Sunday 19 February: Brexit was meant to reinstate an authority to which the British people feel allegiance

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments 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.

599 thoughts on “Sunday 19 February: Brexit was meant to reinstate an authority to which the British people feel allegiance”

    1. That’s got to be Looney Tunes and not Merrie Melodies: nothing and nobody merry when Sturgeon is around.

  5. Tyranny can’t win, we stand with Ukraine in the name of freedom. Rishi Sunak. 19 February 2023.

    Of course, we cannot kid ourselves about the impact of Putin’s actions on each and every one of us. Your energy prices, the cost of grain, the impact on the world’s most vulnerable countries. But that is why we must redouble our efforts, accelerate our lethal aid and bolster our support to help Ukraine secure a lasting peace.

    It won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick, but it will be worth it.

    Tyranny cannot – and will not – win. We must have courage and we must continue to stand with Ukraine in the name of freedom.

    We have no obligations to Ukraine of any kind. It is not, and has never been an ally. Until a year ago 95% of the population would have been unable to point to it on a map! Far from the war illustrating that Russia is a danger to us it has proved conclusively that it is not

    The only tyranny we need fear is that represented by Sunak and his Globalist friends. They have extinguished Freedom and Democracy here in the UK. It is a Police State where even the right to speak is now denied. As he blathers about Ukraine he facilitates the arrival of an army of occupation across the Channel.

    Vladimir Putin is not one of our enemies. They are here among us!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11766741/PRIME-MINISTER-RISHI-SUNAK-Tyranny-win-stand-Ukraine-freedom.html

      1. Morning Ndovu. I noticed that. Both Newest and Favourite. Usually of course the 77 Brigade trolls come out and fix the latter. It’s part of a pattern. The Spectator has had only two (one this morning) Gung-Ho articles about Ukraine this week. The Elites are are starting to feel the pressure .

  6. Tyranny can’t win, we stand with Ukraine in the name of freedom. Rishi Sunak. 19 February 2023.

    Of course, we cannot kid ourselves about the impact of Putin’s actions on each and every one of us. Your energy prices, the cost of grain, the impact on the world’s most vulnerable countries. But that is why we must redouble our efforts, accelerate our lethal aid and bolster our support to help Ukraine secure a lasting peace.

    It won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick, but it will be worth it.

    Tyranny cannot – and will not – win. We must have courage and we must continue to stand with Ukraine in the name of freedom.

    We have no obligations to Ukraine of any kind. It is not, and has never been an ally. Until a year ago 95% of the population would have been unable to point to it on a map! Far from the war illustrating that Russia is a danger to us it has proved conclusively that it is not

    The only tyranny we need fear is that represented by Sunak and his Globalist friends. They have extinguished Freedom and Democracy here in the UK. It is a Police State where even the right to speak is now denied. As he blathers about Ukraine he facilitates the arrival of an army of occupation across the Channel.

    Vladimir Putin is not one of our enemies. They are here among us!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11766741/PRIME-MINISTER-RISHI-SUNAK-Tyranny-win-stand-Ukraine-freedom.html

  7. From the Letters page:-

    SIR – Two of your correspondents (Letters, February 12) deplore the current shortage of skilled artisans and blame it on the demise of apprenticeships. But the cause of this goes back further – to our secondary schools.

    I was a teacher of metalwork at a comprehensive school. The nature of the teaching was light engineering, but boys who opted to continue in this subject into the fourth and fifth years would have had experience of hand tools and basic techniques: the lathe, shaper, milling machine, brazing, simple casting forge work and sheet metal work. They might also have done some simple fibre-glass work. At the time of my retirement we were just getting into vacuum forming and plastic coating.

    On leaving, many of these boys (no girls in those far-off days) would successfully seek apprenticeships with Ford, the gas board, Marconi, the Central Electricity Generating Board and sundry other smaller firms in Essex.

    For job interviews, applicants would take along artefacts they had produced in the school workshop. Shortly after my retirement in 1985 my workshop was stripped of is machinery and 12 computers were installed. I rest my case.

    Ron Hurrell
    Benfleet, Essex

    Brian Thorne 1 HR AGO
    What type of young people want to do metalwork these days?
    What type of young schoolchildren even consider the quaint idea of picking up bricks and laying them in some sort of fashion?
    Why would anyone even think to train to become a plumber or electrician?
    All of these skilled jobs have been demeaned over the years to the point of being shameful or that the person ‘ didn’t do well at school’ and we wonder why no-one even considers the idea of working in a trade?
    Funnily enough, all of these essential positions in society require brainpower, manual dexterity, cognitive skills and an aptitude to work things out but who would have thought it?
    As for plastering, then who in their right mind would even want to do such an outdated form of physical labour!
    Never mind, at least we will have an ‘ educated’ group of people in the future, all clutching their bit of paper telling them they have a Degree….

    Tom Archer
    1 HR AGO
    What type? Plenty I suspect.
    I would estimate that around a third of school pupils are essentially wasting their time at school between the ages of 14 and 16, getting bored and often disrupting others.
    In perhaps the most important subject, maths, they tend to switch off because the challenges are never set in a real world context.
    Instead of asking them to multiply 4 x 5 x 6, present the challenge as calculating how many building blocks are on a pallet that is four blocks wide by six blocks deep by five blocks high.
    Trigonometry can also be brought from an abstract high that goes over the heads of most kids to a means to solving problems, simply by presenting the subject as an everyday means to solving everyday problems.

    Brian Thorne 1 HR AGO
    Yet many of the best bricklayers, carpenters and plumbers have great mathematical minds?
    The trouble is in the teaching, or lack of, at schools where there is little ability to actually teach the subject?
    Don’t underestimate the ‘ bored’ 14-16 year olds, they are being let down by the schools and their obsession with sending children on to Universities.

    1. Yo B o B

      Another problem of course is that these days, most teechers have never left school.

      Primary, Junior, Secondary (both in terms of age and level of instruction) University, Teecher Traneing,

      Universities are hotbeds of Wokism and it festers on.
      None of the higher educators have lived real lives outside of teaching

      Blair the Ba*stard is responsible for the Death of Education in UK

      1. Many arguments can be made in favour of schoolteachers not becoming schoolteachers until they have spent at least six years doing other jobs.

        1. The same argument can be used for police officers. To properly understand the public, you have to work with them and among them. I worked in industry for seven years before joining up. When I joined up I found myself in a training-school classroom with young people who had never experienced life ‘outside’, since they became police cadets straight from school.

      2. Your first comment is precisely why I worked after leaving university and before doing my PGCE. The last thing I wanted was to go from school, to university, to FE college and back into school without having touched the real world.

  9. Here’s a prospect to terrify unionists — a Scottish leader with Christian values
    Rod Liddle
    Sunday February 19 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    Should Christians be allowed to stand for elected public office — or should we ban them, as we do with serving coppers and bankrupts? It is a salient point to consider as we all shroud ourselves in gloom and misery over the departure of Nicola Sturgeon and wait to see who becomes the next leader of the Scottish National Party.

    One of the favourites for the job is a woman called Kate Forbes, who has outraged many London media people by having professed a belief in Jesus Christ. Kate is a member of the evangelical, Calvinist Free Church of Scotland, whose members are allowed to have sex only through a hole in a large wooden board running down the centre of the marital — yes, marital — bed. They are also expected to spend one tenth of every year reciting devotions on the top of a large pole, like Simeon Stylites. I think I have got this right.

    Anyway, Kate is a believer and has even had the audacity to suggest that God plays an important role in her life. If she had said she was a believer but that actually, when push came to shove, God was of only fleeting interest to her and she really cared more about shinty and Strictly Come Dancing, she’d probably have been OK with the Westminster commentariat. It would have put her down as a fascist lunatic, but not a dangerous one.

    We have been here before, of course, when the Liberal Democrats decided that Tim Farron should lead their ineffectual, wet-lipped rabble in 2015. He also appalled people by saying he believed in God and was hectored at every turn by journos inquiring of him whether he hated gay people. Tim didn’t last very long — a victim of the increasing totalitarianism of our times, I reckon: you must think as we do, or we will destroy you. Believing homosexuality to be a sin may be a viewpoint imposed by the church and shared by quite a lot of people, but it is no longer allowed.

    As Farron was hounded, day after day, even some liberal commentators began to feel a little sympathy for him. One chap, writing in The Guardian, said: “I don’t care what he considers sinful, so long as it doesn’t translate into policy. For that reason, however, he should be watched like a hawk for any hint of discriminatory law-making.”

    To my mind that is even more dishonest. People enter parliament because of their beliefs, not in spite of them. It is the moral duty of Farron, Forbes and their like to represent those beliefs and to enjoin them upon the rest of us. If we don’t like them, we can always tell them to get lost at the ballot box. To insist that an MP should ignore his or her conscience is fabulously arrogant. No such stricture would apply to an MP whose spavined shibboleths required him or her to advance the cause of transgender rights, gay marriage and so on — so why should we get worked up simply because someone believes the opposite?

    There is an added piquancy with Forbes, of course, because the benighted Sturgeon was forced to resign as a consequence of her hilarious volte-face over the case of the male rapist in a blond wig, Isla Bryson, whom Sturgeon’s own administration had placed in a women’s jail. A little later she decided that this was a bad idea and that all such offenders now claiming they were women would be kept in men’s prisons. She held to this new line while still insisting that men who transitioned were absolutely real women, in line with her party’s ludicrous gender recognition bill.

    Much as you might expect, Forbes had been against that bill and was asked on a radio programme if her views were compatible with modernity. The answer is, of course, yes, one hundred times over. The gender recognition bill had scant support among the Scottish public, but such is the certitude with which inhabitants of the affluent, liberal bubble believe in their asinine ideology that they assume, as a matter of course, we all believe the same thing.

    Palpably we do not. And in the case of gender recognition, when reality suddenly, alarmingly, strikes home, even the liberals are minded to drop the jiggery-wokery and resort to that rarest of commodities, common sense. Nicola Sturgeon had to do so, and so have countless sporting bodies that rightly feared the extinction of women’s sport.

