Sunday 3 March: Rishi Sunak is right about extremism – but his words must be followed by action

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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522 thoughts on “Sunday 3 March: Rishi Sunak is right about extremism – but his words must be followed by action”

    1. Good morning, Araminta.

      Over in the USA they have the Trump followers known as the ‘Deplorables’, here, those of us who think for ourselves and who do not like what we see as the Country slips further into anarchy and chaos should be self-named the ‘Indefinables’. A badge of honour in my view.

      1. Indeed Korky. Morning. They will probably try to silence Nottl under this new Regime.

  2. Hate preachers to be barred from UK after ‘shocking increase’ in extremism. 3 March 2024.

    “You are seeing an unholy alliance between far-Left groups and some of the Islamist extremism that has been seen on the marches.”
    He said there needs to be a greater understanding, capacity and willingness to tackle far-Left groups “to protect our liberal democracy”.

    Lord Walney’s report is currently being poured over by Home Office officials and is due to be published later this month.

    “Poured over.” Really? There is, oddly enough, only one mention of the far-Right in this article. Its provisions we can dismiss. They already exist and have only ever been used against those whom the Government wish to silence.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/02/hate-preachers-to-be-barred-from-uk-entry/

    1. If the Home Office is involved the only pouring will be that of whitewash to tone down the wording.

      1. 😉
        I dont think there is anything on the planet that can be poured anywhere that will hide all of the huge ugly lumps under all the carpets.

      1. It all started when the Education powers that be, decided not to correct errors in spelling in case this spoiled their self-esteem. And, as a result, the current generation of teachers no longer have any idea of how to spell correctly.

  3. 384229+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Hate preachers to be barred from UK after ‘shocking increase’ in extremism
    Home Office looking to break ‘unholy alliance’ between far-Left anti-democratic groups Islamic extremists

    That would be a start on one of two very major problems, the second being the internal political hate preacher / activist within the
    WEF / NWO riddled, overseeing, treacherously overbearing, political lab/lib/con coalition cartel.

    One thing for sure IMHO, the “excess deaths” must be top of the agenda surely before any move can be made as to who is going to have the political shout concerning these Isles in the future.

  4. Good morning, all. Dry i.e. currently not raining but as for the ground, soggy.

    This product currently may not be illegal but if sales boom and/or it’s use to deter attacks is recognised then a ban will follow tout de suite. Can’t be having with the ‘new Europeans’ being dissuaded from following their centuries old traditions.

    https://twitter.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1763904651861037248

    1. Could all my Armed Forces friends & FB contacts please repost this, not share it (Huge thanks in advance)!👍
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      No former member of the UK Armed Forces should feel they are alone.
      Please don’t be afraid to reach out and contact these numbers, email, etc for help.
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  7. Morning, all Y’all.
    Dull – but enough about me.
    Morning coffee buggered up. The wee hole in the bottom of the filter funnel was blocked by a stray coffee granule, so the filter overflowed & coffee everywhere – except the jug. Rescued enough for SWMBOs breakfast, but that’s all. Had made enough to last until lunchtime, too!
    Bugger.

  10. As it’s Sunday, today’s entry for the Book Weighing Club is early so as to de-conflict with Sunday services.

    Today’s book is Huế 1968 by Mark Bowden which is about, er, Huế, in, er, 1968. The book weighs in at 1lb 4.9oz

    Advance notification for book weighers:

    Next Sunday sees the first day of Ramadan. Book weighing will therefore be confined to the hours of darkness only. This is line with the Book Weighing Club’s diversity & inclusion policies.

  11. ‘Morning you bunch of Far Right deplorables……

    Medley

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    2. Morning folks.

      For what is worth I’m no longer proud to be British………

        1. That made me think of all kinds of dubious and inappropriate replies, Belle!
          I’m a bad person. 🙁
          Morning!

      3. I am proud of my country’s past, ashamed of it’s present and terrified for it’s future.

    3. We have roads like that in our ‘hood.
      Go down another layer and we’d expose Roman roads.

      1. Good morning, Annie. As you well know, there already is a Roman Road in the centre of Colchester. Lol.

        1. Built on the site of an old nursery (flowers).
          Apparently the owner was a Liberal supporter, so the houses built on Roman and Castle Road were let/sold to Liberal voters.
          (At least they were Britons.)

        2. There’s a Roman road in the Highlands – you’ve heard of Roman in the Gloamin

      3. We have lots of Roman roads in our area. I’m surprised they haven’t surfaced.

    4. All spot on as usual.
      Number one, yes to all and have a gas boiler and a petrol car. And there will never be a left turn.
      I must send the last one to our neighbours. 🤣😂

        2. Don’t joke, Bill. They would love to arrest you just to make their numbers up.

    2. I suspect a number of members of the audience are thinking: ‘What a Prick!’

      1. I suspect that the vast majority of members of audiences at such shows are nonentity, air-headed pricks.

  13. Good day all and the 77th,

    Clear and frosty at McPhee Towers this morning. Wind in the West, 0℃ rising to 7℃ today.

    Good to see that the wheels continue to come off the convid and climate scams. These are small wins but let’s bank them.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9dd0486f9fccc540892177c3d20cc06ebdfe0df70e2947f99c6fee63ca6e873e.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/02/health-secretary-release-data-covid-vaccine-excess-deaths/

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ba863522cbdb7a76c6c7485d897bffdc3a335e1115393d74c5d0688fcb39e38b.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/02/government-scrap-boiler-tax-blamed-pushing-up-prices/

    Slowly but surely it is being deconstructed.

    2. Is it possible to hope that ‘the powers that be’ have had a realisation of how commonsense actually works ?

      1. Just wait. They lie. Remember the “Bonfire of the Quangos”? That went well (sarc).

      2. No, Ready Eddy – Good Morning, btw – see my comments on Rishi’s announcement that the pensioners’ Triple Lock will be retained in the future. Whoever the next Chancellor is, he/she will suddenly discover that it is “unaffordable”, in my humble opinion.

        1. When we consider the massive amount of our contributions are being spent on supporting people none of us want in our country. Then there’s the problem of the basic UK pensions
          No body, not one individual should be expected to survive on what it is now.
          Just for turning up on our beaches, the illegals individually would be receiving more than the basic pension allowance of someone who has worked and paid in all their lives.
          What a terrible tangled Web they have woven.

          1. Yep. Yet somehow they have endless rights and privileges, get given everything for free and others struggle.

            All because ‘oh, we have to because of smhmh’. They could repeal it. They don’t want to. The intent is to destroy this country with foreign pollution.

        2. The liability for the state pension, which is unfunded and uncounted in the National Debt, is calculated by some to be £5 Trillion.

          A hard rain’s gonna fall. One day, maybe quite soon.

    3. They will force it back in somewhow. Do not be fooled. The hatred of the Left never ends. Their desperation to control is indefatigable.

    1. Good morning J

      Frosty morning here , -1c so pretty .

      Thank goodness the sun is shining for all of us because the colours are lovely .

      1. The birds are busy in the hedge. Spring not far away. I haven’t ventured out yet to feel how cold it is.

  16. Good morning all!
    A cold and misty start with a tad below -1°C on the Yard Thermometer. But at least it’s not raining.

  17. I think someone’s been watching “Minority Report” a few times too many………….

    “Justice Minister Arif Virani has defended a new power in the online harms bill

    to impose house arrest on someone who is feared to commit a hate crime

    in the future – even if they have not yet done so already.

    The person could be made to wear an electronic tag, if the attorney-general

    requests it, or ordered by a judge to remain at home, the bill says”

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-justice-minister-defends-house-arrest-power-for-people-feared-to/
    This of course is the infamous bill that permits “Life” jail sentences for online “Hate Crimes”
    I suspect the Truckers would have been under house arrest or banged up pdq if this had been available then……….
    Talk about dystopian,the small shoots of rebellion are scaring the Globo’s the Iron Fist is fraying the Velvet Glove

    2. The Soviets declared dissenters insane and locked them up? I’m still convinced that what they really hate about the Russian people is that they successfully ditched that regime. One World means one prison with the self appointed elite as the gaolers.

    3. Removal of freedom because the state has removed freedom. Gods I hate this scum.

      It is long past time the entire state machine were burned away and endless reams of destructive, miserable legislation repealed.

    4. “… [F]eared to commit a hate crime in future”? In other words, if they think you might, just possibly, say something they don’t approve of, you can be put under house arrest.

  18. Morning all 🙂😊
    Brighter but the price to pay is frost.
    Richie has had so many opportunities to take the sort of action the majority are waiting for.
    But in the same shoes as nearly all of our political classes for 3 decades have done absolutely nothing. And sadly with no expected gain, we have no choice but to sit and watch the further demise of our nation.

  19. Darn, almost an Eagle but three putted

    Wordle 988 4/6

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  20. Problems with Forces recruitment??

    I wonder why……………….

    DM
    “33 years after his key role in a daring undercover mission that
    killed IRA death squad linked to 43 murders, former SAS soldier in his
    60s – who’s now stricken by PTSD – is jailed for six months for refusing
    to appear at their inquest.
    The gunmen were en route to murder a
    member of the security forces when SAS soldiers opened fire in the
    village of Coagh, Co Tyrone in June 1991.
    The former SAS soldier, who
    can only be identified as ‘Soldier F’, has provided a witness statement
    for an inquest into the IRA men’s deaths and has agreed to answer
    written questions.
    But now, in an extraordinary intervention, a court
    in Scotland – where Soldier F now lives – has ruled that he is in
    contempt of court and sentenced him to six months in jail. It was asked
    by Northern Ireland’s top coroner to pursue the ex-soldier.”
    Beyond belief,shames us all

    1. No, it shames the Scottish government. We despise this and would see the opposite occur – the judiciary involved in jailing this decent man sent to jail. The SNP should be ashamed of itself and the government should intervene, reverse this stupid decision and disbar/sack/ideally shoot, publicly those who carried out this action.

  22. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/445381dcc2c0d8b77e39b20355a7f3f9dc44e153/0_0_3500_1969/master/3500.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=864744fc7112de1c997ad6dfe0b31015
    A cinnamon frog at Cotswold Wildlife Park, where the reptile team have managed to breed the near-threatened species – a rare feat. The little frogs, native to south-east Asia, grow to be about 3cm long and change colour repeatedly

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7c1594ebb2abcbeff21720721abb45d2644900c0/0_0_6000_4000/master/6000.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=fd077ad23395238e1ffc96187158eccf
    Daffodil-like butterflies in Dambulla, Sri Lanka

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/be3449faf8f10497d51d708fe6f47376ef3b0dc9/0_0_2578_3000/master/2578.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=a00f5e7dbcfcac7b8e593b576eb7e844
    A robin sings in the winter sunshine at the Oxford Island National Nature Reserve, Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/174fea1b9dc7e773ad2d9b59407f788ed6091c26/0_0_2773_1847/master/2773.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=f8dd8b849acfc749a1b5fec7d1a60218
    Elephants on the Crocodile River during the Africa amateur golf championship and amateur women’s invitational in Malelane, South Africa

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b129bb49c3bf5df67fc867c6ba18447b13d7eeb7/0_0_3500_2333/master/3500.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=179051db1e96f8a6e62b91d84138c412
    Bushy Park

      1. They’ve been doing it for ages. They call their drivers Mahouts who wear puttees. {:^))

    5. “ the reptile team have managed to breed the near-threatened species”

      The amphibian team or even the herpetology team perhaps, but the reptile team would be out of its bailiwick.

  23. Anyone on here who was a serviceperson will remember that when you ‘Fell In’ and ‘Formed Up’ as a squad, the first Command was always

    “By the Right Dress” (nothing to do with how your trousers hang, men)

    2024 in in the forces (if you have enough people, and the can understand the English language, will be

    “By the Left Dress”

  24. Wordle 988 6/6 – Only just made it today.

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    And a belated Good Morning to you all. I awoke in the middle of the night, did the Wordle and read some emails, and then back to bed. When the alarm woke me at 6 am, I switched it off and decided to have another couple of hours lie-in. My energy levels are a bit low these days. Ah, well, only four weeks now to British Summer Time.

    1. British Summer Time.?
      How dare you stick up such a hateful racist comment, take two years in prison…

    2. Oh no! Only four weeks left when the time coincides with natural time (and my body clock).

  25. – How come Elizabeth II got on quietly with her Royal duties well into her dotage and now this new lot cannot cope between them?

        1. I very much doubt that Charles is still influenced by his first wife who died some twenty six years ago.

          Since the coronation, there has been a series of articles in the Daily Mail, slyly re-writing history to make Charles look noble and heroic. In recent months we have learned, contrary to what we thought before, that he liked his school, he says it was the making of him, and he quietly got up and soldiered on when other boys bullied him. Another recent example mentioned the oft told story of how Diana “spitefully” confronted Miss Legge-Bourke about her supposedly having had an abortion as proof of Diana’s craziness – without mentioning that Diana had been shown forged papers by the BBC that purported to prove the supposed abortion took place. One is left with the impression that a crazed Diana dreamed the allegation up by herself and broached it in order to cause hurt.
          One could almost think that now Charles is in the driving seat and people who remember what happened have died, he wants to create a new version of events that casts him in a better light! Recollections may vary – but the last one standing writes history.

