Sunday 20 March: There can be no letup in condemnation of Putin’s savage and illegal acts in Ukraine

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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603 thoughts on “Sunday 20 March: There can be no letup in condemnation of Putin’s savage and illegal acts in Ukraine”

  4. Even ethnic minorities are reviled if they don’t toe the fashionable line on race
    Rod Liddle

    Sunday March 20 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    ‘Well, at least you’re spared a visit to Nottingham,” I joked to Tony Sewell, shortly after he had seen his honorary degree from the city’s hapless university withdrawn in an act of hilarious cowardice.

    Tony is a good friend, but more importantly he’s a clear thinker driven by a passion to improve the chances of the poorest inner-city kids by getting them into decent universities. His charity, Generating Genius, has succeeded in sending hundreds of black youngsters to Russell Group colleges, largely by instilling in them deeply unfashionable virtues such as discipline, hard work and a respect for the canon of western literature which the left, in its self-flagellating stupidity, believes is redolent of white supremacy and should be thrown in the nearest river.

    Sewell was born in Brixton to Jamaican parents and I once asked him why he hadn’t gone off the rails like so many others and spent his time stabbing or shooting his peers. His answer was similarly unfashionable: “Family and the church.” He annoyed the lefties when chairing a government-commissioned report into racial and ethnic disparities in the UK, one of the conclusions being that there was scant evidence that our country was “structurally racist”. That is why the cringing clowns at Nottingham University withdrew its honorary degree: you are not allowed to dispute the reality of structural racism even — perhaps especially — if you are black. Last week the government adopted almost every proposal from his report.

    I don’t suppose losing an honorary degree bothers Tony too much, seeing as he has a real PhD. Honorary degrees are too often an award for idiocy and group think and go exclusively to lefties who toe the line. Hell, even Owen Jones, The Guardian’s enfant fastidieux has got one. But actually it did rankle a little, philosophically. It reminded Sewell of the racism he had experienced growing up: “Those people just thought of me as one thing, and they hated it. It almost feels like that with the university. They’re like those guys who shouted out the n-word at me when I was seven.”

    His report is fascinating and deserves to be read. It concluded that there was indeed plenty of racism around in society, but also an enormous disparity of outcomes among our minority ethnic communities — the Chinese and the Indians, for example, tend to thrive and prosper. He also — praise the lord — recommended ditching that insulting and dim-witted term, BAME.

    For the left it was crucial to dismiss Sewell’s report out of hand. In challenging the existence of the myth of “structural racism” Sewell and his team pulled the rug from under the feet of those who depend on it to buttress their deluded ideology. For the left it is axiomatic that all members of our ethnic communities are defined by their lack of whiteness and are thus similarly oppressed and discriminated against by the white majority.

    It is a facile assumption and plainly does not remotely accord with the facts. The presence of this chimera allows the left to treat all non-white Brits as a client group, to encourage them to revel in victimhood — almost as if they were needy children. There are undoubtedly knuckle-headed racists in the country who enjoy abusing people because of the colour of their skin or the deity they choose to worship. But there are many more equally racist people who, in subscribing to the myth of structural racism, are able to treat our ethnic minorities as an undifferentiated mass to be patted on the head and condescended to.

    What happens when these blithe and erroneous assumptions are challenged by someone from an ethnic minority community? There is rancour and bitterness from the professional anti-racists and there is racism. People such as Sewell are told that they are the dupes of whitey and subjected to deeply offensive insults such as “coconut” or “Uncle Tom” which serve to deny that they are really black at all. They have the reality of their existence denied.

    To be truly black you must subscribe to a bunch of beliefs and if you don’t, then you can’t really be black at all. Just ask Trevor Phillips, for example. He and Tony were just two Great Black Britons absent from the “100 Great Black Britons” list recently drawn up, for the simple reason that their opinions did not accord. Also missing were the brilliant author Zadie Smith and the newsreader and journalist Trevor McDonald. It is the very quintessence of racism to deny someone their freedom of thought and freedom of speech because they are a different colour from white people. The likes of Tony Sewell have experienced this all of their adult lives.

    Putin takes on comedian Zelensky

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fd7f0150e-a79c-11ec-a0e9-23fd932feb90.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1010

    Stick that in your hot dog, comrade
    Visitors to the National Mustard Museum in Wisconsin, which displays jars of mustard from around the world, were said to be disappointed that no Russian mustards were on display – just a sign reading: “The Russian mustards have been temporarily removed. They will return once the invasion of Ukraine is over and Russia recognizes and respects the sovereign nation of Ukraine.”

    The museum’s founder and curator, Barry Levenson, denied that he had ritually destroyed the jars: “The Russian mustards are in my office,” he told reporters. He also denied whipping up Russophobia, pointing out that his wife’s second cousin came from Moscow.

    The mustards are now back on display. I hope Putin learnt his lesson.

    Yup, the cull was absolutely Eustice
    An exhaustive, peer-reviewed study on the badger cull has just been published. It shows that culling the animals has had no effect whatsoever on rates of bovine tuberculosis in cattle.

    Bovine TB was already reducing before the cull began in 2014. And since then it has reduced at the same rate in areas where there has been no cull as in those areas where culling took place.

    So that’s 140,000 badgers slaughtered for no reason whatsoever. Aside from to keep the government on side with the ghastly National Farmers’ Union.

    Can we now cull — in the nicest possible way, of course — the rural affairs minister George Eustice?

      1. Perhaps people are realising what a scam it is – and looking at the amount spent on salaries!

    2. Sewell indeed sounds like a noble soul. But I would keep these kids away from the Russell univiversities – they too are infected with the current madness.

      It is difficult to know where to turn for sanity.
      Well. Obviously too NoTTL. But not many other places.

      1. It is an untruth deliberately promulgated by Russell Goup universities that only the best universities belong to the Russell Group.

        Several universities which are in the Top 20 in the listings which are not Russell Group are more highly placed than several of those which are. It is just a marketing ploy.

      1. New houses don’t seem to be built with chimneys any more.

        When there’s no gas, no oil and no electricity how will people heat their houses?

        3. Even when they’re built with chimneys, Rastus, some of them are fake (a new build near me has a fake chimney because it’s in a conservation area and has to fit in).

      2. My hometown of Clevedon , appx 10m SW of Bristol and on the Bristol Channel coast. Our house is not dissimilar to your 1st although it was built in 1964, not a lot happened in the intervening 20yrs apparently.

        1. If I recall correctly mine was built in 1977 and I bought it five years later. It is in New Brimington, Chesterfield, about as far away from the sea as it is possible to get in England.

        2. I remember a black and white documentary entitled ‘Clevedon, the place to go to die’ or similar.

          The town had many nursing homes and was inhabited by folk recuperating from medical operations. My dad was there in the 50’s after suffering a burst duodenal ulcer.

          1. Not so much now, there was a burst of new build housing in the late 70s early 80s which doubled the younger population and a lot of the nursing homes have been sold off to developers for “premium” flats. Having said that the average age along my road is probably in the 60-70s

  7. Inside the secret government unit returning fire on Vladimir Putin’s ‘weaponised lies’. 20 march 2022.

    A new counter-disinformation unit, the Government Information Cell (GIC), set up to dispel Kremlin falsehoods relating to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, is responsible for trawling through online and broadcast material to identify disinformation and tackle it.

    Ministers and officials see the counter-disinformation effort as a vital element of the support Britain is providing to Ukraine. A senior official in the unit told The Telegraph that the Kremlin was “weaponising lies” and using untruths “to justify the unjustifiable”. The information cell was “exposing those lies by countering Kremlin disinformation,” he added.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Pavel Stanford.

    Weaponized lies…now where has that been happening recently….oh yes, the nudge unit headed by communist Susan Michie. All those ads to convince us Covid was the Spanish flu – at a cost of 200M.

    Mr Stanford might well have cited the BBC, 77 Brigade or any of the other semi-government organisations that exist to indoctrinate the general population. Oddly enough these do not occur in Russia, there being no attempt to inculcate them with Cultural Marxist values. It is here that Propaganda and Lies prevail.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/19/inside-secret-government-unit-returning-fire-vladimir-putins/

    1. Perhaps they should have a unit to identify US, EU and UK lies too – like using photos from 2014 and gas explosions in 2018 and trying to pass them off as current? Untruths like Bio Labs, Azov Nazis etc?? And, of course, lies of omission by ignoring the deaths in Donbass.

      1. On that topic there is an appalling pile of propaganda in today’s Pravda Telegaffe about the Azov thugs – not only is it bollox but it rewrites things that were written in the MSM as recently as October last year!

  8. Inside the secret government unit returning fire on Vladimir Putin’s ‘weaponised lies’. 20 march 2022.

    A new counter-disinformation unit, the Government Information Cell (GIC), set up to dispel Kremlin falsehoods relating to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, is responsible for trawling through online and broadcast material to identify disinformation and tackle it.

    Ministers and officials see the counter-disinformation effort as a vital element of the support Britain is providing to Ukraine. A senior official in the unit told The Telegraph that the Kremlin was “weaponising lies” and using untruths “to justify the unjustifiable”. The information cell was “exposing those lies by countering Kremlin disinformation,” he added.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Pavel Stanford.

    Weaponized lies…now where has that been happening recently….oh yes, the nudge unit headed by communist Susan Michie. All those ads to convince us Covid was the Spanish flu – at a cost of 200M.

    Mr Stanford might well have cited 77 Brigade as well, or any of the other semi-government organisations that exist to indoctrinate the general population. Oddly enough these do not occur in Russia there being no attempt to inculcate them with Cultural Marxist values. It is here that Propaganda and Lies prevail.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/19/inside-secret-government-unit-returning-fire-vladimir-putins/

  11. Cash in your Old Oyster Cards

    I know this is way off topic with Ukraine topping the headlines, but this might just help somebody you know who is struggling.

    Clearing out my bedside drawer the other day I found a couple of old Oyster cards for use on the London Underground. I had bought two in 2014 and another (which I had lost) in 2015. I shall never need to use them again as everybody nowadays just taps their credit card on the yellow pads.

    I logged in to TFL website and found details of all three cards (including the one I’d lost). One had £9.10 on it, another had £8.50 and the third had only 60p. Worth a try I thought.

    The Money Expert website said I could reclaim what was left on them and also the cost of setting them up, but only by ringing a Transport for London number (0343 222 1234) which I did.