    I would like to wish Kate Forbes good luck, but will not do so because I fear that her leadership of the SNP might make independence more likely. She is a very capable politician and not saddled with Sturgeon’s years of grotesque failure of governance, nor her misguided wish to make Scotland the most right-on country on earth. Let’s hope the job goes to some woke McDrongo instead.

    ● The average length of a chap’s old fella has increased by more than a quarter over the past 30 years, according to research from Stanford. Whereas once we had but a cornichon, we now have the full dill pickle.

    The researchers confess themselves unsure about why this should be but suspect that sedentary lifestyles and a diet of junk food may be involved. This may offer exciting new strategies for the Burger King marketing department when it is next promoting the Whopper.

    However, my suspicion is that, as the research was gathered from people who, er, self-identified the length of their Uncle Gilbert, the change may be the consequence of that increasingly popular pastime known as “lying”.

    Disney axes 7,000 jobs

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F01a5a114-afaa-11ed-bde0-64a2ad0fcf88.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=846

    The spy who just came out with it

    It’s 13 years in prison, then, for the “spy” David Smith, who took photos around the British embassy in Berlin and flogged them to the Russians. I wonder what it was that alerted our vigilant intelligence services.

    Could it have been the photograph Smith posted on social media showing him smiling in front of a Russian tank, wearing a T-shirt with the Russian flag and the word “Russia” on it, in Russian? The one of him dressed as a Russian separatist guerrilla? Or the one of him with a placard reading, “Save Donbas people from Ukrainian Nazi army”?

    I am no expert, but I would have thought that the trick to being a spy, David, mate, is to operate in a slightly more nuanced manner and maybe disguise your sympathies a little.

    Go on, teacher, show us your cane
    I was intrigued by the following excerpt from a book on sex education aimed at teachers of kids aged 11 and up: “For others good sex is quick, rough and anonymous. You can also explore the fact that some people enjoy feeling pain during sex, which is often referred to as kink or BDSM.”

    My worry is that the children may have no idea what BDSM is and expect some sort of demonstration from the teacher. Perhaps that is why they are determined to go on strike: they are sick of wearing nipple clamps and spanking one another. Incidentally, I would have no objection to the substance of that quotation if it were followed by these words: “These people are known as deviants and perverts and you should stay away from them.”

    1. ‘Morning, C1. Thanks for posting – I always enjoy Rod Liddle’s column. In particular, his “Go on, teacher, show us your cane” reminds me of the sketch in Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life, where Cleese demonstrates basic sexual technique by bringing into the lesson his wife as his ‘assistant’. Even now, many years later, that scene still raises a smile! Pure genius.

      For the uninitiated:

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zRD0-7NSXd8

    2. What Rod Liddle doesn’t say and should have done is that she is far too young at 32 – no experience of life. Or work, really since she spent just 2 years as a junior accountant in a bank before being elected to Holyrood. She epitomises everything which has been, and is, wrong with our political establishment regardless of party.

      1. Whilst agreeing with you Fiscal, it’s pleasing to see that she was an accountant, and as such

        understands numbers, unlike her predecessor.

        1. It was Dennis Healey, I believe, who opined that politicians should have hinterland, one of the few opinions he held which I can agree with.

      2. The only reason Forbes was ‘promoted’ (the day before giving the annual financial statement to the Shortbread Senate) was because her predecessor Derek MacKay was caught out grooming a teenage boy. The boy was 16 when the behaviour was discovered, though MacKay had been in contact with him for at least two years.

        Unsurprisingly, accountant or not, Forbes floundered as she was effectively reading out MacKay’s work but TV’s Nicola Sturgeon could hardly throw her under the bus so soon after having ‘sacked’ her predecessor…albeit he remained on full pay and expenses.

        1. Thanks for that reminder. It’s actually quite scary that someone so callow could shortly be in charge of a budget of billions fleeced from the population of the whole United Kingdom. And morally wrong which, of course, her professed Christian faith should be screaming at her.

        2. Thanks for that reminder. It’s actually quite scary that someone so callow could shortly be in charge of a budget of billions fleeced from the population of the whole United Kingdom. And morally wrong which, of course, her professed Christian faith should be screaming at her.

        3. Thanks for that reminder. It’s actually quite scary that someone so callow could shortly be in charge of a budget of billions fleeced from the population of the whole United Kingdom. And morally wrong which, of course, her professed Christian faith should be screaming at her.

    3. Secession, not “independence”.

      Though I am destined to be forever annoyed by the fact no-one who is a journalist or politician knows this.

  11. ‘Morning All

    Sunday Medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c6b25f16c4f7d31d06a7d63dfe6e1b268fa851de2649a3d4188892c424e4c09a.png

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    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/91f39f6bd22cd9638c95af84ce0cb06e86aeb1d18a64e30a8fc0242c3a1066e4.jpg

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    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/150646229d2e9ec243a4bb6227a4149748a770e1170edb93eb8696fdb7966509.jpg

    1. The cows / vegan one is excellent!
      Who is the … person in the bottom right hand image, and is it really the same person?

    2. Looking at those two pictures, does anyone else get the idea she’s a full on drug abuser?

  13. The Union Jack held by the protestor in the image on the letters page is upside down, is it a deliberate sign of distress?

    2. The David Lammy that scored 11 points on Celebrity Master Mind.
      I think 4 on his specialist subject. Thicko.

          1. I think he was the first black Briton to go to Harvard. After supposedly graduating he didn’t spend much time in any job.

      2. From my recollection he only scored that many because John Humphrys was singularly forgiving on answers that weren’t strictly correct. In proper Master Mind they would have been marked wrong.

        1. Comment ….Doubt whether an appearance on celebrity mastermind bears relation to the Masters degree Lammy obtained from Harvard Law School. At least he won’t be taking holidays when a civil war was taking place in Afghanistan.

          Thick as two planks. He probably paid for the degree. When you are that thick politics is a good place to hide.

    3. It’s pathetic to see the way politicians are dazzled by Gates’s billions and lap up everything he says.

  15. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Amazing Parrot

    I was in a pet shop when I noticed a Muslim with the most amazingly coloured parrot perched on her shoulder.

    “Where did you get that from?” I asked.

    “Birmingham! There’s f***g thousands of ’em!” said the Parrot.

    2. I was in Birmingham in September last year. Loads of women walking around in full-length dresses and hijabs, some wearing face veils. It felt like a foreign city, and I have no wish to return.

        1. I doubt we will ever be rid of them. They breed at a fast rate, and younger Brits have all been indoctrinated to believe they are all ‘just like us’ , posing no threat whatsoever. They are allowed to continue following their ‘culture/customs’, even when incompatible with decent, civilised society. By the time the younger Brits wake up, it will be too late.
          Mind you, when tax paying citizens have dwindled to the point where they are but a small minority, who is going to fund the ropers?
          When we had a significant influx of Indians fleeing from East Africa (1970s?), those people worked hard and integrated into British life. Those sort of immigrants are not a problem.

          1. I have had and still do have personal contact with people who originate from India. I find them very agreeable and pleasant people. Trustworthy. But never muslims, they have already abused many white children, something they were famous for at Alhambra. They stole them from our shores and kept them in caves for the use of, then fed them to the palace lions.

          2. Our older son was good friends all through school with a couple of children from such families. We are still in regular contact with our neighbours from our first home. The wife’s family originated from India, she and her siblings came over from Uganda as young adults. You couldn’t ask for more genuine people.

      5. Good morning all,
        When I am fast forwarding through the ads on TV, one ad seems to pop up every time. I haven’t bothered to look more closely, but it is undoubtedly yet another instance of emotive begging by some charidee. It features one creature totally (apart from eyes in the letterbox) shrouded in black. However much money these savages are given, be it official ‘aid’ or charidee donations, they never seem to become more civilised. No matter how ‘starving’, they still manage to breed.

      6. Good morning all,
        When I am fast forwarding through the ads on TV, one ad seems to pop up every time. I haven’t bothered to look more closely, but it is undoubtedly yet another instance of emotive begging by some charidee. It features one creature totally (apart from eyes in the letterbox) shrouded in black. However much money these savages are given, be it official ‘aid’ or charidee donations, they never seem to become more civilised. No matter how ‘starving’, they still manage to breed.

  16. Good morning, all. Cloudy, dry and calm at the moment.

    Looks familiar?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/593be534c7feebdfa97ae8b8dc38f375346f7731654f6bc4dfed83792680dbac.png

    China, not to be outdone.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/96d0f5586439f2666f166ef2838b71c17f1e13144d833a05c6a2db68d0ffbfa0.png

    The reality of Biden’s regime and its obsession with Ukraine to the exclusion of much else.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ab7e08d6be37e2a1f424670379d58a93a2ca737dd41d46b04a716414adc0110b.png

  17. A couple of BTL Comments:-

    Luci Enne
    2 HRS AGO
    During a speech at the Munich Security Conference this week, George Soros argued in favour of using an experimental weather control technology to mitigate global warming.
    Ice sheets melting in Greenland, in particular, could doom human civilisation.
    “Our civilisation is in danger of collapsing because of the inexorable advance of climate change.”
    Meanwhile, Swedish climate activist (and Soros mouthpiece) Greta Thunberg urged her fellow climate change activists to step outside of legal methods to achieve their climate goals.
    Thunberg argued that if those who made great strides in social justice and civil rights throughout history only stuck to using legal channels, “we wouldn’t be where we are today.”
    The activist advocated that real climate change action can only come from such radical action.
    Of course, there are those who would advocate that one tampers with Mother Nature at one’s peril. EDITED

    Steve Jones
    2 HRS AGO
    …..and then there are those like me who totally ignore Soros, the Swedish snot and all their ilk – they are totally irrelevant to my life and are nothing more than lying charlatans.

    Steve Jones, I am afraid, is making a HUGE error by Ignoring the “Swedish snot”. We need to take note of the ramblings of such people so we can defend ourselves against them.

    1. “Greta Thunberg urged her fellow climate change activists to step outside of legal methods to achieve their climate goals”.

      That is already happening. Attacks on food production facilities for a start.

