Sunday 16 February: Shoplifters spread fear and outrage – yet efforts to combat them are pitiful

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

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

583 thoughts on “Sunday 16 February: Shoplifters spread fear and outrage – yet efforts to combat them are pitiful”

    1. I wish I could do that – I can make a mess of even the simplest dovetail joint and so I have to resort to screw and glue.

  3. Good morning, chums. And thank you, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,338 3/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie
      I only got this one because I couldn't think of any other possibilities!
      Wordle 1,338 3/6

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      1. This is worrying, Phizzee; before seeing your post I was about to post exactly the same comment!

        1. I was going to suggest to King Stephen that unless he opens the curtains there won't be enough daylight hitting the plant to allow it to fully open up! Lol.

    3. Perfect , lovely . and what a joy .

      I have two , a smallish one that I bought in Tesco .. reduced to £12 , but it is growing fast , and another one quite large , for £ 20 in B and Q. I hope I have flowers eventually . ( My Christmas present to myself )

      My younger son lives on the IOW , has taken cuttings from his and they are growing vigorously .

      My second sister has them growing in her SA Bryanston garden , and my younger sister was growing them in her Capetown garden , but the Muizenberg garden is tormented by mole rats .. huge tunnelling hairless creatures that chew and disrupt everything .

  8. Good morning.
    I just listened to the Louise Perry podcast with David Betz, linked by MIR yesterday – it pulls together a lot of themes that occupy people, for example today's letters headline about shoplifters. Criminals in general seem to have no fear of the police in Britain today – and they are certainly better armed than anyone else in the wider population – that's a clear indicator of an unstable society.

    What Betz does not factor in is the extent to which various bits of evidence that he refers to are instigated by state actors. His thesis appears to be based on the tacit acceptance that what we read in the newspapers and see on television is correct. If you watch for example, the Richard D Hall analysis of the Jo Cox murder, it becomes clear beyond reasonable doubt that reality was very different from what we were told. Richard D Hall was smeared as "Britain's most dangerous conspiracy theorist" (and that's another story) but it was never said that his findings were factually incorrect.

    tl;dr of the video is that academic David Betz who studies civil wars, thinks that all the signs are present in Britain for a civil war in the next five years.

    Cynical me thinks that the civil war will kick off as the financial reset does, and most people will always believe that the latter was caused by the former.

    If anyone else wants to listen (it is very interesting as he is a real expert) the video is very long, but the first 25 minutes is introduction and scene-setting so can be skipped, and I watched it at 1.25 speed.
    https://disq.us/url?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGid48FgiHho%3Ax8zQuvbXFnDsaTVDRJkdqbkrjXQ&cuid=5852343

    1. I agree it is very worthwhile listening to David Betz who speaks with both authority and sorrow on the subject of a prospective Civil War in the UK.

      I regret he didn't mention the fact that the three mainstream political parties are so intent on clinging on to power that they are reliant on the votes of newly arrived peoples to swing marginal parliamentary seats in their favour. Hence they are careful not to tread on ethnic eggshells and so disadvantage the native population by their outrageous policies which in turn are driving folk to join Reform.

      If as predicted things do get rather out of hand very quickly I can see the authorities inviting anyone who has previously served in the UK's armed forces being signed up to a rebranded Home Defence Force and being armed accordingly.

      Yesterday there was mention of Neville Shute's novel 'On the Beach' which is fairly depressing. If Mr Betz is correct in his prognostications we can expect the sort of mayhem currently being experienced in the Congo…..

      1. Some people suspect that the new arrivals (fit young men with short haircuts) who are currently being housed at military barracks would be signed up into the Home Defence Force…

  9. As Germany’s economic miracle unravels, its dark past is coming back to haunt it. 16 February 2025.

    For the first time since 1945, Germany has a party on the far-Right, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is both large enough and extreme enough to pose a real threat to the post-war Western order. Its heady brew of illiberal ethnonationalism has attracted the attention of the German equivalent of MI5. The likes of Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni want nothing to do with it.

    This is a propaganda piece to try and recover some lost ground from the caning the Elites have taken over the weekend. The AfD is mentioned because they are the real opposition in Germany and Vance spoke to Alice Weidel personally after his demolition job on the EU members.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/16/germany-economic-miracle-is-unravelling-and-its-dark-past/

    1. AfD must be stopped at any cost.
      German government even tried to cancel this election, claiming there wasn't enough paper in the country.
      Anyhow, regardless of how many votes the AfD get on the 25th, the left & wets will do everything in their power to freeze them out and ignore the sentiment.
      The project must continue.

    2. AfD must be stopped at any cost.
      German government even tried to cancel this election, claiming there wasn't enough paper in the country.
      Anyhow, regardless of how many votes the AfD get on the 25th, the left & wets will do everything in their power to freeze them out and ignore the sentiment.
      The project must continue.

    3. AfD must be stopped at any cost.
      German government even tried to cancel this election, claiming there wasn't enough paper in the country.
      Anyhow, regardless of how many votes the AfD get on the 25th, the left & wets will do everything in their power to freeze them out and ignore the sentiment.
      The project must continue.

    4. As always with this level of discussion, there is one group that is being consistently pushed out, and that these are the liberal ethnonationalists.

      These are people who take pride in a culture based on tolerance, fair play, conscience and beauty that must be protected from alien and hostile encroachment and demolition by setting borders and guarding them.

      The British Empire abolished slavery, for God's sake!

    5. It's a giveaway that they wrote "…a party on the far-Right…" – except, as any fule no, the Nasties were a party of the Left, as mentioned in their name. What bollox.

      1. I would not describe David Miliband as better than his brother, Ed as there is no way in which the adjective good – or its comparative better – can be applied to these odious siblings. Of the two brothers each one is worse than the other!

      2. I would not describe David Miliband as better than his brother, Ed as there is no way in which the adjective good – or its comparative better – can be applied to these odious siblings. Of the two brothers each one is worse than the other!

  11. Medley
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    2. As I posted yesterday about Davey's hypocrisy about democracy:

      And when the nasty little twerp wants to drivel on about democracy I would like to hear his opinion on:

      2024 General Election:

      ……………………….Total Votes ……..Seats
      LibDem ………….. 3,519,214…………. 72
      Reform ………….. 4,117,610 ………….. 5

      Reform received 598,396 more votes than than the Lib Dems

      Come on Davey for many years your party has demanded PR – you are rather quiet about this now!

  13. Relish from Yorkshire

    SIR – As a member of the Yorkshire diaspora, I enjoyed Peter Denton’s letter (February 9) describing the variety of goods produced in Sheffield. I can vouch for the popularity of Henderson’s Relish, although until a recent stay in a lovely hotel in North Yorkshire, I had never heard of it.

    The hotel’s breakfast menu offered “Henderson’s seasoned mushrooms”, along with other dishes. The helpful waitress tried to describe Henderson’s, and suggested I gave it a try. It turned out not to be to my taste and I reverted to grilled east coast kippers.

    My rejection of the mushrooms caused much merriment in the previously quiet breakfast room, with all the other diners within earshot expressing their love of “Hendo’s”. One elderly lady even said she loves the spicy table sauce so much that she has it every day. I got the clear impression that the other diners regarded me as a strange Southerner.

    Since that day I have seen reference to this Yorkshire product all over the place, and I understand it’s been around since 1885. I may even give it another try.

    Tim Oldfield
    Wye, Kent

    This strange Southerner recommends it.

    1. I love it , much muchly nicer than HP sauce , I think some one has meddled with the HP recipe as well as the Heinz tomato sauce recipe.

      Yes Henderson's cannot be found anywhere . I forget where I bought mine , but I know I was wise enough to buy 2 bottles .

      1. When Heinz moved production of HP Sauce to the Netherlands, it suddenly became VERY vinegary.
        Stokes and even Lidl's and Aldi's own brands are much nicer.

      2. This morning – having taken advantage of a Sainsbury special offer – we were reminded how superior Branston baked beans are to Heinz.

        1. Yes , we love Branston Baked beans as well .. strange , I wonder how the ingredients changed so much ?

          Bit similar to Cadbury’s chocolate .. in all forms .. tastes so sweet and sickly .

          Hmm, I love to nibble Terry’s chocolate orange .. so delicious .

    2. Back in the 1970s, Henderson's produced a thick, table-sauce version of Yorkshire relish with a similar cosistency to HP sauce.

  15. Good morning all. A bit of a lie in this morning, but the weather's nothing to get out of bed for.
    A thick mist clinging to the trees up valley sides and a steady light rain with very little air movement at all.
    2.3°C when I took the empty milk bottle out, with a max of 4½°C from yesterday.

  16. Goods strapped down, panic buttons and smashed-in doors: the middle-class shoplifting hotspots. 16 February 2025.

    Shopkeepers on middle-class high streets are tying down their goods amid a shoplifting epidemic.

    The crime is at record-high levels, with an estimated 55,000 thefts per day last year, according to recent statistics. Industry bodies complain that police are failing to tackle the problem.

    Lol. The police and judiciary aren’t there to stop crime.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/15/middle-class-shoplifting-hotspots-high-streets/

    4. So "middle class high streets" is supposed to make us think that middle class people are doing most of the shop-lifting? I highly doubt it, and it's certainly not what I have personally witnessed.

  17. An interesting header photograph on the letters page this morning.
    The shoplifter depicted is certainly not the same demographic as the ones in the security video footage I've seen.

  18. Today FSB has an article on industrial farming polluting water supplies, a genuine problem but on which the article advocates controversial solutions. We are very interested in what you think. Please read and comment on ‘ ’Industrial farming’s assault on fresh water must end ’.

    Nanumaga’s essay on attack on farmers is an attack on all of us – ‘ The Green Version of ‘The Law Of Unintended Consequences ’ is very much an essential read, if you missed it.

    Energy watch 07.00 Total generation: 28.892 GW from: Hydrocarbons 23.9%; Wind 41.9%; Imports 6.6%; Biomass 10.9% and Nuclear 14.9. Solar: 0. UK demand: 28.94GW, UK generation 26.15GW.

    Even though demand is low, and we have more than enough capacity to generate more electric power in gas plants, we are still importing electricity. It almost seems to be compulsory to import electric power from France. And it seems that the percentage of our electricity supply generated from burning ‘biomass’ – shredded trees – is creeping up. And the people in charge of all this want to ban wood burning stoves!

    freespeechbacklash.com

    1. I wonder if the imports are contracted in a way that means we would still pay even if we didn't take them.

      1. I don’t think so Sos, but i might be wrong. The only near consistency is imports from France – even when we are also exporting to France. The French connection is not always a feature, though it is common, but the amount of imported power varies. There seems to be no logic other than the carbon emission count, but even then, how it is calculated appears to be a mystery.

        1. Presumably the imports/exports are determined at a company level rather than nationally, so the variability might reflect local demand, but quite why a company would go to Europe rather than another UK company is a different question, unless it is cheaper to go abroad.
          It’s all very strange.