    A very friendly Scot answered and took me through the refunds. The first two (older) ones had only cost £3 each to set up but the one with 60p on it had cost £5 to set up. After he had done his sums he refunded £29.20 to my bank account. A worthwhile 12 minute call.

  12. Good morning, all. Lovely sunny start.

    Gosh – Long Melford church was stunning.

    More later.

    1. Morning Bill, Is The Bull still going? I used to dine there a lot in the 70s when I lived in Suffolk

          1. Like the fatuous articles in weekend newspapers about “lovely places to eat”. Yesterday one such was said to cost “£176 for two before wine and service charge”….

            They must see people coming….

    2. Holy Trinity Long Melford is one of the finest Parish churches in England. It ranks alongside St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol as such.

      The church is mostly Mid C15 but the tower is the work of G F Bodley, a Victorian master. It replaced a C18 brick tower.

      1. Pevsner (the REAL one – not the modern woke substitutes) thinks that the Victorian tower is better that what the original would have been!

  13. Boris Johnson frustrated with Rishi Sunak over ‘resistance’ to new nuclear power plants. 20 March 2022.

    Government sources said Mr Sunak’s refusal to endorse the Prime Minister’s “big bet” on a radical expansion of the Government’s plans for nuclear power risked derailing a key element of the energy security strategy promised by Mr Johnson earlier this month.

    Mr Johnson is understood to be frustrated that Mr Sunak appears reluctant to embrace a “dash to nuclear” that the Prime Minister believes is needed to shore up Britain’s energy supplies long-term in the face of a crisis fueled by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

    It is highly probable that over the next year or so we will see the government progressively eating its own words over Climate Change and Energy. Particularly if, as seems likely, Vlad turns off European Gas.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/03/19/boris-johnson-frustrated-rishi-sunak-resistance-new-nuclear/

    2. Once again the cynical Johnson has a good political instinct but the EstabLishment gets in the way.

    3. That’s rich coming from the Arch Fraud on everything and especially energy security, Johnson. He’s pushed the net-zero scenario for all it’s worth without taking the consequences into consideration and now that external factors, which he supports unequivocally, crop up, he’s had to reappraise his nonsensical “plans” and finds that to do so isn’t the simple U-turn he’s accustomed to performing. It’s now Sunak’s fault; although the latter must carry some responsibility if he, like most of the dopey Cabinet members, supported Johnson’s initial unattainable targets on “climate change”.
      This current crop of ToryINOs are quite the most useless, overbearing, devious and dangerous group of politicos ever assembled as a UK government.

      1. Does anyone seriously believe that the Arch Fraud Johnson has got Brexit done while the Northern Ireland Protocol is in place and French and other EU fishermen are looting our seas?

    4. Not in Boris’ lifetime.
      In 1989 I was put on the safety case development for Hinckley Point C.
      In 2022 is isn’t even commissioning, let alone built.
      That’s 2/3 of a nuclear power plant in 33 years.
      That’ll go well.

      2. As a first year undergrad in the summer of 63, I had a vac job at Berkeley nuclear research laboratory, attached to then live Berkeley nuclear power station. The prime focus of research at that time was to make sure there wasn’t a further Winscale, by investigating more fully the characteristics of irradiated graphite. Unfortunately, and being even then somewhat forgetful, I managed to destroy an extremely expensive and one off piece of research kit by failing to plug in the vacuum calorimeters during the startup sequence. I left with my tail between my legs I’m afraid: Sorry Andy…. I loved the place though: the digs were an old manor house run by a Mrs Webb, and we were supplied with a constant stream of delicious home made pies and tarts. And across the road was a pub which sold scrumpy from the barrel. An unforgettable and warm summer. I took my motor bike down by train with me and was able to explore what at that time was a wonderfully quiet area, pre M5.

    5. A good BTL Comment:-

      George Herraghty
      3 MIN AGO
      Net Zero?
      We are told that CO2 is causing ‘Climate Change’. How many people know the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere? Very few. Tell them that it is about 420 ppm (parts per million). Blank look. An actual percentage: (0.04%). Better.
      But this works: – 100 years ago for every 10,000 molecules in the air about 3 were CO2. Now it is about 4. That change causes ‘Climate Change’!!
      Then consider this: – CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas absorbing infra-red in 2 narrow ranges. Water vapour absorbs over a much wider range and, on average, it is about 3%. i.e., about 60 times the concentration of CO2.
      ‘Climate Change’ due to CO2 is a myth.

  14. Boris Johnson frustrated with Rishi Sunak over ‘resistance’ to new nuclear power plants. 20 March 2022.

    Government sources said Mr Sunak’s refusal to endorse the Prime Minister’s “big bet” on a radical expansion of the Government’s plans for nuclear power risked derailing a key element of the energy security strategy promised by Mr Johnson earlier this month.

    Mr Johnson is understood to be frustrated that Mr Sunak appears reluctant to embrace a “dash to nuclear” that the Prime Minister believes is needed to shore up Britain’s energy supplies long-term in the face of a crisis fueled by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

    It is highly probable over the next year or so that we will see the government progressively eating its own words over Climate Change and Energy. Particularly if, as seems likely, Vlad turns off European Gas.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/03/19/boris-johnson-frustrated-rishi-sunak-resistance-new-nuclear/

  15. Good morning all. A slight chill again with -1°C outside, but what a beautiful start to the day!

    1. Reinforcing Ed Dowd’s disclosure from the USA. Dr Naomi Wolf (Dr Naomi Wolf) is organising a ‘Posse’, at Steve Bannon’s prompting, consisting of people willing to go through the Pfizer data and find all the ‘gems’ hidden in the 55,000 pages. This exercise is turning up some disturbing evidence.
      Rumours doing the rounds that certain people will try and buy off the Insurance companies. Does the money exist to contemplate achieving that aim?

      2. Who owns the insurance companies? Vanguard and Blackrock?
        They’ll be bought off.
        When you own everything, you can do what you want. What annoys me is the stupidity of the people who still believe that the media is independent.

        1. Dowd has stated that the Insurance industry dwarfs the Pharmaceuticals and are not happy with the latter at the moment. Buying off millions of claimants will be very costly. Is any financial concern going to pick up the bill for both the initial pay-offs for deaths and the ongoing costs of disability for a growing cohort of damaged people? A continuing erosion of their bottom line is not what financiers want to have.

          A court in France has apparently ruled that taking the jab was voluntary and no responsibility rests with the insurers. Could political shenanigans be afoot to open that door elsewhere.?

    2. I’m looking forward to seeing what excuses my German pro-vaxxer friends will come up with to explain this data away!
      When I pointed it out to an English pro-vaxxer, she said that they must be covid deaths. I pointed out that they started in 2021. She changed the subject.

  19. I assume you dealt, yesterday, with the fake news about Russian wearing spacesuits in “Ukrainian” colours.

    They were, of course, in the colours of the new Russian Republic of the Ukraine – as it will be when they return to Earth in six months time.

  20. 351526+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Sunday 20 March: There can be no letup in condemnation of Putin’s savage and illegal acts in Ukraine

    Bearing in mind that is secondary, being of a deflection nature as to condemning the daily illegal acts ongoing
    suffered by the decent indigenous peoples of the United Kingdom.

    The latest political fodder for fools to follow is to undermine the individual persons castle in the shape of
    accepting ” guests” they the political’s are re-running the wooden horse counting on the electorates very short tern memory span.

    In accepting these ” guest’s” could in itself create more
    trouble within the domestic homestead, grist to the mill
    of deflection material ongoing.

    A purpose built establishment with ALL facilities on hand is called for, a waiting area for refugees to await the return of peace and repatriation.

    These refugees are NOT pets, in genuine cases they are peoples in dire need.

  21. On our outing yesterday, we visited the MR’s brilliant nephew who sorted out her new laptop. He and his girlfriend have a new(ish) baby – 6 months old. I explained to the child that – with luck and a following wind – she would live into the 22nd century. She gave me a gummy smile and appeared unmoved!

    The MR has one of those weird long-timescale stories. She knew her grandfather (who died about 40 years ago). When he was a young man starting out in a shop, he met a lady who, as an infant, had been present at the Ball on the Eve of Waterloo. So, just now (the MR has a good 20 years left), the three people span 206 years….

    France win something for a change. All good news for Toy Boy’s election campaign…. I expect to see him in a French rugby shirt very soon.

    1. My parents moved around quite a bit , but had a house which they let out when they were away.

      During the 1950’s, we found out that an elderly next door neighbour fought in the Boer War and… also the Battle of Omdurman .. My father was very impressed , especially so when he explained to us that Mr Adams was living history , to be able to talk about 2 Queens and 3 kings and old battles was something quite special.

    2. My father and my two sons were all born in the 90s.

      (Christopher Birdwood Tracey 1898; Christopher Lourens Tracey 1993, Henry Pieter Tracey 1995)

      1. Christopher Birdwood Tracey’s father Henry Eugene Tracey seems to have been a man of substance: a 44 year old Physician and Surgeon. The 1911 Census has him with wife Emily Alice, 10 surviving children aged 4 to 20 (including Christopher Birdwood Tracey aged 12) and 5 servants, so requiring a substantially sizeable house at Willand near Tiverton

        My wife’s father was also from Tiverton and I have spent over 40 years researching my family tree back as far as 1447. My own mother was the youngest of 9 surviving children (and 3 who didn’t). Her own mother, born in 1870 to an unmarried woman in Stapleton Workhouse, was born in a poor area of Bristol and they all lived in one of many tiny back-to-back houses built to supply labour for the Cotton Mill. Diphtheria and Measles were known for culling the babies, so only the strongest survived. They had a tiny back yard with a chicken house and a pIgeon loft and my mother’s illiterate father won many Racing Pigeon prizes.

        How on earth did they cram themselves in to such tiny houses?

        Incidentally, the dentist who removed many of my lower teeth rather than filling them was born in 1874 and was 75 years old when he worked in (and ruined) my mouth.

        1. Thank you for this!

          My first son, Christopher, is named after my father; my second son, Henry, is named after my grandfather. As you can see from the unusual spelling, their second names came from Caroline’s Dutch father and grandfather.