      1. …and don’t forget the recent praising of some climate protesters by a judge, of all people. This will surely be the green light for others to ape such conduct. Where is the Lord Chancellor when you need him? Oh, it’s Mr Raab, who is currently preoccupied with saving his own skin.

        1. The statement by the criminals was fake news. They misrepresented what the Judge actually did say.

          1. Hopefully the CPS will take that as a red rag to a bull and appeal for a stronger sentence to wipe the smirks off their faces

    2. If the Doom Goblin is actively encouraging people to break the law, couldn’t someone arrest her and lock her away?

    3. Hold one there – lok, theLefty greens are already breaking the law by holding up traffic. Plod are supporting them. The state is endorsing their criminality. Judges let them off. Opposition to this endorsement brings about punishment. Yes, the police set about punishing those law abiding individuals and protect the criminal.

      This madness must end or else we’re heading for carnage.

  18. Morning all 😉 😊

    And yes Mr Sunak what is your real reason for not completing the brexit process?
    Have you ‘been got at’ ?
    Re my post last evening about the film Dark Waters. It all about the dedication of the lawyer Rob Bilott in the Dupont Scandle. As I mentioned it effects almost every single human being on the planet.
    Corporate greed and arrogance are still ruining many peoples lives and in some case causing so many avoidable health issues. And even some birth defects.

    1. Sunak, like many senior politicians, hasn’t been got at, they are fully paid up members of the Davos gang and following the agenda all along.

    2. Sunak has no interest in Brexit. His entire ethos is to obey the diktat of his masters and that is to force us back in.

      1. What is the point of someone like him being put in place as leader of the Conservative party ?

  19. 371356+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Sunday 19 February: Brexit was meant to reinstate an authority to which the British people feel allegiance

    Sunday 19 February: Brexit was meant to reinstate an authority to which the British people fought a war to maintain freedom and democracy.

    That freedom and democracy so easily reversed these past three plus decades treacherously, intentionally, and in many cases total ignorance of their parties true agenda content with putting the party first & foremost regardless of consequence.

    We are now suffering the consequences, mass murder ,mass now what passes for a government controlled morally illegal immigration,mass ongoing (topped up daily ) paedophillia ALL via the ballot booth and majority consent.

    These chaps never had a clue about the treachery the future would finally bring in the shape of back stabbing politico’s and current supporters.

    Lest we forget,

    https://twitter.com/rgpoulussen/status/1627170020798218240?s=20

    1. One of my uncles was in the Commandos and landed near Caen on D Day. He survived that and went on Italy, where he was wounded, but survived that too. Not sure where he went after that, I only met him a few times and never got round to talking about it. There is one of the men in that clip that resembles him. Long gone now, RIP.

    2. Careful now. You’ll next be suggesting that all those men are white as Britain was almost entirely white in 1945.

      The Left are trying to erase that fact.

  20. SIR – I was shocked to hear, when I went to make a doctor’s appointment, that there weren’t any for this week as it’s half term and three doctors are off.

    Since when have doctors been taking school holidays?

    Doreen Chambers
    New Malden, Surrey

    Dear Ms Chambers,

    Nothing “shocks” me any more about the NHS, I’m more surprised you expected anything different.

    1. Probably the real reasons there are so few appointments available is, as so many medical people involved in the NHS now are doing, they are swamped out with private sector work.

    2. “ Since when have doctors been taking school holidays?”. Probably since the majority of GPs seem to be female and it fits in nicely with children’s school holidays.

      2. A lot of Doctors are women who work part time. They have a good work life balance and can spend time with their children. Our health is secondary.

      2. Should we assume that Cook’s slightly unsavoury past will persuade the Wokerati to go for a name change? They have already removed his statue so harsher penalties will surely follow (apart from killing him in 1779, that is).

    5. assuming your comment isn’t a joke…

      A “Kitchen Island” is the term for a stand alone unit in the centre of the room.
      Most people I know who had one installed eventually disliked it intensely.

  23. Good moaning All,

    Sunny start to the day at McPhee Towers if a little cooler than the last few days. Still some painting to do but I feel good walk coming on today.

    Two paragraphs from letters on Brexit struck me this morning:

    Martin R Moloney wrote “We took European supranational pretensions at their face value, and decided that we didn’t wish to obey laws emanating from an alien authority or to profess a loyalty we didn’t feel”.

    That nailed it.

    Mike Tyler wrote “In any case, should not any referendum on such major democratic change require at least 50 per cent of the whole population to agree to it?”

    No. Fifty per cent of the electorate would be my view. Are you going to have infants and children counted? In any case it should not be applied to the Brexit referendum since taking us into the organisation that ended up as the EU was not done by democratic vote in the first place, it was done by the sleight of hand of a disingenuous, duplicitous Prime Minister.

    1. Surely those who don’t vote are ok with whatever the result is? After all, they didn’t hold enough opinion to bother with making it known.

      1. I had that argument with a remainer (Evilthatmendo) after Brexit when they claimed the leave majority wasn’t all that large.

        Of course it’s a double edged concept, but if the result moves a position from the status quo the non voters numbers should count with the side changing things not those who wish to remain the same..

          1. Possibly, but I argue that those who can’t be bothered to vote on such an important issue deserve what they get.

      2. Fair enough, the result could be taken as a snapshot of where the mass of the people stand. However, if we were to go down the 50% route on referenda in which constitutional change would be the result of the vote then perhaps voting should be compulsory? Of course that may throw up the phenomenon of a high proportion of deliberately spoiled ballot papers which would undermine the 50% rule. Maybe things should just stay as they are.

  24. Good moaning All,

    Sunny start to the day at McPhee Towers if a little cooler than the last few days. Still some painting to do but I feel good walk coming on today.

    Two paragraphs from letters on Brexit struck me this morning:

    Martin R Moloney wrote “We took European supranational pretensions at their face value, and decided that we didn’t wish to obey laws emanating from an alien authority or to profess a loyalty we didn’t feel”.

    That nailed it.

    Mike Tyer wrote “In any case, should not any referendum on such major democratic change require at least 50 per cent of the whole population to agree to it?”

    No. Fifty per cent of the electorate would be my view. Are you going to have infants and children counted? In any case it should not be applied to the Brexit referendum since taking us into the organisation that ended up as the EU was not done by democratic vote in the first place, it was done by the sleight of hand of a disingenuous, duplicitous Prime Minister.

  25. Good moaning All,

    Sunny start to the day at McPhee Towers if a little cooler than the last few days. Still some painting to do but I feel good walk coming on today.

    Two paragraphs from letters on Brexit struck me this morning:

    Martin R Moloney wrote “We took European supranational pretensions at their face value, and decided that we didn’t wish to obey laws emanating from an alien authority or to profess a loyalty we didn’t feel”.

    That nailed it.

    Mike Tyer wrote “In any case, should not any referendum on such major democratic change require at least 50 per cent of the whole population to agree to it?”

    No. Fifty per cent of the electorate would be my view. Are you going to have infants and children counted? In any case it should not be applied to the Brexit referendum since taking us into the organisation that ended up as the EU was not done by democratic vote in the first place, it was done by the sleight of hand of a disingenuous, duplicitous Prime Minister.

    1. Saw one mask-wearer on my trip to Sainsbury’s this morning. (Other supermarkets are available.)

      1. I find it comical, when you see some paranoid womble wearing a mask, in a car on their own. It’s just silly.

        But, folk can do what they like. It’s their life. It’s when they demand I do the same that I take issue.

  29. China may be on brink of supplying arms to Russia, says Blinken. 19 February 2023.

    The US has said it believes China may be about to provide lethal aid to help Russia in the war in Ukraine, prompting a direct warning against doing so from the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to China’s top diplomat.

    Blinken made the warning to the Chinese state councillor Wang Yi on Saturday evening at a meeting on the sidelines of the Munich security conference during which he also rebuked China over the use of an alleged spy balloon over US soil.

    One of the mysteries of Ukraine is why the Chinese have not already done this since their own fate is directly linked to that of Russia. The Americans are already planning their demise and recent sanctions show this intent quite clearly. That said this is probably a diplomatic gambit so that their peace proposals are taken seriously. If the Chinese were to aid the Russians directly this would be a whole new ball game and we would have taken a significant step on the road to Global War.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/19/china-may-be-on-brink-of-supplying-arms-to-russia-says-blinken

    1. Well if that happens the ‘THEY’ have actually achieved their objectives.
      WW3, good job we’ve imported all the illegal immigrants to protect our country……..oh hang on a mo ??

    2. Another mystery is why the US can provide ‘lethal aid’ to Ukraine, have Biden inform the US taxpayers that they will be funding the Ukraine welfare state, yet be ‘upset’ that China may want to safeguard their gas/oil supplies from Russia by offering similar ‘lethal aid’.

        1. It separates into two parts, the writer’s dystopian description of where we might be 2030, then the second part arguing that it isn’t impossible and concluding that perhaps

          parents who care about their children be advised to keep them away from C of E churches bowing down before the Baal of this anti-family ideology?

        1. Are you suggesting that by wishing to stop the route to woke that they are brainwashed? It’s the woke who have been brainwashed into a state of being easily offended.
          Quite the reverse I should have thought.

    2. As Sos says, I think that Letter may be Satire.
      But will confess to not being quite 100% convinced.

    3. Tom Lehrer said that he gave up writing satire when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. “Satire can no longer compete with reality!” he said.

    7. Is this really a single Sunday or a compilation of what goes on? If it is a single Sunday or any Sunday, for that matter, no wonder no one goes to their ludicrous church anymore.

        1. I’m Russian Orthodox, as you know, sadly there is no Orthodox Church near me. The only Church is Anglican. You can tell by the cars , perhaps 5 on a Sunday, that there is almost no congregation to speak of. When they come out of said church they are almost all very old people and rarely more than a couple of dozen. The Church is linked to two other churches and the vicar rotates between them, one on each Sunday. It’s pathetic. The Vicar writes a sort of spiritual letter to the community in our monthly magazine. His spiritual insight would do a brick proud.. Again, pathetic that such a vacuous individual should be the shepherd when he is more worthy of selling trinkets from a stall on the high street. The Anglican Church really is a pointless institution whose only purpose now a days seems to be damaging the English way of life beyond repair, in cahoots with our establishment politicians. I would never go to an Anglican vicar for spiritual solace, a dog catcher would be more useful.

