Sunday 12 January: The Government must see that the NHS can’t keep up with modern medicine

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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515 thoughts on “Sunday 12 January: The Government must see that the NHS can’t keep up with modern medicine”

  1. Good morning, chums, and thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe page. And I 'm FIRST!!!

    Wordle 1,303 4/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie and all
      I puzzled over today's wordle for far too long!
      Wordle 1,303 4/6

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  3. 400045+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Grist to the mill,manna from heaven, food for thought.

    Dt,
    Blow to Starmer as supermarket giant backs farmers over inheritance tax raid
    Morrisons says it stands with farmers, as they prepare further protests against the changes

    1. Morning o1 and all.

      Shrewd move by Morrisons calculated to protect their fresh food supplies. Or was it initiated by those behind the scenes keen to defeat the farmers' blockades?

      1. 400045+ up ticks,

        Morning S,
        Granted, but it has still forced them to take a stance in the right direction, time will tell.

  4. Morning all,

    I 've noticed a distinct shift in emphasis on the way the NHS is monitoring my health.
    I get the impression that there is growing realisation that big pharma is calling the tune on medical solutions that are supposed to save the NHS money without addressing the long term influence of unwanted induced side effects.

    It's difficult to put a finger on particularly if you can't an appointment to see your GP.

    1. Glad to see that someone has got their finger on their pilse! (I meant to type pulse but in the circumstances perhaps Pilse is more apposite1?)

      1. Dear Donald.
        Please can Blighty be the 51st. State?
        Going cheap – free actually – as we are borassic.

      2. We have already been bought by WEF but the difference is we have to pay for the transfer and a bunch of Leftie arsoles get all the proceeds.

    2. That's a tantalising prospect – turning the capital into a Las Vegas of the North – lots of casinos, run by Eskimos – they could call it Los Nuukies …..Paging Eskimo Nell, paging Ms Nell….

      1. That's why European governments banned glyphosate-based weedkillers and sodium chlorate. They were banned so that the poisonous plant of Islam could grow to a height to hang is all.

    1. As Musk helpfully suggested, when Hapless Humza threatened to sue Musk for calling him a 'super racist', X has records of every tweet and DM sent by users. It is sensible to assume that Facebook (Meta) have also got such records.

      Due to data protection laws this isn't a problem. But when Hapless Humza made his threat, Musk reminded him that the legal discovery process would expose the relevant DMs Musk had access to that showed Hapless Humza's racialist DMs upon which Musk had based his comment.

      Hapless Humza is really only on safe ground in a 'he said, she said' situation. Having someone with proof of his shenanigans was reason for him to drop his threat to sue.

      Even without having to expose someone's DMs, Burnside on X has highlighted the top tier Labour politicians who were following Ivor Caplin, the nonce arrested yesterday for 'grooming' a 15 year old boy, who's timeline would make all of us blush.

      I expect #TwoTierKeir will see this, not as an embarrassment to his party, but as an excuse to censorship of social media accounts. If it saves one 15 year old…

      2. Does "diverse roles" mean different roles or roles that are only for black people? The illustration hints at the latter.

      3. The way things are going on the Economy front I'm surprised the BoE isn't advertising for experienced Nigerian Princes with a demonstrable track record…..

  14. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    11 Jan 2025
    Coffee House
    William Cash
    The LA dream has burnt out
    11 January 2025, 6:00am

    Last year, I wrote here about the dark side of LA, after the Friends actor Matthew Perry was found dead in the hot tub of his $6 million Pacific Palisades house. I grimly predicted that his luxury ocean-facing bungalow – sold on to a developer for over $8 million just a few months after his fatal drug overdose – would become a new stop off on the ‘Movie Star’s Homes’ tours.

    I was wrong. The Perry multi-million glass bungalow is, reportedly, a charred shell. The LA wildfires have torn through the Palisades area, and have reached the very part of the Hollywood Hills where I used to live in the 1990s. Los Angeles Sheriff Robert Luna said that it looked as though ‘an atomic bomb dropped in these areas’.

    Having lived as part of an expat British community out there in the 1990s, the cost cannot be simply measured in financial, human loss, or environmental terms.

    This has been a week of seemingly irreversible damage to California’s place in the global psyche as a Land of Dreams, or the new Promised Land. Martin Amis phrased this appeal well in his novel Money when the Mid-Atlantic narrator John Self declares: ‘California, land of my dreams and my longing’.

    It was the promise of this West Coast paradise – a City of Angels but with liberal sexual mores and large pay packets – which allured so many Brits from the 1950 generation of Christopher Isherwood, to the 1970s influx of the likes of David Hockney and Dudley Moore. When Isherwood – who lived at 145 Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica, just down from Palisades – was once asked to defend LA to LA-sceptics he replied: ‘Either they understand it’s the only place or they don’t’.

    This also applied to the wave of middle-class (white) Americans who built new lives in suburban southern California in the 1950s – the world of Spielberg – when LA was still a dream factory of orange farms, sun and a powerful symbol of national post-war prosperity.

    As the famous LA urban historian Mike Davis wrote:

    A well-paid job in the aerospace industry and a ranch house in a sunny subdivision, only minutes from the beaches and Disneyland, was the lifestyle against which other Americans measured the modernity of their towns and regions. Millions of Americans, especially the young, envied those lucky enough to live in the Land of Endless Summer.

    The dream was beginning to die by the end of the 1990s. That decade had seen the riots that had the city burning and under curfew (I covered them for this paper from the safety of the Playboy Mansion), the OJ Simpson trial which stoked further racial divisions, and then the 1994 Northridge earthquake. By 1998, Davis wrote that metropolitan Los Angeles, with its estimated 500 gated subdivisions, 2,000 street gangs, 20,000 sweatshops and 100,000 homeless residents, had become a ‘dystopian’ and ‘demonic’ symbol of Dickensian inequalities and racial contradictions in a region ‘where the future has turned rancid’.

    I lived through this all. When I headed out to LA as a young reporter in September 1991, I arrived with all the preconceptions of somebody brought up enjoying The Graduate (set in the San Francisco area), The Eagles’ album Hotel California, and TV shows like Baywatch. I ended up living in a house at 7357 Woodrow Wilson Drive, near Mulholland Drive, next-door to David Hockney who would take me to test out his ‘Santa Monica Mountain Driving Tour’. He’d blast out carefully curated Wagnerian opera from the powerful stereo in his convertible Mercedes coupe as we slowly cruised through the mountain canyons, turning up Sigfried’s Funeral Music in the Ring as we approached his beach cottage in Malibu at the bottom of Las Flores Canyon. All one would have seen this week would have been an inferno of flames and smoke.

    Within just two weeks of arriving, however, I found myself walking through the remains of the Oakville firestorm in the East Bay Hills area of Northern California. The fire killed 25 people, and destroyed 2,843 single-family dwellings at a cost of $1.5 billion.

    I will never forget spending the night with hundreds of suddenly homeless people in a temporary shelter and hearing the cries of sobbing all night from families who had lost everything. I imagine it is much the same today, although the richer victims are reportedly holed up in swanky $1500 hotels like the Peninsula and Four Seasons drinking the bars dry in despair. Many have not got insurance, or inadequate policies to cover the losses.

    State Farm, the state’s largest insurer, recently cancelled 30,000 policies including 1,600 in Palisades, saying they were at risk of ‘financial failure’ due to the fire risks. This meant that residents only had the option of ‘no insurance’ or getting insured under the State’s Fair Plan, which only covers buildings up to $3 million. For many this means personal ruin after a lifetime of work.

    Yes, California is meant to be the land of re-invention but LA is no longer a city of ‘longing’. Certainly, the Brit-in-LA dream is dead. British expat numbers are now down to around 200,000. When I lived in LA, the British Consul-General estimated more like 400,000. At the time of the Heidi Fleiss hooker scandal in 1994, I learned that a surprisingly large number of ‘working girls’ in LA were British. In the 1990s’s Santa Monica was almost like an expat colony with darts matches at Ye Old King’s Head’ English Pub, tea-shops where you can buy old Dad’s Army DVDs and jars of Bovril and bars which opened early on a Saturday for watching the Premier League football.

    The Brit-in-LA dream is dead

    Now, the bar for even working in LA is getting difficult. Expats in the ‘industry’ are now finding it much harder to get an ‘0-1’ work visa, let alone a Green Card. Stylists, stunt men, ‘below line’ producers have to pull together as many as 50 letters of professional recommendation to get a visa, often only giving up to a year of work time. It’s also so much more expensive to live in LA than in the 1990s. Gore Vidal had a beautiful large old Spanish villa house just a canyon away from where I lived that was for sale for $440,000. Now it would be in the millions.

    The other worrying thing about the fires is their cause. The TV news pictures have made LA resemble a cross between Mad Max and a Towering Inferno-style disaster movie. The Guardian wasted no time in blaming the fast-spreading fires, fuelled by unusually strong Santa Ana winds, on ‘a new era of complex, compound climate disaster. Conditions for a January firestorm in Los Angeles have never existed in all of known history, until they now do’.

    Yet, there is every possibility that at least some of the fires may have been started on purpose. Residents in ‘the Palisades’ have reported that the fire started in a ‘walking trail’ area that had no pylons or usual fire hazards. A man has already been arrested under suspicion of arson in the wealthy suburb of Calabasas. The death of the South California dream may be as much to do with sabotage than unseasonal winds.

    Written by
    William Cash
    William Cash is the former Times US West Coast correspondent and former editor of the Catholic Herald.

    1. This piece encapsulates everything that is wrong with the mainstream legacy media. The assumption that there's a common currency of thinking that California is glamorous and aspiring to work in Hollywood or Los Angeles. The complete lack of understanding that California is irrelevant to most people in Britain and reports of its devastation are stories of human tragedy happening on the other side of the world, not part of our national psyche.

      1. The fact that someone has a different perspective on life from your own is not necessarily a function of 'mainstream legacy media'.

        1. True, however the legacy media perpetuates the idea that we all think certain things are important when really, they aren’t. If he was just writing about his own experiences in a foreign country without trying to link it to our cultural identity, the piece would have been fine.

      2. Actually I know California very well. But the fact is that there are plenty of people without a parochial mentality that are interested in what is going on in the rest of the world. I read, The Straits Times, The Hindu, New York Post and even the news from The Office of Tibet as well as other sources of news. To be well informed about what is going on in the world at large is useful. If anything it gives one an insight into what makes our "national psyche" tick and gives one an understanding of how the rest of the world molds our response and our actions. Simply put the observation that 'No man is an Island' is very apt to a country and its relationship to the rest of the world.

        1. I agree with that. What I reject is the idea that California holds a particularly important role in our national psyche – more important than other parts of the world.

          1. Because it is very important. Have you not heard the saying that what happens in California happens in the rest of the USA the next day and in the rest of the world, the next week. Alone, it is the fifth largest economy in the world and the center for almost all technological innovations in the world too. Then there is the entertainment industry which is probably the major influence in the world, period. It's so powerful that not even the Democrats have managed to destroy it, although they are giving it a damn good try.

          2. It really, really isn’t. That phrase about what happens in California is just the kind of myth perpetuated by the media.
            The great post war American success stories (Hollywood, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, PayPal etc) are heavily controlled by the banking cabal. Companies have been started in a planned way to take advantage of advances that were happening in other areas, eg microchips becoming cheaper and more powerful. It’s not comparable to the explosion of talent and ingenuity that characterised Britain’s industrial revolution. If you follow the tech news, the next big thing is not hard to predict, and the banking cabal seems to have put their own protegés in charge of companies that are well placed to become very powerful. Few people are starting businesses in their garage with a great idea – it’s all venture capital these days.
            The US peaked in the 1950s, which is a long time ago now. Even looking at the US today, with seven companies dominating the stock market – isn’t it completely obvious that these companies are massively overvalued compared to their real worth? That no real innovation is coming out of Silicon Valley any more?
            The products of the entertainment industry are pushed at us relentlessly, whether we want them or not. It is certainly the major satanic influence in the world. But as a cultural influence, crucial to us on the other side of the world? Definitely not. Chinese, European and Indian films are watched by more people. My Gen Z daughter’s friends have no time for Hollywood celebrities – they are beginning to see through the mask of their own accord.

