Sunday 3 November: Kemi Badenoch must unite the Right to save Britain from a second Labour term

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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724 thoughts on “Sunday 3 November: Kemi Badenoch must unite the Right to save Britain from a second Labour term”

  2. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe page. No joy with Wordle today.

    Wordle 1,233 X/6

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    1. Too many options!
      Wordle 1,233 6/6

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  3. Good Morning Geoff and All

    Today's Tales: As it's Sunday again these are Church-related oldies:

    The Sunday School teacher asked the class, “Who went to Mount Olive?”
    “Popeye!” came the quick reply.

    The proud father handed the baby to the priest for the christening.
    “And what name have you given this little boy?” asked the priest.
    “It’s a girl,” said the father out of the side of his mouth “You’ve got hold of my thumb.”

    Mary was entering the church. She had no head covering and was wearing a see-through blouse.
    “You can’t come into church like that!” exclaimed the priest.
    “But I have a divine right!” replied Mary.
    “You have a divine left too, but you still can’t come in without a hat.”

  4. Good Morning Geoff and All

    Today's Tales: As it's Sunday again these are Church-related

    The Sunday School teacher asked the class, “Who went to Mount Olive?”
    “Popeye!” came the quick reply.

    The proud father handed the baby to the priest for the christening.
    “And what name have you given this little boy?” asked the priest.
    “It’s a girl,” said the father out of the side of his mouth “You’ve got hold of my thumb.”

    Mary was entering the church. She had no head covering and was wearing a see-through blouse.
    “You can’t come into church like that!” exclaimed the priest.
    “But I have a divine right!” replied Mary.
    “You have a divine left too, but you still can’t come in without a hat.”

  6. Got it in 5 this morning.
    Wordle 1,233 5/6

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  7. After the Brexit vote a number of Conservative MPs made statements along the lines of "I don't mind

    losing my seat as long as Britain Remains in the EU"

    It now appears that their wish has come true.

    Kemi better start ejecting the Libdem faction from the Tory Party if she desires any success.

    1. Considering the number of X comments that quickly appeared with pictures of the newly installed Tory leader standing in front of a WEF background, perhaps a concise and clear repudiation of that organisation's policies would be a better place to start?

      Then attempt the likely Herculean task of ridding the Tory party of its bad apples.

    2. Kemi Badenoch was not even an MP when the nation voted to leave the EU. Perhaps lines need to be drawn, and a distinction made between what is history and what is relevant today?

      The same applies to the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg made his pledge to the students in 2010 and his party voted in favour of putting up tuition fees soon after. Lib Dems who became MPs after 2015 might be forgiven that particular betrayal.

      A more serious issue concerns the gross miscarriage of justice that has been sustained by senior politicians, many of whom prominent today, since first brought to the attention of the Prime Minister back in 1998. This is the institutional assault on subpostmasters, founded on gross perjury at the highest levels. It was only in 2015 that this started to be addressed, and the first Business Secretary even to attempt justice here was Kemi Badenoch.

      All others are implicated, including former Prime Ministers, Post Office Ministers, Justice Secretaries and Directors of Public Prosecutions, which even today makes quite a dent in those current MPs who are fit to govern.

      1. You’re right, many of the sleaziest politicians are implicated but they are the most skilled in avoiding retribution.

        1. Indeed. In a democratic constutional monarchy that has existed here since the reign of William and Mary, it is not down to the King to dispense retribution, but the electorate.

          It is long time it started to do its job, rather than adopting the comfort blanket of Strictly and confidence in a system of imposed lawfulness that has failed the nation.

      2. I recall reading endless articles in Private Eye about the postmaster scandal, but never knew it was Badenoch that did something useful about it. That information completely changes my opinion of the lady.

        1. It is an indictment of Westminster that serious redress for the postmasters came as late as the Sunak Government, when Badenoch and Hollinrake joined the Business Department.

          This has now stalled since the election (although the Budget did mention a fund set up for compensation there) – a gift to the lady at her first PMQs.

    3. If Johnson had really wanted to GET BREXIT DONE he would have deselected all the pro EU Conservative MPs and candidates before the 2019 general election – he should also have come to an accommodation with Farage's Brexit Party.

      The fact that he did not has resulted in the shambles we have now.