          1. The Church is a control system to ensure obedience to a specific collective (OK, I’ll accept it *had* that role and has now become more a village club but hey ho).

            Problem is, recently in an attempt to move with the times the Church has become deeply socialist – have what you want, pick and choose from the Bible, you can have it all!’ attitude rather than they individual having a duty to the wider public and also to accept the responsibility for their actions.

            Duty’s hard. Responsibility is hard. It’s characterised in a strong, cohesive (mature) community. Church leaders – the modern ones – have set about destroying that traditional message in their hectoring and thus destroyed their audiences – young folk can see there’s no moral compass behind the rhetoric so ignore it.

            In contrast, the political class have set about trying to replace the role of the Church in creating a false holy book, endless control systems and lecturing on a false morality – they are as corrupt and debased as the control freaks who started the various Churches.

          2. I was with you until – they are as corrupt and debased as the control freaks who started the various Churches. That may be the case in the West because Western Churches are all breakaway churches, not one has continuity. The Orthodox Church goes all the way back to Christ. It is so ancient that descendants of people who are mentioned in the Bible are members of it. Zacchaeus’ the tax collectors descendants are one example. Continuity and thus teaching is unbroken. Do not be deceived by the rituals you see, they have a purpose. But it is not just the Orthodox Church, several other non-Western Churches can claim to be unbroken and I would not argue with them on that. Mar Thomas Christens, for example.

          3. Without intending to offend you, all Churches stem from the same root: the oldest man in the village and some bloke realising he could get out of the hunt by being the go between of that fellow and the rest of the tribe.

          4. All the churches may derive from the same root but certain Churches chose to break off from those roots and, in the process, lost the teachings. There are teachings, you know, that have been there in the non-Western Churches, from the beginning. they are not in the Bible but are part of Tradition from which the Bible is derived. In other words the proper Church flies with a pair of wings, The Tradition and the Bible. But the Tradition is prior to the Bible, not subject to it. The Western Churches cut off one of those wings when they rejected the real church centuries ago. In fact, I would say that the rot set in with Saint Augustine, that long ago. As a result the Western Churches are hardly Christian. Their worship of the Bible is as wrong as the worship of the Israelites for the Golden Calf. They have the books but have no idea what they mean or how to interpret the teachings that are alluded to. For them the Bible is a fetish not a living thing.

            The Orthodox Church is collegiate in structure, not an authoritarian hierarchy. It is not even interested in people converting people to it. It believes that since it is the true Church all people will, eventually, return to it anyway.

            Almost all theologians in the Orthodox Church are lay people, not priests. So your “go between” concept does not apply and never has. This is a Western imposition on Christianity and is, in the eyes of Orthodoxy, a heresy resulting in a false authoritarianism that culminates in elevating a human being to pretending to be the representative of Christ on earth, the Pope, an institution to be thoroughly rejected by any right thinking Christian.

  33. MPs’ challenge to corporation tax hike welcome
    Abandoning the proposals will inject energy into Britain’s economy and entice foreign investment
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/18/mps-challenge-corporation-tax-hike-welcome/

    The most blaring example of the ill effects of Hunt’s asinine plan to raise corporation tax from 19% to 25% will be seen in Northern Ireland where, just across the border, The Republic of Ireland will be able to flourish with a corporation tax rate of 12.5%.

    BTL (Wrattstrangler)

    We must not forget that Mr Hunt has been given very specific instructions from his master, Klaus Schwab, to destroy British trade by removing the competitive edge that a lower rate of corporation tax has given Britain over most countries in the EU.
    Mr Hunt has clearly no idea at all about how business works which makes him the very worst possible sort of person to be chancellor.

    1. The hike will go ahead. The EU wants tax harmonisation to remove competition within the block and further force protectionism. They’ll hike corporation tax, those who avoid it now will continue to. Those who can’t will go under. Those who pass it on will lose business, not be able to expand and create unemployment. It might raise a bit more under the Left wing fiddle they invent, but it’ll destroy jobs – but the state doesn’t care as a job not created doesn’t count on any statistics.

      Tax destroys jobs.

  35. Completely off topic – a very nice article in this week’s Spectator – for your delectation:

    “I was sceptical when the lady on the bus to Reading town centre told me that her father knew Liszt. Who wouldn’t be? This was a long time ago, mind: probably 1980, and I was on my way into school. I think our conversation started because I was reading a book about music. She was old and tiny, wearing a luxuriant wig. She introduced herself as Mrs Ball but her accent was unmistakably German. Even so, Liszt had been dead for nearly a century. Could it be true?

    ‘Oh, my father knew everyone,’ she said. ‘Richard Strauss was a great friend. And dear Bruno Walter. He lived in our house, you know. They were wonderful days – we were surrounded by the finest music.’ But by this stage the Number 26 had reached its destination; Mrs Ball had to curtail her memories of musical soirées in pre-war Berlin as we were dumped in front of the Butts shopping centre.

    There were a couple more brief chats on the bus, during which I learned the name of her father: Ertel. He’d been a composer, she said, but no one played his music any more. That was the only time she looked sad. Mostly she was girlishly excited to be asked about her musical idols, of whom the greatest couldn’t possibly have met her father. ‘Le divin Mozart!’ she exclaimed, wriggling with delight on the beer-stained seat.

    Later, when I was at university, Mrs Ball visited our house: she and her frail English husband lived a few doors away. She was sweetly enthusiastic about my ham-fisted performance of a piece from Schumann’s Kinderszenen, but by that stage I was too self-absorbed to pay her much attention. She celebrated her 80th birthday about that time and then we moved away. And ever since I’ve regretted not asking her more about her life in Germany, and especially her father’s connection with Liszt.

    Years later, I tried to hunt down Ertel, but he wasn’t in Grove or any other reference book. Nor could I find him in the early days of search engines, and I gave up. Then two weeks ago, on a sudden impulse, I typed in the name and there he was on German Wikipedia: Jean Paul Ertel, who was born in Poznan on 22 January 1865 and died in Berlin on 11 February 1933 (so he only had to endure 13 days of Hitler). He studied law, then devoted himself to writing music – the symphonic poems Maria Stuart, Balsazar and Der Mensch, a string quartet on Hebrew melodies, and his best-known work, the Concerto for Solo Violin complete with a sadistic four-part fugue.

    According to an entry in the Neue Deutsche Biographie of 1959, ‘important conductors such as A. Nikisch, G. Mahler, F. Weingartner, Ferdinand Loewe and Richard Strauss campaigned for the composer, so that Ertel’s symphonic poems often appeared in concert halls around the turn of the century’. Mahler! My bus companion hadn’t mentioned him. And, yes, Ertel had indeed been a pupil of Franz Liszt. I felt guilty for suspecting that Mrs Ball had gilded the lily.

    But there’s an obsessive streak in me that insists on absolute proof. (For example, I own a tobacco jar that belonged to Charles Dickens: his granddaughter gave it to my grandmother, but it drives me mad that the documentation is missing.) How could I show that Mrs Ball of Whitley Wood Road, first name unknown, was once Fräulein Ertel? I spent hours on Ancestry.com but clearly the answer lay in German archives. I mentioned this to my German-speaking friend Jon Anderson and two hours later a birth certificate popped into my inbox, for one Ilse Ertel, daughter of Jean Paul, born 1899. But that seemed a couple of years too old and there was no Ilse Ball in the Ancestry.com records.

    I was about to throw in the towel when I typed ‘Ilse Ertel’ into Google – and there it was. A scan of a British Red Cross document from 1945 urgently asking about Ilse’s whereabouts, from her younger sister Eva Ball, née Ertel, of Reading, Berkshire. And that enabled me to establish that Eva was born in 1902, which tallied exactly with her 80th birthday, and died in 1993.

    So after 40 years my little mystery was solved. But it’s still puzzling that, so far as I can discover, not a single piece of music by a composer championed by Mahler and Strauss has been commercially recorded. You can hear a couple of electronically generated versions of Ertel’s symphonic poems on YouTube and I’m afraid they’re not much fun: think Reger without the light touch. Yet the Concerto for Solo Violin was a sensation in his day and we know that the great Henryk Szeryng owned a copy. At the time it was one of the most difficult violin pieces ever written. If some young virtuoso wants to startle a competition jury, then why not resurrect Ertel’s finger-busting pyrotechnics?”

    2. Good morning Bill,

      Years ago I was one of a few people who were invited to one of the best formal dinner parties I have ever ever been to .

      There was a piano recital and a string quartet before the meal . I was so delighted to be seated next to the Russian pianist when we sat down to eat . He was an absolutely beautiful young man , elegant , intelligent and his hands were lilywhite delicate manicured instruments of grandeur.

      His English was hesitant but listenable . Anway , we discussed Sergei Prokofiev, and he told me that his grandfather was a good friend of Prokofiev. The saddest thing I remembered from our conversation was although Sergei Prokofiev was well loved by the Russians , the death of Stalin .. who died on the same day as Prokofiev , hid the news of the news of the death of the musician .

      There are many people we rub shoulders with , a few leave that indelible mark in our memories , and that young man did , because of his musical skill, his memories , nationality and delicate demeanour .

        1. Yes it was , and so was the meal . The host then showed me his ermine robe room and old inherited family pieces , he and his wife were endowed with old world charm and really delightful .

    4. A family friend once told me that her piano teacher’s piano teacher was a pupil of Chopin. Abroad, obviously.

    5. A family friend once told me that her piano teacher’s piano teacher was a pupil of Chopin. Abroad, obviously.

    1. from the link

      A Home Office spokeswoman said: “The welfare of asylum seekers in our care is of the utmost importance and any attempts to fuel resentment towards them are completely unacceptable.”

      Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council, said: “It’s important to remember that these arenpeople who have escaped war and persecution, including the tyranny of the Taliban, the bombs and bullets of the Syrian civil war and the brutal beatings in Iran.”

      “It’s appalling to hear reports of them being harassed in our country after they turned to us for protection.”

