Sunday 25 May: The absurd claim that Britain’s Chagos giveaway bolsters national security

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

578 thoughts on “Sunday 25 May: The absurd claim that Britain’s Chagos giveaway bolsters national security”

  1. Have an unusual start to Sunday.
    Good morning all; hope you're all well.
    And, of course, thanks to our (obviously) sleepless boss, Geoff.

  5. 406227+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    The way I see it is we are a great success at being ,as a nation, a complete failure.

    Bill Cash
    We have sacrificed our noble sovereignty on the altar of the EU Empire

    Starmer’s reset betrays all of those who chose to restore democracy to the British people

    The remainers can take treacherous misplaced pride in winning the failure stakes,

    IMHO I can see one more shot at rectifying this odious stance we have taken, and that being a very slim one, with a great deal lying with the indigenous youth, as we are leaving them a very near "mission impossible" as a legacy.

      1. The video in the 1st post brings out a strong feeling of Backpfeifengesicht.

          2. That's because the eugenist Gates is repulsively smug. Much like so many followers of the #Schwabstika

  6. Morning All 😀🙂😊
    More puddles in the road which is good, and a bright sunny start as well.
    Back later.

    1. They are lying – the WHO will have the power to mandate lockdowns, not merely suggest them.
      And the lockdowns can be for anything the WHO deems to be a public health threat – not just illnesses.
      Also, the treaty is NOT yet finalised and won't be until next year – there is still time to resist.

      Even more insidious is the concept of 'ecocide' which is creeping into statute books in the west.

  8. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTle site.

    Wordle 1,436 6/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie and all
      I thought today's word was a slang word!
      Wordle 1,436 4/6

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  13. 406227+up ticks,

    What a complete and utter BLOODY SHOW UP ON THE WORLD STAGE.

    Maybe history is better changed erasing Nelson, Drake, & co
    and alleviating the pain of comparison.

    Simon Heffer
    France shows up the UK’s utter spinelessness
    Britain is right to be angry at the treatment of our trawlerman, but at least our neighbours over the English Channel protect their borders

    OGGA1,

    Agreed, as we pay them to do.

  15. From the substack of Dr John Leake:
    "Tulsi Gabbard declassifies 13 Dec. 2021 (Biden administration) memo warning that criticism of COVID-19 mandates was a doctrine likely to be embraced by violent extremists."
    Classic tactic of a tyranny to prevent criticism of itself. This ought to have more publicity because at the moment, everyone can see how ridiculous it is. But the next time our government tries a similar tactic, people may fall for it if they have forgotten.
    https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/biden-admcriticism-of-covid-mandates?publication_id=1119676&post_id=164374109&isFreemail=true&r=28gmek&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

    1. When will this become true ?
      I'm not sure Harry boy and his Mrs should be in the same boat as our political idiots.

  17. Good morning all.
    And a joyous St. George of Fentanyl Day to one and all.
    {/sarc}
    Brightening up now, but heavy drizzle 40min ago when I took the milk bottles out earlier with nearly 14°C on the thermometer.

    1. It’ll never catch on. Everyone is too lazy to pick up the leaves and they get fed up with them turning to mulch on the pavements.

      1. 406227+ up ticks,

        Morning LiR,

        Then they will not recognise long life spans,their loss.

      3. One of My compost bins is always topped up with leaves and grass cuttings.
        The other as mixed leaf grass and uncooked veggie food waste.
        The insects and worms love me.
        And sometimes rats get in. But not recently.
        After the rain I'll check out my water butt levels. I've got 5 linked by overflows and syphon.

    2. Ah, but think about all the lost corruption opportunities…think of all the poor children politicians….

      1. 406227+ up ticks,

        Morning S,

        Ropey issue,

        What I mean i s we need employ a rope to settle the issue

    1. After a dull overcast & heavy drizzle at 07:00, we've now got bright sunshine and almost cloudless skies!

  23. Back on board again I must have dozed off again earlier.
    Sun's out now, birds chattering away.
    They don't seem to be involved in all this political nonsense us humans have to suffer.

  24. Musical meals

    SIR – Some years ago, I produced a German-themed picnic for Glyndebourne’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Letters, May 18), but was disappointed by the lack of choice in the ingredients available at the time, most of which were what we now refer to as “ultra-processed”.

    The Italians continue to top the leader board as the country that has endowed us with the best food and opera (Verdi, Puccini, Monteverdi), with the French coming a close second (Rameau, Berlioz, Massenet). However, I have just seen that Glyndebourne’s 2026 festival includes Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd, and I think sausage rolls will be just the ticket for that particular opera picnic. Ultra-processed they may be – but, if EU net zero rules have the feared effect (report, May 10), they may be a rare treat.

    Paul Bendit
    Arlington, East Sussex

    The only sausage rolls that are 'ultra-processed', Pauly, are the crap that you buy in supermarkets and filling stations. Those that I make (and which every decent butcher makes) are made from minced pork shoulder and belly, seasoned only with salt, black pepper and sage. The puff pastry is home-made from butter, lard, salt, water and flour; and washed with beaten egg.

    Nowt 'ultra' about a good old-fashioned bit o' home baking, lad. Learn how to bake some and give a proper treat to your fellow Glyndebourne attendees.

    1. Add some pork pies for the Billy Budd. Good English cider (I like Thatchers), or English wine to wash it down.
      Be a nice evening out, that, particularly if the weather is good.

      2. Have you ever tries a decent Herefordshire perry? I don't mean the appalling concoction know as 'pear cider' which also contains apples.

        A good perry is made from just perry pears and is a wonderful traditional English alcoholic beverage that is delicious and has other uses.

        A few years ago I obtained some good quality perry to make Mark Hix's winning dessert dish from The Great British Menu. His Perry Jelly (with seasonal berries) served with Elderflower Ice-Cream was sublime. I still have the recipe in the book but I cannot source any decent perry! When Mark made the dish on the programme, a rival chef grabbed the plate off him and licked it clean, "That's the dog's bollocks!" he claimed.

    2. I make a couple of dozen homemade sausage rolls on Christmas morning. They are also at their best (to my taste at least) about 25 minutes out of the oven.

      1. It's taken me a lifetime to enjoy warm sausage rolls. In the past I would buy them from a bakery and always ask for a cold one since warm ones seemed to taste greasy. Lately I've discovered that mine are not greasy at all and, like you say, the flavour is enhanced if still a little bit warm.

          1. You know that I do in moderation; i.e. once in a while. It is 50% butter and lard, both being essential and nutritional fats.

      2. Impressed! I don't think any of mine have ever lived to the ripe old age of 25 minutes.

  25. Good Morning!

    Today Graham Cunningham, in Everyone has lost control of the digital age , makes the case that 'wokeness' now has deep roots in our society and that it will not be easy to uproot, Please read and leave a comment.

    Is 2 – or 3 – QT Starmer being, er, hounded, by a gang of feral rent boys? If so, what do they have, or have had, against him? Frederick Edward discusses all this, the subject the MSM are ignoring, in his Why are Ukrainian hotties harassing poor Sir Keir?

    Energy Watch: Over the last 24 hours: Britain's electric power was sourced from Gas, 10%; Solar, 5%: Wind 51.4%; Imports, 9.8%; Biomass, 3.4% and Nuclear, 18.2%.

  26. 406227+ up ticks,

    The sure way to winning a MX 200 meat printer steak dinner for two is following the starmer tool back into the eu.

    Dt,

    Farmers face losing harvests under Starmer’s Brexit reset
    The UK will have to ban many pesticides, hitting food production, with farmers already reeling from Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tax raid

    Surely MASS support for the Farmers Food and Freedom party
    has become a "must do"

    1. BJ's known baby count was posted on here yesterday. The expression 'Go fourth and multiply' springs to mind. One has to wonder, given the number of wives and offspring, if the chap isn't a latent muslim?

        1. I don't suppose Blue Peter ever produced a badge for those claiming to have bonked a Prime Minister?

  28. I’m back. Thanks to Sue Mac for keeping you informed. Also thank you all for the many messages of concern. I don’t do any social media on my phone which was all I had with me, never thinking my discomfort would lead to admission to hospital. CT scan showed inflammation of my gall bladder. The consultant at the beginning of the week said they would leave it and only do something if it flares up again. Yesterday the consultant overseeing my discharge explained about an elective removal and will see me in 6-8 weeks. I don’t know why the different thinking but even with keyhole surgery I’m not minded to do anything but will discuss with my siblings.

    My stay was extended because of a spiking temperature probably caused by a viral infection. Don’t know where I got that.

    I see that some others are going through the wars too, so get well everyone.

    1. Welcome back Eric!. I hope you will continue to feel better.
      I had a gall bladder flare up in 2016 – caused vomiting and very painful. My then gp came out twice to see me. But since then it has never recurred so far. I still have the gall bladder in place doing what it does.

        2. That happened at ours once.
          He nearly helped him self to a sweet in a bowl on the coffee table. But as I pointed out to him he'd be needing a doctor if he ate one.
          The brightly coloured objects came from Murano.

        3. Yes!! But he's since retired so it wouldn't happen now. He was one of the old sort…….. when I said to him that I didn't think doctors did home visits these days he said they did if the patient was too unwell to get to them. The second time he came, I think it was mainly to see the hedgehogs we had at the time.

    2. Hi Eric! Glad you're back and hopefully in one piece! Re the virus, hospitals are a great place to pick up an infection, being filled with ill people…
      Take care, y'hear?

    3. Good to see you buzzing as usual. You prolly picked up the infection IN hospital. Very unhealthy places!

    5. Good to see you back.
      See how things go between now and seeing the consultant.
      Then both of you will have more information to work on.

    7. I missed all that!
      Must have been when I was off camping in my van.

      Glad you're feeling better though.

    8. Glad you're out and back on Nttl. I suspect you picked up the infection in hospital – they are germ-ridden places these days.

  30. I have just signed a lucrative deal, I decided to give my house away to a complete stranger that lives a hundred miles away with the condition that my family and their children can live there for the next hundred years, while I and they in the future pay this stranger a million pounds a year for the privilege of doing so, my right wing friends think that I am insane, but my left wing progressive friends think this is a great idea as owning houses is colonialist, at least I know that I have done my bit to create a better world and for daring to own property, as all property is theft.
    The new communist owner is very pleased with the deal too.
    Little does he know that with inflation that million pounds will be worthless in next to no time, while being stuck with a valuable asset.
    Win win

  31. Gentle reminder.. they still have four more years of treachery left.
    If you remember Jack Straw went to extraordinary lengths to hand back Gibraltar. It was the locals that stopped him.. not the British people.
    They didn't make the same mistake twice.. so they shipped out every single Chagos resident & native to a settlement just outside Gatwick.
    It's not Starmer, it's the Foreign Office and the whole civil service.

    1. If the Brits were more organised they would have used the UNs right for Indigenous peoples to have self-determination against the civil service. Shipped in a few locals and made their voices heard. Lefties always fold against The Oppressed.

    2. If the Brits were more organised they would have used the UNs right for Indigenous peoples to have self-determination against the civil service. Shipped in a few locals and made their voices heard. Lefties always fold against The Oppressed.

    3. Compare, too, the shabby treatment of the postmasters as highlighted in todays Grimes.

  32. Tell you a funny thing – down memory lane. In yesterday's DT "Review" there was a two page spread about Claire Bloom. To be honest I thought she was long gone.

    I saw her play Cordelia to Richard Burton's Hamlet at the Old Vic in 1953 = seventy two years ago…..

    1. Good morning Mr T, and everybody.
      Informative article; Ms Bloom's selection of lovers may have been better than her choice of husbands.

    2. They'll be twisting themselves in knots when the sickly young ethnics are private school patients.

  34. Portillo is on GBN saying that Reform are just more of the same. I fear he’s right. He’s not recommending the Tories as an alternative. Nor any of the options on offer. Oh dear.

