Sunday 24 March: Throughout this ordeal the Princess of Wales has acted with grace and dignity

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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809 thoughts on “Sunday 24 March: Throughout this ordeal the Princess of Wales has acted with grace and dignity”

  1. Morning all. Off to walk the dog. I may be some time. Snails have been known to pass us🙂

  4. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story

    A TEACHER’S STORY ABOUT STUTTERING

    A teacher was explaining biology to her Year 4 pupils, ‘Human beings are the only animals that stutter’ she said.

    A little girl raises her hand, ‘I had a kitten who stuttered.’

    The teacher, knowing how precious some of these stories could become, asked the girl to describe the incident.

    ‘Well,’ she began, ‘I was in the back garden with my kitten and the Rottweiler that lives next door got a running start and before we knew it, he jumped over the fence into our garden!’

    ‘That must’ve been scary,’ said the teacher.

    ‘It was,’ said the little girl.

    ‘My kitty raised her back and went ‘Ffffff! Ffffff! Ffffff!’ but before she could say ‘F *** off!’ the Rottweiler ate her!

    1. This looks very interesting, Johnny, I hope to watch it all later today. (Good morning, btw.)

  6. Putin must now realise he’s been fighting the wrong war. 24 March 2024.

    The Kremlin has a long and bloody history of fighting Islamist extremism, from Russia’s brutal military campaign in Chechnya – Putin’s first war after becoming president – to Moscow’s more recent military intervention in Syria, where Russian forces were involved in eliminating Isil’s self-declared caliphate in Raqqa.

    It is worth remembering that Putin’s primary justification for deploying Russian forces to Syria in 2015 was to target the Islamist militants who had seized control of large swathes of the country, even if his main motivation was to keep the Assad regime, long-standing allies of Moscow, in power.

    Coughlin had already written his weekly column so they have dragged him out of the bar to write this denial of Ukie involvement in the terrorist attack in Moscow. It smacks of panic. It’s not the only one; there is another article entitled Britain warns Putin not to use Moscow attack to intensify war on Ukraine which is similarly unconvincing though it doesn’t contain an admission about the UK’s long denied activities in Syria. To put it frankly Mi6 and ISIS were then in cahoots to overthrow the Assad Government.

    Despite its title the second article is not an official announcement. It has a couple of quotes from the “Usual Suspects” only one from the UK. Reading between the lines here one is left with the impression that if Vlad only thinks the Ukies were involved, Mi6 is pretty sure of it!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/23/putin-must-now-realise-hes-been-fighting-the-wrong-war/

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/23/moscow-attack-uk-warns-putin-intensify-ukraine-war/

    1. Hardly anything can be believed in the MSM. The bigger the story, the bigger the con. They’ve just been extremely successful with the latest deception!

      1. When considering the propaganda emanating from the MSM, one must have the perception to read between the lines. I have been criticised when able to comment on The Spectator because my critics insisted I read the news and consider the evidence in the way intended by those releasing it to the public, rather than making somewhat different interpretations of restricted information.

        It was something I learnt when engaged with a political campaign to bring down the Thatcher Government in the 1980s. Seasoned campaigners told me not to be too downhearted by the blue posters, but rather consider the blue posters missing this time that were on display at the previous election. This may well indicate a wavering Tory, and someone well worth visiting with an alternative proposition.

        1. They didn’t have AI back in those days. Reading between the lines fits in with the latest deception. If you look carefully, you will see on the subject’s right side that the lines of the jumper continue onto the bench. This is an AI error. The side of her left eyebrow pointing upwards at 45 degrees is another. As are the non matching slats on the bench and the uneven height of the armrests. This means that the video is a fake. The question therefore is the story a fake too? I suspect it is and that a scenario has been constructed. Let’s see what happens next.

          1. Polly, I am all in favour of questioning things, but this is not serious stuff. If you do a search for images of Kate you will see she has always had asymmetrical eyebrows, which she usually hides with a wave of hair over her left eyebrow. Her hair is much longer than usual in the this video, she seems not to have had it trimmed since Christmas, and her long fringe has grown out.
            I’ve noticed the effect of the stripes bleeding into the background before in videos, I think it is to do with digital processing.

          2. I’ve just checked her left eyebrow. In the video, it doesn’t resemble historical pictures. There are too many inconsistencies, including the issues about the bench and the background. I’ve never seen stripes carried over on professional videos. This is supposedly a state of the art BBC production.

          5. Polly, I am all in favour of questioning things, but this is not serious stuff. If you do a search for images of Kate you will see she has always had asymmetrical eyebrows, which she usually hides with a wave of hair over her left eyebrow. Her hair is much longer than usual in the this video, she seems not to have had it trimmed since Christmas, and her long fringe has grown out.
            I’ve noticed the effect of the stripes bleeding into the background before in videos, I think it is to do with digital processing.

          6. I don’t really care if it was touched up. There may be good reasons for this – Kate’s lovely hair beginning to fall out being one of them. There comes a time when it is quite wrong to be uncharitable towards someone who has only shown goodwill towards us.

          7. I have never been uncharitable about her. She’s always been one of my favourites and I wish her well. I don’t think she has any connection to what’s been happening.

          8. A lot of people behave like total scum in their treatment of the Princess. They should all apologise and we should drop the subject. This is the first and last time I have commented here on the subject.

          9. I wish her well. I think it’s perfectly plausible that she’s had no connection to recent events.

            Let’s see what happens next.

          10. My spidey senses tell me that she is being exploited and the public is being manipulated for purposes that are not yet apparent.

    3. A lightbulb moment happened just now when they were reading the news that Putin believes that the Tajik ISIS killers were heading for the Ukrainian border, and thus implicated Ukraine in this atrocity – something vigorously denied by Zelenskyy.

      My thought was that they may well have been heading for Ukraine, but they were working for Putin, not Zelenskyy. The Kremlin has relied on Central Asian thugs to reinforce their invasion of Ukraine, and many of them militant Muslims with no respect for Ukrainian Orthodox Christians, whereas Slav Russians may well feel reluctant to go in hard on their fellow Christians. We already know that many Chechnian Muslims were fighting on behalf of Russia. It is entirely consistent for the ISIS fighters from Tajikistan to bolt for Ukraine to the cover of the Russian invaders, rather than face justice in Russia for what they did to that concert hall.

      Russia is no stranger to destroying concert halls full of people if they happen to be Ukrainians.

      1. Morning Jeremy. Of course the idea that Vlad may have engineered the attack himself occurred to me but why? In this case it is cui bono. He has no need of it. The Ukies on the other hand are hard pressed at the moment and any distraction would be welcomed.

        1. I am not suggesting that Putin engineered that attack on the concert hall. Rather that is normal behaviour of ISIS let loose into society, and could have happened anywhere not sufficiently vigilant.

          He certainly does have a need to cover up Tajik Islamist alliance to support his Special Military Operation. He is able to keep a lid on Slav unrest for now, mostly because of legendary Slav Russian resilience and stoicism as well as severe punishment for dissidents, but there must be a limit to what Slav Russians will put up with before they revolt.

          Ukrainians need no distraction – they want their country back, an end to the bombardment of their cities, the slaughter of their menfolk, and a resumption of normal relations, meaning corrupt and profitable business practices.

      2. Morning Jeremy. Of course the idea that Vlad may have engineered the attack himself occurred to me but why? In this case it is cui bono. He has no need of it. The Ukies on the other hand are hard pressed at the moment and any distraction would be welcomed.

  7. In the Dark
    A woman rushed up to the manager of the cinema and complained that she had been molested in the front stalls.
    The manager calmed her down and was ushering her to another seat, when another woman complained to him that she had been molested in the front stalls too.

    The manager went down to the front and shone his torch along the floor, where he saw a bald man crawling along on his hands and knees.
    “What are you doing?” demanded the manager.

    The bald man looked up. “ I’ve lost my toupee. It fell off in the dark. I had my hand on it twice, but it got away!”

    3. All well and good, Johnny, but his finances are in such a precarious state that he might run out of cash tomorrow (Monday). As you know, there are a lot of people trying to rock his boat.

      1. Just watch what happens. Remember everything you read about him is negative not the truth.

  9. Wordle 1,009 5/6

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

    Good morning, chums. Just seven days to British Summer Time.

    1. Good Morning, Elsie

      Wordle 1,009 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨🟩⬜
      🟩⬜🟨🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Wordle 1,009 4/6

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

  10. Morning, all Y’all. Daylight, getting noticeably earlier by the day, and foggy. Off on Easter hols in a bit, just finishing an over-marmited piece of toast… lovely!

      1. Most certainly. Occasionally available from the more expensive supermarkets; we had Iceland for a few years, and you could get such exotic foodstuffs as Branston pickle and Heinz salad cream… bliss! But then they gave up and closed.

        1. When, as a child, I lived in Argentina, my father once in a while went to Buenos Aires on business. Whilst there he went to Argentina’s Harrods where he would buy a large bottle of HP sauce which he used sparingly on his Sunday full English breakfast.

          3. Yes, ashesthandust, I knew that. It was reported on in the media many years ago. Still enjoying your life in Tangoland? Coming back for the English summer?

          4. The building is still empty, hanging around rather sadly draped in faded Pride flags.

            I am having a ball, thank you. Can’t tear myself away, even for an English summer!

  11. Good morning all.
    A bright, windy but cool day with a tad over 1°C on the yard thermometer.

          3. Reminds me of a joke about naming of new Microsoft HQ building:

            Dos(s) House

    2. 1982. The tax man estimated my tips and took £10 from my wages (£35). I asked my boss for more hours as i was struggling. My next pay packet was less than i normally got because of the tax bracket.
      I asked my boss for fewer hours.

      For some reason i thought i was supposed to work.

      1. A nurse with whom I trained (1970s) was saving for a special holiday.
        She did nights as overtime and by the end of the month really needed a holiday.
        After tax, she was £4.00 better off.

  13. As Princess of Wales reveals diagnosis, doctors warn of mysterious cancer ‘epidemic’. 24 March 2024.

    Leading doctors have warned of a mysterious new “epidemic” of abdominal cancers in younger people.

    Following the Princess of Wales’s announcement of her diagnosis on Friday, specialist clinicians have said that in recent years they have seen a significant increase in under-45s presenting with cancers typically seen in older patients.

    Many are fit and outwardly healthy, prompting a scramble among scientists to establish what is causing the trend.

    Let me see if I can write this article without once mentioning Covid or Vaccinations. There! Done it!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/23/doctors-warn-abdominal-cancer-epidemic-princess-diagnosis/

    2. Covid jabs are so last year….

      “Cancer vaccines – the new immunotherapy frontier” from 2022
      https://www.nature.com/articles/s43018-022-00418-6

      and

      “In what CEO Albert Bourla, Ph.D., called an update to a top priority at Pfizer, the company on Thursday systemically laid out its new oncology strategy following the $43 billion acquisition of antibody-drug conjugate specialist Seagen.

      The company aims to have at least eight blockbuster cancer drugs by 2030, Pfizer’s newly minted chief oncology officer, Chris Boshoff, Ph.D., said during an investor event Thursday as he unveiled the strategic priorities. By then, Pfizer hopes to double the number of patients treated with its innovative cancer medicines from about 2.3 million in 2023.

      (my bold)
      https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/pfizer-fleshes-out-oncology-strategy-targeting-8-blockbuster-cancer-drugs-2030

      edit:
      Also
      https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/251213/first-uk-patients-receive-experimental-mrna/
      First UK patients receive experimental mrna cancer jab, February 2024

      Just a coincidence…

    1. Nice collection today.

      The racial breakdown of criminal intent is on US lines: White, Hispanic, Black, and doesn’t translate readily into European ones: Indigenous, Outer European, Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Black American and Caribbean, Asian (meaning Indian subcontinent), Oriental & Pacific, and former Colonial. “Hispanics” from Latin America are lumped in with the colonials, whereas in America they are considered distinct. “Irish” has long been a distinct category in Britain, whereas a better categorisation might today be either Indigenous or Outer European.

      However the message is clear enough. African pensioners are blameless and should not be scapegoated for the culture of their youth, many of whom assimilated into Western culture. Indigenous pre-pubescent boys are also blameless, despite oft being vilified by the trendy. Young African women are more prone to violence than any other women, and more so than Indigenous men of any age, despite the latter being despised by fashionable society.

      The cartoon comparing bomb shelters is pure factional propaganda and is quite unfair. The bomb shelter in Israel should show the bomb being intercepted and destroyed before it hits the building, whereas the one in Gaza, whilst probably still having a bomb in the basement should be in a building utterly shattered, the mother body parts in the air and the baby buried in the rubble. The Realpolitik of “Might is Right”.

      I was taken to Hooters somewhere in North Carolina by my uncle in 2001, but was mightily disappointed. They were all modestly clad, with their beauties shrouded by the American hijab that was certainly not required in the South of France or a German Body Culture resort. I couldn’t guess the one with an overfilled thong [edit – note for confused Aussies – outside Australia, thongs are not worn on the feet].

      1. On the topic of racist categorisation, I was thinking about Jews. The Ashkenazi are long regarded as Outer European, whereas other semitic tribes are Middle Eastern. Some (and I include my nephew and niece here) are so well integrated, they may well be considered Indigenous. Others, particularly the hostile settlers from Russia and America are Colonials, especially if they were assimilated into cultures there and then re-exported. It is telling that Israel, a Middle Eastern nation and Australia, a Colonial one, are both admitted to the Eurovision Song Contest.

        I prefer therefore to consider Judaism a faction, based on a set of philosophies, rules and beliefs brought out by the Prophet Moses among others, rather than a race. Its persecution is therefore founded more on clashing culture than racial. I do not accord with those, be they Chief Rabbi Mirvis or even Adolf Hitler, who insist that Jewishness is purely racial.

    2. The cartoon brings out real danger; Ange looks as if she might be fun.
      Bloody dangerous – like the most popular girl in the class who will turn on you – but at least life wouldn’t be dull.

  17. ‘Morning All

    Sunday Medley

    Awkward……….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ea1d59351c43cf6d9eb55d23a9f1df08187ae943e6ef2f5642b236c06a65b183.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5a08a8c92a633b10db6734e6b2e265157eb999f6c869d6c05a98f0952c833d13.jpg

    https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=568,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/160/277/155/original/98c5f23320e7b426.jpeg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/02f0e31db433e9192d7aefb4e153c8a147e4526c61b4d9d0494ae408640d8625.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e7d6c18571740219a1eef4405f08e8a16ba40bc2d5bbeaf1cad16975af6eb0fa.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3f9cd52ba936d5a182c1421cf5286408ec117569a3fd00fbda3fcdf410dbb657.png

    Yes,yes let the hate flow through you……….

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/28710431ae2244983762a18d0fefb95d4cc5c7982d7111933655029b6a0c4dd0.jpg

    3. Nothing like a bit of stereotyping…imagine if we tried stereotyping people who weren’t hWite. There would be a snowflake meltdown.

  18. We all said no,no,
    Don’t homo the logo
    But the deed was done,
    Along with the bun,
    Leaving us all in woke limbo

    1. I won’t be buying any. I might steal some though….and give to the poor and hungry.

  19. There’s a food fascist on the radio, saying “the world doesn’t need me to tell them what to do”, after he spent the last ten minutes telling us what to do. Sounds like he nneds a serious punch in the bracket.

      1. Follow my advice, Paul. AVOID all radio and television news/current affairs/politics. You’ll feel much better.

      2. The kebab remains and pools of vomit left after a Saturday night on your local high street.

  21. 384964+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Sunday 24 March: Throughout this ordeal the Princess of Wales has acted with grace and dignity

    I do wish her all the very best but the truth is many of her future potential subjects could have been a pattern for her actions, and they were suffering, via a very nasty, devious, conniving, treacherous, political management, with interrupted treatment via unnecessary lockdown delays, doctors strikes etc,etc,, in point of fact a virtual blitz of NON treatment from an enemy within.

    IMHO the the approaching General Election can be taken to be a “political battle of the DONS”
    the self considered political elite seeking a new
    Capo Dei Capi.

    For what it is worth I do truly believe we get deservedly, what we vote for.

    1. There is constant sniping at Kensington Palace.
      What were the courtiers supposed to do?
      Go against the Wales’s desire for privacy and splash all the details out to the MSM reptiles?

  22. Written from an American perspective, but still very true for the UK:-

    “A nation dies when it hates its own history.”
    A reflection on this truth, by Facebook friend and author Avelina Balestri.
    THE REV’D THOMAS H. HARBOLD
    The reflection below (which was not, to my knowledge, sparked specifically by the impending destruction of the Reconciliation Monument, at Arlington, pictured above: that is my addition) is by author Avellina Balestri. In any case, I agree with her, 100%:

    “It is said that a nation dies when it hates its own history. But what does that really mean?

    “Firstly, I am not opposed to healthy self-evaluation, acknowledging past and present faults, and finding ways to improve our countries going forward. It should be fairly evident given the type of social issues I post about to raise awareness. Secondly, I am not the sort to view history solely through rose-tinted glasses. That should be fairly evident from any of my writings, which don’t cut corners on the harsh realities of life in past time periods where warfare, disease, and poverty were widespread.

    “At the same time, I am not smug about our current age. The fact is there were many good, true, and beautiful aspects of the past we have cast aside. So we have advanced in some ways, and regressed in others. Nostalgia is not completely without rationale for a more organic, communal, and spiritual way of living.

    “One thing is certain to me: the West has come to a point where it is almost fashionable to act self-hating towards itself, in a way I have not seen remotely mirrored among people from the East. There is a knee-jerk response to assume and emphasize the worst in our own heritage, while often giving slack to other cultures and deeming them morally superior.