      The Gimmy y Grants should be housed next door to the “Home Office spokeswoman and Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council”

      We were going to Costa Del Skeg this coming week: we will not now

        1. All those French soft cheeses, the equivalent of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition and their comfy chair. The horror!

      2. A home office spokeswoman, another over paid over self important habitual and pathological liar.
        Who doesn’t have a clue what they are doing.

      3. Well, Mr Solomon. Why did they fight their way through several TOTALLY safe countries to get to England?

        Just asking.

      4. They did not turn to us for protection. If that were the case they would have stopped in the first safe country they came across. They came for the economic advantages and because our government enjoys squandering our money on them rather than on us, the native population. We are used as hosts to the governments importation of parasites to destroy Britain. We are the last to know what Britain really is. After us there will be no more British culture, especially English culture as we are displaced and our history is rewritten.

      5. The Home Office person is lying. None of those young men are genuine asylum seekers. As for ‘… they turned to us for protection.’, wrong again. They turned up illegally, seeking everything for free. They are parasitic savages.

      6. The Home Office person is lying. None of those young men are genuine asylum seekers. As for ‘… they turned to us for protection.’, wrong again. They turned up illegally, seeking everything for free. They are parasitic savages.

      8. The welrfare.. what tripe. They’re using the criminal invasion as spite and revenge for Brexit. They now it, we know it.

    2. Suddenly Rwanda seems like a better holiday destination than poor old Skegie.
      Another place the government has wrecked for its local people.

    3. Police in Skegness, Lincolnshire, were forced to ban young people from
      congregating on the resort’s seafront – making it a no-go area for
      troublemakers.

      That means the local white boys. Meanwhile economic migrants play football on the bowling green.

      1. That reminds me of something I read in a local newspaper about three years ago. I was regarding a public golf course just south of Luton. Stockwood Park, also with other sporting facilities. The news was it was proposed to be developed into a huge housing estate. The reference was made that it didn’t have the same number of people using it.
        But after speaking with fellow golfing friends I had played with, they told me that the reason less people were playing there was, because people, families of a certain religious preference. Were having friends and family picnic gatherings close to and on the putting greens and the children were playing ball games.

    4. Skegness was a somewhat run-down seaside resort which had seen better days, but was popular with the many Brits who have caravans there, coaches of retired folk who go for day trips and many older people who still went every year for their holidays.
      A few years ago, mother-in-law spent a few weeks in the little hospital at Skegness. It was such a lovely, relaxed environment for her, with really kind, caring staff. I feel so sorry for the locals.

        1. Dunno – some sort of solvent, I thought. To react with the powder. As the baking soda was labelled, why not the liquid?

          2. Much obliged. If I tried that (see my moans yesterday) I’d stick my fingers together and to the garment.

          4. Now you’ve gorn and dun it. These lads won’t be able to comment because they’ll have stuck themselves together or to something!

      2. glue. The quick drying stuff. You know, superglue. Mixed with soda it turns into a solid, almost like plastic. Play with is sometime, its interesting.

    2. I use an appropriately coloured cable tie to fix broken pull tags. Trimmed to size, very quick, and works a treat.

    3. This is great. I’ve at least one zip that’s borked. I wonder if it’s the graphite or the carbon in the pencil that loosens the zip?

      1. Caroline here: it’s the graphite. I’ve come across this before – but not the others!

    1. Oh for goodness sake Lynn! It’s because contracts for difference force the energy price up. The state forces all energy to be sold at the cost of the most expensive. Gas is costing us nothing. It’s unreliables making energy expensive.

    1. That really is a ridiculous article. Entirely fantasy with zero evidence to back up his contentions. It’s pathetic.

      1. If the USA, NATO and the EU had tried to support Russia after the break up of the Soviet Union instead of encroaching and damaging wherever they could, we might have a had a friend and staunch ally against the real danger, instead of the enemy we now have.

    3. Best BTL…” I think I speak for many here when I say that I hope he doesn’t try an all-out first strike on east London as my ex wife still lives there. Certainly not Beckton, by the DIY store on the roundabout, off Acacia Avenue. Number 44. Bottom bell. She’s in on Thursdays too, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed”.

  41. Well – I can’t sit here all day reading the comments – I’ve got a raffle to run at the table tennis tournament today – so I’d better get going. Catch you all later.

    1. I’m certainly no economist but, as a voter, I would support all that. But then, I supported Truss in the first place and, in my opinion, she was forced out of office because the establishment simply did not like her policies. The establishment is into managed decline, Truss is into a resurgent Britain. True, she expressed her initial tax cuts badly but the truth is it was not a tax cut for the rich but an attempt to get the economy moving upwards and out of the greedy hands of the kleptocracy that presently rules us. Further, I don’t care about her ‘communication skills, if she is doing the right thing why should I care. Boris was a communicator but did almost everything wrong. I want results for the welfare of the country, not a politician that is an entertainer.

      1. Her policies would have reversed the forced decline and made us competitive against the EU. The EU pays remoaner MPs and has an imposed stooge on the IMF, so of course, Truss and her approach had to be not only removed, but demonised.

        Note the mass of one post commenters on the Wail when her policies are discussed.

        1. Completely agree with your observations Wibbling. I’m afraid the people in power are our enemies not the friends of the British people. They serve international masters to which, we the people, are a sacrifice well worth giving in their eyes.

          1. It’s sad, really. It all comes down to the fundamental problem of a complete lack of democracy.If an MP were to be found to vote against a local demand then they should be able to be removed by their constituents.

            If the public don’t like a budget, the public simply reject it. No ifs, no buts. A bad law, like net zero? No petitions, no letters, simply say no to the law completely.

        2. The acceleration of the decline will rise considerably when corporation tax rises from19% to 25% – but that is precisely what Schwab has told Hunt to do.

      1. Folk like that don’t become MPs. They get real jobs and do worthwhile things with their lives.

    2. The state doesn’t care about your safety. It wants to control you. That’s what the cameras are for. Not for you – for them.

      1. She did certainly deliberately channel the greata creature – pinching from her speeches too! But in mockery, not salutation.

          4. I have no idea what you mean. My grand-daughter, who is a very bright, hard-working teenager, would never in a million years stand on a soap box and read out propaganda written by her mother

          6. I had a colleague at a school where I used to teach called Mr Salter.

            When Scoop was one of the set books for “O” level Eng. Lit. the essay title I gave my class about Lord Copper’s sycophantic assistant seemed to attract more comments about my colleague than about Evelyn Waugh’s character!

      3. I think that was the intention, a parody of sorts. Though, much like the Doom Goblin, her parents have helped with her ‘homework’.

    5. The nudging is nearly over. The violence and incarceration in open prison or re-education camps is about to begin.
      The people must destroy the 15-minute boundaries – smash the cameras, remove the roadblocks, and beat savagely those who seek to enforce it – including councillors who vote for it.
      Otherwise, it’s giving in, and that way lies enslavement.

      2. This was btl on one of the Daily Sceptic’s pieces:
        “ How come that the people who want no borders in Europe – in the world preferably – and want to welcome anybody moving across continents to come and live here are the self same people who want to erect electronic gates and cameras to stop their own people from even moving across their own town?”

  48. A TEEN migrant tried to sneak into Britain sealed inside a child’s coffin.

    The 17-year-old lad was found curled up inside the small wooden casket, which had its lid screwed down.

    The find came during a routine search of a van by French border officers close to Dunkirk.

    The coffin was 3ft 5in long, under 2ft wide and 2ft 5in high.

    The Albanian minor, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said that he had paid £9,000 for a passage to Britain in the van.

    He told a court: “I got into the coffin at a motorway service station at Steenvoorde (northern France) and then it was screwed down.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/21433729/teen-migrant-sneak-britain-childs-coffin/

    1. As I said the other day. I sincerely hope that this results in the fall of Erdogan, he has ruined Turkey with his fanatical Islamism. If anyone deserves the lamp post treatment it is him.

    1. Hence the rank hypocrisy of claiming that the UK is heading for net zero, when all we are doing is exporting the dirty part of “green” technology!

    2. Yes, but that’s different to the mining done before.

      I’ve often wondered what it’s like inside the Left wing mind. Do they really have completely partitioned mindsets, or is it simple chaos with competing doublethink?

      1. They don’t think and further more they have decoupled their thinking from having a moral compass.

  52. An old fogey writes:

    Interesting to compare and contrast the Swedish Muppet wit the Oxford Muppet (see below).

    Normal, well-balanced thinking people loathe the Swedish one. But – apparently – think the Oxford one is the answer to all dreams.

    To me – they are both very precocious and obnoxious children – trotted out to give publicity to OTHER PEOPLE’S views – which are no doubt written for them to spout.

    Grrr.

    Coffee and then ladder work calls.

    1. I’m still trying to work out what that gruesome red/botox-lipped clown — standing to the right of the Oxford muppet — was all about.

  53. 371356+ up ticks,

    Early days yet in the civil war I do believe has already kicked off, this “far right” business means little to me being a long term genuine UKIP party ( deceased via treachery) member, we were tagged that long ago, when SO far right was the truth.

    The claws of the lab/lib/con glass trojan horse coalition, have been slowly appearing since around the time the bog man was cottaging prior to lifting the latch on pandora’s box, they are now fully extended, their ongoing agenda for ALL to see.

    https://twitter.com/PatWilliams1944/status/1627202501609938953?s=20

    1. No, they are not, but the state has to label to them to control dissent. It has to smear, to say ‘this is a fringe group. A bad group. An evil group. You don’t want to be that.’ to ensure that the public’s disgust at government policy is not known to be widespread.

      The label is just another attempt at control. This is why V in V for Vendetta wears a mask – you cannot detroy an idea. You can destroy a man. And the state will do anything to destroy those who oppose it.

    2. Well, what do these idiots in councils and the govt expect? As far as I recall, no-one voted for these people to come here and certainly no-one voted to have them filling hotels all over the country.
      This government has screwed up big time but will never, ever admit it or do anything to stop it.

      1. 371356+ up ticks,

        Afternoon Lotl,

        Tis not what passes for the government screwing up as the misguided, lethargic
        party supporter / voters over the last three plus decades.