    1. Possibly.
      There's no one else.
      Multi-decade Marxism & civil war is currently the default position.
      There is a glimmer of hope. Farage is in talks with Starkey & Cummings.
      Farage has always said he doesn't want to be implementer, he's a showman.

    1. I think she was planted by the eco-freaks. The great "punch up" at her flat was when he called on her to say that he wanted to end their relationship. She went doolally and became violent – the Guardianista living next door dialled 999…and they lived happily ever after.

        1. Perhaps she chucked the contents of a handy glass at him, chucking contents of glasses over men is a woman thing.

          1. ooh…………….your invitation is rescinded.
            On second thoughts…No one ever threw a drink over me. Any lessons?

          2. 😱😱😱 I’ve only done it once – that is thrown a glassful.. and not a full glassful… and it was only water. I wouldn’t waste wine. In mitigation it was many years ago….!

  36. Good Moa Bank Holiday weather.
    At least I have an excuse to hunker down and see if the inspiration I got from the Great Tapestry of Scotland will solve a knotty problem in my own needlework.

  37. I always get her confused with Lesley Caron.
    "Thank heaven, for ageing girls."

    1. Good old Alex and Alexander – he's always a bit longwinded but gets there in the end. I hope they're right.

      1. Yes, he piles on the adjectives when the first one is more than sufficient! We know we're in trouble- that's for sure and it's going to end badly but then there may be a new beginning.

        1. He always seems as though he has ants in his pants as well, wriggling about all the time.

          1. He has a nervous disposition and I think this is a physical manifestation of that aspect of his make up.

    2. They're not going anywhere, a much as we wished they would. These creatures have no concept of shame.

      1. 406227+up ticks,

        Morning BT,

        Harriet Harman

        Wikipedia
        https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Harriet_Harman
        On 10 September 2019, Harman announced that she would stand to be the next Speaker of the House of Commons following the announcement by the current Speaker …

  43. 406227+ up ticks,

    Why are we all the time seeing this in the negative Tis OUR LAND in love and patriotism, NOT the anti Brit politico's and certainly NOT any batch of foreigners.

    By weight of numbers WE WIN.

    Political options should be two in number, do as your legal paymasters request or seek other employment because the boot in the arse in reality, hurts.

    https://x.com/JamesMelville/status/1926555770306322770

  44. Russia and Ukraine exchange hundreds more prisoners. 25 May 2025.

    Russia and Ukraine have swapped 307 more prisoners each as part of the biggest exchange since the war began.

    Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s defence ministry confirmed the second prisoner exchange, a day after each side released a total of 390 combatants and civilians.

    There’s nothing said here, but the BBC News told us yesterday afternoon, that some of these people had been tortured. This before they had even got off the bus from Russia. There is also a statement included in the article that “Russian troops have executed Ukrainian prisoners more than 150 times…” which turns out to be people who “surrendered or attempted to surrender” This, as any reader of the Face of Battle will tell you, is one of the most dangerous manoeuvres of the battlefield. You should if possible capitulate very carefully to like combatants who are much more likely to be understanding.

    It is this perpetual twisting of the truth that makes me so sceptical of Ukie claims for War Crimes. The vast number cited makes it impossible to believe, and close analysis even more so. That individual cases of Rape and Murder; Theft even, occur in war zones, we may all accept. You can read about them in any account of WWII. No one has ever seriously suggested that they were the deliberate policies of the UK and US governments.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/05/24/russia-ukraine-zelensky-putin-war-latest-news16/

    1. How do you execute someone more than 150 times? Shirley once is enough??

    3. There was graphic evidence, I actually watched it, in the early days of Ukrainian soldiers torturing Russians. They were knee capping them, shooting off their genitals and then letting them bleed to death. So if we are going to talk war crimes….

  45. Russia and Ukraine exchange hundreds more prisoners. 25 May 2025.

    Russia and Ukraine have swapped 307 more prisoners each as part of the biggest exchange since the war began.

    Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s defence ministry confirmed the second prisoner exchange, a day after each side released a total of 390 combatants and civilians.

    There’s nothing said here, but the BBC News told us yesterday afternoon, that some of these people had been tortured. This before they had even got off the bus from Russia. There is also a statement included in the article that “Russian troops have executed Ukrainian prisoners more than 150 times…” which turns out to be people who “surrendered or attempted to surrender” This, as any reader of the Face of Battle will tell you, is one of the most dangerous manoeuvres of the battlefield. You should if possible capitulate very carefully to like combatants who are much more likely to be understanding.

    It is this perpetual twisting of the truth that makes me so sceptical of Ukie claims for War Crimes. The vast number cited makes it impossible to believe, and close analysis even more so. That individual cases of Rape and Murder; Theft even, occur in war zones, we may all accept. You can read about them in any account of WWII. No one has ever seriously suggested that they were the deliberate policies of the UK and US governments.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/05/24/russia-ukraine-zelensky-putin-war-latest-news16/

    3. I think it is beyond time we looked into the insulting behaviour of those far-Right English archers at Crécy and Agincourt. Their irreverent V signs at the audacieux, courageux et résolu French crossbowmen was insulting and fractious, causing many of them to weep.

  47. Heavy rain shower – but mild out. Strong westerly wind means the showers are over quickly. Prolly one more – then a fine, sunny, warm day. Or not. The next village is having its Church Fete this arvo. I bet they are crossing everything that the forecast comes true.

  48. Interesting distraction for some of you ..Son number one has travelled all over the world , and always shows me interesting videos of brave souls who have really chanced their luck in dodgy countries .

    Nicaragua !!!!!

    Please just look at this , even if you don't watch all of it , take note of the first few minutes of introduction !!!!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUokzHtx5mI

    2. ..Even speaking about the govt let alone speaking bad about the govt.. can get you in big trouble. Undercover police everywhere.

      TwoTierKeir scribbling down copious notes..

    1. I don't know if the video (embedded) is blurred deliberately but it's impossible to see what's going on.

      However it stinks of an utter failure of common sense. Why were the officers not sensible enough to diffuse the situation by sitting with the chap and talking to him? As the editors mention, this isn't a 20 year old somalian muslim savage.

      1. YouTube now censor videos unless you can prove that you're over 18. To do so, just provide all your personal details, or, as in this case, be grateful that you can't see Sturmer's Storm Troopers in action. If only they were as determined when facing the mobs marching through our city centres whilst causing criminal damage.

    1. If we didn't send anyone to gaol we would have a lot more vacancies.

      1. We have got to keep enough prison places available for those who dare to support Lucy Connolly and Tommy Robinson.

      3. Starmer far prefers our jails to be full of political prisoners – those who disagree with his communist fascism.

    2. If we didn't send anyone to gaol we would have a lot more vacancies.

    3. The solution is a harsher criminal code. Stop jailing repeat offenders. Don't jail muslim pakistani paedophiles. For those with 30+ crimes, just hang the lot of them.

  51. Oh dear.
    I would like to leave them in peace, but I do have to go in and out of the shed and this is only going to get bigger and more of a problem:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7f192d9a01a0a5de911bc74ec35ab3cca0c5f21531eadbbfb945e9213b6b00f3.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee7d9dc4798eb870828194db842cefb62b02b43119d02baa338155c4bc2b1528.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eeca66728f08d57ed9dbda943f48af26a52fb68bd009bcc05f7527598b182a32.jpg

    2. Hello Bob,
      Yes, best to get rid of it .

      But , regarding the beautiful structure of the nest .. nature is amazing .. we have hands and feet , we use our hands to construct , but how very amazing are creatures who use their tongues, saliva , beaks and claws and mouths to create their little homes .

      Creative genius is a miracle .

    3. And I've just noticed the chrysalis beside it!
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cd7d5ec767720b56e0023373ba8804da3ead2e24ff26c39a1d5926180199b472.jpg You will need to open the photo in a separate tab and then enlarge it.
      And Welder Son, on one of t'Lad's motorbikes that he has on long term loan, a P reg Honda CB400/4 has just headed off to t'Lad's!
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/02c2c97386700f9f2e10f8c5569299c04443c552c166b0937944594f8c40628b.jpg
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/03cd6fb2d2ef199e3a947bed212ef5b4ffe69eb1ab2e899b3d9ac615df10c799.jpg
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ff48985e66e19457de2cafcf31f0add2721b95a12f37fd1eec3993299cc93bd.jpg
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/84afdc4f1500148cbe35a6c439759f510b429fd7388181d7371b9ccd95dacd9c.jpg

        1. You can get a spray to kill them, but I want whatever is in the chrysalis to mature first so I can live with it for a while longer.

    4. We had a problem with wasps nests in our shed.

      You can buy fake wasps nests (just google it, there are plenty available) and just hang one up in the shed.

      Wasps are very territorial and other wasps will not go near the fake one for fear of being attacked – they work a treat!

    5. Some years ago, we had the same type of wasps' nest in a bush near our front door.
      I cannot remember the name of the wasp, but it's fairly rare and the nest only remains as a small colony; it doesn't get any larger.

  52. Farage to outflank Starmer on benefits
    Reform leader pledges to fully reinstate winter fuel payments and scrap two-child cap
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/05/24/farage-outflanks-starmer-on-child-benefits-and-winter-fuel/

    Farage has lost it – he is moving to the left. He needed Rupert Lowe to keep him focused – what a shame that his petty spite and jealousy led him to get rid of him. Lowe has had success running businesses and knows that overspending leads to bankruptcy.

    What use is a one man band if that man only plays the triangle or his kazoo specially made in the Reform Party's colour?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/69474bfef5303c7f27a55a2e14305a6c0d8c6cb78cf8ea7db5f90f2936bf12d2.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2e1e68c3d82a54be2ebbbcc6cd50ba6cbcf28dca26075eb4a6edb39a808ab25.png

    3. High taxes, crushing regulation, massive uncontrolled gimmigration. Mostly the fault of the hated EU.

  54. Inconsiderate drivers
    SIR – Your article, “Broken road rules that drive us all round the bend” (Features, May 20), points out that tailgating is an offence of driving without due care and attention.

    What is often forgotten is that this offence is just the first part of Section 3 of the Road Traffic Act. The section goes on to make it also an offence to drive “without reasonable consideration for other road users”.

    Living in a largely rural area, my pet hate is those people – prime contenders for the most inconsiderate drivers – who insist on driving agricultural vehicles at 20 mph along major roads, holding up other vehicles and ignoring opportunities to pull over to let others pass.

    Failing to indicate, or doing so after the turn is commenced, and failing to dip headlights in plenty of time (or not at all), especially when following another car, are but two more examples.

    Brian Marlow
    Blandford Forum, Dorset

    Twathead Marlow should clear orfff back to the clean home counties from whence he came from(if he did)

    Yep, people like him probably drive a monster 4×4 , who take up double spaces in car parks , who speed like hell on our rural roads and prang deer, hedgehogs, badgers, feasting birds of prey, pheasants , and yes I suspect he is the type who objects to the church bell practise , baaing of lambs and tractor mess on the roads .

    Clear off , Marlow , we object to you living here in Dorset. You sound as if you are totally anti farmer !!

    We have to slow down for tractors , combines, horses , tanks, armoured cars , herds of sheep, cattle , and deer crossing our rural roads .

    1. As they say, Belle, there’s no point in being ignorant unless you show it.

    1. Believing it is a robot sent to destroy mankind would be far more rational than a politician working for the country – because Labour aren't.

      The oaf Reeves went on TV today and blithered on about poverty and funding and no one pointed out that if you push private money into failure you just get more failure and wasted money.

      The correct solution, the one that works consistently, is markets, whereby the state cuts taxes, reduces regulation and leaves business alone to hire and fire as they want to, paying very little to a wasteful, inefficient, incompetent, bloated government. Business creates jobs. Business creates wealth. All government does is force one group to pay for another.

      1. Situation worse than you imagine.
        Much of the state's bureaucratic (and other) activities could be managed by AI, but then what would happen to all the unemployable paperpushers?

