Sunday 2 June: Voters are tempted by Labour because of the Tories’ dire record on immigration

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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544 thoughts on “Sunday 2 June: Voters are tempted by Labour because of the Tories’ dire record on immigration”

  3. morning all. news is all about the election and tax rises today so I won’t depress you any further.

  4. Good Morning Folks,

    Was cloudy first thing, now the sun is out for the day, hopefully

  5. Voters are tempted by Labour because of the Tories’ dire record on immigration

    Tempted by Labour, why would anyone that is worried about immigration vote for a party that wants more and begun the flood in the first place.

    3. Yvette Cooper today saying that employers are bribed to bring in overseas workers and that this will stop under Labour. She might want that but will the rest of her party? They are all theatre.

  6. It will be a miracle if American democracy survives this election. 2 June 2024.

    The American republic is decaying in front of us. The precepts on which it was founded – that votes should be respected, that the law must apply evenly, that no one is bigger than the Constitution – are giving way one by one.

    Yes. If Hannan knows it must be mainstream, though he is, as might be expected, behind the times. It’s already dead. The really bad news is that the UK is in an even worse state.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

    1. Hannan's piece was grotesque, completely ignoring the fact that folk voted for Trump because he stands outside the woke globalist orthodoxy.

    2. Hannan, having been an excellent advocate for Brexit, lost his nerve and became a wishy washy Brexiteer and was of very little use to anyone.

  7. It will be a miracle if American democracy survives this election. 2 June 2024.

    The American republic is decaying in front of us. The precepts on which it was founded – that votes should be respected, that the law must apply evenly, that no one is bigger than the Constitution – are giving way one by one.

    Yes. If Hannan knows it must be mainstream though he is, as might be expected, behind the times. It’s already dead. The really bad news is that the UK is in an even worse state.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

  8. Good morning, chums. Another sunny day – enjoy. I did today's Wordle in 3. (And thank you, Geoff, for Sunday's page.)

    Wordle 1,079 3/6

    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
    ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Well done Elsie!
      I was quite proud of myself getting it in four – I thought it was quite a difficult word!
      Wordle 1,079 4/6

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

      1. Me too

        Wordle 1,079 4/6

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

  9. Vladimir Putin is testing Nato borders for weak spots, security chiefs warn. 2 June 2024.

    Frontier disputes with Estonia and Finland could be prelude to Russian bid to seize control in Baltic after overcoming Ukraine.

    The number of anti-Russian articles in the Telegraph is quite astonishing. At least eight at the moment. Most of them are as stupid as the sub-headline above. If Vlad cannot take Ukraine then there is zero chance of him seizing the Baltic. This propaganda program is backed up by extensive support Below the Line by Nudge Unit trolls. These fortunately are of the same standard. Their main purpose it to suppress any native objections to the narrative. We can tell this by their frequent accusations that such are Russian Trolls. They never concede that posters expressing doubts might be motivated by genuine concerns.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/01/vladimir-putin-testing-nato-borders-for-weak-spots/

    1. Nope, I am still not buying the idea that the Russians want to invade the mess formerly known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

      2. The Russians don't want to come here. Only criminals, sexual deviants and rapists seem to think that the UK is the best place to invade!

    2. The DT, like the Spectator, has gone over to the dark side. I found Hannan's piece on Trump and US democracy yesterday especially snide and misleading. The Speccie now often reads like the Guardian, and the comments are dominated by Lefties, with only a few of the old regulars remaining.

      2. The life force has gone out of the Spectator. Too many journos not being true to themselves – whilst telling themselves that they 'are' being true to themselves. It's like reading clever stuff by sixth formers, before they are tempered and sharpened by reality. Idealism is not reality and it is a very dangerous thing if you are extremely idealistic and in a position of power.. This is the type who keep getting the top jobs in politics, our judiciary, MSM, major institutions etc. It explains why our culture is deteriorating.

      3. The DT's report on the Tommy Robinson march yesterday confirms this. As I wrote yesterday:

        The Daily Telegraph has disgraced itself with its biased coverage of the the Tommy Robinson march.

        The editor should be brought to task and sacked if he is not prepared to deal with this anti-British bigotry espoused by this increasingly absurd excuse for a newspaper.

    3. Total and utter carp.
      Russia cannot finish business in Ukraine in over two years since the invasion started, and seems to be bogged down. Who believes they would open a second front until the first is settled, and even then after a long pause to rearm and train new soldiers.

    4. And Johnson and Biden appealed to the hubristic megalomania of Zelensky so that he shunned the negotiations that were being arranged before the fighting began.

  10. Good Moaning.
    Today we have "company" so let's hope the weather allows us to actually sit out in the garden without going down with pewmonia.

  11. Four more boys arrested on suspicion of rape in Nottinghamshire. 2 June 2024.

    Nottinghamshire police received a report that a teenage girl had been attacked on Yorke Drive playing fields, Nottinghamshire, between 5.30pm and 7pm on 25 May.

    A boy aged 12, a 13-year-old, and two boys aged 14 have all been arrested on suspicion of rape, police said. They have all been released on bail with strict conditions.

    Four other teenage boys, two aged 15 and two aged 16, were arrested earlier this week on suspicion of rape and all four remain on conditional bail, police said.

    One’s suspicions cannot but be exacerbated by the lack of information.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jun/01/four-more-boys-arrested-on-suspicion-of-in-nottinghamshire

  12. 388012+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Sunday 2 June: Voters are tempted by Labour because of the Tories’ dire record on immigration

    THEY ARE A BLOODY COALITION PARTY UNDER WEF / NWO
    COMMAND YOU GET WHAT THEY SAY YOU GET REGARDLESS.

    MIRANDA ( LABOUR ODIOUS LEADER THREE TIMES) INITIALLY
    LIFTED THE LATCH AND ALLOWED FREE ACCESS TO THE WORLDS PAEDOPHILES WHO IMMEDIATELY WENT ACTIVE ON YOUR KIDS, IF YOU FORGET, YOUR KIDS WON'T, NOT IN THIS LIFETIME.

    FOR THE PARTY IN NAME ONLY HUGGERS, THE TORY IN NAME ONLY, ACCEPTED THE BATON AND BECOME THE CONTINUATION PARTY, END OF.

  14. Good morning all.
    A bit of a fuzzy head after last night and that pizza I had before bed was a mistake.
    Was up in the small hours with a nasty stomach ache.

    However, a beautiful, if slightly chilly start to the day with a tad under 6°C on the Yard Thermometer. Clear skies and a bright sun forecast to last for the whole day.

    1. Morning, BoboB.

      Hope you feel better soon after your birthday "blow out". We are all guilty of eating late at night but a modern-day nutritionist put this quite obvious fact to me.

      He said, "We go to bed to give our bodies and our brains the necessary and vital rest needed in order to recuperate for the next day. Unfortunately we don't give the same accord to our digestive system and we expect it to continue working 24 hours a day, even when it too deserves a rest period."

      Amazonian tribesmen are strong and as fit as a fiddle and they only eat every second day, this gives their digestive tract the same rest that their brains and bodies routinely get each night. Now, I'm not suggesting that everyone eats only every second day, but not eating after 6:00 p.m. each day makes sense and also reduces the probability of night-time stomach ache and acid reflux.

    1. 388012+up ticks,

      O2O,

      Dr Aseem Malhotra
      @DrAseemMalhotra
      ·
      42m
      ‘
      @WHO
      made global health WORSE during the pandemic by supporting, coercing and mandating the most horrific pharmaceutical product in the history of medicine responsible for serious harm or deaths of millions’

      DO NOT COMPLY 👊

      By the by,
      Even for the good of the party name (ino) party.

      1. As long as his ghastly wife stays in the USA, H can probably be put somewhere relatively luxurious but safe (for us).

          1. Yes – H is for Horrible Harry!

            One can't help wonder whether "what made you fall in love and marry multi-millionaire" Donald Trump came into it. Of course she is beautiful and elegant – he wouldn't have married her otherwise – though I agree that she has a degree of class that MM (married into the British Royals) could never achieve.

          2. The light blue coat dress she wore for the inauguration was lovely. She made a very good speech in 2020 too, when they had a campaign meeting outside in the gardens. I was quite surprised at her good command of English as she normally seemed to be silent.

          4. She’s classy – MM is just trashy. Look at the inappropriate wear she chose for Nigeria.

          5. MM is trashy – she always has been, Harry is just a thick idiot, ruled by his "todger".. The fact that he is mentally deficient is a hindrance to the Royals here.

    2. Not just free to come – if they come across illegally, they will be accommodated in 5* hotels paid for by us.

    3. No chance they have absolutely no idea who they have been letting cross our border for decades. Hence the massive rise in criminal activity.
      The people in politics and Whitehall couldn't run a bath between them.

  19. A BTL Comment:-

    David Hollway
    2 HRS AGO
    In the midst of such doom and gloom, I thought I'd share a little joy.
    I am sitting here reading the DT with a 5-week-old Runner Duck curled up in the crook of my arm (hence any typos…)
    She hatched alone in the incubator (we raise them as a hobby) and as a result has imprinted completely onto my wife & I.
    There are very few things in this world as delightful as having a small duck follow you around everywhere, webbed feet slapping on the hardwood floor, then gratefully flopping down into your lap, clucking softly, then falling asleep. I can recommend it wholeheartedly as a cure for the blues.
    Anyway, whimsical break over; back to the gloom. Or as the punchline of the old joke has it (rest of the joke available on request), "OK folks, coffee break's over, back on your heads…"

  20. Yo and Good moaning all.

    I see that there is a whole section of the DT Letters Page devoted to our breakfast hero, Mr Grizzle, aka Alan G Barstow.