          Henry Eugene and Emily Alice built a large house at Willand, near Tiverton. When asked why they were building such a large house Henry said: “I’m going to fill it with little Traceys” and he did so and had eleven children all of whom survived infancy. The first to die was my Uncle Geoffrey who died in France in the Great War – but most of them got to their late 70s or 80s and Basil, a surgeon doctor in Norwich, made 92.

          The Gables, the house my grandfather built in Willand, became a school catering for children with special needs and Bill Thomas’s MR worked there briefly when she was young.

          1. Richard, I thought that Caroline’s maiden name was either Dutch or Flemish.

            At school I had 6 years each of French and Latin plus 2 years of German (and yet I chose Science!)

            My first job after graduating was in a lab in Oosterpark in Amsterdam, and my landlady had spent her first 12 years living in America. She was ‘een loopende woordenboek’, (walking dictionary) so with a good ear for languages and two years of German, learning Dutch was a breeze.

            Many Dutch friends (in England) are startled and ask WHY did I learn Dutch? Later, when I worked for Shell in the UK, it was interesting to listen in to my Dutch boss on the telephone without letting on.

            Richard, I have subscriptions to several Family History databases. If you want to get in touch outside NTTL, Geoff Graham has one of my email addresses, and I bet you have his.

    3. Excellent post. May I suggest that you pose for a photo with your great niece by marriage, in order that one day she may boast of having met a gent who was around during WWII?
      A compact timescale story: I knew a man whose grandfather was born in the 18th century.

      1. In the 1960s, the Observer newspaper asked whether there was anyone alive whose PARENT was born in the 18th century. It was a tongue in cheek piece.

        To everyone’s surprise, the next Sunday’s issue had a raft of letters from dozens of very old ladies whose fathers were born in the late 1700s and who were still fertile and reproducing in their 70s.

  25. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – Last year my gas and electricity was supplied by Avro, which unfortunately went out of business. I was automatically transferred to Octopus, and so far all has been well.

    However, last Tuesday I received estimates for the cost of my consumption this year: nearly £6,000 for gas and more than £22,000 for electricity. I am a poor old soul of nearly 80 with a history of heart attacks and have no intention of suddenly starting to smelt iron or of setting up many greenhouses to grow cannabis.

    Where on earth did these figures come from, and couldn’t computers have a safeguard included whereby if a figure is just ridiculous then it will be highlighted in some way?

    Liz Wheeldon
    Seaton, Devon

    Quite so Liz. And definitely not good for anyone with a dodgy ticker – an estimate like this could well finish them off!

    1. A BTL comment on this letter:

      Camlock Trelawney
      1 HR AGO
      Like Liz Wheeldon, I was being supplied by Avro before being forced on to Octopus. Since that time I have not been able to move from them without a further 50% or so increase in bills, as no supplier is offering deals except fixed ones above the regulators limits (flexible rates aren’t allowed to be above the limits and, since they are a profit-loser for the power suppliers, new customers aren’t offered them).
      So, as money talks (at least this amount of money) I am stuck for the moment with the virtue-signalling Octopus, a company that funds BLM and therefore supports violent riot, a company that claims 100% of the energy it supplies is green (even when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine) and gets its usage estimates wildly wrong, as Liz Wheeldon reports.
      Although we are in unprecedented times, massive energy price rises started last year, well before Putin’s gambit. The energy market is broken because of Mrs May’s socialist price cap meddling and the scientific illiteracy of the last 30 years of government.

  26. SIR – The vehicle you refer to as a “Jeep” (“Cambridges to retrace Queen’s Caribbean routes in same Jeep”, report, March 13) is in fact a Series 1 Land Rover, which is a much more fitting vehicle for Royals to be seen in as it is quintessentially British.

    The Duke of Edinburgh was transported in his final journey in a modified Defender, and that vehicle’s lineage can be traced to the Series 1. A Jeep is a much inferior motor car produced by a former colony (America).

    Dr Raj Persaud
    London W1

    Such ignorance – and from a long-established British (allegedly) newspaper!

    1. An almost inevitable BTL:

      Peter Wareing
      1 HR AGO
      “The Duke of Edinburgh was transported in his final journey in a modified Defender, and that vehicle’s lineage can be traced to the Series 1. A Jeep is a much inferior motor car produced by a former colony (America).”
      Somewhat ironic then that the Land Rover Defender (L663) is built in Slovakia and that Jaguar-Landrover has been owned by Tata of India (a former colony) since 2008.
      It is also ironic, if not plain stupid, that the UK continues to provide aid to India.

  27. SIR – My daughter and I hired a hybrid car in Iceland for a driving holiday. Trying to charge it was a nightmare.

    We discovered that not all the connectors are the same, so if the connector at the charging station didn’t match the one on your car, you couldn’t charge it. If the connector matched your car but you didn’t have the appropriate pre-paid card to pay with, you couldn’t charge it. Different charging points required different pre-paid cards depending on who owned the charging point. There were charging points available that did not require a pre-paid card and had various types of connectors which you could use if you had time to wait for your turn in the queue. These were not rapid chargers, so the queue took a while to move.

    I don’t know if the situation in Britain is the same but I do know that if the car had been electric-only our holiday would have been impossible.

    Patrick Hollies
    Tadley, Hampshire

    I believe it is, and it isn’t improving nearly fast enough. Just think of the situation as 2030 approaches… which is just what they want, isn’t it?

    1. Yo HJ

      And of course, their Hybrid Diesel Electricity and Petrol Electricity, so be careful

      1. There are however “plug-in” hybrids which seems to be the type the Hollies used.

          1. A great band – I won a swimming race years ago just after hearing that record and made a point of listening to it before several subsequent races – it didn’t really work; perhaps more training might have been better!?

        3. T_B’s post fiddled with

          Plug-in Hybrids is a good name for dual sex wo/manpeople
          I refer of course to the Hospital Rape carried out by a ‘woman’

        4. T_B’s post fiddled with

          Plug-in Hybrids is a good name for dual sex wo/manpeople
          I refer of course to the Hospital Rape carried out by a ‘woman’

      3. There are 2 types of hybrid – both charge via regenerative braking but one of them can be plugged in as well. Much smaller batteries fitted to the non-plugin type.

    3. Hockney’s art always reminds me of those painting-by-numbers colouring books one had as a child.

      1. Morning Grizz, It always amazes me the shite these precocious art critics come out with to justify or explain what the painting is. We see it up in the Highlands with paintings by incomers who do arty farty things and think that throwing some paint onto a canvas with a spatula made of compressed badger pubic hair is somehow ‘art’ and want to charge a fortune to buy it.

        1. Morning, Spikey. I’ve been watching and enjoying the Portrait Artist of the Year competition and the similar one on landscapes) on Sky Arts. Most of the artists are very talented and I learn much from them. Unfortunately those programmes are spoilt by the inane and quite mindless witterings from the three resident judges. I wonder if they attend a special school that teaches them how to spout such utter crap and keep a straight face while doing so. On a number of occasions, exceptionally talented artists have been refused to progress because their painting s are “Too classical”. In their place they have promoted chumps with as much artistic talent as Congo, Desmond Morris’s paint-daubing chimp from Zoo Time in the 1950s.

        2. That reminds me. We buy a lot of honey. It gives us a buzz. It has been noticeable that one could buy single domain honey from New Zealand for around £6 per standard 340g jar in a supermarket. A 340g jar of artisanal honey from a beekeeper down the road is priced at £9.
          Floral honey from Poland costs around £9 per kilo.
          These local artists, folk artists, woodworkers, glassblowers, set very high prices, yet their work is often no better than items churned out in factories.

          2. It’s hanging in my living room at the moment. It was in the loo at my favourite local. All the Art on the walls can be bought. Other works by the same artist are selling at twice the price. I will list it on ebay or amazon to coincide with the next Bond film.

          3. Giclée – Licence To Thrill – James Bond by Ian Rawling. Giclée (Squirt) – Inkjet printing process)

        4. Tom Wolfe wrote ‘The Painted Word’ which explains how a ‘painter’ viz. Jackson Pollock, was promoted by art critics using the shite descriptions to which you refer.

          In essence Pollock simply splothered cans of paint over large canvasses laid on the floor.

          1. I remember seeing one of his in a gallery which seemed to be a large canvas painted a uniform shade of purple with a red splodge in one corner – if that’s art I’m happy to be a Philistine!

        5. Tom Wolfe wrote ‘The Painted Word’ which explains how a ‘painter’ viz. Jackson Pollock, was promoted by art critics using the shite descriptions to which you refer.

          In essence Pollock simply splothered cans of paint over large canvasses laid on the floor.

    4. ‘Plugin Hybrids’ are not real hybrids. They are not designed for people to make use of the electrical part since the batteries are too tiny. They are the manufacturer’s way of getting the ‘green’ tax incentives while the car is used with petrol fuel. Most of them have never had the charging cable removed from its original packaging when sold on.

      1. In Oakland, California they frequently have car shows, new models etc. One year there was a car that had driven from New York to Oakland on 10 gallons of petrol. It wasn’t solar powered but somehow it recharged a battery by switching to gas to recharge and then continue. This thing very evidently upset the conventional car sellers and, obviously, the gas industry. The car was on display but roped off so you could get no closer than 20 feet to it. It was situated so it was almost concealed by two pillars behind which the lighting was extremely poor. Quite obviously all done deliberately. I have not heard a peep out of anyone about that car since. My guess is that some big company brought the patent and filed the thing away for eternity. That sort of thing definitely happens as I witnessed myself. My late father in law designs the business end for gas chromatographs and builds them. He figured out a way of pinpointing which company was responsible for a spill at sea. Once the oil companies got wind of it he was offered millions. He could be living the life or Riley but, to his credit he refused, retains control of the thing and it is offered gratis to interested parties such as the coast Guard, whenever there is a spill at sea.

        1. There was talk of a new Nissan last week that used a gas engine to charge the batteries that were used to drive the car. No claims of magical mileage but the doubters were out if full force to diss the idea of it being viable.

          Wouldn’t that coast to coast trip have needed to be at around 300mpg?

          1. No idea. I don’t drive infernal machines. But it would be a lot of petrol by a conventional car. And what you mention in your first paragraph sounds a lot like the car I’m talking about. Got any link to the thing you’re talking about?

      2. and the petrol engine has to do more work lugging a heavier battery around. Everything comes at a price

  28. OT – for art lovers.

    The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge) has an exhibition of works by that old fraud David Hockney (Alan Bennett with a paintbrush). The MR likes his “art” and ordered tickets online for this coming Wednesday.