  56. Stupid Boy! I spent ages trying to find a word to fit and ignored two letters I already had. Not for the first time:
    Wordle 1,436 6/6

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

    1. I see fellow Nottlers' Wordling away each time I log in, and have just made my first 2 attempts.
      I don't know how to get the grid as above to share here, but I just succeeded on the final row, phew!
      On my 5th row, I stupidly replaced a green letter with another, totally incorrect guess – I blame senior moments.

      1. Displaying Wordle Results

        Dear Mum (gosh, I haven't written that since 1993 when she died).

        When you have cracked the Wordle of the day, near the bottom it says Share (you'll see a panel like the one below:)

        Clicking on that green button creates the little graphic with no visible letters on it (so you won't give the game away).

        You can then copy that graphic, or email it to yourself, or even include it in your posting on NTTL.blog , as many others do.

        On windows PC's highlight the graphic and use <Ctrl-C> to copy it and hold it in memory ready to paste it into your NTTL posting by using <Ctrl>-V.

        On Apple Macs and MacBooks it's <Cmd>-C to copy and <Cmd>-V to paste.

        Or else save the graphic somewhere and use the little Picture icon (like a little mountain range) among the controls below the NTTL posting panel to upload the graphic from your saved location. Hope that wasn't too opaque and that some other NoTTLer hasn't beaten me to the reply.

        We all do it all the time, so it can't be hard. RC.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/91ebd2e3e309f3703b4729492b79334deb268bb0e71e71260233620851410011.png

        1. P.S. Here is my effort today:

          Wordle 1,436 5/6

          ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
          ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
          ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
          🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
          🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

          Didn't know the target word was a free-standing verb. It's not in my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1939 Edition, 2 Volumes, 2475 pages, many kilograms). Apparently it is an INFORMAL – NORTH AMERICAN verb.

          Sent from my iPhone

    1. Can you just imagine the reaction of this Stasi government if that clever satirical programme from way back in 1963 — That Was The Week That Was — was broadcast today?

      The entire cast and production crew would be banged up for a minimum of five years.

  59. Good morning, Grizzly

    I enjoyed that!

    When I was young I had a girlfriend called Rosie. She decided to marry a chap who became the PDG of a very large International Computer Company.

    I have a device like this so I can play the kazoo and the mouth organ when I play the guitar but I have not tried cymbals between the knees or a large drum banged with a foot pedal.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/abdd56df42c8b359564709547c0129c3fd7ef97738ad7a9083ebad7719d787e1.png

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5B5k-CNgDs

    1. Good morning, Rastus.

      Listening to the sublimely talented Don Partridge invariably transports me back to the halcyon days of yore when life was much less complicated and indubitably happier.
      Days of sunshine, wildflower meadows and carefree bliss.

  60. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQX_0P4frSw
    What a prat. Just desperate vote grubbing and entirely, completely the wrong policy. Welfare merely rewards people for failure. Farage should have said 'we're abolishing child benefit. It will be returned as a tax credit to working familiies'

    Just more lies and deceit.

    1. Since getting rid of Rupert Lowe Farage has shown that his judgement has deserted him completely.

      The more he moves to left the more support he will lose and the more support he loses the more difficult it will be to get rid of Labour.

      The best thing that Nigel Farage could do would be to resign from The Reform Party.

      1. Nigel Farridge [c. Geoffrey Woollard] is, and always has been, nothing more than an egomaniac.

        He is full of bluster and self-importance and has no political nous. He is all mouth and no trousers; a svengali for the ingenuous.

      2. Frankly Rastus, I have stopped paying attention to anything he does. He is a vote chasing fraud.

  61. Why can't you shout 'fire' in a theatre? If people have a wit, they'll ask why none of the alarms have gone off. They'll ask why an authority figure – such as a usher or staff member – has said it. They'll look for smoke.

    However that assumes people are not witless morons, and most are.

    Having the US come here to talk about freedom of speech is absurd, as we are very different countries but yes, there is a concern over what we can and cannot say. Blair ensured that in the appalling 'equality' 'race relations' and 'communities' acts – all to protect his beloved muslim voting base.

    In fact, it seems almost all legislation introduced in the last few decades has been to protect the muslim menace.

    1. As I said the other night, there is no free speech here. If you dare to offend a group you can be arrested for breach of the peace, if you cause anxiety or distress by means of a message written or electronic, you will have offended against the malicious communications act. This all on top of protected characteristics legislation. There maybe a case to prevent ranting at or targeting an individual but essentially plod is able to drag you off at the behest of the perpetually offended and at their say so. I shall just have to continue howling at the moon.

    2. As I said the other night, there is no free speech here. If you dare to offend a group you can be arrested for breach of the peace, if you cause anxiety or distress by means of a message written or electronic, you will have offended against the malicious communications act. This all on top of protected characteristics legislation. There maybe a case to prevent ranting at or targeting an individual but essentially plod is able to drag you off at the behest of the perpetually offended and at their say so. I shall just have to continue howling at the moon.

    3. You miss the point Wibbling. The Americans understand better than we do because we take it for granted. They do not, they understand if it weren't for us, they would have no free speech. So it is a matter of great concern to them that the origin of their freedoms be in such a state that it appears to be dying or rather, being murdered. That is why the Americans are making such a fuss about it.

      As for being very different countries. No, not on this issue, not at all. Common Law is the law in the USA and it is understood that they have that thanks to Magna Carta and to such things as the English Bill of Rights, Lord Coke and Blackstone, far more familiar to Americans than to their own people, the English. In fact I learnt far more about our historical freedoms and the why and wherefore of such things while living in the USA than I ever did in the UK. And what I learnt there is 1009% applicable in the UK. We neglect our intellectual history, the Americans do not.

      1. I think rather our freedoms are being killed to appease a dangerous, violent savage. It's as if the state, by declaring we may not talk about the obvious problem can force us to ignore it.

  62. Why should agricultural vehicles move over? They've as much right to use the road as anyone else.

    Tail gating is illegal and folk who don't indicate should both be shot.

  63. MI5 probes Putin link to Starmer arson blitz: 24 May 2025.

    British spies are investigating whether Russia was behind a series of arson attacks on Keir Starmer’s property, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

    Police say that two Ukrainians and a Romanian who have been charged over the incidents, involving two houses and a car linked to the Prime Minister, had conspired with ‘others unknown’.

    Now senior official sources have disclosed that MI5 is examining potential links between the three men and Vladimir Putin’s regime.

    Lol.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14746459/Putin-Keir-Starmer-arson-attacks-Russia.html

    2. Wow. Normally the MSM point the finger at Putin within a few hours yet this time they have taken a whole week to do so. Nobody believes these fake news fools in any event.

      Starmer has now wrecked the country and put us back under the control of the EU in his short term in office. No consensus or appeal to us voters was needed apparently, just Starmer’s scrawled signature on a treasonous document written by others.

      As regards the unreported mass demonstrations over England yesterday, Starmer is evidently hated by the whole country. Starmer will have to go presumably to some sinecure in WEF, the UN or EU to be replaced by another deviant, likely Wes Streeting a man just as despised as Starmer himself.

  65. As a teeager, I drove tractors with colossal trailers filled with some 10-20 tons of silage or combined corn, along the roads, because that was the only way to get from the field to the farm. The tractors were a bit tired, so the steering was a bit slack, often requiring a half-turn swing of the wheel to keep approximately straight.
    The number of drivers who hooted as they passed, showing their finger, then cutting in (they didn't realise the trailer was manually braked, by leaning back and pulling a lever releasing hydraulic pressure (only good as a parking brake) and so the whole equipage was dependent on two unassisted brakes on the back wheels of the tractor, and there was no way of stopping quickly! Or swerving. And only the tractor had indicators, invisible from behid due to the size of the trailer. No rear-view mirrors, either.
    So, I was a bit slow and held up their Range Rover a short while… diddums! Arseholes, all.

    1. I'm always grateful if a tractor does pull over, but equally will sit behind one until it is safe to pass.

      They've a job to do, why make life any harder than it is? I will admit though, the Warqueen always wants to overtake them but she's far less patient than I am.

  66. As a teeager, I drove tractors with colossal trailers filled with some 10-20 tons of silage or combined corn, along the roads, because that was the only way to get from the field to the farm. The tractors were a bit tired, so the steering was a bit slack, often requiring a half-turn swing of the wheel to keep approximately straight.
    The number of drivers who hooted as they passed, showing their finger, then cutting in (they didn't realise the trailer was manually braked, by leaning back and pulling a lever releasing hydraulic pressure (only good as a parking brake) and so the whole equipage was dependent on two unassisted brakes on the back wheels of the tractor, and there was no way of stopping quickly! Or swerving. And only the tractor had indicators, invisible from behid due to the size of the trailer. No rear-view mirrors, either.
    So, I was a bit slow and held up their Range Rover a short while… diddums! Arseholes, all.

  67. I like Ben Leo – he expresses his views clearly and unambiguously.

    On the other hand Paul Richards, a Labour specialist adviser and left wing journalist who often infests GB News, is a nasty little tick of a man!

  68. Listening to OH playing the piano this morning……… we're very lucky to be able to live here, in an enclave of kind and supportive neighbours. We look after each other's cats and share over-production of plants and produce.
    He's quite well at 82, though becoming a bit forgetful. But we have to be thankful for what we have.

  69. That would probably shut out many pensioners and other people who have lived under various bad governments. Why should only younger people be allowed to vote? All and sundry coming here with no investment in this country can.

    1. Young people wouldn't automatically be allowed to vote. Consider the cost of their education.

      I think my point stands: to have a say, you have to have contributed in some form. I'm tired of dossers getting a vote. Tired of gimmigrants having a say. Tired of someone working a 16 hour week, claiming welfare for a 'disabled' (badly behaved) child.

      1. What about pensioners who have lived here all their lives. worked and paid taxes for 40 years, and are still paying in their old age? They have every right to vote and not be silenced.

  70. Apparently thousands of brits have been taking to the streets yesterday and today in protest against this useless nasty government. 500 thousand in London alone.
    And not a single mention of it in our MSM, but footage on a face boo page.
    It seems they are all in this together.

  72. Nature at her best. Eight weeks ago I sowed ten trombetti seed. Four – just four – germinated. So I spoke firmly to them and sowed four more. Three of the second sowing have germinated! Ex abundanti cautela, last week I sowed three more. So I expect – eventually – to be overrun!

    Funny the way seeds germinate – or not.

    1. He lies habitually. He's a Lefty. He has no prinicples, no moral compass, no guiding sense of decency. He's just a chancer.

      1. Lefties are enemies of the state and should be declared thus.

        Their excision is well overdue.

    1. "I tried to give it away, but even Zelensky sent me some boys rather than take it"

      2. …and the bloke at the back is just turning round after seeing another index finger approaching him.

  79. Countryfile goes beyond parody. Here's the blurb for next week's edition (1st June).

    Bradford: City of Culture

    As the BBC celebrates this year's UK City of Culture, Countryfile explores how the countryside around Bradford shaped the city and its creative legacy. A story of grit and wool.

    Anita Rani is back on home turf, meeting renowned environmental artist Steve Messam atop one of the Yorkshire Moors' famed gritstone hills and helping construct one of his most ambitious installations yet – a ten-metre-high tower built from local sheep fleece. She also delves into how the landscape has inspired art over the centuries – from the rambling Bronte sisters to the Commoners Choir, who sing anthems about the landscape.

    Meanwhile, Sean Fletcher follows the journey of a gritstone sheep's fleece – all the way from shearing on a local farm to grading in Bradford's wool depot, ready to be added to the tower installation itself. He also joins a novice bird-ringing group from Bradford College at a brand new National Nature Reserve, created to connect the urban fringes with the surrounding countryside.

    In the Yorkshire Dales, Adam meets some first-generation tenant farmers championing slow farming, conservation grazing and hardy hill breeds – running 280 native-breed cattle and a pedigree Texel flock across 750 rugged acres.

    1. The highlights will be several demonstrations of how to approach sheep from the rear and a few recipes for when the locals have finished doing what they normally do before they slaughter them.