  9. 395759+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Take heed,

    An alert & warning, wrapped in a repeat of yesterday's post,

    Sighs of relief, at last a party leader we can trust, back on the roundabout, surely for one last time.

    To me this is shades of the 24/6/2016 victory being marred early doors by " NO NEED OF UKIP NOW
    JOB DONE.
    .

    https://x.com/ABridgen/status/1852706468266381666

      1. 395759+ up ticks,

        Afternoon MM,That would be the underworld underwear tell tale slip,
        I do believe it is.

    1. Keir: 'I hate capitalists, like you – but give me a free pair of specs and I'm yours forever.'

  13. 'Morning All
    Islamophobia month you say………..
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1020b9fe96130a5bab436838276396d2a8b9dee679eeee4323ed8c6eea68fdb1.jpg
    Rest
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d9f31dd24aaf6a591c67d1dcd36610478237d6fe830f472b7aceabacf1aa7479.gif
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    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5b54da9bfd4abee26b67db7acd204c9b7cde294205190633e7a4367acfa51ba5.jpg

  14. Why would I, or anyone else, ever trust the Tories again? Their brand is broken. Nigel Farage. 3 November 2024.

    The sense of betrayal felt by millions of 2019 voters will not be undone by a new leader.

    What ever Badenoch’s personal credentials who doubts that the Party has been seeded with those having identical beliefs to the former Government? These added to the One Nation Tories still in place will ensure her defeat. It is even unnecessary to have a majority; a large cabal can always make sure that no policies make it to legislation.

    Reform may have its problems but there is no credible alternative.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/02/never-trust-the-tories-again-brand-broken-reform-kemi/

    1. I think you may have a false impression of the Conservative Party. I campaigned heavily against them in the 1980s and got to know the beast quite well.

      First and foremost they are a social club. Their prime motivation is to improve their social standing, and this means ingratiating oneself with anyone important and influential that can further one's career. I cannot count the number of times Tories on the doorstep said to me "I am not interested in politics". All too often appealing to political analysis went way over their heads as their eyes glazed over. They would support any programme that would improve their status, bar none, and amend opinions in a flash were fashions to change.

      Therefore the One Nation "Lib Dem" might well become a Faragist Thatcherite the moment it becomes expedient, and not blink an eyelid.

      Therefore, perhaps conscientious Tories could be working on the Overton Window, and then their numpties in parliament could be relied on to follow their noses?

  15. Here's one for you: Trump Derangement Syndrome has infected Aftenposten here in Norway, coming up with all sorts of anti-Trump guff (whether true or not, who knows?) as if Oslo will be at the ballot boxes tomorrow, and need instructed about how to vote Harris. Cannot they give it a rest? Norway doesn't get to vote in the US elections, I don't know if they noticed. Shit, it's now come on the radio, too! And, all are universally Democrat-supporters, as if Trump were the AntiChrist. It's enough to make one a Trump supporter, if only to wind the bastards up!

    1. All these places acting in this manner are just shooting themselves in the foot should Trump win and the Republicans too.

      1. From the Daily Mail.

        Kamala Harris is seeing a last-minute surge in momentum over Donald Trump in the final days of one of the closest presidential elections in history. The vice president was given a surprise jolt on Saturday night with a poll showing she is ahead in the reliably Republican state of Iowa, while DailyMail.com’s election forecast shows her gaining on the 78-year-old former president. The final Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll has Harris leading Trump 47 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, less than three days before Election Day.

        1. I posted about this yesterday.
          When you look at the articles in detail it's clear it's an outlier, but is being pumped up because, like most of the MSM, the thought of a Trump victory gives them a fit of the vapours.

        2. Looks like Trump's shouty noisy get together in NYC is having echos of Kinnock's shindig in 1992 which cost him the election

    1. Compltely still outside, nothing at all moving. No birds, branches, clouds… a touch spooky, so it is.
      Morning, Bill.

    2. From the Spanish interior

      14°C
      Sunday 09:05 Fog

      They say Valencia is in for another battering of heavy rain today.
      Clean up has only just begun as rivalry between the ruling PSOE and local PP governments has prevented coordination and cooperation. The population is really suffering.

  17. Guten Tag Kameraden,

    Cloudy at Schloss McPhee , East wind, 10℃ with 13℃ the likely top today.