    Last week, the three “curators” of the show gave a laborious 1½ hour webinar about what Hockney’s “painting” was all about – time and space and light and dark and variable perspective… By the end we were so befuddled and confused that we decided not to bother to waste £30 worth of petrol – and will stay at home.

    Two years ago we went to a show at the Royal Academy of Hockney’s latest “art” – done on his I-phone. It was rooms full of stuff which, if your grand-child had done it at primary school, you would say, “How nice”, pin it to the fridge for a week and, secretly, regret the waste of paper.

    Yet he is now a national treasure…. Funny old world.

    1. I’ve never liked Hockney! He’s a “national treasure” in the same way that Attenburough is a “national treasure.”

    3. Yet Hockney, like Lowry, actually draws very well (when he isn’t doing “art”).

    1. “The British only had to put a cross on a piece of paper to demand their freedom. In years to come we might have found ourselves in the same situation as the Ukrainians.” Gerard Batten.
      Well no. We would have been more in a situation like the people in Donbass. There is a difference, and Gerard is swallowing the usual propaganda about the “innocent” Ukrainians.

      1. 351426+ up ticket,

        Morning JR,
        I do beg to differ and class Gerard Batten as
        a leader of integrity, patriotism, & common sense
        we NEVER had in a telling position of power.

        1. Believe me, Ogga, I have no beef with Gerard at all, I fully supported him when he was leader of UKIP. It was a disaster when he was kicked out. It spelt the end of the only viable alternative conservative party there was. I just think that his analogy isn’t accurate because, I suspect, he doesn’t know the whole story about how the Ukraine situation came about.

        2. I like Gerard Batten and It would be marvellous if he, Richard Tice, Lord Frost and Nigel Farage could cooperate with each other to get rid of the current dishonest incompetents in government.

    2. It is ironic that Russia/Russians are being subjected to Cultural Marxism.

      They should rename it College Karl Marx.

  32. Morning all. Another sunny day but a bit chilly at 47f. The letter of the day is again, a piece of monumental hypocrisy as those who are aware of the killing in Donbass are aware. But since it is Sunday, not a cat video but some Russian Orthodox Church Music instead. Enjoy, it’s pretty short so the atheists don’t suffer to much. 😊
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTnxFgmQLKc

      1. They will return tomorrow considering the bilge that the Telegraph is printing in the letters section.

  35. Hitchens……..

    So I pay a good deal less attention than I

    otherwise would to the moral posturings in this conflict of Western

    politicians (you know who you are, Johnson) who travel happily to Saudi

    Arabia, to abase themselves before its rulers, when that country is

    still hosing away the blood of more than 80 people murdered in

    sectarian, lawless ‘executions’.

    I might also point out that Saudi Arabia, helped and equipped by us, has

    for years been conducting a filthy aggressive war in Yemen which is at

    least as vile as the one now being carried out by the Kremlin in

    Ukraine. I should say it was even viler.

    You will have to ask yourself why we care so much less about this than about Ukraine. But you know the answers.

    Rest here

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10631221/PETER-HITCHENS-denounce-Putins-bombs-pay-homage-rulers-filthier-war.html

        1. Nope, but Amazon deliver on Sundays. Royal Mail should take lessons from them.

          Good morning.

          2. I have had three small parcels in a day from Royal Mail. One on the trolley and two separate vans. That’s what Unions are good for.

  36. Never saw this one coming,no siree…….

    “Members of the

    public will be asked to offer their homes to refugees from other

    countries including Afghanistan under plans being considered by

    ministers after the “overwhelming” response to the Homes for Ukraine

    scheme.

    More than 150,000 people have offered to take in a Ukrainian refugee since the government launched the scheme on Monday.

    Government

    insiders said they expected this to outstrip the number of Ukrainians

    who want to come to the UK but do not want to waste the offers”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/all-refugees-set-to-have-a-ukrainian-style-welcome-nq5qgl3m3
    First they ask,then they compel??

    1. At £360 a month as opposed to £1,000’s a week in hotels, why not?
      Given the number of bogus Ukrainians et al who is to know the difference when they are “allocated” as “Ukrainians”.

    2. Good morning Rik, and everyone else.
      And if they refuse, the rayscism argument will be trotted out. Indeed, the re-homing officials will probably be from the Bame sector.

    3. Good morning Rik, and everyone else.
      And if they refuse, the rayscism argument will be trotted out. Indeed, the re-homing officials will probably be from the Bame sector.

    6. I wonder if they’ll change their minds when a ME muslim claiming to be be Ukrainian rocks up on their doorstep?

  37. Well, at the moment, it’s one of those absolutely beautiful Spring mornings that has one thinking, “Bloody Hell! It’s bloody cold out side!” when one goes to fill the wood-crates!

      1. It’s barely crawled up to 4°C so far this morning.
        Pleasant in the sun, but cold in the shade.

        1. It’s always warmer down here. We are protected on one side by the Isle Of Wight and on the other by the South Downs.

    2. Just washed the Sahara sand off the garden furniture. Some of the light brown proved to be exposed wood.
      Bu88er!

        1. We have the pathetic remains of the paint in a tin lurking in the shed. Quick swish of the brush will do.
          It’s yer shabby chic, innit?

          3. Gawd, Conners , you don’t want to see it. Look as though I’ve done a couple of rounds V Henry Cooper. Slight exaggeration but it looks horrible.
            Love your humour about it;-)

    3. I’m relieved to say that now, at 1 o’clock, the weather has recovered its rash dash into spring and is now overcast and cold.

  38. Completely OT. A lesson in making French bread in the 1970s…… It was a bakery in a hillside village about 15 miles north of Laure. It is where the MR’s Loopy Friend lives.

    Sit back and relax.

    https://youtu.be/G9c-ZrKgTsw

      2. When I took an exchange, we visited a French artisan cheese maker; Madame didn’t wash her hands before rolling the cheese in salt and had a cigarette dangling from her lips! When we visited cheese makers over here, there were hairnets, white overalls and everything was spotless! Vive la différence!

  39. Completely OT. A lesson in making French bread in the 1970s…… It was a bakery in a hillside village about 15 miles north of Laure. It is where the MR’s Loopy Friend lives.

    Sit back and relax.

    https://youtu.be/G9c-ZrKgTsw

      1. I told Rose that the flavour for Chartreuse is from this wonderful little mint that’s available from Chiltern seeds. I want to make a path with it. I grow it in half pots that are simply there for me to rub my hands across and take a snort. Wonderful little plant. Sorry, I’m muddled, Crème de Menthe not Chartreuse. Which makes this post redundant. But I will leave it up anyway as an encouragement for a charming plant that all should grow. My excuse is that I’m not a drinker of alcoholic anything.

        https://www.chilternseeds.co.uk/item_862F_mini_mint_mentha_requienii

      2. I told Rose that the flavour for Chartreuse is from this wonderful little mint that’s available from Chiltern seeds. I want to make a path with it. I grow it in half pots that are simply there for me to rub my hands across and take a snort. Wonderful little plant. Sorry, I’m muddled, Crème de Menthe not Chartreuse. Which makes this post redundant. But I will leave it up anyway as an encouragement for a charming plant that all should grow. My excuse is that I’m not a drinker of alcoholic anything.

        https://www.chilternseeds.co.uk/item_862F_mini_mint_mentha_requienii

      1. I drink it occasionally and refer to it as ‘Médicament’. Many of the locals in my favourite (French) bars have started calling it Médicament too.

      2. Nuns are allowed smoking and drinking. I prefer those Nuns as they are happier than the ones that don’t.

        Your body is a temple so don’t abuse it. Having a drink and a fag is acceptable.

        1. ” Having a drink and a fag is acceptable.”

          Fair enough – but what about smoking?

        2. They never used to be- a drink, like a glass of wine on feast days, was allowed. It wasn’t because they were considered sins but more because of the vow of poverty. Smoking and drinking were excesses.

          1. Good afternoon Ann
            Most people in poverty are there due to drink and fags, aren’t they?

      1. I love his songs – I saw him several times in folk clubs in the 1970s and 80s.

        And I used to have this one along with Bantam Cock, Personal Column, On Again, On Again and Lah-di-dah in my repertoire and I used to perform them for the unfortunate boys and girls in my classes.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE-BKrAAZGc

        1. A list of broken hearts – and surgical supports.

          What juxtaposition!

          [Jake Thackray : Personal Column]

  41. “There can be no let up in condemnation”…

    Err, yes, there can. If you want us to keep being angry, that’s your problem. If his acts are illegal, then where are the law enforcers? Oh, that’s it. Funding him. What? You cry. Yes. Our governments, so obsessed with Left wing communist green nonsense are funding Putin’s war machine.

    When there is such tremendous conflict of interest the West cannot blither oon about illegality if it is unwilling to enforce peace.

    1. Morning Mein Wibbling. Are you referring to today leading Telegraph letter? If so, yes, I agree with you.

      1. Aye – the headline riled me up. The press keeps wanting us to be angry yet the fundamental problem is the absolute unwillingess of our officials to act.

        We’re cowardly and hypocritical.

        1. Again, I agree. A huge help in getting this situation resolved is if the government and press told the truth instead of encouraging people to act like a bunch of hyenas on the hunt. If they were actually to do that and defy the machinations of the American war lobby it would be a ray of sanity in the gloom of madness that now prevails. As it is, we are piling on lies upon untruths, and more lies on top of that. It is truly disgusting especially because it could end in a mistake that kills us all.

          1. The trouble is that the government and the press wouldn’t recognise the truth if it walked up and punched them in the mush. They lie all the time and expect us to believe them. Sadly, far too many people do believe all the hogwash.

    1. Marvellous how the authorities can say, almost immediately, it is not a terrorist attack. Why can’t they say that all avenues are being explored.
      ETA: Posted as vw.

    2. Marvellous how the authorities can say, almost immediately, it is not a terrorist attack. Why can’t they say that all avenues are being explored.
      ETA: Posted as vw.

    3. Inexperienced driver – muddled by the pedals. Pressed accelerator instead of brake. Easy mistake… (sarc)

    5. Police have denied it was a terrorist incident or that the car was involved in a high-speed chase. So what does that leave? Mr Magoo or a raving lunatic?