          1. I think it is more the national grid and energy department policy sos, but it is all rather vague.

  19. Good morning, all. Overcast and dry.

    Sexual assault and rape incidents on the rise, not just in the UK – here, finally, analysis is available of 'country of origin and the perpetrators of sex crimes' – but across European states where mass immigration has been encouraged. There really shouldn't be any surprise at this revelation but the figures display an ugly truth.

    That politics, surely the politics of the madhouse, is to blame, isn't negotiable. Politicians fomenting crimes across the board to disrupt our culture doesn't appear to make any sense until the agenda became clear, and strangely, if nothing else good came from CV-19, and it didn't, then the exposure of the globalist agenda and the politicians who have bought into that agenda, was it.
    https://x.com/StarkNakedBrief/status/1890734832788881777

    1. And of course the EU and the UK are magnets to violent criminals from outside Europe who know that if they are caught they will not be executed as they would have been in their countries of origin and if they commit sexual crimes they can often get off with derisory sentences and they will not be deported.

      As the vice-president of the |USA, Mr Vance, told us the danger for Europe and especially the UK is the danger from within. And the PTB are reacting like Corporal Jones's fuzzy wuzzies.

  20. Morning all 🙂😊
    Same old out there with the weather.
    Missed the good night all yesterday, bat flattery.
    As the well informed London mayor's office told us a couple of weeks ago. Shop lifters are encouraged by the fact that there are too many shops.
    Nothing to do with thousands of imported crooks from across the channel and elsewhere, or of the managed indifference of our police farce, or even the we can't be bothered, nothing in it for us, court and legal system.

  22. News story, a man was arrested at LHR with 400 thousand pounds in a suitcase and 11 thousands euros in a backpack. On his way to Turkey described as an Austrian national.
    A barber ?

      1. He could represent many more.
        I use to play golf with a tax inspector.
        Back in the day…..
        He once told me of the many different types of observation inspired inspections by the tax man.

  24. Here we go – the previous PM of Mauritius, the architect of the stinking "Chagos Deal" where we pay someone to take over territory that we already own, is being investigated by a team looking into a money laundering scandal!

    In other news, a violent Polish [9 convictions!] criminal has been spared deportation – no chicken nuggets this time, but – "Nawraz Karbani, the judge in the matter, said the man's nephew would suffer a 'disproportionate' impact if he was deported"

    1. Anything to do with the guy arrested at LHR with cases of cash? See Eddy's story just posted now.

    4. Wet, cold, misty and miserable here and we had a few flakes of snow a short while ago.
      I think the fires will be lit early today.

    1. Include UK in the mix. Secure the military base in Chagos Islands.. and end the Starmer & Hermer regime.

  30. David Starkey on top form on TalkTV two days ago..

    At least you know what to do.
    Go in hard like Trump.. single Act of parliament.. declare null & void everything done by Blair, Gordon Brown & Theresa May.. absolute repeal.. A Restoration. Cannot be done by half measures. Cannot be done piecemeal. Cannot be done by debate. Cannot be done through civil service.

    "We're four years behind Trump.. we may never get there."

  31. Yo and Good Moaning all, from a (weather) dull C d S

    The discussion of Jerkins and Gilets and other such exciting topics is endless

    Ther is a real world out there in which our lives are being wrecked by Starmer and Alphabet Soupers, whose Initials if mentioned gets a BTL removed.

    I would like to point out, that I still have a bag that used to have cake in it.

    1. The only reason they are destroying hundreds of square miles of irreplaceable jaw achingly beautiful countryside is to house unwanted, unneeded, uneducated, uneducable, third worlders.

  36. Re the conversation about Gilets, I used to search charity shops years ago when there was a better classier sort of clothing , I have bought Barbour Gilets for a few pounds , silk scarves, a designer handbag (Fossil) some nice jumpers etc, and Moh was wearing one yesterday !

    2. "Strong and Northern". Those words are a perfect and apposite pairing, just like, "Fish and Chips", "Horse and Cart", "Valvona and Crolla", "Darby and Joan", "Lennon and McCartney", "Poofy and Southern" and "Hillary and Tenzing".

    3. I can see that it is stocked by my local Sainsbury's, so I think I'll give it a try on my next shop. Thanks, per.

  38. Yep, and our countryside will soon resemble the squalor of an African city or an old Iron country city like Bratislava etc .. flats , nothing but flats and ghettos of unspeakable poor quality .. because that is what social housing looks like these days .. modular monsters .

    1. Indeed yes, with the added horror of a Saudi paid for carbuncle that is the Super mosque.

  39. The next British boom could be in the offing – if Starmer abandons net zero
    The PM faces a choice that could determine Britain’s role in the ‘fifth industrial revolution’
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/16/starmer-must-sacrifice-net-zero-to-take-advantage-of-the-ne/

    BTL

    If we don't have an economic boom then how are people who do not want their children indoctrinated by the state system going to be able to pay private school fees now that they are 20% more expensive?

  40. Utter drivel – well done Sir Trevor for pointing out that "urgently needing 1.5 million new homes" and ' we already have plenty of housing" are completely contradictory statements! Thick as pig er …

    1. Indeed, but it be printed. None of the mainstream media like Reform. However, let's hope Rastus does in fact send it.

        1. Adams decamps from the DT (to the Evening Standard) to leave the enfant terrible Bob Moran at the helm.

          Bob gets defenestrated from the DT for upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the establishment.

          Adams then sidles back into the vast vacuum left by the far superior Bob.

        2. If I could draw, cartoon or come with a smart phrase, I'll gladly join in with the criticism.
          Problem is…

      2. "Trump has a Group of people around him of simply a different order this time round.
        That speech at the European conference on ai by JD Vance.. is one the great political speeches of our time. You watch the confidence, the assurance, the force of that man.. the eloquence the precision of what he was saying. It was completely astonishing."
        David Starkey.

        1. The reaction of the audience was a pleasure to watch, squirmed, embarrassed and didn't enjoy being exposed to the truth.

      3. "Trump has a Group of people around him of simply a different order this time round.
        That speech at the European conference on ai by JD Vance.. is one the great political speeches of our time. You watch the confidence, the assurance, the force of that man.. the eloquence the precision of what he was saying. It was completely astonishing."
        David Starkey.

  47. The Cirencester ones used to be good! My wedding shoes and bag came from there – the two piece I wore was a hand-me -down from a friend; OH got his suit from Oxfam. We weren't proud!

    1. My niece's wedding was the full blow out. Her step father spent in excess of £20,000. We all had to hire top hats and tails !

      1. Mine cost about £200 and that was mostly the food. We had lunch in the garden for 25 and then a barbie in the garden for anyone else who wanted to come. It was the hottest day of the year……19.07.97 and my birthday.

        1. We'd been living here for two years by then – and also had a large (for us, then) mortgage to pay.

        3. SWMBOs dress was made by her Father, a printer; my suit was a cheap M&S affair; catering by family & friends. I laid out for the church & vicar, my parents for the hall where we ate.
          I caan still see her now, coming up the aisle… 21 years old, lovely tiny lass. Back in 1982, that was. We borrowed my parents holiday home in Brixham, and rented a mini Mtro to get there reliably. Since then, we've been poor and lived in placed one step up from a cardboard box, we're now rich and comfortable. She's a superb mother to our two lads, and they get their politeness and ability to cook from their Mother.
          I used a whole lifetime of good luck when she agreed to marry me. Never a moment regret.

          1. My first choice of husband wasn't so good – I was 20 but naive. He's a good man but we weren't suited and had horrendous rows. He was good to my mother in her final illness and I could never confess to her I'd made a big mistake.
            You've been lucky with your choice of bride.

          4. We had the honeymoon first – in Kefalonia when I was recovering from breast cancer. He popped the question & I said yes! We got married six weeks later. The register office had a slot free on my birthday, so I booked it.

            I don’t really regret the first marriage, which produced the two lads – but the second one – not at all.

      2. Ridiculous that so many spend tens of thousands on their wedding when they should invest it in their marriage

          2. Mine , in 1979, cost less than that. The bride made the wedding dress and bridesmaid’s outfit, we married on a Monday so the church flowers were still fresh and we went back to my mother in law’s afterwards.

        1. I do like dressing up for occasions. When i went for dinner on the Watercress line we were all in our best tuxedos. I got to wear the cummerbund in the Queen mother's colours.

          3. Those were her racing colours. Not sure the cummerbund was the same. Can’t remember now. Borrowed from a friend’s Mess Dress.

          5. The Queen Mum’s racing colours were blue and buff; she had her golf buggy painted in that colour scheme.

    2. I was passing through Cirencester in 2020 and popped into a charity shop – came out with a beautiful and very expensive shirt!

      I hardly ever buy new stuff nowadays, especially since Laura Ashley closed. Occasionally get something from Seasalt, but going into Oxford's such a drag now that they've declared full on war on cars that I mostly just stick to local small town charity shops.

      2. Plenty of money around that part of the Cotswolds. We live in the cheaper end, but I worked in Cirencester for many years. We got lost in Oxford two years ago when we went for OH’s cardiac check up. I used to drive in often when my younger son was a student.

    3. Thrifty is the word. I have bought a Gieves and Hawks suit and blazer for a tenner each and an Abercrombie overcoat for the same.

  48. Starmer’s Chagos giveaway under fire as deal mastermind interrogated in money-laundering probe

    Government urged to halt islands handover after former PM of Mauritius questioned by officials

    Samaan Lateef in Mumbai.
    Ethan Croft Sunday political correspondent

    15 February 2025 9:00pm GMT

    Sir Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands giveaway was plunged into fresh controversy on Saturday night after the former Mauritian prime minister who masterminded the deal was interrogated in a money-laundering scandal.

    Pravind Jugnauth and members of his family were hauled into the offices of the Mauritian Financial Crimes Commission for questioning on Saturday following a three-hour search of his home.

    Police had earlier raided the premises of a close associate of Jugnauth, where they said they found suitcases stuffed with tens of thousands in cash in more than a dozen currencies, Rolex and Cartier watches and UK visas, according to reports. The associate denied the items were his.

    On Saturday night, the Conservatives said the “imploding” Chagos giveaway should be stopped following the revelations, describing it as a “dodgy deal”.

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

    When I first head this reported on GBN at 6:00am, I mistook the description for loads of cash, watches, and https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/M7TeQ505N2z0Ud1eOTY0NzU=/1980s-children's-cartoon-comic-annuals-beezer-annual-440nw-14340603j.jpg

    1. Starmer needs an escape clause to get out of this disastrous Chagos deal.

      Perhaps the corruption of the Mauritian will give him the opportunity to get out out of it without losing face.

      My worry is that he is too stupid to see this.

    2. You get a better standard of well-considered political opinion from The Beezer than you have ever got from the BBC, the Daily Mail or the Guardian.

  50. Modern British Slavery.

    SIR – My grandparents were coal miners in Wigan in the 1930s. Admittedly, the law no longer allowed miners to be beaten, but they were economically dependent on their paymasters, and they could not change jobs because there were none.