  21. Morning, all Y'all. Hazy and cool today.
    Late on parade – just slept like the dead after yesterdays exertions and a few libations.

  23. I'm afraid I am having to leave this community, except on very special occasions, and if they "upgrade" again, it might be terminal.

    The new Disqus text editor is completely unresponsive on my old laptop, and I cannot find a plugin that will work on my old browser, and a new browser will not support any operating system that will support my old laptop without a lot of workrounding. In the olden days, we could use a simple text editor that has existed since the time of Sinclair's Spectrum and away we go.

    I managed to type this by going into Windows 7 via Parallels emulator on my old Mac, which does support a version of Brave that will run the new text editor. It is very very slow, with lots of spinning balls and blank pages before it finally grinds into a response. Not something I relish doing when I have something to say and little time or mental energy left to fight my way through.

    2. Don't you have a mobile phone you can use ?
      This is what I use, it means I can't up load photographs but it does the trick otherwise.

      1. I have a Nokia 1100, which has a nifty line in classics on 8-bit, but is even less capable of dealing with the upgrade than my old Mac. I use it mostly when I cannot find a phone box that works.

    4. I only have my little old iPhone SE at home. It does everything except download video URLs.

    5. I can only use it from my computer. My iPad is too old.
      The only way to publish from my Safari on my iPad is to enter your history and reply to your comment there. For some reason the system only allows me to type there.

    6. You'll be missed, Jeremy – can you try an upgrade of some sort? Eventually all these things become obsolete and stop working. My old laptop still works, after a fashion, but there was so much on it that no longer worked properly. I bought this one at Christmas and my son set it up for me with a newer version of Debian Linux.

      I still haven't discovered how to post images on here though. When I try, Disqus tells me I must be logged in to post images. As if I could post anything at all if I weren't.

    7. Jeremy, I am in a similar situation, having to post on a Windoes system, very irritating. See if you can post via an affordable smurf phone, or perhaps look for a secondhand Window computer via a charity shop or carboot sale?

  24. OT – how many of you remember where you were and how you passed the day 71 years ago today?

    1. Morning Bill. Chapel in the morning (to get us out of the way) and visits to Grandma in the aftermoon. (salmon and cucumber sandwiches)

    2. I was too young to recall the day, but I still have the commemorative prayer book from the service.

    4. Queens coronation. It rained, we took the bus to Hendon and watched it on my mother's brothers TV.
      Next day my father took me and my elder sister in on the train to see the sights. It had stopped raining. And it was our first time ever in London.

      1. First time I ever saw tv, a very small black and white, in a neighbours flat. My brother and I went out to play between showers, because, quite frankly we were bored. I was eight and my brother eleven, I always blamed him for being the bad influence. I do miss him now he has passed.

    5. I (nearly eleven) watched the Coronation on TV at my Uncle Bill's (!) house; we didn't have a TV.
      I was appalled by those horrible old men in copes attending to the young Princess/ Queen!

    6. Morning Bilty,
      The atoms of the Universe hadn't yet come together to form me.

    7. I cycled to my uncles because he had a TV – 9" screen in a huge wooden cabinet and watched the coronation

    9. I was five, we had just moved to the Copperbelt in Northern Rhodesia and we were temporarily lodged in an old railway station pending a house becoming available, it being the only place big enough for a family of seven! I have no idea what I was doing on this day but we did think that our new "home" was the most enormous fun, especially when the trains went past on their way to the new station further up the line!

      1. In the late 60s with a friend we drove from JHB across the border up to stayed over in Bulawayo on to Victoria falls across into Zambia along the river Zambezi to Kariba back into Rhodesia stayed over with some friends in Salisbury and eventually back to JHB. Two memorable weeks.

          3. Good, a wonderful experience.
            But we did have a close call with a herd of elephants crossing the road in the middle of the night.

    10. Parents and sister and I were here , on leave from the Sudan , after arriving back in the UK, at Tilbury , on a Union Castle ship ,Warwick or Braemar Castle . Can't remember which one . I was 6 years old

      Travelled to Durham , we watched the ceremony on a small TV in Grandpa's house . Vaguely remember , but not really .

      1. What a lovely painting! It actually looks very much like a tinted photograph that professional photographers used to do in those days, though I'm sure it isn't.

          1. I see what you mean 🙂 The only reason I said that is because after the war my father set himself up as a photographer and was actually very talented. Sadly his business acumen didn't match his talent so it didn't last, but I have two lovely tinted photographs that he did do. One is of my mother and the other of me, aged about two. I also have the original black-and-white photos of both.

      4. The artist is rubbish. He or she has got the hat wrong. Not even any straw in it!

    12. Half of me was in my father's groin, the other in my mother's abdomen. I wasn't conscious at the time.

    13. 2nd June 1953?
      I was in Weston Super Mare with my aunt and uncle, while my mother got used to being a widow. I went to a Coronation street party in the rain and have a photo to prove it.

    14. Saw a black and white image of the Coronation coach on a neighbours TV. I think there were only two on the estate then. The tele was a tiny thing and I had to view it from their garden fence, about 30 feet from the window. I think my mother was inside watching it. My parents bought a 17 inch Murphy shortly afterwards. It was so big (for the time) everyone said it was like going to the cinema.

    15. My parents decided on a camping weekend – Surry, I think.
      We were frozen.
      Stood shivering in some benighted high street to watch a procession.

  25. Morning all 🙂😊
    Bright sunshine and cloudless.
    What happened ?
    Our nation needs a reformation not any more of these useless politicians in parliament.

  26. I suspect that site was created by Israel using the bodycam footage from the Hamas terrorists they killed when their response to the attack finally got underway.

    1. It is so blatant I did wonder, but if that is the case why hasn't it been taken down? Also, Israel has consistently refused to make the bodycam footage public out of respect for the victims and it was several weeks before they showed it to selective members of the MSM, which was well after their response got underway.

  27. Good morning all .

    Sunny morning here , light breeze.

    Son no 1 was up early , very early , preparing to have a practise run in the Purbecks .. Running 20 miles … yes that's right , 20 miles .

    Yesterday was a breeze when he ran in the Weymouth 5K park run , he said he was slower than normal , 20 mts + 40 seconds or less.

    He is strong, keen and very fast , for a 55 year old .

    1. I met an ex boyfriend yesterday that I haven't seen for a while. He said that his brother had decided recently, at the age of sixty one, to take up marathon running. He is doing them in times of ~3h 40m. That's not far off the elites!

    2. But but but, I thought California was the very centre of moral uprightness and probity? Surely a charitable individual with loads of money as I'm led to believe the land of milk and honey has in excess, might have stepped in by now. Dems are good people aren't they?

      1. The more you give such people the more they demand and still give nothing in return.

        When the so-called philanthropists, hiding in their enclaves, find themselves on the physical end of violence from those masses they were stupid enough to fund perhaps then they might wake up, but by then it will be too late.

        1. The banners over their doors read “philanthropist”, but that’s as far as it goes.

  30. Morning Stormy,

    Son was a late starter at 50 yrs old , he always enjoyed cricket , fast bowler . hurt his shoulder , then model aircraft flying , motor bikes , and swimming .

    He started to seriously start running , and improving everything , joined a running club , and here we are .. Moh is fit and able and still jogs , he was doing the Park run nearly 10 years ago , but muscle things slowed his progress down

    1. My niece won blues in rowing and gymnastics when she was at Oxford and her husband, a GP, rowed in the Goldie boat at Cambridge and my father just missed a rowing blue when he was up at St John's College Cambridge over 100 years ago!

      I used to enjoy several sports – I was not completely incompetent but I was never much good. (2nd XV rugby, 3rd XI cricket etc.)

      I always thought that:

      If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly

      was a far better aphorism than that you should only do things if you do them well. It is the thing that is worth doing – not your competence that is important.

      1. Paul Newman: "Show me a good loser and I will show you a loser."

        The epitome of the American 'win at all costs' philosophy.

        1. Just because you cannot succeed at something you can still do your very best to do well. Are there really no things which we do for enjoyment regardless of whether or not we have a natural talent?

          When Laurence Olivier, who played Archie Rice, a third rate music hall performer in the film The Entertainer was asked how he managed to play the part so convincingly he replied that he was not a music hall performer but if he did his very best to play the part of one he would achieve the appropriate level of mediocrity.

          There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all

          [Bob Dylan]

          https://www.youtube.com/wat…

      2. Always remember too, never do today what you can put off till tomorrow.

  31. Tomato source

    SIR – Alan G Barstow (Letters, May 26) suggests banishing the American usurpers of baked beans and hash browns from the traditional English breakfast.

    He should also get rid of tomatoes, as they too are invaders from Mesoamerica, arriving in Britain at the end of the 16th century and being regarded as unfit for eating until the 19th century.