    Apathy strikes the Conservative party as 27.2% decided they didn't want either Badenough or Generic.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ce611a4de29ad6f62e9287c37741787d264820620dc207a66d0b94d1d9a5407a.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/11/02/tory-party-membership-slumps-amid-reform-uk-threat/

    If Generic believed in what he has been saying lately, which included repealing the Climate Change Act, he would immediately leave the Con Party, taking his supporters with him and join Reform. He won't though, will he? He'll be happy to accept a senior shadow position thinking it'll further his career. I'll be surprised and pleased to be proven wrong but I don't think I will be.

    The Con Party? It's the beginning of the end for them.

    1. That's the most well defined part of the problem in politics. And it never seems to change, it's only all about them and what they can gain from it personally.

    2. Farage and Tice must get their snobbishness under control and see that Tommy Robinson may be rough in appearance and speech but he is brave, principled and even heroic and shares with them the same attitude towards the disgraceful ruination of Britain being effected through mass immigration of our those who hate us, our laws and ethics and wish us harm.

      If they cannot do this then the Reform Party will be bound for failure.

      1. They have been told. Whether they have the humility to take the lesson on board is another matter.

      2. Whereas I agree with you, I can see Reform's problem. TR has been painted so black in the media (and let's face it, most voters take their opinions from mass media) that it would be risky in the extreme to embrace TR.

        1. There are ways of supporting, without embracing. What Tice and Farage have said are big mistakes, and they have apparently been told from within.

  18. Guten Tag Kameraden,

    Cloudy at Schloss McPhee , East wind, 10℃ with 13℃ the likely top today.

    Apathy strikes the Conservative party as 27.2% decided they didn't want either Badenough or Generic.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ce611a4de29ad6f62e9287c37741787d264820620dc207a66d0b94d1d9a5407a.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/11/02/tory-party-membership-slumps-amid-reform-uk-threat/

    If Generic believed in what he has been saying lately, which included repealing the Climate Change Act, he would immediately leave the Con Party, taking his supporters with him and join Reform. He won't though, will he? He'll be happy to accept a senior shadow position thinking it'll further his career. I'll be surprised and pleased to be proven wrong but I don't think I will be.

    The Con Party? It's the beginning of the end for them.

    1. There's a constant supply of envious, talentless, stupid people to keep the Labour party going unfortunately.

  20. Morning all 🙂😊
    Grey start, it must have been all those fireworks last night.
    I wonder now how the average tory politician really feels as Labour has set out their program of thinly disguised hatred towards the average once hard working, tax paying pensioner and other specific groups of people who were born and bred and live and work paying taxes in the UK. I know None of them would give an honest answer because they will blame everyone and everything else for their failure to control a situation.
    All these people in Parliament had to do, was vote to stop the invasion. And nearly everyone would have been happy to vote for them. And this malicious mob in government right now wouldn't have stood a chance.

  21. I'm putting this up again this morning for those who might not have seen it last night. While driving home yesterday after On my drive home yesterday after a pleasant day's fishing on the Wiltshire Avon I listened to the latest Delingpod. James's guest in this offering is Simon Elmer who talks about The Great Replacement. He didn't mention that it was the French writer Reynaud Camus who first came up with the term 'Le Grand Remplacement' but there was much discussion of how it is regarded as a white nationalist conspiracy theory – only it isn't.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/76dc12930acef1fd33ca7dc1e82144d81d62587c9532304ddbe32a537fa4d0cf.png

    Replacement migration of white peoples in their own homelands is long planned and well underway. It is the UN, The EU, the WEF and the trans-national corporations which are behind it. George Soros's name cropped up as did Peter Sutherland's (look that traitorous bastard up) and the Kalergi plan..

    Simon Elmer has done the research work and has the receipts. Western governments are conspiring with the UN and the WEF to destroy their own nations through mass migration. He has written four long articles on replacement migration: Part One -The Plan; Part Two -The Impact; Part Three – The Response; Part Four – Solutions. They are on his website.

    If you're not a paid subscriber to James Delingpole's Substack it'll be a week or two before this episode is free to view. In the meantime, you can read Simon Elmer's articles on his website here: https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/page/2/

    1. Just look to see who controls the UN, WEF, WHO etc. It's not difficult and the letter "R" figures often (at the start of, or within the names concerned).