    Slavery can be defined as a state of dependency, in which the worker is entirely under the control of the employer class. The government and the families that owned the mines grew rich on the grinding poverty and appalling living conditions of their workers.

    So my question is this: will the families who owned the mines and the governments that profited from the misery, poverty and suffering of tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of miners consider paying reparations to their descendants?

    JA Yates
    Taunton, Somerset.

    It wasn't just the mine-owners and the government [through the National Coal Board (NCB)] who were responsible for perpetuating this slavery and getting rich on the backs of miners; the unions — especially the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) — were equally complicit.

    My father retired early, aged 60, after a lifetime working down the coal mines. At the time he was suffering from the lung disease — pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis — a prescribed industrial condition. The NUM had a scheme whereby it would provide pecuniary support for sufferers of this condition.

    Despite being a fee-paying member since the union came into being, no monetary payments were received by either my father in his retirement, nor by his widowed wife after his death, despite a number of requests being forwarded "for consideration". Meanwhile, The NUM's notorious leader, Arthur Scargill, had a luxury bungalow built for his own use at a colossal cost to the union, as well as a brand new office headquarters, in Sheffield, which was only in use for a few years.

    The bag-of-wind that was Scargill was every bit as much a slave-owner as were the mandarins in government and at the NCB.

    1. Not such a clear-cut "Us-and-them" case, Grizz. I'm sorry about your Father; the betrayal by those you expect to be on your side leaves a bad taste, and reinforced my opinion from back in the 80s that Scargill was a truly nasty shit.

          1. I think he got the NUM to pay £250,000 for it (if my memory serves me correct), which was a fortune at the time.

    2. Not just miners – think of the mill-workers in earlier years, and the small children who worked in the mills, and also went up chimneys.

      2. A couple of BTLs.

        Female Human
        6 hrs ago
        Reply to M Cleary – view message
        My dad was a miner, it was a way of life and they had pride in doing a job that kept the country running. Perhaps in earlier times people tried to keep their sons out of the pits, but then you have to consider that children as young as 4 were sent down the mines to guard the hatches behind which their parents worked. A visit to a coal mining museum is an education. These were the slaves.

        And my response regarding children in the mines:-

        R. Spowart
        5 hrs ago
        Reply to Female Human – view message
        Message Actions
        Have you ever looked up when the use of child labour in the mines was banned?

        Starting with the 1842 Mines and Collieries Bill, boys under 10 were prohibited from working underground as were women and girls of any age.

        Subsequent legislation, particularly the 1860 Coal Mines Regulation Act, which raised the age limit for boys from 10 to 12 and the 1900 Mines (Prohibition of Child Labour Underground) Act, prohibiting boys under 13 from working underground were also enacted.

        The latter act was largely superceded by the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act of 1920 which had stronger provisions and was eventually repealed by the 1954 Mines and Quarries Act.

        Even before the 1st of these Acts the problems of child employment was recognised as shown by the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802.

    3. So sorry for your Dad , Grizzly .

      We have an ex South Yorkshire coal miner living near here .. same age as me , but when you see him walking/ hobbling down the road bent double , one wonders how come a rich country that we once were / are could not compensate men like that .

      On another note . here in Dorset . Very rich landowners turfed their workers out of tenanted cottages to make even more dosh in the holiday rental market https://www.dorsetcoastalcottages.com/

      Then further on from here we have Tolpuddle .. and the Martyrs museum https://www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/museum

      Yet now , my son's partner who works in the Shard area of the City , commutes 2 times a week from the IOW because his job is efficient , zoom and computer led ,has been instructed by his bosses , and also many others in the financial quarter to get back to work because Sadiq Khan has complained that TFL are in financial trouble as are many businesses who rely on commuters , because of the shortage of commuters.

      Just like the UK being short of white babies so the increase in millions of migrant babies will slew our economic efficiency, and create more ghettos and mosques .

      Oh drat and blah blah

      1. Thanks, Maggie. The country has a crying-out need for more men with the backbone of George Loveless and his supporters. Time to make the country Great again. The first job is to clear out the filth of the Left.

  51. Here’s a thought. If Vance had congratulated Romania on annulling an election, praised Germany for trying to ban the AfD, and chided the likes of Britain and France for not doing more to stand up to the far right, would he have been told to mind his own business?

    Answers on a postcard to Ursula Fonda Lyin.

  54. Most of UK’s big build-to-rent developers owned by foreign private equity firms
    Common Wealth thinktank says Labour should control profits made by ‘institutional investors’

    One of the UK’s fastest growing property markets is dominated by corporate landlords focused on providing homes for couples and singles, excluding many families with children, according to a thinktank report.

    The build-to-rent (BTR) sector constructs one in five new homes – including almost 30% of new homes in London – the Common Wealth thinktank says. It is concerned that the Labour government is turning to a select group of private equity-backed developers for a quick fix to the housing crisis.

    In a report, Open for Business or Up for Sale, the thinktank says a boom in developments designated for renters is being backed by “profit-seeking institutional investors”, often based overseas. Common Wealth said its research showed that four of the top five operators were backed by private equity funds and several were based abroad.

    The sector could be at the heart of Labour’s housing plans to build at least 1.5m homes by the end of the parliament.

    Corporate landlords could be given a large slice of land in Labour’s 12 new towns, allowing them to deliver as much as a fifth of the expected 10,000 properties in each location.

    Almost 90% of BTR properties are occupied by couples and flatshares, or single individuals rather than families, the report says.

    This compares with the private rented sector as a whole, where one in four households are families. Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Wakefield are among the cities with the highest concentration of BTR.

    “Housing in the sector also skews toward households on above-average and higher incomes, with industry data showing households in BTR are much more likely to be on incomes of over £68,000 a year than the average for the private rental sector,” the report says.

    In the top five BTR groups are Greystar Europe, Get Living, Simple Life Homes, Quintain Living and the L&Q PRS, a subsidiary of the social housing provider London and Quadrant.

    Simple Life Homes, which is owned by Sigma Capital, has several developments in the UK, including one- to three-bedroom homes available at its Albion Homes site in Salford, Greater Manchester. The housebuilder also manages private estates in Kent, Derbyshire and Devon.

    Ministers are known to favour handing over large tracts of development land to the new breed of corporate landlords in order to speed up the delivery of new housing.

    Advertising newly built rental properties and signing contracts with tenants can take months rather than the years it takes to sell homes on sites of more than 500 dwellings.

    The arrival of renters in large numbers on a site in the early stages of a development encourages the providers of amenities such as schools, doctors’ surgeries and shops to open premises earlier and not wait several years until the development is sold to individual buyers.

    Homes in BTR developments are constructed for the private rental sector and units are not for sale to individual buyers. Buildings are owned by one single owner or consortium, typically institutional investors.

    BTR developers are often criticised for drip-feeding properties into the local market to maintain prices.

    According to estate agent Savills, BTR housing stock stood at 105,000 homes at the end of 2023 from a private rented housing stock of about 5m homes.

    Marcus Dixon, head of research at real estate advisers JLL, said it was likely that foreign-backed funds were early adopters in the UK because their home markets in the US and continental Europe already had large institutional rental sectors. https://www.theguardian.com/global/2025/feb/16/most-big-uk-build-to-rent-developers-owned-by-foreign-private-equity-firms

    1. This isn't happening organically…it's "You will own nothing" in action … and you won't be having any children either.

  55. A list of attractions the UK offers illegal immigrants:

    i) Free board and lodging in excellent accommodation;
    ii) Generous pocket money;
    iii) Free translation services;
    iv) Access to legal aid;
    v) No obligation to work – indeed you are forbidden to do so;
    vi) Soft sentencing if you commit any crime and especially rape and other crimes against women;
    vii) There is no death penalty in UK so if you commit a murder and there is the death penalty in your country of origin the ECHR will ensure that you are not sent back there. You will probably be released well before the end of your prescribed sentence.

    FOR more information as to why the UK is such an attractive place to come to contact Mr Starmer and Mrs Balls.

  57. The woman-beating criminal who has doged deportation is hardly a good ‘father figure’ to his nephew.

  58. European Defence Chiefs: Posted three years ago.
    From left: Albania's Défense Minister Mimi Kodheli with her counterparts Jeanine Hennis Plasschaert (The Netherlands), Ursula Von der Leyen (Germany), Ine Marie Eriksen Soreide (Norway) and Roberta Pinotti (Italy) at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
    Putin must be wetting his pants in terror.
    https://scontent-cdg4-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/274011369_10160118638369954_7000091061400712963_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_p180x540_tt6&_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=24iVCjIeqVsQ7kNvgHeSX44&_nc_oc=AdgBjD7oWjb9t6y9B0gj4Bd5MVVfGfeIU6G4SCfd7XER-v9p9trr6gC9g1bC4PBlBWgqKVumegB56_7cZBJQj4lk&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-cdg4-3.xx&_nc_gid=A1qN1E9N4BinzSXQXrfJBGG&oh=00_AYAJ6qAmCeITXYbIu9-EDLAUssZajd68h6nkYRJpHRyifw&oe=67B7B9D7
    What a brilliant job they did!

      1. You are making the assumption that defence must necessarily have something to do with guns, when it can quite clearly be achieved with unicorn farts and rainbows. Off to the re-education camp with you!

  60. During my month in 1990s-world, I bought weekend newspapers for the first time in a long time. One Sunday Telegraph included more than one article on Trump. One of these discussed the effects of cutting migration and imposing tariffs and how this would negatively affect the poorest in society, the very people that Trump claims to want to help. It could have been written for The Guardian.

    Why Trump's mass deportations pose a £400bn threat to America's economy
    Removing all illegal immigrants could push US into 'depression territory', with worse to come
    Eir Nolsøe, Senior Economics Reporter
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/12/america-trump-mass-deportations-us-economy

    It was particularly interesting for a reference to Ronald Reagan, during whose presidency 2.7 million 'undocumented migrants' were given legal status. In his departing speech as president in 1989, he attributed America's success to its embrace of immigrants. "One can live in France, Germany or Turkey but not become French, German or Turkish. Anyone from any corner of the Earth can come to live in America and become an American. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost."

    This illustrated the difference between the Old World and the New, a demonstration of the Arthur Wellesley Dictum. By coincidence, the same edition (January 12) included this letter about being an Anglo-Saxon:

    Anglo-Saxon identity
    SIR – The University of Nottingham has removed the term "Anglo-Saxon" from module titles to refute "nationalist narratives", and American academics campaign against the term "because it suggests a distinct, native Englishness" (report, January 5).

    What a statement of the blindingly obvious. The Angle and Saxon peoples of the early Middle Ages colonised this land from across the North Sea, becoming the "Anglo-Saxons", or English, and populated the lower parts of Great Britain and its minor islands, with the exception of Wales and Cornwall. Of course, the term references a distinct, native and identifiable Englishness. There still is an ethnic and cultural identity of English people.

    The English are British, but not all British people living in England are English. Some are of other ethnicities native to these islands and identify as such; others belong to ethnicities foreign to our shores. Where's the shock there?