    Roger Croston
    Chester

    1. SIR – I was delighted to read Alan G Barstow’s letter from Sweden praising the addition of kidneys to the English breakfast.

      I would go one step further and suggest the quite delicious devilled kidneys.

      Justin Tahany
      Reading, Berkshire

  32. I think this letter is the best of all of them this morning , I mean they are all a good read , but this one is good one .

    SIR – I write from Telford, which is a nice place to live. We have a major hospital and many secondary schools. The population is roughly 150,000, and the town covers an area of about 30 square miles.

    I have no idea how much it would cost to build a new town like Telford, but it would clearly be a lot. If the Government’s figures are to be believed, net migration to the UK during the past two years is about 1.4 million. This means that, every two years, we need to build the equivalent of nine Telfords – so nine new hospitals, 60,000 new houses and all the associated infrastructure, requiring enormous areas of land.

    Why are the major parties silent on the subject? Why is the impact of mass migration not being openly discussed?

    Barry Lovatt
    Telford, Shropshire

    1. Ideal questions for Mr Lovatt to put to the wanqueurs who will be proposing themselves as candidates in the election

    2. Ideal questions for Mr Lovatt to put to the wanqueurs who will be proposing themselves as candidates in the election

    3. Because the major parties have no answers to the (very sensible) points that you raise.
      I'm only amazed that this hasn't been classified as "hate speech".
      Perhaps Starmer will change that.

    4. In my experience (I live about an hour's drive away) Telford is full of muslims who do what muslims usually do. It's also extremely difficult to find one's way around.

  33. 😘 I know you haven’t Maggie. You are as delicious as you were when you were a younger lass.

    1. Is she any good? What experience does she have? Just read the piece you linked – I suppose she can't be any worse than the men. And the AC will generally be in dry dock rather than at sea.

  36. Morning all, Sir Kneelalot is going to control immigration, thank goodness. This morning:

    "He also vowed to “control our borders and make sure British businesses are helped to hire Brits first”.

    A Labour government would bar bosses who break employment law – for example by failing to pay workers the minimum wage – from hiring foreigners, the newspaper reported.

    It would also legislate to link the immigration system to training, with businesses applying for foreign worker visas having to train Britons to do the jobs."

    Neither of which actually controls anything, just aims at justifying those who come in as worth keeping because they're getting 'training', thus adding value to the economy. In the first one I doubt very many businesses would get prosecuted for anything along these lines.

    Slippery Starmer really has a grip 🙄

    1. From the Daily Mail

      PETER HITCHENS: I’ll take the knee to you – to beg you to vote against a Keir Starmer government
      21:12 EDT 01 Jun 2024, updated 21:12 EDT 01 Jun 2024 By Peter Hitchens for The Mail on Sunday

      It is time to grasp that we will never get what we want from our politicians. Once, there were parties that actually stood for what normal humans believed and liked. But they have vanished. Instead, we have carefully programmed propaganda machines, fuelled by hair gel and hot air. They bellow slogans which have been devised to please us by artificial intelligence.

      The real programmes of the parties are more to do with building millions of horrible box homes, and in starting vain and silly wars. Or with placing us under the permanent rule of Left-wing lawyers. But at Election time they hire propaganda wizards and voice coaches and pretend they are just like us. This is all bilge.

      Many tell me they will refuse to vote at all. Or they will refuse to vote for the Tories. I understand this. For years I urged patriotic, sensible people to dump this miserable party. I would still cross the road to avoid it if I saw it coming down the street. But conditions change. The country is now back roughly where it was in 1997, though far worse off. It is worse off because in 1997, far too many sensible people did not see the danger facing them from the Blairites.

      The Tories should plaster this photograph of Sir Keir and his deputy, Angela Rayner, taking the knee at every crossroads in the country. It is the truth about them, writes Peter Hitchens
      The Tories should plaster this photograph of Sir Keir and his deputy, Angela Rayner, taking the knee at every crossroads in the country. It is the truth about them, writes Peter Hitchens
      If only, back in 1997, conservative people had held their noses and voted against the Blair project. Yes, John Major’s government was ghastly and feeble. But we would have dodged many terrible things.

      Blair’s victory meant the total triumph of political correctness in the Civil Service, in schools and universities and in the courts. It began the great wave of mass immigration which transformed the country. It broke up the United Kingdom. It wrecked the House of Lords, kicking out the hereditary peers who were the most independent and honest people in it.

      It politicised the police. It banned by law the founding of new state grammar schools. It scared the monarchy into becoming the wretched green, multicultural remnant it now is. It dealt appalling blows to the armed forces. It debauched what was once a superb private pension system. And it turned this country into the compliant sidekick of the USA, in any war it cares to start or fan into flames.

      Its crowd-pleasing promises on crime and education were, of course, never kept. Its direct lie, in a TV Election broadcast, that the Tories would abolish the old age pension, remains one of the most outrageous pieces of dishonesty ever used in an Election.

      In fact, there was hardly any link between its campaign and the truth. Yet millions felt it was ‘time for a change’. Some wanted to ‘punish’ the Tories. But most Tory MPs, as now, were happy to go off and spend more time with their money. The best way to punish them would have been to force them to stay, rather than slink away into the luxurious worlds of the lecture circuit, hedge funds and paid lobbying.

      Now, many are making a similar mistake. They think there is nothing to lose by letting Sir Keir Starmer enter Downing Street. They could not be more wrong. Sir Keir is a dedicated dogmatic Leftist. The Tories should plaster that photograph of him and his deputy, Angela Rayner, taking the knee at every crossroads in the country. It is the truth about them.

      In any case, do you think Sir Keir’s government will go away when you get tired of it? People have got used to the ease of sending back unwanted goods, thanks to internet shopping. But if you buy a Labour government on July 4, you won’t be able to send it back.

      Like some horror-film pet or plant, it will grow and grow and refuse to leave, as it takes over your life. Votes at 16, no doubt followed by votes for EU nationals, will cement it in office. And those who voted to punish the Tories will find they have punished themselves for many years to come.

      This is why everyone has to discover the key to being a modern voter. Learn to vote against, rather than for. Manifestoes are mostly lies, or deliberately disguised. You will not get what you vote for, ever. But you do still have the power to prevent what you do not want.

      I wouldn’t ask anyone to vote for the Tories. But I’m ready to take the knee to you, to beg you to vote against a Starmer government.

      1. So what is the best way to vote if one's aim is to stop Labour becoming the goverment?

        A vote for the Conservative Party will achieve nothing – Sunak's party cannot beat Labour.

        A vote for The Reform Party will not stop Labour winning – Tice is not up to the job.

        Ed Davey? Anybody who votes for him should be disenfranchised for mental incapacity.

        1. I don't know if we have a Reform candidate here – and they will have had very little time to get to know people or make any kind of mark. So I will probably vote for the incumbent Tory girl, who has at least been very active locally for all sorts of groups.
          I would never in my life vote Labour. Even though the last Labour MP was a good local man.

          1. Reform's website shows some of the candidates, possibly one for your area in there? Ours is someone I never heard of, with no other details. Good luck, Ndovu

          2. Ours has. contacted me on email and suggests going for a pint. I might take him up on that.

          4. Hmmm…..a name but no information or photo. Still think I might stick with Siobhan.

        2. Hopefully every time Davey appears in public someone should ask him about his role in the Post Office scandal – that should keep him out of the public gaze while he hides away again, as he did last time the issue arose?

          1. Too busy falling off things……:-D completely agree, I'm a Bridgen fan (PO scandal, blood scandal, vaccine scandal).

      1. Yes indeed and this case a pretty mealy- mouthed get out of the lawyerish variety.

    3. Easy way to control immigration?
      No benefits whatsoever for the first 5 years in the country. If you can’t support yourself you are not welcome. That would be regardless of what the EU, United Nations, WEF or WHOever else says.

    4. ‘Many tell me they will refuse to vote at all. Or they will refuse to vote for the Tories. I understand this. For years I urged patriotic, sensible people to dump this miserable party‘
      Peter Hitchens may be imploring that people now vote Tory simply to block Labour, but unfortunately one always reaps what has been sown.
      They dumped Boris Johnson for a mess of cakes. They destroyed the next leader, installed a caretaker PM full of great ideas like banning smoking and putting teenagers into the military. It’s too late for tears Peter.

      1. Hitchens I’m sure is well meaning over this one, but he’s just wrong. It still amounts to a case of voting for, “better the devil you know”, etc. Well, it just isn’t better regrettably. As far as I can see, Lab / Con have morphed into two cheeks of the same backside.

        I have voted NOTA several times over the past couple of decades. I made an exception in 2019 because it really sounded like BJ was committed. He wasn’t and neither was his party of soppy Wets as it turned out.

        I’ve got a Reform candidate standing in this brand new constituency and so this time around that’s where my vote is going. I don’t suppose he will get in, but I’m sorry Mr Hitchens, that’s tough is my response.

  39. Good morning:
    Wordle 1,079 4/6

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

  40. Good morning:
    Wordle 1,079 4/6

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

  41. Thanks James, but you will have to explain what that means. Does it mean that it is a fake website as sosraboc says below?

    1. It does not tell us very much; however, what it means is that it's a domain name that's been around since 2010. It's not a new venture spurred on as a result of Oct 7. If it's a deep fake then it's been kept in readiness a long time.