        These governing (ino) reptiles as far as I can ascertain have not put a foot wrong in taking their own orchestrated agenda forward and repeatedly with the peoples help.

        1. Trouble with that, JN, is that they will get millions of votes but NO MPs. As with the Greens ..

          1. Well I an NOT voting for any of them in Wesminster under any circunstances. I will not stand by and do nothing.

      3. Ah, but you’re ignoring that to the state we did specifically vote against this invasion. The state, being dedicated to destroying Brexit at every turn, saw an opportunity to spit in the face of citizens, treat them with disdain and insult while forcing a horde of criminals on us.

        The state has not screwed up. This is deliberate.

        1. They, the state, must be reminded, time and time again, that THEY are OUR servants.

          They must do OUR bidding.

  54. Afternoon, folks! You may well step back in amazement that I am here when normally I would just be getting back from church. For the first time ever I was so angry I walked out! I’d been asked to read the lesson (which was the only reason I’d gone so as not to let down the churchwarden who asked me to do it), but when it came to the Liturgy of the Word and I was ready to stand up and do my bit, the rectorette started reading virturally the whole of Exodus! I waited for my opportunity while she rambled on, then, having omitted the Gospel, she said we should affirm what we believe! I got up and left (which was a bit spectacular as I sit near the front). I was already unhappy that there was no choir, music or hymns (she’d pissed off the choir and they all walked out after choir practice on Thursday), she’d got a little table in the nave, she intended to anoint us (!) and she didn’t stick to the service – she had long, rambling “explanations” of the Gospels and words interspersed with the liturgy we were familiar with. It was basically her “show”. The most sickening thing, however, was that she kept going on about “reconciliation”! We wouldn’t have needed it but for her actions! It’s split the congregation and there is deep resentment about the way things are going. I shall be looking for somewhere else to worship until she’s gone. It used to be such a nice church and in less than 12 months she has managed to wreck it.

      2. A married couple of friends of ours are both ministers in the Church of Scotland. When I first moved up here I intended to go to the local church but discovered that, although I’m baptised and confirmed in the CoE, I would need to ‘join’ the church to take communion! I declined and went to the Episcopalian church. I’m really not fond of woman clerics, and as Conway says, they do tend to make it all about themselves. Anyway, the wife of the couple has just been appointed as the next Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland! But hey, what do I know?

      3. I am particularly allergic to women priests.
        It’s something that doesn’t work.
        I especially hate it when they give the audience a confession about their emotional state, as if they were in a group counselling session (except the audience cannot say anything).

        1. I confess to not liking women priests (but it seems to be Hobson’s Choice these days). Surprisingly, a female member of the congregation admitted that she doesn’t like women as ministers, either.

          1. I think we are fortunate. Throughout our woes – and after – we had a staunch woman deacon. Farmer’s wife. Down to earth. Now we have (through Fakenham – see above) a female rector who is absolutely first class in every way.

          2. There are some good ones but I’ll concede that they’re in the minority. Ironically it seems that the only dissenter in the shenanigans around the bishops voting at synod recently was one of the women. I don’t recall her name I’m afraid – definitely not The Midwife.

        2. I can’t put my finger on it, but there doesn’t seem to be the same gravitas or even spirituality.
          They don’t have the natural authority of, say, a Hilda of Whitby or an Æthelburga of Barking, let alone our 1950s headmistresses.

          1. This one is of that ilk; she has a poor speaking voice, doubtful diction, appears not to understand the meaning of the words and looks like a lab assistant (no robes, not even a girdle round the alb). Plus she is usually late (she turned up early this morning for a change and when one of the churchwardens said she was here, the comment – not from me, I hasten to add! – was, “pity!”). She has sown division where once there was concord.

        3. From what I remember at the time, a lot of Feminists became members of the CofE expressly to campaign for Woman Priests and I also recall some years later that many of them, once that goal was achieved, had fallen by the wayside.

    2. Oh, man. That’s a nasty development. Sorry for that, Conners. Hope you find somewhere better soon.
      I suspect, by reconciliation, she means “agree with her”, but then, I have no knowledge of the details.

      1. You may have no knowledge of the details, but you have immediately identified the problem! We have concluded she is high on the autism spectrum.

          1. Many old school actors were clerical offspring.
            There isn’t that much difference between proclaiming to a congregation and to a theatre audience.

          2. Same with teaching; you had to put on a performance. One of the best priests I ever had the good fortune to listen to was a former actor. He made the words so meaningful.

          4. That’s another bone of contention – she doesn’t dress up! I have found a local church to go to for Ash Wednesday; I’ve been before but not for some time.

          5. That’s even worse. I think it shows a lack of respect for God’s house and the congregation. I must be terribly old fashioned.

          7. I loved that programme! Derek Nimmo with his sssstutter! Bet you can’t do that, nowadays!
            Or was it a sssstammer?

          8. I do miss gentle progs like that . My dear elderly aunts and uncle would sit with with their stiff G+Ts making their lips numb and laugh like drains ..

            Progs like that remind me of happy days and pure TV entertainment .

    3. Been there, done that. The church refused to do anything useful (like sacking) the offending rector, despite a formal complaint about him. Stalemate. Then a new baby bishop came on the scene. We appealed to him. At first he assumed WE were the problem. Then investigated. Came and told us we were right and that he would “sort it out”. And he did. We were formally and legally removed from the group of seven parishes – and linked, loosely, to Fakenham parish church. With whom we have been in happy communion for ten years. If you have a decent sub-bishop – it’s worth having a bash at getting him to do something.

      1. I think the wardens have started with the rural Dean in the first instance with a view to escalation. I should add, she has also alienated one of the churches linked to us (there are three altogether). I haven’t heard about the third. We should have a good case because in addition to the lack of people skills, she has not been doing any parish visiting, so she has not been fulfilling her duties.

    4. I now realise there is a difference between the Church of England and the Anglicans.
      Archprick Wellbeing and his apparatchiks have highlighted the issue.

      1. I am not normally given to making a scene, but I just couldn’t stomach it any more. I only hope her Numbers are up and we can have a Genesis of a decent, traditional priest whose eyes do not light up at the thought of a Happy Clappy speaking in tongues meeting in a warehouse (we have a pre-Reformation listed building of great beauty to worship in). We also had (until they walked out due to her rant) a Cathedral quality choir that had sung Evensong in Hereford, Liverpool, Bradford and Chester Cathedrals. All gone unless it’s resolved satisfactorily. Philistine doesn’t come close.

          3. Then the PTB can say that, as there is no congregation, they can close the church, deconsecrate it and sell it – loadsa money….

          4. Then the PTB can say that, as there is no congregation, they can close the church, deconsecrate it and sell it – loadsa money….

          8. She’ll be preaching to an empty church. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to leave and there was a bit of a bust up at the end!

    6. The only decent congregation round here is at a wayout Baptist church. The attendees are great, the minister was really good until he upped and died. The rest, a mix of Anglican, and methodist are in an unchristian fight for customers.

      We support the work that the good Baptist church does but as for going to services and listening to woke pronouncements about reconciliation, forget it – we hear enough of that bs from blackface Trudeau.

  56. Reports that a body has been found in that poor missing woman’s case. One page says the body was in the river. I hope and pray it’s not her and I feel so awful for her family.
    The police have not covered themselves with glory in this case at all.

  58. Good Afternoon.
    Have made my daily visit to the tip and the charity warehouses.
    Glad to say that the tip has a chap wearing a yellow gilet rather than an orange boiler suit, whose job is to make sure that anything worthwhile is rescued and recycled. Maybe ECC realise what was being wasted.
    I feel easier about taking older furniture and various bit and bobs to the tip when charities prove sticky.

    1. I hate chucking stuff that’s perfectly good out. If it can go to a new home, so much the better.

          2. Don’t get me started… I feel quite sorry for the children when they have to sort it all out!

          4. That is another thing. Some of our stuff is quite valuable. I’d hate it to end up in a skip….

          6. If it’s brown wood it was valuable, it ain’t now.

            I have pieces that are worth perhaps a tenth of what they were when I inherited them.

          8. Nothing as old as that but I have a late 18th century Sheraton Secretaire bookshelf which at its peak might have been worth 5 figures at auction. Even now one sometimes sees them at dealers selling for that kind of money.

    2. We decluttered before moving in September. I still make regular trips to the tip, we are on first name terms!.

      Our tip guys (and a guyess) insist that anything useful is placed in their free to a new home pile and it is amazing what is available.

    1. I’ve been sitting down in the lovely sunshine at the bottom of our garden.
      Found the small hole in the pond liner filled and covered with bitumen and flashband. Refill in a couple of days.
      Already one french chappie at home. 🐸 😉

  61. SIR – As a boy scout in the 1960s, I used to go walking in the Peak District. On one such occasion we returned via Glossop.

    The single fare (Letters, February 12) from Glossop to Manchester Piccadilly was two shillings and four pence (about 13p) but the return fare from Glossop was two shillings (10p). We of course all bought return fares but surrendered the ticket at Manchester.

    David Hyman
    Manchester

    A few years ago, Firstborn & I travelled by train from Manchester airport into the city. The ticket office advised us that a return was cheaper than a single, so that’s what we bought.

    1. On the very rare occasions that I stand before a ticket office, I ask for a “Cheap Day Return”.

    2. That was the same when I emigrated to Canada, the return ticket on BOAC was less than the single.

      I doubt that I have kept the unused return coupon.

  62. I took the ‘Spitfire’ Kona out for a sortie today after finally fixing the warning icon in the instrument panel https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/de9366842dfc6d982a06ec8c517c18dc1469cae76ae939823af48e81dfde4960.jpg

    I went through a meticulous diagnostic process of establishing the nature of the problem I had involuntarily created and eventually concluded that the fault had been logged in the ECU that could not be erased through what is known as drive cycles.