          3. Because it is very important. Have you not heard the saying that what happens in California happens in the rest of the USA the next day and in the rest of the world, the next week. Alone, it is the fifth largest economy in the world and the center for almost all technological innovations in the world too. Then there is the entertainment industry which is probably the major influence in the world, period. It's so powerful that not even the Democrats have managed to destroy it, although they are giving it a damn good try.

  15. From Coffee House the Spectator

    11 Jan 2025
    Coffee House
    Jim Lawley
    The solution to Spain’s problems
    11 January 2025, 6:00

    It’s not often that a country can solve a serious, endemic problem quickly, easily and at no expense at all. But Spain can.

    The problem is some of the country’s left-wing politicians’ harmful ignorance of Spain’s 20th century history – and in particular about what actually happened during the Second Republic (1931-1936) and the resulting civil war (1936-1939). Not knowing the history, they constantly frame 21st century Spanish politics as a continuation of that war. Their misunderstandings and misrepresentations are holding Spain back.

    Unfortunately, many on the left fondly imagine that they are the proud heirs of noble republicans who fought for democracy against General Franco’s fascist forces. And when politicians of the two right-wing parties, the Partido Popular and Vox, point out that in fact those republicans themselves can hardly be regarded as freedom-loving democrats, they are immediately condemned as beyond the pale ‘Franco apologists’. Yet both right-wing parties are in fact staunch defenders of Spain’s democratic constitution.

    All of Spain’s politicians should read The Penguin History of Modern Spain. Published in 2023, the author, Nigel Townson, points out that not only were the republicans also guilty of horrific atrocities and the systematic elimination of tens of thousands of political opponents during their reign of terror, but must share some of the blame for the civil war itself too:

    To defend the [republican] government …on the grounds that it was ‘democratically elected’ is to ignore the extent to which the authorities of 1936 had failed to uphold law and order or to govern in a democratic manner … their politics of exclusion had alienated … swathes of Spanish society…who… feared for their properties and even their lives.

    It’s likely indeed that if the republicans, aided as they were by the Soviet Union, had won, Spain would have endured a communi
    Yet when the problems of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez become particularly acute – at present he’s mired in corruption cases involving, amongst others, his wife and brother – he seems to find the civil war, Franco’s dictatorship and the importance of defending Spain from the return of fascism a very convenient distraction. His latest idea is to hold more than a hundred acts throughout 2025 commemorating Franco’s death (on 20 November 1975) and celebrating ‘50 years of freedom’. Declining to attend the first of these (on 8 January), Alberto Feijóo, leader of the right-wing opposition said: ‘The socialists are nostalgic for the days of confrontation between Spaniards but that will not prevent the rest of us from wanting to build a future together.’

    In his eagerness to present himself as a safeguard against the ‘far-right’, Sánchez is again displaying his ignorance: Franco’s death was not immediately followed by democracy and freedom. Instead power passed to Franco’s hard-line henchman Arias Navarro, known as ‘The Butcher of Málaga’ for the atrocities he perpetrated during the civil war. Nothing to celebrate there, surely? It wasn’t in fact until June 1977 that democratic elections were held. So 2027 (and not 2025) is the year in which to celebrate ‘50 years of freedom’.

    Last April, as the investigation into his wife’s alleged corruption started to gather pace, Sánchez announced that he was going to take a five-day break from his duties so that he could decide whether he wanted to continue as prime minister. Imploring him to stay, his supporters promptly resorted to their default playbook – invoking the Civil War and Franco’s ensuing dictatorship (1939-1975). One minister recalled how his grandfather ‘was arrested in 1939, they [the right] wanted to kill him. He was lucky because a friend got him out of the truck. He spent three years in prison… He lived a life of misery … You cannot give up, Pedro.’ Another prominent socialist urged Sánchez ‘to think of the people who [during and after the civil war] died in the ditches, of the people who were executed against cemetery walls, of all those who suffered exile, repression, imprisonment’.

    Ironically Sánchez’s government has declared that schoolchildren should learn the truth about what happened in the 1930s. It’s a great shame then that Townson’s excellent book isn’t available in Spanish. But fortunately Sánchez can read English. Perhaps next time he feels in need of time out from running the country, he could spend a few days reading some actual history. He’d be doing his country a favour.

    Written by
    Jim Lawley
    Jim Lawley is a former university lecturer who has lived and worked in Spain for 40 years.

    1. Disappointing article. The history book mentioned was written by one of his university colleagues.
      Carlos Arias Navarro became president under Franco en 1973 until halfway through 1976 when the new King replaced him with plans to reintroduce democracy.
      The republic lasted only five years when Franco's 1936 coup began the civil war. The population fought to preserve its fledgling democracy but the republicans were unable to resist the might of the Germans and Italians. The Soviet Union's feeble support appeared once the war had begun.
      I would recommend Lawley read some of the excellent and well researched works by Angel Viñas an academic also connected with his university.

  18. Elon Musk and Dominic Cummings 'in plot to sabotage UK politics'. 12 January 2025.

    Dominic Cummings is helping orchestrate Elon Musk’s vitriolic attacks on British politicians including Sir Keir Starmer, senior Government sources have claimed.

    Boris Johnson’s former No 10 adviser – who is planning a new ‘StartUp Party’ which he hopes will smash the traditional Westminster system – is understood to be communicating with Mr Musk on WhatsApp.

    The sources say that Mr Cummings, who has called for huge cuts to the size of the British state, is advising Mr Musk on his mission to slash trillions of dollars from US government spending on behalf of incoming President Donald Trump.

    Anti-Musk Clickbait. There is no foundation for these claims.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14274419/Elon-Musk-Dominic-Cummings-plot-sabotage-UK-politics-Nigel-Farage.html

      1. I’m not so sure Bob. He is likely to dilute support for Reform, thereby splitting the anti-Labour vote down the middle.

    4. Whatever it was that the Corporal Jones's Fuzzy Wuzzies did not like having up 'em I am sure that Starmer finds Musk getting up 'im just as bad!

  19. A very Good Morning to one and all, your families, friends. Pets, workmates, customers and bosses.
    I hope that I have not missed anyone out
    and of course Many Thank- yous to Mr Geoff Graham, our mentor for providing this site.

    Or Yo All and Fanx, Boss

    1. Mentor? Mentor? Tormentor more like with all the dire news and warnings posted here! :-))

    1. They know exactly what they're doing.. and there's a dirty rotten stinky PIE at the bottom of it.

  21. Good Morning!

    Today Nanumaga is back om FSB with a different view on Nigel Farage’s Tommy Robinson dilemma, ‘ The Dilemma That Won’t Go Away ’ and suggests a novel solution to Mr Farage’s problem. FSB still advocate's voting for Reform, but with your eyes wide open and on the look out for worrying signs – and in the full knowledge that eventually we need to abolish the party system.

    Iain Hunter’s superb Common Law is essential reading in opinion. Know your inalienable rights. Please do read it if you missed it yesterday.

    Energy watch 08.00: Demand: 31.042GW. Supply: Hydrocarbons 48.9%; Wind 10.7%; Imports 15.3%; Biomass 7.5% and Nuclear 15.2%

    Yet again the wind is low. But even with demand also low we are having to import over 15%, importing much more electric power than wind is producing, and we are still perilously close to blackouts. All for nothing.

    freespeechbacklash.com

      1. Don't worry – it hasn't gone away and one day it will come back with a vengeance to bite us on the bum. Those that hold vast quantities of Sterling that we have exchanged for tat will simply use those Sterling holdings to buy large swathes of prime real estate and agricultural land. Welcome to C21st Serfdom…..

  22. If the Electoral Commission can lower the voting age to thirteen or fourteen then it's a landslide for BRUV.

      1. This will split the Muslim vote 50/50.. those that practice p aedo and those that only slightly support it.

        1. Can anyone imagine what would have happened if a bunch of C of E
          Catholic or Jewish men had done the same thing anywhere else on earth.

          1. Funnily-enough Celtic supporter Humza Yousaf blocked inquiry into paedo activity at the club 1966-2025.

      2. I do so hope he chooses a Lyle as his deputy then you can rest assured everything will be sweetness and light……

      4. He's a bloody Muslim. No way in the world would I vote for someone happy to betray his own culture.

  23. Good morning all.
    A slightly less cold start to the day with the temperature actually getting up to 0.1°C on the digital bit of the thermometer from a minimum of 4.8°C of yesterday!
    Calm air, very misty and a very appropriate first part of Mendelssohn's Calm Air and a Prosperous Voyage on Radio 3 as I turned it on!

    Am I the only one who considers that the Pakistani Rape Gangs have become the lesser part of the scandal and that the real outrage is becoming the cover-up and who orchestrated it?
    https://x.com/BeardedBob7282/status/1878355572891726127

        1. Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.

          Of course the difficulty is when those guilty of treachery or treason towards their people's children hold the reins of power.

          Starmer has not got the integrity nor the honour to resign and neither do any members of his repulsive government.

          So how can he and they be removed before they inflict even more damage?

      2. The guilty are already known and stand out from the rest. Just issue the arrest warrants and make it public and they'll all run.

    2. Precisely. Elon Musk is merely reiterating what we have been saying in this country for three decades.

      I suspect the harsh and unjustifiable treatment of Tommy has awakened him to the dire state of the UK and EU institutions and the utter incompetence of a government that the US will have to deal with.

  24. Good morning all

    Damp mildish start to the day , cloudy 4c.

    We haven't experienced any snow here in South Dorset , we are 4 miles from the sea , the flooded water meadows we had before Christmas are now just a water logged muddy mess , the River Frome just keeps flowing along to Poole harbour !

    Son was up early , another race to compete in in Swanage .

    Rachel Reeves will not have discussed global warming nor net zero with the Chinese air polluters , will she or won't she ?

    1. Nor will she discuss the different Chinese attitude to Muslims.
      Unless a large section of Labour voters voice their 'concerns' and threaten Jess Philips' seat on the gravy train.

      1. I do hope the Chinese government allow her to stay and encourage the rest of the front bench to join her.
        Let's hope so and have a restart.

  25. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    11 Jan 2025
    Coffee House
    Leah Pennisi-Glaser
    What does Labour have against state school Latin students like me?
    11 January 2025, 5:04

    What type of person studies Latin in 2024? As a result of Labour’s decision to axe the £4 million Latin Excellence Programme (LEP), the stereotype of the average Latin student – that they are posh and privately educated – is likely to persist. As a state school student who studied Latin – a subject that helped me win a place at a top university – this saddens me greatly. The intellectual vandalism of Labour’s education secretary Bridget Phillipson is hard to forgive.

    One in two children are taught Latin at private schools, compared to just 2.7 per cent at comprehensives

    Out of the six of us who studied Latin GCSE at the bog standard state school I attended, I was the only white student. The others came from solidly working-class black and brown Muslim families. We all went on to attend Russell Group universities; two went to Cambridge. I have no doubt that having a Latin GCSE under our belts helped.