    “There is absolutely a palpable bitterness I have encountered time and time again towards our own history, because it is supposedly just about “old white men” which, needless to say, is both a sexist and racist statement and dehumanizes our own ancestors. Any sign of patriotism or pride in the past is condemned as being somehow toxically jingoistic, although I would argue that a lack of this healthy sense of communal and national identification is actually what’s toxic.

    “It seems evident to me that this post-modern western trend is a product of Marxist ideology that encourages a break with the past in order to start from scratch and create a magical demi-paradise that would instead be a godless dystopia. That is why I will oppose this trend until my dying day.”

    Amen, and amen.

    https://anglophilicanglican.substack.com/p/a-nation-dies-when-it-hates-its-own

    2. Good morning Bob.

      My thoughts are that in these strange times , a couple of generations of British people , still fairly young have no knowledge of our contribution to the world , we are a small island but we gave so much to many continents , we didn’t start wars, we defended our own country and many others besides , we gave away financial succour, created jobs , and educated millions to help progress their own nations health and wealth .

      Why do people feel guilty by focussing on the slave trade ..

      We were all slaves , and still are , to the tax man , because our taxes are used to fill the coffers of ungrateful nations who now have no respect for our generosity .

  23. They didn’t have AI back in those days. Reading between the lines fits in with the latest deception. If you look carefully, you will see on “Kate’s” right side that the lines of her jumper continue onto the bench. This is an AI error. The side of her left eyebrow pointing upwards at 45 degrees is another. As are the non matching slats on the bench and the uneven height of the armrests. This means that the video is a fake. The question therefore is the story a fake too? I suspect it is and that a scenario has been constructed. Let’s see what happens next.

  24. Good Moaning.
    This morning I feel both chuffed and rather old.
    Grandson is driving himself over to the Dower House to help us assemble a storage unit for outdoor “stuff” currently residing in a rapidly collapsing cupboard.
    That is the youngest grandchild now independently mobile. How did that happen?

    1. I no longer attend Church services, unless it is the funeral of someone I know and care for. I still have a cross made from a palm leaf which I received when I was a regular churchgoer in my youth. But thanks for reminding me, Michael, that today is Palm Sunday.

      1. Nor do I since I had to listen to a left wing sermon in Portsmout Cathedral. some years ago

        1. Come to our church – I banned political sermons a long time ago much to the upset of our now resigned vicar. We have however been praying for Israel and the defeat of anti Semitism.

    2. Why? The Archpillock wants to give a billion pounds (of accumulated Collection funds?) away.

      1. Although I sometimes go in for a few minutes of quiet contemplation, the church is only 50 yards away being next-door-but-one.

  27. SIR – Daniel Johnson is right to warn that Ukraine jeopardises the peace of Europe (News Focus, March 17).

    Ukraine is a serious threat to the whole of Europe. Young
    people did not experience the old Iron Curtain. It was very bad for one
    half of Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, the Baltic and
    Balkan States.
    Luckily at that time the United States, Britain and
    France had sufficient forces in Europe for it to be evident to Ukraine
    that there would be a full-scale war if it pushed further.

    No one
    predicted the collapse of Soviet Russia. We enjoyed the peace dividend,
    but Nazis are back – the same monster, poking us with a stick.

    The
    first duty of any government is to defend the nation, but our Armed
    Forces are so depleted that even the Chief of the General Staff has
    warned that we are at a 1937 moment, which means, based on experience,
    that thousands will soon be killed and wounded.

    Like Hitler, Vlodymir Zelensky sacrifices his own people without concern for their
    lives. We do not know why many Ukrainians accept this state of affairs,
    but they do. The Russians do not. Russia wishes to be an open,
    liberal democracy like ours.

    Our concern now is our safety.
    Voters should ask candidates at the upcoming election whether he or she
    will support a massive increase in our defences to meet the new threat.
    We must give Russia the materiel to sustain its war effort and win on
    our behalf. If it works, it will be money well spent. If it fails, we
    will be at war – but we will have at least tried to secure ourselves.

    Sir Charles Montgomery Lucius-Git Featherstonehaugh-Smith-Jones III
    London

  28. Good morning all and the 77th,

    And a fine morning it is over McPhee Towers. Wind in the West going North-West, a cool 6C rising to 12C today.

    Why does this hapless government believe that ennobling someone with a name like Khan and giving her the job of adviser on something called ‘social cohesion’ will have any effect whatsoever? You cannot cohere forces that are repellent and continuing to refer to the mythical ‘far-right’ threat in a pathetic attempt to introduce some sort of balance, as if any balance at all is Right and Deserved when it comes to Islam, simply will not fly. It is being greeted with derision now. As it should be.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58c3531ad73065d89f0009dfd8c07d8b9d06c637eed3f70e33e81d74b63407a8.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/23/islamist-far-right-report-sara-khan-oldham-stoke-gove/

    A quick look at the BTL comments reveals the attitude of the majority.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2317a815be8f72db1688ee0a5d14fb1481d12245cb88e9a3c8ace96b38e6da79.png

  29. Good morning all and the 77th,

    And a fine morning it is over McPhee Towers. Wind in the West going North-West, a cool 6C rising to 12C today.

    Why does this hapless government believe that ennobling someone with a name like Khan and giving her the job of adviser on something called ‘social cohesion’ will have any effect whatsoever? You cannot cohere with that which is repellent and continuing to refer to the mythical ‘far-right’ threat in a pathetic attempt to introduce some sort of balance, as if any balance at all is Right and Deserved when it comes to Islam, simply will not fly. It is being greeted with derision now. As it should be.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58c3531ad73065d89f0009dfd8c07d8b9d06c637eed3f70e33e81d74b63407a8.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/23/islamist-far-right-report-sara-khan-oldham-stoke-gove/

    A quick look at the BTL comments reveals the attitude of the majority.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2317a815be8f72db1688ee0a5d14fb1481d12245cb88e9a3c8ace96b38e6da79.png

    1. Objecting to Globalist Liberal-Left nonsense and the ensuing rot is now “Far-Right”. Everyone on here is “Far-Right”. Them’s the rules.

        3. I bet I’m further right than you. I just passed my far-left doppelganger coming the other way.

    2. Just behave your selves who ever you are, and deal just with both the ‘I’ words. And almost everything will be not too far from being alright.
      Of course, Immigration and the obvious.

    3. Islam seems to embrace all the characteristics of what is thought to be “far right” – I am unaware of great numbers of groups of far rightists other than Islam and its deluded non-Muslim supporters.

    4. All the time I was growing up through the 1970s, the word “fascist” was used to describe anyone we disagreed with. I think it was because those born in the 1950s and onwards never knew fascism because that movement was trounced during WW2. Ever since I learnt the French word ‘fâché’, I have associated fascism with being angry about something.

      I do use it today though, not to describe Conservatives or Muslims, even when I oppose what they stand for, but rather those referred to today as “Liberals” or “Woke” – supremacists who believe the only way to address perceived historical injustices is to categorise the scapegoats, vilify them and exclude them, ordering them to apologise if they think incorrectly. For me, this is a much more accurate description of fascism than any glib cliché thrown out as a reflex to criticism.

      1. Modern ‘liberals’ seem to be ardent statists who believe the state should regulate and direct every aspect of life.
        That is what fascism is as defined by its founder Mussolini.

        1. Indeed. I have just looked up the etymology in Wikipedia. It seems to have been derived from the Italian for ‘bundle of sticks’ rather than the French for ‘angry”. Sticks symbolised punishment, and a bundle of them could not easily be snapped. The Latin word for it was ‘fasces’ not to be confused with culinary term ‘faeces’, which is different and describes a side-effect of my level of cookery.

      2. Nearby is a suburban trio of shops, built by the Coop between the wars in the days when every neighbourhood had a grocers and butchers.
        Part of the marble fascia has carved fasces above the door.
        Always gives me a smile.

    5. A BTL Comment and response:-

      R. Spowart
      3 MIN AGO
      Message Actions
      “Towns and cities across Britain are “struggling” to deal with extremism being whipped up by Islamists and the far Right, an official report will warn this week.”
      The “Far Right”?
      Forgive me, but who exactly ARE this “Far Right”?
      My political opinions were once centrist and shared a lot of cross-party support. They include:-
      – Secure borders
      – Safe & clean cities
      – A desire not to see my country bankrupted by excessive Government spending
      – A belief that Racism against any race is wrong, but that those coming to our country should accept that it is OUR country and accept OUR laws.
      Over the decades Political Thought as followed by “the Elite” has shifted strongly leftwards leaving those sharing my opinions isolated on the Right Wing of politics.
      When you add in political ideas and campaigns unthought of by our forebears, the lunacy of Trans ideology and the wholesale trashing of British History being but two modern day schools of thought, is it a surprise that so many people are reacting against much of what we are being forced to accept?
      Becoming not so much “Right Wing” as Reactionaries against the lunacies of the REAL danger to our Society.
      The Extreme Left.

      REPLY

      Holger Hartmann
      1 MIN AGO
      Reply to R. Spowart
      Well put.

  30. Morning all 🙂😊🌞
    Two sunny starts on the trot. It must be spring.
    Middle son coming to cut the grass this morning.
    Good for you Catherine, your miles ahead of all those horrible slimey gobby media trolls. And because we already know what scumbags they are, your own established dignity prevails.
    Strange to have an appointment for an MRI scan on a Sunday. Could be an advantage, roads less busy, easier parking at the hospital. Less crowded. One can hope, it’s all we have really.
    I’ve been told by messenger failure to attend appointments cost’s the NHS 180 pounds.
    I wonder if that works both ways, yesterday another letter telling me my appointment in July has been cancelled, a new appointment pending. It’s the first I’ve heard of either.

      1. Not sure yet TB.
        I had an echo cardiogram and an ecg at the beginning of the month. Although the results were not passed on to me, I suspect this could be part of the problem solving. 😊🤞

        1. I had an echocardiogram whilst on the cardiac ward – they told me I had an ejection fraction of 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% 55% …

          2. The cardiologist just said we need to keep an eye on it.
            I think he was just trying to keep the fear up because 55% is not that bad. Although you might think 100% would be ideal that is just not possible because the ventricules don’t completely empty.

            Anyway, I check my heart/lung performance by monitoring blood oxygen level (SpzO2) which in most people should be around 98%.That covers both the ability of the heart to keep adequate blood circulation and the lung’s efficiency in oxygenating it.

    2. NHS Trusts now appear to be sweating their assets.
      It made absolutely no sense whatsoever to have £billions worth machinery sitting around over weekends and evenings.
      That is one very real improvement.

    1. My word people in this are not only born stupid, but are now painted in the same vein.

    2. Remember when the job of coppers was to catch criminals? I don’t see this happening here. Also note someone had to spend time ordering and paying for that coloured mat.

    3. Let’s hope the horses react the same way to people dressed in rainbow clothing.
      “Ooops …. thought you were a pedestrian crossing.”

  32. Good morning all,

    Very chilly breezy morning , 8c.

    Blue sky , but cumulus and cirrus moving quite swiftly .. maybe rain later .

    No 1 son kitted up in his running gear , off for an 18 mile run .. yes , I know ..

    He has been taking it easy having injured his knee running a 10k in Devon nearly 2 months ago.

    If that is taking it easy , well my goodness!

      1. Quelle Bloody Surprise.
        Though the Sikhs, like the Jews, normally fit in and just get on with life.

    2. No surprise as Rugby’s gone woke.
      The confirmation came with the driving from the game of Israel Folau for expressing his traditional Christian faith and then complete w*nkers like Joe Marler piled into him.
      A former player and fan., I’ve given up on the game. I don’t even go to watch Exeter any more.

  37. I think they should have dealt with it as they did with King C III, give the truth. Maybe Gen Z would have had a problem but us sturdier folk would have coped and everyone would have forgotten the issue by now. Conspiracy theorists proved correct again!

  38. I see Kneejerk Fishi has jumped onto the England/St George’s Cross bandwagon. Don’t imagine he has ever seen a football.

    Funny thing. I can’t imagine Sir Winston getting involve in an argument about wendyball outfits.

    1. Winchester school always played football over rugby, being a bunch of posh swotty nancies. 🙂

    2. Personally, I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the colour of the cross emblem on the back of the shirt, but the Football Association must have anticipated the resulting outcry. Therefore, I can only conclude that the FA wanted the controversy. Rather more outrageous, in my view, is the extortionate price of the official replicas.

        1. The pester power of children and teenagers is very strong. Young fathers cave in then get one themselves.

          2. Tribal? Wanting to belong to a larger group? As for the fathers, I think some rather like the idea of being their child’s mate or bigger sibling.

      2. It brings a wry smile when I hear of the fans being ripped off for a cheap shirt made in the far East when trading standards will swoop on market traders for selling knock-off kit. If people would just stop buying the expensive tat, the extortion would also stop.

      3. I didn’t know there was a cross emblem on the back of the shirt – but as it seems there is, then the new emblem is a nonsense. The price is something else and will probably reduce the numbers of these things.

    3. Starmer has already driven up in his White Van draped in the Cross of St George.

      PS He sincerely wants votes

    4. Our government has taken it upon itself to regulate the game of soccer. No doubt this will lead to great improvements.

      1. No diving; no arguing with the officials; no “knee-slides” when scoring…

        Can’t wait!

        1. I like my football, but doers not need any government intervention or supervision. Another quango, as you say

    1. Goodness – so I am not alone always to find one cat or another sitting in my chair….!!

    2. Lovely picture. My family pet was a tortoiseshell cat, she actually house- trained the dog who thought himself a cat, it was all rather complex.

        1. Our two are out all night. On a fine day, they quite like to do their rounds for an hour or so – but mainly spend the day asleep.

          2. Read your mind, cats do!! Pickles can tell the time – 12.15 – fast asleep; 12.20 in the kitchen for his bit of cheese.

    1. Yes, that’s one thing that medics don’t treat scientifically.
      In school and uni I always had to follow a measurement by indicating the accuracy range limits with a plus and minus sign (±),

  41. Three birthdays this week.

    I fear my birthday list may not be up to date so I would be most grateful if those who are not on it and would like to be on it would let me know under this post so I can add their names (and please let me know if there are any errors) so we can all wish them.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e281877e66f9640965428cfaf7612b736a56b10f037dc7830d6ff3f7e0f8aba9.png

    Here is the list: (E &OE)

    02 January – 1947 : Poppiesmum
    08 January – 1941 : Rough Common
    09 January – **** : thayaric
    10 January – 1960 : hopon
    16 January – 1941 : Legal Beagle
    18 January – 1963 : Stormy
    21 January – **** : Nagsman
    23 January – 1951 : Damask Rose (Rose)
    23 January – 1960 : Kifaru
    27 January – 1948 : Citroen 1

    10 February -1949 : Korky the Kat (Dandy Front Pager)
    11 February- 1964 : Phizzee
    22 February- 1965 : AW Kamau
    22 February- 1951 : Grizzly (Alan/George)
    24 February- 1941 : Sguest
    28 February- 1956 :Jeremy Morfey
    29 February- **** : Ped

    02 March- **** : Garlands
    05 March—– 1957 : Sue MacFarlane
    08 March—– 1957 : Geoff Graham
    26 March—– 1962 : Caroline Tracey
    27 March—– 1947 : Maggiebelle
    27 March—– 1941 : Fallick Alec

    19 April——- 1954 : Devonian in Kent
    22 April——–1950 :Jay Sands
    26 April——- **** : Harry Kobeans

    18 May———****: Hertslass
    24 May——– 1944 : Sir Jasper (NoToNanny) (Tom)

    01 June——- 1952 Bob of Bonsall
    02 June——–1939: Clydesider
    08 June——– **** : Still Bleau
    09 June——- 1947 : Johnny Norfolk
    09 June——– 1947 : Horace Pendleton
    23 June——– 1961 : Oberstleutnant (Paul)
    25th June——-1952 : Corrimobile

    01 July———-1946: Rastus C Tastey (Richard)
    12 July——— 1956 : David Wainwright/Stigenace
    18 July——— 1941: lacoste
    19 July——— 1948: Ndovu (jules)
    21 July———-1960: Richard II (ex Tier5Inmate)
    26 July——— 1936 : Delboy
    29 July———- 1944 : Lewis Duckworth
    30 July———- 1946 : Alf the Great

    01 August—— 1950 : Datz
    03 August—— 1954 : molamola
    10 August—— 1967 : ourmaninmunich
    14 August ——-1944 jillthelass
    18 August—— **** : ashesthandust
    19 August——- 1951 : Hugh Janus

    04 September- 1948 : Joseph B Fox
    07 September- 1946 : Araminta Smade (The Mighty Minty)
    09 September ———: Conway (Connors)
    11 September- 1947 : Peter Anderson (ex peddytheviking)
    12 September- 1946 : Ready Eddy (ex Eh Calm Down)
    13 September- **** : Anne Allan (The Pushy Nurse)
    15 September- **** : veryoldfella
    26 September- **** : Feargal the Cat
    30 September 1944 : One Last Try

    07 October—– 1960 : Bob 3
    11 October—– 1944 : Hardcastle Craggs
    25 October—– 1955 : Sue Edison
    26 October——-1948: Jonathan Rackham

    12 November- ***** : Cochrane

    01 December– 1956 : Sean Stanley-Adams
    06 December– 1943 : Duncan Mac
    10 December– **** : Aethelfled
    16 December– **** : Plum
    21 December– 1945 : Elsie Bloodaxe
    (E&OE)

    2. I’m on your list thank you, Rastus, I’m a very old Nottler, different account, different name, different time . It’s lovely that my birthday has been remembered. It’s a lovely Nottl tradition, this place is like a big family.

        1. I have always read the comments even when not around – the old account still exists but I have this one now. I recall Hugh Janus with his black labrador avatar, my favourite dogs are labradors. I recall Peddy the Viking with his gargoyle avatar and hearing about Missy his cat but most of all it’s sad to see those who’ve passed away and not on the list – Lady of The Lake – both she and I Richardians – members of the Richard III society. I see that Plum isn’t around either – a great tennis fan as I am .