    Instead I needed to clear it through the On Board Diagnostic OBDII port on the vehicle using Car Scanner https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/960e2aaffb95be50bd49424ce5cc33f4cff82c82374b4283429197262212e075.jpg

    Here’s the cockpit layout showing the digital auxiiary battery monitor https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48138d50afafc82ff0c372f90181726cdf7367b8d29c61fffb785e4b3dcf7c5d.jpg in the centre console and the head up display https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/41be08ed96ef1795465b9800de2bd6151242a945b70ec63471763fed1d000352.jpg above the driver’s instrument cluster https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a11865bb9b69cc29d23c2555195bf48a4ecc7ee6943a22d713e221eae3f10351.jpg

    A major finding on this sortie to the bottle bank is the very restricted charging that this EV delivers to the auxiliary battery when airborne. It’s not suprising then that EVs are experiencing so many auxiliary battery failures.

    1. Your daily reports exhaust me…. To have spent all that money on a car that makes you anxious….

    2. How can you keep your eyes and attention on the traffic when there are so many instruments? Far too distracting.

    3. “ A major finding on this sortie to the bottle bank is the very restricted charging that this EV delivers to the auxiliary battery when airborne”.

      I didn’t realise the car flew!

    4. We have just ordered more house coal, I hope it will be delivered next week .

      We don’t do modern stuff, we just chuck a few logs on our fire and a bit of coal when we are freezing , our central heating system only heats down stairs , when we moved here 23 years ago, we had no idea how cold the house could be upstairs .. so hot during the summer but nitheringly cold in the depths of winter .. 5 bedroom chalet .. wasted.. we should have moved years ago.. de cluttering is a very painful experience .. Moh clears off to golf and can’t get to grips with things .

      1. Our bedroom and the room downstairs are in a modern extension built a couple of years before we bought the house in ’95 – both rooms are very cold in the winter. We had half the roof (the north side ) replaced last winter and discovered that there is actually some insulation in the walls — we always thought they’d skimped and not put any in when it was built. But the older part of the house is cosy when we have the wood burner going.

        We have plenty of decluttering to be done before we make the move to downsize – whenever that might be – no plans to leave at the moment.

        1. Ours is on 3 levels , hall way spare room, shower room
          next 3 steps living room, dining room kitchen , ut/room

          Not a straight staircase up 14 steps to next level unused large bedroom over garage , large walk in linen cupboard waiting for dosh to convert to shower room .. 3 more steps to 3 bedrooms and bathroom .. 2 huge lofts clutter up there , insulated , bathroom and airing cupboard , clutter in 2 bedrooms re many reasons . Moh’s mothers bits and pieces .

          We have cavity wall insulation .. but because the house is a chalet stle , we have eaves .. useful for more clutter , little doors sealed against draughts .

          We sometimes hobble up the stairs .. and the old dog has to be carried , he is only a lightweight.

          Not a stair lift friendly home either ..

          All the talk rom Nottlers about downsizing / moving etc is an expensive business.

          Our snag list is lengthening !!!!

      2. Before I moved into my current house I looked at a four-bedroom house with mansard windows. I viewed it in the summer and the rooms were so bakingly hot I knew they’d be freezing in the winter. I chose a different house.

  63. Online misogynists should meet victims instead of being jailed, says senior bishop
    Bishop of Gloucester Rt Rev Rachel Treweek wants perpetrators of online sexism to come face to face with the consequences of their actions

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/18/online-misogynists-should-meet-victims-instead-jailed-says-senior/

    Misogynists should be confronted with the impact of their abuse by victims as a potential alternative to jail, a senior bishop has said as the Church of England backed new laws to ban sexism online.

    The Bishop of Gloucester Rt Rev Rachel Treweek, who is also Anglican bishop to prisons, said community programmes where offenders were brought face to face with the consequences of their actions could change their behaviour in a way that locking them up in prison would not.

    She is leading moves in the House of Lords with former culture secretary Baroness Morgan for a legally-enforced code of practice requiring social media firms to prevent online violence and abuse.

    Their proposed amendment to the Online Safety Bill will give Ofcom powers to fine social media firms up to 10 per cent of their global turnover if they fail to abide by the code that will be drawn up by the new watchdog. It is backed by Labour, as well as senior Tory peers, raising the serious prospect of defeat for the Government.

    Give Ofcom some ‘teeth’
    Bishop Treweek said Ofcom needed to be given the “teeth” to crack down on misogyny as research showed women were 27 times more likely to suffer harassment online than men. “It strengthens people’s power. If things are made illegal and there is a proper code of practice, that gives it some teeth,” she said.

    She told The Telegraph that the scale of online abuse against women was a “tsunami” and legislators could not “just sit back and say: ‘Oh, well, there’s nothing more we can do.’”

    But she said jailing offenders was not necessarily the answer to curbing misogyny: “If companies have failed, do I think sending someone to prison who themselves is not a danger to the public is the answer? Controversially that would not be my answer because our prisons are over-full already and cost the taxpayer lots of money.

    “What I would say is that I would want a penalty and I would also love to be able to put people through community programmes where they understand what effect it has on people.

    “It’s like in restorative justice where we know it has far more effect than locking someone away in prison. Having to do some community service which involves a programme which might actually bring them face to face with women and girls who’ve experienced violence and have had their lives damaged or ruined.

    “That would be far more effective to me than sending them to prison. But I know that not everyone will agree with that point.”

    Tools to screen out abuse
    The Government maintains that the Online Safety Bill will protect women and girls from abuse as it will require firms to abide by their terms and conditions, which generally bar misogynistic behaviour. Failure to enforce them will result in fines, and their services could be blocked by Ofcom.

    Further measures require big social media platforms to provide users with optional online tools that would allow women to screen out misogynistic abuse.

    Bishop Treweek is, however, among peers who believe the Government needs to go further by backing not only the legally-enforced code but also an amendment that would require social firms to automatically switch on the tools screening out legal but harmful abuse. Users would therefore have to opt in to see harmful content.

    She said there also needed to be better signposting online to alert vulnerable people, including children, to the risks of entering a particular site. “It should be done in a child-friendly way with symbols and emojis so people know, in the same way if you’re going across the train tracks, there’s a big warning sign saying live rails and trains might be coming,” she said.

    One of the DT comments

    SRG Pratt
    8 HRS AGO
    It is telling that the symbol of a bishop is a crook and that of an Archbishop a double cross.

        1. London is no longer an English city, that’s why. It enjoys the dubious distinction of being the only capital city in the world where the ethnic population is a minority.

      2. I can answer that:

        All your plumbing
        All your electickery
        All your roads
        All your homes
        All your refuse collection
        All your food deliveries
        All your security

        Need I go on?

      3. I can answer that:

        All your plumbing
        All your electickery
        All your roads
        All your homes
        All your refuse collection
        All your food deliveries
        All your security

        Need I go on?

      1. In recent months I have come to thinking that the Hungerford and Dunblane shootings were state-sponsored to provide the excuse to deprive us of weapons in anticipation of what we see around us today.

        1. Certainly Dunblane was facilitated by the police not paying attention when advised by the man’s club that he wasn’t safe with guns.

          1. Only the other week at least two men who killed and/or shot at passers by were KNOWN to the plod to be risky

  65. Very agreeable, mild afternoon – with sunshine. Pickles almost dug out a mole – but it was too quick for him. Gus has slept all day!!

  67. It appears that the missing lady’s body has been found. In the river. A mile from where was last seen. So much for all the expert “water explorers”….. Like the one who said, “If she is in the water – no matter where – I’ll find her…” Yeah, right.

          1. Well, I can’t believe the expert didn’t find her. And I’d have a lot more faith in him (it is his business, after all) than idiot plod!

          2. Hmm. I am always a bit chary of people who brag about their skills. Really skilled people don’t.

          3. But it’s his business, and he has the experience. I know what you mean, though blowing one’s own trumpet!

          1. So did I , it is all very peculiar , especially so when there was no trace off a scent that the specialist dogs could follow ..

            I think everyone has been deeply affected by the drama of this disappearance.

        3. My thought too. If she was only a mile away from where she was last seen, they would have found her sooner. I wonder if her body was hidden somewhere and then put into the river in the night. It all seems so odd.

      1. I think the plod remained of the view that she had just pushed off and didn’t take the river seriously.

        Time will tell, of course. Funny if it is a different woman…

        1. You have an odd view of funny!
          I know what you meant, I thought the same thing.

          I hope for the family’s sake that if she is dead that it is her body,.

          7. The dogs did too – you should hear them brag while they are having a smoke behind the kennels….

          10. Ha! Someone should have accused the poor woman of being an “alt-right” “hate speecher” (sic). Plod would have found her in a minute.

          12. Yes i did think twice as i have tremendous sympathy for the poor woman and her family.

            The point i was trying to make (and not very well) is that Plod is enthusiastic and energetic snout solving some “crimes” but not so good at solving the ones the public actually cares about.

          13. Apparently, death by drowning is easy to spot – lungs full etc. If you were already dead, the lungs wouldn’t fill.

            (What I have said dates back to my acquaintance in 1960 with a young woman who was a pathologist….)

          14. But if she had been beaten and was unconscious that would still be possible.
            I hope for the family that it genuinely was an unfortunate accident and if it is her that the police have a lot of explaining to do.

          15. Also dates back to the story of The Man Who Never Was, ( book 1953, and film 1956).

            The author, Ewen Montagu, was a QC and judge.

        2. In my early schooldays, ‘Funny’ was invariably challenged with: ‘Funny Ha Ha?’ or ‘Funny Peculiar?’

    3. This will create even more speculation, Bill. A couple of walkers found the body but the police didn’t. There were 40 detectives on the case and they apparently didn’t search a mile downstream.

          1. I found the dog’s behaviour rather odd. We have a Springer and if I or my beloved had fallen or jumped into a river she would have followed straight away.

        2. The first reaction of both Caroline and I was that the body was dumped after the initial searches. I seems very murky to me.

      2. If walkers found the body, it was probably not drowned; drowned bodies invariably sink. If the body has been in the water for hours – rather than three weeks – the cause of death should be apparent?