    2. Just look to see who controls the UN, WEF, WHO etc. It's not difficult and the letter "R" figures often (at the start of, or within the names concerned).

  22. Police investigating Russell Brand sex assault claims ask CPS to consider charges. 3 November 2024.

    Police investigating sexual assault allegations against Russell Brand have asked the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to consider bringing charges against the comedian.

    Scotland Yard launched a criminal investigation last year following a complaint from a woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Brand in central London 20 years ago.

    I’m not a fan of Mr Brand to say the least but one hardly need read beyond these opening paragraphs.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/02/met-police-russell-brand-sex-assault-claims-cps-charges/

    1. Allegations made. Interviews conducted. No charges as of yet.

      Why is his name in the media?

      No need to answer.

    2. I always abominated Russell Brand – especially when he and the odiously sub-human Jonathan Ross were so cruel about the granddaughter of Andrew Sachs. So when I chanced to hear him talking about some political issue I was astonished to hear him speaking good sense.

      1. I believe he's had something of a Damascene conversion, including to the Christian faith. When coming from the depths that he's been in, any changes towards becoming a better person will be slow, and he'll need some wise counsel and guidance, which I hope he will get. But unlike some people who are sceptical, I'm fairly hopeful of the validity of his conversion – at first appearance, anyway.

          2. The Holy Spirit can enlighten and cleanse the darkest and nastiest heart, though as it is early days, I think too soon to make an assessment.

    1. The total number of people who have crossed the Channel in small boats this year now stands at 30,906, 15.8% higher than at the same point last year (26,699) but 22.6% down on the same point in 2023.

        1. Morning! Hope you're keeping well.
          I was wondering… Copy 'n paste from the Standard article linked.

          2. Hangin on, at least. Thanks for asking.
            Feeling low as Brother & Sister-in-law have decided to divorce, and it’s messy and acrimonius. They are 73, FFS! They have been married since I was about 17 or 18, so God knows why they are breaking up now.
            One fewer household to visit when we go to the UK for Christmas, I suppose, so not as bad as it could be… they live in Wrexham, the rest are Mother in South Wales, and In-laws in Devon.

          7. One of my cousins left his wife after 40 years of marriage. They had set up a business together and became extremely wealthy. Many members of the family took his side but I was very firmly on the side of his wife with whom we keep very much in touch.

            By contrast when my second sister fell pregnant by a much younger man (whom she did eventually marry) my sympathies were very much with her first husband.

            My parents and Caroline's parents were married for over 50 years but Caroline's two sisters have had unhappy marriages but my elder sister, after a deliberate shotgun marriage has now been very happily married for 68 years.

          9. If they live in Wrecsam, you've had a lucky escape! I spent three years at university there.

      2. I'm just listening to the Delingpod with Simon Elmer, and they make the excellent point that the boats are just a small and visible percentage of the migration that is being legally waved through.

    2. Morning Obs.
      It depends what he means by small boats. Two man rowing boats ?
      Probably not rubber boats with 40 people in.

    3. Isn't it obvious by now that the "small boats" are actually a planned distraction from the real scandal of legal migration?

        1. High pressure, calm seas. We need an artificial maelstrom we can turn off and on to catch 'em mid-Channel.

    4. You cannot stop smuggling unless you withdraw the draw. They come for welfare and increasingly crime.

  24. Good morning all good people!
    A dull and overcast start to the day with calm air and mist clinging to the trees at the top of the valley sides.
    A tad over 6°C on the Yard Thermometer.

  25. Most will agree that our political system is broken and unfit for its stated purpose of being the democratic expression of the British people.  Many will agree that it has become an instrument of oppression, showing every sign of slipping into full-blown totalitarianism with even MPs being gagged on subjects that the Establishment does not want discussed, like the strange case of the man charged with killing the Southport innocents. So today Free Speech publishes a Plan for a real democracy, where MPs are legally-bound to represent their constituents and only their constituents.

    And the Grumpy Old Man is back with a gripe of the day, after his walk in the woods.

    Finally, FSB is collecting for a services charity of your choice, with a poll at the top of the Today page and below the short article on the charities involved, Help our Veterans . All donations made to FSB from now till Remembrance day will be given to the charity with the most votes.

    https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/

  26. 'Morning, Peeps and Geoff. Mild and overcast on yer sarf coast, but dry and 12-13°C forecast.