          2. I protect this lovely place. Whoever I sent over from the Spectator were good sorts and who I thought would blend in with this big family, I am trustworthy and loyal and everyone here is good and kind. But on the wider Internet of many sites I’ve encountered the most relentlessly cruel and spiteful and of which I chose to keep away from, the Internet can be dangerous and I need to protect myself. But this place has always been the most courteous, kind and respectful of others.
            You’ve been very generous to the Spexciles. But I’ve no idea what happened to those like me who also posted on Archbishop Cranmer’s site ( a life line during Covid and those deemed ‘ the most vulnerable ‘ like myself) he just shut down his site with no warning and vanished – I miss Lamia, she was so wise, gentle and a good Christian.

          3. You might recognise my logonid from the Archbishop Cranmer BTL comments, though I admit that I don’t recognise your current one – did you post under your old account referred to in a comment above?
            I’ve seen TwoFeetOnShore posting comments on TCW, and Happy Jack set up a blog ‘Crannoggy Island’ on which a few of the old regulars post. https://dodothedude.blogspot.com/

            I really miss the Archbishop Cranmer site – it was a great venue for exchanging news on the goings on in the churches, and for theological debate (which I enjoyed engaging in, and learned a lot). I think the enemy of God achieved a big victory in getting it closed down. From just a few pieces of evidence I think I can work out why it had to be closed and deleted.

          4. Hello yes I do recall your name from Archbishop Cranmer, I used my other account there and was more of a reader than one for commenting.
            Others such as Inspector General and Mrs Proudie post elsewhere .
            But others that only posted at Archbishop Cranmer such as Chief of Sinners have just gone from online . Everyone with all the disqus Archbishop Cranmer history removed from their accounts – as if that site never existed – it just vanished totally. I thought it a wonderful site, I learnt so much about theology, I loved the articles and the comments
            There is no comparison to that site anywhere . Thank you for telling me of Happy Jack’s new blog, ill check it out .

    4. Not many in November! We don’t see much of Cochrane these days though he has contacted me on Twitter before now and I think he still looks in.

      July is well represented though………

      2. I blocked Cochrane on Twitter when he told me not to listen to Damask Rose and Corrimobile in connection with the ‘vaccine’. I told him I already had my own views regarding it before I was aware of theirs.

      3. Weather isn’t too good in February and people are a bit depressed and flat after Christmas 🙂

    5. I thought I had asked to be added before, obviously not. 5th May 1949 Dave Sergeant.

  42. Apropos Rik’s medley… this is a bit small, but if you double click it, it’s just about legible.
    These are the crime stats from Denmark, where they record crimes by country of origin. We should try that!
    Look at India’s exceptionally low ranking – can only assume that all the Indians in Denmark are software developers! I met an Indian market trader in Germany once, he said that when he first came to Germany years ago everyone assumed he was a market trader, but now they all assume he’s a software developer…
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/894f5446c3556412cab135ef7a77a345d514772c2373151633f896dda3de3bb3.jpg

  43. I note that Verstappen went from first to last in the Australian GP.
    Looking at the results one wonders why Ferrari need Hamilton.

          1. From the post could you tell which drivers came first, second and third?
            Could you tell who drove the fastest lap?
            Could you tell where Hamilton placed?
            You might guess the car in first two but not necessarily which way round and what was significant about the third place finisher?
            The race finished hours ago and anyone with any interest will have looked it up.

          1. OK, define exactly what you could conclude from my original post and how you concluded it.

          2. That you took pleasure in divulging the results before the race had been shown on terrestrial TV.

          3. The “my pleasure” was a sarcastic reply because I failed to see what results you could have established apart from Ferrari probably doing well and something happening to Verstappen, which could have been anything from crashing to being disqualified.

          4. To many British F1 fans, perhaps the most crucial piece of information was “where did Verstappen come” – you gave that away.

          5. True.

            Although he might have been disqualified after the race having come first, or been placed at the back of the grid after a start malfunction and, having restarted at the back of the grid, moved through the field or any number of first to last scenarios…

            I would also argue that if the reading Nottle fans were that concerned they would have read the sports pages, which is what I did.

          6. A large part of the pleasure in watching a sporting event on TV is the anticipation from not knowing the result. That’s why TV programmes giving the football results before a recorded game is shown, typically warn viewers to look away if you don’t want to see the results. I am sure that many F1 fans intending to watch the race highlights on Ch 4, will avoid looking at anything that might divulge the results. Knowing the results beforehand is like watching a strip-tease where the girl starts naked.

  44. Moral arguments over the state pension are irrelevant. There is no money
    Politicians and pressure groups must leave their bountiful fantasylands and accept our dire economic reality
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/23/moral-arguments-state-pension-irrelevant-there-is-no-money/

    The fact that governments did not set aside money specifically for pensions is the criminal fault of the politicians and not the unfortunate sods who naively trusted their government. Any insurance company which squandered pension money would be in deep trouble. And don’t forget what Robert Maxwell did with Mirror Group employees’ pensions!

    BTL

    We contributed to our pension through our contributions. This is a right NOT a benefit as the dishonest politicians are trying to claim. Indeed, as I worked some of my working life outside the UK I had to make additional payments to restore my pension – why should I need to do this if the pension is a benefit rather than something for which I have paid?

    The directors of any private sector life assurance/pension companies which behaved as the politicians do would very rightly be in prison for a very long time.

    1. There never was a fund. Today’s tax-payers pay for today’s pensions. SERPS was a great idea, no wonder it was ditched.

      1. Apparently the unfunded liability for the state pension is as much as £5 trillion. Twice the national debt. That takes some grasping.

    2. The BTL commentator forgets that his contibutions went directly towards the funding of pensions already in payment. It is a giant Ponzi scheme.

      The only honest thing to have done would have been to set up individual managed investment accounts attached to individual NI numbers into which the employee, the employer and the state if necessary all made contributions. But of course that would have meant planning a generation or two ahead and waiting a generation or two before any pensions could have been drawn.

      Politicians simply cannot work like that. They need votes NOW.

    3. Shortly before I retired there was a brief window during which one could pay for years in the 1970s before the start of Home Responsibilities Protection in 1978, which gave automatic credits for people who stayed at home to look after children or elderlies.

      I didn’t work outside the home during the 70s. I took advantage of this concession and paid up the NI conts for 1975,76 and 77, which made my pension up to the full rate at that time. When I claimed it at the age of 60 it was 10% short.

      I not only got the 10% from then on, but also the arrears for nearly three years, which made it a no brainer and cost-free.

      However, I will never get the ‘new’ rate which came in for those reaching retirement age from 2016 onwards.

      My National Insurance record was used to qualify me for my State Pension, thus it is a right not a benefit.

    4. “The directors of any private sector life assurance/pension companies which behaved as the politicians do would very rightly be in prison for a very long time”. Would they or would it be more likely that they would quietly leave their post with a huge severance pay-out and move smoothly to another over-paid job somewhere else?

    5. With respect to the government, we have no rights as long as we keep obeying their laws and accepting them as our government. Anyway, the headline is correct – if there’s no money, then rights are irrelevant. At some point the magic fiat money tree isn’t going to work any more. My guess is that we will have a period of digital food stamps as ‘money’ aka fiat CBDCs before we transition to some kind of gold backed currency again.

      1. If we have no rights the no one else in the whole wide world should receive any of our money and that applies especially to illegal immigrants and legal immigrants. If they come here they’ve got to be able to care for themselves and if they can’t should be returned whence they came.

  45. Something to ponder…

    Jeremy Wayne Tate
    @JeremyTate41

    The goal of education in each century:
    753 BC – The cultivation of virtue
    33 AD – The cultivation of virtue
    313 AD – The cultivation of virtue
    800 AD – The cultivation of virtue
    1517 – The cultivation of virtue
    1865 – The cultivation of virtue
    2024 – College and career readiness

      1. They must have been laughing their socks off at us. Chortling over our gullibility.

      2. The turned against us all. They did not apply it to themselves. They did not lead but just followed the trend.

    2. Johnson is a charlatan. Hancock is complicit in the deaths of the elderly by not insisting on testing before releasing people from hospital into care homes. Schapps is a spiv. Rishi Sunak couldn’t manage a brothel if it had no prostitutes nor customers.

      Please feel free to add your own…

  51. Quite a few of us also post on TCW, which is always a good read and usually polite. I don’t find it too difficult to avoid the trolls – I seldom stay on Tw/X more than a couple of minutes though I visit there if others post something worth reading. On Fb I tend to stick to topics of interest to me and avoid politics.

    1. I was grateful for Twitter during the covid era just past, I really didn’t have a clue how it worked, all those symbols, so much ‘noise’ and so busy but necessity is a good teacher. 93% of people in this area got the first jab and 89% the second, so I felt like a pariah and truly beyond the Pale. I felt so alone, in what was a very strange time as well. I was amazed and thankful to find so many unjabbed on Twitter, in fact 30% of the population have not been jabbed.

      1. My elder son remained unjabbed, the younger one had his – I didn’t ask him about boosters. I had two AZ ones, purely because it was going to be a requirement for travel – I had a trip to Kenya booked which was twice postponed and the jab passports and testing for that were a minefield and palava when we finally went in 2022. Even last year I had to show mine, though that’s been dropped now.
        I had no reactions at all to the jabs but who knows if my husband’s three Pfizer jabs were the cause of his heart failure?

        Even now, most of my friends and associates still talk about getting their boosters and that they’ve recently had ‘covid’. When told the jabs make people more susceptible to it they don’t believe me.

    2. You probably know me better then others here but the majority would recognise my name and avatar, forgive my secrecy but I’ve been harmed elsewhere. It’s not always about the rough and tumble of politics which one takes on the chin. Sometimes there can be a person whose seemingly nice to everyone else but takes against you and is vicious, vindictive and cruel. This is a lovely site and I’ve always felt safe here but I’m aware that more pop in from other places then they used to There are sites that use disqus that have no moderators and posters run riot and harm others,
      a mistake of mine to venture onto such places – sometimes i was online for a certain period and away for a long period ( not online).
      I do read TCW on a Sunday ‘ out in the sticks ‘ I do like that. But I miss the Disqus free sites ( of which this was one) until 4 years ago, when it all changes . I very much liked the disqus free sites , I occasionally popped into the Spectator and liked the non political threads and I liked Archbishop Cranmer but that’s gone now .

      1. I probably do know who you were under your other name but I won’t say any more than that. We can be discreet here. As for the other Disqus sites – that all changed, as you know in 2019 for some reason, when Geoff had to set Nottl up again. We owe him a huge Thankyou for hosting us here. We try to keep it a troll-free zone – we have been under attack from bots many times but not recently.

        1. Yes you do and thank you. Yes Geoff has done a spendid job and leads by example. I do know another site in America similar to Nottl. When those changes occurred in 2019 many decided to leave disqus and when the bots arrived they thought it scary and even more left. There are just about 30 who post there now ( plus my two moderator friends ) . They’re very happy and just spending time chatting about their lives and politics.
          But the man who hosts the site always hopes someone will come up with a serious intellectual debate .

  52. I reckon he must have joined Police Scotland so as to be as close as possible to the action as they dig up all the dirt on Sturgeon/Murrell….and he’s loving every minute.

  53. You really can’t trust ‘The Envy of the World’ to tell the unequivocal truth. They’re all AC/DC

    NHS England to Still Provide Cross-Sex Hormones to Teens Despite Banning Puberty Blockers

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2024/03/GettyImages-1507326306-1-640×480.jpg

    Children as young as 16 years old will still be provided with cross-sex hormones by England’s National Health Service despite announcing a ban on puberty-blocking drugs for children.

    Under new guidance from NHS England, gender-affirming hormones (GAH) will be made available to “young people with continuing gender incongruence [or] gender dysphoria from around their 16th birthday”.

    The life-altering drugs will be offered under the Children and Young People Gender Service despite the health service announcing last week the ban on giving children under the age of 18 puberty blockers unless they are a part of a clinical trial.

    According to The Telegraph, the guidance states that NHS staff “ensure that the individual understands that there is limited clinical evidence on the effects and harms of prescribing GAH treatment below their 16th birthday; and also that GAH treatment is a significant decision with long term indications”.
    *
    *
    ww.breitbart.com/europe/2024/03/23/nhs-england-to-still-provide-cross-sex-hormones-to-teens/

          2. No point virtue signalling when nobody can see your front door. All our houses here face away from the road.

    1. It was unforgivable, it is the time that the government turned against its people. And took no notice of the rules themselves.

      1. They all worked together so they knew there was no danger socialising with their colleagues. They denied that to the rest of us. I don’t forget or forgive.

  56. Well the New England kit with the woke changes to the St George Cross didn’t bring them any luck last night. 1-0 to Brazil. Clearly St George is not happy!

    1. I didn’t pay much attention to them but I suppose I was more or less compliant. I always knew the ‘bug’ was no threat.

      1. If I wanted to visit someone I did so, if I wanted to go out I did. Conveniently I live close to the coast and it was nice weather during the first lockdown. I refused to wear a mask which saw me banned from Tesco, but Lidl and Aldi were less fussy.

        Unfortunately there was nothing I could do about pubs and restaurants being shut.

        1. Masking didn’t come in until after the first lockdown was lifted. I tried wearing one but hated it – eventually (not soon enough) I printed off an exemption slip.

          I never resorted to online food shopping but always went out when I needed to. We still had our lonely neighbour round for dinner and carried on much as normal. I most resented the travel ban.

          I certainly didn’t download the “tracking app” and I never signed into restaurants or cafes.

          1. I had forgotten about the signing in at restaurants. I tended to sign in as Richard Bingham (better known as Lord Lucan) and a false contact number. Obviously I didn’t download the tracking app but enjoyed its rollout as I was aware that it could not function on iPhones because of how their operating system works. I knew this before the App was released and what is more Hancock did too. He was told by tech experts but was arrogant enough to assume Apple would change their operating system to allow the App to function. Guess what? They didn’t. Predictably.

          2. We didn’t have to sign in to restaurants but i did at the hairdressers. Like you i gave bogus details and a made up number.

            Signed…Edmund Blackadder.

        2. We carried a copy of the government site that said if wearing a mask causes you severe distress you don’t have to wear one. We followed their advice and were severely distressed.

          1. I printed off the badge saying I was exempt and wore it on a lanyard. Saved a lot of hassle.

        1. I had a neighbour who refused to go out at all and I live in the middle of the country! Her husband was sent out to do the shopping, instructed to wear a mask all the time, then when he got home he had to put the groceries in an outbuilding, disinfect every item before it got brought inside, but before he could bring them inside he had to strip off all his clothes and put them in the washing machine which was in the outbuilding, then put on clean ones that had been left there before he went inside!! I’m really not kidding.

  60. When I went for coffee or lunch with friends who religiously tapped their phones on something by the door I just waved mine so as not to draw attention but it was switched off.

    1. My main misjudgment with the COVID business was with regard to its duration. I had assumed that it would, like Swine flu et al, be around a few months and then disappear. Despite my lack of precautions I still can’t be sure if I ever got it – I had a strange and persistent cough in December 2021 which might have been Covid but as I wasn’t testing I’ll never know.

      1. The MR is pretty certain that she had it in December 2019 – well before it was made public. She was very unwell for about a month – just as we were in the throes of clearing out house in France.

        I refused to be “tested”. There are still morons in this village who do a Corvid test every effing time they have a sniffle – and then ostentatiously ponce about with masks on…!!!

        1. I think my son and his friends at University all got it in December 2019 as well. I can’t believe people who are still wearing masks. I saw one the other day and shook my head in disbelief.

          1. Most are clinically mad – the two in this village are eco-freak Limp Dumbs (which amounts to the same thing, of course).

          2. Are they also public sector workers? If they are they probably also take two weeks off if they have a positive test.

          3. Both retired. Electric car (of course). One was a midwife. Her husband was a senior master a a pubic school.

          5. Yes, I had a colleague who went to Millfield, she was really odd, really strange ideas and a Guardianista with it, too. It is difficult to have a conversation with people whose views are diametrically opposed to one’s own, apart from pleasantries about the weather.

          6. Do what the French do. Talk about the last meal and rubbish it, then talk about sex.

          7. Hmmm. Even with food one was on risky ground (she was a vegetarian) and as for sex…. apple shaped and hairy legs. A stranger to any form of housework…! A sense of entitlement….!

        2. Governments nearly always come late to the scene during situations like this so it is highly likely the MR did have it in Dec 2019. We also think we caught it about that time, we were away for Christmas in our one and only Christmas hotel stay – the day after we came home late evening we felt terrible and it lasted for about a month with return bites occasionally for three months or so afterwards.

          Neither of us have tested, apart from its being a fraud, I stopped pushing things up my nose when I was about four years old.

      2. I think we both had ‘it’ in January 2020 – a heavy cold (but no more than that) which left us with a dry cough for several weeks. Since then we’ve both taken our vitamins C& D and have had no bugs since worth noticing.

    2. I didn’t know about the phone ‘tapping’ and I was blissfully unaware of the one-way routes around the supermarkets; when I realised after it was all over (covid) that I was expected to follow footprints on the floor I really thought they had lost the plot. I used to hum to myself to keep the noise of the brainwashing tannoy out of my mind. There were so many red flags for me but one of the biggest was the fact that the WHO downgraded ‘covid’ as no longer being a threat to public health two or three days before Johnson’s ‘Fright Night’ speech in which he declared ‘some of you are going to lose loved ones, some of you are going to die’ and it simply didn’t make sense to me. Why destroy the economy when the WHO has more or less said covid was no longer a threat. Gates’s involvement was also a big red flag, he was detested in the Maths Department where I worked, those who could used Linux where they could instead of Microsoft as a form of protest.