  68. A Bonnie Birdie Three for a change!

    Wordle 610 3/6
    ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

        1. Sorry to spoil the run on threes. Boring par four for me.
          Wordle 610 4/6

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

  70. Interesting…
    Vaccination damage: First trial against Biontech begins in March, others will follow
    The first civil lawsuit in Germany concerns a 57-year-old woman who is said to have suffered heart damage after a Covid 19 vaccination.
    (English text) https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/impfschaeden-erster-prozess-gegen-biontech-beginnt-im-maerz-weitere-folgen-li.319507
    The legal processing of possible health damage caused by Covid-19 vaccinations will pick up speed in Germany in the coming months. According to information from Welt am Sonntag, the first civil lawsuit against the Mainz-based vaccine manufacturer Biontech for alleged vaccine damage begins on March 15th.

    1. And thus it begins.

      It will be fought tooth and nail by the Biotech companies and they have extremely deep pockets to pay layers.

  71. Time for me to wander.

    Well, the sunset WAS fabulous – and, though it is over, it is only just time to draw the curtains. How wonderful when nature does her (sorry, their) stuff and the days DO get longer….

    Have a spiffing evening – speculating.

    A demain. One hopes.

  72. Yesterday I noticed strange happenings in South Africa. Lady cricketers were being interviewed regarding their match prospects.
    Gqeberha was the name of the place where they stood and spoke.
    I’d never heard of it. So I loocked it up.
    It seems that the Government are in the process of changing the names of all the towns and cities in the country.
    It was recently known by the name of Port Elizabeth.
    JHB is now know as eGoli. Perhaps they might have another look at that one its slightly reminiscent of a make of Jam.

        1. It use to be a decent place to live until you know what happened.
          It’s a tip now.
          There’s a website called The Death of Johannesburg.
          Lots buildings have fire damage the streets are full of litter. The building I worked on, The Carlton Centre/Hotel has been hit by vandalism and locked for decades.

      2. Hillbrow Bill.
        Afew years after I returned to the UK early 70s. One of my old friends had gone out there to work in printing. As he sat at a traffic light in the main street. The guy in the car in front got out of his car and shot Richard in the head. Nobody knows or knew why.
        I was in a pub and a tiddly Welsh chap was getting excited about his new karate black belt. Making a bit of a fool of himself. But the guy next to him at the bar pulled out a pistol shoved it against his temple and asked “What’s Karates Answer to this”?

        1. Gee… Sympathy for your mate, and condolences.
          Similar happened to someone I worked with in Rio. Held up at pitol-point whilst in the car, they reckon when money was demanded, he reached to his hip pocket for his wallet, the robber thought he was pulling a gun, and blew him away.

        2. Reminds me of a similarly qualified chap who got stabbed.
          Proud as Hell about his karate black belt.

          1. I was at a neighbours braai next to where we lived. There was a massive tray of cooked chops. And the dog where I lived was looking over the fence. I picked up a chop and gave it to Sterker, the Rhodesian ridge back.
            A guy came up to me and said in his strong afrikaaner accent I think it’s time you left.
            I replied, why ? He opened his jacket and showed me the gun in his shoulder holster. I put my drink down and walked out.
            Chop chop.

        3. I have been very lucky. After spending an afternoon drinking in a bar in Hill Brow i was bundled into a car, in the middle of p*ssing myself, when the driver said: “never walk around here alone, it’s too dangerous. Where are you staying?” And he took me there and dropped me off.

    2. Spent a lot of time in SA in 1995/96 and so was keen to take the family there on hols 7 years ago. I got completely confused as all the places i knew had changed their names (and not for the better, natch). Navigation was a nightmare.

      Still, i’m sure it will happen here soon enough. They’ve started on road names and pubs so it’s only time…

      1. Not necessarily in the correct order.
        I have a feeling one of my nieces and her three daughters will come back to live in the UK within a few years.

    2. Just by jumping, they would have survived.

      I remember Sarah Kennedy, when she was on Radio 2, telling the story of a nest of ducklings on the rooftop of her block of flats. They all survived the jump, with no-one there to catch them.

  75. I can’t remember who linked it, but I have just listened to the Straight Talk with Doug Macgregor “The Ukrainian army has bled to death” podcast, and it was fascinating. Thank you!

    6. I’ve just finished reading Colm Toibin’s “The mountain”, about Thomas Mann. In the bit where he is exiled from Germany and has to escape Sweden via Southampton to the US, i thought about that time in history and how difficult it was to get visas to leave a country that was persecuting you. I resolved to be a better person and try to be more sympathetic.

      The problem is, it isn’t pre-war Germany for most of the people coming here, is it? And the truth is, they aren’t writers, or even doctors, engineers and teachers.

      1. We’re getting the dregs. Trouble is, the only depiction the MSM gives us is of refugees who have made good in the UK e.g. children who have arrived with no English and then have gone on to Oxbridge, or surgeons who are now making a positive contribution to this country (hats off to them). The impression we get is that all these immigrants are here wishing to make a new life and integrate into British society. The truth is very far from that.

        1. My feeling is that if these incomers had any real qualifications they would not throw their papers into the sea. Also, surely, if they did have genuine diplomas etc then couldn’t they have applied for a visa and come here legally. I think the air fare would have been less.
          So no, I do not believe that these newcomers have any desire to contribute to our country, our economy and our way of life.
          Sorry if that makes me a bigot but I have had enough of all this BS.

          1. Yes. All my good intentions go out the window when I confront the cold hard evidence.

            I think we Brits are generous to those genuinely in need. But we don’t like having the p*ss taken out of us.

      2. Most certainly not. And it should be up to those people to stay and change their system by whatever means, as our ancestors have had to do throughout the ages.

        If these people were professional people, there would be no need for them to gain entry illegally. They could apply by the normal channels.

    7. They are bringing them in on purpose, it is synchronised between the different countries. .

      On a much smaller scale than in the UK, Trudeau specifically reopened an illegal border crossing to allow the unwanted ypto cross over from the US. Just like yer French encourage your invaders, the new york authorities are giving bus tickets to the unwashed so they can get up to Plattsburg after which off duty border guards drive them up to the border.

      That’s in addition to the immigrants they want to bring in each year. 500,000

  78. Good night, chums. I hope to watch a little of tonight’s BAFTA awards and read the first 50 pages of my Book Club’s February Book. We meet to discuss it over a two-course evening meal on Monday the 27th.

      1. It’s called THE SENTENCE, Annie, and is written by Louise Erdrich. It’s about a Native American book-lover who runs a bookshop after being locked up for alleged drug-dealing (a pun on the word of the title). Didn’t much like the characters in the first few chapters, but once she was released from her sentence and found work in a bookshop it began to grow on me. It’s rather quirky. PS – I hope you are settling in nicely in the Dower House and, of course, Good Morning btw.

        1. PPS – IF you fancy reading it, it is for sale at the Red Lion bookshop on the High Street, Annie. They are a good bunch and have a chat with Jo – she runs the Appetite Book Club which I am a member of. We meet for our monthly meal at the Officer’s Club and becoming a member (no charge to join) means you get a £2 discount on every book we have as our Book of the Month, i.e. the one we discuss each month.

  79. I’m watching “Hidden Figures” on Film 4, if BLM really wanted to know how to approach racism they could do a lot worse than to watch this film again and again and again, and white racists would also benefit.

    I’m a white racist and I always find it brings me back to earth. As it were.

        1. However, in my own defense- I have made a pot of soup using homemade lamb stock. It has the remaining meat off the bone, lentils, carrots, onions and mushy peas. ( Thought I had box peas but didn’t.)
          That’s for tomorrow.
          Have also done several other jobs and planning a fairly early night as Nursey is coming tomorrow to vampire some blood from MH.
          Edit for missing word- duh!

          1. I walked to the curling club and prepared the ice for this afternoons league, that’s about it today.

            Mainly cerebral effort since then. We are booked to leave for a holiday on Thursday but the weather forecast is now for about ten inches of snow on Wednesday night and again on Thursday morning. It’s a bit of a logistical problem to plan around the anticipated snow in NY and PA.

          2. Heading south? My guess is SC, maybe Hilton Head?
            Have a lovely break Richard and your wife also.

          3. Couldn’t get in, they were fully booked.

            But yes we are going to admire South of The Border.

      2. I did drain half of the water out, with a bucket, of my smallish pond this afternoon and found the problem I’ve been looking for, for about 12 months. A small tear in the liner.
        And fixed it with bitumen.
        Frogs have already moved in. Re fill in two days and reconnect to the shed roof down pipes for rain water top ups.

      3. Apart from my protest this morning, I have put an escutcheon on the back door to stop the draught whistling through the keyhole. Also watched a couple of recordings and cooked myself a meal.

  81. Did anybody else suffer the award ceremony on TV this evening. My word it was soooo boring. Acting at its best or worst it was hard to tell.
    Which I guess was a success in its self.

    1. No, didn’t know it was on. Mark Dolan is talking through his arse on GBN about how wonderful Sunak is so I’m watching The Onedin Line on Talking Pictures.

  83. News isn’t good about the finding of the body in the river. Those poor children.
    Time to head up the wooden hill.
    Good night from me 😴

  84. Am going to bed- am so tired and worried.
    Hope y’all sleep well and have pleasant dreams.

  85. ‘No regard for this country’s history’: Mobs force Metropolitan Police to put statues of Winston Churchill, Admiral Nelson and Robert Peel on danger list as possible targets for damage
    The dossier was compiled in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020
    Scotland Yard listed the bronze statue as being a possible target for damage https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11769919/Mobs-force-Metropolitan-Police-Sir-Winston-Churchills-statue-danger-list.html

  86. Rishi Sunak forced to ‘pause’ Protocol deal amid backlash from senior Tories and DUP
    Unionists warned it ‘would not fly’ if it accepted EU law while Cabinet Brexiteers said it was the ‘best leverage’ in talks with Brussels
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/19/rishi-sunak-forced-pause-protocol-deal-amid-backlash-senior/

    BTL

    A referendum is needed in Northern Ireland to sort this mess out.

    If the vote is to stay in the UK then the ECJ will be expelled immediately and Northern Ireland will remain a full member of the United Kingdom. If the vote is to join the ROI and the EU then Britain will immediately cease to have any financial or social obligations towards Northern Ireland.

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