    I see that the NT is up to its old tricks again; this time it is embracing – with its usual humility – the provision of 50% vegan food in its over-priced restaurants:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/02/national-trust-votes-to-make-half-cafe-food-vegan/

    Apparently this is to tackle the (alleged) 'climate crisis' and to speed little old England along to nut zero, thus saving the planet yet again. They say their research has told them that vegan food will attract more visitors. We are not told who conducted the research – Friends of the Earth perhaps or similar ?? – but it seems to have failed to discover that much vegan food is highly processed and that the quantity and range of such foods in supermarkets is shrinking due to lack of demand. Oh yes, and we are told that 70% of NT employees are 'progressive activists' whatever that means. Rainbow lanyards, anyone?

    I ceased to be an NT member several years ago, so the pleasure of throwing Teddy out of the pram and resigning is not available to me. However, for those who are lumbered with life membership perhaps the answer to yet more of their pious nonsense is to take your own sarnies and a flask.

    1. I bought my wife a life membership nearly 50 years ago. It cost £50.
      It admits two and usually allows free parking.
      I suspect sending the magazines etc costs them more now than I paid.

        1. We’ve had that several times over.
          It probably paid for itself within the first few years of my gift.

          1. Fair enough. They will have spent the money by now anyway, no doubt. Or added it to what is apparently rather a large slush fund.

          2. The current equivalent is over £2000 and with fewer benefits. £50 then is roughly equivalent to £1000 now, so it was probably one of my best ever investments.

      1. 'Morning Phiz. I wouldn't put it past them to start removing picnic benches – or perhaps they already have…

    3. In the next village to where I live is a Green arts and crafts centre called The Fold. This was set up by Will Tooby, who inherited a horticultural business from his father, who grew roses. Will Tooby sold the business and much of the land to a large wholesale nursery company, but kept the old buildings, which he converted into a crafts centre.

      They have a cafe serving wholesome organic food, at premium prices. It cannot compete with McDonald's nor tries to. It is quite nice though to eat food and not feel ill afterwards.

      Some years ago, they would do roast dinners – free range lamb raised locally on organic pasture, along with their own organic veg. Very good it was too, tasty and one left feeling fit and well, rather than a little sick as if poisoned by someone's profit on chemical product.

      Then, alas, they went vegan, and all we got from then on was the gruel of vegetable soup and salad, but at a high price at the till. I never felt it filled me up, and missed my Sunday roast.

      Having lived in Herefordshire, I know perhaps more than many trendies just how important mixed farms are to the good of the rural environment. Go arable, and the hedges are grubbed up, and there is no way of matching manure to keep the land in good heart for growing. Animals and plants were made to be together, not segregated in to categories. This means eating the surplus, not allowing it to go to waste.

      For this reason, I consider veganism to be profoundly anti-Green. Above all, I wish The Fold would serve their Sunday roasts once more.

      2. My brother-in-law is in with the hipster set.

        I saw him in the summer and he said he was teaching some of his vegan friends to eat meat and fish. They had concluded the best way to save the planet was not to eat avocados or drink almond milk (with all the associated airmiles) but instead to eat “sustainably” i.e. locally produced stuff.

        A bit like our grandparents. Turnips, pigs and all.

        I actually rather admire them for changing their minds on the vegan nonsense.

      1. No butter on the bread, no animal products in the bread…sandwiches can be very good – theirs wouldn't be.

    1. I suspect that Kemi has more in common with Enoch than most Conservative leaders in the intervening 50+ years.

      1. If I recall, it was Enoch Powell that once advised people to vote Labour in opposition to membership of the EEC.

        I admired him then, and still miss his radicalism and thinking.

        It's too early yet to judge Kemi.

        1. By their action shall ye know them. Her actions in the past show us what to expect, leopards don't change their spots,

      2. Attends WEF meetings
        Writes articles urging pregnant women to get the covid jab
        Seen in the company of M Gove.

        I would love to believe in Badenoch, but she's just another compromised leader who's going to promise us what we want to hear. Perhaps she'll stop the boats if they've imported enough people, just so we think she's great.