      1. Funny how the ages of the driver and passenger were given but not their names.

    1. Here is a BTL comment under an article on the same subject in the DM:

      But Remainers are vey like Putin – they do not accept democratic votes and they hate people having views other than their own. Ukraine borders good – UK borders bad? Isn’t there a inconsistency in Remainers’ thinking?

        1. According to Remainers, Blighty has been the origin of every evil under the sun since the Big Bang.

          2. I’ve read that, but don’t ask me for a plot precis. AG’s books tend to blur into each other.

          4. I binged on them when in my early teens. Next was Georgette Heyer and Nevil Shute.

          5. I saw a dramatised version on the telly with David Suchet as Poirot and Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings.

      3. Rastus, if we start looking at Remainer hypocrisy the inevitable step is realising that they suffer from a permanent cognitive dissonance – doublethink. At that point you see just how insane the Lefties are.

    2. Here is a BTL comment under an article on the same subject in the DM:

      But Remainers are vey like Putin – they do not accept democratic votes and they hate people having views other than their own. Ukraine borders good – UK borders bad? Isn’t there a inconsistency in Remainers’ thinking?

    3. what “bold move”, what’s he been up to now? From that article it sounds as if the UK is leading the way regarding Ukraine. If so, why? Just to distract us all from the covid warfare? What an utter mess this country is in. (posted as vw).

    4. But the Western Ukrainians want to be in the EU: precisely the opposite of freedom, like the Orish. Or at least that’s where Brussels wants them.

    5. But the Western Ukrainians want to be in the EU: precisely the opposite of freedom, like the Orish. Or at least that’s where Brussels wants them.

    6. But the Western Ukrainians want to be in the EU: precisely the opposite of freedom, like the Orish. Or at least that’s where Brussels wants them.

  44. That’s the morning passed with lots of choppy-chop, seary-sear, sauté sauté, add wine, reduce, add stock, cover and wait until 13:00 then cook for 4 hours at 160° before finally adding zest and juice of one orange.

    That’s 4 lamb shanks – one of which is enough for two of us so, although together they cost £25 that’s 8 good meals @ £3.00 each. Bargain.

          1. Actualy, Aeneas, it comes, would you believe it, from the Basque country on the other side of the Pyrenees.

  45. 351526+ up ticks,

    UK Govt Wants Citizens to Host Afghans and Others In Homes as Well as Ukrainians

    I do believe they will give the host a choice as in

    a paedophile, a knifer, a high risk terrorist, the host is given a pick & mix choice that is in my book much more that they deserve.

    2. I’m waiting for when they propose moving OAP out of their homes to make way for refugees. “You have more than one bedroom? Sorry dear, out you go. There’s a room for you at Knackers Yard retirement block.”

      2. 351326+ up ticks,

        Afternoon JR,
        The sickening thing is that there is a contingent
        that WILL put party before family and most certainly before Country.

    3. Mr Rashid will be selling Afghani ID documents to the lightly tanned mobile that will allow them to claim another £350 per relative from the infidel government.

    4. Great; so if you choose a Ukrainian, “racist” and/or “Islamaphobe” will be entered on your file.
      Steer well clear of this chance to give government apparatchiks an opportunity to get a foot in your door.

      1. Weird.
        Ogga’s post is labelled “Content Unavailable” – not deleted or blocked. I never saw that before.

  46. Beeboid Radio 3 excelling itself. A three hour prog “presented” by the war reporter/news reader Myrie just ended. He clearly had no idea about any of the music but simply read – very badly – a script which someone else had written.

    That immediately followed by a “world famous” “British” photographer. Guess where he was born…

    1. Misan Harriman (1977) is a Nigerian-born British photographer, entrepreneur and social activist. As well as being one of the most widely-shared photographers of the Black Lives Matter movement, Harriman is the first black man to shoot a cover of British Vogue in the magazine’s 104-year history. In July 2021 Harriman commenced his appointment as Chair of the Southbank Centre, London

      Fingers – pies?

  47. The shameful silence about the Hunter Biden laptop story. 20 March 2022.

    Well over a year after the presidential election, long after all mainstream media outlets killed a legitimate story about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, the New York Times finally announced it had ‘authenticated’ the computer and its messages. The computer, left at a Delaware computer repair shop, is filled with damning information about Hunter’s operations, which appeared to take advantage of his family’s political power. Hunter’s only proper marketable skill was opening doors with his last name. It’s still unclear how deeply and directly Hunter’s father, Joe, is implicated in this sleazy business, which went on for years. Not that the Times wanted to know any of this when it mattered most, before the 2020 election.

    They are in it together Lol! It is stories like this that confirm every suspicion that you have about the MSM. To believe them about anything; Covid. Ukraine etc. you would have to be a fool!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-shameful-silence-about-the-hunter-biden-laptop-story

    1. Actually it is perfectly clear that Biden Sr. is directly involved. In at least one of Hunters emails it say: “50% to the big guy.” It is obvious in context that “big guy” is Joe Biden. It is also corroborated by the direct testimony of one of Hunter Biden’s business partners who, on realizing that Hunter was a crook, withdrew from making deals with Hunter. The man in question, who I don’t remember the name of but I’m sure can be found with some searching on the internet. Directly relates an incident where Joe Biden was present and, metaphorically, twisted a Ukrainian Barisma (spelling?) executive in order to extract more dollars. In the conversation he says that Joe Biden was referred to as the “big man”.

      1. Doesn’t matter, the US judicial system protects their own. While the dems are in power, all Bidens are a protected species, the focus will be on the Trumps.

        Come next January when n Republicans take congress back, things will start to change.

    2. The New York Post put up the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop before being removed from Twitter. Three weeks before the US elections 50 members of the US ‘intelligence’ community signed a letter, printed in the New York Times, stating that the laptop was Russian disinformation and they didn’t have a single piece of intel to suggest it.

      The New York Post had images of all 50 signatories on their front page this week, asking when an inquiry into their deception could be set-up.

  48. The shameful silence about the Hunter Biden laptop story. 20 March 2022.

    Well over a year after the presidential election, long after all mainstream media outlets killed a legitimate story about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, the New York Times finally announced it had ‘authenticated’ the computer and its messages. The computer, left at a Delaware computer repair shop, is filled with damning information about Hunter’s operations, which appeared to take advantage of his family’s political power. Hunter’s only proper marketable skill was opening doors with his last name. It’s still unclear how deeply and directly Hunter’s father, Joe, is implicated in this sleazy business, which went on for years. Not that the Times wanted to know any of this when it mattered most, before the 2020 election.

    They are in it together Lol! It is stories like this that confirm every suspicion that you have about the MSM. To believe them about anything; Covid. Ukraine etc. you would have to be a fool!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-shameful-silence-about-the-hunter-biden-laptop-story

    3. Why is it women go to pee in pairs? When I tried it, I was thrown out of the greengrocers! :-D)

    1. There are two things that irritate me. 14 “quarter finals” – instead of a straight knock-out.

      The fact that the young people have no idea of the answers to the deliberately woke/bleck questions that are thrust down their throats.

      Oh – and the complete absence – in most of them – of general knowledge.

    4. Yes – you need to have it near the top of the page or it goes straight to someone’s profile.

      1. That’s ‘cos the list of uptickers appears above the uptick symbol just as you click.
        Irritating…

    5. If you double click on reply, you can then uptick this has been happening for a long time.

  55. 351526+ up ticks,

    Can any of the mods tell me why I am receiving a multitude of ” comment unavailable” is it anything
    appertaining to abrasion ?

      1. 351521 + up ticks,

        Thanks GG,
        Tis why I put,
        ” comment unavailable” is it anything
        appertaining to abrasion ?

        Good O, hard core tory’s (ino) being rubbed the wrong way,

        The old regular, the paedophile fan will be one,
        odious creatures, truth dodgers.

  56. Good afternoon. This amazing lecture by Antony Sutton from 1976 is totally relevant to our situation. Knowledge at the third level, as Sutton defines it is absolutely required for each of us, and the level provided by the media is not that at all. His insights on the development assistance given by the US to the building of the USSR as a world power is fascinating and a crucial background to the nature of what is playing out.

    https://www.tarableu.com/knowledge-at-the-third-level/

          1. Bob – just saw your comment re unblocking. Click on your profile, select ‘Settings’, then ‘Blocking’, and delete those you wish to unblock. You’re welcome… :-))

          2. Heyup Geoff!
            Ta for that, but I’d already managed to follow the instructions!

            Why can’t they have a flag on the blocked persons page with a simple “unblock” tag?

    2. These illegal boaters are costing our nation and absolute fortune, something like 5 million a day. The government need to be reminded on a regular basis (hourly) that the money they squander is not their money, it belongs to the tax payers of the UK. Their mal-administration is worse than appalling.
      Why are the political classes so arbitrary in nature when they live almost entirely off the British public.

    5. Race replacement Mr Straker. It is why there have been concerted attempts to kill off the over 50’s.

  58. Well watch this space peeps……yesterday i received yet another letter from my local health trust telling me that the rearranged appoint from 26th of April to 31st of May has been cancelled . This time they have informed that it was I who cancelled the appointment and if i do it again i will be referred back to my GP as per the trust access policy. I think some one needs a good telling off which is what i will be doing when I visit the local Out patients department in the morning asking to speak to an administrator. They appear to have a serious problem on board.

      1. I wrote (e-mauled) to my MP, he seems more interested in him self unfortunately. I have also been in contact with PALS again. I sent a stinking review of the admin on their website I think i’ll be taking the baseball bat tmz TB. 🤗 My GP is next to useless. It’s like talking to a brick wall.
        Short of feigning a heart (not a bad idea) attack in the lobby it seems to impossible to get hold of any one who is interested.

        1. Eddy, I know that “e-mauled” is likely a typo but what a wonderful one. I suspect many of us would like to maul the sodding MPs.

      2. Before all this covid stuff kicked in TB the government announced several new regional NHS managers salaries in the region of 200k per year.
        They have been bought in to lessen the effect of the (wind it down) NHS and this will encourage more people to use private medical treatment.
        I was offered knee surgery at the local Spire hospital. But because on my current undying health problems they can’t take on such tasks as they have no emergency back up. Which in effect makes thing twice as bad as they are as in even if i wanted to pay for a private operation it could not be carried out unless it happened in a general hospital. I can’t even get an appointment for a steroid (which helps) injection in my Knee because my GP is useless the admin adds weeks to a job that takes an hour.
        When I complained I was told it was because the were no beds and staff shortages due to covid. But last August when I had to visit A&E for the second time, there was spare bed in cardiology, where I spent the night and in the morning before being sent home 5 of the team came to see me.