      1. We’ve never used Microsoft here and even my IT illiterate husband can use Linux without too much trouble.

        The Diamond Princess convinced me covid was nothing to worry about. I was sorry the young Chinese opthalmologist whistle-blower died – the fear in his eyes was palpable – they must have bumped him off because he knew too much.

        1. Microsoft was ‘standard issue’ within the university, to use anything other involved a fight because of the lack of official technical support. Being brough up on ‘Apple’ I thought MS was a dinosaur.

          1. Both my sons went into IT work and when we needed to start using a computer at home, Microsoft was banned……. the new laptop I bought myself for Christmas has been set up with a newer version of Debian than I had on the old one – which was fine for some things but most websites stopped functioning properly. The last time I used a MS prog of any sort was XP at work (I retired in 2011). I’m still getting used to some of the changes.

  61. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8f1902a444a2375038185ccfe9f5bcf83b9028c9/0_0_3200_1966/master/3200.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=0df7779da6aa3e313f8ae42bc2118478
    A grey crowned crane at the Bird Gardens Scotland in the Scottish Borders. The 3ft-tall bird is the national bird of Uganda

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/048c0943d11a2196212ed4e4b8e1cd549c244b1b/0_0_4500_3335/master/4500.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=70fd63e5fe2808d6f29f7ea8c73ff268
    Swans in Windsor, Berkshire by the River Thames. A good number of the cygnets born last summer have survived and added to the Windsor Flock, which lost over 50 swans last year due to bird fluhttps://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f8f714f71b96061283c36f0bb01c85bba1db8d8e/0_0_4724_3278/master/4724.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=008580340d5a7e2ec1602d03127418a9
    A parakeet feeds on cherry blossom in Battersea Park in London

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2f85e29737f4619e5fd4c83fe8c2e2bff386afbc/0_0_2155_2717/master/2155.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=566d20d1298df5eb7165d8a35f87adcc
    A mother burrowing owl looks exasperated as her offspring nearly crashes into her on returning from one of its first flights.

    1. Last summer taking the grandchildren to Sparkwell zoo on Dartmoor we visited the aviary and lo and behold there was a Grey Crowned Crane. An hour or two later revisiting the aviary I noticed a group of people by the crane’s enclosure and shouted out excitedly : “Oh look a Grey Crowned Crane!… :-))

      Morning Michael & all…

  62. ???????!!!!!

    “Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, the third-wealthiest woman in the US, has awarded $640 million in new charitable donations – with most of it going to far-left nonprofits pushing left-wing causes, including assisting migrants who commit crimes and promoting transgender biological males who compete against women, the NY Post reports.

    ?????!!!!

  64. I’m looking after a neighbours labrador puppy for a week.
    Her owners are greenie obsessives and vegetarian.
    I’ve found a plastic Ed Miliband dog toy, teaching her words like Rabbit and Squirrel
    but I’ve not changed her diet, that’s up to her owners and I don’t want to make her refuse to eat when the owners return.

      1. My late hound quite liked a side order of dressed salad – with his bowl of meat.

        1. Yes, and my dog is partial to a bit of grass whilst I know another which is inexplicably fond of cucumber. But their bodies are still designed to be principally carnivorous.

          1. Dogs are very fond of cucumbers, I think it’s the water content of a cucumber and the crunchy texture.

          2. I tend to agree with the Great Lexicographer about cucumbers…..mind you, he’d never had Pimms.

            “It has been a common saying of physicians in England, that a cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.”
            Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

          3. Thinly slice and salt for a few minutes. Rinse and pat dry. Perfect for cucumber sandwiches.

          4. James Boswell, very interesting in himself, mind you his London diaries were somewhat raunchy. The 9th Laird of Auchinleck and his tour around Scotland with Dr Samuel Johnson – super read ! He’s right about the Pimms .

          5. I’ve read Boswell’s London diaries and enjoyed them. A shame about his unfortunate, erm, interaction with Louisa!

          6. What a good idea.
            In the Summer when it’s really hot i always make sure there are plenty of bowls of water dotted around and i sometimes give them ice cubes too which they like. Now i will be giving them pieces of frozen cucumber!

          8. That’s so funny. Those poor cats trying to eat their dinner being terrified by cucumbers
            .

          13. They eat berries and scavenge but they were only domesticated about 12,000 years ago – a very short time in evolutionary terms. Before that they were wolves. Human teeth compared with canine teeth show the clear difference between a true omnivore (us) and carnivores like dogs/wolves.

        2. Our lab LOVED salad, but would never eat it unless it had dressing on it!
          Funny story. When clearing her poo from the garden I used to just toss it over the fence into a large “wild” area bordering the garden which though it wasn’t ours, we cleared for about three metres from the fence to keep both invasive weeds and snakes at a bit of a distance. One day our garden “help” noticed what were definitely tomato plants growing in the area, so we cleared around them and staked them and had delicious tomatoes all summer. We used to wait until people had eaten them before telling them where they came from 🤣🤣🤣

          1. One of my greatest joys in the Aude (Laure-Minervois) was sharing a potager with half a dozen French neighbours. The hours one spent bricoling, nattering – and growing things! I introduced them to Trombetti and cavolo nero – of which they were at first (being French) very suspicious. Then one season I noticed two of them had planted out semis that came from seeds they asked me to buy in Italy!

          2. We had a retired neighbour who lived for his potager so we never had to do a thing – we just got everything supplied from next door and our gratitude was enough reward for him! Early one morning I looked out of our bedroom window and to my horror saw our lab digging up his newly planted lettuces and tossing them in the air for my cat to catch, they were having a lovely time 😱 I rushed over, herded the miscreants inside then went to the neighbour to “confess”. He just smiled then later we saw him mending the gap in the fence the lab had got through!
            He had a sad end. He was in his early 80s and had a bad stroke. He watched his beloved potager deteriorate and every day apparently asked the doctor/nurse when he would be well enough to tend to it again. One day the doctor told him he would never be well enough and he died two days later 😔

          3. During the last war when nightsoil was used for fertiliser, the first crop, which spread over the garden, was always tomatoes.

      2. Several of my dogs liked tomatoes and bananas. Kadi likes tomatoes but won’t touch banana.

  65. Yo All

    The Imam of Canterbury and ‘our church’s money

    Shirley, the descendents of those people who were sent to the Americas as slaves now live in comparative economic ‘luxury’,
    compared to those whose forebearers stayed in Africa, who in fact were the original ‘slave collectors and deliverers to the ports’ of the the
    First Mentioned, who not of their tribe

    So, is the church looking to give money to those who now citizens of other countries, or will they pay ‘lotsa dosh’ to the original Slave Masters families?

    1. It has been said, quite accurately, that reparations for slavery amount to nothing more than people who have never owned slaves giving money to people who have never been slaves.

    1. 384964+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Could it be a reaction to having been in the Luftwaffe during
      WW2 ?

    2. “Boris Johnson’s elitist, depopulation-obsessed father, Stanley Johnson…”

      That is quite rich, coming from the scion of a family of obsessive, compulsive, over-breeders.

    3. Stanley Johnson. ‘I fly all around the world’ but when we get this scam going you won’t be flying anywhere. Fucking hypocrite!

  67. And of course UK must be in with a chance of getting ‘loads of dosh’ because of the actions of Barbary Pirates

    How many white slaves did the Barbary pirates take?

    1 million and 1.2 million Europeans

    According to Robert Davis, author of Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, between 1 million and 1.2 million
    Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North
    Africa and The Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries.

    https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Barbary-Pirates-English-Slaves/

  68. I do believe Covid existed , I cannot be doing with conspiracy theorists
    but most certainly politicians and drug companies used Covid to their advantage.
    It brought out little and big dictators and became about control.
    There was an awful lot of brainwashing and manipulation and people who lived a quiet life in rural areas were treated the same as those in cities.
    People weren’t allowed to think for themselves, to make their own choices,
    I was placed in ‘ the most vulnerable category ‘and basically locked away,
    I’ve always had to be careful – even before Covid, my immune system is basic .
    People become so fearful of Covid that they forgot how to live and had those years stolen away.

      1. Ludvig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were acknowledged students of Bach.

          1. That is often the case but, as I’ve said before, music is subjective. No composer is “better” than any other.

          2. Historically it’s a figurative example. I don’t recall a direct literal connection.

    5. I’d be careful of creating a “Who was the greatest?” set up. JS Bach’s achievements are magnificent, tapping into the spiritually sublime by way of service to God. However for example Stravinsky is a different beast entirely. Personally I think Trevor Horn’s work on the first Frankie Goes To Hollywood is sonically superb. Apples and oranges, they all contribute to the field of great music.

      1. I made no mention of “creating a greatest” (I abhor any “best” or “greatest” lists or comparisons; they are invariably fatuous).

        I simply stated that Bach was an undisputed genius who still gives inspiration to many other contempory musicians like no other ever did or will do.

          3. Indeed it is. The reddening is still apparent but the swelling around the eyes has abated, much to my relief.

          6. OK, I have a moment so here goes!
            My husband woke up one morning with one side of his face badly swollen, an angry red line running towards one eye, while another ran towards one ear, and in a lot of pain. I called the doctor immediately and he came just after lunch, diagnosed shingles and sent me off to the pharmacy with a prescription as long as my arm. When I returned our cleaner was there and on the phone. When she came off it she said that my husband had shingles, she had just made arrangements for us to see a man in the next village who had “le touche” and we were to go straightaway. My cleaner was a woman with whom one did not argue when she was in full sail so we meekly complied. On the way she told us that this man cured shingles and warts and everyone went to him. We arrived at his farmhouse where he greeted us and started to help my husband out of the car. I tied to stop him, explaining that he had a prosthetic leg so I should do it, whereupon he gave me a huge smile, raising his trouser leg to show me his prosthetic leg!! At this point I decided to leave everything to the fates and we would just do exactly as we were told 🤣
            We were escorted into his kitchen and my husband was parked on chair in the middle of the room. A couple of minutes later what looked like the whole village filed in, but was probably only about a dozen people, and sat on benches and chairs ranged around the room. For about five minutes Monsieur le Touche, as we later christened him, passed his hand over my husband’s head without touching it. When he had done he said we would take a coffee/cognac break before the second session. His wife then appeared from the “back kitchen” with the refreshments which she proceeded proceeded to distribute. When everyone had finished, we had the second five minute session after which all the “company” filed out politely wishing us a bonjour and “bon courage”. When they had gone M. le Touche told us we were to return two days later, then two days after that, then twice in the following week. In the meantime, my husband was told he was not to take any of the medication he had been given except for pain-killers if he needed them.
            The following morning the shingles blisters were out in full force but all the pain had disappeared and the swelling was down a bit. The following sessions were, thankfully, minus the audience but always followed by coffee/cognac! Daily there was an improvement. We had some long and interesting chats with him about how he discovered he had this “gift” which I won’t go into here as this is long enough, but there is a funny sequel.
            About three weeks later we were in the local market and bumped into one of the district nurses who unfortunately for medical reasons knew us well. My husband still had the scabs from the shingles so she asked what had happened to his face and I told her. I then told her what we had done and asked her to please not tell the doctor whereupon she burst out laughing and said, “Where do you think the doctors go if they get shingles?!!” The next time we saw the doctor we did tell him, he just smiled and said “Good!”.
            So that is how you cure shingles in la France Profonde 😆

          7. Thanks for that, Peta. 👍🏻Reading that story has really made my day. 🤣

            We do not have a M. le Touche, here in my village in southern Sweden, but I am certainly willing to try the coffee/cognac ‘remedy’. 😊

          8. You know something? You probably do – or not far away. We had a great friend who had his own pharmacy in Hamburg. When we told him about this he said that he knew about this and not only that, when people came into his pharmacy with shingles he always recommended them to someone he knew in a village in the Heideland about an hour away. Some went, some didn’t, but all of those who went got better far quicker than those who didn’t.
            In Germany as in France, doctors are not allowed to recommend them, but pharmacists can! Here in France you can also ask in the local Mairie if there is someone in the area and if there is, they will tell you.
            As a matter of interest, we asked our cleaner what we should pay him and she said that he would not ever take money for it, but a bottle of armagnac would not go amiss, so we gave him two, very good ones😊
            Coffee/cognac is a pretty good remedy for lots of things 😊

    8. He’s always been the tops for me, although I do love Mozart and Beethoven as well as many operas.

  70. The Jab – the gift that keeps on giving!

    “Receiving blood transfusion from COVID-19-vaccinated individuals could pose a medical risk to unvaccinated recipients since numerous adverse events are being reported among vaccinated people worldwide, according to a recent study from Japan.

    The preprint review, published on March 15, examined whether receiving blood from COVID-19-vaccinated individuals is safe or poses a health risk. Many nations have reported that mRNA vaccine usage has resulted in “post-vaccination thrombosis and subsequent cardiovascular damage, as well as a wide variety of diseases involving all organs and systems, including the nervous system,” it said.

    Repeated vaccinations can make people more vulnerable to COVID-19, it said. If the blood contains spike proteins, it becomes necessary to remove these proteins prior to administration, and there is no such technology currently available, the authors wrote.
    Contrary to earlier expectations, genes and proteins from genetic vaccines have been found to persist in the blood of vaccine recipients for “prolonged periods of time.”
    In addition, “a variety of adverse events resulting from genetic vaccines are now being reported worldwide.” This includes a wide range of diseases related to blood and blood vessels.
    Some studies have reported that the spike protein in the mRNA vaccines is neurotoxic and capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, the review stated. “Thus, there is no longer any doubt that the spike protein used as an antigen in genetic vaccines is itself toxic.”
    Moreover, people who have taken multiple shots of mRNA vaccines can have several exposures to the same antigen within a small time frame, which may lead to them being “imprinted with a preferential immune response to that antigen.”
    This has resulted in COVID-19 vaccine recipients becoming “more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.”
    Given such concerns, medical professionals should be aware of the “various risks associated with blood transfusions using blood products derived from people who have suffered from long COVID and from genetic vaccine recipients, including those who have received mRNA vaccines.”
    The impact of such genetic vaccines on blood products as well as the actual damage caused by them are currently unknown, the authors wrote.

    https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202403.0881/v1

  71. I used to be unequivocally pro-multiculturalism. How naive I was. 24 March 2024.

    Just one day before the October 7 terrorist attack, I tweeted that Conservatives should stop bashing multiculturalism. In the five months since, however, it has become clear that Britain is not the success story I naively believed it to be. Extremist ideologies have been celebrated on our streets. Minority communities have been targeted. And our failure to confront the root causes of division has become all too apparent.

    The nation’s silent majority have watched in horror as protests descended into platforms for hate speech. As posters were vandalised with swastikas and mobs chanted anti-Semitic slogans, often without any understanding of their true meaning. Not all movements for justice, we know now, are inherently just.

    Wow! Imagine that! I have never been a multiculturalist because I read history books. They tell me that small enclaves of the Other can exist within ordered societies but as soon as anything approaching equality occurs battle ensues for supremacy. There is nothing wicked about this. It is the way things are.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/24/i-used-to-be-unequivocally-pro-immigration-how-naive-i-was/

    1. The “equality” that approached did not approach on its genuine merits but was imposed on the overwhelming majority.

  72. 384964+ up ticks,

    May one ask,

    Regarding the the womans pension issues

    Does muslim mo’s multi wives, four in number, get an individual pension or is it only the flavour of the month wife that receives one ?

      1. You can still get pension credits by having claimed some type of benefit e.g. Child Benefit.

      2. 394964+ up ticks,

        Morning SW,

        Pension,By any other name, or do they exists
        solely by singing carols ?

      3. In which case, do they not get “pension credits” …. my mother did ( from 2008 till her death in 2017) bc her pension income was below a minimum level and her financial assets were below £22k.

      4. In which case, do they not get “pension credits” …. my mother did ( from 2008 till her death in 2017) bc her pension income was below a minimum level and her financial assets were below £22k.

        2. I like Cage. Some of it is music, the prepared piano pieces jump out of memory. Some of it is sonic art, but not music. However around that time and subsequently there has a crisis in confidence as to what music is within the academy, which ultimately flows out into the culture. Sound familiar?

  74. “surpass the musical genius of Johann Sebastian Bach”, that sets up a measurement scale, a point of destination to go beyond. I can agree with your wording in your second paragraph here.

    1. It doesn’t “set up a measurement scale”; it simply expresses my personal preference. Everything is subjective; we all have our preferences in any genre. Only those who call someone “the greatest of ‘all time’ or the ‘best ever’ ” deserve ridicule.

      1. OK you are free to disagree, that is subjective. Like how your initial wording landed here, I can see maybe other contributors have read it similarly. I can agree with your later clarifications.

        Now I must disagree with your notion of “”Everything is subjective”. Well, no. This is a Postmodern assertion. There’s a nuget of truth there. True, we all like what we like. However it ignores the overall independent collective assessment and concensus which builds up over time. This forms the canon, our shared culture and heritage. The stuff that survives has an objective quality, an ability to communicate that which cannot be communicated in any other way.

  75. Beethoven was familiar with the works of Bach and Mozart but never studied with them,

  76. The Remoaners can’t help themselves, can they…

    The St John’s Voices choir must be saved

    Music-making in Britain appears to be under attack, as bureaucrats mangle an art form which brings us closer together as human beings

    MICHAEL BERKELEY
    24 March 2024 • 10:00am

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/03/23/TELEMMGLPICT000371108833_17112015216130_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqNJjoeBT78QIaYdkJdEY4CnGTJFJS74MYhNY6w3GNbO8.jpeg?imwidth=680

    The disbanding of the St John’s Voices choir in Cambridge has caused shock waves in the musical world as yet another blow undermining music-making in this country. SJV created a highly successful mixed voiced choir at a time when women were excluded from the chapel choir, indeed adult women sopranos still are. Under the inspired direction of Graham Walker, Voices has achieved remarkable levels of excellence in the 11 years of its existence.