        2. She also voted against a ban on student dependents being allowed in to snaffle at the welfare trough.

      4. I am not sure about her at all. Lets see what she does and not what she says. I am told she will never leave the Euro Human Rights Court.

        1. Exactly. By their fruits shall ye know them. When given the opportunity to repeal 1,000's of EU laws she bottled it.

        2. And she doesn't want to control legal immigration, which is the bulk of our immigration. She is from Nigeria…

    2. Peter Hitchens nails it.. "The Conservative Party is still quite clueless about what it faces, and so cannot fight it."

      It's the start of the wilderness years. The Tories still don't get the vandalism of Blair & Brown.. "It failed utterly to stop the Blairite takeover of the legal system and the coup d’etat of establishing a ‘Supreme Court’ in a country where Parliament is actually supposed to be supreme."

      Unfortunately.. the so called broad church without any ideas.. the one that brought them to the brink of collapse.. is actually doing well in the polls.

  29. SIR – Where is the steel coming from to build all these additional pylons (Letters, October 27)?

    D Derbyshire
    Northwich, Cheshire

    As if anyone needed to ask…China.

    Good morning.

      1. Bet ya a bowl of rice.

        The Chinese workforce is more disciplined. (for rather obvious reasons) Therefore being able to undercut any price India might suggest.

          1. German was better – from Mannesmann, ThyssenKrupp.
            So good I asked if I could get an ice lolly sized piece machined so I could sit in my office and lick it…
            Matron! He's drooling again!

          2. Don't they still get their iron ore from Kiruna? They did during the Second World War, when Sweden was 'neutral'.

  30. Good morning all,

    Just another November morning of the new weather era , no dewy cobwebs, frost, garden movement , no bright colours , just dank mild fungi smelling weather.

    No sign of any earth movement either , the resident mole must have moved on .

  31. Did anyone else watch Despatches (Ch4) yesterday evening? Quite an eye-opener regarding the poor state of some Duchy properties! What I found quite surprising was the 'discovery' of so much legal documentation regarding the Duchy holdings of land and so on, and the huge sums of money raised for Chas and son Billy Wales. Whilst there is in theory nothing wrong with a landlord charging rent for the use of its property, some of the size and scope of some of these arrangements is breathtaking. I imagine that there may be some red faces amongst our greenie royals this morning.

      1. What is the ethnicity of Poundbury?
        The ethnic makeup of the town in 2021 was 93.7% White (White British or White Other), 2.4% Asian, 0.9% Black, 2.6% Mixed or of multiple ethnic groups and 0.4% of other ethnic group.

        Crime is almost nonexistent. Someone stole a bike once.

        Easy to see why. No wogs.

          5. I've been there a few times and it seems a bit soulless to me. Like living in a dolls house.

        3. The TV channels obviously don't make their adverts there then. Nor here in Cornwall where we are embarrassingly
          un-diverse at 96.8% white I'm afraid.

    3. People always comment on the fact that The Idiot King is frugal.

      However his avarice and greed sits strangely with his parsimony and reveals him to be a mean-spirited miser. His treatment of his brother and his treatment of his first wife probably give us a good guide to his character and personality.

        2. The only time I have seen Charles without that hint of petulance in his expression was when he was smiling on the balcony after the Coronation. Extremely unattractive.

          1. QEII wasn't very good at teaching her children how to behave. Anne and Edward turning out well out of 4 is a 50% failure rate.

      2. Yes, I don't like Andrew but Charles' treatment of him is astonishing. Charles, just by reason of being first-born, has all the advantages and is withdrawing money from his brother and taking his home. Both spoilt brats but surely he'd at least treat his brother decently considering his own wealth. It does say everything about him. Charity starts at home – albeit in their rather gold-plated way.

        1. Yes. Andrew is clearly incapable of maintaining himself in the style to which he is accustomed, but trying to palm him off with servants' cottages knocked into one is just rubbing it in. Ungraceful.

          1. I have to say that IMO Andrew has always been a self-opinionated, spoilt, pompous brat. He tried to muscle in when Charles and Diana were divorcing by suggesting that he (Andrew) should mentor/look after William and Harry. I'm not surprised Charles wants to get back at him, but he should certainly take his disgraceful son Harry and Harry's cheap Hollywood tart to task too.