    2. . They should have sorted out Harry and Andrew, but they have failed to do so. That is another millstone round their necks. Charles need to tough up with his own.

      2. QEII should have sorted out Harry, but didn’t. Probably harder to sort out one’s son than one’s grandson – yet she managed to sort out Andrew.

  26. Looking forward to our afternoon out with very old friends. From Mill Hill. We grew up in the same street and went to the same junior school and have kept in touch. Even enjoyed a family holiday in the west country with our then young children.
    Lunch in Snorbens and after in a pub nearby, usually with a live band Sunday afternoon.
    Slayders.

  27. Hunt says he wants to cut taxes but in a way that is ‘sustainable’ for the economy.

    When they say things like that,it’s clear they just don’t understand. The state is NOT the economy. It’s a parasite. You cannot grow an economy by eating it. In that simple statement he exposes that he’s a hard Left socialist. He is wrong. His attitude is that low taxes are a ‘rac to the bottom’ – but to the bottom of the state machine, not economies.

    However, to them, this isn’t a problem. His real agenda is to ensure we do NOT grow. To keep the country back through crushing taxes. Because of his hard Left statist position his real plan is to ensure we’re never competitive against the EU – because competition is bad, m’kay? It forces government to keep cutting taxes and exposes poor strategies and ideologies. It would, simply see the sclerotic communist farce of the EU to wither and die as nation after nation abandons it’s protectionist, statist failure.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/02/jeremy-hunt-interview-budget-public-at-limit-over-taxes/

  28. How a mining family moved on from the pit.

    SIR – As I come from a mining family, I read Daniel Hannan’s article (“The same fallacy that fuels nostalgia for coal miners is determined to keep us poor today”, Comment, February 25) with great interest.

    My great-grandfather was a miner in the Forest of Dean and my grandfather followed him down the mine, but he then moved to the pit in Wheatley Hill, Co Durham. My grandfather told his children: “Don’t go down the mines” – and they didn’t. One of his sons went into the RAF, while the other served in the Army and his daughters became senior nurses.

    As for his grandchildren, one became a major in the Army, another became squadron-leader in the RAF, a third became a judge and a fourth is a director of Shell UK. One of the girls became the headmistress of a large school and one of his greatgranddaughters is now in a very senior position in an international bank.

    Mr Hannan asks how many coal miners would want their grandchildren to have jobs like theirs. In our case he didn’t – and we are eternally grateful.

    David Miller
    Newton Abbot, Devon

    Nature? Nurture? Both? Neither?

    I am a firm believer that intelligence has nothing to do, whatsoever, with one’s genes, background, schooling or environment. It matters not a jot who one’s predecessors were or what their alma mater was. We are all born with a brain. It is how one applies the use of that brain that determines one’s direction in life.

        1. I read the letter, but I also read this, authored by A.G. Bear:
          “I am a firm believer that intelligence has nothing, whatsoever, with one’s genes”.

          1. Yeah … and your problem with that piece of eminently provable rationale is …?

            I know, personally, lots of thick, gormless offspring of intelligent parents. I also know the precise opposite; so your point is?

          2. Anecdotal evidence. And why shouldn’t intelligence be heritable? Almost everything else is.

          3. My point being that while some offspring manage to become as clever as their switched-on parents, there is no guarantee that will happen every time.

            A GP of my acquaintance (back in the 1960s) had a son who was as-thick-as-two-short-planks and couldn’t pass his 11-plus. He was not educationally sub-normal just a dunce at all subjects.

    2. Then how do you explain that some people can grasp things quickly while others cannot grasp them at all?

      1. That (unassailable) fact actually has nothing to do with the subject matter of the letter.

    3. And applying the brain is likely taught by caring parents who want their children to thrive. Those children will then pass that attitude down to the grandchildren…
      My Paternal Grandfather, whom I never met as he died too soon, worked in the mines near Hartlepol. My Father became Professor of Chemistry, Head of Department and one of the initial team to start a University in Nigeria. And that’s all the history I know. Dad died in 1997, and Mother has dementia so isn’t up to giving coherent information.

    4. Hey Beatnik, you were born in a freight yard, in a caboose, Dude. You keep your home in your hand- you’re a travellin’ man. Hombre. You’ve used your brain to jump that old freight train, Man and your alma mater is the railroad. You know every engineer on every train-
      all of their wives, and all of their names

      1. Way to go, Dean. Ol’ Marty Robbins had it bang-to-rights, Hombre:

        A man and a train, a train and a man
        They both tried to run as far and as fast as they can
        But a man’s not a train and a train’s not a man
        A man can do things that a train never can.

        “A man’s not a train and a train’s not a man”? Jeez, Bro. There’s some heavy metaphysical effluent goin’ on there, Dude. My trackside upbringing developed me a sharp nous, Man; but that wacko lyric is sending my thought-patterns haywire, Compadre.

        1. Hey Beatnik, Ol’ Marty is best when he’s in Old El Paso getting gunned down, Hombre. He must know: “there’s many a man that’s lost his life tryin’ to make up lost time” those safety-wise words told by old engineers. There are old engineers and bold engineers but no old bold engineers, Bro.

  29. Since it’s Sunday, just weighed Firstborn’s farm Bibles.
    One, dated 1838, weighs in at 1kg 34g. This is printed in Danish in small gothic script.
    The other, date missing, weighs in at 2kg 45g, and is printed in an illegible heavy gothic script. The dates have been eaten by mice or bookworm, and the language is German. The damaged, handwritten flyleaf mentions Stuttgart.
    Both bound in (damaged & dry) leather.

    2. Ko-cho-line leather dressing is good for rehydrating leather. I use it on my saddles.

  30. Two yesterday, full house today. 14 wrong letters!
    Wordle 988 6/6

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  31. We considered ourselves lucky to get 5 today!
    Wordle 988 5/6

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    1. Wordle 988 4/6

      I was lucky.

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  33. Why do MPs feel under threat . We are more under threat than they are , in everyday spaces , when we shop or walk around , knowing that some drugged up nutter will cause chaos , as they do , even in small market towns and villages , festival or whatever .

    I had visited London pre Covid , I hadn’t been there for years . We had a family occasion when family members came down from their farms in N Yorkshire , niece and sister from SA , and we met up to celebrate a birthday .

    I was shocked , truly shocked by the smell of the streets , the diversity at Waterloo , and concrete blocks here there and everywhere .. The tube scared me to death , and I felt like a country bumpkin from another world .

    My niece and sister from SA were quite relaxed , but I know my sister was tearful because she visited Westminster Abbey to pay her respects and was appalled by the noise and frolicking of some ethnics in a Holy place .

    1. Not been to Londonistan for years, except for the airports, but I can well believe the difference between when we lived in Bow / Isle of Dogs, and now. Downtown Lagos comes to mind.

  34. Further to the earlier discussion on the Mental Ishoos and Shortcomings of the current Windsor bunch…

    Theodore Dalrymple
    It’s time to eliminate the concept of ‘mental health’
    2 March 2024, 6:30am

    The concept of mental health is a hypochondriac’s, narcissist’s, shirker’s and social security fraud’s charter: for who can prove that someone does not so feel depressed, anxious, or grief-stricken that he is unable to work? Who can distinguish between can’t, won’t and would rather not?

    Fragile mental health, and especially mental health issues, are said to be preventing large numbers of young Britons from working, with people in their early twenties now more likely to be out of work than people in their early forties as a result. One even hears people nowadays say that ‘I’ve got mental health’ – not meaning something positive but negative. Mental health means something bad, something incapacitating.

    Those with mental health issues, or just plain mental health, can get by economically without working. This is a powerful cause, I would guess, of considerable psychological unease, for even now most people do not like to feel useless to others. The frauds among them, of course, are delighted to be paid to do nothing, especially if they can supplement their income on the side.

    But the difference between the genuine cases and the fraudulent, insofar as the genuine cases really do experience wretchedness of one kind or another, is not absolutely categorical. If you play a part long enough, after all, it is what you become: habit changes character.

    What is mental health? The only definition I can think of is the absence of outright lunacy. Unfortunately, it has come to mean any deviance from a state of perfect equanimity and satisfaction. A long time ago, I noticed that the word ‘unhappy’ had disappeared from the everyday lexicon, in favour of the word ‘depressed’. For every person now who claims to be unhappy there are a thousand who say that they are depressed, and this is irrespective of the conditions that are making them so. When I used to say to depressed women that there would be something wrong with them if they were happy while their disgusting boyfriends were pulling them by the hair and banging their head on the floor, they would laugh, as if they knew all along that to complain of depression in such circumstances was absurd.

    But the semantic change from unhappiness to depression, in so many cases absurd and even laughable, is not without its deleterious effects. If you are unhappy, you seek the causes and, if you have what used to be called inner resources, confront them. (Unfortunately, there are circumstances, truly tragic, in which this is not possible.) But if you claim to be depressed, you pass the responsibility over to professionals who are expected to do something to or for you that will remove the depression as a diseased appendix is removed.

    This is fatuous and explains why expanding so called mental health services will always resemble an animal chasing its own tail. The supply creates its own demand. The psychiatrist Colin Brewer formulated a quasi-law: misery increases to meet the means available for its alleviation.

    I once calculated that if you look through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, 5th edition (in which British judges believe with all the fervour of a Latin American peasant praying to a miracle-working Virgin for the recovery of his pig) you would conclude that the average citizen in the western world suffered from two and a half mental disorders a year.

    Of course, there are fashions in diagnosis. A generation ago it was multiple personality – The Three Faces of Eve kind of thing – and the DSM 5 suggested that the prevalence might be as high as 1.5 per cent of the adult population, that is to say one in every 66 people. Multiple personality has since become very rare.

    These days it is gender dysphoria that is fashionable, with child gender-identity referrals increasing from 210 per year in 2011 to 5,000 per year in 2021. Either there must be something new in the water supply, or we are dealing with a socio-psychological epidemic.

    I do not deny that there is real madness or that physical illness may present with psychological symptomatology straight out of the DSM 5. Both the psychiatrist and the ordinary physician must be aware of this. But this overlap does not explain the vast increase in diagnosis of psychiatric disorders among the young. Nor do I deny that there are many reasons for the young to be dissatisfied or anxious about the future, from the instability of family life to the uncertainty of economic prospects. But no army of nurses, psychologists, therapists or doctors will improve matters: on the contrary, it will dig a pit from which it will be difficult for the young to escape.

    The ever-expanding gamut of psychiatric diagnosis encourages the belief that all departure from a desired state of mind is a medical condition susceptible to medical or some other technical solution. This results in a propensity to hypochondria of the mind, with people taking their mental temperatures, as it were, as hypochondriacs take their blood pressure. But it precludes honesty or genuine reflection and leads to the search for bogus cures of bogus diseases. A corollary is the neglect of those who genuinely require care, who drown in a sea of inflated need.

    There are ways to ameliorate the situation. The first is the complete abandonment of the concept of mental health. The second is the abandonment of the automatic legal equivalence of psychiatric disorder and physical illness.

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

    Demosthenes
    a day ago edited
    Excellent article. I would argue however that mental ill-health genuinely is increasing in prevalence, especially amongst young women with Borderline Personality Disorder. Not long ago, this was a relatively rare condition, psychiatrists might see it a few times in their careers, now the system is become overwhelmed by them. They invariably have some form of abuse or displacement during their formative years and their brains adapt accordingly, resulting in extreme emotional volatility and impulsivity, becoming a fixed part of who they are for the rest of their lives. There is no cure.

    Such patients are filling A&E departments and psychiatric units up and down the map; being admitted, discharged and readmitted in a merry-go-round of melancholia, soaking up what limited resources we have. The opportunity costs are astronomical. They also compose the vast majority of ‘Trans’ patients. Having often been excluded from social groups throughout their adolescence, they are drawn to anything which provides a sense of belonging and affiliation like moths to a flame. The wishy-washy psychology teams’ insistence that we pander to their pathology in using their preferred pronouns and names, even during private discussions amongst medical professions, I fear does them more harm than good.

    But these are just one of many issues I see day-to-day. There are also the young men who’ve heavily smoked weed for years on end, winding up on our wards with chronic schizophrenia. The middle-aged men who’ve been abandoned by their wives (and therefore children) to a mainstream culture that despises and belittles them, developing severe depression and suicidality as a result.

    Ultimately, I see all this as but flotsam and jetsam of the upstream destruction wrought by the sexual revolution in the 1960s. It’s remarkably rare we admit a patient raised by their biological mother and father in the same household. These are the exceptions – the rule is a story of broken homes, of step-mothers and step-fathers and step-siblings; of foster care and neglect and indescribable depredation. The vast majority of our patients are black and white, Muslims and Jews are massively underrepresented. It is no coincidence, I would suggest, that these demographics also have the lowest rates of single motherhood and divorce in the country; with communities who, for better or worse, will rally around in reflexive solidarity when one of their number faces adversity.

    For the native English population, this support was once provided by Christianity, ethnic pride, and above all, extended nuclear families. Yet all these psychological buttresses have been kicked away over the decades to leave nothing but the cold, perfunctory, and increasingly hostile embrace of the State.