    Delete "Anglo-Saxon" from the vocabulary and you erase the national and ethnic history of the group to which I belong – together with many others. Po-faced academics should teach students actual history, not indoctrinate them with politically charged ideologies.

    Jeremy Leffler
    Birkenhead, Cheshire

    1. At a rate of 250 a day over the next 4 & 1/2 years of this government they will have added 410,000 to their army!

    2. That death is directly down to Border Force. If they had not "facilitated" the illegal invasion, instead returning the invaders to France, he might well have been alive still.

  63. Just back from the freezing shed, trying (and succeeding!) to find my small toolbox that contains the ski waxes. What was really irritating is that I'd looked in that location at least four times already (the toolbox rack, under the outdoor chairs) and not seen it! Or, are the fairies playing pranks on me?

  64. EXCLUSIVE Revealed: London's most dangerous Tube and overground lines AND stops as crime epidemic spirals to an all-time high – are they stations that YOU travel to?

    London's most dangerous Tube and train stations can today be named and shamed.

    MailOnline can reveal more than 4,100 crimes were recorded in 2024 at King's Cross St Pancras, one of the capital's busiest terminals. This is more than any other station on Transport for London's (TfL) entire network.

    However, when taking passenger numbers into account, the most dangerous station is Poplar on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), near Canary Wharf.

    Statistics collated by the British Transport Police (BTP) and TfL show 46 crimes were committed at the stop on the self-driving line last year. This equated to a rate of 58.7 offences for every million passengers.

    It was followed by Cockfosters, the northern terminus of the Piccadilly line, with 57.4 crimes per million passengers, and then King's Cross St Pancras with 51.4.

    Since Sadiq Khan became Mayor in 2016, Tube crime rates have more than doubled, from 9 per every million journeys to more than 21 last March. Similarly, offences have risen on the Overground, DLR and Elizabeth line, which opened in 2022.

    Our analysis comes after shock stats last month laid bare the ever-worsening crime epidemic plaguing commuters, who have fallen victim to violent, racist, sexist and anti-Semitic assaults.

    One woman was even whipped in the face with a belt in a sickening attack at Green Park station last January.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14333115/london-dangerous-tube-overground-lines-stops-crime-epidemic.html

      1. Yep , you could go to London and bump unto people you haven't met for years ..

        I remember many occasions like that .

        Haven't been to old smokey for years now.

        Haven't been anywhere apart from the Isle of Wight since lockdown .

      2. Yes I could leave the back door open and not get burgled, my neighbours shared my culture and language. I could walk in the woods with my dog and not worry. So unenriched.

        1. You might want to rephrase about the back door… just saying…
          So far, in my little part of Norway, we haven't reached your level of enrichment and all the crimes, rapes, murders and so on taht go with it, but knives are beginning to be too much in evidence, so it's coming.

    2. And Sad Dick will still maintain that crime hasn't increased on his watch, despite factual evidence that he is, as usual, talking utter bolleaux.

    3. What could possibly be the reason for such an increase in rape, theft and violence? It is a complete mystery to the politicians and authorities. Anyone any clues? Global warming perhaps?

      2. It seems not even the murder of their own forces the political class to accept their complete and abject failure. Look at Abbott and Lammy. Two prime examples of the utter failure of diversity.

        Stupid people, vicious, spoiled, ignorant, arrogant and infesting this country.

    4. What could possibly be the reason for such an increase in rape, theft and violence? It is a complete mystery to the politicians and authorities. Anyone any clues? Global warming perhaps?

      1. The last time I went to London was in 2019, apart from passing through and changing trains in 2022, when we were on our way to Hexham & back.

    6. The diversity commit all the crime. Khan is a diversity. His biggest crime is encouraging London to be like pakiland – an open sewer of filth.

      1. They should carve drains in the middle of the roads, to channel it all away. Just like in Shitholistan.

      1. #metoo.
        Back in the 80s, lived in the rougher parts of Tower Hamlets, Mile End, Limehouse, Bow and Milwall. Never felt threatened, SWMBO neither. Now – not keen to go near London at all.

          1. I’m blessed to have had time in Bow, Millwall and the rest. Fabulous people, and a Kray brother even offered (to SWMBO) to off a Reggae-players stereo, ‘cos they played Reggae all fcukking night at colossal volume and she couldn’t sleep – me, another benefit of learning to kip in a dormitory, I can sleep through armageddon (but not a cat scratching lightly at the door…).

  65. Phew!!!
    That was a close shave.
    Bright thing in the sky; to make matters worse, sky with bits of blue in it.
    "Should I wear my tin foil hat while I walk Spartie? I asked myself. "How dare global boiling interrupt my plans."
    Luckily, good old dunkelflaute returned, so we walked safely in the cold, grey gloom.

  66. 401768+ +up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Sunday 16 February: Shoplifters spread fear and outrage – yet efforts to combat them are pitiful

    The only common sense advice which will be totally ignored by the anti Brit political establishment is work back from Dover rectifying the multitude of daily wrongs.

    Shoplifting is one of many decent peoples deflection issues, Look out for the shoplifter whilst mo is slipping in via Dover adding to the politico'o count regarding their "leveling up" agenda.

    1. He's right. Normal people are better than Lefties. Lefties cannot cope with difference. They cannot tolerate dissent or refusal. They are so consumed with their own righteousness that they cannot understand how evil they are.

      1. Why do so many people hate so many people? I'll willingly join a discussion over left – right approach to pretty well everything, but why does it so often descend to having to commit violence or even kill the opposition?

  68. Nato at odds with Ukraine over battlefield tactics in war with Russia
    Zelensky’s troops accused of wasting expensive weapons and equipment with Soviet-style methods
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/02/16/nato-ukraine-soviet-battlefield-tactics-squandered-weapons/

    BTL

    Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner.
     https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

    Is Mr Lammy completely insane or is he just phenomenally stupid? The best way to prolong the fighting in Ukraine would be for Ukraine to join NATO which is what Lammy wants.

    1. "Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner."
      Yes, I remember the news when these were announced – both TV and print. To reassure the Russians that they were not being surrounded. I'm sure Russia still has those concernes, and maybe they will lead to pairing off with China to settle it one and for all.

    2. Lammy is a class A spanner. The man has lead for brains. Everything he does or says is through a lens of stupidity.

      1. Lead is useful, if only as a counterweight or a bullet. Lammy's brains don't even achieve that.

      2. A black woman football players said the other day to the white woman she was addressing that she was a stupid white woman.

        This was judged not to have been a racist remark but when I say that Lammy is a stupid man I shall scrupulously avoid mentioning his colour just to be on the safe side.

      3. An adjustable spanner with the jaws permanently stuck on closed. Only useful as a blunt instrument: yeah, that's Lammy.

    3. Lammy is intellectually challenged to say the least. Of that list, I suspect only Maggie meant it.

  69. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/16/starmer-must-sacrifice-net-zero-to-take-advantage-of-the-ne/

    Hmm. Here we have an ignorant front bench full of stupid socialist ideas. Do we think they'll make the right choices or the wrong ones? Starmer probably thinks data centers run on thin air, or that windmills are sufficient to power them.

    Faced with the possibility of genuine improvement – lower energy bills, fracking, low taxes, research, investment, recycling and industry

    OR

    Socialism, high taxes, soaring unemployment, unaffordable energy, falling to nothing in the AI arms race, a huge state, inefficiency and waste

    2 Tier Kier will go for the latter every time. He cannot help himself. He is incapable of making good decisions as he is a moron.

      1. 20% of the electorate. If the public sector – as non net tax payers and the welfare crowd were excluded from voting entirely parties like Labour and the green abomination would simply not exist.

      2. Or maybe too many people couldn't bring themselves to vote for the LibTories again after 14 years of serious disappointment?

        1. True. Frustratingly it leaves the Tories with absolutely nothing to confront Labour with in the Commons.

          What can they say? 'This policy is really bad!'
          'You should know, it's yours. We're just continuing it!'

          1. So did I. I didn’t stand in the election so as not to split the vote. There was no more I could do.

  70. Minister for Development Anneliese Dodds announces £17 million package and reiterates need for much more aid to enter Gaza with the support of UN agencies including UNRWA
    comes as 300,000 people now confirmed treated by UK-Med at field hospitals in Gaza thanks to UK funding
    Thousands of civilians in Gaza will receive humanitarian aid funded by the UK. Food assistance programmes, water and sanitation services and maternal and children’s healthcare are some of the areas which will be scaled up with new funding.

    This will build on UK efforts over the past 15 months which have ensured more than half a million people have received essential healthcare in Gaza.

    All this has to be paid for, of course, so UK pensioners will have to go without WFA and people waiting for urgent medical attention can sod off and the BBC TV licence will be increased by £100 to help pay for Two Tier Keir's humanitarian gestures.

  72. 401768+ up ticks,

    Starmer to join EU leaders for emergency Ukraine summit
    Meeting comes after US urged European leaders to come up with ‘ideas’ or be frozen out of peace talks

    Revoke his passport as soon as he is out of territorial waters / air space.

  73. Chat GPTs opinions:
    The Evening Standard has reported on a proposed agreement between the United States and Ukraine, which has generated significant attention. This proposal involves the U.S. gaining access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals, such as lithium, titanium, and graphite, in exchange for continued American military support. The U.S. aims to secure these critical minerals, which are essential for various technologies and defense applications.
    APNEWS.COM

    However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed reservations about the deal. He contends that the proposal predominantly favors U.S. interests without offering sufficient security guarantees for Ukraine. Zelenskyy emphasized the need for a more comprehensive agreement that includes both financial benefits and security measures to protect Ukraine against future threats, especially amid ongoing Russian aggression.
    APNEWS.COM

    The discussions took place during the Munich Security Conference, where European leaders also voiced concerns. They warned against any agreements made without their involvement, stressing the importance of European input in decisions affecting the region's security.
    SG.NEWS.YAHOO.COM

    In summary, while the proposed deal has the potential to strengthen U.S.-Ukraine relations and provide Ukraine with much-needed military support, it has also raised concerns about the adequacy of security guarantees and the need for broader international involvement in the negotiations.

    I asked: What is the Russian opinion on this?

    ChatGPT said:
    Russia has expressed strong opposition to the proposed U.S.-Ukraine agreement concerning Ukraine's rare earth minerals. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov criticized the U.S. proposal, describing it as a "commercial" arrangement that could be detrimental to Ukraine's sovereignty. He stated, "It would be better of course for the assistance to not be provided at all, as that would contribute to the end of this conflict."
    POLITICO.EU

    The Kremlin's reaction underscores Russia's concerns about the potential economic and strategic implications of such a deal, particularly regarding the control and utilization of Ukraine's valuable mineral resources. This development adds another layer of complexity to the ongoing geopolitical tensions in the region

    1. How to get around this? Jaw-jaw is better than war-war, so talking is a good start, but talk with a purpose.

        1. Russia knows all about that from WW2. Nobody has yet stamped all over the USA and brought death and destruction to their homeland. It changes the (is zeitgeist the right word??)
          In WW2. the UK mainland was bombed and many killed – it changes a people to feel the breath of Death on their cheek, so it does.
          You realise what it means to be fighting a war. Not some remote mercenaries, but your children, your home, your friends.