        1. Several things happen when you reach a certain age .. You are no longer called for mammagrams and that sort of thing . My doctor told me to contact the Breast people .. they have no appointments for months , such is the backlog .
          Damn and Damn again to this Covid outrage .

          1. As I have mentioned many times TB it seems the NHS has recently adopted a new agenda towards the elderly…… FOAD.
            Eff Off And Die.

          4. To be fair, it’s the uselessness and incompetence of NHS administration that’s at fault. Why they didn’t have a plan for dealing with a pandemic (didn’t they have a practice a few years ago?) I don’t know.

          5. What pissed us of, Belle, was being spoken to as if we were the ones at fault. As if we’d been the ones sitting doing sod all for 2 years except covid this and covid that. I got quite shirty because it isn’t our fault.
            Apols for language but I am so very fed up with it and I am also very tired.

    2. They want me to go for a blood test on 4-4 and then an ECG on 12-4. Not going to do it. Will call the surgery tomorrow and tell them to do the blood on the same day as the ECG; if they say no will tell them where they can shove the blood test.
      It’s not as if it’s over the road, it’s quite a distance.
      If they hadn’t spent the last two bloody years pissing about with a flu variant none of this BS would be happening- or not as much of it anyway.

      3. MB had two letters arrive informing him about the same appointment. They popped through the letter box as I walked down the hall with the car keys to run him up to the hospital.
        Luckily, MB had made a note of the date on his previous appointment and had rung the consultant’s secretary during the week when no confirmation had appeared.

      4. Can’t your surgery take the blood? Oh, sorry, the “envy of the world” NHS isn’t seeing patients any more, is it?

        1. That’s where they want me to go! But two separate appointments. No way. Do it in one go or forget it.

        3. Your appointment will be in three weeks time. Even though, should one visit the surgery to, say, pick up tablets,, the nurses are standing around gossiping – and could easily just DO it, then and there.

      5. They can do a blood test and an ECG at your local surgery. But the hospital has better equipment/analyses and better qualified staff. I know. I was there for hours and hours last week. That is the second time in 6 months i have ended up in the Acute Med Unit with suspected heart problems and both times the effing GP had over reacted. It’s enough to give you a heart attack.

        Stay strong Lottie. Hold your ground and be assertive and insistent. The moment you become rude/abusive gives them the opportunity to dump you.

        1. I am not rude; I am formidable. Which is why I never had problems in the classroom.

      1. Thanks Bill, I’ve already been in touch with PALS I think the were over ridden by admin after they changed my phone call to a face to face. That’s been cancelled now as well.
        But i have sent PALS a copy of the email i sent to my MP and asked both to contact the CEO of the hospital over all this nonsense.

    1. They are Finnished… Vlad will soon be running the place. Then they won’t be so effing happy…

    2. Not sure that it doesn’t have the highest suicide rate, for any country in the world.

    4. I’m particularly taken by the Finnish dream house. My kind of place if it wasn’t for the cold.

      1. I can take cold – my scale is that it’s cold when you breathe in and ice forms in the nostrils. About -12C, dependent on humidity. Hot is when you breathe in and the air scorches the rim of your nostrils. About +36-38C. Between those two, it’s comfortable.

  62. Sacking your staff by video is a return to an age when workers were treated with casual disdain
    Frank Cottrell-Boyce
    The P&O sackings is where you end up when business and government undermine basic protections and lose touch with common decency,

    “My grandfather went to sea in his mid-teens. He served at the battle of Jutland – the Somme of the sea. In the Second World War, he worked on the Atlantic convoys, bringing food and supplies to a besieged Britain – the Stalingrad of the sea. Shortly after the war, the ship on which he was working as a stoker, the Cydonia, hit a stray mine and he was boiled alive when the engine blew up. The newspapers reported that the ship had been damaged “with the loss of one greaser”. The same phrasing appears in the records of the shipping company. He’s not named anywhere. He was commemorated not as a person but as a component.”

    Which is how P&O dealt with their employees last week. All ships called in as if they were pedalos on a boating lake; security sent in to remove crews. So here we are, an island nation, our sea lanes closed just when every parish hall and spare room is filling up with toiletries and warm clothing that people were hoping to ship to Ukraine. The companies in Jason Reitman’s film Up in the Air outsource uncomfortable sackings to a “corporate downsizer”, played by George Clooney. That seemed far fetched at the time but P&O didn’t even bother with that. They sacked crews remotely, using a pre-recorded Teams message.

    The MP for Dover, Natalie Elphicke, went down to the port to protest. Like your neighbourhood arsonist offering you a flask of tea over the smoking ruins of your house. She was met with shouts of “shame on you” from the sacked workers who understood, as perhaps she didn’t, that this is not an aberration. This is the economy going to plan, as clearly outlined in Britannia Unchained, a booklet cut and pasted together by five Tory MPs. (Elphicke, like her whole party, had voted against Barry Gardiner’s fire and rehire bill which might have prevented this.) It’s a short book but if you read it you’ll see that a decent editor could have got it down to one sentence. “When we seek to protect the vulnerable we limit the freedom of the rich and the privileged – and that is a disgrace.”

    It’s a wretched read – a series of assertions and hunches freed from the chains of argument or evidence, with the intellectual rigour of a YouTube conspiracy rant. The prose occasionally soars to the level of clickbait, as in its most famous sentence: “The British are among the worst idlers in the world.” Most of its authors are now cabinet ministers in a government that no one would call exactly Stakhanovite.

    The transport secretary – who goes by the name of Grant Shapps and is not one of the infamous five – wrote a stiff letter to the CEO of P&O but was too exhausted by the effort to look up the chap’s name and addressed it to someone who had retired a while back.

    The chains from which the booklet’s authors want to free Britannia are, of course, those of regulation. The heroic age of regulation began at sea with Samuel Plimsoll’s attempt to govern a shipping industry that had lobbied against laws to forbid overloading and lobbied for laws that imposed prison sentences on sailors who refused to join unseaworthy ships.

    Nicolette Jones’s brilliant biography of Plimsoll, The Plimsoll Sensation, points out that the tactics used against him were both vicious and familiar. “Plimsollism is terrorism,” ran one headline. The royal commission that was eventually established was deliberately swamped with “evidence” about the impossibility of ever establishing a standard load line. It would just have to be left to the wisdom of shipowners, one of whom, the honourable member for Plymouth, was the owner of three ships that had been lost with all hands and two others that had been abandoned.

    It was simply cheaper to price in the deaths of thousands of crew than to sail safely. There’s a school of thought that the market will make P&O suffer for its bad behaviour, that customers will be appalled and not use them. It’s true that the market does regulate the market, but it does so through catastrophe. It took the death of 80, many of them children, in a rail crash in Armagh in 1889 to make the case that train companies should be legally obliged to have brakes on carriages. In the 1870s, The Daily Telegraph revealed that one train guard had been found asleep on the job towards the end of a 40-hour shift. The company had instructed the porter to nudge him awake whenever he dropped off.

    We are immediately angered by the casual sacking of British crews but we need to remember that the point of sacking them is to replace them with Filipino crews who can also be treated – like that guard – as components.

    We’ve allowed a narrative to take hold in which regulation is seen as the enemy of the individual. Indeed, we’ve elected a prime minister who made his name as a kind of anti-regulation Roy Chubby Brown.

    But historically, regulation is how we have established the importance of the human in the face of the machine. It’s how we care for each other. It’s always a fight. My friend, Michael Molloy, died in his teens when the coach he was travelling on crashed. The coach’s tyres turned out to be older than he was. When his mother fought for regulation, the bill she campaigned for was thrown out by Chris Heaton-Harris, the current chief whip.

    P&O is the logical outcome of the assault on the rules-based world that we tried to build after the war. It’s a campaign for disconnection. Clooney’s character in Up in the Air finds that he has somehow exchanged his own ability to make relationships for a pocket full of air miles. He wanders the world like an oligarch’s super-yacht – always voyaging, never docking, in perpetual and pointless motion. All at sea. At our best we hunger for connection – it’s why we wanted those ferries to take that warm clothing to Ukraine. Shortly after he was elected pope, Francis went to see the refugees in Lampedusa and talked about Lope de Vega’s play Fuenteovejuna, in which an entire town gets rid of a tyrant of a governor by murdering him. All the inhabitants are complicit so none of them has to take responsibility.

    The former Peninsular and Oriental Steam Packet Company is now owned by DP World – a “logistics solutions” organisation based in Dubai. Its power is rootless, mobile. The management of P&O distanced themselves with tech, as though they were mere functions of their own software. Components. The chains that Truss and Raab and Patel are trying to cut are the chains that bind us to each other. The chains that tell us that we too are involved in catastrophes like Ukraine or the drownings in the Mediterranean. Cut those chains and we are all diminished.

    My grandad’s name by the way was Thomas Boyce.

    Frank Cottrell-Boyce is a British screenwriter and novelist
    …https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/20/p-and-o-ferries-workers-jobs

    1. “P&O is the logical outcome of the assault on the rules-based world that we tried to build after the war.”

      What?! To prevent P&O acting as it did, every country in the world would have to have the same laws, enacted by the same legislature, and the same rates of pay.

      Frank speaks through his fundament.

      1. every country in the world would have to have the same laws, enacted by the same legislature. -isn’t that the plan?

    2. I have no idea why that wazzock BPAPM bothers. It makes sod all difference to his shape or general health. Just bloody virtue signalling – and, I suppose, a brief chance to escape Carrion’s constant eco-freak nagging.

      1. He seems to have put even more weight on recently. I should think he can’t wait to get out to avoid Carrie and the two brats! Just can’t imagine him with young children.

    4. Given his new wife’s regime and all the photo ops of him jogging in his boxer shorts he looks like shit. Noticed recently his big jowls growing. He is clearly stuffing himself like Billy Bunter before the tuck shop closes for good.

          1. Apparently he stuffs himself with heavily processed food – endlessly throughout the day,

          2. I can’t see Carrie Antoinette slaving over a hot stove to have a meal ready for her man. Far too busy doing other things. Like destroying the livelyhoods of people that work for a living.