    Yet from February, fewer state school students will be able to follow in our footsteps and study Latin, thanks to Labour. The decision to cut funding halfway through the academic year seems particularly spiteful. Students have been left in limbo as they wait to see if they can sit their exams in the summer. Of course, those with sufficiently wealthy parents will be able to pay to sit the examination privately. As ever, the skint draw the short straw.

    One in two children are taught Latin at private schools, compared to just 2.7 per cent at comprehensives. I was one of the lucky few who made up the 2.7 per cent. I attended a single sex comprehensive in inner city London where nearly half of students speak English as a second language and 36 per cent of students get free school meals. We are not the sort of kids whom you might expect to know their nominative case from their accusative.

    Much of what we did study hardly prepared us for going to university. Hours of our time was wasted on things like design technology (DT). During these lessons, we cooked, sewed, and sanded, instead of learning English and maths. It was an avowedly feminist establishment, but the irony that a large chunk of the school week was effectively given over to housewifery was not lost on us.

    There was an independent girls’ school nearby and it had a fearsome academic reputation. During one cookery lesson, my friend, who did not, let’s say, have the makings of a domestic goddess, pulled a crumble out of the oven that resembled a dead and very burnt badger. “I bet they’re not bothering with this bullshit up the hill,” she muttered darkly.

    Within a few years of the Conservatives coming to power in 2010, everything changed. DT lesson hours were reduced and Latin was offered as an after-school GCSE option. Some of my teachers were openly left-wing in their political views. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in this milieu, Michael Gove – the education secretary at the time and now editor of this magazine – was painted as the bogeyman. But when Latin lessons began, some students privately voiced their gratitude about the education shake-up.

    Initial interest in taking the Latin class was considerable, even though our thoughtful head of languages gently warned us that the GCSE wasn’t going to be easy. “You’re starting at a disadvantage, most students taking the qualification have been learning Latin since prep school. They’re at least three years ahead of you all.”

    Limited resources also meant that teaching was limited to two 45-minute lessons a week. Despite this, around 40 pupils signed up. After a while, lessons were cut down to one a week; and then the Latin teacher announced he was leaving, and that no one would be replacing him. By this point, there were only six students left anyway, but undeterred we continued to meet up after school, sans teacher, and taught ourselves from the textbook.

    We did so because we were clear-eyed about the benefits of studying Latin. The subject might have an elitist reputation, but we felt it was a worthwhile endeavour. I’m glad I persevered. For all the challenges Latin presented, “boring” is one word I’d never use to describe studying this ancient language. It was a great introduction to a period of history I’d never formally learnt about before or since; it challenged my brain to think in new ways. Putting imaginary rings around certain areas of knowledge is always a slippery slope. It’s hard not to conclude that the whole sorry decision to scrap the Latin programme reveals some deep-seated bigotry of low expectations on Labour’s part.

    Written by
    Leah Pennisi-Glaser
    Leah Pennisi-Glaser studied at Edinburgh University and is a chess teacher and tutor

    1. It's called.. reaching for the sky by the 'soft bigotry of low expectations'.
      Death of western culture by a thousand cuts in Trot world.

    2. It is hardly a surprise that we find that our students who studied Latin at GCSE and are continuing to study it at "A" level have a far better grasp of grammar and language.

    3. I don't think it's a waste of time to learn cooking, needlework or simple DIY skills. On the contrary, kids should learn more life skills at school and less BS politics like the climate fraud or LBGT propaganda. At my school we learned needlework. I pursued cookery at home, but I had the advantage of a mother who almost never bought ready-prepared food of any kind.

      1. At my Technical School we had woodwork and metalwork lessons up until the Third Year when those able to concentrate on the more academic studies were given to drop the practical ones.

        In my case whilst studying Art, Physics and Pure and Applied Mathematics and going on to study Architecture at Sheffield University and University College London, I found the practical knowledge taught in both woodwork and metalwork to have fitted perfectly with my career development.

  27. G'Day all,

    A dull start at McPhee Towers, wind in the South so warmer at 1℃ rising to 4 or 5℃ later.

    Good-bye Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Asda. Hello Morrisons. I wish there was a major Morrisons near us; we'd use it now. There's only a smaller mini-store.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7251684441cea1e6167e5255092d929270e7865143addca9e5df777ba5ed38e1.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/11/supermarket-giant-backs-farmers-on-inheritance-tax-raid/

    A major supermarket has backed farmers as they protest against the Government’s planned inheritance tax raid, in a blow to Sir Keir Starmer.

    Sophie Throup, the head of agriculture at Morrisons, told farmers on Saturday that the supermarket was “with” their community and understood “frustrations” about the raid.

    Farmers are planning protests at supermarkets across Britain on Friday to oppose the tax raid on inherited agricultural land.

    Ms Throup, who farms at her home in Yorkshire, said Britain’s fifth-biggest supermarket had raised “concerns with the highest level of government” since the changes were announced in the Autumn Budget.

    Sharing a video on X, formerly Twitter, Ms Throup said: “We want to send a message of support today for the whole of the farming community.

    “We understand your anger and your frustrations at the inheritance tax – and we’re with you.”

    1. This may of course be a cynical ploy to ensure that any future blockades by farmers are aimed at other supermarkets.

    2. Food prices are rising by the day in our supermarkets.
      I think we'll have to join the migrants queue for left overs they seem to be settling in nicely and keeping warm for free.

      1. I have a delivery today, from Sainsbury, it's costing me £107.43 and really, I'm not kidding. It is meager. Nothing elaborate or self indulgent at all. Most expensive thing is laundry detergent at £7.00.

        1. My good lady spent 175 pounds on a Sainsburys shop on Friday. Including 6 bottles of wine. Probably around two weeks of supplies. I bake our bread from a local shop selling local flour.
          Free parking for customers.

          1. Fortunately I neither drink nor smoke. Ciggs are more than £10.00 now. Is that true?

          4. Mostly tax. It’s why knock offs from Turkish barbers are doing so well.

            Talk about creating a black economy !

          5. I always buy a bottle of whisky, no longer smoker (sadly), comes to amount you mention, even with everything else. Morrisons, like the staff/store workers there. Home delivery. Delivery guy either gives immediate refund, or refunded online same day around a couple of hours after delivery. I had home delivery from Sainsburys for a while, drivers there almost all young, slim women – whilst they're as able as men, young people especially females who's bones aren't fully strengthened due to age/contraceptive pill shouldn't be lifting heavy items, imo.

        3. They're all pretty similar, johnathan. I have home delivery for most things. Aldi is excellent on fresh fruit/veg..all meat and dairy..and alchohol, but no home delivery. Not a Lidl fan, no home delivery either. Aldi checkout girls are exceptionally quick – they also have to do all the tasks even heavier ones loading/downloading supplies, restocking etc. Respect. Fell out with Sainsburys long ago, managers there change every few months, staff the ones in charge, mostly female. Tesco is too far away from where I live. Don't care for Asda food. Morrisons it is, am told part of an American consortium now – haven't seen any changes locally in terms of staff attitudes, food and other supplies. Plan to continue there. Order usually similar amount to yours, two of us here 24/7, plus all famalam once or twice weekly.

          1. Home order too. Reason I go with Sainsbury's is they almost always have what I want. Order from M & S too, but they are to expensive to order everything from. Tesco runs out of everything all the bloody time, so I gave up on them. My thing with M & S is they have the best fruit. But currently I am on the meat only diet so Sainsbury's is fine. We actually have an excellent butcher in town but, unfortunately, he doesn't deliver.

  28. G'Day all,

    A dull start at McPhee Towers, wind in the South so warmer at 1℃ rising to 4 or 5℃ later.

    Good-bye Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Asda. Hello Morrisons. I wish there was a major Morrisons near us; we'd use it now. There's only a smaller mini-store.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7251684441cea1e6167e5255092d929270e7865143addca9e5df777ba5ed38e1.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/11/supermarket-giant-backs-farmers-on-inheritance-tax-raid/

    A major supermarket has backed farmers as they protest against the Government’s planned inheritance tax raid, in a blow to Sir Keir Starmer.

    Sophie Throup, the head of agriculture at Morrisons, told farmers on Saturday that the supermarket was “with” their community and understood “frustrations” about the raid.

    Farmers are planning protests at supermarkets across Britain on Friday to oppose the tax raid on inherited agricultural land.

    Ms Throup, who farms at her home in Yorkshire, said Britain’s fifth-biggest supermarket had raised “concerns with the highest level of government” since the changes were announced in the Autumn Budget.

    Sharing a video on X, formerly Twitter, Ms Throup said: “We want to send a message of support today for the whole of the farming community.

    “We understand your anger and your frustrations at the inheritance tax – and we’re with you.”

    2. Sadists who want to torture and abuse children are drawn towards the Labour Party.

      Bridget Phillipson must be squirming in orgasmic delight at the sheer damage she is doing to children's education.

      1. Paedos .. there seem to be so many , and are the British paedos of the same mindset as the multitudes of Muslim / African / Catholic/ Jewish/ etc etc paedos .

        How come the world appears to so cruel, vindictive , sadistic, manipulative and just plain evil?

        There seems to be no protection , the police , government , medics , and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all are useless.

        Hieronymus Bosch’s extreme portrayals of agony are more than just analogies—they reflect the horrors that humankind have committed and endured since biblical times.

        Nothing changes .

        1. Paedophilia is widespread, Belle…very likely in those organisations. Why nothing really changes, hot air every so often, then dies away. This time? could be different if Musk keeps up the attack.

      2. You may be interested (or have already seen it)…Free Speech Union website, Rastus. Set up by Toby Young who is currently in disagreement with Phillipson. I support him, have done ever since he set up Lockdown Sceptic (now Daily Sceptic) website.

    3. So, so many of them. No wonder we are in such a mess. The amazing thing is that they think they can get away with their filthy perversion without fear of being discovered. Such arrogance!!

  30. Morning all 🙂😊🥶
    It's only minus 3c today it must be glowball warming. And Sun also attempting to attend our Sunday morning.
    Please don't mention the NHS it's more than medicine they need refreshing on, the administration has now turned so many patients into victim's.
    But 6 years on 'the (fictional) waiting list' don't get me started…….

    1. Much as I would like to see it happen, I fear the second Trump administration is going spend all four years bogged down by Democrat lawfare.

      2. That wont happen. This time he is prepared. Remember that in the last Trump administration he had no idea about how Washington worked. He does now and boy is he going after it. It's not just what he is saying above. It is also embodied in his use of RFK, Elon Musk and Ramaswamy, which will sweep out his opponents and the corrupt.

        1. I think you are forgetting quite how "independent" US judges are of Governmental control.

          They can follow their own agenda and it takes years to push cases up through the levels to higher courts that have the power to overturn decisions.

          Unless Trump's team can devise a method of accelerating the appeals process, Democrat appointees can cause enormous damage.
          eg
          https://apnews.com/article/california-gavin-newsom-donald-trump-special-session-7657a45176c2928aa715acc169966559

          1. Not forgetting at all. I had plenty of tussles with judges in the USA. They make judgements but with one eye on the electorate that vote them in. They aren't fools and know that the left is crumbling and it isn't cool to be left wing now. They will lose their seats.

          4. Even executive orders can be challenged through the courts; and if they’re defied, what then?
            Civil war?

          5. Not a bad idea although that would be more appropriate in GB and that’s the way it’s going, seems to me.

      3. I suspect he's prepared for that.
        When the Democrats stole the 2020 Election, they shot themselves in the foot and gave him 4 years to examine what went wrong with his 1st term and plan to avoid the same interference.

    2. Good luck with that.
      Shouldn't you make that statement after you have at least some of the agencies on your side.

      2. I doubt any would support him. Much like our own public sector, about 20% of it has to do the work of the other 80% desperate to ensure nothing gets done to keep their pointless jobs.