    The reason given for the disbanding is that the funds saved can now be directed at a broader musical arena, which is strange given that St John’s is the second richest Cambridge college and the choir are not paid, meaning that it is only the cost of its inspiring leader that is being re-directed. What does broadening mean if not achievement, diversity and gender equality? It has even been suggested that the admission in 2022 of one woman alto into the chapel choir has “weaponised” this destructive move. News of the disbanding was delivered to a shocked choir as they were getting to the end of a session for their latest CD, rather as ENO musicians were told of their sacking in the interval of a performance of The Handmaid’s Tale.

    The producer of this new and possibly last St John’s Voices CD is a fine ex-Radio 3 producer called Jeremy Hayes who I worked with when I was Artistic Director of the Cheltenham Festival. Many musicians, including the great pianist Alfred Brendel, told me what superb “ears” Jeremy had, so I tend to believe him when he told me that, “Somewhat ironically this latest recording, of some glorious but unknown music by Nikolai Golovanov and three works by his friend Rachmaninov, is probably going to turn out to be the choir’s best recording yet. The choir was on wonderful form and sounded terrific.” Therein lies another reason for the choir’s importance – it is manifestly broadening the repertoire and discovering little-known jewels in the choral repertoire, just as other unsung choirs such as The Ora Singers under Suzi Digby are doing.

    The previous master of St John’s, the late Sir Christopher Dobson, under whose aegis Mr Walker founded Voices, was fulsome in describing what an amazing job SJV were doing, so the decision taken by the present master, Heather Hancock, an ex-civil servant, is hard to fathom. We know that singing in a choir enhances human communication (you have to listen to each other) and that music benefits other academic studies and neurological development.

    As with the misguided attempt to get rid of the BBC Singers and the Arts Council’s ill-thought-out cuts to precisely those organisations that were fulfilling their mandates like WNO, the London Sinfonietta and Britten Sinfonia, and now the local council cuts to the CBSO and small festivals, it is little wonder that the world of music is starting to feel unbearable pressure.

    When I talk to my colleagues abroad they sigh and express condolences at what they can see we are losing up and down the country. With the quality of what we produce we are no longer worthy of the epithet “Das Land ohne Musik” – the land without music – but we could return to those barren days.

    At Westminster I have noticed cross-party concern at what is happening to music and even ardent Brexiteers agree that the effects of our negotiations in terms of touring are failing an industry that has historically brought massive revenues to the Treasury. It must be a false economy to mangle an art form that provides not only fiscal nourishment but, vitally, an insight into who and what we are as human beings. Let us hope that, as happened with the BBC Singers, St John’s College Cambridge reappraise and reverse this senseless decision.

    Lord Berkeley of Knighton is an English composer and broadcaster

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

    Professor Gaga
    1 HR AGO
    Why does the choir need to disband?
    Just because their funding is cut doesn’t mean they have to stop singing.
    Their conductor is Director of Music of another Cambridge College, presumably well paid. He travels the world as a performer and conductor. The choir has made recordings and performs concerts – that appears to be its main mission, not singing services at St John’s.

    1. The services at St John’s are generally sung by their real choir….the choristers of St John’s college school.

  77. I’m afraid I must disagree with your cultural relativism. Is a five year old’s painting as good as, say, a Renoir? Unless you think it is then you have admitted that there is such a thing as objective merit in the arts.

  79. When you write “music is subjective” you are judging it by its appeal to yourself. I like Tchaikovsky but I do not think that he is the greatest of composers. Any judgement must take into account other factors. Technical Brilliance. Spiritual simplicity etc. This would surely make Beethovens Last Quartets the supreme example of Western musicality?

    3. “When you write ‘music is subjective’ you are judging it by its appeal to yourself.”

      No I’m not. I am merely stating that everyone has their own opinion on any subject, music included. That is what makes it subjective. No music is objective otherwise everyone, without exception, would hail it as the pinnacle. That concept is simply ludicrous.

      1. “No music is objective otherwise everyone, without exception, would hail it as the pinnacle.”

        Oh dear – you must have missed the outstandingly brilliant music composed by black women.

        2. I’m rather fond of the songs of Joan Armatrading, as I also am of the songs of the husband and wife team, Nicholas Ashford & Valerie Simpson.

      1. The String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135 is Beethoven’s last string quartet as well as his last complete opus in any genre. He finished it in October of 1826, not many months before taking his last breath in March of 1827. WIKI

        A distinction without distinction.

        1. But that is in the singular … not the plural. His Late Quartets are legendary; The same cannot be said for any “Last” Quartets.

  80. When you write “music is subjective” you are judging it by its appeal to yourself. I like Tchaikovsky but I do not think that he is the greatest of composers. Any judgement must take into account other factors. Technical Brilliance. Spiritual simplicity etc. This would surely make Beethovens Last Quartets the supreme example of Western musicality?

  82. I’m just back after a bacon sandwich and a stroll around Knowlton Church.
    This Norman church, which was built in the 12th century, is situated at the centre of a Neolithic ritual henge earthwork. The unusual pairing of the henge and the church symbolises the transition from pagan to Christian worship.
    .
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/797f81a9acea8ce18c7a748e26d5a8ad20d23058ff65c16f18f015905356284b.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1fe81579cb5a8c0ca8be1ac10a4b0886584a3275424979a8ed227e8bb399bafe.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/01a553dbdf8d84bf828c50cfc688ca3f092842ef5a424eff70c3f6702826ff57.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/27ad10d092b42a4d0a0d3694bc2b42759a8a78fd2279d5f8315c3a0edca6945c.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d4da849c055d4fd6ce516de78626c0b228b0f40f924aea1a306524d8c6892d9a.jpg

    1. cf: Pagan to Roman to Christian. It is the GROUND that is sacred – not the buildings.

          1. He’s spending it on persecuting white Christians in England. Judging from what our Church Wardens tell us of all the online courses they are obliged to take anyone would think that CofE congregations are packed full of racist, wife-beating paedophiles 😡

          2. Yesterday the MR asked me to print a 12 page document – “Appointment of Church Wardens” – which used to be a single sheet....

          4. Ah yes, those middle aged flower arranging ladies who are overcome with lust at the sight of a choir boy.

    2. Careful, the appreciation of English heritage can lead to a “dark Nationalism”. Something similar was put up in a gallery next to pastoral watercolour English landscape paintings.

      1. It’s in the middle of no where, and at most could hold about 10 people.

  83. Has ‘our’ NHS finally hit rock bottom? I fear it has much further to fall. 24 March 2024.

    An iron rule of British life must now be that not a single week will ever pass without tales of dismal failure emerging about “our” NHS.

    Well if you are like me Mr Simons you are simply waiting for the whole shebang to collapse. NHS. Defence. Police. Whatever. It is all poised on the edge of disintegration.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/24/has-nhs-hit-rock-bottom-i-fear-it-has-much-further-to-fall/

    2. After starting work in 1959, and paying tax for years, this coming week or so, I will be forking out from my own pocket for; chiropractor, dentist and audiologist.
      Maybe I should claim asylum.

  86. I used to be unequivocally pro-multiculturalism. How naive I was
    We have not created a harmonious melting pot, but a society where prejudices and tensions can fester

    BELLA WALLERSTEINER https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/24/i-used-to-be-unequivocally-pro-immigration-how-naive-i-was/

    DICK. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

    (Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2)

    And then what are we going to do about the monocultural people we have invited into our multi-cultural land?

    BTL

    You cannot import fanatical mono-culturalists into a multicultural society because they will not accept the ways of life of the people they have joined.

    Muslim states are very aware of this. How many churches and synagogues are there in Saudi Arabia?

    1. As my late father said ” its just stacking up massive probelms for the future”

    2. I see to recall being called a Nazi and a fascist for expressing these sentiments just a few short months ago. Now of course Diversity has directly impinged on her grubby little metropolitan circle it is something that has got to be stopped.
      Bella, welcome to the world where millions have suffered because of you and your ilk’s insistence we flood the country with third world savages.

      1. Spooky,that’s saved me some typing as i was mentally composing a post on exactly these lines I will only add she and her ilk will be the first to clutch their pearls in horror if proposals to “deal” with these issues are put forward………..

        1. She will not be clutching her pearls because they will be ripped from her neck while being fucked up the arse by those same people she championed. Stupid fucking bitch.

          I think it’s time for me to go……………>>>>>>

    3. I was very rude to her BTL on Pressreader. Including “less of the “we””.

  89. I am always surprised by how much such things weigh.
    I would guess I took well over 50 tons of fallen oak from my woods and probably a lot more when branches and pine trunks and all the other odds and ends of trees flattened by the oaks are taken into account, after the last storm.

  91. Thanks for the warning but as a member of the Far Right I have an automatic excuse.

      1. It’s one of many infantile leftist insults I wear as a badge of pride.

      2. *one more time folks ’round we go again* “Ohhhhhhh… We’re all Far-Right now, we’re all Far-Right now”.

      4. Wasn’t there a song that went “alt right now”, by some group called ‘Free’ (whatever that means)?

  93. President Zelensky has branded Putin ‘a low life b*****d’ for trying to blame Kyiv for the Moscow massacre that killed 143 people as Britain has warned the Russian leader not to use the attack as an excuse to intensify the war in Ukraine.

    Putin said in a speech yesterday that the suspects, who killed more than 140 people in the deadly attack in Moscow, had sought to escape towards Ukraine and that preliminary information showed that some people on the Ukrainian side had prepared to let them cross the border from Russia.

    Zelensky dismissed the suggestion that Kyiv had been involved shortly after, saying: ‘What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious. Putin and the other b*****ds are just trying to blame it on someone else.’

    My bold italics.
    Zelensky appears to be suggesting the Russians organised the attack in Moscow, what does that make him?

      1. Vlad is probably as ruthless as they come. He would have to be. But he has one quality and virtue completely lacking in our politicians – his patriotism and wanting the best for Russia and its people. As does Trump.

        2. Sorry, but I disagree that he wants the best for Russia and its people. First and foremost he wants the best for himself and his acolytes and his place in history.

          1. They all want what is best for themselves, that goes without saying, self-interest is what propels them to the top. It is fortunate that his place in history coincides at this point in time with the best interests of Russia and its people.

          4. There was a time when I thought like you do and that he was the right leader for Russia. Several things happened that made me change my mind.

        1. They don’t because it isn’t reported in Western media. If they said such a thing the BBC would put Kate Garraway or have Lorraine Kelly …to give a definitive answer.

          Vlad just needs to say nothing.

        2. The Russians don’t need to. Not forgetting the fact that Russian news services are denied us in the FREE WEST !

    2. In my post below, I argued that it was a little more complicated than that. The attack was carried out by Tajik Islamists from Central Asia. Putin relies on these to do the dirty work on the Ukrainians that Slav Christians may be squeamish about. However, they cannot always be relied on to attack Ukrainians, and may well be just as content to massacre Russians too.

      Most likely is a failure of Russian military intelligence or the command required to keep their mercenaries in order, rather than any orchestration from the Kremlin.

      1. You rather missed my point.
        Zelensky suggesting it was Moscow driven is no different from what he is suggesting Putin said: that it was Kiev driven.

        I have seen no evidence that Putin said Ukraine organised it, merely that the alleged perpetrators were heading towards Ukraine where it was believed some Ukrainians would take them in.

        I find it extremely difficult to believe, although I accept it isn’t impossible, that Russian commanders orchestrated this against their own people.

          1. I think some of his ministers/generals may have made such a claim, but I don’t think Putin himself has.
            The MSM has been claiming his statement that they were on the way to Ukraine and likely to be let in is being told as him stating the Ukrainians themselves organised it.

          2. Yes, I know they were on their way to Ukraine and I know that Putin said that, but I am pretty sure I saw a clip (translated) in which he said that Ukraine were behind it in response to the US saying that they weren’t.

          3. Pass, although I would be wary of “lost in translation”, unless you are a fluent Russian speaker.

          4. There is a video I saw of this clown dancing in heels to the accompaniment of that mad woman ‘singing’ to the Davos crowd in an interval at the WEF.

        2. I fear you rather missed mine. Perhaps you underestimate the level of incompetence in the Russian military command. Putin may not have organised it any more than his generals, but by recruiting some pretty unpleasant characters from his Muslim provinces, it was only a matter of time before something nasty happened in Russia.

          I do not actually give much credence to Putin cynically arranging an atrocity against his own people in order to provide a pretext to attack Ukraine. The reason is that Putin does not need to do this to order a push onto Ukraine, nor does it threaten his presidency. He can go ahead and do it anyway, and he is such an accomplished liar, all he needs to do is to invent something, and enough of his own people would believe it. They would have to if they don’t fancy a move to Siberia or a dose of Novichok.

          I certainly would not put this past someone like Netanyahu, whose source of power is threatened if the conciliatory Israeli Left attract national sympathy and throw him out of office.

          1. Your regular digs at Netanyahu and what he is doing in Gaza suggest your sympathies lie with Hamas.

          2. My sympathies as you well know are with the civilians caught up in this systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing, leaving foreign taxpayers to sort out the aftermath, paying for aid, resettlement of refugees and restoration of infrastructure, whilst Israeli settler gangs grab valuable real estate for themselves.

            Hamas, as the Governmenf of the Day in Gaza are doing a marginally better job of defending the civilians than the Israeli invaders, who are openly and aggressively hostile. My main regret is that they were not better armed to see off the Israeli bombardment, as well as the half-cocked raid on Israel on 7th October 2023, which only gave Israel a pretext to invade. They should have held back until they were in a position to disable retribution by the IDF. I suspect though a covert co-operative alliance between the worst of the Islamists and the Knesset, which Hamas failed to keep under control.

            What makes it so much worse is that not only are the Israelis setting a terrible example to other powerful regimes in the world, not least Russia and China, they are undermining free democracy in my country. The campaign against the Labour Leader during the 2019 General Election, referring to him constantly as an “antisemite” according to some disgraceful definition of the word insisted on by Chief Rabbi Mirvis, was an utter disgrace and has now brought the British very much into the fray as well as opening up the sort of Jew hatred I have never had to witness in my lifetime nor wanted to. It means that there is now no credible party of Government in my country, thanks to this. I have no confidence ih the man or the party who first hounded and then pushed out Jeremy Corbyn on a lie, and then cancelled in his party anyone criticising Israeli behaviour, however atrocious.

          3. I think you are utterly wrong.

            Hamas brought all this upon the Palestinians. Even at the last ceasefire they started up firing rockets into Israel on the dot of the end.

          5. That statement is utterly hypocritical given what you wrote earlier.

            If what you want Hamas to accomplish against the Israelis was being perpetrated by the Israelis against the Palestinians, the whole of Gaza would have been totally destroyed and all the people there would have been killed by now.

          6. Of course it works both ways, and I have long argued that both Hamas and the IDF should limit themselves to military targets and not go in for group liability attacks on civilians, even when they are placed in harm’s way by the combatants. I must also say that the scale of the ongoing and relentless attacks on Palestinians by the Israeli forces dwarfs the raid conducted by Hamas-led forces on Israel on 7th October last. Brutal though it was, it was swiftly repelled and not repeated.

            Militarily, that raid was idiotic, considering the vastly superior Israeli firepower and Israel’s powerful military alliance with the USA. If they were serious about tackling the threat posed by Israel, they should have been sure of their own alliances to provide sufficient force to take out Jerusalem before embarking on such a project. Better still might be for Israelis and Palestinians to learn to coexist without knocking seven bells out of one another, and leave the rest of the world in peace.

            Has not the whole of Gaza already been rendered uninhabitable by the Israeli invasion, and do you deny that the ultimate intention by Israel is to cleanse the province ethnically, clear it of existing buildings, and then redevelop the site as a highly desirable bit of coastal real estate for incoming settlers? They interviewed a number of settler leaders impatient to move in. They said that 2 million Gazans are the rest of the world’s problem – plenty of room in Africa – and that only the stupid opt to stay put in their former homes. An offer they cannot refuse. If that isn’t gangster fascism, I don’t know what is.

            Why is America continuing to arm this?

          7. I suggest you re-read the history of the entire area.

            More recent history shows Israel “cleansed” the Gaza strip of Jewish settlers.
            The Palestinians then set about destroying what was there, eventually voted in Hamas and Hamas stole vast amounts of the aid pouring in from outside agencies to build tunnels, buy weapons, and make the leaders extremely rich.

            Hamas will never ever stop attacking Israel so, unless Israel agrees to cease to exist, the solution is to utterly destroy Hamas and all its supporters.

            I certainly do not think the Israelis are proposing what you suggest regarding coastal areas as a playground for the rich.

          8. Destroying Hamas is akin to destroying the Conservative Party and all its supporters. Both are governments of the day in their respective places, and both are corrupt enough to “privatise” public money in order to make leaders extremely rich. And in destroying one party, what makes you think the alternative is any better? Comparing Conservatives with Starmer’s Blairites is like comparing Tweedledum with Tweedledee.

            Building tunnels and buying weapons may well be standard defence policy when faced with a deadly threat from an extremely belligerent neighbour. Unlike the London Underground during the Blitz, it may be only the chosen few that are protected, and the general public must take their chances on the surface with the bombs. If I were a Palestinian civilian and thought those tunnels safer than the Israeli-run refugee camps, I would over-run them and never mind the Hamas bouncers. In fact the safest place to be right now is to nip into Israel, don a kippah and look innocent.