    2. ' renowned environmental artist Steve Messam atop one of the Yorkshire Moors' famed gritstone hills and helping construct one of his most ambitious installations yet – a ten-metre-high tower built from local sheep fleece.
      ' Renowned'       for what? Emperor's New Clothes? Lack of imagination? Lack of talent?
      'Artist?' Emperor's New Clothes strikes again.
      My 9, 7 and 1 year old grandchildren could create something more inspiring and aesthetically pleasing, albeit smaller, from a heap of sheep fleece.

    3. Anita Rani! Says it all! She’s getting a kicking in the Mail – worth a look!
      Achingly ‘right on’!

        3. Some quick work with CTrL-A and CTRL-C…

          BBC Woman's Hour presenter Anita Rani accused of being 'biased and bigoted' by gender rights campaigner

          By KATHERINE LAWTON, 11:57, 25 May 2025

          BBC Woman's Hour presenter Anita Rani has been accused of being 'biased and bigoted' by a gender rights campaigner.

          Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters – a women's rights group – said her views were 'misrepresented' on the show by Rani. She made a formal complaint to the BBC, claiming the presenter should never have been allowed to present interviews with individuals on both sides of the transgender debate, because she had in the past shown 'extreme and unacceptable bias' on the issue, The Telegraph first reported.

          Woman's Hour had discussed the debate with figures on both sides after April's Supreme Court ruling that trans women are not legally women. The ruling also decided the word 'sex' in the Equality Act refers to biological sex and not gender identity, sparking mass debate across the world.

          Ms Joyce featured on Woman's Hour last week, before chief executive of Amnesty International UK, Sacha Deshmukh, appeared on the show two days later. In her complaint, Ms Joyce condemned the 'choice to use a demonstrably biased and bigoted presenter, Anita Rani, for that interview, thereby giving her and the interviewee the chance to misrepresent me'.

          She added that the presenter had 'previously publicly demonstrated bias and prejudice towards the gender-critical viewpoint'.

          'In particular, she shouldn't have been allowed to interview Sacha Deshmukh because it was obvious she would give him an easy ride for ideological reasons,' she said.

          Gender rights campaigner Ms Joyce quoted a tweet Ms Rani had penned four years ago in the wake of criticism of Woman's Hour for featuring Paris Lees, a trans author, to discuss the book What It Feels Like For A Girl.

          Ms Rani posted: 'I'm disgusted by the levels of transphobia on here. Woman's Hour is a space to discuss everything about LGBTQ+ issues. Listening to people's stories helps us understand something and hopefully empathise. Ditch the hate.'

          In response, Ms Joyce claimed the tweet exposed Ms Rani's 'extreme and unacceptable bias'.

          Ms Joyce claimed the presenter misrepresented her point of view in a question to Mr Deshmuck, enabling him to make out she did not understand the Supreme Court ruling. 'Anita asked Sacha misleading questions which muddled up my explanation of the judgment,' she wrote.

          A spokesman for the BBC said: 'The BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit will respond to this complaint directly, in accordance with our usual complaints procedure. Woman's Hour has given an on air clarification, stating that when Helen Joyce from the campaign group Sex Matters was quoted in the interview with Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, her comment referred to the Equality Act and not to the issue of sex and gender in wider society or any other legislation.

          'Both interviews were part of a series broadcast by Woman's Hour over the past two weeks, which reflect a wide range of perspectives on the Supreme Court ruling.'

      2. Also featuring Sean Fletcher, a close second to fellow presenter Margherita Taylor in the BBC's gushing and girning championships.

    4. Anita Rani! Says it all! She’s getting a kicking in the Mail – worth a look!
      Achingly ‘right on’!

  81. Going through all my accumulated junk and found an amusing early email from July 1998: world cup guidelines for American Tourists. Conclusion. The best thing that can be said for it is that it is not Germany.

    1. I’ll try and post:

      Unfortunately i am getting messahe “network error”. A shame, because it is amusing.

  82. From Coffee House the Spectator

    24 May 2025

    Coffee House
    Brendan O’NeillBrendan O’Neill
    Why did the Met arrest a Jewish man for mocking Hezbollah?
    24 May 2025, 2:06pm

    It’s the 21st century and Jews are being arrested for making fun of fascists. The Telegraph has revealed that last September a Jewish protester was nabbed and detained by cops in London for the speech crime of mocking the then leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah.

    The man – who wishes to remain anonymous, which is wise in these febrile, anti-Semitic times — was holding a placard featuring a cartoon of Nasrallah with a pager and the words ‘beep, beep, beep’. It was clearly a reference to Israel’s pagers operation against Hezbollah’s top dogs, which some beautifully call ‘Operation Grim Beeper’. Nasrallah was alive at the time this fella held aloft his blasphemous banner, but it’s obvious what the guy was saying: tick tock, Hasan, your time is coming.

    Worst of all, there’s the galling fact that a Jew was interrogated for mocking Jew haters

    I hope I don’t get a knock on the door from the Met for saying this, but that is one funny placard. How deliciously wicked to taunt a cartoon Nasrallah with the ‘beep, beep’ of those thousands of Trojan Horse pagers that Israel used to decimate his cruel and racist movement. That placard deserved prizes, not police investigation.

    The Met saw it differently. They hauled the man in for questioning. They repeatedly asked him if he believed his placard would cause offence to demonstrators who are ‘clearly pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel’. I hope he replied: ‘Yes! That’s the entire point, you dimwits.’

    Everything about this case is properly psycho. We’re now expected to consider the feelings of people who support Hezbollah? A proscribed organisation? Maybe soon people will be accused of Hezbollahphobia if they dare to diss that neo-fascist militia.

    You know what I find offensive? The thought of people in Britain supporting this self-styled ‘Army of God’ that is openly anti-Semitic and which dreams of expelling the ‘cancerous’ Jews from Israel and sending them ‘back to Germany or wherever they came from’.

    If you cheer such an eliminationist group, such a vile Jew-hating outfit, then it is the duty of every good Brit to offend you. To mock you and ridicule you and say ‘beep, beep’ to piss you off. That the Met, in this case, took the opposite view and sought to ringfence Hezbollah fanboys from offence is chilling.

    Then there are the staggering double standards. I’ve seen anti-Israel agitators freely prance in the streets with the most sick-making banners. I’ve seen placards calling Jews ‘Christ killers’ and comparing the Jewish nation to the Nazis. I’ve seen the Star of David tangled with the Nazi swastika – the grossest libel that depicts Jews as the heirs to the monsters who once murdered them.

    How many of these people had their collars felt? How many were interrogated for causing offence? If London is a city in which you can mock Jews but not Jew haters, in which you can defame Israel but not make fun of its anti-Semitic enemies, then I fear our capital is even more lost than we thought.

    But worst of all, there’s the galling fact that a Jew was interrogated for mocking Jew haters. That a Jewish man was arrested for making fun of a movement that views his kind as an inferior species. To my mind this is as repulsive as arresting a black person for criticising the KKK. What was the Met thinking? This is too serious to let it blow over. Heads must roll over this humiliation of a British Jew.

    What a moral test this will be for the left. They are currently manning the barricades for Kneecap after one of its members was charged with a terror offence for allegedly waving the Hezbollah flag. Will they likewise speak up for a Jew arrested for criticising Hezbollah? Many home truths are about to land, and with a mighty bang.

    We need to get serious about free speech. The state’s meddling in the liberty to utter is out of control. To grill a man for caricaturing violent anti-Semites is a new low for our regime of censorship. Sense and freedom must be urgently restored.

    Brendan O’Neill
    Written by
    Brendan O’Neill
    Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.

    1. What about the incessant offences caused by these vile t3rr0rist supporters every day all over this once-great country?
      What about how uncomfortable, threatened and unsafe the 'untouchable' masses cause normal people (of all hues, not just native Brits) to feel every single day?

    2. Stasis, as in stagnation?
      Sometimes my ageing mind throws up words that I rarely if ever use in conversation.
      Suddenly it's risky to criticise H'olybollox (name pixellated), yet illegal to praise them.

  83. Grid-Tied Inverters

    There is an increasing uptake in solar power generation for domestic, commercial and national objectives justified by Net Zero and sustainable objectives. However, solar power generates direct current and has to be converted to alternating current at the right frequency if it can be connected to the national grid.

    This is achieved using grid-tied inverters of which there are numerous designs and manufacturers. This video explains how grid-tied inverters are incorporated into various sized installations and dicusses the issues surrounding their adoption. The video is obviously sponsored by an Indian supplier but still raises issues about how a national grid using grid-tied solar inverters must necessarily have both some degree of intelligence and the ability to be controlled remotely by radio.
    https://youtu.be/BLuK1f6EysA?si=MTyhCxoUQfZnEiJn
    I have reservations about the ideas that smart, remotely controlled and artificially intelligent driven software are consistent with the reliability of a national grid.

    1. It goes beyond that. Many inverters produce alternating current output as a 'square wave' whereas the grid is a carefully controlled sine wave pattern. This creates a compatibility issue.

        1. It's probably cos people don’t understand stuff? They go off at a tangent.

    2. Here's a LOL that must be kept from Ed.

      Infrared solar panels. This could unlock 24/7 power anywhere in the world! Most solar panels absorb sunlight to produce energy, but these solar panels only work in the dark! They capture infrared radiation from the Earth at night—turning the heat escaping into space back into electricity.

      “If we just scale it up”

      Maybe if we cover everywhere inside Asia, Africa, Europe & Americas then just maybe we might produce enough energy. No place to live, but surplus energy.

      1. …on the other hand Ed could use an array of sustainable lemons to power a string of LEDs that would illuminate a regular Chinese solar panel. 🤔

    1. You may be either black or white — it doesn't matter — if you act like a monkey in the HoC.

      If I am ever permitted into that chamber I shall take a large bag of bananas with me to throw at them.

  86. A busy week last week. Granddaughter finished up her degree at Maryland and the family went to the graduation ceremony. First up were the PhD's – over 50% oriental, then on through the award of Masters and then the Bachelors. Lots of attendees – Maryland graduates about 11,000 per year.

    1. Jill would have been proud. i think it was about this time last year she posted for the last time.

    2. Jill would have been proud. i think it was about this time last year she posted for the last time.

    3. Jill would have been proud. i think it was about this time last year she posted for the last time.

    4. Our grandson has, on Friday, finished his 4th year of his Master of Pharmacy degree. Results of the 3 exams he sat last week will come through in June and his graduation is in July. He has a further year of registration where he has to work in a doctor’s surgery and a community pharmacy. Thereafter he will be free to choose his career path. He will also be licensed to prescribe medication.
      A very smart young man.

      1. A story like that is about the only thing i regret about not having children. Though if i had had children they would probably all be in jail.

      1. Miliband should be personally sued for his lies about gas and made to pay the debt his demented ideology is dumping on the economy

      1. Mann's bankroller has never been exposed. My guess is it's a shady back hander from big government.

  89. Yes. And even more proud to have a great granddaughter – all four generations were present at the event.

    I lost her in June, and I am not looking forward to the anniversary.

  90. Folk would say 'well, he'll find other work' but they really don't have any idea how difficult that is. If we want to get new customers we either advertise, which costs a fortune or they're word of mouth and often incredibly difficult to win over and pointless if you have to tender. You need 5-7 years before you get you money back.

    Then there's the customer themselves: will they actually pay you? When? We did an install for a leisure centre recently and it went bust the next weekend. While the hardware was paid for our time wasn't, and that's the value we cna't give to someone else.

    Morons like Raynor and reeves don't understand these basic things.

  91. The Warqueen had a group of researchers who were paid about that. They'd do the forecasting and actuarial work.

  92. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/05/25/chagos-islanders-flee-to-britain-starmer-giveaway/?recomm_id=2a0826c0ed171fa4f0ee0f3f2bca9862
    Chagos islanders flee to Britain over Starmer’s giveaway

    Council warns that dealing with the migrant influx will need Government cash support

    Chagossian migrants are moving to Britain en masse over Sir Keir Starmer’s deal to hand their homeland over to Mauritius.