      3. No. The Agencies must be independent from political manipulation. They are in place to task specific functions of government not to decide their own biased priorities as we have seen under the corrupt Biden administration.

    3. I'm feeling a bit left out. Now he wants to annex Australia and we are being ignored. Trump has a tendency to be eccentric in his approach to things, as we all know. I wonder if he is actually throwing out outrageous remarks to test the water for a union of the English speaking world,rather like the EU or something along those lines. Such an organization would be fantastic and unstoppable.

  33. Personally I think they should have at least two per bedroom imposed on them at their expense, and that includes all these middle class cretins who support unrestricted immigration.

  34. Indeed. I watched news footage of a row of Fiat ambulances outside a hospital and wondered how many people make the corelation between unnecessary imports (or the exporting of money and wealth generating jobs) and the growing dearth of financial resources for public services.

  35. Morning all 😊 Dull Day in West Sussex but no where near as cold as yesterday.

    Telegraph was rather dull today apart from an attempted smear of Elon Musk. If people want to read it, just ask and I will post it.
    Meanwhile, Tommy again but this time the sniveller in chief, Pierce Morgan being tackled for his lies and misdirection.

    Piers Morgan REPLIED – Are his balls as big as his mouth?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uQUPHHziMw

    1. Moron really is a disgusting piece of work – smearing the Armed Forces when editor of the Daily Mirror and let's not forget his behaviour during the Covid scam!

      1. I watched him yesterday with Gad Saad and Tim Pool. His manner was totally defensive. I know enough about human nature to detect when someone knows they are wrong and that creep knows he is, he was even licking his lips from nervousness. And as if to confirm that he is wrong, in the above video, he pretends to take on a challenge and then promptly blocks the challenger. What a bombastic fraud!

      2. Yes, it's really a sign of a decaying society that someone as free from principle at Piers Morgan has enjoyed such a long and lucrative career.

    2. Moron really is a disgusting piece of work – smearing the Armed Forces when editor of the Daily Mirror and let's not forget his behaviour during the Covid scam!

    3. Piers Morgan is the bellwether example signifying whether or not the MSM has cleaned up its act. He's still around so no, it has not.

    2. The cost of muslim welfare is hundreds of millions. Over 70% are utterly welfare dependent. Blair imported over 10 million of the vermin and they immediately started breeding at a rate the locals couldn't, precisely because the locals were working.

      Then of course Labour paid the dross to breed as well, so now we've two generations of sewage littering, graffittiing, screaming and stabbing one another on our streets.

      Imagine a world where Blair hadn't been able to kick the doors down. One where Brown hadn't poured billions on welfare scroungers and teenage single mothers. Where being a single parent was something to be ashamed of, let alone being one at 14.

      1. Not forgetting Starmer's efforts, as a lawyer, to give immediate welfare benefits to all comers.

    1. There you go. Countrywide cover up. Talking to others even I've found how widespread UK it is. Charlie Peters – Journalist of the Year.

    1. When we visited Wastemonster on U3A trip a few years ago David Davis was down on his knees in front of us as we walked back to board our coach home. He'd dropped his bank cards and they'd scattered….

    2. More power to him, warrants further investigation. If this was happening in another country, MSM be all over it like the bad rash it is.

  39. The great firewall keeping out the hard-Right collapses across Europe. 12 January 2025.

    The next chancellor of Austria could be Europe’s most Right-wing leader after establishment parties failed to strike a pact to keep a populist pro-Putin faction out of power.

    The victory for Herbert Kickl’s Eurosceptic and anti-migrant Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) marks a paradigm shift on the continent as traditional coalition building between moderate parties falters.

    We can only hope so. For our own sakes if nothing else. A “Hard-right” Europe and a Trumpian United States would make Starmer’s policies and position completely untenable.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/01/12/europe-firewalls-far-right-austria-kickl-cordon-sanitaire/

    1. Why is being anti immigration – considering the crime, welfare demands, immense cost of supporting the non-English speakers with translation and translators, the corruption, the rape of children, the sheer, unwanted mass of them all over the place doing absolutely nothing – 'Right wing'?

      Everyone apart from the chattering classes wants immigration controlled and reduced, radically. We like our own and for good reason. Shared ethics, standards, morality and values are the bedrock of society. Destroying those to suit pakistani muslim child rapists has done incredible damage to our country.

  41. Freezing cold here and nose still running faster than a shoplifter on steroids.
    Another good result though:
    Wordle 1,303 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  42. BBC Starmer fest this morning with Paddy O'Connell, Neil Kinnock and several other 'Hard Lefties' knocking Farage, Musk and Tories in general.
    Impartiality observed though – Right, far Right and hard Right all treated with equal contempt and derision.

        3. So is JC, look at the numbers of his followers. Kinnock not in the same space time continuum as JC but nevertheless Kinnock has followers – more's the bleeding pity.

        4. Wishful thinking. The EU budget could drop by a third when his expenses are no longer drawn down.

    2. Contempt and derision is all they've got. They have no constructive answers to anything. They see through an ideological glass darkly which clashes with reality and always creates negative consequences.

      1. it's easy, just throw your TV away!
        I agree, the screechy voices are at least 50% of the reason why I can't stand British radio or TV.

    4. The left loathe children.

      Look a what they are doing to children in private schools and look at the way they want to cover up the cover up of the rape of white girls by Pakistani men.

      Stephen Kinnock is as big a pillock as his father was. Here he is trying to dodge the issue about the cover up of Pakistani rape gangs

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/ukpolitics/video-3346333/Video-Moment-Stephen-Pinnock-avoids-reporters-question-grooming-gangs.html

  43. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/broken-britain-cough-up-french-style-healthcare/

    He's got a point, but that means the NHS has to radically change as well. Hospitals would have to compete against one another. They'd have to provide a service quickly, or not at all. The taxes currently taken to pay for feather beded useless NHS trusts would have to go, as would all health funding spending. In it's place would come an insurance model.

    The state would completely lose hte whipping post of the NHS. I can't imagine it would allow that. So much tax is stolen under the pretence of 'the NHS' and they wouldn't let that go.

  44. He's the worst of the lot, a lawyer determined to do the legal thing, not the moral.

    But, the Tories did nothing about this. They could have scrapped legal aid for immigrants. They could have stopped putting the dross up in hotels. They could have enforced our borders.

    Starmer enforced the law, but the law makers did nothing to do what the public wanted.

    1. They're all doing it because it's what their masters at the WEF, Bilderberg etc have told them to do.

  45. The question.. Will Noncegate scupper the Paedophile Protection Party's latest attempt at passing the Islamophobia Blasphemy Law?

    That's a question only Elon Musk (212 million followers) can ask.
    What's for sure in the UK.. The Muslim Council will call for All hands on Deck and employ the likes of Novara Media's Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar to sift through the "Likes" to find targets then bring them down one by one.

  46. Britain is now worse than an international laughing stock

    It’s not just the grooming gangs scandal. Starmer’s UK is becoming a case study in how to destroy a society

    11 January 2025 5:00pm GMT
    Zoe Strimpel

    More than once while talking to friends in the United States recently, I have encountered chuckling, head-shaking and a comment along the lines of: “What’s goin’ on with you guys? You guys are crazy!” And then more chuckling, tapering into a slightly bored pause, then a change of subject.

    They’re referring, of course, to the constant stream of strange, worrying news emanating from our sceptred isle – news that, as the world heaves against the era of woke and political correctness, puts us awkwardly and very clearly at odds with the direction of travel in the United States, as well as other parts of the free world.

    With its anti-woke backlash in full swing, America is detoxing from the poisonous brew of diversity, inclusion, social justice, and identitarian rubbish that it cooked up and exported all over the Western world in recent decades, with Britain one of the most willing takers.

    Those that aren’t detoxing out of choice are doing so out of fear. Donald Trump has vowed to cut federal funding to America’s DEI-obsessed universities if they boycott Israel and fail to stamp out what he called the “anti-Semitic propaganda” that has flourished on their campuses since October 7.

    Perhaps the even bigger change is evident in corporate America which, previously up to its eyeballs in woke, has also got wise to the way the wind is blowing. Walmart, McDonalds, Boeing, booze company Moors-Colson, Harley-Davidson, tractor-maker John Deere, and Lowe’s, the home improvement retailer, have all said they will scale back – and in some cases entirely eliminate – DEI programmes in recent months.

    Now even Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta empire appears to be following suit. Its axing of DEI programmes came in the same week that it announced it was getting rid of fact-checkers or policing of content on Facebook, Instagram and Threads in a victory for free speech die-hards. Meta’s is a submissive move towards the incoming Trump administration. The former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has also been replaced as president of global affairs by a Republican, Joel Kaplan.

    The winds of change have, in part, been fanned by one Robby Starbuck, a former music video director turned activist. Starbuck is credited with getting Walmart, Harley-Davidson, John Deere and Lowe’s to abandon woke policies. Elsewhere, consumer pressure has been instrumental in forcing companies to shift course. When Bud Light ran an ad campaign with Dylan Mulvaney, a trans influencer, sales of the beer tanked. It was a shock and a wake-up call, of a magnitude that seems only possible in America.

    There have also been massive changes in the world of net zero. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is the latest on Wall Street to leave the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative. Britain’s highly ideological and punitive approach to environmentalism may soon leave it even more of an international outlier.

    Of course, the apparent madness of Britain – and the growing image crisis facing the country under Labour’s leadership – has come to a head in the outrage over the grooming gangs. Our Government does not seem able to get a grip on the scandals and the coverups that have horrified the world. Indeed, Starmer’s main take-away from the global reaction of shock and disgust, including the almost obsessive interference by Elon Musk, seems to be that we must not give in to the “far-Right”.

    Starmer appears to be constitutionally resistant to broaching any kind of national conversation at all about improperly controlled migration, or the specific social problems associated with immigration from countries with very different values to our own. In Britain today, as my head-shaking friends in America have easily perceived, the evils of sounding or being accused of racism seem to outweigh the urgency of thoroughly addressing the actual evils that have taken place.

    Then there is Labour’s governing agenda, including a schools policy actively hostile to educational excellence and an economic policy that appears determined to push Britain into bankruptcy. It is hard to disagree with the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch when she said last week that: “what we have is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party fronted by Keir Starmer. This is all the Corbynite stuff, but Keir Starmer is fronting it… This is Jeremy Corbyn’s dream.”

    Jeremy Corbyn’s dream is most decent people’s nightmare – especially economically. While the US economy goes gangbusters, and with the US stock market quivering in anticipation of Trump’s arrival back at the White House, we in Britain are contracting where we aren’t stagnating, with fewer people getting or even looking for jobs. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is a laughing stock.

    It’s odd to recall that, just a few years ago, we were looked on admiringly by many of our American friends for standing up against the worst of the trans madness. Some even dubbed us Terf Island for these efforts, turning a slur used against “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” into a light-hearted nod to British pluck.

    Now we are just Starmer’s grim union-run, somnambulant and yes, still hopelessly woke, island. If we don’t wake up from our confusion soon, we are going to be nothing more than a declinist relic chasing its tail, fighting battles that only have losers, shadow-boxing away our immense value and resources till we have none.

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

    Cat Arwood
    17 hrs ago
    Starmer is making this look like a country which cares more about nasty men’s feelings than the physical safety of children. It’s abhorrent, and I am ashamed that this delusional Labour mob represents us. They do not represent me.

    The Findhorn
    17 hrs ago
    Reply to Cat Arwood – view message
    The career feminists high up in the main Westminster Parties have rarely even pretended to care about the concerns of non professional, working class women and girls.