      The owners of the domain name are hidden from view in a routine lookup, but I guess one can find out if one is prepared to pay. I'd say newspaper outlets do pay for that information and government too.

      The domain is one of 57 hosted on the same server, which implies that a single person or organisation is running either 57 sites or collects interesting domain names, (more likely).

      The domain name is currently for sale, which tends to support my last paragraph. It's not a fake site, but it's unclear who is using it currently and for what purpose.

      1. Thanks James. In fact the mods here have removed my comment due to the risk of malware which sosraboc mentioned. I don’t mind – I’d hate to cause anyone problems of any kind! !

      2. Apiculture, religion and philosophy have long been linked. Does anyone remember that film 'A Taoist of Honey'?

    2. Royal jelly, Beckham and the bees
      David Beckham began beekeeping during lockdown, and invested £500 to build a beehive at his Cotswolds home.

      King Charles has long been a lover of bees, and keeps number of hives at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire.

      Beckham has developed his own brand of honey produced in his garden, which he has called "DBee'z Sticky Stuff"

      The honey from Charles’ hives has also gone on sale, and can be bought by visitors to Highgrove under the name Highgrove Royal Garden Honey

      Beckhams now has several “flow hives” – which allow honey extraction without opening the hive – on raised platforms on his property, ringed by wild flowers to add flavour to the finished product

      Charles boasts a number of elaborate beehives at Highgrove. The handmade, palatial designs were given to him for his birthday in 2018

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2024/06/01/david-beckham-king-charles-swap-bee-keeping-tips/

  44. ‘We can’t enjoy our own beaches’ – Majorcans occupy the coast in anti-tourism protestLocals cram together to call for cuts to the millions of visitors who descend on the island every year https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

    I wonder if the PTB and the MSM make the connection between Majorcans who resent the invasion of outsiders even though they bring money to their economy and the indigenous population of the UK who increasingly find they cannot enjoy their own country. And in the case of illegal invaders to the UK they cost taxpayers a fortune to house, feed and imprison when they are caught committing crimes. And even worse – they do not go back home again after a fortnight's holiday!

  45. When we moved, I regretfully had to dispose of my trusty food processor.
    I'd had it around 40 years and it had put in good service.
    Can anyone point me to an equally robust modern version? All that I've seen so far in shops and online are flimsy tarted up objects, constructed out of on an unhealthy amount of plastic.

    4. The staff reply:

      "I had a very trusty old Braun of about the same age. It had been my workhorse in three countries but finally it burnt out good and proper two/three years ago and I replaced it after MUCH research with a Magimix Compact 3200. It's a bit fussier than the Braun but does a good job. If I hadn't had the Braun to compare it with I think I would feel satisfied with it."

    5. The staff reply:

      "I had a very trusty old Braun of about the same age. It had been my workhorse in three countries but finally it burnt out good and proper two/three years ago and I replaced it after MUCH research with a Magimix Compact 3200. It's a bit fussier than the Braun but does a good job. If I hadn't had the Braun to compare it with I think I would feel satisfied with it."

      1. Thanks you, M.
        I already have a mixer and (fingers crossed) it's putting in stirling service.
        It's a food processor – hefty chopping, slicing etc… that I need. They all seem so flimsy nowadays.
        Funnily enough, a friend suggested eBay this afternoon, so I will have a look.

    2. I thought I must be seeing things when Better Half showed me the pic complete with flag…seemed to be in Downing Street? Surely a fake photo?!

      1. I can't find a report on it in the UK mainstream media. Searching on 'johnson meets azov brigade' produces a couple of fringe media reports mentioning the location as Parliament or the Reform Club.

        1. He follows a number of different people, I’ll ask him if he can remember where he saw it. Update: says he saw it on Telegram, published in Malaysia. All sounds a bit dodgy to me.

  49. 'Morning All
    One for Paul to start….
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/42b8fc4cb6ddabb62244fd6aee9c20de017924b772a2fec5d649e13f809dfe10.jpg
    More
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6f38ac2f249e6ab3d7250811779c7411caf40c54de1f348325cfe534c76c507d.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f99e636578e9f5ae269d9a0743a48624f02c51308e1d47e071605c95694b4ee5.jpg
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9468f4788e552acd7c844c0f5a94b897f1bb1558ff780f630c8ecf2b185d54ae.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/35cd9d52c3a96787d97c08a9fd6ea85bdeb1478e50fba3cd74925b882d504374.jpg

    1. Labour has been accused of plotting a “devastating” assault on rural life by the head of the Countryside Alliance.

      In an interview with The Telegraph, Tim Bonner said that Sir Keir Starmer’s “utterly absurd” policies will make it “impossible” for countryside sports such as hunting and shooting to continue.

      Labour has already vowed to strengthen the Hunting Act to end trail hunting, which they claim is used as a “smokescreen” for illegally hunting foxes, deer and hares.

      The party has also promised to introduce a requirement for full cost recovery for firearms licensing, which it says will raise £14.6 million.

      “It looks likely that there may well be a manifesto commitment to legislate on hunting which is extraordinary but perhaps unsurprising given Labour’s history on it,” Mr Bonner said.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/01/labour-policies-destroy-country-shooting-pursuits/

      1. Bet they don't go for fishing, though. Too many of yer werkin clarse enjoy that killer "sport".

        1. I don't think the majority of people I meet at clay shooting events are exactly typical Tory supporters; any increase in the licence fee isn't likely go to go down well with them!

        2. That's why we have the ludicrous situation where it's illegal to hunt a hare, but fine to hunt a rabbit.

      2. The hunting act is appalling legislation, so Starmer will only make it worse. To think his ancestors were gamekeepers.

    2. Indeed. Would love an Artillery Luger – and it's shoulder stock holster!

      1. There should have been an immediate investigation as soon as that nasty destructive little git got back into the mayors office.

  52. Now here's a strange little story from the DT

    "Tory councillor behind parking clampdown ‘living in fear’ after car set alight

    Since going public with concerns, two vehicles on her High Wycombe driveway have been burnt"
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/01/tory-councillor-fear-car-set-alight/
    Funny Old World watching the odd "Traffic Cop" prog the police now will not just fine you but will seize your car for no MOT/Tax/Insurance an easy way to solve this problem…..
    One might think the guilty were protected in some way a "Protected Characteristic" perhaps……..
    🥧🔑

  53. Zelensky criticises Biden for not doing enough. 2 June 2024.

    Volodymr Zelensky has criticised US President Joe Biden on Sunday for not doing enough in allowing US weapons to be fired into Russia as Ukraine faces the threat of a renewed invasion.

    Yet another anti-Russia propaganda article. The Telegraph is pumping these things out like bilgewater. I think that the idea is to exhaust criticism.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/02/ukraine-zelensky-criticises-biden-no-doing-enough/

    1. Given the amount of aid/dosh that Zelensky has prised out of the USA, I think it's more than a bit ungrateful to criticise!

    2. I'm not sure about this. We might need him to stand for Lord Protector after the Civil War.

      1. 788012+ up ticks,

        Afternoon AS,

        Lot to be considered, ego factor, monetary values, knife sharpening ,all the usual mercenary weighing up to do first

    3. Because they were livid that they had no grounds to arrest anyone. Or hit people.

    4. 388012+ up ticks,

      Afternoon RE,

      They are going through " kapo type" training for the coming takeover.

  58. When you're a very greedy and ungrateful PoS there's never enough in the pot.

    Then, of course, there's what he knows about certain personalities and their dealings.

  61. Sounds very dodgy to me. If you listened to the end of the monologue, which I did, Oliver then had a defence expert on to comment who pointed out that the Azov brigade had been distanced from its roots and absorbed into the Ukrainian army in 2017 (before Zelensky's time). He also said that they were the brigade who put up a very brave defence of Mariupol (irrespective of whose side you are on) before being ordered to surrender. I'm surprised at Oliver, he's made an anti-Johnson "story" out of nothing, and totally out of context as the expert he spoke to pointed out before he was politely cut off!

    1. The world wide web has now morphed into the wild world web, there are so many conspiracy theories out there and very difficult to separate ‘fact’ from ‘fiction’. I haven’t watched Oliver for a very long time, or even GBN come to think of it. Farage seems to have his own agenda now, who knew. I know you and I think differently re Ukraine (and especially Johnson, although I have some sympathy for him now (not much) – I believe he’s been badly led on and let down by the Biden mob) but we still think the same on more or less anything else we could mention :-))

    2. The Azov Brigade still use an adaptation of the double-Z runic symbol on their badge. The world laughed at Putin when he referred to Ukrainian fascists but this is what he was referring to, a movement that aligns itself with the Ukrainians who sided with Hitler to fight Stalin, the man responsible for the famine which killed so many of them.

      1. What is Putin if he isn’t also a fascist? It is simply totalitarianism by another name.

          2. Then be sure.

            It is not excusing Putin to explain why this war happened but anyone who does so face-to-face risks losing his friends or his teeth. Also, it’s quite difficult to make the point to some people that there is a fascistic element in Ukraine, for they appear to believe that fascists don’t fight other fascists. In their world it’s left v. right and that’s good v. bad, where bad is always on the right. It’s a tedious argument about terminology in which fascism is treated as a discrete and separate idea to be examined and analysed academically. Those academics who associated the term with nationalism condemned the idea of civilised, quiet patriotism as dangerous and prejudiced.