    1. P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster referred to those with mental health issues as loonies and was warned by his Aunt Dahlia that Colney Hatch’s talent scouts were constantly on the lookout for new talent. In view of their more delicate sensibilities upper class loonies went to see Sir Roderick Glossop who euphemistically described himself a nerve specialist.

      The eponymous hero of Evelyn Waugh’s story, Mr Loveday’s Little Outing, is an inmate of an institution which is starkly called: The County Asylum For Mental Defectives.

    2. I follow an American doctor called Chris Palmer on Twitter, who is trying dietary treatment for mental health, and having quite a lot of success. Terrain theory.
      A lot of mental health, not just autism, can be tied up with gut health…which has been linked with vaccinations and antibiotics.

    3. In the days of the old mental hospitals, it was a stigma to be mad.
      And that included being “depressed”.
      We have now gone to the other extreme, and being mentally fragile in some way is now a badge of honour.
      Of course, quite coincidentally, the governments of that time did not throw taxpayers’ money at everyone who was feeling a bit down or fed up.

  35. VERY good piece (this Sunday) by Julie Burchill:

    It’s generally my morning habit to leap out of bed at 5am singing the Queen song ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, but on those rare mornings when I sleep in, nothing can be guaranteed to finally get me moving at 5.43am as surely as Radio 4’s Prayer For The Day. One of two things will happen; usually, some wet-wipe in a dog-collar will come out with a mouthful of woke platitudes and I’ll be so cross that I can’t keep still a moment longer. On a few occasions, though, I find the person speaking so affecting that it seems wicked to lie in bed for a moment longer when the Lord’s wonderful world is out there waiting to be experienced afresh. So either way, it gets me going.

    One reason our church lost its way is because it attracts mediocre men who want to ‘show off’

    I’ve noticed that the best religious speakers on Radio 4 tend to be disproportionately female; perhaps because women were allowed to be ordained only relatively recently, they are more thoughtful than male vicars, who can seem like the most awful shower of self-serving show-offs. I’m thinking, in particular, of Giles Fraser and even more of Richard Coles, the ex-pop singer from the Communards: the one who made even Jimi ‘Mr Potato Head’ Somerville seem sexy in comparison, which was no mean feat and maybe a miracle.

    Coles is a highly annoying wazzock who hung up his cassock so that he could spend more time with his media career, only to find himself on the wrong side of BBC radio’s long scythe last year; the one which picks off anyone over a certain age, even if they’ve spent decades contorting themselves to fit the prevailing fashionable stances. He declared himself ‘frustrated and sad’ at getting the old heave-ho, which pretty much sums up the way I’ve felt hearing his hollow, jolly voice on Saturday Live for the past twelve years. Bring back Ned Sherrin! (Yes, I know he’s dead, but it’s the principle of the thing.) Coles now juggles his ‘Canon Clement’ cosy-murder novel-writing career with the obligatory panel shows and podcasts – ‘The Rabbit Hole Detectives’ – and last year added a nationwide tour annoyingly called ‘Borderline National Trinket’. He must be coining it; camels and eyes of needles, anyone?

    In an interview with Buzz magazine, he talked about leaving the Church in an astonishingly offhand way. The Lord knows that I’m not the best Christian, but I do keep trying – and I do know that, if I had made a different choice about whether I wanted to be nice or nasty for a living when I was young, no way would I be so flippant about leaving the ministry in order to pursue a full-time gig as a gob-on-a-stick:

    ‘There wasn’t a defining moment that made me resign…part of it was being a vicar for 12 years and I had done everything I thought I could do. I didn’t want to go anywhere else, so it seemed the right time to make an exit…I don’t have to wake up on a Sunday morning and have to remember to do this and that. I do miss being a vicar and I love being in church and I loved being part of it, but I didn’t really enjoy the responsibility that came with it.’

    I understand this to mean that Coles enjoyed performing as a vicar, but not so much the actual religious stuff, the ‘responsibility’ that comes with attempting to act as some sort of interlocutor between a human being and the Almighty. Admittedly there is great responsibility involved in this position, but exactly what did Coles think it would be like?

    As I mentioned in my essay on Alastair Campbell, it appears that many people who pretend to be devoted to public service actually want to be in showbusiness; this is as true of vicars as of MPs.

    The CofE is addicted to the high that lecturing, hectoring and scolding produces in mediocre people

    Looking at Coles’ Wikipedia entry, there seems far more about his entertainment ‘journey’ than his spiritual one. He was a choirboy at his private school, and maybe this is where the confusion set in; perhaps he liked the sensation he got from showing off, and got it mixed up with being a believer. My heart sank with each new morsel of information; he appeared in a film called Revenge of the Teenage Perverts, has played Frank N Furter in a production of the Rocky Horror Show, hosted Countdown – and I can’t stress enough what a minuscule slice of his performing pie this is. He’s certainly got ‘nerve’: in the midst of all this, he was featured in a 2020 BBC show called Winter Walks in which he opined:

    ‘At the centre of what we do in order to be who we are, we need silence, we need retreat, we need contemplation’.

    This is like me saying: ‘In order to appreciate life fully, we must remain sober at all times.’

    ‘He took up religion in his late twenties’ also stood out for me, and though we do not know who penned these Wiki-words, they seem strange. Does one ‘take up’ religion? My own relationship with faith has been rocky and intermittent, but what has made it the most important thing in my life is partly the sense of being summoned, cell by cell. One ‘takes up’ macrame or pot-holing; one is raised up by faith. To be fair, Coles is aware of spreading himself too thinly:

    ‘I was once called in the middle of the night to attend a parishioner’s deathbed and I could not because I was in Glasgow doing Celebrity Antiques Road Trip’.

    But he still maintains that he has given up being a vicar because the Church of England is becoming less tolerant of homosexuality and moving in a ‘conservative and fundamentalist’ direction rather than having to choose between faith and fame.

    There are many words I would use to describe our poor desiccated Anglican church, but ‘conservative and fundamentalist’ are not two of them. I’d venture instead ‘weak’ and ‘totally out of touch with the people it should be serving.’ One reason our church has lost its way – and its congregations – is because it attracts mediocre middle-class men who are looking for a way in which to perform, to ‘show off’ as Coles himself says of his showbiz career. A congregation is a captive audience for an hour or so – but they can, and do, vote with their feet, and the falling away in church attendance numbers over the past century has been woeful.

    This is largely because the working-class have been turning their backs on the CofE the way they have turned it on the BBC, or ‘the BBC of E’ as my husband calls the greedy two-headed beast.

    Only last year, the CofE commissioned a report which found that the few existing working-class vicars were ‘deeply alienated from a church culture that favours and naturalises middle-class ways’ frequently encountering ‘disapproval and lack of sensitivity towards cultural difference…a culture of privilege amongst many of its ordained representatives who often benefit from elite educations…clergy identifying as working-class often find themselves socially and culturally at odds with the church environment’.

    Christianity is now the most persecuted religion in the world

    As the Guardian put it recently, ‘The Church of England is being urged to nurture a new generation of working-class clergy and lay leaders amid concerns about an ‘upper-middle-class culture’. The paper reported that the CofE’s ruling body, the General Synod, which met in London this week, would be urged to ‘increase its presence on social housing estates and other economically marginalised communities, and to encourage people from working-class backgrounds to take on leadership roles.’

    Good luck with that. Like the BBC – which also keeps promising not to treat the white working-class like a cross between children and brutes, failing repeatedly to achieve this most basic of aims – the CofE is addicted to the high that lecturing, hectoring and scolding produces in mediocre people. Both bodies probably believe that anyone who hasn’t been to ‘uni’ is a half-wit and shouldn’t have been allowed to vote on Brexit, and that the people I come from are racist xenophobes because they don’t believe in open borders, being the social group who suffer the most from social resources being shared out recklessly.

    They’d rather get the thrill of ‘converting’ Muslims, like the acid-thrower Abdul Ezedi, than listen to the concerns of the indigenous people as to how the presence of such people affects their native culture, or stand up for their Christian brothers and sisters being butchered abroad. Christianity is now the most persecuted religion in the world, but you’d never think it to hear the silence of the Anglican bishops. They also seem quiet on the topic of the police harassment of Christian street preachers or the young gospel singer Harmonie London, by a force who actively protect protestors screeching about jihad on the streets of London. It’s interesting, by the way, that black-majority churches are flourishing in this country, having none of the doubt that has done so much to make the CofE so moribund.

    Bringing me back to what I said about women in religion at the start, the antithesis of the BBC of E is the Reverend Mina Smallman, the Church of England’s first black female archdeacon, for Southend in Essex, from 2013 to 2016. Sometimes, but not often, you can hear her on Radio 4; she is astonishingly good, in every sense of the word. After a life of service, the Rev. Smallman was forced into the spotlight when her daughters Nicole and Bibaa were murdered by a Satanist in 2020; as if this wasn’t enough, it was revealed that the two Met policemen who were supposed to be guarding the scene of the crime took ‘selfies’ of themselves and posted the results to their WhatsApp groups accompanied with messages such as ‘living the Wembley dream…unfortunately I’m sat next to two dead birds full of stab wounds’.

    Last year on a Radio 4 debate on the relationship between the public and the police, the Rev. Smallman rejected every invitation she was given to speak in a racially divisive manner; boldly stating that the white working-class also suffers from police brutality, bringing up the grooming gangs as the prime example of this and pointing out that the police demonised the raped and trafficked white children involved, rather than take on their exploiters. This exceptional woman walked the walk, too; when asked to mentor ethnic-minority students, she accepted only on the condition that she would also mentor white working-class boys; the most likely group to fail in education.

    But she has retired now, and the church is ruled by mediocre middle-class men. ‘Male, pale and stale’ is not a phrase I like – but it is proving to be the ruin of the CofE. John Sentamu is gone to the House of Lords; you couldn’t have an Archbishop of York these days who, as an African, spoke movingly of his adopted country and criticised multiculturalism thus – ‘Let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains’ – let alone accuse the BBC of being cowardly about criticising Islam, as he did in 2006.

    Michael Nazir-Ali, born in Pakistan to a father who converted from Islam, was once the Bishop of Rochester. Now he has turned to the Catholic Church, after his criticism of Islam – ‘There can never be sufficient appeasement and new demands will continue to be made’ – made him a target for all kinds of cry-bullies, from the Muslim Council of Britain to Nick Clegg. Quite a few Anglican priests have crossed the floor to Rome, including my excellent friend Gavin Ashenden. Once the Queen’s Chaplain, Ashenden resigned in 2017 after criticising a service in a Scottish cathedral at which a Muslim read a passage from the Koran which opined that Jesus is not the son of God.

    What’s left? Not a lot. In the middle of Lent, it’s probably not the best ‘optics’ that the current Archbishop of Canterbury has been found flogging ‘Holy Week Retreats’ at Canterbury Cathedral for £950 a pop in the lead-up to Easter. It’s as though the holiest place in England in the holiest week is some sort of Godforsaken ‘wellness’ beano, with possible ‘opportunities to interact’ with the Big Man himself; no, not the Lord – Justin Welby.

    No wonder Prudence Dailey, a General Synod member, told the Daily Mail:

    ‘A sumptuous three-course dinner and a Holy Week retreat do not go together. I can’t get my head around the type of person who would want to do those two things at the same time. It is not what Holy Week is about.’

    What a shame the Rev. Richard Coles has retired from the cloth – they could have offered paid-for meet-and-greets with him. Tawdry and empty, yes: but totally appropriate for a church in which the glory of Protestantism enlightenment has been replaced by little more than progressive entitlement.

    1. I was just about to post that. As soon as I saw the photograph at the head of the article I knew it would be right up your street and one of your faves.

      https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/GettyImages-840260380.jpg
      Reverend Richard Coles on Strictly Come Dancing

      And this…

      https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/GettyImages-1240045801-2.jpg
      The Archbishop of Canterbury has been flogging ‘Holy Week Retreats’ at Canterbury Cathedral for £950 a pop

      1. Thank you for ruining my morning. I had deliberately omitted the unspeakable photographs…{:¬))

      2. Thank you for ruining my morning. I had deliberately omitted the unspeakable photographs…{:¬))

    2. Great article – it all needs saying, over and over again until the church leadership gets it!

      I physically cringed at this sentence, “‘I was once called in the middle of the night to attend a parishioner’s deathbed and I could not because I was in Glasgow doing Celebrity Antiques Road Trip’.”
      The man should never have been a vicar at all.

    3. I don’t know if it is significant but both Richard Coles and Chris Bryant, two of the most unpleasant men you see on television or in the House of Commons, are both homosexuals who resigned from being Anglican priests.

      1. I do not think their sexual orientation has anything to do with it. I know several obnoxious, self-obsessed and wholly unchristian hetero “priests”.
        PS I sent you an e-mail last night.

        1. Yes, thank you.

          We have been playing the game of translating English idioms into French for some time with our students. For example: les genoux de l’abeille and les moustaches du chat.