    Major airports have seen a “significant” influx of incoming families over recent months, many of whom appear to have rushed through their decision to move to the UK.

    One council has warned that dealing with the surge will require financial support from the Government.

    Chagossians were granted British citizenship by Sir Tony Blair in 2002, meaning that they have the right to move to live and work in the UK.

    1. I thought 2TK acted illegally as I thought those Chagosians would have had the right of self determination under some UN agreement. How can one man (sic) have the right to sell the home and birthplace of all those people?

    2. Another master stroke by the TT idiot! The "deal" seems to be that we give away something we paid for, in response to a purely "advisory" ruling that we give it away, and then we pay the recipient for the gift!? The fact that the actual inhabitants seem totally opposed to being given to a country that is over 1,000 miles away and cares not a jot for them, is apparently irrelevant to our government!

  96. I'm very worried that Oscar has bloat. There's a distinct bulge after his ribs and he hasn't been himself.

    So I'm taking him to our vet on an emergency call.

    1. Get the vet to check your wound while you’re there, wibbling! You’ll be paying an arm and a leg!

  97. I hadn’t been feeling well, then doctors removed 13 of my organs

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/23/cumbria-woman-cancer-fight-13-organs-removed/?recomm_id=552198825e3c83c20649d04d9a3013d2
    During two surgeries, medics removed her greater omentum (part of the stomach), gall bladder, spleen, large bowel, womb, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, cervix and rectum.

    They also removed a portion of her stomach and small bowel, and the surface layer of her liver and both sides of her diaphragm.

    Determined to look on the bright side, Ms Hind said: “I turn 40 this year and I want to say yes to everything – I’ve been surfing, in a hot air balloon and dog sledding so far.

    1. We saw, some time ago, a TV programme, on 5 I think, Surgeons at the edge, a matter of life and death who carried out a similar operation on and elderly woman. Not as drastic as the one in that article but bad enough. They showed her an her husband some time later and she joked that she doesn’t fart anymore and thought it hilarious.

  98. I just cannot believe the Mayor of Rotherham addressing his councillors in Urdu .

    My Great Grandfather was Civic Mayor of Doncaster in 1925 .

    Where are the stout hearts of real Yorkshire men and women , those who fought in the War of the Roses , those who worked hard in industrial Georgian/ Victorian Yorkshire , those whose antecedents go back generations mentioned in the parish manuscripts .. Those whose relatives created the landscape of Yorkshire , the Ridings .. and those who wrote wonderful literature about the English heroes / philanthropists/ the steel industry/ coal mines / steam engines /leather/ wool/agriculture/ rhubarb.. pork pies / sausages /black pudding .. and the brass bands that were so historical in every village and town.

    1. It certainly wasn't proper Yorkshiremen who permitted the mass influx of foreigners who are dedicated to replacing them.

    3. Good evening, Belle,
      There should be a law that only those who were born in this country, have paid taxes, have never committed a single criminal offence, and who speak fluent English should even be allowed to stand for any public election. If elected, they must only speak English and wear normal Western style clothing when in their official role.
      If at any time they use any foreign language when working, or commit any crime (however minor), that should result in instant removal from post. That should apply to every elected role from parish councillor to MP to civil servants.

      1. Quite simply, the PTB want to hand us over, otherwise measures would have been taken. Children are being prepared for this, to make the final transfer easier, by weekly visits to a local mosque during school hours. They ( the PTB) must have been paid handsomely to get this underway. We have been sold down the river.

        1. Around 15 years ago, I helped with a year 6 (10/11 year olds) class visit to an indoctrination/brainwashing/ideology centre. As the coach approached the building, along a street of old 2-up-2-down terraces, one girl was overheard by the teacher when she told her friend, ‘My mum says they’re all dirty down here.’ The teacher, an extreme lefty CorBin fan (and a definite champagne socialist from a very privileged background), was outraged; she reported the child and family on returning to school! Whether the headmaster put the complaint through, we never heard anything further.

    4. Cricket was still being played as of yesterday afternoon on our village green as we passed by on the final yards of our journey home from Devon.

      I think it was oop north the heavy industrial jobs went first, then the rest of its culture swirled around the plughole and followed on – gone.

  100. Alan Yentob has died aged 78. He was old BBC. Started as an assistant and worked his way up to channel controller. One time his office was dressed as a set to shoot an interview with Mel Brooks. The door was left open and I couldn’t resist a peep inside. He walked in after me and all he said was, “It looks nice, doesn’t it”? He was Iraqi but Jewish.

  102. 25 May 2025, 13:00 BST
    Updated 25 minutes ago
    Alan Yentob, the long-serving BBC arts broadcaster and documentary-maker, has died aged 78.

    Yentob profiled and interviewed a wide range of important cultural and creative figures over the years, including David Bowie, Charles Saatchi, Maya Angelou and Grayson Perry, for TV series such as Omnibus, Arena and Imagine.

    He also served as controller of BBC One and Two, and the organisation's creative director and head of music and arts during a long and varied career.

    Paying tribute to her late husband, Philippa Walker described Yentob as "curious, funny, annoying, late and creative in every cell of his body" and added that he was "the kindest of men".

    1. Another turd-faced liar and a drain on the taxpaying public. Heavily involved with Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company notoriety. He acquired a six million pound pension fund at the BBC and was paid one third of a million per year on top of that – for what?

      Not a fan!

      3. Batmanghelidjh ☹️
        She took over Dame Vera Lynn's old mansion at the bottom of The Downage in Hendon.
        She made her self very comfortable and they had a job to get her out.

          2. She wasa. big lass, yes although the 'trouble getting her out' probably refers to the legality of removing her from property she had no right to occupy.

            As with all Lefties, she wanted something for nothing.

          1. I use to cycle past the 1930s design mansion to and from school most days. But I never saw Dame Vera.

  103. I mean, what are the chances of that happening?
    https://scontent-cdg4-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/499605736_652461037785528_560189972546127588_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s640x640_tt6&_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=833d8c&_nc_ohc=r9b7iZSTcI0Q7kNvwGafBGY&_nc_oc=Adl0eVRhgSovGQgzD2_EuV9SDGXSQeelbbiAbDQcncVEIt3TaU2Bm122ASOyfo-K_NmMsEepBlXLUk3wNPmlZHai&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-cdg4-3.xx&_nc_gid=9KEs3EqfpAdQQwZMamFqqg&oh=00_AfIUy1RrJsru1kSVWYq1FVH_MMKcjUH3LFQ3wRozXIqdCw&oe=6838FF0A

    1. They say winning the lottery is the easiest way to research your family tree.

      1. If I won the lottery I'd work less. Pay off the mortgage and just work less. It'd be nice to build our own place too as everything seems too damned small – have it on one storey too.

        As Junior gets everything anyway I can't imagine he'd notice.

  104. Britain’s Chagos giveaway bolsters national security Starmer's bank balance. And that of many of his thieving accomplices too.

  105. Brrrrrrrr – it's not nice out there at all – but I needed some fresh air – it's very fresh. Tied up the tomato plants in the teeth of a howling gale.

  107. Dry chilly wind, we do need some rain, not drizzle , proper rain , a downpour ..

    Will have to water the garden again as well as the tubs of hydrangea.

    1. Here in the east (anglia) it has been very windy, sufficient to blow minor branches from the horse chestnut trees and damage the roses, white petals all over the ground. It rained overnight and we had torrential rain for a couple of minutes mid-morning. Yup, we're back home again. We didn't wake up until 10.30 am. Not so young as we thought we were. Doggo is recovered, happy to be home.

          1. It’s gone round to the west, but it’s no warmer than that biting East wind we had for weeks.

      1. Edit for crudité
        Never let the truth spoil a good joke.

        Starmer's penis was rejected by Macron and Zelensky for being too small.

          1. Vimto really was short for Vim tonic, so you were stating the truth.
            I was referring to Grizzly's vomit joke.

          2. Yes, I know you were….. never mind, next time I'll flag it up with an emoji!…. 😉

      2. Edit for crudité
        Never let the truth spoil a good joke.

        Starmer's penis was rejected by Macron and Zelensky for being too small.

  109. Wordle No. 1,436 3/6

    ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 25 May 2025

    Scam for Birdie Three?

    1. Well done, although I'm not overly happy about the word – I went for the more credible alternative ( D ) and was surprised it was wrong – Bogey……..

      Wordle 1,436 5/6

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

    2. Well done, a par here.
      Wordle 1,436 4/6

      ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. More fluke.

      Wordle 1,436 3/6

      ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. All those white sluts were gagging for it. All those poor men should be released ! Oh…I see they have…Still, at least Lucy and Tommy are still all banged up. Phew. We're safe at last.

      1. The pakistani muslim paedophiles should be castrated with bolt cutters and bricks. Oh, how horrible, folk wail.

        They raped children. More than that, they abused, insulted, scarred children because the state endorsed the abuse.

          1. Yes, he'll be in today, overnight and we'll visit tomorrow. It's a very big worry.

        1. Last the vet posted Oscar has slept, he woke for some water and his stomach is settling.

          More than that I don't know, but he's at the vets and being monitored by the overnight vet person. They've five others in as well so I have to trust they know what they're doing.

  115. Britain is heading for utter ruin, and neither the parties nor the voters are prepared to stop it

    From Labour to the Tories and Reform, no one is making a convincing case for shrinking the size of the state

    Daniel Hannan • 24 May 2025 3:18pm BST

    What a dreadful week. For the first time, I find myself wondering whether there will be anything left to salvage. I don't mean Keir Starmer, whose approval ratings have already collapsed irremediably. No, I mean for Britain.

    Everything that elevated us above the run of nations is being lost: our competitiveness, our sovereignty, our credit-worthiness, our prestige. We are diminished morally, financially and, after the Chagos surrender, physically.

    At the start of the week, a different future looked possible. Labour had put the Chagos deal on hold, reluctant to hand billions of pounds to a foreign government while cutting benefits at home. There was talk of how, under the influence of his no-nonsense enforcers, Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer was becoming more sensitive to voters. Just as the foreign aid budget had been cut to increase defence spending, so we were told to expect hard-edged policies on immigration, net zero and welfare.

    But, when the moment came, Labour returned to its comfort zone. Instead of cancelling the payments to Mauritius, it cancelled its sole attempt to trim the benefits bill, namely the removal of the winter fuel allowance from all but the poorest pensioners.

    At that moment, any hopes of a more fiscally responsible Labour Government dissolved. All those briefings to the effect that Labour would act where the Tories lacked public trust – cracking down on bogus sicknotes, ending the state's monolithic control of healthcare – were exposed as wishful thinking. When push came to shove, Labour would not challenge the prejudices of its core constituency.

    That core constituency is no longer the working class. Rather, it is what we might call the perking class, made up of those who depend directly or indirectly on state handouts: quangocrats, BBC employees, civil servants, human rights lawyers, white-collar shop stewards. A subset of the perking class is the shirking class: people who will vote against any party that makes it tougher to get signed off work.

    If Labour could not slow, even slightly, the ballooning of the state pensions bill, we can forget about Liz Kendall's benefits cuts. The pensioners who would have lost their winter fuel payments were largely Tories. The working-age people who watch YouTube videos on how to qualify for invalidity payments are Labour.

    Here was a vision of the next four years: a Labour Government prepared to spill the cash in every direction while doing nothing to generate more wealth. Mauritius was paid to take over territory that it had already been paid for renouncing. The EU was paid for graciously taking over our food standards – just in time for its trade war with the US, our chief export destination. Meanwhile, the welfare bill continued to grow.

    We are heading for national penury. Labour is not just expanding the state, giving pay rises to its public-sector friends while making their work-from-home arrangements permanent. It is simultaneously driving taxpayers to less punitive jurisdictions.

    Ministers seem not to understand why there might be a problem with pushing out a millionaire every 45 minutes. Leftist commentators positively cheered when it was reported that Britain had suffered the largest fall in the number of billionaires since records began. But who do they imagine is picking up the departing plutocrats' share of the tax bill?