            Remember those Stalinist posters featuring ‘Mother Russia’? If you feel brave, ask someone of the Left [sic] why Russian communism wasn’t also nationalistic.

  62. A bit like some of our incoming "guests". Apart from knowing about personalities and their dealings, but they don't even need that.

  63. A huge country estate in west Dorset which includes a village and a manor house is on the market for £30 million.

    The Bridehead Estate, Littlebredy which covers more than 2,000 acres, is thought to be one of the largest English estates to go on the market this year.

    The estate includes an early 19th-century Regency manor house with an indoor pool, a large area of countryside that includes the ancient Valley of Stones nature reserve, and the entire historic village of Littlebredy – 32 properties including cottages, a farmhouse, and a church. https://www.dorsetecho.co.u…
    https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/148255958#/media?id=media0&ref=photoCollage&channel=RES_BUY

    People are selling up, fearful of a new destructive , jealous Labour government . https://search.savills.com/…

    2. 388012+ up ticks,

      Afternoon TB,

      A steal for any aspiring genuine patriotic party
      being planned, as an operating hub with its own
      English laws and systems working, in fact a "passport to pimlico" MK2.

      An oasis of sanity whilst building a thoroughly checked membership daily.

        1. 388012+ up ticks,

          Evening HL,
          In all seriousness my belief is that sides shortly will have to be chosen,taken out of the hands of politics completely.

  64. A huge country estate in west Dorset which includes a village and a manor house is on the market for £30 million.

    The Bridehead Estate, Littlebredy which covers more than 2,000 acres, is thought to be one of the largest English estates to go on the market this year.

    The estate includes an early 19th-century Regency manor house with an indoor pool, a large area of countryside that includes the ancient Valley of Stones nature reserve, and the entire historic village of Littlebredy – 32 properties including cottages, a farmhouse, and a church. https://www.dorsetecho.co.u…
    https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/148255958#/media?id=media0&ref=photoCollage&channel=RES_BUY

    People are selling up, fearful of a new destructive , jealous Labour government . https://search.savills.com/…

  65. Perhaps, if he's so concerned about lack of data.. place an Ad saying.. if 30,000 people can turn up at Southend United footie ground with a utility bill or suchlike.. I'll stand for parliament for Clacton.

    If not.. leave me alone.

  66. An article in yesterday's Telegraph criticizing Trudeau and the state that Anadarko us now in.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/01/justin-trudeau-woke-tyranny-warning-britain-under-starmer/

    If only Canada was in as good a shape as the article presents. To quote from the article:
    The former high school teacher is a real Good Guy, calls himself a “social activist”, and speaks with perky gentility; he is famous for politeness. In reality the ex drama teacher is anything but a good guy, he certainly lacks any politeness nowadays.

  67. From Coffee House, the Spaectator

    Could Diane Abbott go to the Lords?
    Comments Share 2 June 2024, 9:41am
    The Diane Abbott saga rumbles on. After questions over whether the former shadow home secretary would be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in the election dominated the news agenda this week, Keir Starmer sought to end the media circus on Friday by declaring that the Corbyn ally was ‘free to go forward as a Labour candidate’. Abbott has suggested she will hold off popping the champagne corks at Starmer’s comments until after Tuesday’s National Executive Committee meeting when the candidates are finalised.

    But could another option tempt Abbott? The Sunday Times reports that a string of Labour MPs – including Abbott – have been offered peerages in return for them standing down as MPs to make way for key Starmer allies. Yes, this is the same Keir Starmer-led Labour party that has made a big song and dance about abolishing the House of Lords and cleaning up the honours system. But given Lords reform is no longer talked about as a first-term priority, it seems Starmer feels free to fill it how he likes in the meantime. The argument made by Labour aides is they will need many more Labour peers to get their business through the upper chamber.

    The question: could Abbott be tempted? There’s only a few days to go until a decision must be made on the candidate list.

  68. from Coffee House, the Spectator

    The Tories have handed Starmer a gift on immigration
    Comments Share 2 June 2024, 11:15am
    To turn Keir Starmer, of all people, into someone who can credibly promise to bring immigration down is an act of perverse genius by the Tory party that is unparalleled in the modern political era. Presented with an open goal, the Labour leader has today stuck the ball in the net by telling readers of the Sun that his changed party will prove it is back in the service of working people by ‘not just talking about sky-high migration but acting on it’.

    A pledge by Starmer to cut the immigration levels seen under the Tories has got past Labour’s activist base on the grounds of being pitched as a policy to protect British workers from being undercut by unscrupulous bosses. A party that increased net migration five-fold when it last got into power by ‘sending out search parties’ for immigrants (in the words of Peter Mandelson) and is now led by a man who once declared that all immigration laws have a ‘racist undercurrent’, has just outflanked the Conservative party to the right.

    Playing with fire doesn’t even begin to describe the social recklessness and electoral stupidity of what the Tories have done
    This is not down to any great skill on behalf of Starmer but because the Tories have made it so incredibly easy for him. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak took Labour’s quintupling of net immigration and then – amazingly – trebled it again via a deliberate further easing of entry requirements. Instead of continuing to cause angst in its post-Blair range of 200,000 to a quarter of a million, the net annual inflow of migrants now ranges between 600,000 and three-quarters of a million. Playing with fire doesn’t even begin to describe the social recklessness and electoral stupidity of what the Tories have done – in total defiance of repeated manifesto promises to bring numbers down.

    Those of us who were active long-term Brexit campaigners (unlike the Johnny-come-lately Tory MPs like Johnson and Sunak who we dragooned into our ranks in the run-up to the referendum) always understood the electoral power of mass migration scepticism among the British public. More than anything, it was Tony Blair’s failure to impose transitional controls on migration that even the European Commission felt were advisable following the enlargement of the EU that opened up the road to Brexit. Only Blair and his fellow denizens of the Westminster village were surprised by the scale of the influx of cheap Eastern European labour that led to downward pressure on wages for working class jobs.

    On the election trail in 2010, Gordon Brown got skewered by a question from salt-of-the-earth working class voter Mrs Gillian Duffy that was as much tautological as rhetorical: ‘All these Eastern Europeans – where are they flocking from?’ Afterwards he was caught referring to her as ‘a bigoted woman’, effectively sacking a huge chunk of Labour’s electoral coalition in the process.

    So it was immigration policy more than any other issue that rendered Labour unelectable and caused a majority of the British voting public to think the unthinkable with regard to EU membership. It is, then, oddly fitting that it is immigration policy which is bringing Labour back to power – although not, in truth, their own, but that of the Conservatives.

    Both Johnson and Sunak convinced themselves of the lie that the public was not really bothered about legal immigration volumes so long as the system provided theoretical control. But it was not just ‘taking back control’ that people voted for in the referendum, it was also a fervent desire to use that control to bring numbers back down to 20th century levels.

    Perhaps they could have got away with holding steady immigration numbers at 250,000 or so – failing to reduce numbers as David Cameron and Theresa May failed before them, in a relatively unspectacular way. Nobody would think Starmer capable of reducing net migration below that or even being willing to try. More likely the public could have been whipped into a frenzy of worry that he’d take things far higher.

    Instead, our Tory premiers of this parliamentary term opted for trebles all round in the last-chance saloon. Today, in response to Starmer’s pledge, a Conservative spokesman told the BBC: ‘No one believes Keir Starmer is serious about tackling immigration.’

    On the contrary, a Labour leader who finds the very idea of border control distasteful is indeed likely to be able to reduce immigration from the stratospheric levels that the Tories have brought us. The Conservative party has wilfully thrown away an electoral superpower that it never properly understood. Samson went to the barber for a number one buzz cut, Achilles stabbed his own tendon and the goose that laid the golden eggs has just been cooked.

    1. TBF I think the Tories have tried to something but the Socies always put up blocks to their plans.

    2. Um… Has the Spectator not noticed that Starmer's policy isn't actually aimed at bringing numbers down. All it does is add credibility to the quality of migrants' skills by requiring employers to train them if they want to import them. He'll just say there's no need to repatriate because they're "adding value" to the economy. I sometimes wonder about the naïvity of Speccie articles.

      He'll follow this up by saying, "it's only fair that those taxed get a say in our democracy" like he's going to with 16-yr old voters and before you know it they'll be officially able to stay.

  69. Really?

    This "hottest" month and season tripe is becoming wearing. Wettest? and he may have a point. I think our daily reports courtesy of the elder statesman (BT) from the Fakenham area (East Anglia) may indicate otherwise. I've regularly had to wear three layers, one being a fleece, when gardening throughout this sodden Spring.

    https://x.com/juneslater17/status/1797042875063996562

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a132829d749705a104b29dd9328ec3eb74df71d56249256747e710953c4624ca.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0844365b91ad88e9fc1dcd96484248a2465bf52a3a12fab9746a35953b71ecb3.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b4e97b8e930a5c9c3ef6d302d526f65822f1f07292326c4dd4359d8ff8f14d3b.png

      1. Afternoon Sue. We have graduated to the stage where no statistics can be believed.

        1. Is she? I’m never sure with her! I don’t find her very amusing – and I say that as a stroppy Geordie!

          1. She overestimates her ability as a satirist in the Rod Liddle style but generally hits the target.

      3. Howay, Pet.

        She's taking the piss about having to wear a coat … in late May, though but!😘

      4. Howay, Pet.

        She's taking the piss about having to wear a coat … in late May, though but!😘

      5. June Slater?

        Record breaking temperature for May and she is wearing her coat on the 25th? She’s being annoying by taking the proverbial.