    4. Ouch! What a great article from Julie.

      The vicars on the Irreverend podcast are excellent on the demise of the CoE while doing their best to uphold the actual (former) values of the Church. Exactly the opposite of Coles. Here’s the link to Friday’s episode. They are on Rumbl and possibly You Tube too I think. The show starts off with a bit of religion and then they go on a reassuringly sensible rant about what’s wrong with the world. Excellent stuff.

      https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/irreverend-faith-and-current-affairs/id1528967755?i=1000647673849

      We once had to read one of Coles’ books for book club. It was only the fact I’d borrowed it from the Library that stopped me throwing the damn thing at the wall.

      1. Firstborn’s Godfather was a C of E Vicar – he used to say he was the only one that still believed in God. Now retired in disgust (other villages are available).

    5. The worst speakers, preachers and celebrants I’ve had the misfortune to have inflicted on me have all been women.

  36. One advantage of living in the middle of nowhere is that IF one sees a police car, the driver is lost!

    1. Last time we saw a police car here it had parked in our drive – they were at the wrong house!! Not very reassuring.

  37. Soldiers harmed by anti-malaria drug launch landmark legal claim against MoD
    More than 450 claimants seeking compensation after suffering from anxiety, nightmares, depression, hallucinations and suicidal thoughts

    Veterans and military personnel who suffered debilitating side-effects from the controversial anti-malarial drug Lariam have launched a groundbreaking legal battle against the Ministry of Defence.

    Ten lead cases have been listed for trial at the High Court in March next year after hundreds who were given the drug sufferred from anxiety, nightmares, depression, hallucinations and suicidal thoughts.

    The case is set to be one of the most significant class actions against a government department in recent years, with more than 450 claimants suing the MoD.

    Legal sources say the overall compensation bill for a class action of this type would be in excess of £20 million.

    The veterans’ lawyers have received over 9,000 enquiries from service personnel and veterans who have fallen ill as a result of Lariam.

    However, many are time-barred as a result of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 which introduced an absolute maximum of 6 years to bring a civil claim over events that happened overseas.

    Hilary Meredith-Beckham, chair of Hilary Meredith Solicitors, said: “Soon after Lariam was brought to international markets in the late 1980s, users began to experience shocking side-effects. Yet over the coming decades, as the drug became implicated in ever-increasing acts of unexplained violence, homicide and suicide, the MoD continued to give Lariam to thousands of unsuspecting troops deployed to some of the world’s most dangerous places. Our clients have suffered appalling side-effects.”

    Lariam, developed by clandestine US military research programmes, was given to British servicemen and women from 1991, but lawyers for the veterans claim that warnings about the drug’s side-effects were raised from when the British Army began to trial it among troops.

    At least 17,368 British personnel were prescribed Lariam at least once between April 2007 and the end of March 2015.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/02/larium-drug-ministry-of-defence-court-side-effects-sue-sold/

    1. I remember Lariam; I had some very odd dreams and threw the [expletive deleted] things away!

    2. In the Malayan jungle we were forced to take ‘Ugly Pills’ each morning. I can’t remember what they were called but we referred to them as Ugly Pills because the least taste of them made your mouth twist and your face grimace. When in base camp we were paraded and given them individually. If you didn’t make enough noise and gesticulations you had to take another one.

  42. Twitt video, sorry. It shows Rishi Sunak coming out of 10 Downing St and standing behind one of those painted figures with a hole for the face that people get their photo taken with at the seaside.
    The floodgates of ridicule have burst wide open for Rishi… there is a host of Roland Rat memes too…he will struggle to be elected to anything now…oh, sorry he never was elected anyway…
    https://twitter.com/CharlotteEmmaUK/status/1764079033468289440

  43. Lovely day now. It was a bit parky this morning though!

    Just on the way back from an 8 mile walk down East Clandon way, filling in the bits of the North Downs Way (Pilgrims’ Way) that we haven’t done yet. We try to do something every Sunday morning but don’t like to be out tool long because of the dog.

      1. No he can barely do 100 yards let alone 8 miles! Beside me on the beanbag on the floor.

        1. What about taking him in a buggy? One of my friends does that because the dog is old but doesn’t like to be left behind.

          2. I don’t know if your dog will take to it (Charlie wouldn’t have it at any price!) but if he does, you can all go together.

    3. Donald Trump, 77, confuses Biden with Barack Obama AGAIN at Virginia rally – marking the third time he’s made the same gaffe in the last six months
      Donald Trump has confused Biden with Obama again in a rally speech
      It is the third time the 77-year-old has made this mistake in less than six months
      He spoke in Virginia, telling crowds, ‘Putin has so little respect for Obama’

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13150789/Donald-Trump-77-confuses-Biden-Barack-Obama-Virginia-rally-marking-time-hes-gaffe-six-months.html

      Does it occur to his detractors that he might be doing this deliberately?

      1. Maybe Putin does have little respect for O’barmy. The rest of us do. But what does Vlad think about Biden?

        1. Obviously I didn’t make it clear enough.

          Biden is controlled by the Obama team behind the scenes.
          Trump refers to Obama instead of Biden on purpose, to make that very point.

          Because Trump is doing so, but somewhat too subtly for the Democrat loving MSM, the Trump haters are pretending it is no different from Biden’s confusion.

          If Trump’s detractors stopped to think they might realise that this is Trump’s way of telling the people that Biden isn’t in charge, he’s a puppet whose strings are being pulled.

  45. We must keep using cash – if only to stop the banks snooping on us

    Wherever we turn, people, institutions and governments want to know our personal details – it has to end

    WILLIAM SITWELL
    3 March 2024 • 10:00am

    Announcing a new exhibition on the future of money this week (who could resist a journey through the history of payment systems?), the Bank of England released news that the total value of notes in circulation is up nearly 16 per cent.

    Jennifer Adam, the curator of the Bank of England Museum, said: “For all that many people are using more digital payments, many people may be using cash as a means to manage their day-to-day spending.” And she added: “It’s much easier to keep track of your finances if you’re physically handing over cash in shops.”

    Officials at the bank also attribute this spike in cash to “the turmoil caused by the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis”. Which I’m sure is true. But there’s another reason. We’re sick of Big Brother, the state via its tentacles of officialdom grabbing our data. But it’s not just Big Brother. There’s Little Brother and Baby Brother and every other Motherf***er Brother stalking us at every turn demanding our data.

    Councils – apparently going bust up and down the country – are less interested in collecting bins than data. Phone the bank and before they even have the chance to say: “No you can’t have a poxy £500 overdraft”, you must hand over your email, phone number, date of birth, address, postcode and mother’s maiden name. And, of course, you need to do that more than once during the course of the call, an endless interrogation, first by robots, then humans. “But I’ve already told the robot my mother’s maiden name,” met with zero sympathy. You must reveal it again.

    And such bots and such humans have no old-school courtesy. Don’t they know it’s rude to ask a lady her age? Not when you’ve laboured for 30 minutes to get through to someone to ask if they’ve dispatched your new debit card.

    A friend recently staying near Ripon in North Yorkshire decided it might be nice to visit Fountains Abbey. As well as the ancient abbey, there was the appeal of the water gardens and the spring snowdrops. But, the fools, when they arrived it was made clear that the fee to gain entry was nearly equivalent to a year’s membership so, considering future family days out, repaired to an office to sign up for 12 months of National Trust roaming.

    Except they couldn’t just pay some money and give a name. The office demanded an address, an email, a date of birth and two telephone numbers. And, ironically, the form one has to fill in attempts to reassure you that “your privacy is important to us”. What they actually mean is “your data is important to us”.

    My pal, sensing a family riot if he didn’t acquiesce, handed over his personal details but then felt soiled, even as he contemplated the vaulted ceilings, grand columns and vast tower of the Abbey ruins.

    Wherever we turn, people, institutions and governments want our data. The Chinese insist upon it when we sign up to TikTok, the water companies want it when you call them up to say you’ve got a leaky pipe.

    Thus we revert to cash, to stop the Brothers from following our every move (“We note you bought of copy of the Daily Mail yesterday, before hiring a Santander bicycle from Chelsea to Paddington, purchasing a return ticket to the West Country during which train ride you bought a black coffee and an item of ‘confectionary’ – perhaps you’d be so kind as to elucidate on that, based on your previous spending habits we suggest it was a chocolate brownie – bought a set of Muji pens on Amazon and then at Exeter took a taxi, mileage, based on the fare, around 11 miles, but destination as yet unknown.”).

    And when we use that cash we feel guilty. I often find myself these days asking: “Is cash OK?”. Like I’m Ronnie Biggs, on the run from the boys in blue. “Hiding a little from the tax man are we?” we imagine the shopkeeper saying.

    But the resurgence of cash is to those of us data fugitives a reassuring message that we are not alone. The first Facebook generation soon realised it was an error placing photos of themselves getting sloshed on a public form so that future bosses could check the veracity of their claim to love nothing more than a quiet night in front of the telly. Now perhaps Millennials will begin to see that having a bank watch their every move makes the convenience of buying everything on a phone a little less attractive.

    I think I’ll swing by the Bank of England and take a look at this exhibition. Surely that’s one place where they have to accept cash.

    2. When the cost of not answering your call outweigh the cost of answering it service will improve. If every organisation were informed – customers can bill you for their time – those long, pointless IVR would disappear.

      Imagine calling your ISP and being stuck on hold for 20-30 minutes. Then you send them a bill for the £20 of your time they’ve cost you. It’d sharpen their mind to say ‘we’re really very busy’ to ‘we aren’t hiring more staff because that costs us money, so we’re just making you wait to use the depleted few we have left.’

      Oh, they’d try to hike their prices but that’d be swiftly stamped on as more people just send them bills until the cost of paying for poor service drove them out of business.

    3. “Our” NHS will grab the information. It’s there on till receipts and there is a reason why loyalty cards offer rewards based on your shopping history. All this loverly information is there to be trawled through.
      If your GP (hollow laugh) sees that you enjoy butter, cream, red meat or whatever today’s later health scam might be, you will be denied the necessary treatment on the basis that you brought the condition on yourself.
      That information will also be available to insurance companies and any other organisations that can use it against you.

  46. Patrick O’Flynn
    Can the Tories avoid oblivion?
    2 March 2024, 6:30am

    Another day, another terrible poll for the Tories – the latest YouGov survey records support for the parties at Labour 46 per cent, Conservative 20 per cent, Reform 14 per cent, Lib Dem 7 per cent, Green 7 per cent. So far, so normal for our beleaguered governing party – even if Reform has nudged up another point to its record-ever showing. Six points between the Cons and Reform looks to me like the sort of margin that could be wiped out altogether were Nigel Farage to take the helm of the challenger party.

    The Labour lead and vote share is so commanding that the current response of many Tory MPs – just to grimly await a career-terminating encounter with the British electorate and to start ‘putting out feelers’ for alternative employment – would seem quite logical. However, if you dig down into the tables of data, there is another reading of this poll. If you keep in those people who told YouGov they didn’t know who they’d vote for, or who said they wouldn’t vote, or refused to answer, you see the following raw percentages: Labour 32 per cent, Conservative 14 per cent, Reform 10 per cent, Lib Dem 5 per cent, Green 5 per cent, SNP 2 per cent, ‘Other’ 1 per cent, ‘Won’t vote‘ 12 per cent, ‘Don’t know’ 17 per cent, ‘Refuse to say’ 3 per cent.

    This yields two instant surprises. First, Labour’s score is low. Secondly, that the Tory percentage score and lead over Reform is even more parlous than the published adjusted figures would have led one to expect. To me, the raw data seems consistent with another hypothesis: Labour really hasn’t sealed the deal with the electorate, and the vast majority of voters potentially available to the Tories but not currently in their column are to be found on their right flank.

    It is thought by many pollsters that the relatively high combined figure for don’t knows and won’t votes in the electorate at the moment is likely to contain a disproportionate number of 2019 Tory voters. If Labour and the other left-wing parties have failed to draw in such voters by now, after all the travails of the government, it must be fairly unlikely they will succeed in doing so before polling day. And it seems equally unlikely that these voters are currently estranged from the Tories because they consider Rishi Sunak too right-wing.

    It’s far more likely that Sunak has disappointed them by being too centrist – failing to grasp the negative impacts of international human rights and asylum regimes, and the rise of the kind of ‘hate marches’ Suella Braverman warned about. Sacking Braverman and bringing David Cameron and a phalanx of his acolytes into the Cabinet sent out another unappealing signal to alienated right-wing voters. And so did withdrawing the party whip from Lee Anderson a week or so ago.

    Other opinion research tells us that excessive immigration of all kinds is rated one of the top political issues by 2019 Tory voters and yet Sunak has shredded his credibility in this area by presiding over even greater volumes than Boris Johnson did before him. If we also take the view that the Reform score, while impressive, remains for now soft and tentative – something giving added credence by it flopping in the Rochdale by-election – then does this not point to there still being a pathway to a very competitive election showing available to the Conservatives?

    To take it they would need to be led into the election by someone with credibility in the eyes of right-wing voters. By taking a strategic decision to lurch in a centrist direction after his poor party conference performance, Sunak ruled himself out of being such a leader. But other candidates are available. The polling data does point to the Tories marching to a landslide defeat. It also hints that things need not turn out that way.