    In any case, it is not just plutocrats. The real story, masked by our net immigration figures, is that we are also losing young entrepreneurs at every level. Never mind hedgies and property moguls. Beauticians, fitness instructors, IT consultants and estate agents are emigrating in pursuit of higher salaries, lower taxes and better weather.

    Many nurses in the UAE's top hospitals come from Scotland, as do a lot of the doctors. Who can blame them? Their colleagues in the UK are gearing up for yet another strike because what the Government manages to squeeze from the private sector is never enough. We train medical students expensively only to watch them cross the seas for better pay and conditions – in practice, if not in theory, ending their student loan repayments.

    Their places are taken by unskilled immigrants, most of whom become a net drain on the Exchequer. So the vicious cycle continues: higher tax rates, lower revenues, worse public services and a deterioration of the workforce.

    What might break the cycle? The first challenge is to forge a credible opposition. I don't intend to repeat all my arguments for a Tory/Reform entente. I have been periodically making that case in these pages since last year, but few in either party want to hear it. I will simply observe that, if I were to anonymise the reactions of the two parties to the EU and Chagos deals this week, you would not be able to tell which was which. Their divisions are rooted in past grudges, not present policy. Still, let's suppose that the two Right-of-centre parties managed to form a parliamentary majority. Do they have what it takes to nudge us out of our nosedive?

    To get back to the growth that we enjoyed before the massive expansion of the state under Gordon Brown, we need to cut government spending by a third. Nothing in either the Conservative or Reform programmes suggests that they are prepared for the radical solutions that the moment demands. Neither party backed Labour's mild reduction in pensioner benefits. Both theoretically favour smaller government; both oppose specific cuts.

    To be fair, they are accurately representing their voters. When the condition is as serious as ours, and the treatment so unpleasant, sufferers will often cast around for quack alternatives. Angela Rayner pretends we can solve our problems through even higher taxes – taxes of the most anti-competitive sort, falling mainly on savers. Reform and the Tories pretend that we can get the savings we need from foreign aid or efficiency drives or scrapping DEI programmes.

    The truth is that we need to abolish entire departments, halve the state payroll and remove the Government from swathes of public life. We need to dismantle the Blairite juridical state that prevents elected governments from implementing their promises. We need to repeal the laws on which that state rests – the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act, the Climate Change Act – and the quangos they spawned.

    We need to let ministers appoint their own senior officials, and to allow the Lord Chancellor to remove activist judges. We need to overhaul the immigration system, automatically removing illegal entrants and letting them appeal against that decision only afterwards and from overseas.

    We need to replace the NHS with Singapore-style individual healthcare accounts. Instead of penalising our private schools, we should be replicating their success in the state sector by introducing school vouchers. We should scrap the EU-era tariffs and regulations that, five years on, still clog up our books. We should replace the ECHR with a Bill of Rights that would restrict itself to guaranteeing our basic liberties: free speech, free association, free contract, free worship and equality before the law: no more protected characteristics.

    Simply to list these things is to see how far any party or, indeed, public opinion, is from them. Even before 2020, Britain was in an authoritarian mood. Since the dreadful lockdowns, the state has become, for many, a first rather than a last resort.

    An ugly phrase kept coming into my head this week: De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, or 'On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain'. It was the name of a tract by a fifth- or sixth-century Welsh monk, Gildas, who chronicled the destruction of his country by the invading Anglo-Saxons. To Gildas, the barbarians were simply an instrument of divine justice. It was the sinful Britons who had brought the disaster on themselves.

    Is there time to turn aside? Are we ready to vote for candidates who offer hard truths rather than sweet delusions? Are we prepared to accept that public spending is limited by the laws of scarcity, not the meanness of politicians? Perhaps. Or perhaps, like the Britons of Gildas's time, we have already left it too late.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/24/heading-for-economic-ruin-no-political-party-can-stop-it

    1. But we have all known this day was coming for decades, how come our highly educated journalists are just catching on

    3. Voters won't stop it because they have been given something for nothing and like it. You can't now take that away.

      This is the fault of big fat state buying votes.

      So many things are wrong:

      Massive over population means higher demand for everything, so prices are higher.
      Prices are forced up due to legislation, high taxes and state waste.
      Employment is expensive so there's less of it leading to high welfare.
      Wages are suppressed to due to a huge labour market.
      If you work, taxes are egregious to pay for those who don't – and can't due to massive population.
      Eventually welfare becomes a generational habit and you can't get off it.

      This all adds to the cost of the state, and big fat state keeps forcing ever more legislation, tax and waste on the ever dwindling working population. It's a spiral that will only speed up.

      To reverse it is simple: stop paying people. If you've wasted your school years, you starve. If you don't work, you starve. If you have kids without the ability to support them, tough. If you don't save for your future, you are penniless in old age.

      Failure should not be rewarded. That's the crux of the problem.

      Equally we have a government that is fiddling the figures on just about everything. Currency manipulation, massive debt – to pay for the massive debt, moronic, destructive no energy policy driven by ideology, enforced globalism when we need the exact opposite, destruction of farming and farmers, hugely expensive fuel and food (legislation, mostly), crushing taxation, wasted on a bloated, incompetent state.

      You name it, it's back to front.

    4. Lord Mr Hannan's comprehensive and spine-chilling description of Britain's Marxist road to destruction.

      When will we wake up?

      1. If any of these rumours were true…which i doubt. At least he would get a thorough shaft cock up his arse that he would treasure as opposed to those young experienced young men that politicians generally take advantage of. Too many to mention.

      1. Downing Street has coded entrances on many levels. I don’t believe butch types like Tommy have access to insides.

  117. Trouble is the majority of the people in those areas that elect these Paki councillors hardly speak English. We've imported the third world and those areas have become the third world.

  118. Oscar did have tummy bloat and is in vet hospital. Vet winded him with an injection and he seemed far better – certainly he let off a massive fart and burp. He's on a drip and is being monitored closely. They did an ultrasound and saw the prob and are 'doing things'.

    £400 today. On top of the £150 a week we pay for the dogs but, it does have our vet – so they see the same person – almost on call.

    We won't be saving anything this month.

      1. Apparently the prognosis is good, just another thing to worry about. Going to keep an eye on the others.

        There's a reason why they're walked 2 hours after they eat. The Warqueen both gets and doesn't get the importance of their routine.

    2. Poor Oscar ,
      My sympathies … yes one of my previous spaniels , Skipper , over forty years ago developed bloat .. he was in the care of the Vet hospital for 2 days..

      When things go wrong , whether insured or not , fees are huge ..

      1. Anyone with insurance needs to check ts&cs, they don't cover all eventualities depending which plan you're on.

        1. Which is why we go directly to the vets and they don't bugger us around. We're worth a lot of money to them – over £2500 / dog / year and they charge us for anything above that.

          1. Definitely. My vets place is an enormous building, they only use a couple of rooms. Wind blows through it. Usually just one vet on duty, but three or four nurses. They had a separate entrance where they had a tank of water for dog swimming to help arthritis or something. Other dog used to go, until I started giving it turmeric. Still has to have Rheumocam, around £45 (approx £1 per ml.)

    3. Hear you. My dog has liver problem, scan alone almost £800. Speaking with a guy yesterday, his pet dog limping, started trailing legs…. scan, same price.

    4. Just think how lucky you are – Reeves won't be able to steal your savings because you haven't got any.

      1. This my philosophy these day, Conners. Whilst keeping some of my savings, I now enjoy treating my friends to meals out and such, so that there is much less for our current government to tax.

        1. That’s what I’ve started to think. Inflation eating away at the value and the thieves in Westminster just waiting to rob me. Spend it and enjoy it has become my motto. As long as I’ve got the money for projects that need to be done, some electrical and plumbing work, some guttering and roofing and a new shower room, I shan’t keep hold of the rest.

  120. France shows up the UK's utter spinelessness

    Britain is right to be angry at the treatment of our trawlerman, but at least our neighbours over the English Channel protect their borders

    Simon Heffer • 24 May 2025, 5:45pm BST

    Britain can learn from the zeal of the French coastal authorities detaining a British catamaran fishing for whelks in its waters without a licence. It is not simply that the detention came hours after Sir Keir Starmer, in an act of abasement towards the European Union, had allowed their fishing fleets access to our waters until 2038. It is that the French still could not summon up any leniency towards us. Nor is it that the French find it far easier to detain a trawler than to stop endless rubber dinghies, filled with the victims of people smugglers, to leave their waters and head for the English coast.

    No: it is that the French take the business of being French exceptionally seriously. They still have, like General de Gaulle, "une certaine idée de la France" – a certain idea of France. It is a France with a specific culture, way of life, and rights for its citizens: and the job of French officials is to enforce laws that protect these things.

    To the British this now seems astonishing: for one of the main motivations Sir Keir and his colleagues seem to show in governing us is a profound disregard for, and sense of embarrassment about, anything that smacks of British rights, customs, values or traditions.

    I am not condoning the breach of the law that the captain of the catamaran has allegedly committed in harvesting whelks. Had it happened in reverse, with a French trawler (before Sir Keir's capitulation) being found pursuing crustaceans improperly in our waters, we can imagine the most likely outcome would have been a British coastguard vessel (if one could be found) heaving into view of the offending craft, with an official asking it politely through a megaphone to clear off.

    The lightness of touch of how we do things is something many find commendable and, in matters of whelk fishing, perhaps we would not want to make a spectacle of ourselves by overdoing it. The trouble is that in so much else we simply seem not to care, and operate an approach towards enforcing our borders, our customs and our rights that is not so much permissive as downright decadent.

    Take another example. In recent days the French government has been asked to consider a report into the Muslim Brotherhood which it alleged, in Emmanuel Macron's words, was practising "entryism" into French institutions, seeking to Islamify schools, local government and other French institutions from the bottom upwards. Macron, fearing the rise of Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National, has urged a forceful response to these claims. The far Left, predictably, has accused him and his interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, of Islamophobia. They, and most of the rest of France, have simply ignored the insult. The very idea that France and Frenchness are under assault has united most of the people behind the so-called "Islamophobes".

    Any British politician who spoke of an attempt by Islamic activists to impose their culture on ours would be condemned as a racist and kicked out of public life, irrespective of whether the assertion was true or not.

    This is, after all, now a country where an old lady is warned over a preposterous "non-crime hate incident" for putting a picture of Enoch Powell in the window of her shop. It is right for us to feel anger with the French for their treatment of our trawlermen; but it would also be right for us to look at a country that unrelentingly stands up for itself and its people, and wonder whether it is not time that we did the same.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/24/france-shows-up-the-uks-utter-spinelessness

    One wonders whether Macron really is bothered about Islamification or is simply attempting to spike Le Pen, the apparently right-wing socialist.

    1. Guessing more to come – Starmer is spineless but doing the best he can to reverse Brexit, aided and abetted by the EU.

    2. Whether the assertion was true or not? Of course it's true – you only have to look around and it sticks out a mile.

  121. Visited here earlier today, Saint Giles in Wimborne St. Giles, a real gem, being the Church for the Earls of Shaftsbury.