            I am not sure such a Final Solution is in the interests of anyone, least of all creating a whole generation of martyrs out for revenge. It may be possible to exterminate all Palestinians on the grounds that they are “Arabs”, but I am sure they have friends elsewhere who will take note and retaliate whenever they are ready. What is annoying is that they are going for all shipping in the region, not just that connected with Israel.

            Your certainty is touching, but mistaken I fear. A playground for the rich in Gaza has already been proposed by a number of those with influence in the present Knesset.

            As for Israelis pulling out of Gaza, it is akin to clearing good Aryans out of the Warsaw Ghetto, so the place can be flattened without fear of killing proper people. If there were a few more Jews living in Gaza, they might be a bit more careful about where they put their bombs. On the other hand, the West Bank shows that this doesn’t really work for the Palestinians.

          9. That post has shown me how little you understand of it and how little you know.

            I normally hesitate before suggesting anyone is antisemitic ,whatever that truly is, but if there is such a thing , you epitomise it.

  94. M.V. Empire Steel.

    Complement:
    47 (39 dead and 8 survivors).
    11,000 tons of aviation spirit and kerosene.

    At 03.01 hours on 24th March 1942 the unescorted Empire Steel (Master William John Gray) was hit by two torpedoes from U-123 (Reinhard Hardegen) and caught fire after the cargo exploded. The U-boat had spotted the zigzagging tanker about 5 hours earlier and at 01.57 hours made a first attack that became a complete failure because the G7a torpedo fired became a tube runner and due to a misunderstanding a stern torpedo was fired without being aimed. After 40 minutes the U-boat fired nine rounds from the deck gun at the burning wreck which later capsized port and sank northeast of Bermuda. 35 crew members and four gunners were lost. The master, six crew members and one gunner were picked up by the American tug Edmund J. Moran (towing the Robert E. Lee) and landed at Norfolk, Virginia.

    Type IXB U-Boat U-123 was decommissioned on 17th June 1944 at Lorient and laid up in box K3 of the U-boat pen. Scuttled there on 19th August 1944. Wreck captured by US forces in May 1945 and handed over to France.

    Post war information:
    Became the French submarine Blaison. Stricken 18th August 1959 as Q165.

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/br/empire_steel.jpg

  96. Why a healthy brain requires a meaty diet. 24 March 2024.

    We all think we know what we should be doing to keep our brains fit, whether it’s learning a new language, socialising or getting enough sleep. Among this catalogue of habits, eating a juicy steak is unlikely to be at the top of your list.

    But it should be, according to one Harvard-trained psychiatrist who specialises in nutrition science and brain metabolism. She recently claimed that the brain “needs meat” because it is jam-packed with nutrients that are either difficult or impossible to get from plant sources.

    Scientists and nutrition experts seem to agree. “Animal-sourced foods – meat, fish, dairy and eggs – are nutrient-rich foods,” says Alice Stanton, a professor of cardiovascular therapeutics at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, who has authored reports warning against shunning meat from our diet. A diet that consists exclusively of plant-based foods risks the brain as well as bone health, fertility and immune function, she warns.

    It would be interesting to see if Veggies suffer a higher rate of cognitive decline over a similar time period. Alas there is nothing here. Though I have made no study of the matter I note that my own diet follows the recommendations here; in fact I exceed them comfortably . I shall probably drop dead of a heart attack but that is surely better than Acute Mental Decline?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/diet/nutrition/why-healthy-brain-requires-meaty-diet/

      1. I’m afraid that what most people think is a ‘balanced diet’ is the product of decades — if not centuries — of conditioning. The truth is quite different.

        It is an unassailable fact (based on considerable archaeological fossil evidence) that for the first 99·6% of the existence of the human species, we were carnivores. As a direct result of this, humanoids were physically powerful and mentally acute. Moreover, they suffered from none of the modern diseases that have proliferated since around 10,000 years ago (0·4% of the species’ existence) when the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians commenced eating vegetation and cultivating grains.

        Modern man eats vegetation, carbohydrates, sugar and processed ‘food’ in unbelievable quantities. This is the direct reason why modern man is weak, feeble, stupid and ridden with disease. Eat meat: remain an apex predator animal. Eat weeds: become a vegetable.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x36kALQLXM&list=WL&index=52

    4. I am not convinced that it is impossible for ominivorous humans to live well on a Vegan diet, but it demands considerably more skill to maintain adequate nutrition, especially when sourcing an adequate variety of vegetable-based food in season. Meat comes ready-packaged, is not seasonal, and it a lot easier. Most people don’t have the time or mental energy to devote to preparing food with sufficient nutritional variety unless they eat meat.

      One rule that should be applied for anyone with bowel problems is the Rule of Thirty. Never mind the 5-a-day, there should be at least thirty different types of plant-sourced material each day in the diet. Quantity is not important – even a pinch or a smidgeon counts. This rule covers anything vegetable – a cup of tea counts as one, sugar another, each herb or spice in a mix counts one each. Chocolate – fine. Pepper, one too. Bread can be increased with some oatmeal. Beer – that has hops (one), malted barley (one). Pick all sorts of edible wild plants, such as nettle, dandelion, spring tree leaves, even grass. All count one each. The only limit is whether they are poisonous, and even then the body can tolerate a very small quantity of much that is toxic in larger doses. Even sawdust counts.

      The reasoning behind this is that the gut has a lot of specialist bacteria that can only process one food. Without the variety, they starve and the gut then is taken over by a handful of those that are well-fed, which is very bad for the health. Even a tiny quantity is sufficient to ensure survival of a great diversity of gut microbes.

  97. Britain accuses Kremlin of creating ‘smokescreen of propaganda’. 24 March 2024.

    Russia is using the Moscow terror attack to create a “smokescreen of propaganda” to help justify its invasion of Ukraine, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said.

    “I take what the Russian government says with an enormous pinch of salt… after what we’ve seen from them over the last few years,” Mr Hunt said.

    “We know that they are creating a smokescreen of propaganda to defend an utterly evil invasion of Ukraine.

    The only smokescreen going on here is in the MSM.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/24/ukraine-russia-war-latest-news2/

    1. Oh shut up Hunt! It’s nothing to do with us, and your contribution should be nothing more than sympathy for the people injured and killed.

    2. Jeremy Rhyming should ask his wife to find out from her bosses in Peking what line the UK ought to take…

  98. Well, in a little corner of the City of London, church was very well attended this morning. Communion was like herding cats but I shouldn’t complain.
    We gathered just inside Henry VIII Gate at St Barts Hospital and a group of children from the family service, dressed up in costume approximating to desert dress, performed a play with the script (mostly) telling the gospel story. Then processing in reverse order to keep the candles and smoke away from the donkey, which dumped big time inside the hospital grounds anyway, to the Priory Church. Sung Eucharist as normal thereafter.

    3. Our Sunday Club, usually mostly Nigerian children and today all Nigerian, treated us to a Gospel rendering of “Hosanna” complete with waving palms and laurel. They even brough their own music! The mother of one of them has an amazing voice and was sitting right behind me joining in – very moving :))

      2. Mazères? I am just being inquisitive. Children of Nigerian expats are often very well turned out, spick & span, in the UK.

        1. No, not Mazères, that is our out-reach church run by a lay reader attached to our church in Pau.

    4. We started on the Mount and processed (choir, children bearing baskets of palm crosses and dressed as arabs, the donkey – who alternated between chomping on the grass and pulling the handler’s arms out – crucifer, priest and ragtaggle congregation) into the church and round it.

  99. Have been clearing out the garage this afternoon, off to the tip tomorrow,
    rather enjoying tearing up boxes. Shall start on more rooms in the House very soon

    2. When you have finished yours you can come and do mine. Board and lodging provided with as much (decent) wine as you can drink 😁

  100. Yes, there is a large Total gas plant not far from Pau and a lot of Nigerians employed by Total in Nigeria are sent to France, usually on three years contracts. We always have at least three Nigerian families in the congregation, at the moment we have five. The children are beautifully behaved and it is lovely to see the whole family always turning out in their “Sunday best” – very colourful! Years ago some of the children took it upon themselves to collect up all the service books/sheets and hymn books after the service and put them away, so now all newcomers are taught to do the same :))
    Btw, it is a CofE church and the services are in English, though we have quite a few French “refugees” from the Catholic church as we are “high church”. The service books are printed in both languages.

  101. Our Vicar having resigned a couple of weeks ago in a huff and announcing his last service would be Easter Day then refused to do any more services at all without telling the PCCs so the Archdeacon arrived to tell us he would be leaving on Easter Day and doing no more services – ideal just as we enter Holy Week when we have daily services scheduled for which we have now managed to arrange cover. Now said Vicar is going around saying he’s still the priest and in charge until we are notified and are not to do very much at all and that he will go on issuing orders while he does so, including arranging services without telling the churchwardens or PCCs. Apparently he’s putting it about he’s having mental ‘elf issues – you’re telling me.

    2. It is Welby’s fault.

      A fish rots from the head down and Welby as a “fisher of men” seems to have gone to a putrid poissonnerie to find those to swim in his shoal.

    3. On the downside that vicar is on the way out, so you’ve got no vicar to do services. On the upside that vicar is on the way out. Don’t tell me you’re not on balance glad about it JD.

      How about getting the parishioners together for a jaunt to a nearby friendly church for a couple of weeks to tide you all over? Sends out a strong message, if nothing else.

    4. Presumably the churchwardens have keys to the church and the organist will have keys to the organ. The vicar, since he is by his own admission mad, (that is what ‘mental health issues’ actually means after all) is not in a fit state to take services. Boycott any services he may arrange and arrange your own amongst yourselves, locking the door to the church and leaving the key in the lock for the duration of the services.

      Bribe a teenager to covertly video the vicar’s attempts to break into his church to try and disrupt your services and post the amusing results on YouTube.😂

      2. The churchwardens do have the legal power to lock the vicar out of the church, something we might have to do at this rate.

    5. Presumably the churchwardens have keys to the church and the organist will have keys to the organ. The vicar, since he is by his own admission mad, (that is what ‘mental health issues’ actually means after all) is not in a fit state to take services. Boycott any services he may arrange and arrange your own amongst yourselves, locking the door to the church and leaving the key in the lock for the duration of the services.

      Bribe a teenager to covertly video the vicar’s attempts to break into his church to try and disrupt your services and post the amusing results on YouTube.😂

  102. From the Sunday Grimes:

    “As the French go off red wine, is the answer a £55 bottle with no alcohol?”

    ” French restaurants have been particularly snooty, with sommeliers refusing to call it wine, instead referring to it as “juice”.”

    For once – I am in complete agreement with the sommeliers. It is just expensive grape juice…..

    1. I very much intend upon a vineyard tour of France at some point ( after clearing out the house and whatever else ) I’d be very disappointed to drink non alcoholic grape juice instead of the real stuff. I was equally disappointed to have recently received a box of white Italian wine only to find they are cartons of wine- not bottles- cartons !

      2. It is one of the (many) things we miss about yer France is the proximity – ten minutes by car- of a dozen very good small wine producers. Three within walking distance. I used to go with my wheelbarrow!

        1. I guess that was to enable the MR to wheel you home in it. (Don’t drink and drive!!)

    2. Seems I’m “snooty” too, then. Who knew?

      Emperors and new clothes. An old fairy tale, that’s for sure.

    3. The Top Ten producers:

      Italy (4,250,000 litres per year)
      France (3,641,900 litres per year)
      Spain (3,248,000 litres per year)
      United States (2,333,900 litres per year)
      Australia (1,369,000 litres per year)
      Argentina (1,182,100 litres per year)

      I rarely drink French wine nowadays; my current favourites are from Australia and Argentina.

          2. And you plus YB have no intention of closing it before it is fully dealt with or the plastic garden shed is fully assembled. God Bless your grandchildren and I’m entirely confident that they will survive and flourish despite your introduction to cynicism/reality. Top notch!

          1. There is a great Malbec from the Cahors region in France called Matayac – as good as any I’ve had from Argentina.

          2. I’ll look out for it – Prof Google says about 70% still comes from Argentina, shame really, I’ll look out for the Chateau Belgrano…..

          3. I wouldn’t swear to it, but I have a feeling that the French re-imported the grape back from Argentina and then started making the wine again. I know for sure that they re-imported the carmenere grape back from Chile having though it had gone extinct!

          4. Yes, I’d heard that – it came back to France! The bulk of it apparently still comes from Argentina, however…

  103. Ultra narcissism. A consultant clinical psychologist who knows him tells me he has a very severe narcissistic personality disorder in their view and it’s a two year treatment programme to correct it.

    1. You could short circuit that with electric shocks… Just leave some bare wires plugged in and switched on…{:¬))

  104. Well – good luck. Try to steer clear of the Janet and John Bible and “leaflets” for services!

    1. Don’t worry – we do! We did have a “leaflet” for a service once with the modern version of the Lord’s Prayer. Since most of us know it by heart we don’t read it from the booklet or any leaflets so the result was interesting!

  105. That’s why Child Benefit should be limited to the first two children. That’s all that most British parents have – immigrants tend to have many more. Why subsidise their way of life, while guaranteeing the demise of our own?

    1. I meant the translator, I should have written “they” or “one” instead of “you”

    1. Ah, but you didn’t apply first 😆 Never mind, I have two guest rooms and a very large garage 😉

  110. It’s a funny old world.
    Normally the Left hates capitalism, big businesses making huge profits from ordinary people producing stuff for next to nothing made under slave labour conditions in the far East and sold in the West at a huge mark up.
    But now big business has hit on a cunning plan to get the loony left on board, even cheering them on.
    All that have to do is make stuff the denigrates their country, like football shirts with a befouled national emblem.
    Electric cars that are very expensive and not really fit for purpose. Food that is halal certified and mocks christian religious festivals.
    As long as it gaslights people and harms the old Western values then these communists are more than happy to support capitalism. Which just goes to prove that their is nothing so strange a folk, especially if they are Left wing.
    I suppose it is no different from their support from Islamism in a way.
    Hypocrisy is better than democracy.

    1. A system in which the establishment is left-wing, and businesses are ostensibly independent but expected to toe the line and promote the zeitgeist, or else suffer the consequences. Sounds about right.

      Hang on! Isn’t that fascism?!

        2. More than fine, according to the CofE it is obligatory, and a mortal sin if you don’t.

  111. We’re fine. The PCC is united, the congregation increasingly so, and retired clergy have stepped forward to cover most of our service requirements until the end of the year and we laity will do the rest. We’re used to being self sufficient.

      1. We’ve been in interregnum since May 2020 and have had some fabulous locums, all of whom have been retired. We also have a retired priest in our congregation who fills in any gaps for us. We are very lucky – and blessed!

  112. Possibly back then, but now there is nothing within a good couple of miles, and they have their own churches.

  114. Spag bowl tonight and some red wine.
    After nice day doing the garden, quite warm in the sun out of the wind

  116. A dried Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,009 3/6
    ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
    🟨⬜🟨🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Well done, almost threw mine in.

      Wordle 1,009 5/6

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

    2. Par for me.

      Wordle 1,009 4/6

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

      1. There are several very large tubs of fence paint now stored in it.
        (I’m crap at judging quantities.)
        Plus boxes of stuff that MB can’t bear to part with (see attics for details).

  118. Just about to have afternoon tea and hot toasted buttered crumpets, there is no comparison 😊

    1. Are we on the same timeline? Afternoon tea was an hour ago ! Now is the time for high tea….meat paste sandwiches and Gin. Trust me.
      Failing that………………….come to my Summer drinks party and we can argue over the canapes..

      1. It’s 5.10pm, a little late for afternoon tea but I had a roast lunch otherwise it’ll have been around 3pm. Rather like the sound of your high tea and gin 🙂

          1. Ah, just spotted it, thank you. Earl Grey tea – loose leaf ? I cannot abide bags .

          2. This is/was/is an invitation. Obviously you would need to be within minimum safe distance to the South Coast. And i would make a special effort to provide Earl Gray loose leaf. Get our pinny on.

  119. GJ

    Gunilla Jones
    1 MIN AGO
    ‘ Multiculturalism was obviously not going to work as the medieval religion was never, ever going to integrate with any other religion……..now we are screwed as UK will be a Muslim country, the way they proliferate, very soon. Glad I won’t be around to see it, but feel for our granddaughter.

    Comment by Liberty Scruton.

    LS

    Liberty Scruton
    1 MIN AGO
    Sorry to break this to you, but you were duped. You are one of the millions of useful idiots. Multiculturalism was never about creating a melting pot, it was to sow division and chaos to destroy our sense of national identity so that we can all become just Europeans or’citizens of the world’. Chaos is the necessary precursor to a communist takeover and gives the elite an excuse to impose even more tyranny, censorship, etc. We ‘aint seen nothing yet.

    Comment by Martin Ridley.

    MR

    Martin Ridley
    1 MIN AGO
    You and your like have doomed the UK. Remember the names you called those of us who saw it coming.

    Comment by David Ravenhill.

    DR

    David Ravenhill
    2 MIN AGO
    for years and years ive said never trust a muslim and ive been vilified for it, until recently when frankly its too late.

    Comment by Ian Shelley.

    IS

    Ian Shelley
    2 MIN AGO
    Immigration is not immigration.
    The historic immigration Britain has seen bears no relation to today’s mass immigration. For the century and half from 1800 until 1945 average immigration was just 16,000 a year. It is over now forty times higher. More importantly, the nature has changed. Progressive enthusiasts for immigration would have us believe every foreigner arriving here is the same, a worthy victim itching to contribute to our nation. Pre 1945 immigration was almost entirely European, Dutch, German, Jews and 65% from just one country, Ireland; fellow English-speaking, Christian British islanders. The average pre-war immigration by Africans, Asians and Arabs altogether was a mere 275 people per year.
    Today, incompatible migrants are welcomed here to rub our faces in diversity. Diversity, to Progressives, means a reduction in the world’s diversity by diluting away Western culture. Immigrants are exploited as units to be weaponised against us, diminishing our culture. Their presence here requires the removal of our ancient liberties, so that a superficial peace may be maintained by silencing those concerned at the wreck of a culture we are bequeathing our children. Before we were enriched by diversity, we never needed the concept of Hate Crime or Equality Legislation. All these, and much worse to come for our children, are the little price we pay for Progressives to have the satisfaction of taking power over us and feeling morally smug. We are expected to believe their hegemony is a liberation from the old “unjust” order of Christianity.