        2. Perhaps he is, in his rather childish way, just trying to show how tough he is. Like that picture of Masters I Hav Known in the wonderful Down With Skool, which shows a completely weedy teacher with the caption "You may think I'm soft but I'm hard, damned hard".

          Charles is a twit, and it is not just Diana that Harry got his thickness from.

    4. Don't watch TV and if it Ch4, I automatically assume it is lies. After all they actually allowed Hope not Hate to spew its filth in a documentary a few weeks ago. It's amazing to me that Ch 4 is allowed to operate but GBNews constantly gets threats to be closed down for minor offences.

    5. Don't watch TV and if it Ch4, I automatically assume it is lies. After all they actually allowed Hope not Hate to spew its filth in a documentary a few weeks ago. It's amazing to me that Ch 4 is allowed to operate but GBNews constantly gets threats to be closed down for minor offences.

  32. Did anyone else watch Despatches (Ch4) yesterday evening? Quite an eye-opener regarding the poor state of some Duchy properties! What I found quite surprising was the 'discovery' of so much legal documentation regarding the Duchy holdings of land and so on, and the huge sums of money raised for Chas and son Billy Wales. Whilst there is in theory nothing wrong with a landlord charging rent for the use of its property, some of the size and scope of some of these arrangements is breathtaking. I imagine that there may be some red faces amongst our greenie royals this morning.

  33. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/455258df401131348823c967ee0e1009d2a0f93f745ca65e00a0090dca5272eb.png

    I think we all know the British sous-chefs responsible for this awful concoction.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d6c2d2c8e27887f12e91f2e74f436ed0cd4c7fe50ae774a3fb828e7d5c51151b.png

    Kemi, you need educating, Naomi Wolf has the real data and she's easily found on X, Daily Clout etc. Get a researcher on the job before you fall foul of the narrative.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d236ca2ce0cd2b27bd29cba42e6e43722e97e66b5f4ca47d2f59970d4b916c93.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/21ed99a1b2827e222c19777cc4113d5d60c8d5550e0f3f28c3402c14ce33d243.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/98963c5c3ec592683e891c49832c77e60acb9c8bee7d513b5cfea626cdb77ce9.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3d646d778f7d615448a04548ed7df24808490676e5546007f2175279734ea0d9.png

  34. Aren't there rules about colonialist slavery? Or do they only apply to those peoples that have long abolished it?

        1. I've just read that he was funding an animal rescue with the videos. Why didn't he tell them they'd have to prise his squirrel from his cold dead hands?

  39. As I mentioned last evening, the MR's brilliant computer buff nephew is due shortly to replace my aged desktop. So I'll be out of action for some time while Tim tinkers.

    1. Yo Bill

      I hope that you will not have to throw the cats out to make room for him……..

    1. “The far-right activist’s Manifesto…maybe he’s turned over a new leaf. It is that bad: I will not read it, because I will not buy it, because the day I put £24.99 or any fraction thereof into the pocket of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is the day I’ve parted company with the material world”

      Yawn.

      And that is why i don’t bother woth Zoe Williams.

      2. You should change your moniker. Or, at least, live up to it. Tommy Robinson has never had to turn over a new leaf. You, obviously have slavishly fallen for the usual propaganda about him that the left and the MSM like to push. Those of us that have actually bothered to learn what he has to say now fully support him because he tells the truth. That is his sin, speaking truth to power, as my generation put it. I suggest that you go listen to him speaking to Dr. Jordan Peterson or his interviews with Tucker Carlson, then come back and call him "far right" You are, in fact, talking about him from a position of ignorance. Which is just what the government wants you to think along with evil people like, Hope Not Hate and Islamic extremists. So go listen to him or change your name because, at present you are close minded. It should be, 'No info required.

        Oh, and by the way. The reason he changed his name is because people like Hope not Hate were calling out Antifa and such people, threatening to murder his wife and children.

    3. It seems to be unavailable now. Have been looking for it without success. Even Amazon USA is out.

      1. He should publish on Truth Social. Get it on the Net and it will be there forever.

        Though owning or downloading it will be the equivalent to having the Anarchists Cookbook.

        Good morning.

          3. Supply and demand.

            I notice some ordinary items on Ebay are priced in the thousands. Some idiot will pay.