    The first rector of Wimborne St Giles, John de Fissa, was recorded in 1207 and a church is recorded on the site in 1291. This medieval parish church was rebuilt in the 1620s under patronage from Sir Anthony Ashley, 1st Baronet of Wimborne St Giles. Ashley died in 1628 and was buried in a spectacular tomb in the church, which still survives to this day.The church was rebuilt again in 1732 by John and William Bastard, Dorset architects who most notably rebuilt nearly the entire town of Blandford Forum following a catastrophic fire the previous year. The Bastard siblings also rebuilt Blandford's parish church concurrently with that at Wimborne St Giles. As such, the churches share similar designs with one another, as noted by Pevsner. The 1732 rebuild, in the Early Georgian style, consisted of a tower with nave and south porch, constructed mostly from Greensand ashlar and flint.The church was remodelled twice in the 19th century, first by the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury in 1852 and more substantially by the wife of the 8th Earl in 1887, the latter work being designed by notable Gothic Revival architect George Frederick Bodley as a memorial to the Earl, who had committed suicide the previous year. The 1887 remodelling involved splitting the Georgian nave into three with a Gothic-style arcade and adding a north chapel. Whilst this was work being undertaken, a robin nested in one of the newly constructed arcades; it was decided to preserve this nest in a bottle in the wall.On 30 September, 1908, during soldering work on the lead roof, the church caught fire. The fire spread quickly and by the time it was extinguished, only the walls remained standing; the church a smoking ruin. The majority of the 1732, 1852 and 1887 fittings were destroyed, including most of the stained glass, the organ, church bells and woodwork. Only a few fittings were able to be rescued and the monuments that did survive, such as the font, were severely damaged.The 9th Earl of Shaftesbury engaged Sir Ninian Comper, a pupil of Bodley, to restore and rebuild the church. Comper rebuilt the church from 1908 to 1910, utilising the surviving 18th century walls and thus keeping its external appearance similar to before the fire. Inside, however, he extended the church northwards with a new north aisle and added a lady chapel. He designed all new stained glass windows, incorporating fragments of the glass that survived the fire and added a new intricate wooden screen to separate the nave and chancel. He also replaced and redesigned the roof, designed numerous new sculptures and added a western gallery to the nave. Comper's work, considered to be one of his best, is designed in the richest Gothic Revival style.Curiously, the incident of the robin in 1887 repeated itself in 1908. The 1887 nest somehow survived the fire, possibly thanks to being enclosed in a glass bottle, and both nests were grouted into the wall of the new arcade. An inscription near the altar makes reference to these events.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/14fd178f03c9508a4d0a36bda3b2062cf979b928f859667f97ed107e29706230.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d5b9cfa03786ac5a44d893a3837903a6e6050cb9bbb1ad9c0f0919efc86c1ff1.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6da38755c64cc01106181407006acba864c36b3e87e3991345260d89ad2e7ef3.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/61d798b1ef8d9c9e74cee825eb194c3d76ee732b1d24557d49d52395cff12177.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/337d53e73d279e6a2655b28a13e4582c5d4e98bb2b62a8e0bca53e25dc14a153.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d3a5d21a24619037c9dfb1a1ed37cd3b5eba4ab80aef6c03f52b2205bdaf6f30.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fa5c44d88db241491cca11082ca0883ab38638470659a0c0256c547f71427a08.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8974447d2242a5604f7918a82d93b6695b85e5bd7e9a349fd224a1786e6f803a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/83ef2c78f2c2cdee3fba5754ee2cb04d67387f2de35729cb6da5188192934ef5.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fbf920f198fd9b784e0356cfe2a955b4fbef569af23ea8719ba02448859b5a0.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d3a75e8fe2f3ec072f82a463021a18a2834e4f8e9a236445b82688d89cefceb6.jpg

    1. The interior looks incredibly cold and bleak. I don't think I would want to worship there.

  122. Arsenal have just broken a 101 year old record, moving one ahead of Liverpool for most consecutive wins in the final match of the season.

    1. And? What is the food like at the Ground and how much do they charge for beer? Are they allowed it?

  123. That's me for this day of several halves. Rain – sun – more rain – strong wind – cloudy – sun – some warmth. Looks like more of the same – though one website suggests rain from Tuesday-Thursday.

    Very nice local church fete at Melton Constable. Norman tower – much victorian restoration.

    http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/meltonconstable/meltonconstable.htm

    Large number of people – a delight to see. About 200 cars.

    Have a spiffing evening preparing for Bank Holiday.

    A demain.

    1. What were the parking charges? Did loads of locals complain about people parking everywhere?

      ©Jeremy Clarkson.

  124. Joined the club has he? Do you realise we will eventually see Lord Farage…………….

    1. As always, we don't. We didn't get a say when in 2008 Milioaf forced the climate change act on us. We can't refuse all the green taxes slapped on energy.

      If we were given the choice we'd have rejected it, so they forced it on us.

    3. Gave you an uptick.
      Here's the other comment – from a brainwashed idiot.

      "FourCandles, Dorking, United Kingdom, 1 hour ago

      It is a scientific fact that 5/6 of the known fossil fuel reserves have to stay in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. Your proposal to start drilling new wells does not make any sense if you accept that. And if you don't, then your arguments are built on sand. As for forcing people to stop eating meat, I haven't seen any such proposal, and any political party that tried it would be booted out in short order, so I call BS."

  127. Evening, all. Back home now. It's nice to go travelling, but it's so much nicer to come home! Have had a soak in the bath, put the washing up in the dishwasher and am washing the dirty linen. Luxuries that are thin on the ground on a campsite. I have unpacked most of the stuff from the motorhome, but there are one or two things I'll take out tomorrow; nothing urgently needed. Besides, it's been raining quite hard and I don't fancy getting wet.

    Labour is just one absurd claim after another. It has no connection with reality and thinks that we, the electorate, don't either.

      1. I went down to Bognor Regis (I know!) because it happened to be handy for several things I wanted to visit like Fishbourne Roman Palace and Goodwood races. I'm a bit of a Roman buff (A Level Latin and a visit to Rome and Pompeii whet the appetite) so it was nice to see the largest Roman villa in the south, if not in the whole country.
        I had a horse running at Goodwood, but she only finished fifth, which was a bit disappointing.

        1. Had to go and google that, C. A fascinating story! Glad you had a good time.

        1. We got some after I hung the washing out. Not much more than drizzle really, but at least I can skip the watering this evening.

  128. Afternoon all. Leftover moose madras for lunch, skillet flatbread, washed down with some of last years cloudy cider, sat watching bees pollinate the apple blossom for this year, Django R on the outside speakers over a 5MB internet connection – and a very sore back from hauling wood yesterday. If someone had told me I'd be happy doing this 20 years ago I'd tell them to take a long hike. Age comes with rewards, as well as pitfalls.

          1. You start to realise what is important in life. Bees keep the world turning.

      1. All fine and dandy, GQ. Suffering a fair few aches and pains after the first hard work of the year – but can't grumble.

        1. That's good and shows you've achieved something mate.
          A fuck off huge large gin will sort that out.

    4. Nice! I've always liked a bit of Limehouse Blues – considering he was short of a few fingers the guy was a genius…..

      1. Him and Stéphane G – perfect for lounging and listening. And drinking gin, because GQ made me do it.

        1. Yes, and I always liked Stephane’s collaborations with Yehudi Menuhin – God I’m sounding like a right pseud now…..

          1. Likewise, pal! This is why I like being ‘search bubbled’ by an app like Spotify. It’s amazing how many bands I’ve found both old and new because of it’s ‘people who like what you like also like this’ promotion.

    5. Bees? You've got bees?! All of ours have been murdered by the state. 80% down on bees.

      1. Where are you, PM? And what do you mean? Are we talking pesticide usage, or clearing meadows of wild flowers?

        1. I am in East Anglia (though a Yorkie with ancestors from Appleby and Blencarn) – just south of Cambridge – farming country – but this is happening all over the UK – a couple of years ago Parliament passed a bill allowing farmers to use pesticides which killed bees!!! – also many blame the chemicals dropping from the skies due to ‘geo-engineering’ .

          1. On your first point – Glyphosates more than likely, unless there’s other ranges of ‘approved’ chemicals that I’ve not heard about – although they’ve been approved for quite a while as far as I can remember.

            Not good at all.

          2. Neonicotinoids. Their use had been banned but sugar beet farmers received dispensation to use them.

  129. Hardly any of the Liverpool players joined in at the end with "You'll never walk alone".
    I guess it means that they are not particularly interested in participating in thecelebrations.
    It's not the first time this sort of thing has happened…..I can't think why. 🤔

    1. That reminds me one of the football clubs dropped a couple of hundred thousands buying a second supporter so they could sing 'You'll never walk' alone as a duet

    2. The full tweet!

      Red Lip Riots
      @RedLipRiots
      🇬🇧 LONDON BELONGS TO US NOT HIM
      The city is still ours. The Mayor is just passing through.

      I was in central London today and it hits you like a gut punch.
      This city is not dead. It’s just been held hostage.

      The Thames still cuts through it like a silver sword.
      The Tower still stands, stone defiant against the filth and failure that’s crept in around it.
      You look up at the skyline and still feel it the weight of empire, the blood and brilliance that built the beating heart of the West.

      And then you look down.
      At the boroughs now carved into fragments of foreign fiefdoms, each one governed by cowardice, curated chaos and no go zones of imported grievance.
      Knife crime surging. Police kneeling. Flags flying that aren’t ours.
      And presiding over it all?
      Sadiq Khan the diversity mascot of decline.

      This man hasn’t governed London.
      He’s mutilated it.
      Turned a world capital into a laboratory for identity politics, “safe zones,” congestion charges and demographic gerrymandering.

      While the Tower watches.
      While the stones of Whitehall grind their teeth.
      While the spirit of Churchill walks the embankment, waiting.

      Sadiq’s London is a patchwork of broken trust, broken English and broken families.
      But the city?
      The city remembers.

      It remembers fire.
      It remembers Blitz and blackouts and holding the line when the world turned grey.
      It remembers that this island’s capital doesn’t kneel not to mayors, mobs, or manifestos.

      We are not done with London.
      London is not lost.

      She is tired.
      She is bruised.
      But she is still ours.

      And the men who built her, Wren, Churchill, Nelson did not bleed for her to be divided by cowards and sold off by clerks.

      From the domes of St Paul’s to the smoke-stained bricks of East London, this city still whispers:

      “Take me back.”

      And we will.

      Sadiq can pose for Vogue, tweet platitudes and hand the boroughs over one grievance at a time.
      But we are coming.
      And we will not stop until London is once again a capital for Britain, not bureaucracy.
      A city of history, not hashtags.
      A city of courage, not quotas.
      A city of nation, not narrative.

      London will be ours again.
      And they know it.
      That’s why they’re scared.

      1. The first reply is from Richard Bentall, a professor of clinical psychology at Sheffield University:
        "You're not well son. My wife and I had a lovely weekend visiting our daughter in Brixton last week. The place was lively and buzzing.
        Of course there were quite a few black people but some of us don’t have a problem with that."

        Red Lips responds:
        "You're not well son"? That's your opening line? You condescending prune. You swan into Brixton for a weekend flat white and think you've done a tour of duty in Kabul. "It was lively and buzzing" yeah, mate, that's what most people call overcrowded, overpriced and one wrong look from ending up in A&E. But sure, tell the peasants they're imagining the muggings.

        And "of course there were quite a few black people"? Wow. That's your version of tolerance? What do you want, a biscuit? A Diversity Rosette? You sound like the sort of bloke who claps when a plane lands and thinks reading The Guardian makes you edgy.

        Professor Feelgood, one man's "vibrant" is another man's postcode war. The fact you don't see the issues doesn't mean they're not there it just means you don't live with the consequences. You visit Brixton. Others bury their kids there. Bit of a difference, that.

        So spare us the tourist takes and middle class moral signalling. Some of us don't get to leave the chaos behind on a Sunday night drive back to Surrey.

        We live it. We fight it. You just Instagram it."

        Sign her up! A Nottlander with knobs on (if you, er, see what I mean…).

      2. The first reply is from Richard Bentall, a professor of clinical psychology at Sheffield University:
        "You're not well son. My wife and I had a lovely weekend visiting our daughter in Brixton last week. The place was lively and buzzing.
        Of course there were quite a few black people but some of us don’t have a problem with that."

        Red Lips responds:
        "You're not well son"? That's your opening line? You condescending prune. You swan into Brixton for a weekend flat white and think you've done a tour of duty in Kabul. "It was lively and buzzing" yeah, mate, that's what most people call overcrowded, overpriced and one wrong look from ending up in A&E. But sure, tell the peasants they're imagining the muggings.