        2. Russia knows all about that from WW2. Nobody has yet stamped all over the USA and brought death and destruction to their homeland. It changes the (is zeitgeist the right word??)
          In WW2. the UK mainland was bombed and many killed – it changes a people to feel the breath of Death on their cheek, so it does.
          You realise what it means to be fighting a war. Not some remote mercenaries, but your children, your home, your friends.

    2. " Zelenskyy has expressed reservations about the deal."

      The cut offered to him isn't large enough.

    3. My opinion (for what it's worth): Always respect the Russians. They are more thoughtful and nuanced in their approach to the US.
      Their position, as expressed by ChatGPT, matches pretty closely my own. So, maybe if everybody could stop fighting and start talking, not only would many people remail alive, less money wasted on destruction, but there could be some opportunity to come to a satisfactory solution for all sides.

      1. Indians (Sikhs, Hindus) are good people. Pakis (Muslims) are well dodgy.
        One has to choose one’s African carefully…

    5. So Zelensky wants "financial support" yet he admits that he's "lost" over $100Bn that USA supplied? Edited to add a zero that I missed out!

      1. Is the West/NATO supporting Ukraine because Ukraine should be supported, or because they are fighting Russia? as in, any port in a storm.

        1. They are fighting Russia because Vlad stands up for traditional values and he is not on board with wokery.

    6. I suspect this Dmitry Peskov is correct in what he's reported to have said. It looks that way to me, too.

    1. Thank you. That brought back memories. As a child I used to go next door to watch as we never had a television but they only had BBC until their receiver was replaced when lightning struck the aerial.

    2. We had no telly. Mum resisted that to the end of her life. Occasionally there was something important and I went to a neighbour to watch.

    3. Thanks, Maggie, I enjoyed those. But I can't ever remember seeing a songstress called Gracie Feilds.

    2. Yes.
      No sport at (boarding) school. Freedom at home to cycle with friends (both in Nigeria and Leicestershire). Visits to aged relatives.

        1. I miss visits to my Great-Aunt Hilda. Small, fat, and utterly adorable. Called me "me duck" (pronounced "dook").
          Now I'm getting maudling… 🙁

      2. Church when at Boarding school.
        Father was skeptical. "All about control", he'd say. He's quit Quakerism as a young man.
        I had a great fright away back in the late 1980s, when I said the same – and a voice in my head said "Is that really what you think?" Nearly shat myself, so I did.
        That was rather a surprise, and caused me to rethink.

        1. Went to a church school but not Sunday school. We went to church sometimes but not usually every week. Evensong sometimes or Matins, but not HC.

    4. I loathed Sundays when I was a child.
      Being forced to go to Sunday School, completely against my will.
      Absolutely no shops or anywhere else open.
      Both utter ruinations of my last day off before going back to school on a Monday.

      1. You were lucky.
        My mother was a religious fanatic.
        I had school on Saturday mornings, competitive sport for the school on Saturday afternoons, followed by homework.
        Sunday was church in the morning, "Crusaders", a sort of church youth club, in the afternoon and homework in the evening.
        It lasted until I was 16.

      2. Oh dear, no Monopoly.. you had enough companions in your family?
        Kicking a ball against a wall?
        Listening to the top twenty on the radio?
        Schoolwork.. for Monday?

        I ‘ll bet you loved Sundays really, so go on tell us more 😉🎶🎶

    2. Ah, the woman who rewrote a short story of hers, which was OK, changed a couple names and published it again slightly expanded as a "new" book!

    1. Photo didn’t upload for some reason. Anyway Winston spent the time incarcerated in his crate. He’s obviously used to that. Now he’s crunching on a bone and Kadi is asleep.

    1. The rainbow people probably imagine they support the indigenous tribes. They should think themselves lucky the South Sea Islanders have given up eating people, though they likely think that’s a myth or they’ve found some pathetic excuse to explain it away.

      1. I doubt if anyone on this forum disagrees with him which, when the government's new definition of Islamophobia is clarified, means many of us could be deemed criminals.

        .

    5. Every time I breathed out my breath was visible as steam! I had warm gloves on, but I couldn’t feel my fingers!

    6. Excellent rant from Pat Condell.

      IMHO, the invasion per se isn't down to incompetent politicians, it has to have been planned and orchestrated by politicians working to a globalist agenda formulated by others. What other reason could there be to explain multiple countries around the World performing the same damaging act in the same time-frame? .

      If there is any incompetence it is in the belief held by current politicians that the succeeding political generation(s) will be able to control the moslem masses and therefore realise the globalist plan. Good luck with that.

  83. Just in from an hour's ladder work. Finally got all the unwanted bits of Rosa Banksia removed – thanks to our excellent, small, hand chainsaw.

    In a day or so – when I have feeling in my hands(!!) I'll sort out the wire to support the two new stems we will be training up.

    Chilly – to say the least….

  84. Shirtlifters spread fear and outrage but efforts to combat them are pitiful, 'cause the Government is stuffed full of them.

  87. My old Kindle died so I bought another. Just spent an hour setting it up and trying to find my way around it. All the carefully filed collections are unsorted so started to sort it all out again. It'll have to stay as it is for now.

  88. This afternoon, to brighten up a dull Sunday: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/19bdeb1254a3ffe71c021013fb7376657f28312886a4a8897fc44db7a3bbd295.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1041b541b3a8c43a02d05f5c82c137de36bc96144dbe6ca10ce2d6451d55787f.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/069b6fd1aa4be80771a025e3389dd413066953524dea1a83462a6e87ebeaf3f3.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6c42a3b319538d8706965721b18d26ce76c5358942cfc8f2dd62ba7174e2b8ef.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7470103cb6b44fc1d2f265e4eba0a183752db31530bb48b1f97eae26538bc5e1.jpg

    1. Lovely! I planted some snowdrops years ago but they all disappeared. All our crocuses seem to be purple this year.

      1. Yes, snowdrops are fussy sods it seems. I usually plant a few every Autumn and they are slowly increasing. Hopefully by the time I'm 130 I should have a lawn full.

        1. It’s strange how everyone’s accesses to such things are slightly different. Presumably laptops, PC’s phones and iPads etc all react differently.

          1. A lot of these book (pirate)sites like LibGen are now blocked at the ISP level in the UK I have to use a VPN to get my books now
            Edit
            In December 2024, the UK Publishers Association won an order from the High Court of Justice requiring major ISPs to block Anna's Archive and other copyright-infringing sites, extending a list of sites blocked since 2015 under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.
            Re-edit
            Anna's archive is available in the UK using the Opera browser free VPN just went there

  94. Well we are back, the weather came as a bit of a shock even though we were warned that it was chilly here.
    Mrs VVOF has come down with a nasty bug, retired to bed full of shivers. She told me that she fully expects to feel better when all is unpacked, washed, ironed and put away. She obviously has a touch of delirium about her as well.

    On a more serious note, I have come to the conclusion that flying to Australia or returning back to the UK becomes more of an ordeal the older you get. When the captain announces that they have four pilots/co-pilots on board for the Singapore to London leg you know it is not going to be a quick trip. That was confirmed fourteen and a half hours later when we landed at Heathrow.

    A few photos in no particular order https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c8e3d9c1a2be4c43c0732431007dcb9d08ca4dea3f778f8f989e6e3b9de9ac99.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/98f7aa28fb3ccefac7b857f9730986f1ec185489f52fe2775fbaf47372f5f793.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/60a4dd5f66ff1364213c40d6278999a908410a6e54cbe9069553654d71bd193a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2ea7bcbb8376104b44df59d8c6c368f250c6399c0454b5fd846d7c1e7571e0d.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0c20cc6d174e6119100b2f79edab191805001733117d85119af0909622603b83.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/95117838349adbee28ef21c5c565daf6fc429cee994be1e38e68fed2714fc07c.jpg

    3. Such a different way of life, so much more enjoyable in so many ways than the UK.
      Where did you stay?
      Singapore is also very enjoyable and well ordered and safe from crime.

      1. The brother in law lives in West Wyalong NSW and we traveled out from there across country to Adelaide and then on to Mt Gambier and Echuca before heading back. I agree it is a different way of life, especially when you leave the cities behind, I always feel that we are in the “real” Australia.

        1. We use to live south of Adelaide late 70s and then travelled towing our home a 16 x 8 ft caravan with a LWB Land Rover via Melbourne and coast road to Gladstone in QLD. And after 8 months back inland.
          A fantastic experience.
          Thise were the days.
          With our young son. A toddler
          He’s off to Sydney next month on a business trip. And Auckland.

          1. It sounds like a terrific trip you made which must have given you many memories.
            The trip out and back is long and tedious but the country and its people makes it all worthwhile.

      1. I saw the photos were sideways but have no idea why that is so, apologies to any that end up with a cricked neck!

  96. Wordle No. 1,338 3/6

    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
    ⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 16 Feb 2025

    A smooth Birdie Three?

    1. Dodgy 5 here.
      Wordle 1,338 5/6

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

    2. In between par
      Wordle 1,338 4/6

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

    3. Phew, indeed! Well, I made a right pig's ear of that one – annoyingly I abandoned my usual tactic of playing at least two starter words up front (which would have set me up for a birdie), basic error at guess 3, and then finally getting third out of three possibilities to finish. Painful…..

      Wordle 1,338 6/6

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

      1. If it's any consolation, Kadi and Winston have demolished a pig's ear each – very tasty they found them 🙂

          1. They are worn out and asleep. All the excitement; a pig's ear each and a ham bone each as well. Their teeth should be sparkly white after that.

          3. Winston shares with the late, much missed, Oscar the trait that a chest rub sends him gooey and he slides to the floor. Kadi just stands there.

    5. Par for me.

      Wordle 1,338 4/6

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

  97. 1d
    The bigger scandal is whether the Prime Minister did any diligence at all when selecting his cabinet.

    Exactly…. his reputation is on the line here… and he has now endorsed her knowing full well she had to amend her CV twice and the investigation into potential Fraud on her Record…. Yeh, he knows, but now he has backed her publicly, it is all on him and his credibility with the electorate…

    1d
    Tick, tock, tick, tock… It's only a question of time.
    It's just such a tragedy that so much damage has already been done to our country by this one, dishonest, woman.

    1d
    I get the feeling that Starmer will use the inevitable admission of guilt from reeves as a reason to sack her and ditch her budget.
    So that would make number four. An Industry Minister (fraud), Anti Corruption Minister (corruption), Health Minister (all that sh!te on WhatsApp), and then the Chancellor (fraud).

    Good times.

    1d
    What hacks me off is that she took the Bank of England for a ride, being sponsored for a Masters degree in economics at LSE between 2003 and June 2004 when she worked for and was paid by the Bank and then I presume left to stand unsuccesfully as an MP in May 2005 in Bromley and Chislehurst.
    My understanding is that you cannot stand for parliament while working for the Bank of England so when did she resign from the Bank, at the present time they say 2006 but is it correct that she was working for the bank while standing for parliament?