    2. The problem is that the hugely expensive Met Office super computer is programmed to support man made climate change. Forecasts may vary.

      1. The supercomputer is running a model. It's like Ferguson's COVID model and his Foot & Mouth model, i.e. usually inaccurate.

    3. I had to have a proper gander at this. Absolute tosh. N. Suffolk has been 13⁰-17⁰C the majority of the month and often only 10⁰C, two weeks ago for example. The Met office is just part of the Climate Catastrophe scam. I can think of higher May temps in E. Anglia, even by their odd metric, e.g. 1990.

  70. Phew – it's warm out there today – especially wielding the hedge trimmer at arms' length. Quite hard on the arms and I still can't quite reach far enough. I've come in to cool off a bit. Spent most of the morning trying to decide which replacement phone charger to buy on Amazon…. I lost one on my last trip to Kenya and although we have one with two ports, I will need one of my own for my next trip away. To make up the free postage level I've ordered next winter's vitamins.

  72. All Saints at Martin off the A354, smack in the middle of the Dorset Cursus and Cranbourne Chase.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/08f805697b6e01f78607470173a802e08bca7f201620a3d274ed921e71ab0673.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/33c4ebf49bbc3f7c930f8c48c3e645ab04a2e25191af3930772998e52ed54043.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6cc5658b8ccc442123b42bda8617a717a39e62a801da7aac3e276d42d02c3eb5.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5aab6cf84d514f67285723cda555dd659cea800dbc4056660d31fba51214e1b9.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/42c2c774ed2483abe193c862c72120e58760d93c46876379d2363e54b9de136e.jpg

    2. How many times did she "flip" the home to avoid the taxes that they want on the rest of us? Typical politician hypocrite – only cares about her own bank balance. And to think that the thick British population will vote people like her into Government. I despair.

    3. How many times did she "flip" the home to avoid the taxes that they want on the rest of us? Typical politician hypocrite – only cares about her own bank balance. And to think that the thick British population will vote people like her into Government. I despair.

    1. And it's not a bridge either.

      Another triumph for the DT's teenage editorial staff.

      3. The sign does exempt taxis and buses. The height sign above the entry might have warned otherwise though.

    5. Perhaps his hotel hadn't got round to the reading lessons, taxpayer funded of course.

      1. I actually dance on a regular basis with a blind man. The only difference on the dance floor is that I have to keep an eye out for other couples and steer away if necessary.

        He doesn't hold back, either. I admire that; it must take guts.

        1. I would think people who have been blind a long time are good at mind mapping. Knowing where the post box is for example.

          1. Absolutely. On the dance floor, though, everything is in constant motion!

          3. It wouldn't surprise me if young men from Buenos Aires followed Ashes around as if she was mother duck.

    2. Hope he doesn't get a blind partner. Then it would really be a case of the blind leading the blind.

  78. There is no reason why a blind person can't dance. Wheelchairs are another matter. I think it would be humiliating.

    2. Again, I know someone who dances in a wheelchair. She evidently thinks it's better than not dancing.

      1. (Although obviously this is dancing for enjoyment, rather than competition.)

      2. Agreed. I just had an image of two Waltzing wheelchairs and thought it would get laughs rather than applause.

    3. For what it's worth, Phil, Friday mornings in the gym at Roehampton involved various ball games: some in wheelchairs, others sat on the floor. All were good fun, yet competitive. My efforts were on a par with my able-bodied sporting prowess… 😟

        1. I keep telling him he should get blades or pogos for each leg. It would make shopping easier and he wouldn't even need to use the Bus. Plus he could mow down all those old dears blocking the aisles with a Trompedent.

  79. Fear of worse, eh, Ndovu? 😀 Yes, I'm sticking with Conservative too, this time following heart rather than brain.

    1. Siobhan is young (early 40s) and is active locally promoting business, and especially matters important to women, such as the local maternity hospital. She answers emails, too, and not just with a template reply. She's quite photogenic and never a week goes by without a photo in the local paper of her meeting a group of people on one issue or another. I had a look at her voting record last week and although she generally votes with the majority of her colleagues, she has deviated from that norm a few times.

  80. She sounds a good ‘un, if she is I hope she’ll get elected. I won’t say who mine is, postie once commented ‘gu t’ t’openin’ of an envelop, that fella’. Still re-elected tho. Office is generally good at helping with queries, bin collection etc…

  81. Female bus drivers are often safer than their male colleagues. It should be possible to fit a collision warning sensor on the front of the upper deck, ditto for HGVs.

    1. My lady neighbour drives as if she is driving a limousine for VIP's. Her husband drives as if he is on a race track. She says by driving as she does she is saving fuel by always anticipating and being in the right gear.

  82. 388012+ up ticks,

    388012+ up ticks,

    Sound advice in the comments,

    Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧
    @TRobinsonNewEra
    ·
    6h
    Read the comments, we are not just winning , we have won .
    Quote
    Sky News
    @SkyNews
    ·
    15h
    Far-right activist Tommy Robinson organised a demonstration in central London to call out a "two-tiered policing system" and demand the resignation of Met police commissioner Mark Rowley.

    https://trib.al/YKanzN3

      1. 388012+ up ticks,

        Afternoon Pip,
        I’ve tried checking it keeps taking me back seemingly to all roads leading to sky.

    1. They aren't men – they are animals – with apologies to real, and not human animals. No wonder when some of them come over here they don't realise that things are different.

  84. Just in from an hour or so in t'garden. It is sunny and almost nice. I may risk sitting outside for a cup of tea in half an hour.

          2. It’s a storehouse, built to keep the mice out as best they could.
            This one is some 250+ years old…

          3. Gosh – that's old for a mouse.

            I remember seeing similar in Slovakia in the early 1990s.

    1. Here's another attributed to Orwell: 'Those who control the present control the past and those who control the past control the future.' 1984 on telly recently, the b&w version with Jon Hurt, Richard Burton and others. I have a collection of his writings, bought from an outdoor book sale for 50p some years ago, never part with it.

          1. On the whole books are preferable to films – unless the recipients are devoid of imagination

            Edit – or can't read beyond textspeak. Which is of course very possible…

          2. Many films are much better than the book.
            Double Indemnity
            The Graduate
            The Godfather
            And then there are others which are just as good as the book but different
            The 39 Steps
            Strangers on a Train
            but I've never seen a version of 1984 which rivalled the novel.

          3. 'Day of the Triffids' has never been done justice to. Nor Stephen King's 'The Stand'.

          4. If the book is well written it’s difficult to better in a movie. The Great Gatsby with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow I thought was a masterpiece but it still didn’t top the novel some of which is a word picture.

          6. Long time since I read the book or seen the film. I remember I enjoyed both.

  86. This great composer was blacklisted by the BBC for writing tunes – he demands our respect

    Shunned by the establishment, George Lloyd spent decades in exile, growing mushrooms and carnations in Dorset

    SIMON HEFFER • 1 June 2024 • 7:00pm

    I wrote about George Lloyd on the 25th anniversary of his death last year, when Radio 3 allowed me to make a programme about his career as a composer. I have also highlighted his Fourth Symphony – his masterpiece, written in Switzerland in 1945-46 when he was recuperating from shellshock, having been told he would never write music again. I first wrote about Lloyd in this newspaper in the mid-1980s, when he was slowly emerging from a period of critical neglect in an age when composers tended to write music to impress their peers, rather than for a wider audience. The standing of classical music in this country suffered accordingly, and is still suffering.

    Further evidence of Lloyd’s posthumous recognition is a new initiative by Lyrita, which is releasing a massive collection of his works on CDs. Lyrita was an early pioneer of Lloyd, issuing in the early 1980s three vinyl discs of his Fourth, Fifth and Eighth symphonies. Those recordings came after two events that ended his exile of more than 20 years growing mushrooms and carnations on a Dorset smallholding. First, John Ogdon, the pianist, who admired Lloyd’s writing for his instrument, showed the BBC (which had blacklisted him for being insufficiently atonal) the score of his Eighth Symphony, and it was eventually broadcast; and then in 1981, two of his symphonies were performed and broadcast – the Fourth, which had its premiere at the Cheltenham Festival in July, and then within weeks the Sixth was heard at the Proms.

    The Lyrita initiative in part repackages earlier projects. Two boxed sets of Lloyd’s symphonies feature recordings conducted by the composer with the BBC Philharmonic and the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Another set includes choral works, also conducted by the composer: his Symphonic Mass of 1992, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Brighton Festival Chorus; and A Litany, with the Philharmonia and the Guildford Choral Society. Lloyd wrote choral music with a fluency, tunefulness and majesty familiar from his symphonies, and which had not been heard in the English canon since the deaths of Vaughan Williams and Howells – though his music is more susceptible to European influences from the romantic era than either of theirs. Another disc, made posthumously and conducted by Matthew Owens with the Exon Singers, includes his Requiem. Its score was only finished a month before the composer’s death in 1998, and was written in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales.