    2. The statist Left are an odd lot. They fervently proclaim they believe in freedom of speech (but only as long as it agrees with their view), freedom of religion (although they hate Jews and Christians), are against slavery (yet see nothing wrong with ensuring wages are suppressed through taxation and inflation), are happy to keep the poorest on welfare rather than working, rant on about women's rights ( butare happy to destroy society through massive uncontrolled gimmigration from stone age cultures( and seem to not care about gimmigrant criminality. It seems to the Left, the colour of the criminal is more important than the crime and through that, avoiding considering patterns and dealing with the root causes.

      It must be very difficult inside a Left wing mind. The doublethink required, the hypocrisy must hurt dreadfully.

    3. "what we have is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party fronted by Keir Starmer."

      At long bleddy last. Why has it taken politicos so long to state the bleedin' obvious?

  49. 400045 + up ticks,

    Not so many years back you went on converlesent after a serious op / illness, also currently modern medicine has the advantage of being able to create anti medicine medicine,that calls for bona fide medicine to rectify.

    Then also we have the use of modern medicine in numbers, the NHS cannot keep up all the while the CALAIS EXIT / DOVER ENTRY is open and operating daily, under the governance of the lab/lib/con /french connection coalition party.

    Letters to the Editor
    The Government must see that the NHS can’t keep up with modern medicine

      1. I went away to a boys' prep school at 8 and then went to a very traditional boys' public school.

        I had two sisters, respectively 10 and 9 years older than myself, who married at the age of 20 so I was very timid of the fairer sex until I was 18.

        Here I was at the age of 15. (Middle row – between Ian Clark and Robert Aish on a diagonal line to the right up from Slug the housemaster!)

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a89624d7afc0cf78ef114091972465c20967a431538f40ef4d57982587e8c21.jpg

        2. You were handsome even then Rastus 🙂 Was it cruel to send boys away to school do you think? For some of us, it wasn’t good to be at home. I went to a local Grammar School – no-one knew why it had been built, or who by, or at what cost. I’d have done better at the local Comp…they did more practical things there.

          1. Fun fact: Most schools in uk were Grammar schools associated with cathedrals & monasteries for the bright & clever then along came the new urban middle-class who demanded their kids be permitted to attend. Then came the Endowed Schools Act remodelled as fee-paying schools. Then state funding & the eleven plus.

            Then a prominent Labour socialist Antony Crosland popped up.. who knew better than everyone.

            Betcha you can't guess what happened next?

          2. Dontcha just love socialists? My favourite quote of a commie defending the indefensible:

            Diane Abbott: I sent my son to private school so he wouldn't end up in a gang.. thanks to all the inner-city deprivation
            caused by Thatcher.

          3. And didn't that work out well?

            Diane Abbott's diplomat son James Abbott-Thompson threatened her with scissors then attacked NINE medics and police while hooked on crystal meth.

          4. This is a very sad story because her son who went to The City of London School and Cambridge ended up on drugs and charged with violence so his expensive education did not seem to have done him much good. Apparently he once chased his mother about the house brandishing scissors when he was 'high on crack cocaine.

            I had some respect for Diane Abbott who knew she would suffer tremendous opprobrium for sending her son to a private school because she decided that she wanted to do her best for her son. By contrast public school boys Blair (Fettes) and Cameron (Eton) put their own political careers ahead of their children's education and used state schools when they could well have afforded private school fees. Why a so called Conservative Cameron thought he would gain Brownie points by using state schools is beyond me!

            The miserable hypocrite Cameron put his children straight back into private schools as soon as he stood down as PM.

          6. Guess what happened next. Her son was fast tracked into the civil service where he progressed to madness and drugs to the point they shut him out and then he attacked police officers. Then chased her around the house with scissors.
            Then we see Abbot being so confused she wears two left shoes.

            These are the people that think they govern us.

        3. There's a couple of IFAs in Hongkong that can name a school from a cropped photo of an entrance.. I guess its part of the job placing kids for a fee.

          Blundell school

    3. Um, too much of that describes my life today!
      I remember lino in a bedroom in the 1970s – left over from a previous owner.

    4. I was a child in the 1950s. Going in the woods with my dog, cycling miles (although we never put the dog in a box on the back) to go plane spotting, climbing trees. A much freer and safer life.

      1. Safer it most certainly was. We would do the same, disappear into the woods until it was time for tea. No one worried that we were gone all day and had no idea where we were. Todays parents would be in a panic.

    2. I see Odds-on Pestilence with War & Famine a close 2nd & 3rd.. but I reckon the late money on heavily backed Death suggests a late run in the final stages.

    3. I see Odds-on Pestilence with War & Famine a close 2nd & 3rd.. but I reckon the late money on heavily backed Death suggests a late run in the final stages.

    5. Upper Lambourne by John Betjeman

      Up the ash tree climbs the ivy,
      Up the ivy climbs the sun,
      With a twenty-thousand pattering,
      Has a valley breeze begun,
      Feathery ash, neglected elder,
      Shift the shade and make it run –

      Shift the shade toward the nettles,
      And the nettles set it free,
      To streak the stained Carrara headstone,
      Where, in nineteen-twenty-three,
      He who trained a hundred winners,
      Paid the Final Entrance Fee.

      Leathery limbs of Upper Lambourne,
      Leathery skin from sun and wind,
      Leathery breeches, spreading stables,
      Shining saddles left behind –
      To the down the string of horses
      Moving out of sight and mind.

      Feathery ash in leathery Lambourne
      Waves above the sarsen stone,
      And Edwardian plantations
      So coniferously moan
      As to make the swelling downland,
      Far surrounding, seem their own.

    1. Is this the same Andrew Neil cried when a studio lamp fell over early days of GBN…the same one let Sturgeon beat him to a pulp live on TV…I think we should be told……

  53. It must be very difficult inside a Left wing mind.
    It isn't at all.
    They are very organised. Very determined. Well funded. Very adept at the debating shimmy. Skillful at curating an argument based on commie-woo.
    They've even managed to convince grown men in positions of high power that.. yes a man can quite easily grow a cervix.
    And he may have testes the size of rugby balls and a voice like Barry White but he's just as feminine as Leilani Dowding. FACT.
    And they even have selective statistics, and a model created by Neil Ferguson to prove it.

  54. Ditto. Carnivore diet? interesting..my husband been on several different meds for many years, diagnosed as Type 2 Diabetic. He twisted his foot recently, and following that I realised the number of different meds he was on – several, taking multiple tabs daily. When I calmed down, he promised to do something about it and started searching online. Now, he’s been Carnivore Diet – once daily, mostly steaks, eats cheese, eggs, cream, drinks full milk etc, for a few months. Result no meds, no aches or pains, bp steadily reduced, a lot more energy, no more exhaustion. I believe Grizzly does similarly.

      1. He’s not mine, but I do like a bit of Grizz 🥰 Hope it’s working for you, johnathan – my chap gets a bit bored with it occasionally, but soon feels ill and reverts. He was a big fruit especially apple eater, he misses that, but his digestion tells him no chance mister.

        1. Fortunately I don’t care enough about food in that sense. It’s fuel and I’m pretty happy with what ever I eat. I used to make Viennese tortes, professionally but, now a days, I can take it or leave it. Only never make me eat figs, projectile vomiting, detest them. So far, health wise meat is fine. But I would like to ask Grizzly about soups. It’s just nice at this time of year.

          1. Pretty much the same, although I like Danish pastries. Not too keen on figs either, the seeds. Probably gazillions soup recipes online. What husband does is chuck a few onions, stock, meat (usually beef but not always) in slow cooker, turns it on then gets on with his day…has a meal several hours later, I eat my usual salads.

  55. Same old story, the hate filled habitual and pathological liars always eff up everything they come into contact with.

  57. to para-phrase Matty Taylor..

    if they refused to do anything about decades of swarthy foreign gentlemen folding up little girls like deckchairs above kebab shops.. Literally the worst crime you can think of.. Worst than murder isn't it.. Torturing children.. When the Govt & Keir Starmer proved they were willing to be complicit in that type of behaviour..

    then, do you really think he cares about; lying.

  58. The doomsday weapon Putin could use to cripple the West. 12 January 2025.

    One evening as the summer of 1859 drew to an end, a telegraph operator in Washington received a tremendous shock. An arc of flame burst from Frederick W Royce’s head to the equipment on his desk, and he passed out. His set was ablaze.

    Wireless operators were being affected all over the world. “Everywhere the instruments were jammed,” reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Sparks from telegraph wires even created minor forest fires.

    This is about a naturally emitted solar EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) that has nothing whatsoever to do with Vladimir Putin. Human beings can create them, most notably during the detonation of Nuclear devices. It is widely believed that such an enhanced weapon would be the first to be used in a Nuclear War since it would knock out all unprotected (your telly, radio, car etc.) electromagnetic communications. Important military systems are protected by Faraday cages. If push comes to shove you could stick your radio in with the Budgie and hope for the best. You could then eat the microwaved budgie afterwards

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/11/the-doomsday-weapon-russia-could-use-to-cripple-the-west/#comment

    1. I think some of the West, certainly as far as Britain is concerned, are crippling themselves!

    3. "Putin is planning to fry our electronics!"
      Translation: when we can't kick the financial can down the road any longer, we will fry the electronics so that you can't see while we revalue gold (Dutch central bank 2022) /close your bank and steal your savings (US 1933)/ steal your investments (Great Taking) /foreclose on your house/impose a CBDC /anything else we need to do to transfer your wealth to ourselves.

    4. Scientific knowledge doesn't extend to how the sun works,
      Nor does it extend to how the Earth's magnetic poles shift and how the consequent changes in the way that our planet's electromagnetic fields shield us from our sun's radiation.
      Science still has no explanation aa to why a major global wind belt has disappeared.

      Science has however told us that humankind has overriding control of our planet's climate and that the current instability in global weather patterns is just the final melting indicator of the current ice age. Whilst we have been trying to stop this meltdown for well over ten years now our unsuccessful achievements so far are expected to result in the failure of major ocean currents which ironically could well lead (with scientific evidence) to the next ice age.

      You can now see the incentives that drive the exploration of other planets as a refuge from our doomed planet about which we know so little.

      1. I think planet Earth, unique in our solar system, will do as it jolly well pleases. We can only influence our tiny patch, if that's our desire. Although I admire Musk and his wish to go to Mars (will he send others first tho..hmmmm), I won't be lining up, or paying the travel fee.

          1. If it’s anything like ours, some boarded up, others cheap tat, and the chemist – kind of. Many are now online.

    5. I believe fridges make handy faraday cages (haven't checked that, but wrapping your phone in foil does the job).

      1. Do you remember a few years ago, some people were actually making foil hats – and wearing them. I can't remember why tho 🤔

        1. If you make your hat to the exact proportions of the gtreat pyramid, it will enhance your brain power.

          3. I suspect even that may not help me, Joseph – probably not sufficient foil in the universe…😂😆😂😆😂😆

    6. I have just read a similar article elsewhere. I am worried that I don't know what I should be worried about any more.

    7. I think Putin is thinking 'I don't need to invade the UK. There are nutters doing far more damage than I ever could already there.'

      1. Putin is also likely thinking our government will react in an idiotic way and will arm his country accordingly.

        We are now home to multiple potential terrorists who are inimical to our culture and way of life.