    1d
    Did she not leave the BoE by some mutual consent – to take a lower grade job in a provincial city?

    1d
    I think we should be looking as to how she got into Oxford, what were her O Levels and A Levels ?
    There is no doubt if you get into either Oxford or Cambridge you will emerge with some papier cul to show you were there for so many years. I have never heard of anyone not getting a degree at Oxbridge once they got over the threshhold.

    Seems to me that from her paper qualifications the BoE assumed she was fit for a basic money laundering task and when they found out she wasn't they moved her out.

    Lying is part of her life, did she take / pass her 11 + even ?

    How many years was she at Oxford ?

    1d
    Rachel can say whatever she likes because she knows that HBOS are gagged by the terms of the Compromise Agreement. Their HR spokesman even had to get her permission before saying anything – and I'm sure had to clear what she was going to say with Reeves before speaking to the press.
    The people that aren't gagged are her former colleagues – and the BBC interviewed over 20 of them.

    1. Yes but diversity and equity play a big part in selecting government portfolios now. Once you go down that path, the concept of hiring the best no longer applies.

      Maybe that plus a few compromising photos will explain it all.

    2. But Starmer loves frauds – that chap in the Chagos Islands is a money-laundering fraud!

  98. For Rastus and anyone else who is interested…

    Education Regulator Accused of Bias Over ‘Ideological’ Extra Time Review

    Yesterday exam regulator Ofqual’s new permanent chief regulator Ian Bauckham took up a bizarre campaign on extra exam time. He said he was “concerned” by the fact that a higher proportion of students at independent schools get extra time compared to state-funded schools. This move from the independent regulator curiously comes after education secretary Bridget railed against the “divide”…

    The announcement has caused serious consternation in parts of the education sector. Baukham says: “If, when we dig into the figures and get under the surface, we find something is happening that isn’t fair to all candidates, whatever school they’re in, then we will take action.” The split last year was only 42% independent, 27% in non-selective state, and 35% sixth-form and further education…

    Exam boards are now expecting instructions from Ofqual to publish data showing the percentage of “Reasonable Adjustments” handed to independent schools vs state ones. Guido hears fines are being considered for organisations who award more to private schools. Those being the ones which teach a disproportionate number of SEN children…

    The finger is pointed firmly at DfE for pushing Ofqual into this review, while sector sources tell Guido exam boards have always simply followed strict joint qualifications board evidence requirements. An industry source tells Guido:

    “This feels sinister and smacks of government interference in a supposed politically-independent body to satisfy an ideological policy of Labour Party and Bridget Phillipson in her mission to destroy the independent school sector. She refuses to properly fund SEN provision or mainstream state sector schools but is happy to splash money on an Ofqual review.“

    The way that Reasonable Adjustments are handed out does not usually require medical evidence which would confirm if a pupil is SEN. That will make a fair analysis much more expensive and complicated. Instead of focussing on improving learning support in state schools authorities are crying foul on a “concerning” arbitrary divide. Another bugbear for the unions there…

    14 February 2025 @ 16:32

    1. 2d
      It's long been one of the falsehoods about the private education sector that it is all about academic hothouses that secure Oxbridge places ahead of State schools. The reality is that many school specialise in dealing with the less able pupils, and ones that are disadvantaged in various forms of handicap, including the deaf and blind, and those with psychological problems – like Summerhill, for example. The state largely stopped making special provision, dumping all and sundry into the same state schools, and expecting teaching assistants to enable coping, but with the result that classes are often simply disrupted instead at the expense of the rest of the children.
      This is therefore an attack on such children based on the nature of the school they attend. Shameful.

      It doesnt add up
      2d
      As a former specialist teacher for deaf children, I can only concur with your comments. Before I retired, the gradual move towards generic 'one hat fits all' SEN provision, based largely on cost, caused much needless distress to both parents and children.

    2. “This feels sinister and smacks of government interference in a supposed politically-independent body to satisfy an ideological policy of Labour Party and Bridget Phillipson in her mission to destroy the independent school sector. She refuses to properly fund SEN provision or mainstream state sector schools but is happy to splash money on an Ofqual review.“ Bang on the money.

    3. Katharine Birbalsingh been taking Phillipson to task recently, in a letter she wrote to her. Published online.

  99. I visited here this afternoon:

    The Church of St Laurence is the main Church of England parish church for the village of Downton, Wiltshire, England. An unusually long building for a village church, the present structure dates from 1147. Continually altered and enlarged until the mid-19th century, the church displays every style of architecture from the Norman to Victorian eras, and has been designated a Grade I listed building.

    The church building is notable for showing the evolution of the dominant architectural styles used in Britain, from the Norman work in the nave to late Gothic work in the tower and chancel; numerous and high quality monuments, and a surviving 14th-century priests' doorway. Despite the small size of the village, the building is the fourth-largest medieval parish church (by area) in the county, surpassed only by St Thomas, Salisbury; St Andrew, Chippenham; and the remains of Malmesbury Abbey.

    Prayers were said and a time, I have no idea how long as I seem to lose myself in these places, spent recharging and getting my ducks in a row.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/41dfc71db447e7dd00977cc1b56dfc3c498a635b320e4126a76e99e9d2fec66d.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7701ff90b469861b51e676748b55d78ab0daf9d92923cd79d13d0a08ccfc65d5.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/497875a5db0e6127c6fe8e5ce5bbd95acc6d15a64b068f6596310bee5b874d69.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/26f7f0a026810bfb3daede3ee04e7ec7f5d6e4b9d102247784eff6b1cb88a07a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fa8cfc5814115d0c74fda94adce874fdc412ed848f8b9beb8a92e8974d4c738.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d5fe79a436155595057a32ccc81d0d726528bb6bdea1b82fb7bb7671760891af.jpg

    1. Handsome church. Ben Maton (organist) I think he's in Devon, visits many small churches and plays the organs he finds in them which are generally still playworthy. Many if not most churches are still in attendance sometimes just by a small congregation. I love his videos on YouTube, worth watching and even more so – listening.

    2. Lovely photographs ..well done , and I enjoyed looking at them.

      Stained glass windows are amazing … I looked up the history of them , and how perfect and incredible the art is .

      A Brief History of Stylistic Development in English Stained Glass

      Origins

      Although glass is an ancient material, the Romans appear to have been the first to use glass in windows. In the UK, fragments of coloured window glass dating to the 7th century have been excavated at sites of monasteries in Monkwearmouth and Jarrow in Northumbria. The Anglo-Saxons may have been making stained glass windows, using coloured glass and lead, but essentially, stained glass as we know it was a medieval art form which was widely used in gothic architecture.

      12th Century

      Bust of a King, c.1210 (c) Stained Glass Museum

      The oldest remaining glass in situ (in its original place) in England dates from the 12th Century. Glass from this early period survives in Canterbury Cathedral where it was placed in 1184.

      The earliest windows at Canterbury Cathedral contained two figures, one above the other, depicting the genealogy of Christ. The figures were in the clerestory and are large so that they can be clearly seen from the ground. Those few that remain have dramatic grandeur and the painting has great simplicity and strength, accentuated by the lead lines. There is a great range of deep colours. The Stained Glass Museum holds a similar example from Soissons Cathedral, France, dated c.1210.

      13th Century

      St Vincent Roundel, c.1225-50 (c) Stained Glass Museum

      Geometric grisaille panel, c.1200-50 (c) Stained Glass Museum

      In addition to 'figure' windows, the thirteenth century saw the increasing popularity of 'medallion' windows. These were often intended for the aisles of a church. Early in the 13th Century the Trinity Chapel was built at Canterbury as a shrine for St Thomas Becket, and the medallions and panels in the windows are devoted to the depiction of his life and the miracles performed after his death. The stories are illustrated with brilliant colours and with great dramatic intensity and economy. The borders around them are broad with deep colours and elaborate patterns. The roundel of St Vincent, pictured here, is a similar example of a panel from a medallion window from France.

      During the 13th Century the use of decorative 'grisaille’, or clear glass was developed. Grisaille glass had the advantages of being cheap and letting in more light. The most famous example in England is the Five Sisters window at York Minster. This window is predominantly made of white (or clear) glass, painted with an ornamental network of foliage and patterns with an occasional inset of coloured glass. This example of an early 13th century grisaille panel in the museum not only still has most of its original glass but also most of its original leads.

      https://stainedglassmuseum.com/histsg#:~:text=The%20oldest%20remaining%20glass%20in,depicting%20the%20genealogy%20of%20Christ. Do read these lovely links .

      https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-oldest-medieval-paintings-canterbury-b1890569.html

      The patience and skill creating the window scenes and the skill needed to insert the delicate glass into the window frames is awesome .. patience and loads of lead perhaps , strength of eyesight and vision re the finished article is a gift sent from God , of that I am certain .

  100. Reynolds: It Would Be ‘Irresponsible’ Not to Give Away Chagos Islands Even After Former Mauritian PM Arrested
     https://youtu.be/PO5l1eBKlKo
    **********************************

    'Give away'?? We're paying them Billions to take them off our hands…it's scary to think we've got more than another four years of this malignant shambles to put up with

    6h
    The manufactured reasons to give Chagos Islands to another country without giving the Chagossian people the right to self determination is a fundamental breach of international law as set out in the United Nations
    Where is the Human Rights lawyer?

    Oh yes he is leading the pack to disenfranchise the people because his mate will make squillions when the deal gets pushed through

    5h
    Surely the obvious question is in what way are the Chagos Islands not secure at the moment? They are British, they have an UK/American military base on them, they are in the middle of the ocean and nobody can launch a surprise attack without being spotted. How does giving them away make them safer? How does having a 99 year lease make the bases more secure than having them forever?

  101. Not going to plan for the moronic strategists in the Labour party? Biting (off) the hand that feeds you was always on the cards in this vote garnering scenario. Couldn't happen to a more deserving shower.

    I mentioned below the problem politicians would have controlling the moslem masses. Seems that is starting already.

    https://x.com/recusant_raja/status/1891101797458100402

  102. In one mixed ability language class I taught (in the target language, according to the National Curriculum guidelines), out of 28 pupils, 7 had learning AND/OR behavioural problems. I had no classroom assistant, either. All the pupils missed out; the bright were held back by those who couldn't cope and those who couldn't cope needed a different curriculum tailored to their needs. Most of my time was spent stopping those with behavioural problems from stabbing other pupils with compasses.

    1. It was much easier teaching adults in private industry, too much bad behaviour and I would just fail them in the exam – only once was enough.

  103. My first teaching job was at an independent school in Bideford which had a specialist unit for helping dyslexic children.

    This was set up by one of my best friends, Nick Barton, before I arrived at the school . Nick then went on to be a prep school headmaster in Gosforth and then returned to lecture at his alma mater, St Chad's, at Durham University.