    However, the great revelation of this Lyrita issue is the double CD set of his four piano concertos, written during his Dorset exile in the 1960s and early 1970s. “I just write what I have to write,” Lloyd said, and there is a sense in these concertos that some sort of liberation from past struggles – whether with his mental health or with the BBC – opens up a new ease of expression. The first of the concertos is perhaps the most stunning, reminiscent of the grandeur, power and musicality of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. It is subtitled Scapegoat, and was inspired by Lloyd’s hearing the dramatic playing of Ogdon, which he thought would be highly suited to what he had in mind. The work, written in the arctic winter of 1962-63, radiates nothing but warmth, not least because the composer’s writing for orchestra makes no concessions to the piano, and fills the listener’s head with the most astonishing range of sounds. That European influence is detectable again, with touches of Rachmaninov and Richard Strauss, but fundamentally the work is pure Lloyd, written to bewitch by a sheer beauty with which the musical world had little truck when the composer wrote it. It is, unquestionably, one of the great British piano concertos.

    It is played on the new disc by Martin Roscoe, who gives an equally assured performance of the Second concerto. The Third and Fourth are performed sensitively by Kathryn Stott, who gave the first performance of the latter in an exuberant Festival Hall concert in 1984. All these recordings are essential for any lover of fine classical music: and if this project propels George Lloyd’s reputation up even further, then justice will have been done.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

  87. This great composer was blacklisted by the BBC for writing tunes – he demands our respect

    Shunned by the establishment, George Lloyd spent decades in exile, growing mushrooms and carnations in Dorset

    SIMON HEFFER • 1 June 2024 • 7:00pm

    I wrote about George Lloyd on the 25th anniversary of his death last year, when Radio 3 allowed me to make a programme about his career as a composer. I have also highlighted his Fourth Symphony – his masterpiece, written in Switzerland in 1945-46 when he was recuperating from shellshock, having been told he would never write music again. I first wrote about Lloyd in this newspaper in the mid-1980s, when he was slowly emerging from a period of critical neglect in an age when composers tended to write music to impress their peers, rather than for a wider audience. The standing of classical music in this country suffered accordingly, and is still suffering.

    Further evidence of Lloyd’s posthumous recognition is a new initiative by Lyrita, which is releasing a massive collection of his works on CDs. Lyrita was an early pioneer of Lloyd, issuing in the early 1980s three vinyl discs of his Fourth, Fifth and Eighth symphonies. Those recordings came after two events that ended his exile of more than 20 years growing mushrooms and carnations on a Dorset smallholding. First, John Ogdon, the pianist, who admired Lloyd’s writing for his instrument, showed the BBC (which had blacklisted him for being insufficiently atonal) the score of his Eighth Symphony, and it was eventually broadcast; and then in 1981, two of his symphonies were performed and broadcast – the Fourth, which had its premiere at the Cheltenham Festival in July, and then within weeks the Sixth was heard at the Proms.

    The Lyrita initiative in part repackages earlier projects. Two boxed sets of Lloyd’s symphonies feature recordings conducted by the composer with the BBC Philharmonic and the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Another set includes choral works, also conducted by the composer: his Symphonic Mass of 1992, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Brighton Festival Chorus; and A Litany, with the Philharmonia and the Guildford Choral Society. Lloyd wrote choral music with a fluency, tunefulness and majesty familiar from his symphonies, and which had not been heard in the English canon since the deaths of Vaughan Williams and Howells – though his music is more susceptible to European influences from the romantic era than either of theirs. Another disc, made posthumously and conducted by Matthew Owens with the Exon Singers, includes his Requiem. Its score was only finished a month before the composer’s death in 1998, and was written in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales.

    However, the great revelation of this Lyrita issue is the double CD set of his four piano concertos, written during his Dorset exile in the 1960s and early 1970s. “I just write what I have to write,” Lloyd said, and there is a sense in these concertos that some sort of liberation from past struggles – whether with his mental health or with the BBC – opens up a new ease of expression. The first of the concertos is perhaps the most stunning, reminiscent of the grandeur, power and musicality of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. It is subtitled Scapegoat, and was inspired by Lloyd’s hearing the dramatic playing of Ogdon, which he thought would be highly suited to what he had in mind. The work, written in the arctic winter of 1962-63, radiates nothing but warmth, not least because the composer’s writing for orchestra makes no concessions to the piano, and fills the listener’s head with the most astonishing range of sounds. That European influence is detectable again, with touches of Rachmaninov and Richard Strauss, but fundamentally the work is pure Lloyd, written to bewitch by a sheer beauty with which the musical world had little truck when the composer wrote it. It is, unquestionably, one of the great British piano concertos.

    It is played on the new disc by Martin Roscoe, who gives an equally assured performance of the Second concerto. The Third and Fourth are performed sensitively by Kathryn Stott, who gave the first performance of the latter in an exuberant Festival Hall concert in 1984. All these recordings are essential for any lover of fine classical music: and if this project propels George Lloyd’s reputation up even further, then justice will have been done.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

  89. Encore Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,079 3/6
    ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
    🟨🟩⬜🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. 4 today.
        Wordle 1,079 4/6

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

    2. 👏 Par for me.
      Wordle 1,079 4/6

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

    3. I feel a bit embarrassed in this company with a clumsy bogey!

      Wordle 1,079 5/6

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

    4. Well done, just got back from a long but great day's boat fishing at the Eddystone and west of there. Happy with a 5 as I'm knackered.

      Wordle 1,079 5/6

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

        1. All pollack, lures and live bait. 28 or 30 fish from about 5lb to 14lb. Four of us fishing with the skipper just moaning that we lost too many. Good friends all with lots of laughter and taking the pee.

          2. Oddly enough there is a commercial ban on catching pollack locally. A dodgy decision as most of the rod and line commercial fishermen have been almost totally ruined because now is the pollack season. Bass won't be a viable option for another month or so.

  90. – Lefty – A man with a criminal conviction cannot be leader of a country or allowed to travel to Western countries

    Righty – What about Nelson Mandela

    Lefty – But he was a great man fighting oppression and his conviction was politically motivated

    Righty – I rest my case

    https://scontent.flhr10-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/447472436_7615491188519005_8755290470086693238_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s600x600&_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=MipOxilOnLoQ7kNvgHNC2-s&_nc_ht=scontent.flhr10-1.fna&oh=00_AYCM2fQ9jRfrNh5go_9fpErwDnzMwBLTNPuWlQQzXQO_9Q&oe=66627181

    2. Even Amnesty International admitted that Mandela was never a political prisoner. He was convicted for terrorist acts that killed people indiscriminately and he could have been released much sooner if he’d agreed to renounce violence. He consistently refused.

  91. GBBO is on the telly right now, but I don't know which language. There's a large black woman with a massive, well, cake-hole, who keeps calling the contestants "bikers", so already I'm confused – is this cooking or motorcycling show? Otherwise, she is completely incomprehensible. The pooftah with her is now dressed as a woman. Prue & Hollywood still there, and erudite.

    1. Can you let me know which channel it's on? Then I'll be able to make sure I can avoid it.

    2. Alison the shouty, talentless Hammond, and I presume the ‘pooftah’ is Noel Fielding! He’s actually funny, but weird! I think he did the Mighty Boosh!

      1. I have only seen the Hammond woman once – she "presented" a programme about Monaco – a place we know and like. The prog was abysmal. The whole thrust was about Hammond and how marvellous she though herself to be – and – to make it even worse – she has a stupid, loud laugh at the end of every sentence (or, indeed, phrase) she utters.

    2. I almost spilt someone elses vegan responsibly sourced vaniila milkshake when you said that. I must be in the wrong sort of Bar.

  94. That's me for this unexpectedly nice day. It appears that it won't last – rain later in the week, and low night time temps = 7ºC … Well, it is D-Day week!

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  95. We had an enjoyable sunny afternoon visiting various venues where artists were showing their skills, wonderful mosaic work , glass workings, paintings etc https://www.dorsetartweeks.co.uk/directory/map and finished off the afternoon in a wonderful garden having a cream tea after viewing the work of the artist late Elizabeth Muntz . https://artuk.org/discover/artists/muntz-elizabeth-18941977

    The afternoon became very warm , 26c, I wore a light jumper because this morning was slightly chilly, so I felt rather warm having tea , even though I was under a gazebo.

    Moh wore a shirt and shorts and his hat , and felt very comfortable .

    1. How lovely. Get to the x rated bit ! Where he …………………………………..

    2. "Clinical Director Becks Kerr told ITV News: 'if you put people in a place like this, you’re asking for a mental health crisis.'"

      Well where does she suggest they're ut up then? Her house?

      1. Hell's teeth, they are merely setting the stabber with mental heath ishoos or suicide bomber with same, ready to go on a rampage and be excused when/if caught and tried.

    3. "Despite never having any previous mental health issues, he was diagnosed with depression at Wethersfield" – oh yes, how do they know what his previous health issues were? It's rubbish – they should be sent back where they came from.