            Besides…all that steam from the cooking might make her £900 wallpaper peel off.

  64. Alan and Paul split in January after three years of marriage. Paul, who spent two nights in jail after being convicted of drink-driving earlier this year, is staying in a friend’s spare room while the pair finalise their divorce, ‘but he’s back at the marital home most days for the animals on the Kent farm they once shared. D Fail

    They shared rings three years ago, and probably every night after, but it turns out it was a bum deal. They are splitting amicably.

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/03/19/21/55558891-10631137-image-a-25_1647724662148.jpg

    3. Anyone who wears a suit like that on the right deserves to be divorced! To say nothing of the wallpaper….

          3. Alan is the gay BBC luvvie on the left. His ex-hubsand is the drunk in the terrible suit on the right.

      1. I don’t know who the other person is, but if Alan Carr wasn’t so damn annoying I doubt if any one would realise he was around.

  65. Groaners
    1. Politicians and diapers have one thing in common: they should both be changed regularly…
    and for the same reason.

    2. When asked if they would have sex with Bill Clinton, 86% of women in D.C. said, “Not again.”

    3. A little boy goes to his dad and asks, “What is politics?”
    The dad says, “Well son, let me try to explain it this way:

    I’m the breadwinner of the family, so let’s call me capitalism.
    Your mother, she’s the administrator of the money, so we’ll call her the government.
    We’re here to take care of your needs, so we’ll call you the people.
    The nanny, we’ll consider her the working class.
    And your baby brother, we’ll call him the future.
    Now, think about that and see if that makes sense.”
    The little boy goes off to bed thinking about what dad had said.

    Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him.
    He finds that the baby has soiled his diaper.

    The little boy goes to his parents’ room and finds his mother sound asleep.
    Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny’s room.
    Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny.
    He gives up and goes back to bed. The next morning, the little boy says to his father,

    “Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now.”
    The father says, “Good son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.”

    The little boy replies,

    “Well, while capitalism is screwing the working class, the government is sound asleep,
    the people are being ignored and the future is in deep shit.”

    1. All so true, but the main thing to remember is, what never actually changes, the the political classes Eff up every single thing they come into contact with……..even if it’s a passing gesture.

        1. Best I ever ate were fried in Fremantle.
          Bloody long way to go for a plate of chips.

          2. Chippy in Leyburn, Yorkshire. After a couple of pints, a bag of chips as we walked back to the holiday home. Brilliant!

          5. We’ve been to the chip shop did you go the the brewery along the road a bit. ?
            I love Freemantle it’s got a great atmosphere.
            We first went there in 1976 after our 6 weeks at sea. (50 pound Pommes)
            My cousin who lived nearby took us out for the day before we sailed in the Melbourne.
            Freemantle was terribly rundown then. Did you go to Kings Park as well Obs ?

          6. Yes.
            It’s all a bit different now – more like Perth, unfortunately. Much of the interesting shops and pubs are gone, replaced with bars and high-rise offices. Sad.
            Was there on vacation with family in 2000 and work in 2018. When we rolled up at Perth airport, the hire car was nowhere. Eventually, a small Fiesta turned up with a big Aussie in it, he gave me the keys and said to drop them with the car park attendant when we leave. No papers, nothing to sign… Wow! (We went roun to the office a day later to get some evidence we hired rather than stole the car).
            Great place. Three lane drive-through Bottle-O is burned into my mind… so much Aussie wine I’d never heard of before, that I’d no idea what to buy!

          3. Wells-next-the Sea has been recommended to me for great fish and chips. I intend to try some when I’m over there.

        3. You can’t get chips at all in France can you? They only have those skinny ‘fries’ things don’t they.

          1. Prolly the real reason they sold up and came home… That and the French of course. :@)

          2. Uncle Bill. I have repeatedly invited him for lunch and he repeatedly refuses. I even offered to send a car so he didn’t have to thumb a lift !

          3. Didn’t you know? Since being famous, Bill only travels by helicopter or Concorde.

          4. Was he on the one that crashed?… That would explain it. :@(

            *I did even offer to send a limo. Still won’t do it. Turns out it’s not me…it’s him !

          5. Just pack it in. I have explained to you endlessly exactly WHY I do not wish to mingle.

            I am a deaf, anti-social old grump with no small talk or interest in other people.

      2. Wot? No southerner has deep-fried jellied eels; pie-and-mash; Dorset knobs; Sussex pond pudding; or bread pudding … yet?

    2. Buck up, Mr Grizzle.

      The remake, for BBC Cymru will be “Seven Brides for Seven Sisters”
      and

      for BBC Islington/BBC In house it will be “Seven Bridegrooms for Seven Brothers”

  67. What about this for a strange experience that made me shiver.
    This morning i was sitting watching Titchmarsh enjoying his week end.
    It gets a bit boring as does much TV so i picked up my guitar i keep in the lounge.
    I started finger picking the chords that formed the Bob Dylan tune Knocking on Heavens door G D Am with an alternating C chord.
    I could quite remember all the words so i picked up my phone from the side table and put in the two words Lyrics for and before I could add anymore what came up on the screen was Lyrics for Knocking on Heavens Door………..scary eh !
    Do you think the ‘THEY’ are listening as well ?
    Perhaps this was something ‘THEY’ have planted in the vaccines 🤗🤔

      1. Yes but it’s in a drawer somewhere not plugged in, I hate it.
        Just a weird coincidence hopefully.
        But I have had a couple of strange things happen when I have put my phone down, it seems to talk to me, but i turn it off.
        I clear content regularly.
        A friend of mine says he has had advertisements for goods pop up on the Internet after discussing certain items with his wife.

        2. Won’t have a Google or alexa whatever gadget in the house. Why would i PAY FOR SURVEILLANCE?

    2. Yes. Of that I’m 100% convinced. As someone confined to quarters and thus forced to use the computer for almost everything. I know very well that they anticipate things in advance. The more you use the computer, the more accurate they get in anticipating you. Sometimes it is quite eerie.

    3. Been pub o’clock for me since about 16.30 (when I finished cursing mowing the lawns). Took a Pimms into the conservatory to contemplate my handiwork (and remind myself what jobs I need to do tomorrow!).

  69. I’m very pleased to see that the merman didn’t even make the podium in the 100 or 200 swimming races.
    Although I have a sneaking suspicion it might not have flapped its hardest.

      1. 🤗😊 Ilke this old old one …”I see you arrived on your bike and you have the pump in your pocket”.

          2. Arrogant little shit should have been beaten more….

            ***signed His last master….

          4. Arrogant little shit should have been beaten more….

            ***signed His last master mistress….

          3. Paul, stick to the hooch. I looked at wordle and thought it was daftle. I’d rather read than fartle about with thatle.

          6. I can’t cope right now. I’d rather escape into fiction. Right now it would probably take me 5 hours:-(

          7. You sound a lot more simple than i gave you credit for. You need to be instructed? Ask Plum.

          9. If you haven’t listened to The Doings of Hamish and Dougal, you must. Ofshoot from Clue with the late, great Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden.

    3. The word i would use is crass. adjective. So crude and unrefined as to be lacking in discrimination and sensibility.

    6. The Whitehall administration is trying to destroy this country to such a degree that we go to the IMF. The IMF will only help (and the statists are plotting this) if we rejoin the EU at which point they’ll overturn Brexit and ram us back into the EU.

    1. Yo Rastus

      has painted the Prime Minister into a corner

      I would have thought even Johnson would have ecmplained to by now

    2. There are two thoughts – if Boris is that weak and places his wife above his nation in policy matters, then he is truly pathetic.

      More likely, this is what he has always thought and is merely carrying on regardless, slapping bills on expenses and not caring.

      When the oaf Miliband signed the climate change act into law – and immediately slapped his bills on expenses – we set in motion the collapse of our way of life. Worse, most MPs cheered it in with abandon. Why? It was financially devastating. What is wrong with those fools? Why do they not serve first and only? Are they all utterly bent?

      The answer must be yes, they are. Which indicates that MPs and Whitehall management cannot be allowed to operate without our absolute permission. Collar and chain these fools. They’re disobedient, abusive,vicious, dangerous dogs. You don’t let such animals off the chain until they walk at heel.

  76. That’s m for today. Though it was sunny, there was a real little jap in the air all day.

    FROST expected early tomorrow – at first light.

    Have a smooth evening preparing for the 2023 General Election. For God’s sake find a proper party for us to vote for.

    A demain.

    1. Official Monster Raving Loony Party. At least they don’t claim to be anything other than their party name.

      1. If there’s a candidate round here, that’s who I’ll be voting for- seriously!

    2. ‘Little Jap in the air all day’:

      Was he flying a ‘Zero’ armed with torpedoes, Bill?

    1. But it isn’t about what we want. ‘Representative democracy’ never has been. True democracy hamstrings the state to the command of the public. That’s why the demented globalist, green, redistributive nonsense is so pursued in ‘representative democracy’ countries – the public can be ignored.

  78. Thought for the evening…
    If you aren’t meant to drink WD40, why does it come with a straw?

    1. I was going to post something but, rarely, have decided to be good… for now.

      1. No. But I know how WD40 got its name.

        [Water Displacement formula at the 40th attempt]

          1. Goes well with gin too.

            It’s been handy in trying to work out why our bathroom window won’t properly lock.

          4. I kinda wish I liked gin and tonic- sounds so posh. Can’t even stand the smell of it. I used to like a vodka and tonic but vodka makes me want to fight- and I mean fisticuffs, so forget that. That’s why I stick to good old Pinot and the occasional Scotch.

          5. I’ve drunk gin once in my life. The smell reminded me of hair tonic. Disgusting stuff.

          6. Thanks for that- I thought it was just me. Bloody awful stuff. Well said Mickey;-))

          7. Again, and somewhat worryingly, I am going to be good again;-) Gawd, I must be poorly….

          8. For the avoidance of doubt, WD40 (as Grizz says above) is for water displacement.
            3in1 (Three in One) may refer to the Holy Trinity, or – more likely – a widely available mineral oil. It’s a “lubricant”, in the generally accepted context.
            Anyone seeking a “lubricant” in a different context, should consider various products based on Dimethicone. But keep it off your floors, baths, shower trays and other surfaces. This has been a public health warning…

            :-))

          9. I knows that but was going to be wicked… hence comment above.
            Thank you, Mr. Geoff, Health Inspector and Information Ossifer. 😉
            I really am trying to be good tonight…

  79. MB is watching some programme about cruise ship disasters.
    Is it impossible to use the word “cruise” without the adjective “luxury”?
    Does nobody ever go on a bog standard cruise?