        And "of course there were quite a few black people"? Wow. That's your version of tolerance? What do you want, a biscuit? A Diversity Rosette? You sound like the sort of bloke who claps when a plane lands and thinks reading The Guardian makes you edgy.

        Professor Feelgood, one man's "vibrant" is another man's postcode war. The fact you don't see the issues doesn't mean they're not there it just means you don't live with the consequences. You visit Brixton. Others bury their kids there. Bit of a difference, that.

        So spare us the tourist takes and middle class moral signalling. Some of us don't get to leave the chaos behind on a Sunday night drive back to Surrey.

        We live it. We fight it. You just Instagram it."

        Sign her up! A Nottlander with knobs on (if you, er, see what I mean…).

    5. It's a bit like the plague years, just that the rats are bigger, only have two legs and are the parasites, as opposed to just carrying them.

    1. She’s out doing a book-binding course with a couple of friends until tomorrow. Here’s an interesting fact for you that I didn’t know: It takes 12 bottles of Pinot Grigio for 3 women to bind a book.

      :opens gin:

  134. There's not much left of it, but it's enormous. A lot has not been excavated because there are houses built over one of the wings.

    1. Houses built over one of the wings of a significant Roman villa…? Words fail me. Criminal ignorance and sheer vandalism.

  135. Driving up the A515 towards Buxton from Newhaven one time I though my steering was having problems, then I realised how much of a crosswind there was!

      1. Yes, the ones who founded Yorkshire. Mind, as progressive as they could be on the domestic front, what they did to their enemies on the battlefield is too horrible to contemplate.

    1. Red Lip Riots
      @RedLipRiots
      🔥 CALL TO ARMS 🔥

      We’re pushing 27k strong and rising. This isn’t just a following anymore it’s a force. So here’s the mission.

      If you see anything WOKE, PANDERING, ISLAMIST, ANTI-BRITISH or just plain INSULTING DM me.

      📌 A supermarket ad erasing British families?
      📌 A journalist sneering at tradition?
      📌 A media event bending the knee to every cause except our own?
      📌 A school pushing gender rot or race baiting bile?

      Send. It. To. Me.

      My DMs are open and I’ll hit as many as I can. Companies, media hacks, activist groups, blue-tick cowards they all need to feel the pressure.

      I might not confront every single one but with numbers like this, we don’t need to hit everything. We just need to hit enough to make them flinch.

      This is how we take the fight to them. One lie at a time. One post at a time. One truth bomb at a time.

      You find it I’ll fire it.
      Because silence is surrender and they don’t get to smear this country and our people without a response.

      This is your loudspeaker.
      Let’s start making noise.

      2. If there might be an answer to all this crap, it might be for people to complain to the relevant "woke authority"

        "XYZ has caused me great distress and offence.
        Why aren't you doing something to stop them?
        These are hate crimes, you MUST stop them!"

        Fight fire with fire, lawfare with lawfare.

    3. There was a lovely Debenham store in WGC but it was closed around 4 years ago. Now pound land. A seemingly thriving M&S in the now very quiet Howard Centre now closed down totally. Waitrose, Sainsburys thriving.
      A very large John Lewis store very sparsely populated with customer's.
      It's such a shame.

  140. I Had a decent day mainly doing very little. Watch some football but not much else.
    I wish I was more mobile, perhaps it might improve after I've had my knee operation next month.
    Family all away in north Cornwall and south Devon for the week. Youngest sweating it out in Dubia around 40degs. Good job they've got all that oil to burn keeping all the air con running….
    Goodnight all Nottlers 😴🤗

        1. Thanks Alec have made a note. Bit of a brutal day, advised by family to take Niquitin for ongoing vax effect, instead the reverse. Have to see the funny side…’night you too x

    2. We didn't wake up until 10.30 am this morning after travelling home from Devon yesterday, we were exhausted from too many disturbed nights with our D&V doggo, who on entering the door of his home was restored to normal health, instanter!

    1. What name is Hat using now?
      The article just shows what socialism does. Fine in theory but it doesn't work in practice.

      2. “You can vote your way into socialism, but have to shoot your way out.”

        1. And now, still snoring his head off…I want to go to bed so I have to risk waking him, making him more alert. Often wonder what became of me…🤯😆

  144. Thanks very much for the info, William. I hadn’t heard of that before. A quick search on the Defra website does say they’ve been in use for the last 5 years. At least it would seem this year those who have used it in the past haven’t got their emergency use dispensation for 2025.

    1. Rape seeds used to be coated in them to kill pests that ate the leaves but it also affected bees through the pollen.

  145. Swifts have hunkered down for the night, brooding their eggs.
    We have starling chicks in a couple of the boxes too.

  148. We had a nice little bit of very lean, young lamb shoulder for dinner. Poor little lamb had a short life but was very tasty.
    Bach violin & piano sonatas to accompany, plus asparagus and new potatoes, roasted peppers, carrots and a bottle of red.

    2. I slow-roasted a nice piece of fatty lamb shoulder yesterday (140ºC for six hours). It melted in the mouth.

  149. From the Telegraph

    The White House has said it is “monitoring” the case of Lucy Connolly in an escalation of free speech tensions with Sir Keir Starmer.

    State department officials are examining the treatment of Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor, who was jailed for 31 months over a social media post about the Southport attacks.

    Judges threw out an appeal brought by the 42-year-old last week, meaning she will not be released before August.

    Campaigners raised her case with Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, as part of a wider effort to challenge what they regard as draconian hate speech laws across Europe.

    A spokesman for the state department said: “We can confirm that we are monitoring this matter.

    “The United States supports freedom of expression at home and abroad, and remains concerned about infringements on freedom of expression.”

    It is the latest sign of Donald Trump’s willingness to intervene in domestic British affairs amid a growing transatlantic rift over the protection of freedom of speech.

    On Saturday, The Telegraph revealed Mr Trump sent US officials to meet five British pro-life activists over censorship concerns.

    The diplomats from the US bureau of democracy, human rights and labor (DRL) travelled to London in March in an effort to “affirm the importance of freedom of expression in the UK and across Europe”.

    They met with officials from the Foreign Office and challenged Ofcom on the Online Safety Act, which is thought to be a point of contention in the White House.

    Since then, Connolly’s case has raised eyebrows of Trump administration officials who question her conviction and the length of her sentence.

    British politicians who have criticised her sentence were praised the White House for its intervention.

    Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, said: “Lucy Connolly is effectively a political prisoner and should be freed immediately. She made an ill-judged tweet, soon deleted.

    “That the US is investigating this case is a sad indictment of the dire state of free speech under Two-Tier Keir. Free speech is in crisis under Labour.”

    Connolly expressed her outrage on social media platform X hours after Axel Rudakubana murdered three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport.

    She posted: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f—ing hotels full of the b——s for all I care, while you’re at it, take the treacherous government politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these [Southport] families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.”

    Connolly deleted the post less than four hours later, but by then it had been viewed 310,000 times. She was arrested on Aug 6 following widespread riots across the country over the stabbing attack, and later jailed for 31 months.

    Connolly, who has no previous convictions, also sent another tweet commenting on a sword attack, which read: “I bet my house it was one of these boat invaders.”

    Last week, the Court of Appeal judges said they did not accept that the original sentence for inciting racial hatred was “manifestly excessive”.

    The judges also said they did not accept that Connolly had entered her guilty plea without fully understanding what it entailed.

    Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “In recent months, shoplifters with hundreds of prior convictions have avoided prison. A domestic abuser with 52 prior offences got off with just a suspended sentence, as did a paedophile with 110,000 indecent images of children.

    “And yet Lucy Connolly has received a 31-month prison sentence for an appalling – albeit hastily deleted – message on social media. How on earth can you spend longer in prison for a tweet than violent crime? This crazy disparity will only fuel perception that we have a two-tier justice system where the law is enforced selectively.”

    Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader and an ally of Mr Trump, said: “Our American Republican friends seem to care more about free speech in the United Kingdom than our own government.”

    ‘North Korea of the North Sea’
    Lord Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, which helped fund Connolly’s appeal, said: “This is the third national humiliation in a week under Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership.

    “Has it really come to this? That the US government now has to monitor human rights abuses in the United Kingdom?

    “Britain is rapidly becoming the North Korea of the North Sea.”

    Sir Keir has been forced to defend Britain’s record of free speech in recent months, which has become a point of tension with Trump administration officials.

    During his meeting in the Oval Office in February, the Prime Minister claimed there had been free speech “for a very, very long time in the UK, and it will last for a very, very long time… Certainly we wouldn’t want to reach across US citizens, and we don’t, and that’s absolutely right. But in relation to free speech in the UK, I’m very proud of our history there”.

    In a speech at the Munich security conference in February, JD Vance, the US vice-president, cited British pro-life campaigner Adam Smith-Connor, who was convicted for breaching a buffer zone outside an abortion clinic, suggesting “free speech in Britain and across Europe was in retreat”.

    No case has raised concerns in Washington more than the prosecution of Livia Tossici-Bolt, an anti-abortion campaigner whose case threatened to jeopardise Sir Keir’s trade deal with the United States.

    The 64-year-old praised the Trump administration for its support after she was handed a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £20,026 in costs for breaching a buffer zone around an abortion clinic in Bournemouth.

    Her case alarmed leaders within the US state department, which made the highly unusual step of warning Sir Keir that it was “monitoring” developments closely.

    At the time, a source familiar with trade negotiations insisted Ms Tossici-Bolt’s arrest was being considered amid Britain’s attempt to win an exemption from US tariffs, saying “no free trade without free speech”.

    Spokesmen for the Foreign Office and the Home Office declined to comment.

      1. Please Mr M, do not go "Woke", even in the ssmall hours of the morning……

  152. Just been out with a friend who has managed to get in ridiculous trouble with Plod. You would think Plod has better things to worry about. Hurty words. Absolutely ridiculous. I must join the FSU.

  153. Solar Isolators – a fire risk when they are supposed to protect against solar wiring shorts.

    Spain's excessively rapid implemention of the rush to Net Zero using solar photoelectric panels has been an explanation of the yet undiscovered reason for its nationwide grid failure.

    A critical part of the integration of solar arrays with the grid's alternating current domestic supply is the inverter which employs an 'intelligent' quick acting dc to ac converter to handle changing values in electrical supply and demand.

    However, circuit isolating trips commonly used in domestic mains distribution boxes behave entirely differently when installed between solar arrays and inverters. What was once thought to be a safety mechanism can easily become a serious fire hazard if the solar installation does not meet current wiring safety standards.

    This video explains why disconnecting a solar array direct current feed to an inverter is so dangerous and it finishes with a demonstration of an arc induced fire in a device that is supposed to guard against circuit faults:

    https://youtu.be/EJC6wKir_Lo?si=SvSoyelBpT1f7WZ-

    1. Since an "upgrade" I cannot play the video.

      I thought that solar panel isolators work between the inverter and the grid, and are therefore already on the AC circuitry.

      Any safety trip mechanisms between the array and the inverter would surely be specified by the manufacturer and be designed to work on DC? Anyone working on a 12 volt car battery knows that there is a terminal spark on connection or disconnection if there is any load. One can only imagine what this would be when working on an array in multiples of 48 volts. Therefore disconnection on the consumer side is imperative before any changes on the DC side.

      Am I talking gibberish? Because of the scrolling system of thread retrieval favoured these days by web designers, we'll never know, since this thread will tomorrow be down the memory hole.

      1. In the video, the DC output of a solar array goes through a device known as a Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT) which continuously optimises the solar array power into either a storage battery or the inverter DC input.

        The problem arises because of the need to isolate the DC feed into the DC inverter under fault conditions. The safest way to turn of this solar energy source under fault conditions is to turn off the sun during the day.

        I’m still trying out some MPPT’s with several solar panels to understand this elusive DC isolation issue. An enormous capacitor on the input to a DC to AC converter does not help the isolation issue.

        1. There is a quick and easy way to turn off the sun during a day – throw a blanket over the panels!

          1. Bill Gates is working on a method to achieve the same effect without having to climb on a roof.

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