    Comment by Matt Matt.

    MM

    Matt Matt
    2 MIN AGO
    They were both naive and immature; but incessantly plugged by MSM.
    But to now be awake is better than to be woke.

    Comment by Geoff Knox.

    GK

    Geoff Knox
    3 MIN AGO
    Mi casa es su casa doesn’t work when the guests start selling your family silver.

    Comment by Yvonne Osprey.

    YO

    Yvonne Osprey
    4 MIN AGO
    Well well. Only fools thought multiculturalism would work. Sowing division, ensuring there is no commonality between people, it was and is an inevitable disaster. It’s the old divide and conquer philosophy.

    Comment by Charles Augustus Milverton.

    CA

    Charles Augustus Milverton
    6 MIN AGO
    It’s the nature of politics that the pendulum swings both ways if we refuse to accept what the mainstream political parties are giving us.
    Stop listening to their lies, Michael Gove said recently that it is “important for the public to feel we are doing something about high levels of immigration.”
    Emphasis on the word “feel”.

    Comment by Richard King.

    RK

    Richard King
    7 MIN AGO
    In the end there should be only one culture in the UK. That is a UK culture. Everyone can have their supernatural religions, their food, their opinions, etc., but culturally they should believe in fair play, follow the local national football/cricket team and subscribe to British values.

    Comment by Roger Blank.

    RB

    Roger Blank
    7 MIN AGO
    “I don’t know whether my views on multiculturalism were naïve or immature”
    Both. Unfortunately, the indigenous population of these Isles are the ones who have had no say in the matter and have been the ones expected to assimilate and adapt (in their own homeland) rather than the millions of immigrants. EDITED

    Reply by Lisa Arcari.

    LA

    Lisa Arcari
    6 MIN AGO
    REPLY TO EDITED POST
    So true. So well put.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/24/i-used-to-be-unequivocally-pro-immigration-how-naive-i-was/

    1. We were never, ever given the choice over massive uncontrolled immigration. Blair used it as a weapon to force his agenda. Since Brexit the state has used it as a weapon, an almost ‘you wanted less gimmigration? Up yours!’

    2. UK culture? What’s that?
      There’s traditional English Protestant culture, Welsh Protestant culture, Scots Protestant culture, Scots Gaelic culture, Ulster Protestant culture and Irish RC culture. That’s more than enough multiculturalism.

      1. You have missed out those of us who have preserved our non-Irish Recusant Roman Catholic culture which pre-existed the appearance of you Johnny-come-lately Protestant usurpers. Never forget that Henry VIII died a Roman Catholic. We had to hew out priest holes inside our castle walls and go to all manner of other inconveniences just to survive. Clear off you bully boys.

        2. You are a tiny minority, albeit one that while it was in charge used to burn Protestants alive with relish and later tried repeatedly to murder or overthrow the legitimate government on behalf of hostile foreign powers.
          The exact confessional status of Henry VIII at his death is unclear as he was avowed as a heretic by the Papacy and had appointed a determinedly Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury – Cranmer – and permitted the publication and dissemination of the Bible in English. His last wife was also a committed Protestant as was his son and heir.

          1. Our small village was majority Catholic until the mid nineteenth century and there is still a catholic church in a nearby village. There were more of them than you’d think.

          2. I remember reading a monograph about the recusant English population before the arrival of the Irish which put them at 1-2% of the population with a concentration in the North West. Are you in the North West?

    1. I’m not drinking right now Tom 🙂 it’s one I opened two days ago.
      I’d have Erin after me if I drank a bottle in one go. 😉🤭🍷🍷
      But I’ve never been able to reason how people suggest that there are 6 glasses per 75cl bottle..

        1. Magnifying glasses.
          But an hour on my medium size glass is adequately efficient. 🤗🤓

          3. There was a regular poster here, now sadly deceased, who we teased with pictures of giant glasses, a lot bigger than this one.
            RIP LotL

          4. Years ago I bought two about that size from Ikea in London. I wanted something to display my match-book collection and I still have them – both full to the top!!

        1. There used to be a wonderful gift shop in London called “Eximious”, I think it was in South Molton Street, and one of their very “original” gifts was a wine glass that took a whole bottle 😆

        1. My pleasure. I, on the other hand, use every day French every day so I really should know how to :))

          1. My last use, was when living in St Hilarion, outside Rambouillet. in 2011. Then I moved to S Spain (Estepona.)

  122. – Diane Abbott got confused in Iceland when she went in for some halal Easter buns and came out with four Arctic Rolls

  123. That’s me for this very sunny but bitterly cold day. The thermometer as deceptive. Said the temp was 8ºC. Not in the gale it wasn’t!

    Have a jolly evening avoiding all the news etc.

    A demain.

  125. Another day is done so, I wish you goodnight and may God bless you all, Gentlefolk. Bis morgen früh.

  126. 384963+ up ticks,

    Have we a date for the civil war to commence, on the decent indigenous side we have mounting death & ongoing serious injury numbers,children now adults suffering mental health issues due to foreign paedophile ongoing actions, children awaiting sufferance due to the political overseers dover importation campaign of assorted felons,
    paedophiles / rapists inclusive, so I do ask once again when does the civil war commence?

    https://x.com/Steve92592444/status/1771627213751799879?s=20

    1. Those told to leave included former soldier Adam Brunetti, wife Michelle
      and their two children, who were given just two months to quit their
      three-bedroom house. But Mr Brunetti has now been told they can stay.

      Of course he can stay, the ‘agents’ think he is a furriner and they

      Cannot

      Must Not

      Ever Ever

      be inconvenienced

    2. 384963+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Tell me will such issues ( race replacement) alter the voting pattern ,or at the next General Election will he majority voter give their consent ?

          1. I expect as they have done before. Because they know they will get away with rubbing our noses in it. Display their differences in a prominent place on English soil. As they did on the steps of the Albert Hall.

    1. Ah yes, woman even taught men how to create fire to cook food and gain warmth. As said yesterday, when neothific Ogg was sitting there with two sticks it was Mrs Ogg who said ‘ rub them together dear ‘ it was Mrs Ogg who trained the hairy mammoth too . Why is it when men do the simplest of jobs they make a fuss and praise and they struggle with lists * quickly hides * 🙂

      2. No! Because, as you well know Aeneas, he is not a trans anything! He is a mentally defective man!

  131. A belfry. A bat – a mad bat.

    Anger at Church archdeacon’s call for ‘anti-whiteness’

    Dr Miranda Threlfall-Homes also insisted she was ‘not anti-white’ but still faced accusations of ‘seeking to divide’ and ‘racism’

    Hayley Dixon, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT • 24 March 2024 • 5:07pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b596db011e8a8ab34357079401873c3e91da8a634cf14e6ddf2c379f991949cb.jpg
    The Ven Miranda Threlfall-Holmes insisted she was ‘not anti-white’
    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    A Church of England archdeacon has called for “anti-whiteness”, in comments which have been criticised as divisive.

    The Ven Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, Archdeacon of Liverpool, also called for people to “smash the patriarchy” but insisted her comments were “not anti-white, or anti-men”.

    Her statement prompted an angry reaction, with one person asking if it would be “safe to attend church” if Dr Threlfall-Holmes “holds racial prejudice against white people”.

    Just weeks ago, the church announced it would be hiring a “deconstructing whiteness” officer as part of a new 11-person “racial justice unit” being set up by the Diocese of Birmingham. Senior clergy have also faced criticism for calling for the church’s £100 million slavery reparations fund to be increased to £1 billion.

    Dr Threlfall-Holmes wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “I went to a conference on whiteness last autumn. It was very good, very interesting and made me realise: whiteness is to race as patriarchy is to gender. So yes, let’s have anti-whiteness, and let’s smash the patriarchy. That’s not anti-white, or anti-men, it’s anti-oppression.”

    In response, users of X suggested that if the Cambridge-educated priest wanted “anti-whiteness” then she should “lead by example and resign”. Some described her comments as “racist” and one asked: “Why do you seek to divide when your job description is literally to bring people together?”

    Her words were criticised as “divisive” and “nonsensical” and one user said it would appear she had “given up Christianity to join a new and sinister cult”.

    Dr Threlfall-Holmes, who was appointed archdeacon last year, also holds a role advising church leaders on implanting safeguarding reforms. Last October she revealed she was attending a conference on “waking up to and addressing whiteness in the Anglican church”.

    The day-long “Racial Justice Conference” in Birmingham was organised by Reconciliation Initiatives, a charity working in partnership with Coventry Cathedral to help churches “contribute to reconciliation in wider society”. The aims of the conference included: “To encourage white participants to take next steps in facing their own whiteness, and in addressing institutional racism within Anglican churches and provinces.”

    The charity also runs a four-week “Being White” course aimed at clergy and lay members who “identify racially as white” to help them address “the ways we are caught up in a system of white superiority and white advantage in UK society”.

    When asked about the apparent contradictions in her comments, Dr Threlfall-Holmes told The Telegraph: “I was contributing to a debate about world views, in which ‘whiteness’ does not refer to skin colour per se, but to a way of viewing the world where being white is seen as ‘normal’ and everything else is considered different or lesser.”

    Dr Threlfall-Holmes, a historian, added: “I do however understand that this is not a definition that is widely shared as yet outside of academic circles, and regret that Twitter [X] was perhaps not the best place for a nuanced argument.”

    She praised the comments of the Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt Revd Dr Michael Volland, who last week defended the decision of his diocese to oppose a “deconstructing whiteness” officer on the basis that the phrase can be “misleading” and “has nothing to do with knocking or demeaning people who have white skin”.

    The use of such terminology has previously been criticised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said it was similar to language used in the television sitcom W1A, which satirised BBC managerial jargon.

    The Rev Dr Ian Paul, who is a member of the General Synod and the Archbishops’ Council, has warned that “importing” such language from the culture wars in the US risks “alienating ordinary members of the Church of England”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/24/church-of-england-archdeacon-calls-for-anti-whiteness/

      1. As Fr. Calvin Robinson maintains, women shouldn’t (can’t) be priests. Deus Vult.

      2. As Fr. Calvin Robinson maintains, women shouldn’t (can’t) be priests. Deus Vult.

        2. You read that right – they seem to cause a disproportionate amount of trouble. Prior to that, trouble was often the realm of the vicar’s wives 😆

          1. Curiously, I think quite the opposite – anything to do with pastoral care should be the realm of women, they’re so much better than men at that – we men should stick to defending the churches from Viking invaders and drinking heavily to celebrate our victories!!

          2. Some vicar’s wives are lovely and invaluable in sharing the pastoral care with their husbands, but when they do cause trouble they do it with a vengeance. You’ve been reading too much Bernard Cornwell 😆

          3. I can never read too much Bernard Cromwell, I love the Sharpe novels!
            And the TV series with Sean Bean as the eponymous hero – ‘Get off that bluddy ‘orse, yo’ bastard!’ (imagine the Sheffield accent)…..

          5. Be fair PJ – I grew up on Alistair Maclean (HMS Ulysses is a stunning book, and one of his lesser known, bizarrely) and Hammond Innes, it’s a natural progression!

          6. Well, I too grew up on Alistair MacLean (and I have read HMS Ulysses and agree with you!) and also Hammond Innes along with quite a few others, and then I digressed. oddly enough, neither author featured in the set-works for my degree, can’t imagine why 🤣 Seriously though, you could have done a lot worse!

          7. Most of Maclean’s books were turned into massively successful films which were horribly inferior to the books – Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone, Ice Station Zebra etc. The one exception was Where Eagles Dare – what a fabulous film – ‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy’ in Burton’s rich baritone, brilliant….

          8. Most films are horribly inferior to the books, but I agree with you about Where Eagles Dare, but I enjoyed Ice Station Zebra too.

          9. Yes, that wasnt bad, Rock Hudson (one for the ladies!) and Patrick McGoohan if I recall – I’m a huge fan of him – The Prisoner was fantastic!

          11. I grew up on Alistair Maclean (The Satan Bug, et al) and Hammond Innes, loved all his books and still re-read them when I am stuck for something entertaining to read!!

          14. Like Robert Harris, GMF entertains and educates at the same time. And while making history interesting and believable, both avoid the dreaded ‘pish tushery’ when their characters speak..
            I am currently reading “Act of Oblivion” by Robert Harris. Highly recommended.

          16. Thanks Sos, I’ll take a look, but cursory investigation suggests he’s primarily spy genre – hope he’s good as I think Deighton and Le Carre have that stitched up!

          17. I enjoyed them because they cross into war related themes and history.

            They are relatively short books, certainly by modern standards, and whilst there is a connection between many, like the Sharpe series they can be read entirely standalone. You don’t need to read them in any order either although it helps if you do, rather like Sharpe, so if browsing car boot sales, charity shops or book fairs you can pick them up fairly cheaply.

          18. You’re right, a little book browsing at car boots etc can be unbelievably lucrative, I find the same with CDs (what they? Ed…) – I’ll look out for him!

        2. Well – we have one. Though I gave up on the church six years ago – this lady is simply brilliant. The best priest we have had here in the 40 years I have lived in this neck of the woods.

          1. I’ve known some lovely ones but I was always worried it would lead to the church being taken over by what we call now wokeness.

          2. The Rev Angela Tilbury came over to lead our Lent meditations for a week in 2002 as she was a friend of our then chaplain. She was brilliant – if only there were more like her. One used to hear her quite often on the Today programme on “thought for the day”.

    4. Pretty soon, the Church of England will comprise only black lesbians. And none of them will believe in God.

    6. This is one of the many reasons why I have always been against women holding positions of power in the church.
      Not because they are women, but because the institution was always going to attract the wrong type of women. Basically lefty social worker types who see the victim as the perpetrator and not the criminal and who hates her countrymen and women for being white. Anyone who can say there is too much whiteness in European countries with a straight face is in serious need of help.
      I presume she does not think their is too much darkness in Africa or India?
      Power gives such people the golden opportunity to spread hate, division and lies to further their own ideology.
      What the church should be doing is hiring clergy who are dedicated to and have studied the religion over many years and have a serious interest in helping other people to connect to the mysteries of god in order to enrich their lives.
      We used to have them; the ones who integrated into their local community and used their religious knowledge to help their communities to live peacefully and to develop spiritually.
      Alas no more.
      Welby really is the devil’s advocate.

      1. Totally agree.
        That is the very type of women who have been drawn to becoming CoE priests.

      2. It explained a lot when our problem priest proudly announced in the parish news she’d only been a Christian for 10 years

      3. “This is one of the many reasons why I have always been against women holding positions of power in the church.
        Not because they are women, but because the institution was always going to attract the wrong type of women.”
        My reasoning exactly.

    9. I managed only a couple of paragraphs of that before I started shouting at the screen.

    10. Silly woman. I think it a great mistake to admit women to the priesthood. Jesus’s disciples were men for a reason.

      Cardinal Basil Hume of Ampleforth convinced me of this opinion years ago.

    1. Those of us who live in the country could have told him that for nothing! The same also applies to Western values and islam.

    2. Pat Morris does know his stuff. He also sent me a complimentary copy of his book a few years ago as he used one of my photos. He’s right about badgers. They eat hedgehogs when other food is scarce.

  133. Taking one’s mind off the absolute sh1t going on in the World around us, I’ve begun to compile an album of my favourite poems and poetic passages. Of course, in just over a week the trout season will be open so that’ll take my mind off matters too. For now though, I’m amusing myself with the poetry: nothing too challenging and mostly short so easily memorised but definitely verses which grab the imagination or emotions or both.

    As an ex-fighter pilot I have to start with this:

    High Flight

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/929e4b2b28fe2cdcdf87c114b890b2d3d2eaa0fa67edad7c8d7d08204fe12073.png

    Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

    And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
    
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

    of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

    You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
    
 High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

    I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
    
My eager craft through footless halls of air….



    Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

    I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
    
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —

    And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

    The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

    – Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

    John Gillespie Magee jnr.
    Spitfire pilot, killed aged 19

    3. On the airman theme, WB Yeats’s
      An Irish Airman foresees his Death
      is one that has always moved me

      I know that I shall meet my fate
      Somewhere among the clouds above;
      Those that I fight I do not hate,
      Those that I guard I do not love;
      My country is Kiltartan Cross,
      My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
      No likely end could bring them loss
      Or leave them happier than before.
      Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
      Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
      A lonely impulse of delight
      Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
      I balanced all, brought all to mind,
      The years to come seemed waste of breath,
      A waste of breath the years behind
      In balance with this life, this death.

      2. I had forgotten that one. Many thanks for the memory jog.

        Yeats could have been writing about Paddy Finucane except they weren’t really contemporaries. Yeats died in 1939, Finucane in 1942 aged just 21, a boy from County Dublin who became an RAF Wing Commander with DSO, DFC and two bars. They promoted true warriors young in wartime.

        1. I was thinking along the same lines re Yeats/ Paddy Finucane, Fiscal McPhee!

          I hadn’t been aware of the difference in their DoDs.

          1. We’re both wrong. From Wikipedia:

            An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” is a poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), written in 1918 and first published in the Macmillan edition of The Wild Swans at Coole in 1919.[1] The poem is a soliloquy given by an aviator in the First World War in which the narrator describes the circumstances surrounding his imminent death. The poem is a work that discusses the role of Irish soldiers fighting for the United Kingdom during a time when they were trying to establish independence for Ireland. Wishing to show restraint from publishing political poems during the height of the war, Yeats withheld publication of the poem until after the conflict had ended.[2]

            The airman in the poem is widely believed to be Major Robert Gregory, a friend of Yeats and the only child of Augusta, Lady Gregory.