  59. Well, surprise, surprise. The Wet Office has lied again. No sign of any "thaw"…. Sunny, though.

    2. We actually got up to 2.9°C before the sun dipped below the valley top.
      It's back down to zero now.

  60. Saint Mary's, Sturminster Newton. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/65df2d98cfbce8a67438d556c1c840473db21d903b484c946f8593e9d8c137fc.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ba061100edb149cc41b79549a69b45b77a33dc05912802512df09fbedc74729d.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/77be4746ed5b3c168d5cd18e1ae27d7687704c4666759e42e167e94cd12ebd88.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b860b4f1425b229d9e23bbb86b359868e652d1acdcdd85b1af82529bbba1c5e8.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3c70d2f2e225029bff925681750b8d6dfa416bd7c394526b3064ef24435c1a58.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4f9878b8532701a903cdbe38c5c6db312b600e2f8bd003912756de9fc089972b.jpg

      1. Brain fog /memory loss notwithstanding – I need to be in that queue. Seriously, nothing would persuade me, not even a win on the pools (which, now I come to think of it, I don't do – nor the lottery). Daily Mail having its usual laugh.

  63. Nothing changes:

    Friends of the BBC: Eric Gill, one of the most perverted sexual deviants known to man.
    His personal diaries reveal several extramarital affairs, incest with his two eldest teenage daughters, incestuous relationships with his sisters and sexual acts on his dog.
    Broadcasting House, the Headquarters of the BBC is adorned with several of his sculptures. A reflection of its inner soul, perhaps.
    There are rumours of a Jimmy Savile shrine deep in the basement. It's called The Nursery Suite.
    https://c8.alamy.com/comp/E0W61P/london-england-uk-broadcasting-house-g-val-myer-1932-hq-of-the-bbc-E0W61P.jpg

      1. According to a government minister (Jess Phillips) if you support Hamas the NHS will put you at the front of the queue. Her own words were because of the support she said she got faster treatment. Fucking bonehead.

        As all those relaxing in hotels at tax payers expense have found.

        Jess is a true Brummie. Thick as shit. The stupid cunt thinks being noice and weasonable others will be too.

        There are now 200,000 rag heads living in Birmingham besides all the other blacks and incomers.

        That's two cities down.

    1. A lot of Liberal Democrat MPs for rural seats are supporting this planned starvation.
      I hadn't heard about it.

    2. Starmer taking the democracy out of democracy as predicted basically. Make a law, devolve government, stuff local government full of appointees then move in the lawyers if anyone objects to not having a say in local decisions. All in the best possible taste and for the people, natch.

      1. After annual cancellation of local elections, the cancellation of the general election in 2029 will be met with a shrug of 60 million shoulders (120 million shoulders?).

  69. From David Jensen's latest Substack…

    Open Discussion Of Potential Silver Market Failure in London Hits Financial Media

    Over the last few years, silver shortage problems have been smoldering in London however last week an analyst for TD Securities openly stated what this Substack has been repeatedly saying – the London silver market is moving toward “stock-out” or silver delivery default. Given the growing global physical silver shortage and an estimated 4B oz. to 6B oz. of cash or spot silver contracts standing in London this is no small matter.

    Silver available for delivery from London vaults to my analysis may be as little as 10M to 50M oz. and is far less than estimated by TD. Remember, the London silver spot contract holders can demand immediate delivery.
    …..

    The Potential Nexus Of London Silver To Blackrock and JPMorgan Chase Bank

    We will know with time if last week’s BLK sharp share price drop is related to these public revelations regarding the potential for delivery failure in the City of London’s silver market.

    Jeff Currie, Goldman Sachs’ Global Head of Commodities Research at the time, stated on CNBC in 2021 that silver ETFs purchased and vaulted silver and that the ETFs then immediately sold claims to 3rd parties against this vaulted metal, beneficially owned by ETF shareholders, into the market.

    That is termed ‘rehypothecation’ and it is illegal if shareholders do not give informed consent to this beforehand.
    (end)

  71. Steerpike
    Press barred from grilling Starmer’s Chagos chum
    12 January 2025, 11:06am
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-1229700761.jpg
    Philippe Sands (Getty Images)

    There are just eight days to go until Donald Trump takes office. So the question much of Whitehall is asking is: will David Lammy’s Chagos deal get over the line in time? The agreement to hand the valuable cluster of islands to Mauritius has been attacked by China hawks in the U.S – including Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for Secretary of State. He has decried the deal as ‘a serious threat to our national security interests in the Indian Ocean.’ Given those risks, why is the Labour government so intent on pressing ahead? After all, handing over British territory isn’t cheap: the current bill stands at £9 billion for UK taxpayers.

    One reason why the Labour government might be keen on settling the issue is direction from the top. Keir Starmer’s close friend Philippe Sands KC is Mauritus’ chief legal adviser and a longtime agitator for Mauritian control of the islands. The pair co-founded Matrix Chambers, from which Starmer plucked his Attorney General, Richard Hermer, ennobling him back in July. Sands is a regular on various political panels, boasting at Cambridge last year about ‘humiliating’ the UK in international courts. Sadly, though, it seems these days his public appearances are a little more curated.

    Philippe Sands’ appearance at the Jewish Labour conference today carries a warning note: ‘this session is open to attendees but not open to journalists.’ The subject of the discussion you ask? A conversation on ‘human rights and international law.’ You couldn’t make it up. The conference blurb breathlessly offers the chance to ‘hear from two leading barristers … at a time when the rules based international order seems threatened.’ Mr S wonders whether handing over Chagos to a China ally will help or hobble that ‘rules based’ system eh?

    Sadly, it seems that the conference is not the only place where answers are in short supply. For in the Commons, Mark Francois has asked the government for a list of all meetings between Starmer and Sands on the subject of Diego Garcia since the election. The government’s response has been to direct him to the http://gov.uk website where details of such meetings are published. Though sadly not before 20 January…

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

    GlosMikeP
    5 hours ago
    Regardless of whether Starmer gets this ludicrous deal over the line before Trump takes the reins, I wouldn't be in the least surprised if on 20th or 21st US occupies the entire Chagos archipelago and puts up the US flag. Frankly, I would consider that to be in UK's interests if he did.

    Dahlia Travers
    5 hours ago edited
    Surely there is scope to judicially review a decision that will, predictably, have such a negative impact on the UK and that has not been debated in Parliament?
    The relationship between Starmer and Sands should be examined and their correspondence and minutes of meetings be carefully safeguarded as evidence for potential prosecution, Starmer lives by the law , it would be poetic if he were also to die (metaphorically obviously) by it.

    Burkean Dahlia Travers
    29 minutes ago
    Unfortunately not, which is why the Hard Left love "international law". Treaty making is a prerogative of the Crown, which is of course exercised in practice by the Government.

    It is true that the similar prerogative of proroguing Parliament was massively undermined by the Supreme Court's creativity in the Miller case, but that concerned a decision taken by BoJo and I suspect the courts would find a way of translating "it's different when we do it" into legal doctrine. The only firm rule that can be relied on is that treaties have no effect in domestic law unless implemented into domestic law by an Act. However, would the Chagos great Chinese takeaway need implementation into domestic law? I'm not sure it would. Maybe Andrew Tettenborn could opine in the pages of The Spectator on this.

  72. Sp…Beeb faces leesahnce fee being scrapped by 2027….so far, so good. Labour eyes up replacing it with 'new tax'. If you have pips, they will squeak…..

      1. I imagine that’s the idea. Sounds to be quite some criticism at Reeves’ China deal…run rings round her….

  73. Cindy Yu
    Keir Starmer wants to redefine crime and punishment
    12 January 2025, 5:30am

    How far should a government go to stamp out people smuggling? This month, the Home Office is set to introduce powers that will allow courts to place expansive restrictions on those suspected of people smuggling and other serious crimes. Penalties are set to include social media bans, restrictions on banking and even curfews, imposed pre-arrest. Infringement of these court orders would be a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in jail.

    Some have welcomed this as tough action from the Labour government; finally, you may think, they’re doing something about illegal immigration. But tough policies aren’t always good policies. The mooted powers would allow the police to shut down a suspect’s social media accounts, freeze their bank accounts and even track and limit their physical movements, all before there’s enough evidence to mount an arrest. Private companies like banks and social media platforms would be required to enforce these restrictions. To me, this proposal raised the chilling spectre of another ‘tough’ policy: China’s social credit system.

    First, a caveat. Social credit has been one of the most misreported stories about China in recent years (and you can listen to my podcast, Chinese Whispers, to understand how the hyped-up reports came about). Any Chinese person can tell you that there is no single score, à la Black Mirror, that dictates their lives. Nevertheless, what does exist is still a scheme that allows authoritarian overreach and an inconsistent and arbitrary application of the law, which dishes out wide-ranging punishments that equate to modern day cancellation.

    The scheme mainly targets unscrupulous companies and tries to ensure that any lawbreakers in one part of China will be placed on a blacklist and limited in their freedoms in other parts of the country. Infractions include not meeting food safety standards or committing fraud.

    But individuals also fall foul of the system, and it is so fragmented and vague that citizens are often left in the dark as to their rights. Tax evasion, smuggling, and fraud are all violations that will land you on a blacklist in some provinces, but not in others. Some blacklists require court rulings, but not all. Local authorities can also add their own violations, which means criminals are punished quickly, but with little scrutiny. During the pandemic, when China had a ‘zero-Covid’ policy, some local authorities blacklisted non-mask-wearers, but not others. Under a system that respects the rule of law, citizens know what is illegal and what isn’t, and can rely on a consistent application of the law; in China, the social credit system has created a shadowy parallel to the legal system that is rife for accidental or deliberate abuse.

    Punishments for the blacklisted include: being banned from air travel or high speed rail; having your children banned from attending private school; your bank accounts being frozen. These collateral punishments are applied with little communication – and those who try to appeal the decision find a bureaucracy that is Kafkaesque in its slowness.

    I am of course not suggesting that Labour is about to introduce a British social credit scheme. The Home Office’s suggestions target only those suspected of serious crimes, and the restrictions are only intended to be a pre-arrest arrangement. Britain’s legal system is also mature and (most would say) independent of politics in a way that China’s is not. Law enforcement agencies generally apply the law without supplication to an authoritarian government, and the British media is much more capable than China’s of calling out abuses of power, judicial or political.

    But there are some troubling similarities in the principles at play. Restricting the liberties of those who haven’t been charged or even arrested is a move towards social credit’s arbitrary application. The extensive impact on various parts of one’s life – enlisting the help of private companies too – opens up a new world of collateral punishment.

    Will those placed under court restrictions be able to appeal the decision – and promptly – before their social media accounts are frozen and internet access is cut off? Will all law enforcement agencies that can apply for this power be held to the same threshold of evidence required to make such a request? Will courts have explicit and consistent guidance on what is an appropriate scale – or area – for the package of punishments, especially as judges will be deciding on a case-by-case basis?

    Democracies can slide into authoritarianism through complacency (recently and vividly demonstrated by some of the government’s Covid policies). Of course people smuggling and other serious crimes need to be rooted out, but we mustn’t hand over our own liberties and allow the erosion of our civil rights in the name of security. That is the very trade-off that the CCP uses to justify its rule. We can already see where it leads.

    Written by
    Cindy Yu is an assistant editor of The Spectator and presenter of our Chinese Whispers podcast. She was brought up in Nanjing. She tweets at @CindyXiaodanYu

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

    Stanley
    10 hours ago
    If you recall, after the Southport protests Two Tier announced he would ban travel for people "suspected" of going to 'Far Right" protests and monitor their movements.

    He loves Xi and his authoritian government and would love to have the same here to keep the natives quiet.

    Zeeland Stanley
    7 hours ago edited
    This isn’t just bad governance; it’s an autoimmune disorder of the state. The very structures meant to protect us – the rule of law, civil rights, free speech – have turned against us, devouring the host while masquerading as the cure. Every protest, every criticism, every cry for justice is treated not as a symptom of decay but as the disease itself. We’re left staggering, unbalanced, the body politic in free fall – one hand clutching its fractured liberties, the other held out for a miracle, a reform.