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

    MarkNowland
    a day ago
    As a former Conservative voter, I hope they lose their deposit in every seat. I want to see the party destroyed forever. They are truly evil. Decent people have been conned for decades into voting for a party that does the polar opposite of what they promise they will do. And after yesterdays speech by the microweasel, they’ll be keeping us safe by focussing their efforts on the imaginary far right. What this tells me is that they’re not going to do a single thing about the real threat, instead inventing an imaginary one to tackle which will, of course, take the few freedoms we have left. Anyone with any association with the Conservative Party is a pathetic coward and traitor – you are part of the problem.

    Sunak and co don’t deserve another chance, they deserve the gallows.

    AA_Bill MarkNowland
    16 hours ago
    I will repeat what I posted to ‘RogueBroker’ a few minutes ago:

    If only you knew how spot on your comment is.
    Just over twenty years ago I worked in a specialist intelligence unit where we were all vetted to the highest level. We came from various organisations. One of our number, a Met SB officer, was recalled back to the Met to set up and run a department focusing on “Far Right” extremism.
    A few months later I was walking along The Embankment to attend a meeting at Thames House (name dropping there but to show you the level we were) when I bumped into him with a couple of members of his new team.
    On asking how it was going he launched into an expletive laden tirade. The gist of it being that the whole thing was a complete and utter waste of time, set up to keep the left wing of the Labour Party happy (then the government). It had been pressure on the Met from Mr. BLiar to look into this so called danger to the UK. Sure there were things like the National Front which had been well and truly penetrated, but they posed no real threat. What few examples that they had found were the underpant basement dwellers furiously tapping out world domination threats on the Internet.
    In short there was no evidence to substantiate the far left’s hysteria that there was a “Far Right” mob lurking round every corner. The only example bandied around has proved to be the mentally disturbed individual who killed Jo Cox.
    My poor colleague felt that he had been trapped in a career killing back water, which it was.
    In all the stuff that came across my desk I never once saw anything remotely connected to a “Far Right” organisation or Blofeld type character

    Lewis
    a day ago
    Sunak’s dissembling speech yesterday in which he included the mythical “far right” among the vermin who hate this nation and seek its downfall, was a contemptible performance by this feeble imitation of a prime minister. He’s incapable of understanding the state we’re in, let alone gripping it.

    We’re at a dead end. The political system is worn out and there is no party able to effect repairs, or start again from scratch.

    2. And from the shadow steps forward the NWO, one world global government. Right on cue.

    3. For “alienated right-wing voters” read “the sort of people who used to vote Conservative and who feel totally betrayed”

    4. Even the National Front is left-wing… as are all extreme organisations.

    5. Sunak *does* understand the state the country is in. He engineered it, after all. He was installed to ensure the nation was never a threat to the globalist cause. His every action since as been solely for that end goal.

      After all, why else has every single decision been the exact opposite of the one it should have been?

  47. I gather that a singer/songwriter by the name of Raye has won a clutch of prizes at the Brit music awards. I’d never heard of her – although, at my age, that’s not unusual. She was lauded for defeating the odds, having been shunned by the music industry and self-financing the release of her first album. It is said to be a personal statement containing lyrics about her struggles and experiences.

    Good for her, I thought, but then I heard a small snippet of her work. My first impressions were of plaintive bleating and emoting as she tickled the piano keys, but little evidence of melody or anything remotely memorable. I suspect the awards were more for her difficult ‘journey’ and determination rather than any likelihood of enduring success or broad public appeal, although I gather her songs have been recorded by others achieving some prior recognition for her.

    2. I sometimes scan the daily mail luvvie awards articles. It is not just the recipients of awards that I haven’t heard of, there’s a whole generation of names that I have been ignorant about. I suppose that they are entertainers but it could equally be the guest list at a dog show.

    4. Thank your for listening so we don’t have to.
      That is above and beyond the call of duty; even to NOTTL.
      p.s. I’d never heard of her either. Must ask the founts of all knowledge (aka grandchildren).

  48. Looking at the Telegraph’s front page is a study in irrelevance these days. We see some twit saying that Telegraph readers are urging tax increases to please the electorate, a matter on which Jeremy Hunt overcomes his manifold asinine pronouncements at least to observe that tax payers have reached their limits. The air of breezy business and pointless gossip as usual has a slightly desperate air, – as well it might have. Rochdale has of course pretty much vanished….

    We are finally seeing a red glow away upwind, – the anger that, once it builds, as it surely will, will give us the cleansing of our public life in what I expect to be a very uncomfortable period for us all. Calling opposition right-wing extremism will no longer wash when that comes from the unelected entitled and parasitic class who presume to govern our people.

    1. “Jeremy Hunt Goes to war’ on ‘immoral’ Whitehall waste”.

      “I’d prefer to be Nigel Lawson but I need to be prudent like Gordon Brown” says Jeremy Hunt ahead of Budget.

      1. It’s a bit late but … better late than never I suppose.
      2. Never noticed Brown being prudent – certainly not when he buggered up the best pension plans the U.K. used to have.

      1. ”
        I’d prefer to be Nigel Lawson”. Is that a death wish? Lord Lawson, R.I.P.

      2. Calling Brown prudent is like calling the Niagara falls a tiny stream. He was a profiligate waster.

    2. Yet we do, urgently need tax cuts. More, we need spending cuts. We need to remind the state, via a short, sharp kick in the gonads that it is servant, not master. That endless law it is passing must be repealed and that the invasion of this country – of the woke, Left and foreign must end.

      Once one kick is given, we keep going until practically every bone is broken.

    1. I wrote to the Bishop of Birmingham complaining about that yesterday. After it appeared on Twitt, the main advert appears to have been pulled off the recruitment page, but there were still links to it elsewhere.

  50. RELEASED!

    Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story
    RECIPE FOR THE PERFECT CUPPA…

    Experts tell us that the best way to make a perfect cup of tea is to agitate the bag.
    So, every morning I shout,

    ‘Two sugars, fat arse!’

          1. Not quite – still v rocky on my pins but they appear to have found the cause (Tamsulosin for extended prostate but they don’t know what to replace it with). Pf ft NHS, particularity NHS Scotland. Bloody useless.

  51. Here’s Nigel! No, not that one. This is the Prof who dared to suggest that the British Empire wasn’t all bad and had the Guardianistas frothing at the mouth. This should have the same effect.

    Israel’s founding was complex and messy – but it certainly wasn’t imperialist

    Opponents of the Jewish state smear it as a colonial project. This is a false narrative and fake history

    NIGEL BIGGAR • 2 March 2024 • 7:00pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5a6cc7c7eb682cca56acb5b63070007e1c996906ad91a1c44cd558e78eaa74e4.jpg
    The British Mandate: General Edmund Allenby, Arthur Balfour and Herbert Samuel, 1st High Commissioner of Palestine, Jerusalem in 1925

    Cameraman to trio: “Oi! Just got of bed ‘ave yer? Look at the camera, straighten your ties – and find yerselves a decent tailor.”
    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    The “decolonisation” story is a moral melodrama, performed in stark divisions: black versus white, oppressed versus oppressor, good versus evil. That’s the comic-book source of its recruiting appeal, exciting the desire of mortal humans to plug their little lives into a grander narrative where they play righteous crusaders crushing underfoot unrighteous infidels.

    It’s also the spiritual source of the decolonisers’ unscrupulousness. For, what does utter evil deserve except utter destruction? By this reasoning, what do MPs who refuse to vote for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza deserve except the intimidation of their families and death threats?

    The sinister logic was laid bare last October by University of Kent lecturer, Dr Shahd Hammouri, who, the day after Hamas’s atrocious attack on Israel, asserted online that “resistance by the Palestinian people by all means available … is a legitimate act”.

    Two months later, on Al Jazeera, she invoked Israel’s “settler colonialism” in justification: “Israel is a colonising power and the Palestinians the colonised indigenous population.”

    That’s the simplistic melodrama. Here’s the complicated truth. Before 1914, Jewish corporations bought Palestinian land from Arab landlords to settle thousands of Zionist immigrants fleeing Russian pogroms.

    The immigrants preferred building their settlements with fellow Zionists. Accordingly, they let go of Arab tenants they’d inherited. Naturally, the Arabs resented this. Their displacement was legal, but since was bound to excite racial antagonism, it was also tragic. Whatever our evaluation, this was no “invasion”.

    In 1917 the British government made the Balfour Declaration, pledging to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, without prejudice to “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”. A major motive was sympathy for the Zionist story of an exiled people yearning to return home.

    It’s widely believed that the declaration betrayed a promise made in 1915 to Hussein, sharif of Mecca, that Britain would establish an Arab state encompassing Palestine. But there was no betrayal. The British established two Arab states, Jordan and Iraq. And, as Elie Kedourie argued in his book In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth (1976), they hadn’t promised to include Palestine.

    After the First World War, the League of Nations mandated Britain to administer Palestine with the aim of building an independent state and a Jewish homeland out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. What kind of “national home” remained undetermined.

    During the Mandate’s quarter of a century, the British tried a variety of permutations to satisfy both Jew and Arab – a semi-autonomous Jewish province in an Arab state, a Jewish state in an Arab federation, and a bi-national state. However, they had underestimated the difficulty of constructing a viable polity out of cultures as divergent as those of European Jews and Levantine Arabs.

    No option proved mutually acceptable. British frustration was memorably expressed by Ronald Storrs, governor of Jerusalem, when he wrote in his 1939 Orientations: “Two hours of Arab grievance drive me into the Synagogue, while after an intensive course of Zionist propaganda I am prepared to embrace Islam.”

    Arab frustration had burst into violence in 1920, when the “Nebi Musa” riots left five Jews dead and 216 wounded. Further riots followed, culminating in the Arab Revolt of 1936-9. While the immediate motive was anti-Zionist, it wasn’t untainted by historic anti-Semitism.

    One instigator of the 1920 riots, who became the leader of Arab resistance, Haj Amin al-Husseini, ended up in Nazi Germany in 1938, where, as the far-Left Israeli historian Ilan Pappe charitably puts it, he “confused the distinction between Judaism and Zionism”.

    Responding to Arab grievances, the British considered restricting Jewish immigration in 1930, but decided against it out of sympathy for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. When they did impose limits in 1939, the extremist Zionist terrorist group, Lehi, sought an alliance with Hitler to oust them.

    Exasperated by their failure to broker a compromise and subject to increasing violence, the British unilaterally withdrew from Palestine in February 1947. In November, the United Nations voted to create two states, one Jewish, the other Arab. At that point, Jews occupied only ten per cent of the territory.

    However, when invading Arab armies failed to crush the nascent Israel in 1948-9, some 750,000 Arabs fled Palestine, abandoning their land. Some reckon half were deliberately expelled. Similarly, Arab troops occupying Jerusalem forced Jews out and a further 900,000 were driven from Arab countries, most seeking refuge in Israel.

    That’s the whole, messy truth about the founding of the State of Israel. It involved victims and villains on both sides, and a lot of human tragedy. The cartoonish “decolonisation” narrative doesn’t begin to do justice to the past and authorises unrestrained, even genocidal, violence in the present.

    So, whether driven by what Kedourie called “the canker of imaginary guilt” or merely by the desire to look good in the eyes of peers, those who are busy “decolonising” our universities, schools, museums, and media need to wake up. They’re spreading poison.

    Nigel Biggar is Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/02/israels-founding-was-complex-and-messy-but-not-imperialist/

    2. “Two hours of Arab grievance drive me into the Synagogue, while after an
      intensive course of Zionist propaganda I am prepared to embrace Islam.”
      ^^^This^^^
      A pox on both their houses

    3. The middle chap looks as though he ought to be leaning over the sty to see how the Empress of Blandings is getting on?

    4. One factor which is never mentioned in this debate is that the Balfour Declaration could not have foreseen the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust.

  52. Of course they do. And Torygraph readers respond in like kind with two digits raised in the direction of the Beeb.

    Does the BBC hate Telegraph readers? Let’s have intelligent radio back

    The mindset and attitudes that attract people to our brand of quality journalism is repellent now to the whole Corporation

    SIMON HEFFER
    3 March 2024 • 9:00am

    My colleague Ben Lawrence wrote in Thursday’s Telegraph about the ‘infantilising’ of Radio 3’s audience, the ditching of two intelligent speech programmes, the blurring of the line between classical and popular music, and the retreat from anything resembling intellectualism or elitism. This has been happening for months, with Radio 3 imitating Classic FM, treating the highest form of music as aural wallpaper.

    I don’t blame Sam Jackson, Radio 3’s controller: I fear he is only obeying orders from the cynical fools who run the BBC, and whose hatred for anything requiring a thinking audience must be smelled to be believed.

    Ben’s article was headlined “Why does Radio 3 hate your mum?”, implying the network’s apparent distaste for a generation (of which I am part) whose interests tended to be more demanding – and who have as much right to be catered for as any group of licence-payers.

    It would have been more accurate to ask, however, “Why does the BBC hate Telegraph readers?” Because the mindset and attitudes that attract people to our brand of quality journalism is repellent now to the whole Corporation.

    One only has to hear any news bulletin, or watch any drama programme, to be bombarded with assumptions held by a bullying minority – itself, hypocritically, a self-determined elite – and by the contempt they feel for those who disagree with them and their constant adoption of the latest insane variant of identity politics.