    1. The very word ” cruise” sounds to me like hell on earth… a tenement on the sea.

      2. I can’t think of anything worse; being incarcerated in the middle of the ocean with loads of people you can’t get away from! Hell is other people. Help!

    2. My old man and I had our honeymoon on a mini-cruise from North Shields to Gothenburg! That wasn’t really luxury – great fun, but not exactly luxurious! It was a car ferry and our cabin had bunk beds!!

          1. We chartered a boat and spent a fortnight sailing around the Greek Islands visiting Poros, Spetses, Hydra, Ermione, Navplion, Astros,.
            Bliss was in that dawn to be alive (as Wordsworth said) and to be in love was very heaven when we both knew our love would last for ever.

          2. Oh good heavens! Ermione! I went there and the islands you mentioned, in 1977! Id just finished my finals and I had a very drippy boyfriend!

    3. The Royal Navy used to, when they had those ‘shippy things’, but that was a long time ago

    4. I did in 1964. Went on a Baltic cruise (to Copenhagen, Leningrad and Stockholm) in a converted WWII troop-carrier (M.V. Dunera). Accommodation for 600 schoolchildren was bunks in dormitories, with the odd school lesson thrown in. Meals were eaten at bolted down tables while sitting on bolted-down chairs a yard from each table! Food was sub-prison standard. I did learn, however, how to play deck quoits and water polo. There was a prize for the cleanest and tidiest dormitory (we won the boys’ prize).

      Ee, we ‘ad a lovely time.

    5. We did.
      A superb cruise near the Maldives, tiny boat, more crew than passengers and the cabin was so low I couldn’t stand up in it AND there wasn’t a porthole!
      We went all around the small islands and saw the bleaker side too. A great experience.

    6. IMHO, the only way to cruise is under sail – in a yacht. Most of my ‘cruising’ has contained a racing element – in Ireland, Great Britain, the Med and Long Island Sound.

        1. Done that too, Geoff, on a daily basis, quite pleasant.

          Been to Ephesus, wonderful. Have painted a formerly Greek cottage.

          However, I have no desire to revisit Turkey:
          Their ‘hard selling’ – and public hygiene – are atrocious.

          1. I’ve done Kaş several times, a Gulet cruise followed by a week in Ölü Deniz, and a week in Turunç. Loved them all, but this was before Recep Tayyip Erdogan went full Islamic.

            Think I’ll avoid in future. (Sorry, Rastus)…

      1. Thanks for that, Geoff! I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of that ship! I wasn’t allowed to go!

        1. My luxury cruise cost no less than £85. Unfortunately, us Cumbrians had to share the vessel with a load of plebs from Slough.
          “We make Mars bars”
          “you have gas TV”
          etc, etc.

          When the passage from Crete to Sicily encountered a Scirocco, and the ship was close to 45 deg from horizontal, the queue at the Matron’s office of the seasick was hundreds strong.

          The cure? Carrs (of Carlisle) Table Water biscuits. How we laughed… :-))

          1. Ah! Carrs of Carlisle! What a landmark you drove over the bridge into Carlisle! Was it next to a brewery? I know the name was written on the chimney tower!

          2. Carlisle Brewery was close to Carr’s. After the State Mtnagement Scheme was wound down, the brewery was taken over by Theakstons. Now it’s mainly housing. Carrs is still there, under a McVities banner.

          3. Thank you again Geoff for your wonderful memory! I was 6 when we first started to visit a farm out beyond Dalston and Welton, on the road to Caldbeck. The daughter and son of the farmer were 23 and 21!

  80. Boris Johnson has got himself into trouble by comparing events in Ukraine with Brexit .

    Of course we must accept that Ukraine borders – GOOD

    but

    UK borders – BAD

    But will it be Vlad Putin or Ursula Fonda Lyin who will want to impose an Ukraine Protocol like the Northern Ireland Protocol?

    1. Yes, but the Ukrainian government isn’t going to go further in destroying Ukraine economically and socially in collusion with Russian officials to force Ukrainians to join Russia as their only saviour.

  81. If there are any Rugby fans still around.
    If there is BBC2+1, the analysis of the 6 nations W/E is very good with the highlights.
    I’ve really enjoyed it.

  82. I have decided to apply for the role of Dr. Who. Think I would be in with a good chance. I am a woman, the right side of my face right now looks as though I have been duffed up in a dark alley and, what a surprise, I am mouthy. As stated earlier, I can be formidable and don’t put up with any BS.
    Oh, hang on… the bbc don’t like real women do they?

    1. If you appoint me as your Agent, I’m sure I could persuade the producers that the time is ripe to reincarnate Dr Who as a Penguin who identifies as a woman…..

      1. As long as there is enough fish 😉
        And I will only appear in black and white costumes.

          1. How do you solve a problem like a penguin?
            How do make it stay and listen to all you say?
            Give it fish- duh;-))

          3. And I can sing it and all- much to the neighbours dismay, I imagine.
            Although I ain’t nothing like a Dame.

  83. A relatively relaxed day catching up with sorting out the smaller sticks I brash trimmings today using the chop saw to fill a couple of dozen mushroom trays with them.
    After yesterday’s exertions getting a few more lumps of stone cemented into the wall, a quiet day was needed.

    However, I’m now off to bed.

    Goodnight all.

  84. Evening, all. Been a fantastic, sunny day here – blue, cloudless sky. After church I spent the afternoon in the garden ; mowed two lawns (and needed to say dozens of Hail Marys because of my foul language as the big mower had to be scrapped – tried to repair it and failed miserably – and I was reduced to struggling with the Chinese junk that was the mini-hover which barely took the top off and kept falling apart. If ever there was a case of false economy, buying that was it!), planted two clematis, weeded the borders and the orchard and fed the pots and fruit trees. Phew! As for the headline, there can certainly be no let-up in the MSM’s attempts to vilify Vlad and start WW3.

    1. I feel your pain. Petrol mowers can’t cope with being laid up for winter with current bog-standard unleaded in the tank. It buggers up the carb. As a diabetic, it makes a change from being buggered up by carbs. But – seriously – there are additives you can put in the fuel before the winter. Better still,
      there’s Aspen alkylate petrol, which will prolly cost more than the mower did, but won’t gum up the carb if you should ignore the mower for a century.

      1. I’m sure that’s true, but these are/were electric – so green, don’t ya know? 🙂

      2. To my astonishment I have now managed to do 3 mows this season on our old MTD ride on without any problems. But it needs serious repair which means we shall have to buy a new machine which we cannot afford.

      3. We use that stuff, also you can get it as 2 stroke mix for chainsaws. Little orange bugger started on 2nd pull yesterday after being laid up since September!

      2. Might as well have done. It took me twice as long to mow (without a dog) because I had to keep stopping to put it back together. Grrr!

  88. Could Boris Johnson be the next leader to head for Kyiv? Prime Minister eyes plan to visit Ukraine capital to show support in country’s war with Russia… but security chiefs are ‘having kittens’ over the idea

    Boris Johnson is considering a lightning trip to Kyiv to show support for Ukraine
    Security officials said to be ‘having kittens’ at the prospect of the PM going there
    But a Whitehall source said Mr Johnson ‘wants to go’ if it can be made to work
    The PM was in a row after appearing to link Ukraine’s struggle with Brexit https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10633721/Prime-Minister-eyes-plan-visit-Kyiv-support-countrys-war-Russia.html

    1. Johnson as ever is a virtual signalling arsehole of the first stripe. A visit to Moscow would be a more appropriate gambit as opposed to seeking to
      prop up a puppet regime run by a prize clown and finger puppet of Klaus Schwab.

      Johnson himself is a prize clown and actually resembles a circus clown viz. the chap given a helmet and fired from a cannon. I just wish he would join the circus and go back to Turkey.

      We are still waiting for Brexit Boris, you lying arsehole.

    3. The Ukrainians have just effectively banned all independent media in their country. That is the government that Boris Johnson wants to show his support for.

    1. We have a British culture. The Afghans have an Afghan culture. Likewise the Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians and most other countries. All are different.

      It was a mistake to attempt to impose our ‘western’ values on cultures different to our own or to use force of arms to seek to change them.

      We should leave the foreign buggers alone to go about their business in their time honoured ways. If that means allowing that they practice the stoning of adulterous women and beheading of thieves, so be it, I would leave them to it and not interfere.

      We have enough problems in trying to retain our British culture, developed over millennia, without our useless politicians splashing our taxes on foreign adventures and by inviting a disparate alien bunch of misfits, many with malevolent intents, to our shores.

      Globalism is a busted flush. We are all different, hold different values, apply different laws and different attitudes to life itself.

      We should not attempt to ‘democratise’ the rest of the world. Just leave them alone to find their own paths to enlightenment even if it will take some of the heathens a century or two to get there.

      1. In the light of what we have seen in the last few years, I have to agree with a lot of what you say.

    2. We have a British culture. The Afghans have an Afghan culture. Likewise the Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians and most other countries. All are different.

      It was a mistake to attempt to impose our ‘western’ values on cultures different to our own or to use force of arms to seek to change them.

      We should leave the foreign buggers alone to go about their business in their time honoured ways. If that means stoning adulterous women and beheading thieves, so be it, I would leave them to it and not interfere.

      We have enough problems in trying to retain our British culture, developed over millennia, without our useless politicians splashing our taxes on foreign adventures and by inviting a disparate alien bunch of misfits, many with malevolent intents, to our shores.

      Globalism is a busted flush. We are all different, hold different values, apply different laws and different attitudes to life itself.

  91. Good night (or rather good morning), everyone. Last night (Sunday) I watched Sergei Eisenstein’s classic silent film OCTOBER. To try and understand a little more of the 1917 Russian Revolution – there were in fact two of them: in February the overthrow of Nicholas the Second, and in October the overthrow of the temporary civilian government which had succeeded him – I found a Russian 10-part documentary series giving me much more information and insight. I managed to watch the first three in the series but, as it is now 2.30 am, I am off to bed.

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