    Hiro Protagonist
    8 hours ago edited
    Fascinating article, thank you – so what happened to innocent until proven guilty? That this idea has come from a government led by a supposedly top former lawyer is even worse, he clearly doesn't understand the system he was paid to represent.

    This is a terrifying idea; if pushed through it won't stop with people smugglers, it will slide and expand to cover everything the government consists 'serious', which as we know from the riots, actually includes lots of relatively petty things.

    This government is so dangerous economically, socially, legally. They have to go as soon as possible.

    Kemi Badenough Hiro Protagonist
    6 hours ago
    Exactly, the smuggling is being used as cover

    Charlieray15
    11 hours ago
    Ah yes, just like Blair's anti-terrorism laws, which we were told would only be applied in a very small number of specific cases, only to find, just a few years later, that councils use these laws against people who put their bins out early. Aren't these lawyers wonderful?

    Zeeland Charlieray15
    7 hours ago edited
    Let’s not dwell on petty details. Think of the greater good! The greater good being, of course, their own shopping list, everyone’s equal, but some are more equal than others. You’ll get your share of justice, if you know the right people and don’t mind waiting 20 years.

    Clive Thompson
    7 hours ago
    Join up all the dots:

    > "postpone" elections and change the system (gerrymandering)
    > introduce the definition of "islamophobia" – curtailing freedom of speech
    > introduce pre-arrest – state oppression
    > arrest people for social media posts – curtailing freedom of speech
    > introduce new educational dogma – indoctrination

    This is definitely a Marxist government.

  75. . The more I read on Nottlers (and the BTL comments on the letters page) the happier I am that I old, however, I feel my life has been wasted.

    I was involved with military aircraft for over 40 years and it just seems waste.

    UK is a lost country

  76. . The more I read on Nottlers (and the BTL comments on the letters page) the happier I am that I old, however, I feel my life has been wasted.

    I was involved with military aircraft for over 40 years and it just seems waste.

    UK is a lost country

  77. Wordle 1,303 3/6

    🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜
    🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 12 Jan 2025

    A consummate Birdie Three?

    2. Why move the yellow letter to occupy the first slot, when you knew for sure that the first letter was green?

      1. If searching for letters it is a waste of a letter to repeat a known letter. I do the same as Lacoste unless I have strong indications. The yellow letter has not moved but is a newly identified letter from a different word.

      2. I didn't 'move' the yellow letter; I simply inserted my number two exploratory word, Elsie. It reduced the possibilities to three.

      3. I think my method is the same as yours but it took me five tries.

        Wordle 1,303 5/6

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

    3. Well done, I improved today.

      Wordle 1,303 3/6

      🟩🟩🟨⬜⬜
      🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. Birdie blitz!! – good stuff everyone…..

      Wordle 1,303 3/6

      🟩🟨⬜⬜⬜
      🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    5. Birdie and a bit

      Wordle 1,303 4/6

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

  80. I wonder if anyone can remind me of what happened to Megan and Harry when they decamped from Britain to live across the pond. I recall that their first port of call was Canada because they argued that no way would they live in the USA as long as Donald Trump was President. But before his first term had ended, in fact around halfway through his first term, they upped sticks and did move to the USA. What was the reason they gave for this? I just can't recall the reason they gave at present.

          2. Leaving aside the "changeable" bump and lack of any maternity wear – her behaviour in front of the cameras an hour or so after the "birth" was utterly improbable and unlike any very recently delivered new mother. A total sham. Either a surrogate or they bought the babies.

        1. How do you raise funds to buy a house? She was a moderately successful actress in a TV drama. He being a low level Royal.

          They didn't work for the money to work many years repaying the mortgage.

          $11 million to buy that house in MONTECETO.

          1. How much did Netflix or whatever pay for their tv series. It seems that the celebs play with millions just like we play with singles.

            Didn't the ginger one inherit a pile from his mother?

          2. I just find it difficult to believe they spent their own money. Rich people don’t as a rule.

  81. A case of Cum and get it?
    From the DT…
    "‘I craved everything: the sex, the touch, the dates. I knew I was dangerously addicted to love’
    Bouncing from one intense relationship to the next was making Dr Emilia Vuorisalmi physically sick

      1. For the record I didn't read all the salacious details – no wonder our 'friends' from warmer climes are risking life & limb in rubber boats to get here….

          1. It's like all men. It is said that they are not complete until they are married and then they are completely finished!

        1. Chocolate is supposed to be good for reducing blood pressure. Stick that finger up your bum and tell us the results. Or not.

      1. To do that she would need to dispense with hormone 'therapy'.

        I have had recent experience of something similar where i was gaining breast tissue and was prescribed Testogel.

        The side effects were not something at my age i ever wanted to experience again.

    4. She doesn’t understand the distinction between lust and love. As with so many, morality is not her strong point.

    1. I would say this..
      Old news.. the councillors were on their way out anyway.
      Ben Habib mouthing off as usual. I like what he says but he aint no leader bruv.
      Laurence Fox, Posie Parker & Andrew Bridgen now realise just how difficult it is to make headway in politics.
      Nigel Farage has proved three times he can do it.
      Andrew Tate & Dominic Cummings will also flounder. It's not easy.

      1. Oh I forgot that other legend in her own lunchtime.. Gina Miller & The Tooth Fairy Party. LOL.

        1. I would like to see people like Marr and Kuesenberg strapped to chairs with the threat of a blowtorch to answer questions rather than promote what their 'sponsors' require of them.

  83. Former French European Commissioner Thierry Breton has essentially openly confessed that the West stole the Romanian election and stands ready to do it again in Germany if deemed necessary.
    "We did it in Romania, and we will do it in Germany if necessary," a translation from the French of Breton's recent appearance in European media said. Early last month a top Romanian court simply annulled the first round of the country's presidential election in order to create what amounted to a 'do over' election.
    The publication Romania Journal highlighted Breton's words as follows: "If, on the other hand, the Tesla and X boss breaks the law, especially in Germany, by supporting the 'extremist' AfD party, the former European Commissioner believes that it will be necessary for the authorities to act as in Romania, where the presidential elections were canceled, writes the website of the French television BFMTV, which recalls Călin Georgescu’s TikTok campaign.

    https://x.com/Richard_C_D_L/status/1877798209050828999?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1877798209050828999%7Ctwgr%5Ec37c9b5cc7a4f97dd1b5ab8202b0e4bb81f74d61%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fex-eu-commissioner-breton-what-was-done-romania-may-be-needed-germany

    2. "Former French European Commissioner Thierry Breton" is clearly the extremist here. I don't think anyone need look as far as USA to find extremism in the EU.

    4. Funny, the excuse is different in different countries, but the effect is the same – elections are cancelled.

  84. Right – that's me gone. Very sight thaw – may be a less cold night. Tomorrow – just above (net) zero and a bit of sunshine.

    Have a jolly evening – think of whom to stab tomorrow.

    A demain.

  86. I have just come back home , walked Pip, rather he had a scamper , the moon is a balloon !

    We walked for about 40mts, dusk was falling , and i don't really want to slip slide or trip up .

    I left Moh at home watching football , Saints!

    The weather was very mild earlier , not the crispness of earlier evenings , and no brrr factor. 8c.. not too bad considering i don't really feel the cold , I usually have warm hands !!

    On the way home , I decided to go up one of the local lanes that leads to a pond and a wood and some collapsing old barns .

    The hedgerow on either side had been clipped , so the car thankfully wasn't being scratched . This area is full of fields with sheep grazing , and many are lambing , thankfully now the weather is dry !

    What amazed me as I drove along the lane were the amount of moths , different sizes , that fluttered in my headlights , a consistent amount of moths .. the cold weather obviously hadn't deterred them , and how brave of them ..

    Last year the the old barns hosted a pair of barn owls , and we enjoyed watching their progress even though it was a lean wet spring and summer . I didn't see any birds this evening , only 3 Roe deer , and a weasel that ran across the road .. Blackbirds are courting .. pairing up and chakking away in the remaining dusk dimness.

    Driving in the dark is becoming more difficult because when I got back onto the main road.. it was busy with Lulworth traffic .. headlights these days are horrid .. mine are okay , but headlights are brighter and dazzling , even when they are on dip.

    As I say , we have been lucky with the weather , but the mud on the lanes and roads that the busy tractors leave behind after working the very soggy fields isn't much fun , skid factor if the weather freezes .

    Back home ,Moh happy , Saints won by 3.0 Swansea , oh dear , but the stadium looked half empty.

    1. What a lyrical account. About the time I was about to take Spartie out, our son and D-i-L arrived. They wanted to do some printing and discovered they were out of print cartridges. They had simmered down by the time they reached us, so we had a pleasant afternoon.
      And I totally agree about headlights.
      Although age doesn't help, people far younger than us find them a dangerous aggravation.

      1. I bought a pair of anti- glare specs that fit over normal specs. I've only used them a couple of times so far but they seem to help. Good for very low sunlight too.

  87. I have just come back home , walked Pip, rather he had a scamper , the moon is a balloon !

    We walked for about 40mts, dusk was falling , and i don't really want to slip slide or trip up .

    I left Moh at home watching football , Saints!

    The weather was very mild earlier , not the crispness of earlier evenings , and no brrr factor. 8c.. not too bad considering i don't really feel the cold , I usually have warm hands !!

    On the way home , I decided to go up one of the local lanes that leads to a pond and a wood and some collapsing old barns .

    The hedgerow on either side had been clipped , so the car thankfully wasn't being scratched . This area is full of fields with sheep grazing , and many are lambing , thankfully now the weather is dry !

    What amazed me as I drove along the lane were the amount of moths , different sizes , that fluttered in my headlights , a consistent amount of moths .. the cold weather obviously hadn't deterred them , and how brave of them ..

    Last year the the old barns hosted a pair of barn owls , and we enjoyed watching their progress even though it was a lean wet spring and summer . I didn't see any birds this evening , only 3 Roe deer , and a weasel that ran across the road .. Blackbirds are courting .. pairing up and chakking away in the remaining dusk dimness.

    Driving in the dark is becoming more difficult because when I got back onto the main road.. it was busy with Lulworth traffic .. headlights these days are horrid .. mine are okay , but headlights are brighter and dazzling , even when they are on dip.

    As I say , we have been lucky with the weather , but the mud on the lanes and roads that the busy tractors leave behind after working the very soggy fields isn't much fun , skid factor if the weather freezes .

    Back home ,Moh happy , Saints won by 3.0 Swansea , oh dear , but the stadium looked half empty.

    3. Bercow demanding today that Farage acknowledge publicly that leaving the EU was a disaster and that it was all his fault. Prize plum, as you say.

    1. The wood burning provides 5%. But that's just electricity. It ignores gas to homes for direct heating.

      I hate to think what we're being charged by gas companies forced to keep turbines off line ready for dispatch.

      Last time we were paying £5,000 per MW. That's simply insane. The green con must be stopped. It's a failed attempt at state control and socialisation of an energy market. All it's done is make energy expensive, unreliable and scarce.

      1. Dont forget that any windmill electricity is bought at the highest price at the time in the crazy UK energy market, although it costs not a penny more to generate.

        1. "fuel" is free, but the capital and construction costs need paid down, plus maintenance and management… like any other generating plant.

          2. Yup. Nuclear is the answer, but some difficulty in building the damn things.
            Example: My last job in the CEGB/National Power was the safety case for Hinckley Point "C". That was 1989. It still hasn't produced a watt yet.