        1. Ah yes! They joined forces with Ascham House a while ago! 2005 and it’s now Newcastle School for Boys.

  104. That's me for today. At least the miserable weather restrained itself enough to let me do the large garden chore that needed to be completed.

    Three cold days (and nights) ahead – that Thursday the global boiling starts. Apparently.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

  105. Stabbys + incidents in:
    Austria.. Munich.. (last couple of days) now.. Belgium.. France.. Dublin.. London.. Athens..
    Hmmm no MSN reports.
    I guess it is a tadge tedious.

  106. Stabbys + incidents in:
    Austria.. Munich.. (last couple of days) now.. Belgium.. France.. Dublin.. London.. Athens..
    Hmmm no MSN reports.
    I guess it is a tadge tedious.

    1. It is a very long book, but Barbarossa, How Hitler lost the war, by Jonathon Dimbleby gives significant detail on negotiations between Germany and Russia, behind the scenes, in the 20's and 30's in the run up to WW2.

      Imagine if Putin is negotiating with China as Trump acts. Not good.

      That said, I'm still on the side of those who would go for peace rather than continuing to feed young men into the Ukrainian meat grinder.

      1. 401768+ up ticks,

        Evening GGGG,

        Maybe old poof,tell me who broke the enigma code ? saving a great many lives,

          1. Tommy Flowers never seems to get the recognition he deserves. I suspect that Turing's recognition, much richly deserved, is nonetheless overstated due to his sexuality.

        2. Evening Ogga,

          Alan Turing was a brilliant mind and a tortured soul who eventually killed himself, plagued by the guilt and shame of his homosexuality.

          He was, however, still an old poof.

    3. A lot of leaders at the time were men who'd been affected by the carnage of The Great War.
      There is a theory that the reason why France capitulated so quickly in 1940 is that Marshall Petain dreaded a repeat of Verdun.

    2. What would your green minister say about the carbon emissions – or are they too young to remember the funeral pyres from previous outbreaks?

      How are your chickens doing? They are killing millions over here because of suspect bird flu

        1. You cannot eggsadurate how much a dozen eggs costs in the states nowadays.

          Nope, not sorry canada is not sending any surplus

      2. Killing the chickens so they don't die of bird flu? They either die of it or get better and then they have natural immunity. it's crazy.

    5. Who needs marksmen to cull cattle?
      Arsehole.
      We knocked off Firstborn's pigs with a stun gun and a sharp knife – over a bucket for the blood.
      Magic black pudding…

      1. They're not to shoot the cattle, they're to protect the cattle killers from the farmers.

        /sarc but not impossible in the current mad world in which we live.

  109. NHS fun facts for 2025..
    One In 10 NHS Patients Need Translation Services. Mostly to Urdu & Bengali.
    More than 2,000 healthy breasts are chopped off every year during trans chest surgery.
    NHS spending for 2024/25 is £200 billion.

  110. Ot to be outdone by potential foot and mouth or bird flu, they are now talking up two suspected Ebola cases in New York.

    We're all going to die I tell you,

        1. If I recall the International Classification of Deaths 10th Edition lists over 5,000 potential causes of deaths although "Crushed by Lifeboat" seems a bit spurious these days….

  111. From Coffee House the Spectator

    15 Feb 2025

    From the magazine
    Smoking is sexy again
    Flora Watkins

    It’s a summer’s day in Suffolk, some time in 1992. My best friend Rebecca and I are both 14 and lying on our backs in a field. We have a packet of ten Silk Cut between us, and we are practising blowing smoke rings that will make us irresistible to boys.

    Everyone we fancy smokes: Slash, Kate Moss, half the Lower Sixth at the boys’ grammar school. It might be 40 years since Richard Doll made the link between smoking and lung cancer, but we don’t care. There’s Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise with his cowboy hat and a Marlboro Red. Johnny Depp – smoking in every sense – in just about everything. It is, durrrr, a truth universally acknowledged that pretty much anyone looks hotter with a cigarette.

    Through our late teens and most of our twenties, we then gravitate towards the clouds of smoke that fill every bar, pub, gig and house party in search of men who taste of Marlboro Lights. Sure, you need to wash your hair and all your clothes every day, but this is a small price for the effortless cool that only smoking confers. Besides, how do you even think about flirting without being able to ask – or be asked – for a light? It isn’t alcohol that makes sex happen; it’s the flickering flame of a lighter between two people in a dark corner of a club.

    I love all the paraphernalia, too: spinning the wheel of the heavy silver Zippo, a present from my first boyfriend; stuffing a tissue-thin Rizla with earthy Golden Virginia when my student loan is running low, and licking its gummed edge. I adore the ashtrays, miniature works of art, particularly the vintage Michelin Man one that I nicked when on a date at Bibendum. It still sits on my kitchen dresser, too precious to use.

    But at some point smoking lost its spark. The allure began to vaporise, thanks in large part to the ban on indoor smoking in 2007. Smoking – and smokers – became less and less attractive. We had to huddle in freezing doorways to feed our depraved cravings. We became pariahs. Cigarettes disappeared behind screens in shops and the sleek packaging was replaced by grotesque images of diseased lungs.

    It isn’t alcohol that makes sex happen; it’s the flickering flame of a lighter between two people

    Prominent smokers were either stick-thin and heading for oblivion (Amy Winehouse), older reactionaries (Nigel Farage) or considered C2DE (Dot Cotton). On the way to an antenatal appointment, I recall seeing a man on a drip in a wheelchair outside King’s College Hospital. He was cuffed to a prison guard, and had a gasper gripped between thumb and index finger. Now I admire his commitment – but at the time I shuddered.

    My husband is not a fan of my smoking and it’s not great when the man you’re in love with recoils, saying: ‘Get away from me – you stink.’ So there are no photos of me in my Vivienne Westwood wedding dress with a cigarette between my lips, which is something I now regret.

    But apart from when I was pregnant, I never really stopped smoking. As my friend Arabella Byrne (we met when I asked her for a fag at a Spectator party) has written in this magazine, smoking as a mother of young children ‘helped me to grieve my former life by kidding myself that it wasn’t over’.

    If we thought smoking was becoming the preserve of the middle-aged, though, we were wrong. Stick around long enough and everything comes back into fashion – even the main cause of premature death and preventable illness in the UK.

    Whether it’s Gen Z’s nostalgia for the 1990s, a rebellion against Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer’s authoritarianism, or the realisation that vaping is naff, nasty and will kill you anyway, smoking is back. At New York Fashion Week last year, the models were smoking. The actress Lily-Rose Depp, like her father, is rarely papped without a fag in hand. When Charlie XCX was asked what ‘brat’, the name of her multi-Grammy-nominated album meant, she said it refers to the type of girl who might have ‘a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top’. We were having brat summers in Suffolk 30 years ago.

    Jared Oviatt, creator of @cigfluencers, a ‘hot celebrities smoking’ Instagram account, has said that when he started the page, ‘I was really digging into the archives. But now I feel like I have more current examples than ever.’ They include the actors Zoe Saldana and Paul Mescal and the singer Sabrina Carpenter, alongside iconic smokers such as Bob Dylan, David Lynch and almost every 1990s supermodel. There are entire Pinterest pages dedicated to Johnny Depp smoking.

    Molly, our 19-year-old babysitter, confirms that ‘literally everyone I know has, like, quit vaping and started smoking in the last couple of years… there’s such a culture of people thinking it’s attractive. I’m not sure how to explain it.’

    I realise the advice I’m about to impart is not becoming to a supposedly responsible mother of three, but I give it anyway. ‘Don’t overthink it,’ I say, ‘most people look hotter with a fag hanging out of their mouth.’

    Written by
    Flora Watkins

          1. I'm surprised the government isn't pushing smoking – solve the pensions problem and gain megabucks in tax.

          2. PPS. I once saw a chap in a wheelchair outside the entrance to a Community Hospital in Yorkshire, hoisting with the back of his hands a lit cigarette to his lips because his fingers had had to be amputated due to circulatory problems attributed to his smoking…

          4. You saved it… man, I'm both impressed and really saddened. I miss the old bugger.
            God rest his soul.

          5. No but I remembered it. His Disqus profile is still live. I noted it but said nothing because I felt sure he’d tell me that he must be allowed what few pleasures he had left. Likewise with Ann and her Pinot. Sometimes lecturing others on what’s good for them is just out of order.

          6. You are a kind and perceptive person, Sue.
            I hope you relax in the bosom of love that you deseerve.

          7. Agreed.
            There comes a point where abstinence makes no difference whatsoever and denying people things they enjoy is just a form of sadism.

          8. As I told my mother when she was worrying about having a glass of sherry; for goodness' sake, you're nearly 90. Enjoy it!

          9. We are only here once.
            I've got a Jura and ice on the go now. My mother's eldest sister made it to 96. Lived in QLD, i was told she drank a glass of whisky every evening.

          13. I'm afraid I recognised he was on the way out, and sent quality Scotch Whisky to him some months ago.
            I believe it was too late to be a problem.
            Still miss the old bugger.

    5. We all know of people who smoked and died 'young' from lung cancer or heart problems. Yet there are others – my relatives included – who smoked and lived well into their ninties. I believe you either have the gene or you haven't – if you have, you die; if you haven't you don't.

    6. Gawd, I remember being ambulanced to the hospital in Den Helder, Holland, after joining my seismic vessel, suffering severe abdominal pains. I had been on the lash during the flight and then the evening at local bars as we weren't sailing 'til the following morning. They suspected pancreatitis and basically gutted me (I have a 'zipper' scar from 3" below my belly button up to my chest). Turned out it was just a drink too much or something. Anyway, 48 hours later, in a wheelchair with drips and raised bottles on separate wheeled tripods I managed to get to the lift and down to the ground floor where smoking was still allowed.

        2. Stopped smoking in 2010 following a nasty heart attack. Fit as a flea nowᵥᵥᵥᵥᵥᵥᵥᵥ…

          1. I began smoking at 15. It was cool to smoke when you're a teenager. Stopped at 25 in spite of living in Spain where cigarettes were cheap. Not so cool when you grow up.

  113. From Coffee House the Spectator

    15 Feb 2025
    Coffee House
    Julius Strauss
    What Putin wants and what America will do
    16 February 2025, 1:06pm

    WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 12: U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he takes a question from a reporter after Tulsi Gabbard is sworn in as Director of National Intelligence in the Oval Office at the White House on February 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. Gabbard, who will oversee the 18 intelligence agencies and serve as Trump's advisory on intelligence, was confirmed by the Senate 52-48.

    If I had a penny for every time I have been told that Russian President Vladimir Putin only wants respect. Or that he is only interested in eastern Ukraine. Or that if Kyiv is only denied NATO membership then he will call off the tanks.

    Well, in the last seven days US President Donald Trump has given Putin all this and more.

    And, though it is still early days, so far the war is showing no sign of slowing. And what has the man who wrote The Art of the Deal asked for in exchange for all this diplomatic largesse? Absolutely nothing.

    In fact, the only substantive demand Trump has made so far is of the Ukrainians. Last week Washington sent Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, to Kyiv with an extraordinary demand.