    4. "Despite never having any previous mental health issues, he was diagnosed with depression at Wethersfield" – oh yes, how do they know what his previous health issues were? It's rubbish – they should be sent back where they came from.

  99. Rob Burrow has died (Rugby League player suffering from Motor Neurone Disease). RIP.

    2. Immensely sad. I can’t help tears rolling down my face .
      RIP and immense respect to the dignity and courage shown by him and his wife.

        1. A very good friend of mine, and coincidentally (or is it?) a very good Rugby player, died from MND and I have tried to support all the charity initiatives ever since.
          It's a horrible disease and if I got it myself (I've played a lot of Rugby) I think I'd top myself….

    5. He was a legend – a tiny bloke for Rugby League but a heart as big as a lion (and hard as nails). The news upset me far more than I thought it would do…. speaks volumes about the man.

  100. Max's capitulation confirmed. Abbot said she is the "adopted Labour candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington". She also described the idea that left-wingers have been offered peerages to stand down as "factually incorrect".

    Max told the BBC: "I have n-n-n-n-n-n-no comment to make."

    1. Every concession he grants persuades me further that when he gets power he will kowtow to the Muslim caucus.

  101. Not a cloud in the sky all day. How did that happen?
    First meal outside this evening, delicious home made pork and apple burgers and lots of lovely salad. Even two glasses of wine.
    Back on line tomorrow 🤞slayders.

    1. In the early days I think the concern was genuine. However, as time passed and lockdown followed lockdown to the obvious end result those calling the shots grew drunk on the publicity and began to believe their own hype.

      When the 'experts' ignored the advice it was obvious no one else should either. That we were continually kicked by the state is just evidence.

      1. My own view is that it was very obvious from the outset that it was only really harmful for the very elderly and those with existing problems that 'flu or pneumonia would have killed.

          1. Was that the liner with a loads of fairly elderly passengers quarantined? If so, I remember saying it would be an excellent way to calculate the 'Covid19' death rate. A bit callous of me perhaps but …

          2. They called it the Petri dish….and the number of deaths was minimal! They knew….

          3. They called it the Petri dish….and the number of deaths was minimal! They knew….

        3. It wasn’t obvious in our household as, in the first wave, Mr S was involved in treating people in their 40s who were extremely sick/dying. He says he had never previously seen that clinical picture with respiratory symptoms associated with white outs in lung fields on the chest X Rays.
          But I never supported locking down (indeed I signed the Great Barrington Declaration) because the bottom line is that about 10,000 people a week die in normal circumstance and, long before covid, I not only saw young patients die from overwhelming infection but personally knew 2 of my own contemporaries who did. The grown up approach is to face up to the fact while using basic common sense and working overtime to support and treat those affected. Boris’s first speech seemed to be acknowledging that. However, he was then forced to cave to intolerable shroud waving pressure from the BBC, Labour and the likes of Cummings and Gove at a time when, because of getting covid himself, he had suddenly realised he was mortal. The press behaved as if nobody had ever died before and acted thoroughly irresponsibly with the implication that any death was attributable to the Government and showcasing the dreadful Scottish and Welsh pantomime dames as they sought ever more stringent restriction, solely to try to bounce Westminster into doing the same.

          1. And how many of the younger age group already had significant underlying problems?
            The whole approach was utterly nonsensical.
            How on earth the authorities could allow all deaths within 28 days of a Covid diagnosis to have to be reported as Covid deaths is an indication of how it was a con-trick.

    2. There seems to be a serious outbreak of forgetfulness by many of these people – Fauci, Vennells et al. "I have no recollection Senator"

  103. Countryfile weather forecast:
    Frost due on Tuesday, the Jocks had better be well strapped up.

  107. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwick_House

    I met Moh at a party at Southwick house in 1968, when he was in the RN, he and his fellow officers were doing a Navigation course .

    He showed me the D Day map room , true , yes .

    Very memorable .. history there for me to look at , as did many others who were invited to gaze at it ( the maps not the golden rivet)

  108. There's been a yelp from the kitchen and a shout of 'Yes!'.

    It seems her Warqueenery has discovereed the forgotten pot of Hagen Das. Well enjoy it lass. We have almost nothing else in the cupboard.

      2. No, Geoff, but I might put my chewing gum on the bedpost overnight! Lol.

    1. It appears to be the copper from Friday who got stabbed whilst he was withstraining the first stab victim.

  111. And at the same time the Germans were doing everything they could to save the attacker.

  112. Dont think so – I dont have their astonishing strength of character…..

    1. One never knows.
      Did they, before they got the disease?
      People do extraordinary things in the face of adversity.

      1. You're absolutely right – but I really dont want to find out…… RIP Rob….

  113. So, a Politzei officer who pulled a man trying to subdue a knife attacker off the knifeman and got stabbed for his troubles, has died.

    1. Indeed, but the poor officer had to make a snap judgement in very difficult circumstances.

  114. Mexican elections are getting heated:-

    Mexico's bloodiest election in modern history set to give first woman president
    Voters will decide between a former academic who is promising to advance the current leader's populist policies and a former senator and tech entrepreneur who has pledged to escalate the fight against the drug cartels.

    Mexico's election has become its bloodiest in modern history after the number of assassinated candidates reached 37 before today's vote.
    https://news.sky.com/story/mexicos-bloodiest-election-in-modern-history-set-to-give-first-woman-president-13146748

  115. He was A Superstar – I remember how brilliant he was in the gym tests – his squat thrusts (an absolute killer) were legendary!

    1. He was my Judo coach for a few years, and believe it or not, I could beat him at most of the Superstar events.
      NOT the squats.

        1. I could match him for stomach curls but nothing else on the gym side, not even close.
          He was a much, much pleasanter individual in the flesh than he came across in the TV programmes.
          Extremely patient and his coaching was the best I ever received.

          He taught us at school and I was fortunate enough to qualify to be trained at the Bukokwai

          1. I always thought he came across quite well!

            You were very lucky to learn from such an iconic figure……

          2. I had a Mr Bamford who taught me judo! He was a funny little man but a very good teacher. One session he had us ‘throwing’ him taitoshi? and as he went down over his shoulder, his false teeth shot out under the wall bars!
            Cue much hilarity…

        2. I seem to remember Andy Ripley on there, as well! He was my heartthrob! And he was the godfather of one or Rastus and Caroline’s sons!
          Another terrific sportsman who died too soon.

          1. Yes he was – to see Ripley in full flow – that ground-eating stride and his long hair flowing behind him – I almost fancied him myself! A great Number 8!!!

          2. I adored him! My father said he was like a cart horse lumbering up the wing, but as you say those great long legs and the mane of hair….oh what memories!

          3. He was a great athlete and my Rugby Club joined in a large number of others raising money and awareness for Prostate Cancer following his dreadfully premature death.

          4. He was a great athlete and my Rugby Club joined in a large number of others raising money and awareness for Prostate Cancer following his dreadfully premature death.

          5. As I read this, it came into my mind that he was the first elite sportsman that I knew of who wore contact lenses. It’s bizarre what is swilling around in my memory cells!

          6. My Dad used to say I’d been reading Titbits when I came out with random stuff….

  117. just back from the wedding of the decade in Portugal. Wow, is all I’m going to say. Wonderful time and a pleasure to spend time with my folks and the extended family and all their little ones. My two cousins married earlier than me and their children are all grown up, with children of their own. I have to say, my cousins’ children have all found wonderful husbands who don’t appear to mind talking to old duffers like me, or even older duffers like my folks. It’s nice to have something really positive to say and it does give me some hope for the future. Possibly more tales to tell in the future.

    oh actually you can have this one now. My goddaughter was marrying someone reasonably famous in the football world and there is an event which started today in the resort (players were staying in the same hotel as my folks) for footballers playing golf. Last year it was won by Steve Bull! And a few years ago by Kenny Hibbett!*

    *I’m not much of a football fan but these are ex-Wolves players, whom even I have heard of.

    my Goddaughter and new husband are relocating shortly from oop north to Cobham; so close to where I live so I am looking forward to imposing myself on her🙂

    1. What a coincidence, Mir! We are off to Portugal next Monday to attend a family wedding involving a footballer!

          1. We were in Vale do Lobo, but that is because it’s where the couple first met when they were teenagers.

          2. Oh how lovely! Thank you for that! We’re going to somewhere near Braga!

          3. Ah well obviously (?) we all know Catherine of Braganza and now I have looked up where it (and Braga) is. The things you learn!

    1. Was it because he thought he didn't need a cloak when he was taken to Argentina by submarine after an unidentified body was found in his burnt out buncker ?

  122. I'm off to bed.
    No word on Step-son but I'm now past caring.
    Goodnight all.

  123. Evening, all. Late again because I've only just got back. Have had a very busy weekend.

    If people are going to vote Labour because they don't like the Tories' record on immigration I can only say, you ain't seen nuttin' yet.

  125. Another day is done so, I wish you a goodnight and may God bless you all, Gentlefolk. Bis morgen früh. If we ae spared!

  128. Good night, chums, sleep well and see you all at around 7 am on Monday.

  130. Now and again, a good, long zed solves a number of issues.
    Morning, Tom!

    2. ' Morning, Geoff and thank you for all your care you have lavished on us, on our behalf.

Comments are closed.