          2. We did several of Yeats’ poems for English A level in 1966. I have to say I enjoyed his work more than some of the Wordsworth ones we also learnt.

      3. I had forgotten that one. Many thanks for the memory jog.

        Yeats could have been writing about Paddy Finucane except they weren’t really contemporaries. Yeats died in 1939, Finucane in 1942 aged just 21, a boy from County Dublin who became an RAF Wing Commander with DSO, DFC and two bars. They promoted true warriors young in wartime.

      5. I am re-reading Yeats’s ’Sailing to Byzantium’ at this instance. One of the greatest poems written in the English language, albeit on a different topic which will remain obvious to those following current geopolitical events.

    4. That was read at the funeral of a very dear young friend of ours, who died aged 24. His sister read the poem and I honestly don’t know how she did it. When his coffin was brought into the packed crematorium the Imperial March from Star Wars was played and his Darth Vader helmet was on top! It was quite a send off!

    5. We still have our regular Spitfire appearances here over NN8. We will enjoy them while they last, until NZ gets them.

    6. Dear Fiscal. Might I suggest that you tune in to Angel Radio every Sunday from 6.40 am to 7.35 am? You will hear Wag’s Rag Bag, a wonderful collection of varied poetry compiled, read and presented by Charles Wylie. Do give it a try.

      1. Thanks for the tip, Elsie. I can listen while making the morning tea and laying the breakfast table.

        1. Excellent, Fiscal. Let me know what you think of it. It has such a wonderful mixture of poems, such as from Lewis Carroll’s JABBERWOCKY to the glorious ADLESTROP.

    7. Dear Fiscal. Might I suggest that you tune in to Angel Radio every Sunday from 6.40 am to 7.35 am? You will hear Wag’s Rag Bag, a wonderful collection of varied poetry compiled, read and presented by Charles Wylie. Do give it a try.

    9. How front line troops view those behind the lines:

      If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath
      I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
      And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
      You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
      Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
      Reading the Roll of Honour. “Poor young chap,”
      I’d say — “I used to know his father well;
      Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.”
      And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
      I’d toddle safely home and die — in bed.

      S Sassoon.

    10. It’s beautiful – I remember Reagan quoted from that when the space shuttle disaster happened.

    11. I remain so in awe of the mental powers and artistic accomplishments of the many young men who fought in WWI and WWII.

      We have the great early poetry and musical compositions of men lost in their late teens and early twenties and wonder what further beautiful compositions they could have made had they lived.

    12. I remain so in awe of the mental powers and artistic accomplishments of the many young men who fought in WWI and WWII.

      We have the great early poetry and musical compositions of men lost in their late teens and early twenties and wonder what further beautiful compositions they could have made had they lived.

    13. I remain so in awe of the mental powers and artistic accomplishments of the many young men who fought in WWI and WWII.

      We have the great early poetry and musical compositions of men lost in their late teens and early twenties and wonder what further beautiful compositions they could have made had they lived.

  134. He does. He said it recently either during his Lotuseaters.com slot or during Fox and Father.

  135. He does. He said it recently either during his Lotuseaters.com slot or during Fox and Father.

  137. Covid consensus

    SIR – While I support Matt Ridley’s plea for a “faster and cheaper” Covid inquiry (“The six lockdown questions we need answers to”, Comment, March 17), there is one vital question that needs to be added to his list.

    Why did the scientific community abandon its core guiding principles of integrity of knowledge, openness and respect of challenge? “Cancelling” those scientists who, with sound scientific evidence, dared to challenge the consensus, is one of the abiding shames of our Covid response – one that must never be repeated.

    Dr David Slawson
    Nairn
    ________________________________________

    SIR – Matt Ridley asserts that the Covid Inquiry is “assuming it knows what went wrong – that we locked down too late”. Yet Baroness Hallett, the chair of the inquiry, has stated repeatedly that she is yet to reach any conclusions and is not acting on any assumptions. She will consider all the material that has been provided, including both oral and written evidence.

    Mr Ridley outlines where he feels the inquiry is giving insufficient attention. However, most of the areas he highlights have either already been covered during our investigations or are set to be covered in future investigations.

    Baroness Hallett does not intend for this inquiry to run and run. Nonetheless, the public deserves a serious, thorough and comprehensive examination of the UK’s planning for and response to the pandemic.

    The inquiry will produce timely and detailed recommendations as we progress. The first report will be published this summer, with public hearings set to conclude in 2026.

    Ben Connah
    Secretary, UK Covid-19 Inquiry
    London W2
    ________________________________________

    The six lockdown questions this inquiry is failing to answer

    The current investigation isn’t doing its job. We need a faster, cheaper rival to actually get to the truth

    MATT RIDLEY • 17 March 2024 • 8:00am

    In his excellent 2014 book Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed begins with the story of an airline pilot, Martin Bromiley, whose wife died because of mistakes made by anaesthetists during an operation. He set out to reform medical safety in the same way that air safety had been spectacularly reformed: by investigating, learning and sharing, rather than seeking to apportion blame or brushing failure under the carpet.

    The same lesson needs to apply to Covid. As the letter from over 50 scientists to the Telegraph last week argued, the official inquiry is going about it all wrong: assuming it knows what went wrong – that we locked down too late – and playing Gotcha with witnesses. Rather than abolish this costly Titanic of an inquiry, somebody should shame it by founding a rival, cheaper, faster and more airline-like one. If we did that, I would like to see the rival inquiry try to answer six crucial questions.

    First, was it a mistake to deliberately spread panic? “We frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain,” wrote Matt Hancock in December 2020. “Ramping up messaging – the fear/guilt factor vital,” said the Cabinet Secretary. They were dialling up the fear so we would fall into line, but the effect was undoubtedly to cause anxiety, division and eventually cynicism.

    Second, did the authoritarian instincts of public-safety bureaucrats backfire? People were already social-distancing before the first lockdown and the rise in cases was faltering. But coercion may not have just been unnecessary, it has also done real harm to the social contract between people and government. And did the closure of schools for months, when children were at relatively low risk of death from Covid, do far more harm than good?

    Third, what was the source of the early and wrong emphasis on “hands, face, space”? The evidence suggests it was based on a dogma that flu and similar viruses spread by droplets, not through the air. The source of this myth was eventually traced to a 60-year old experiment on tuberculosis that proved nothing of the kind. “Covid-19 is NOT airborne,” said the WHO repeatedly – and incorrectly as they now admit. So locking us down indoors was wrong. The advice should have been to go outdoors whenever possible, and open the darned windows.

    Fourth, why did modelling prove so useless? Again and again the models produced badly wrong forecasts or had huge margins of error that made them practically futile. In the case of the models with which the scientists tried to force us into a lockdown for omicron in December 2021, they managed both, over-estimating the death rate if we failed to lock down by at least an order of magnitude. An honest inquiry would examine whether there is any expertise on the future, either in the form of mathematical models or examination of the entrails of chickens.

    Fifth, have vaccine mandates disastrously and perhaps permanently damaged the reputation of vaccines, one of the most miraculously positive of all medical technologies? Vaccine rejection is now common and will result in growing measles outbreaks and worse. The blame for that lies not just with anti-vax hysteria but with our medical overlords who told us to vaccinate children – for whom the risk from Covid was very small – and to get vaccinated or lose our jobs or our ability to travel. Alongside the overclaiming for the vaccines, in particular that they prevented transmission, this meant that when inevitably a few side effects emerged, people became cynical.

    Sixth, has lockdown-resisting Sweden proved that our lockdowns – which began four years ago this week – killed more people than Covid? Its overall excess deaths to date remain far lower than ours. People will argue either way but ignoring the issue won’t do.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/17/six-lockdown-questions-this-inquiry-is-refusing-to-answer/

    1. I am really happy to see this article and the letter, giving the Covid inquiry notice that they are not going to get away with a “lockdown earlier and harder” simplistic Report.

    2. You seriously have to ask? It comes down to money. If a scientist rejected the provided narrative they would become unemployable. No research grants, no working with other scientists who had fallen into line.

    3. The Covid Inquiry is set up to throw buckets of white wash over the perpetrators of possibly the worst medical crime in recorded history.

      We know already that the so called virus was the product of gain of function research, carried out by the US Agencies in China and Ukraine and probably in a various US Universities.

      We know that the Testing was a sham in particular the abuse of the PCR test never intended for diagnostics and run at cycles which guaranteed that a can of Coca Cola would yield a positive result. Some wretched German pseudo-scientist devised this con.

      We know that Big Pharma was in on the scam and made trillions in profits from the pushing of the various poisonous jabs deliberately claimed to be safe and effective vaccines when they were not vaccines but gene therapies and neither safe nor effective but untested and poisonous.

      We know that the politicians around the world acted in lockstep to introduce severe curbs on our collective civil liberties whilst those same politicians cavorted at garden wine and cheese parties at Number Ten and drank copious quantities of Champagne at our expense.

      We know these fuckers have lied to us at every turn and can see how many have enriched themselves courtesy of brown envelopes from Soros, Gates and others. I would include the supposed medical experts standing daily at those preposterous lecterns spouting lies and going off to plum jobs in the very companies producing the harmful drugs.

      Nuremberg 2 cannot come soon enough for me and I pray that I live long enough to witness the demise of these clowns. They know who they are and so do the little people like us.

    4. The Covid Inquiry is set up to throw buckets of white wash over the perpetrators of possibly the worst medical crime in recorded history.

      We know already that the so called virus was the product of gain of function research, carried out by the US Agencies in China and Ukraine and probably in a various US Universities.

      We know that the Testing was a sham in particular the abuse of the PCR test never intended for diagnostics and run at cycles which guaranteed that a can of Coca Cola would yield a positive result. Some wretched German pseudo-scientist devised this con.

      We know that Big Pharma was in on the scam and made trillions in profits from the pushing of the various poisonous jabs deliberately claimed to be safe and effective vaccines when they were not vaccines but gene therapies and neither safe nor effective but untested and poisonous.

      We know that the politicians around the world acted in lockstep to introduce severe curbs on our collective civil liberties whilst those same politicians cavorted at garden wine and cheese parties at Number Ten and drank copious quantities of Champagne at our expense.

      We know these fuckers have lied to us at every turn and can see how many have enriched themselves courtesy of brown envelopes from Soros, Gates and others. I would include the supposed medical experts standing daily at those preposterous lecterns spouting lies and going off to plum jobs in the very companies producing the harmful drugs.

      Nuremberg 2 cannot come soon enough for me and I pray that I live long enough to witness the demise of these clowns. They know who they are and so do the little people like us.

    5. The Covid Inquiry is set up to throw buckets of white wash over the perpetrators of possibly the worst medical crime in recorded history.

      We know already that the so called virus was the product of gain of function research, carried out by the US Agencies in China and Ukraine and probably in a various US Universities.

      We know that the Testing was a sham in particular the abuse of the PCR test never intended for diagnostics and run at cycles which guaranteed that a can of Coca Cola would yield a positive result. Some wretched German pseudo-scientist devised this con.

      We know that Big Pharma was in on the scam and made trillions in profits from the pushing of the various poisonous jabs deliberately claimed to be safe and effective vaccines when they were not vaccines but gene therapies and neither safe nor effective but untested and poisonous.

      We know that the politicians around the world acted in lockstep to introduce severe curbs on our collective civil liberties whilst those same politicians cavorted at garden wine and cheese parties at Number Ten and drank copious quantities of Champagne at our expense.

      We know these fuckers have lied to us at every turn and can see how many have enriched themselves courtesy of brown envelopes from Soros, Gates and others. I would include the supposed medical experts standing daily at those preposterous lecterns spouting lies and going off to plum jobs in the very companies producing the harmful drugs.

      Nuremberg 2 cannot come soon enough for me and I pray that I live long enough to witness the demise of these clowns. They know who they are and so do the little people like us.

  138. Second poem: The one forever associated with Violette Szabo

    The Life That I Have (Yours)

    The life that I have
    
Is all that I have

    And the life that I have

    Is yours.

    

The love that I have

    Of the life that I have
    
Is yours and yours and yours.


    
A sleep I shall have
    
A rest I shall have

    Yet death will be but a pause.
 


    For the peace of my years
    
In the long green grass

    Will be yours and yours and yours.

    Leo Marks
    (SOE cryptographer)

      1. They showed that film at the end of term when I was a pupil. The thing I chiefly remember about it was how dark the pictures were (literally, rather than metaphorically). It all seemed to be shot at night.

      1. It’s another media psyop. The media is using her illness as a giant squirrel. I guess maybe to try and keep Twitter traffic away from the WHO before the crucial May vote that sets the unelected world government in stone?
        They started the whole “where is Kate?” thing. Nobody was asking. They ran an article saying that Kate and William sometimes come across as arrogant because they are well meaning but very keen to protect privacy.
        The story built in a theatrical way with William’s cancelled engagement, Kate being pulled out of a future appointment etc.
        Lo and behold, the following week we had the disastrously out of touch, careless (since when was Kate careless?) and arrogant mother’s day photo, followed by conflicting signals on different days (Kate is healthy / Kate is ill / Kate doesn’t look like Kate).
        People are talking about Kate, which is exactly the goal of the whole exercise.
        The Establishment is following their usual strategy, having provoked a certain reaction from the public, they turn round and try to tell them that the whole thing is their fault.

        She has lost weight (her engagement ring kept slipping round on her finger in the video), and she didn’t have much weight to lose to start with.

  141. Evening all – We’ve had our dinner (lamb), accompanied by the genius of Bach’s Mass in B minor and a bottle of red.

    Dishwasher’s packed up so the washing up’s waiting till the morning. It’s not going anywhere and nor are we.

  142. Well, chums, I shall wish you all a Good Night and hope you all awaken refreshed and ready to do battle with tomorrow’s eventualities. I think I may well have a long lie-in tomorrow, so don’t please expect me until after 9 a.m. Sleep well.

    1. I just watched the film American Fiction on Prime. A great film and so prescient given the approbation given to mediocre coloured race baiters in society. In the film it is authors writing fictional accounts of the suppression and hardships experienced by blacks at the hands of whitey. Incredibly funny and so relevant to current trends in society.

      In truth, many are promoted way above their station in life and always leaving everyone with some debacle whether social or else financial as the end result. Fani Willis and Letitia James in Georgia and New York respectively prove the point.

  143. I’ve just read a very interesting article in Unheard about the latest trans manifestation.
    Apparently, the none binary thing is starting to take off in a big way.
    The idea is that there should be no indication of what sex a person is from the outside. So it sounds as though a lot of people just want to stay pre pubescent for ever, rather than develop ing the characteristics that would mark them out as one sex or another.
    Cutting off emerging sexual indicators such as breasts, or, preventing facial hair from growing, or sexual organs developing is seen more as an aid to staying in an infantalised state, rather than becoming the opposite sex.
    This kind of makes sense, as their are very few people who genuinely believe they are the wrong sex and most of those are living their lives with the support of friends and family who have had the experience of knowing this to be true for a long time.
    The trans umbrella is now being widened to take into account groups of people who have all kinds of different problems to do with self image and identity Which are being purposely focused on making bodily changes as the answer to them.
    This is cruel and unnecessary. Trying to enlarge the group to gain even more influence on society, even though a lot of the new members will be damaged by your solutions is despicable.
    What on earth is happening to our society?

    1. These people are mentally ill and should be pitied and helped to recover, rather than indulged in their delusions.

    2. The mentally ill victims of this cult are being used by older and more powerful forces to indulge their own fantasies.

    3. At the highest level, a sterilisation programme. Eugenics. The foot soldiers inflicting the damage are indulging a perverted sexual fantasy.

  144. A topical poem:

    A former KGB chief called Putin
    Was shocked when he witnessed a shootin
    By four guys who claimed they’re from ISIS
    To create a big enough crisis
    For Kyiv to have seemingly put the bootin.

    Anon

      1. Thanks for the correction.
        I was giving preference to poetic metre rather than content accuracy.

  147. Watching the programme about Barenboim I realised that I am allergic to Chopin. It must be his pollen nez.

    2. I have the vinyls of Barenboim’s complete Beethoven Sonatas when he was a young pianist. I will have purchased in the late sixties or early seventies. The memory fades.

      Exquisite and unrivalled so far, at least to me.

    1. There is undoubtedly a lot of spite, envy and class hatred at play but pupils who go to fee-paying schools have a huge advantage over those who went to state schools. Yes, some state schools have wonderful academic records but self-confidence, leadership skills, public speaking and making contacts are not particularly well-developed as a rule. We should be striving for equality of opportunity in education and fee-paying schools do not help.

        1. My reply to vw: “They might be able to emulate private schools academically but, as NTTL members who went to one of the military apprentice schools can attest, much of their character development happened after school hours”.

          1. When I joined my grammar School it had a a Combined Cadet Force 300+ strong with all three services represented. The school had it’s own rifle range where we were taught to handled and shoot converted Lee Enfield 303s.

          2. Snap! There are few grammar schools left and even fewer with CCF corps. The grammar school that I attended had a CCF corps with an Army and a RAF section but no naval one – a bit odd for a seaside town miles away from any Army or RAF unit.

      2. HMG Education department should be emulating private schools. But they don’t seem to want to – neither do the teachers!

        1. They might be able to emulate private schools academically but, as NTTL members who went to one of the military apprentice schools can attest, much of their character development happened after what, in a state school, would be school hours.

    2. Yep. Plus such parents pay twice for their children’s education via taxes for a place they don’t take and via fees for a place they do, so school closures will cost the taxpayer a fortune.

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