    Bessent presented President Volodymyr Zelensky with a document to sign which would hand over the rights to half of all Ukraine’s rare earth minerals – of which it has trillions of dollars worth – as recompense for weaponry Washington provided under the Biden administration.

    This is the equivalent of inviting a friend in need to a free dinner, and then later presenting them with a bill for many times the cost.

    This is the equivalent of inviting a friend in need to a free dinner, and then later presenting them with a bill for many times the cost

    The events of the last week have been so dizzying that – lest we become punch drunk – let’s do a quick recap.

    On 12 February, Trump spent 90 minutes on the phone with Putin. Both leaders talked about how great their own and each other’s countries were, and Putin congratulated Trump on his election campaign and his penchant for ‘common sense’ solutions.

    Trump said that the two leaders would probably meet again soon in each other’s countries.

    Trump then called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to inform him of his conversation with Putin, and to tell Zelensky that Putin wanted peace.

    On the same day, if my notes are correct, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Ukraine will not get back the land it has lost to Russia. He added that NATO membership for Kyiv is off the table.

    It was left to Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief who hails from Estonia, a country that knows the Russians only too well, to say what many others were thinking: ‘Why are we giving [Russia] everything they want, even before negotiations have started?’

    Next, JD Vance, the US vice-president, offered Putin another unsolicited concession. He said that there would be no US forces deployed to Ukraine. Any deal would be left to the Europeans to police. If those forces were attacked, he added, they would not be covered by NATO’s Article 5 mutual-defense guarantee.

    At this point, on 14 February, Zelensky, Vance, and much of the leadership of European defence and politics, traveled to Munich for the annual security conference.

    Zelensky reminded them all of the 1938 Munich agreement in which Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, signed over the Czech Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler in exchange for guarantees he would advance no further. (Chamberlain, incidentally, was greeted as a great peacemaker at the time.)

    Then Vance gave a speech that barely mentioned Ukraine or security. Instead of worrying about Russia, he told the leaders of Europe, they should worry about themselves.

    He cited a recent Romanian presidential election won by a man called Călin Georgescu, an unknown until he appeared on TikTok on a white horse.

    (When it transpired that Moscow had meddled in the vote with a sophisticated social media campaign, the Romanian courts declared that election rules had been broken and ordered that it should be rerun.)

    Vance said that this was evidence of a lack of democracy in Europe. Europe, he said, was more at risk from progressive policies – he cited a few more fringe issues to back up his claim – than from Russia, China, or any external enemy.

    To say that Europe’s good and great were left open-mouthed would be an understatement.

    The Munich Security Conference has, of course, thrown up surprises before.

    Putin’s speech in 2007, when he excoriated the West for allegedly treating Russia poorly, has gone down as one of the turning points of post-Cold War history.

    Perhaps Vance was only saying what he thought ‘the new sheriff in Washington’ (his words) wanted to hear. Perhaps he felt he had been eclipsed by the radicalisms of Elon Musk and wanted to win back the boss’s favor.

    But if talk about seizing Canada, Greenland, and Panama had been the sartorial equivalent of removing a few frilly outer garments by the new US administration, Vance’s speech was, at least for the Europeans, a full striptease.

    It revealed the new Trumpian vision for the world in all its shocking nakedness. The US would champion the AfD – the German party of the far right – and a questionable Romanian on a horse, while admonishing Europe for worrying about Putin.

    And so, back to the man in the Kremlin.

    To imagine that Putin wants only this, or only that, is at best speculation, at worst self-delusion. During my last trip to Russia proper, way back in 2017, officials and academics were already telling me that Moscow was at war with the West.

    And, as far as Putin is concerned, it seems to be an all-consuming war to which he will devote Russia’s considerable resources. After all, in his eyes, it is his best chance to win a legacy that will put him in the pantheon of expansionist Russian greats such as Catherine and Peter.

    Set against this push from the east, what does the West have? Unhappy electorates who don’t want to pay for bigger armies and eastern European populists who act more as Moscow’s proxies than stand-up members of the clubs to which they belong.

    And an America which is not only terminating its services as the world’s policeman. That is perhaps something we expected. But it is also turning predatory. And that is something we didn’t expect.

    Tellingly the first demands of the new US administration have not been from the world’s aggressors, but from their victims. The Palestinians should leave Gaza so it can become a US real estate development. The Ukrainians should hand over their rare earth minerals (for past favours rendered).

    Autocratic China is rising. Dictatorial Russia is on the march. And the cop we depended on to keep us safe, has not so much retired, as morphed into a predatory mafiosi.

    Human nature tends to be optimistic. In early 1992 few in Sarajevo thought there would be war. In early 2022 most believed Russia would not invade Ukraine. In Afghanistan in 2011 diplomats told me with confidence that the defeat of the Taliban was only a matter of time.

    I do not want to be a doomsayer. I am generally of sunny disposition. But certain realities are now staring us in the face. And we must dare look. Only once we have opened our eyes and taken in the rainclouds and lightning ahead can we begin to chart our path through a very stormy sky.

    Written by
    Julius Strauss
    Julius writes Back to the Front, a substack on Ukraine, Russia, the Middle East & the Balkans

      1. My mother made it to 105 and I put that down to her daily sherry at 5pm (and perhaps never having had a job)

          1. Why should I let the toad work
            Squat on my life?
            Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
            And drive the brute off?

            Six days of the week it soils
            With its sickening poison –
            Just for paying a few bills!
            That's out of proportion.

            Lots of folk live on their wits:
            Lecturers, lispers,
            Losers, loblolly-men, louts-
            They don't end as paupers;

            Lots of folk live up lanes
            With fires in a bucket,
            Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
            They seem to like it.

            Their nippers have got bare feet,
            Their unspeakable wives
            Are skinny as whippets – and yet
            No one actually _starves_.

            Ah, were I courageous enough
            To shout, Stuff your pension!
            But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
            That dreams are made on:

            For something sufficiently toad-like
            Squats in me, too;
            Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
            And cold as snow,

            And will never allow me to blarney
            My way of getting
            The fame and the girl and the money
            All at one sitting.

            I don't say, one bodies the other
            One's spiritual truth;
            But I do say it's hard to lose either,
            When you have both.

      1. He always said he was going to leave his body to medical science. I don't think he wanted a funeral.

      1. “If all the year were playing holidays;
        To sport would be as tedious as to work.”

        ― William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1

      2. Homer Simpson:
        “Here’s to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

  116. Nope.
    Sadly.
    Maybe it's a bit private – I'd hate to intrude.
    Private send-off at home.

      1. Poor Tom had a very fractured few years after he left Norfolk , his heart was broken in every way . His F/B friends in England were unable to help him and although he was lucky to find accommodation in Moffat , Scotland , his heart was still in Norfolk . RIP Tom .🙏🏻🙏🏻

        (My F/B comment to Judy on Tom's page)

  120. Well little 18 monrhs grand daughter came today while her 5 year old brother went to Arsenal with his eldest cousin aunt and mum and dad.
    We took her to another cousin's fith birthday party.
    All the family friends and those from her class at school were there. There's not much and old boy can do at a kids party, so I stayed in the community centre kitchen with her orlther grandparents and did most of the washing up.
    I'm off to bed when I've administered my three eye drops. 3 ….4 times a day for 3-4 weeks.
    Night all 🙄😴

    1. If Farage had any real sense of justice and humanity he would be joining the cries for Tommy Robinson to be treated properly.

  122. Hundreds of people have been charged with online “speech crimes” amid claims from the Trump administration that civil liberties are under threat in Britain.

    Almost 300 people have been charged with spreading illegal “fake news” or sending “threatening communications” since the Online Safety Act came into force in 2023. Dozens have received convictions under the act.

    Multiple people were charged under the law following last summer’s rioting in the wake of the Southport stabbings. The riots also led to what are believed to have been among the first convictions under the new rules.

    Data from the Crown Prosecution Service, disclosed to The Telegraph under a Freedom of Information request, shows that 292 people have been charged with communications offences since the law came into effect in October 2023.

    This includes 23 people who were charged with sending a false communication and hundreds more for sending a threatening communication. So far, 67 people have been convicted under the new rules.

    The Online Safety Act, which was passed into law under Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, requires technology giants to tackle dangerous online posts and videos or risk billions of pounds in fines.

    It also created a number of new criminal offences. These include cyberflashing, sharing “revenge porn” and sending illegal false communications, more commonly referred to as a “fake news” offence.

    This offence banned disinformation that could cause “non-trivial psychological or physical harm”. However, the provision has prompted concerns among free speech advocates, who warned it represented a new form of “speech crime”.

    Hundreds charged with online ‘speech crimes’ under ‘Orwellian’ crackdown
    Almost 300 people fall foul of new laws as JD Vance claims free speech in Britain under threat

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/15/hundreds-charged-speech-crimes-jd-vance-warns-civil-liberty/

    1. Can't a group of normal people bring a joint civil action against the BBC and other MSM outlets for publishing misinformation?

    2. Can't a group of normal people bring a joint civil action against the BBC and other MSM outlets for publishing misinformation?

  124. Just took a look at the Reform Membership ticker. Just less than 500 to go to reach 210,000 members!
    I do so hope the numbers continue to grow to give the present incumbents in Government Sleepless nights that they will be held to account!

  125. Son and family came round for Sunday lunch today.

    He has 3kW output of solar panels on his roof, 16kWh of battery storage and two electric vehicles.
    He stores as much power in batteries .as he can during the day with free roof power.
    He uses Octopus energy at 7p/kW at night with an EV tariff and uses that to charge EVs, run domestic appliances and charge batteries at a rate of up to 25kW.

    He now says he working on installing a heat pump with higher thermal output rads and expects to run it on excess EV rate electricity and stored battery power at night with a heat pump gain of between 3kW and 5kW for every kW input.
    He's not intending to change the CH plumbing.

    DIL says it's a pipedream.

    1. An air to air heat pump would be viable if he has low cost electricity. No subsidy of course, but plenty of availability, especilly South Korean brands.

      1. I have a South Korean designed EV.
        It’s viable for what I use it for because I charge it at a night tariff with a domestic rate of VAT.

    1. Starmer is a disgrace.
      Are they talking about "peace-keeping" troops after a peace arrangement between the US and Russia?
      It has already been said that such an agreement would include European troops on the ground.
      So Starmer has probably been told what to say by the Americans. Expect similar bleatings from Germany, which is also under the Americans' thumb.

  128. Well, chums, it's now my bed-time, so I shall leave you here. Good night all, sleep well, and see you all tomorrow morning.

    1. Look speaking as a nine year old who experienced/saw violence in Egypt in 1955/56/and who was evacuated from Ismailia / Moascar Garrison with my mother and sister, and said goodbye to Daddy who was then arrested the next day with hundreds of white British and French and Italian engineers etc and interned in Cairo for 3 months .. yes and released .. care of the UN

  130. Goodnight, folks. The Rayburn's stoked, the hot water bottles are warming the bed, I'm just going to watch the last act of Artaserse and then I'll be catching zeds.

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