pets are sick.

          2. He seems to be back to what passes for normal for him, thank you, jill. He’s accepting strokes and cuddles and there has been no repetition of teeth meeting skin (his teeth and my skin!). He’s managed to lose one of his contact lenses and I am having great difficulty putting the antibiotic drops in his eyes – he screws them up so tight the drops just dribble down his cheeks. He isn’t due back at the vets until 2nd March. He won’t be in a good mood because he’s going to the groomers earlier that day.

  71. Popped in to see eldest daughter earlier. She is currently doing a 6000 piece jigsaw measuring 1.2m by 1.7m……

      4. 370863+ up ticks,

        Evening W,

        You contact political arsewipes department C/o palace of westminster

    2. Where is the RSPCMB when it is needed?

      Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Minii-bBusses

    5. We had a carer for my mother-in-law who resembled those images. She was African and one of the better carers provided by the company we employed for the live-in care service.

      She was conscious of her physical shape and said that it was normal in certain African women to have large bottoms and that no amount of physical exercise or dieting could alter this innate characteristic.

  74. 37096+ up ticks,

    I did ask 5 day ago,

    ogga1

    370860+ up ticks,

    May one ask,will monies for the Ukrainian war effort be diverted to Turkish / Syria earthquake aid, could not the hotel costs for the morally illegal immigrants be better spent on
    temporary accommodation within the disaster hit country ?

    One this occasion what is of more importance

    TANKS or tents ?

    Killing or kids ?

    https://twitter.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1624862778073706504?s=20&t=ZOOHpkgVQtMY1GG3dLsaQA

    1. The Ukraine money is recirculated (laundered) back to the US military complexes and politicians in Washington DC. It is also cover for the destruction of the Nordstream 2 pipeline by the US in order to weaken and deindustrialise the German economy and thereby further weaken the EU.

      Whenever the global bankers see their hegemony under threat they connive with politicians to stage ‘events’. In WWI we had the pandemic of Spanish flu, an influenza virus developed in the US and given to US military who spread it at will.

      The Spanish flu playbook has now been repeated verse for verse with the Covid Scamdemic.

      Another example is the staging of Pearl Harbour designed by FDR to bring the US into war with Germany, its axis powers and Japan. This had the added bonus of the US seizing global power destroying the British Empire and near bankrupting the UK in the process.

      Then we had the staged assassination of the Kennedy brothers tied to the dollar and political policy. Next after several proxy wars the detonation of the Twin Towers in order to get the American people riled up to invade Afghanistan to plunder its resources and rob others. Arabs flying commercial airliners undetected in monitored air space so ludicrous as to be believed by idiots.

      Ukraine is a US proxy war conducted by the US State Department and Zelensky the most evil yet comical puppet yet inflicted on the rest of us in the dystopian Clown World the globalists have engineered.

  75. Always check the small print! I had got it into my head that my appointment with the skin consultant was on Tues 14th this week. Checked the letter today and it’s April 14th !
    Now, although my face is giving me considerable pain, there is a sense of relief also. I was worrying that if they wanted to keep me in overnight, how would my husband get home and be OK without my assistance. Right now, although he’s doing so much better I don’t want him here on his own. So that is a worry gone.
    I may well have to bring the appointment forward because, as I said it hurts. But right now it is a relief that we don’t have to go on Tuesday.

    1. I am sorry you are in pain. Are you entirely sure that it isn’t Dental related? I only ask because the nerves in the face are very tightly packed.

  76. Goodnight, all. The Rayburn is stoked, so I’m ready for bed. Oscar got me up at 04.00 this morning, so it’s been a long day!

    1. Expect nothing from Sunak, a small man of no significance for whom no one voted and for whom no one cares. This is excepting perhaps my own personal wish to see him behind bars for crimes against humanity along with his co-investors in Moderna and those operating its Covid research and delivery laboratories.

      We need the EU like a hole in the head.

      We need true patriots to replace the scum presently occupying seats in Parliament, not greasy, oleaginous dodgy foreigners with financial interests elsewhere, overseas interests they continually put before any consideration of the interests of those they represent in this country.

      1. “We need true patriots…”

        …and where are we going to find them? Certainly not among the minny vote-splitting parties.

      2. His good mate Osborne was one of the Partners in an investment firm that put a stop to the merger between Astrazeneca and Pfizer. ‘They’ obviously didn’t want a big beast overshadowing Moderna. Spivs, the lot of them.

  80. UK NEWS
    Afghan boys arrested over ‘rape of girl at Kent school’
    new
    Matt Dathan, Home Affairs Editor
    Sunday February 12 2023, 9.40pm, The Times

    Four Afghan boys who arrived in small boats last year have been arrested in connection with an alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl at a school in Dover.

    Kent police has confirmed that it is investigating a report of the attack, which took place at a school in the town last Monday.

    Four boys, aged between 13 and 16, were arrested as part of the investigation and have since been released on bail while inquiries continue, the force said.

    One of the boys, aged 15, was arrested on suspicion of rape and the three others arrested on suspicion of facilitating the attack.

    Sources familiar with the investigation told The Times that three boys, aged 13, 15 and 16, who cannot be named for legal reasons, are alleged to have pinned the girl down and acted as “lookouts” to stop her getting away while the fourth boy raped her.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/afghan-boys-arrested-over-rape-of-girl-at-kent-school-chlh6vcvj

    3. That’s absolutely terrible that poor girl.
      How much more of this undermining of our culture and social structure do our idiot and divot politicians think we should put up with ?

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