    The technological possibilities of the internet mean one can listen to classical music stations from around the world that treat people as intelligent, and do not push a patronising agenda.

    The time is surely right for others to re-create what we used to call the Third Programme, and to stop insulting our mums.

    2. We’ve got intelligent radio. Nowadays it’s called the Delingpod, Irreverend, Bald Explorer, Ahmed Malik Podcast etc.
      Move over BBC, your successors are already here.

    1. In the film of ‘The Entertainer’ Laurence Olivier played the part of Archie Rice, the music hall entertainer, and he was asked how he was so successful at playing the part of an entertainer who was very good but not quite good enough to be successful.

      He replied that as he was not a professional music hall entertainer he did his very best to do the acts as well as he possibly could.

  55. Last night a reception was scheduled in Toronto to follow on from talks* between the emporer and Giorgia Meloni. The reception had to be cancelled because a mob of pro hamas demonstrators had surrounded the venue and causing problems.

    Looks good on Trudeau, he has invited the world’s dregs in and the authorities resolutely do nothing to stop the weekly riots.

    * Talks! Meloni flew all the way from Rome so that they could agree that there will be discussions about agreeing a framework for negotiating an agreement for cooperation between the two countries.

    1. What with the online harms bill i think they can now. If ‘they’ so much as think you are going to say something against the narrative you will be under house arrest without any access to media or internet.

      1. Afternoon Phizzee. The Spectators new comments section starts tomorrow. It will be wordpress so we will not be able to access it without signing up. This would require, like the Telegraph, giving your real name. All this is in aid of making sure that Ofcom can prosecute you as an individual for anything you write.

      2. It is the latest flailing of a failed, obsolete entity desperate to control something rapidly getting away from it.

    2. See, thing is, the state can. All very well having an opinion, but if the state disagrees with it it will send you to jail.

  57. In a huge development and absolute smoking gun revelation, the government of Germany has confirmed the authenticity of a leaked audio recording file published by Russia’s state-backed RT. The leak was first published by RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, who described that she received it from Russian security officials.

    It first appeared under the headline “Alleged audio of German officers discussing Crimean Bridge attack leaked” – as it featured top ranking Germany military officials in a private discussion of “a potential German operation to bomb the Crimean Bridge in Russia,” as it was initially described by RT. Russian media is now openly admitting that the call was in fact intercepted by Russia. Moscow is now saying this shows “direct” German involvement in the war.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN_nGgzx8NA

    1. For the German top brass to be discussing strategy on an unsecured channel suggests to me they wanted the discussion made public.

    2. This absolutely stinks of a set-up. The history of the third world war is being written – “Germany started it!”

      Note the timing of this release, the week after the Munich security conference at which there were peace demonstrations. How much bigger those would have been if this had been known!

    1. I listened to this last night and I have to take exception to some of his remarks in which he equated the threat from Islamism with the ‘far-right’. He spoke of the marches calling for a cease fire in Gaza in an approbatory way – and it is perfectly reasonable to call for one – yet appeared to miss the point that while many of the marchers were good-hearted but soft-headed (or simply ill-informed tossers), far too many were using the right to protest as cover to promote something unspeakable.

      1. There is a worrying trend for “our side” to back the Arabs against Israel, because, like…well…Soros and the Rothschilds. As if either gave a damn about their fellow Jews or in any way represent the Zionist aspiration to nationhood. These people equate Zionist with Globalist, which is irrational, as is trusting the Arabs just because they share the same perceived enemy.

        1. “These people equate Zionist with Globalist, which is irrational…”

          Some may remember the Talk Radio programme a while back in which a presenter objected to the use of ‘globalist’ as it invoked, in her opinion, the old Jewish money prejudice. It is entirely permissible to be very wary of much global financial (and political) activity, even if it does involve some people of Jewish descent, without being guilty of that idea, one which informed so much political opinion for so long, especially the Labour Party at its inception: “Big money is bad, big money is Jewish, therefore Jews are bad.”

      3. Agree William. There is no far right threat. It’s a fiction to give the left cover for its abhorrent behaviour.

    2. I listened to this last night and I have to take exception to some of his remarks in which he equated the threat from Islamism with the ‘far-right’. He spoke of the marches calling for a cease fire in Gaza in an approbatory way – and it is perfectly reasonable to call for one – yet appeared to miss the point that while many of the marchers were good-hearted but soft-headed (or simply ill-informed tossers), far too many were using the right to protest as cover to promote something unspeakable.

  59. Not a pleasant read today I’m afraid, so please don’t if you think it may upset you:

    M.V. Doggerbank.
    Type: Motor merchant
    Tonnage 5,154 tons
    Completed 1926 – Harland & Wolff Ltd, Govan, Glasgow
    Owner Kriegsmarine
    Homeport
    Date of attack 3 Mar 1943 Nationality: German

    Fate Sunk by U-43 (Hans-Joachim Schwantke)
    Position 29° 10’N, 34° 10’W – Grid DF 9329
    Complement 365 (364 dead and 1 survivor).
    Convoy
    Route Yokohama (17 Dec) – Kobe – Saigon – Singapur – Jakarta (10 Jan) – France
    Cargo 7000 tons of rubber, fats and fish oil and other raw materials
    History Completed in April 1926 as British Speybank for Andrew Weir & Co, London.

    On 31 Jan 1941, the Speybank was captured by the German raider Atlantis (Kpt.z.S. Bernhard Rogge) in the Indian Ocean. A prize crew led by Paul Schneidewind brought the ship to Bordeaux on 10 May. Taken over by the Kriegsmarine and converted to the auxiliary minelayer Doggerbank (Schiff 53) (KptLt Paul Schneidewind). In January 1942 the ship left France, laid mines off South Africa in March/April 1942 and then proceeded to Japan.
    Notes on event
    At 21.53 hours on 3 March 1943, U-43 (Hans-Joachim Schwantke) fired a spread of three torpedoes at steamer of the Dunedin Star type, which sank in two minutes after being hit by all three torpedoes. But it later became clear that they had by mistake sunk the blockade runner Doggerbank (KptLt Paul Schneidewind), which was several days ahead of her scheduled arrival.

    On board were many crew members of the German supply tanker Uckermark and the raider Thor which had been destroyed in an accident in Yokohama, Japan on 30th November 1942. The U-boat had observed that five lifeboats were launched and even tried to question some of the survivors, but it was impossible to understand them because they could not get closer due to the darkness and left. One of the boats was found by the Spanish motor tanker Campoamor on 29th March, but only one man was still alive, taken aboard and brought to Aruba. Fritz Kürt later reported that there had been 15 survivors in his boat but only six managed to get aboard again when it capsized, including the master. They were in a desperate situation without water and food and Schneidewind committed suicide after shooting four of his crew at their explicit request.

    Type IX U-Boat U-43 was sunk on 30th July 1943 in the North Atlantic south-west of the Azores by a Fido homing torpedo from an Avenger aircraft (VC-29 USN/T-13), assisted by a Wildcat aircraft (VC-29 USN/F-2), of the US escort carrier USS Santee. 55 dead (all hands lost).

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/dt/doggerbank.jpg

    2. How awful for Schneidewind. Kudos that he did as requested. Not an uplifting story.

      1. An indication of just how bitter the struggle was, both sides fighting an implacable enemy and the sea.

        1. The latest book off my bookshelf of unread books is “Bosman at his best” published in 1965 and which I bought when I was In South Africa in 1995. Short stories, told from an Afrikaner perspective, often with. Boer War theme. (Herman Charles Bosman was 1905 – 1955 I think).

          The tragedy of the Boer War. Makes you think. Tough times.

          Wish I’d read it sooner!!

        2. The latest book off my bookshelf of unread books is “Bosman at his best” published in 1965 and which I bought when I was In South Africa in 1995. Short stories, told from an Afrikaner perspective, often with. Boer War theme. (Herman Charles Bosman was 1905 – 1955 I think).

          The tragedy of the Boer War. Makes you think. Tough times.

          Wish I’d read it sooner!!

        3. The latest book off my bookshelf of unread books is “Bosman at his best” published in 1965 and which I bought when I was In South Africa in 1995. Short stories, told from an Afrikaner perspective, often with. Boer War theme. (Herman Charles Bosman was 1905 – 1955 I think).

          The tragedy of the Boer War. Makes you think. Tough times.

          Wish I’d read it sooner!!

  60. Some flowers taken over the last couple of years;

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4a30fdb193efc706c29b11df846bba7b98e57737844ceac1cbd059e38faf7fd4.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c813f30ed25140bbbb5b4ce804b20e6cd6b301da73d3891b28f78c8ca591f264.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e4c4b2c3d360a43374e9b74b417f1a6f6d3718fc691be7a23299c3f80d603689.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/05794e87bbf030d47dfd512a23cfed1d1beaee0cebf661fddbfd99e37059634d.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d679f89d12b973e274d1fc19b0accdd188351969a87ebe60ef7a21379cdd09ff.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3fb6b69f5aa6e01bc8a4aeffb4488aab5c4123d11f8f8abb6144c2beb4448573.jpg

      1. It’s a camellia. I was rabbiting on about them a few days ago because I don’t see them around here and I think they are one of the most beautiful springtime shrubs that there is.

  62. Had to look at the map of the year to confirm it wasn’t 1st April – it wasn’t apparently but I’m still not sure….

    “She earns six figures looking after the money of chief executives and bankers – but this is not your average financial adviser.
    Harper Thornhill, known professionally as Countess Diamond, is a “financial dominatrix”, catering to the growing number of people, the vast majority men, who pay for the thrill of having someone else take complete control of their money.
    While the language is the same – restrained but consenting adults are “submissives” – the services offered by Diamond and others go beyond whips and chains. Often these dominatrix, sometimes called findoms, work entirely online or over the phone and may never even meet their clients, let alone touch them.
    The professional dominatrix from Bristol, a married mother-of-two, aims for complete financial control. She orders her submissives, sometimes called slaves, to hand over access to their bank accounts, restricts their spending, controls their financial decisions and takes a healthy cut. It may sound risky, but Diamond, 35, says it’s where the thrill lies.

    “The people I work with get a rush from losing money, or the thought of it”, she says, “they’re turned on by the idea of giving over everything they have knowing I’m going to take a big chunk of it.”

    Submissives, often referred to as paypigs, ATMs and finsubs, send them significant sums of money, buy them gifts or completely surrender their finances. The clients willingly sign up for the experience and as with the usual dominant/submissive dynamic, the sexual thrill comes from relinquishing control to the dominatrix. But in findom, the power-play is all acted out through money – and it’s getting more popular.

    I think I could do that – so if any one is anxious to lose total control of their dosh please let me know….

    1. DT BTL comment:

      Watkyn Bassett

      It’s just like being married, but without the tea & slippers.

      2. A chum of mine lives completely alone. He has a wide circle of friends but is unmarried, no girlfriend, no children. Alongside the monotony of simply living, what with cooking, cleaning, shopping, hoovering – during lockdown he sort of stopped. It was several days between washing, let alone changed his bedlinen or even cooked.

        Sometimes I wonder if having someone ‘just take over’ for him wouldn’t be so bad.

        1. If that someone was a capable housekeeper offering practical assistance, yes. But not just taking his money.

          2. HMM. Are you a capable housekeeper? Care to come and look after a one bedroom flat that needs a tender touch?

    6. I manage our day to day spending on food and bills. The warqueen does our investing and savings. I don’t know how well that’s going beyond ‘we have some’.

      The idea of giving away all financial responsibliity is probably quite liberating if you’re alone and doing everything for yourself.

      1. I believe it’s true to say that you have earned the sobriquet of ‘Pushy’ so only a hop, skip and and a swish to Dominatrix! 😉

    8. I have heard it all now. They keep publishing this kind of decadent claptrap to wear people down.

    9. I understand that kind of thing has been going on for a long time – not exactly news.

    1. This is moronic. Every single one of these must go, permanently. I don’t care where. The taxi from France must stop.

      Whatever reason the state gives out to continue this invasion must be confronted and that’s going to mean the reams of EU law be removed.

      1. Nah, just that yellow stuff that passes for communion wine these days. Looks like piss but one dutifully offers the Blood of Christ and it still tastes like the cheap port of old, which I did once spill, leaving a red stain on a white blouse. Very embarrassing.

        1. It’s been a long time since I took Communion.
          I’m a bad person, I guess.
          The wine then was a dark, heavy, highly alcoholic red port type.

          1. I don’t think not taking Communion makes you a bad person as long as you live your life by Christian principles. It would be different if you were an axe murderer 🙂

        2. Our communion wine is deep red. I’ve only once had yellow wine (on Epiphany when we went to Ellesmere College for the ceremony in their chapel).

    4. The foresight comment takes me back to the winter of 62-63.
      The husband of a work colleague commuted to the City everyday. To keep warm, he wore pair of interlock bloomers over his pants.
      Janet spent the entire cold snap worrying far more about him having an accident and his underwear being exposed to public gaze than she ever did about frozen pipes or impassable roads.

      1. Jockeys wear women’s tights under their britches for warmth without weight. If they have a fall and are taken to hospital …

      1. While working at Faslane on commissioning systems, I had to work with a team of divers. I soon learned that “flippers” are known as fins.