          3. It's not exactly rocket science though is it !!!

            We know how to do it but our dear leaders don't fucking want it

    2. The government in general and Milipede in particular will never get it. They'll never understand the basics of wind production. Questions for Ed to discuss:

      1. What causes wind to blow?
      2. Why is wind less likely in Winter and Summer in the UK compared to Autumn and Spring?
      3. What does the UK's predominantly diurnal weather pattern imply for wind powered energy production?

      Basic stuff, but you just know that the government won't get it.

      1. 4. Why is there bugger-all electricity production from solar cells in the winter months?

        1. I could have added that, but felt Milipede’s overloaded bonce couldn’t handle it.

    3. The government in general and Milipede in particular will never get it. They'll never understand the basics of wind production. Questions for Ed to discuss:

      1. What causes wind to blow?
      2. Why is wind less likely in Winter and Summer in the UK compared to Autumn and Spring?
      3. What does the UK's predominantly diurnal weather pattern imply for wind powered energy production?

      Basic stuff, but you just know that the government won't get it.

      1. One of my friends from church has just bought an EV. She had a power cut last weekend and couldn't do anything. Even so, I don't think she's joined the dots yet.

        1. We have a condo board meeting this week and one of the topics is preparing for EVs.
          It should be interesting how people see this can be done. Installing over seventy chargers would make quite a dent in our funds, even simple power outlets at each parking spot would require a serious upgrade to the supply.

  90. Poacher turned …. poacher?
    Comment in the Spekkie.

    "She misread the job offer.

    Starmer “I would like to appoint you as Corruption Minister”
    Tulip “ Great I know all about that”
    Starmer “ to be clear I mean anti corruption “
    Tulip “ Smashing ,, Aunty corruption is my specialty”

    1. The Left wing state protected them. From social workers to police to councillors – many of whom were muslim, to hostel runners. The entire establishment was complicit and permitted, no; endorsed the rape of children by pakistani muslim paedophiles.

      This is why Starmer is doing nothing and will continually refuse an inquiry. It would destroy his voting base and expose the putrid cancer destroying this country, the poison of 'diversity'.

      1. 400045+up ticks,

        Evening W,
        Well penned, but many of us going under the put down title “fruitcakes” have known this for years.

        1. If we ever find the extent and depth of the treachery I sincerely hope there are real trials and real punishments – prison, primarily.

          However, we all know what'll happen. 'Lessons will be learned' and folk will forget. The Left will go back to promoting and protecting the diversity sewage who'll simply carry on.

        2. If we ever find the extent and depth of the treachery I sincerely hope there are real trials and real punishments – prison, primarily.

          However, we all know what'll happen. 'Lessons will be learned' and folk will forget. The Left will go back to promoting and protecting the diversity sewage who'll simply carry on.

      2. What you say is true but it was also conservatives who ignored what was going on. All political parties knew what was happening.

    2. Of course it didn't bother them; it's all following the rules laid down in the koran and emulating the "perfect man". These people do not adhere to Western cultural norms.

      1. 400045+ up ticks,

        Evening C,
        Are they not given succour via a democratically elected governing party via the people, again & again knowing
        they, the element in question takes an oath through the islamic instruction manual.

        For many an eye opener will be when the head hits the bottom of the basket.

    1. The fact that guy hasn’t been named is a pretty sure sign that he’s not a white indigenous male!🤦🏻‍♀️

    2. Probably both. GBN say they can’t reveal for legal reasons but there are never any legal reasons that prevent publishing a pic of a normal white person.

      1. Can't let people know there's a problem with the diversity, can we?

        It's hypocrisy. The state, yet again closing ranks to pretend there isn't a problem when everyone knows there blatantly is.

  94. Evening, all. Slight thaw today. Can't come soon enough, as far as I'm concerned. Global warming? Bring it on!

    The NHS was designed, in 1948, for a stable population which had contributed. It was intended to keep the population healthy. Compare and contrast with nowadays; it treats all comers regardless of contribution, and the population is being rapidly expanded thanks to rubber boats. The NHS also treats non-life-threatening mental problems like gender dysphoria. It isn't modern medicine that's the problem.

    1. I think it's called "mission creep", Conners. Happens everywhere, unless you're vigilant.

    2. It is also grostesquely mismanaged with vast amounts of waste and inefficiency. It's a government department with two sides: the healthcare side does a very good job and tries to heal the sick.

      Then there's the administration.

  96. Much like energy, the more the Left try to hold the lever in place, the bigger the backlash will be.

  97. The government just announced a change of designation. It's no longer "our NHS". All citizens must now call it our International Health Service.

    1. What exactly does a three year sexual program consist of? Is it like the Prevent program for muslim killers?

  101. Heh. Very good. What I note, that few people are pointing out; is that had the state government cut back trees so create fire breaks and had created more reservoirs to capture water the impact of these fires would be vastly reduced.

    Much like with Australia, and the flooding here. There's a pattern to all three incidents though: a government obsessed with 'climate change' and refusing to do what needs to be done.

    1. We had the usual "climate change" and "think about the Ukraine" from our woke intercessionist this morning in church. As soon as I saw who it was, I knew what it would be. Aagghh!!

      1. There were a few like that on the intercessions rota when I was at All Saints Fulham. One guy used to spout rubbish v-e-r-y slowly in a low voice. He imagined it lent spiritual gravitas. At Barts, standard intercessions are supplied to the readers with the names of the sick and departed inserted. I like that we ask God to enlighten Bishop Sarah.

        1. Thankfully, we only have the one. The rest are pretty sensible. This one thinks we all stay glued to our TVs (one of these days I'll point out I don't have one) and the press. No wonder she's as woke as she is.

    2. They also did a great job in Alberta by refusing to allow clearing of brush or the creation of firebreaks.
      Jasper is a federal park so the feds run it. In yet another example of their idiocy, fire hydrate had a different thread to those used outside the park – when the fire fighters arrived their hoses were no good.

  105. Good evening all.
    We have watched the 6 part police/forensic drama with an autistic assistant to the Detective Inspector. Channel 4 and it worth a look.

  106. Anyone watching Antiques Road show?

    An amazing ceramic creature , blue owl like art shape ..
    38
    It looks like Sadiq Khan .. first glance of course .. worth £6k..£8 k

  108. Child's note on post-war hardships found in door panel
    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyk344depyo
    A teenager's account of the difficulties of post-war life has been found hidden in a door panel that was saved from the tip. The handwritten note tells of the daily six-hour power cuts, no coal "in any quantity" and short supply of food.

  110. Queen Sonja of Norway, 87, is rushed to hospital following 'skiing incident'
    The Norwegian monarch, 87, was admitted to Lillehammer hospital yesterday
    READ MORE: Inside King Harald and Queen Sonja's romance as their 'fairytale' becomes a TV drama

    Queen Sonja of Norway was admitted to hospital with a skiing-related injury yesterday, the royal household has revealed.

    In relation to her ski trip, the 87-year-old monarch, who is married to King Harald V of Norway, also 87, suffers from atrial fibrillation, a heart condition that causes an irregular and often abnormally fast heart rate, according to the NHS.

    Despite the hospital admittance, Sonja's condition is not thought to be serious, and she is in good shape, the family told Sweden Herald.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14275677/Queen-Sonja-Norway-87-rushed-hospital-following-skiing-incident.html

    1. All perverts together….I think that might be a song. Doubt it will played on Top Of the Pops hosted by Jimmy Savile though…

      1. There's a Rugby song 'All queers together' to which the chorus goes;

        We're all queers together
        That's why we go round in pairs
        Yes we're all queers together
        Excuse us while we go upstairs
        (sung to the tune of the Eton Boating Song).

        Several 'amusing' verses including;

        I went for a tuppenny bus ride
        It was crowded so I had to stand
        A little boy offered me his seat
        So I tickled it with my hand…..

        I've got a friend called Basil
        And he has a friend called Bond
        They're always seen together
        They're known as Basildon Bond

        (That's enough smutty Rugby songs. Ed.)

        1. Yes i am aware of that.

          There was an episode of 'Come dine with me' which featured rugby chaps. Where one waxed lyrical about the the beauty of the male form.

          1. Well I guess somebody could accuse me, as an ex Rugby player, of being gay but they'd be only eating liquid food for the next 12 weeks :-))

          2. It wasn’t about gayness. It was admiration for the male form. Then he realised what he was saying and how it could be interpreted.

        2. "Oh the sexual life of the camel
          Is not as everyone thinks
          At the height of the mating season
          It tries to bugger the Sphinx
          But the Sphinx's anterior orifice
          Is blocked with the sands of the Nile
          Which accounts for the hump on the camel
          And the Sphinx's inscrutable smile"

          1. Excellent Opo – that is the precursor to the chorus! (How do you know that?)

            In the process of civilsation
            From anthropoid ape down to man
            It is generally held the the Navy
            Has buggered wherever they can
            But the recent extensive researches
            By Darwin and Huxley and Ball
            Has conclusively proved that the hedgehog
            Has never been buggered at all….

      1. The usual smug, self satisfied, condescending cant, AA.These people are impervious to rational thinking or any kind of genuine empathy.

        1. I have a feeling the account is not necessarily a Left wing account. Which makes this type of rot concerning, hence my mention. Are aware of "You're such a lovely human being"? Very strange.

          1. "The rights to… pass on to the next generation" also drew forth a mirthless smile from this quarter. How on earth do they expect to procreate?

          2. The vomit inducing "Leaving the world in a better place than when you found it." and how's that working out? I love Dark Lord Jordan Peterson's response to the narcissism "How about not making it any worse than what you found it?".

    1. 400045+up ticks,

      Pip,

      Up ticks,
      some time ago the powers controlling our posts, started to cull our up ticks,mine by 30,000
      so in a form of defiance I, done my own accounting,just never stopped.

  115. Popping orff, night all. 😴
    I've just been watching one of my all time favourite programs, a 2005 Dr Martin.

  116. Does anyone know whether or not Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves ever attended Klaus Schwab’s Young Global Leaders indoctrination courses?

    I ask because it seems that every other utterly incompetent politician and politico from Merkel, Blair, Macron, Ahern, Trudeau and their underlings including jokers such as Matt Hancock appear to have done so.

    As I understand matters the WEF is constructing a large concrete edifice for its international headquarters in Geneva. Who is funding this? I understand that this WEF headquarters has its own tunnelled ‘Zil’ lane to a private airport.

    Who the fuck do these resurgent Nazis think they are?

    1. It is scary – and because they've quite openly trodden the pantomime villain path (S.P.E.C.T.R.E, even) their blatant power grabs are dismissed as barmy conspiracy theories. No-one could possibly be so power crazed and evil, could they? "Go back to sleep dear, nothing to worry about here."

    2. Starmer as a younger man was probably too Far-Left for that. I believe he went to on a tour of Communist Czechoslovakia.

      2. I did that back in 1979 and wouldn't have missed this bit of history for the world. I was on a Czech motorcycle going back from a cultural exchange in Poland and chanced by the factory where it was made.

        They wouldn't let me in without authorisation from the importers in Kings Lynn. A teacher with a busload of schoolkids from East Germany told me I could tag along with his party and tour the factory, pretending I was one of the teachers, so I did get to see it after all.

        They had these monuments to the glory of Socialism by the side of the road. One of them was a splendid edifice of a blue, slightly rusting spanner, twenty foot high, with a red star in its jaws. I called it "the star-bangled spanner".

  119. A very belated Good Night, chums. Sleep well, and I shall see you all at about 7 am.

  120. Another day is done and I'm exhausted, AS USUAL so, i wish all our Nottlers a GOODNIGHT. Schlafe Gut Bis Morgan Fruh.

  121. Another day is done and I'm exhausted, AS USUAL so, i wish all our Nottlers a GOODNIGHT. Schlafe Gut Bis Morgan Fruh.

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