  66. Just posted this on Going Postal:-

    Picked up on this Conservative Home article on the old page and made a BTL Comment:-

    Our survey. Almost two-thirds of party members oppose Sunak’s suspension of Anderson.
    https://conservativehome.com/2024/03/03/our-survey-almost-two-thirds-of-party-members-oppose-sunaks-suspension-of-anderson/

    Those in the Labour Party screeching about Lee Anderson’s “ISLAMOPHOBIA!!!” are doing so in the same way as they used to screech “RACISM!!!” at anyone trying to raise the matter of the Pakistani Muslim Rape Gangs and for the same purpose, to silence legitimate debate and to protect & placate their core Muslim vote.

    We owe Mr. Anderson a sincere vote of thanks for bringing the debate that Labour want to shut down to the fore.

  68. Should you ever pop over this side of the pond about Mayish then a visit to Exbury Gardens in the New Forest is a must.

  69. Russia suffers bloodiest month of war. 3 March 2024.

    The Kremlin’s forces have pushed back Ukrainian soldiers and captured a string of towns and villages around the two-year anniversary of the war.

    But the gains came at a cost of some 29,000 men killed or wounded in February alone. On Sunday Russian soldiers were thought to be closing in on their next target: the town of Chasov Yar, near to Bakhmut.

    I don’t usually comment on these numbers because there is no possible way of checking them. Still it was only last week that Zelensky said Ukarine had suffered only 31,000 casualties over the two years of the War and yet we have here the UK Intelligence Services telling us that the Russians have lost 29,000 in one month. It is obvious that one (or perhaps both) of these calculations must be a complete fantasy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/03/russia-bloodiest-month-february-ukraine-war/

    1. I would like to know what the ECHR thinks about Ukrainian men being dragged off the streets and sent to the Front. Do i hear a pin drop?

    1. Afternoon Oberst. I think that on reflection the loss of Christianity has been the death blow to Western Civilisation. It was the moral spine. Without it the rest has been proved useless.

      1. Indeed.
        The savages are outside the gates, hammering to be let in. There isn’t much time left to save civilisation – but it’s not over yet, there are awakenings now. However, the battles will not be pleasant. Let us hope that Right prevails.

        1. Outside the gate? You are optimistic, the savages are already within the gates and attacking our culture from the inside.

        2. I think the CofE is doomed. The sermon this morning blamed Maggie Thatcher for the ills of society!

          1. Why do the daft buggers get into politics? Are there not enough Biblical stories to preach around? No wonder the Church is in decline – like the WEF, but with surplices.

          2. If they were going to blame a politician, Blair was the obvious choice. He really is evil.

      2. Christian or not, the Christian ethos has been behind how we have behaved for generations.

        As you say, taking away that foundation leaves us adrift with no guiding principles.

    2. Sighs – Janet and John Bible and unrecognisable liturgy.

      And I don’t need some overweight dinner lady talk about “cattul”

      1. It turned out that way after a promising beginning, I’m afraid.
        The choir was lovely to listen to.

  72. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/03/jk-rowling-happened-again-man-accused-filming-female-toilet/

    “JK Rowling says ‘it happened again’ as man caught filming in toilets identifies as woman

    Kurtis Mawson, 22, who carried out secret recordings in a public convenience, told police he considered himself female

    3 March 2024 • 1:46pm

    A man who was accused of secretly filming women in a female lavatory told police he identifies as a woman as he was arrested, with JK Rowling telling followers: “It’s happened again.”

    The author shared news of the conviction on social media, writing: “That thing only evil, nasty bigots claim happens, and that never, ever happens, has happened. Again.”

    The author shared a link on X to a report of the sentencing of Kurtis Mawson, 22, who secretly filmed women in a public toilet and sexually assaulted a tourist on Durham city bridge.

    The court heard how Mawson was still inside the toilet cubicle when police arrived.

    When an officer asked if anybody was in there, the perpetrator allegedly put on a high-pitched voice and answered “Yeah”.

    The prosecutor said: “When challenged with what he is doing in a women’s toilet he said: ‘Just chilling’. He then said he was there as he identified as female.”

    Kurtis Mawson pleaded guilty to sexual assault on a female and voyeurism

    Kurtis Mawson pleaded guilty to sexual assault on a female and voyeurism Credit: Durham Constabulary

    Rowling posted a series of comments on X stressing that women and girls should not have to “surrender” bathrooms to the very small number of “trans identified males” who she alleged pose a “proven danger” to them.

    She wrote: “It is possible to want trans people to be safe and happy while recognising that there are risks to women and girls in eradicating single sex spaces. Women and girls are being pressured to surrender their hard-won rights to a group that poses a proven danger to them.”

    Last year, an Edinburgh judge gave an eight-year prison sentence to transgender rapist Isla Bryson, 31, who committed the offences while still living as a man. Bryson only began living as a woman after being charged with rape.

    Bryson only began living as a woman after being charged with rape.

    Rowling added that: “Telling women and girls they must accept increased risk to themselves to appease male feelings is the very definition of the patriarchy you claim to stand against.

    “Vulnerable women are paying the price for a fashionable fallacy that has serious, real world consequences.”

    Mawson pleaded guilty to sexual assault on a female, voyeurism, three counts of making indecent photographs of a child and possessing an extreme pornographic image.

    He also admitted breaching a sexual risk order and failing to comply with the sexual offender register.”

      1. With the way that every meal, scene and everything else is posed to social media, I am surprised that toilet memories are not posted.

        Here we are in the khasi at Maccy Ds and look at this great big floater that I have just dumped

    2. Bloody hell, my mother’s maiden name was Mawson!
      Hope the tw@’s not a relative!

  74. This is why we have defunded the RNLI.
    If it was clear that any fool trying to cross the Channel in an undersized boat would likely end up feeding the fishes and not be picked up, maybe incidents like this would not be happening, and a small girl would not now be lying on a marble slab, with her lungs full of seawater. Poor wee lass.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68461794

    1. And what bastards the authorities are, by encouraging this:

      It was one of several incidents, with a total of 249 people rescued throughout the day.

    2. Actually, I am working hard not to cry about this wee lassie. Wish I hadn’t read that article.

      1. Some years back, our sub-aqua club (and us) had a sponsored swim along the Ouse, from around Clapham (Beds) to Bedford to collect for the RNLI. Now, no more. They should never have got into the illegal-refugee taxi business; if they want to save people, they should have been towed back to France.

        1. Notice how, contrary to common usage these days, there isn’t a single black in their begging adverts.

        1. My cousin and his wife, who live in Swanage, sent me an RNLI Christmas card this year. It featured two yellow wellies with the initials RN LI. I was shocked, I almost gagged. If they were virtue signalling it was lost on me.

    4. Prediction:
      “Those who oppose the setting-up of a safe route for these poor refugees now have the death of of a 7-year-old girl on their consciences,”
      said Keir Starmer in an interview on BBC Radio 4.

  75. A National Bogey Five!

    Wordle 988 5/6
    🟨🟨⬜🟨🟨
    🟩🟩⬜🟨🟩
    🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. I managed one worse.

      Wordle 988 6/6

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

    2. 4 today.

      Wordle 988 4/6

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

      Could have been any one of 6 penultimate letters.

        2. Nonsense, lacoste. “Verstanden” is 10 letters long; for Wordle you only need 5. Lol.

    3. Showing how much luck is involved…

      Wordle 988 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. Boring par four.

      Wordle 988 4/6

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

  76. Just in from an hour and a half in the garden. Ground still sodden – but useful time spent gathering kindling. There was no wind – for a change. We have been badly buffeted recently. It was a joy to watch Gus going about his rounds.

    Bright sunset at horizon level.

    Soon time for a once a week drinky-poo (Lent…I am supporting the MR in her abstention),

  77. Well I think at long last I have applied the final coat to the new plaster of my Far Right kitchen.

      3. Swastika has deep meaning to Hindus – of a spiritual type, not fascist type.

        1. Which is what Baden-Powell knew and therefore adopted as a symbol for his Boy Scouts, until Mr Hitler’s shenanigans (and attacks on Boy Scouts as a result) forced him to withdraw it as a Boy Scouts emblem.

        1. Nigel (the elephant in the room)
          Said goodbye to the circus
          Off he went to support trumpety Trump
          Trump Trump Trump

          The head of the Reform was calling from far far away
          They bet one night in the silver light
          On Reform to pave the way….

          Edit alternative last line

          On Reform to save the day…..
          (With Apols to Mandy Miller)

          1. She only recorded that song to prove that she wasn’t deaf. You are too young to remember the film…

      1. It also starred Jack Hawkins way back when he could talk, before his throat cancer necessitated other actors to imitate his voice for him.

  79. I was lying abut the sunset. The clouds have gone and the sun is now lighting the whole of the western sky.

      1. Don’t. After an absence of a few months, Rattus norvegicus has returned to the back garden.

        I think the two quite young specimens I’ve seen, have discovered last year’s rat poison. For the first time ever, one of the blighters managed to climb the feeding station as far as the drinking bowl. The poison causes dehydration…

  81. And as the sky turns redder and redder – it reminds me that it is time for a glass of red wine!

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain

    2. Lovely!
      Firstborn has one as a resto project – the body has been welded, it’s now time for the running gear, engine, interior and paint!

      1. Annoyingly, when we bought the van (it was yer traditional barn find), the ventilator “hat” was on, but we didn’t check that it was fixed. When we got the van home, it was gone – it had bounced off during the journey on the trailer. Bugger. New one available through MiniSport, but even so… :-((

    3. Early production – it has a smooth roof, not a ridged roof. Likely about 1962.
      Lovely looking van. I’d give it a hug any day!

      1. I had a later version. I had to clear out several bags of rotting farming detritus, but it scrubbed up well. Mine had the roof vent.

        This was but one of several vans bought to cart around disco equipment for “Northern Lights” disco, which evolved from the church youth club and the venture scouts.

  84. Evening all!

    Lovely sunny day today and we’ve been out and about – this morning the table tennis tournament where I was running the raffle; this afternoon the Music Society concert – a very talented Chinese flautist and Japanese pianist who met at the Royal College of Music. Very enjoyable concert. Dinner is cooking now.

    The battery on my car wouldn’t charge yesterday in spite of being on charge for over eight hours so it’s dead as a dodo and I will have to get a replacement.

      1. They’ve now closed in Stroud and Tesco Express is there instead. Several people today recommended Clarkes, a local firm.

        1. Very similar price at your local supplier/garage, and you help support local business.

        2. Hi Jools. Bugger Halfords: they’re rip-off merchants. Find a local motor factor.

          Euro Car Parts is but one of those.

          Sadly, modern car batteries have a long life, but when they die… they die completely and suddenly.

          For future reference, friend Dianne is currently on an extended 3 month holiday in the far East. Her car is in the garage, and hooked up to a trickle charger / battery conditioner. It worked last year. Hopefully this year will be a repeat…

          1. Not sure how old mine was – but a few weeks without being used has finished it off. I’ll ring the local firm – Clarkes, who are only just down the road.

  85. The Horner texting saga goes on.
    Now it appears that Max Verstappen’s father Jos ‘has told friends his son will LEAVE Red Bull if he has to – with Mercedes a potential destination’ – amid feud with Christian Horner.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/formulaone/article-13151665/Max-Verstappen-LEAVE-Red-Bull-father-Jos-Christian-Horner-Mercedes.html

    I would be delighted if it happened today and he actually did go to Mercedes because it would possibly show whether it really is the driver rather than the car, if the Reb Bull second and third choice drivers continued to dominate F1 for the rest of the season.
    It would be even better if George Russell moved from Mercedes to Red Bull in his place and proceeded to win the championship.

    1. When the law is this debased it is just state thuggery.

      The obvious solution is to castrate, brand his forehead and then flog him.

  88. 38four229 +up ticks,

    I’d prefer to be Nigel Lawson but I need to be prudent like Gordon Brown, says Jeremy Hunt ahead of Budget

    I just knew it, he’s coming out,

    Prudence like gordy…

    1. Only Jeremy Hunt could utter the words “prudent like Gordon Brown” with a straight face

        1. I had someone point out to be that Brown actually ran a budget surplus, but that was only because he’d hammered the pension funds to do so.

    2. We all know that Prudence is, beneath the prim exterior, a bit of a trollop, who needs to have 24/7 chaperoning to stay out of trouble and avoid scandalising the whole neighbourhood.

  89. Lovely lunch at the Ivy in St Albans.
    And a pint in the Boot by the clock tower after.
    5 hours in total. An early night approaches.
    Night all.

  91. Interesting discussion on GB News just now, about how pro-Hamas the Irish are.

    2. That attitude dates back to (at least) the sack of Constantinople by
      Roman Catholic Crusaders in 1204. The effect was to fatally weaken Christendom in the East. Roman Catholicism, Islam and socialism share something in common. Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism and Judaism form another team.

  92. Evening, all. Here at a more reasonable time today! It’s been sunny, but very cold and a sharp frost overnight. We had such a hailstorm last night that I doubt I’ll get much fruit on the golden gage (the blossom was out and now is mainly on the ground – it looks as though it’s been snowing).

    I have absolutely no faith in Sunak. His idea of extremism is probably ordinary people expressing mainstream opinions.

  93. They really are Nucking Futs……

    Finnish broadcaster Yle reported Thursday that the government has given the OK for Ukrainian forces to use Finnish weaponry to mount attacks on Russian territory.

    Soon after the 2022 Russian invasion, Finland began joining other European countries on sending defense aid to Kiev, and has thus far sent an estimated nearly $2 billion worth of arms packages.

    Chair of the Finnish parliamentary defense committee, told Yle that “Ukraine has the right to use these [Finnish] weapons against military targets also on Russian soil.”

    However, “A key condition for Western military aid to Ukraine is the commitment to avoid using it on Russian soil,” the publication also said. Finish officials have explained that thus far they have abided by that stipulation in respect of the desires of other Western allies.

    Fine until a commander goes rogue and says: “Bugger this for a game of soldiers lets select a Russian target…..”

  94. Robert Wilkinson
    @robertwlk
    My GP says I have insomnia.
    I asked if it was serious.
    He said ,” there’s no need for any alarm.”

  95. Just had dinner – roast lamb, roast spuds, carrots, cauli & leek. Preceded by smoked salmon & prawns. first dinner I’ve cooked for weeks!

    2. Nice! Proper dinner on Sunday evening.
      Hope you had some good wine to go with it.

        1. I had a veggie stir fry yesterday (sweet and sour). No wine as it was a Lenten fast day. Had a no alcohol lager instead.

      2. I do like lamb – haven’t had any for weeks. I don’t think they do lamb in Kenya though the food was good.

    4. I did chicken breasts with onion, garlic, red pepper, olives and lemon.
      Served with fried potatoes & veg. left over from Thursday, mushrooms and the cauliflower cheese I didn’t put into the oven early enough to have yesterday.

    1. 384229+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      If the WEF put the block on cabbages then parliament will lie fallow.

    2. So bringing food the 100ft from my veg plot to the house causes “climate change” but transporting it hundreds of miles doesn’t? I thought we were all supposed to go vegetarian as well. Clearly the lunatics are in charge of the asylum.

      1. Conway, imagine if you will, all those spade, fork and rake wielding gardeners generating all that carbon dioxide by doing healthy exercise are a problem for the World. It is, of course, highly debatable now that we know science has become ‘The Science’ demanded by the so-called philanthropists who fund so much of today’s research.

        Next up for the ‘nutters’, banning sports or maybe even restricting all physical exercise to one day a week?

        1. Well they restricted exercise to 1 hour a day during the Covid scam so that’s just a tweak. Mind you, will they find people (particularly Nottlers) will be so compliant next time.

    3. The World Economic Forum did not advocate for the criminalization of home cultivation of food

      Claim: The World Economic Forum (WEF) has proposed the criminalization of home cultivation of food.

      Fact: While there is a University of Michigan study indicating that fruits and vegetables cultivated in urban farms and gardens typically exhibit a carbon footprint six times larger than conventionally grown produce, there is no evidence of the World Economic Forum endorsing this study or advocating for governments to criminalize the cultivation of personal food. They have categorically refuted the claim. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.

      https://factly.in/no-the-world-economic-forum-did-not-advocate-for-the-criminalization-of-home-cultivation-of-food/

      1. This is from the World Economic Forum’s own website.

        Urban Gardening & Circular Economy

        Urban gardening, urban horticulture, or urban agriculture is the process of growing plants of all types in an urban environment/space. It is not only a sustainable method to grow your own ‘healthy food’, but also it is an innovative approach towards environmentally friendly urban lifestyle. Urban gardening also helps to make the city green and promote the city to become self-sufficient with the food supply.

        The plants that are grown under urban gardening concept are not only limited to fruits and vegetables, but flowers or any other plants can also be considered as well. The plants can be grown with the intention of using them for your own self-consumption and satisfaction or with the aim of selling them at your local farmer’s market or even giving them for free for the people in need. However, urban gardening is not limited to individuals/residents. Local institutes, organizations, and companies can also play a major role by using their available land or even helping to establish community gardens for groups of people from the community.

        Urban gardening is not only about the plants but is also a nice hobby to keep yourself occupied. It also helps to connect/socialize with like-minded people and assist your local communities by providing organic fresh food.

        The Global Shapers Freiburg Hub is aiming at implementing this project with the following goals:

        ➔ Promote urban gardening among interested individuals and provide them with the necessary resources to start things off

        ➔ Connect people who are already urban gardeners with other people who are interested

        ➔ Create well-defined channels for the distribution of the harvest. (i.e. How can we bring the product from the gardener to the people in need? Farmer’s market? Sell to shops?)

        ➔ Use local farmers for seedlings (connect the community with the farmers)

        ➔ Promote the reuse of products for gardening (ex. – yoghurt containers, boxers, clothes etc.)

        https://www.weforum.org/projects/urban-gardening-circular-economy/

      2. 384320+ up ticks,

        Morning DW,

        More to the point, my personal input was concerning the mandatory purchase of allotments for NEW BRIT
        accommodation.

        The political overseers,WEF riddled, are certainly running an anti farming campaign,. taking out 20 percent of food producing farmland to grow trees & flowers, ( you can only eat so many daffs).

      1. We often get them across the sky only ever in that direction, I have seen them in a straight line but twirled like an old-fashioned telephone cord, two or three parallel lines of them. It must be something to do with the way the wind drifts and eddies across the Chilterns.

  100. The writer is only really off-target in his reference to Sunak. Islam is winning by force of numbers and confidence. It has no need for violence while the UK establishment deludes itself and looks the other way.

    Galloway’s election may be a precursor to darker days yet

    It is not just Jews who need to be worried. Our whole society is threatened by today’s zealots

    JAKE WALLIS SIMONS • 2 March 2024 • 4:38pm

    I told you so. Normally those words carry an air of triumph, but today there is only despair. My book, Israelophobia, was published on September 7, exactly a month before our great struggle began.

    It warned that the resting spirit of Jew-hate had been roused. To blame was Islamism, reimagined as anti-colonialism; American identity politics, selecting Black Power over the wisdom of Martin Luther King; Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda, which coined slurs like “Zionism is racism”; and the afterlife of Nazi dogma in the Middle East.

    My book argued that this ideology had gripped our social elites and Islamic radicals, who were bent on imposing it on the rest of us. It showed how the oldest bigotry, which had inhabited religious fervour in the Middle Ages and racial pseudo-science in the 20th century, had found a new Trojan horse on which is pinned a Palestinian flag.

    And so to the election of George Galloway, which is emblematic of the radicalism that is now flaunted on our streets. Here is a man who has branded Bradford an “Israel-free zone”, appeared regularly on the propaganda channels of Russia and Iran and refused to debate a student who was a dual Israeli citizen, while posing as a tribune of the working classes.

    Here is a man – let us not forget – who appeared to salute Saddam Hussein for his “indefatigability”. Here is a man who was pictured embracing the Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh. And this man has been rewarded with a seat in the parliament five months after October 7.

    Perhaps this should come as no surprise. The latest figures show that the largest surge in anti-Semitic incidents last year occurred in the days following the Hamas atrocities, before Israel had even fired a shot on Gaza.

    On Friday, Rishi Sunak described the Rochdale election as “beyond alarming”. Galloway, he added, “dismisses the horror of what happened on October 7, glorifies Hezbollah and is endorsed by Nick Griffin, the racist former leader of the BNP”.

    For Jews, that speech eased the tightening of the chest a fraction. At least the Prime Minister understood. Two days earlier, I had joined 1,300 diners in applauding his speech pledging extra funding to the Community Security Trust, the organisation that protects our schools and synagogues.

    But how much longer will Sunak remain in Number 10? How much longer will the civil service fail to implement Sir William Shawcross’s Prevent reforms? And how much longer will Sir Keir Starmer hold firm against Labour’s Hamas fan club? The rabble from Rochdale is rising and genocidal slogans fall across Big Ben.

    Buoyed by the by-election results, Chris Williamson, the deputy leader of Galloway’s self-styled “Workers Party of Britain” and a fellow broadcaster on Iranian and Russian propaganda outlets, gave an interview to Radio 4. In it, he failed to disavow Nick Griffin’s endorsement of his party and defended Hamas sadism as “armed resistance”.

    He even voiced the conspiracy theory that “most of the people who were killed – the innocent people who were killed on October 7 – were killed actually by Israeli forces”. On an already shameful day, this display of swivel-eyed crankism on the Today programme dragged our politics, our national broadcaster and indeed the country into the mud. Is this the new normal? And is the new normal a staging post to something darker?

    Israelophobia activists form just one brigade of a twilight army. Other battalions are devoted to divisive positions on race, gender, empire, slavery, the environment and capitalism. This “new radicalism”, as I now call it – the situation is too grave for terms that can be dismissed as provocative – is not a problem only for Jews. It is weakening us from within under the eyes of Putin, Xi and the Ayatollahs. They are coming for us all.

    Jake Wallis Simons is editor of The Jewish Chronicle

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/02/galloways-election-may-be-a-precursor-to-darker-days-yet/

  101. The writer is only really off-target in his reference to Sunak. Islam is winning by force of numbers and confidence. It has no need for violence while the UK establishment deludes itself and looks the other way.

    Galloway’s election may be a precursor to darker days yet

    It is not just Jews who need to be worried. Our whole society is threatened by today’s zealots

    JAKE WALLIS SIMONS • 2 March 2024 • 4:38pm

    I told you so. Normally those words carry an air of triumph, but today there is only despair. My book, Israelophobia, was published on September 7, exactly a month before our great struggle began.

    It warned that the resting spirit of Jew-hate had been roused. To blame was Islamism, reimagined as anti-colonialism; American identity politics, selecting Black Power over the wisdom of Martin Luther King; Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda, which coined slurs like “Zionism is racism”; and the afterlife of Nazi dogma in the Middle East.

    My book argued that this ideology had gripped our social elites and Islamic radicals, who were bent on imposing it on the rest of us. It showed how the oldest bigotry, which had inhabited religious fervour in the Middle Ages and racial pseudo-science in the 20th century, had found a new Trojan horse on which is pinned a Palestinian flag.

    And so to the election of George Galloway, which is emblematic of the radicalism that is now flaunted on our streets. Here is a man who has branded Bradford an “Israel-free zone”, appeared regularly on the propaganda channels of Russia and Iran and refused to debate a student who was a dual Israeli citizen, while posing as a tribune of the working classes.

    Here is a man – let us not forget – who appeared to salute Saddam Hussein for his “indefatigability”. Here is a man who was pictured embracing the Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh. And this man has been rewarded with a seat in the parliament five months after October 7.

    Perhaps this should come as no surprise. The latest figures show that the largest surge in anti-Semitic incidents last year occurred in the days following the Hamas atrocities, before Israel had even fired a shot on Gaza.

    On Friday, Rishi Sunak described the Rochdale election as “beyond alarming”. Galloway, he added, “dismisses the horror of what happened on October 7, glorifies Hezbollah and is endorsed by Nick Griffin, the racist former leader of the BNP”.

    For Jews, that speech eased the tightening of the chest a fraction. At least the Prime Minister understood. Two days earlier, I had joined 1,300 diners in applauding his speech pledging extra funding to the Community Security Trust, the organisation that protects our schools and synagogues.

    But how much longer will Sunak remain in Number 10? How much longer will the civil service fail to implement Sir William Shawcross’s Prevent reforms? And how much longer will Sir Keir Starmer hold firm against Labour’s Hamas fan club? The rabble from Rochdale is rising and genocidal slogans fall across Big Ben.

    Buoyed by the by-election results, Chris Williamson, the deputy leader of Galloway’s self-styled “Workers Party of Britain” and a fellow broadcaster on Iranian and Russian propaganda outlets, gave an interview to Radio 4. In it, he failed to disavow Nick Griffin’s endorsement of his party and defended Hamas sadism as “armed resistance”.

    He even voiced the conspiracy theory that “most of the people who were killed – the innocent people who were killed on October 7 – were killed actually by Israeli forces”. On an already shameful day, this display of swivel-eyed crankism on the Today programme dragged our politics, our national broadcaster and indeed the country into the mud. Is this the new normal? And is the new normal a staging post to something darker?

    Israelophobia activists form just one brigade of a twilight army. Other battalions are devoted to divisive positions on race, gender, empire, slavery, the environment and capitalism. This “new radicalism”, as I now call it – the situation is too grave for terms that can be dismissed as provocative – is not a problem only for Jews. It is weakening us from within under the eyes of Putin, Xi and the Ayatollahs. They are coming for us all.

    Jake Wallis Simons is editor of The Jewish Chronicle

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/02/galloways-election-may-be-a-precursor-to-darker-days-yet/

    1. Sunak understood? I doubt it. If he had really understood he’d have cracked down on islam and its adherents. We wouldn’t need an organisation to protect Jewish schools and synagogues if we hadn’t been taken over.

  103. Well, chums, the day is over, so I will now head for bed and wish you all a good night’s sleep. See you all tomorrow.

        1. Will do. He’s snuggled up on Oscar’s fleecy bed waiting to go to bed properly.

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