        2. Items can easily be blocked on Truth Social similarly to all websites. WWW is monitored the same as everything else.

      2. Yes, 'currently unavailable'. Kindle issues of his previous books still seem available for download, that's about it.

      2. But you do read about political topics. Just your choice of reading material doesn't include books.

  42. I can remember, just, when Ooomans had Rights, those days have gone, regretably.

    Badgers have damaged part of a Lincolnshire road, and emergency repair works are needed to stop the route falling apart.

    Natural England grants last-minute licence for Lincolnshire County Council to get on with essential works to repair animal damage.

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
    https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/news/article/2103/badgers-mean-highways-headache-in-mablethorpe

      1. Not seen one for many years, some people say disease. Nearby farmer used to empty his silage tank down the sett on his land – nothing would outlive that, although they do have several entrances/exits to setts. Not seen a hedgehog either, for even more years.

          1. Was it on the roadside, Mir? Always a number of road fatalities as darker nights grow, deer too. Not too keen on fireworks either, hiding or panic running.

          1. Ever so slightly envious, Grizz (ok that’s an understatement). Climate will change this winter I reckon, be some snow n ice…will see more wildlife then as they retrn to feed.

          1. I used to see them dead at the side of the road occasionally, not so much now. If they’re not killed outright, they crawl to somewhere dark to die depending on how bad their injuries are.

        2. You need to stop listening to malthusian propaganda from the parasite class – as we have discussed before….!

          1. You are not bright enough to tell me what I need to do.

            Badgers and hedgehogs have existed side by side for millennia, and they are both still around. It is nothing more that human meddling that messes up biodiversity. Humans, by a country league the most stupid life form to have ever evolved, have destroyed all the natural environment of this planet — the only place in the known universe to support life — and their idiotic out-of-control overpopulation contributes massively to this.

            Humans are the only species, in the history of the planet, that routinely destroys and trashes it own living space, and pollutes the planet on a cosmic scale. Nothing has ever done that before or since mankind evolved.

            As for being 'Malthusian', the facts display otherwise. The species and its forerunners has existed for over seven million years yet, in the past 70 years (the space of my lifetime) has quadrupled in numbers! Only an imbecilic organism would do that: i.e. breed out of their natural numbers. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

      3. Here here. But don’t tell my father’s (recently deceased) cousin, who was a badger freak.

    2. If the roles were reversed, I'm sure badgers would have a Natural England for humans. Not.

  45. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    ‘Nothing,’ said Vladimir Nabokov, ‘revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it’. If smell is the most evocative of all the senses, it seems that Gen Z’s fabled nostalgia for the 1990s has reached new heights. It isn’t just the fashions and music they’re now spending their money on but also the decade’s fragrances.

    Sales of 90s classics like ‘Joop! Homme’ and ‘CK One’ have rocketed and there has, over the last month, been a 228 per cent increase in sales of Calvin Klein’s ‘Eternity for Men’. But what if Generation Z were able simply to follow their noses and return to the 1990s themselves? Would the era smell of sandalwood and bergamot or something a great deal less beguiling?

    Making a call outside your house means using a phone box that stinks of old cigarettes and last week’s urine

    There’s much they’ll find a trial, not least communications. Just picture it: until the mid-1990s, anyone with a mobile phone is a yuppie or a freak. Most of us have landlines, pay vast quarterly bills, and spend our lives leaving or taking messages for others. If you have friends abroad, you can forget speaking to them: the most faltering three-minute call (complete with snap, crackle and intermittent white noise) can set you back several pounds. To ring people up, we must either memorise their numbers (a skill now lost) or carry around a small address book (the losing of which is a social catastrophe).

    Making a call outside your house or workplace means using a phone box that stinks of old cigarettes and last week’s urine, with a payphone which often simply swallows your money and smartly cuts you off. Queueing for one of these cubicles in the rain while the person inside rabbits on at length is something you accept as part of modern life.

    So is the awkward incoming call at home from someone you’re avoiding – only the snazziest phones show who’s contacting you, and you must simply pick up to find out. The words ‘wrong number’ in a foreign accent usually get rid of someone and are easier and less awkward than an offhand tone of voice.

    But how will Gen Z entertain themselves when they land in their longed-for decade? There’s no streamable music, albums are expensive, and they’ll spend their lives making hissing home recordings on blank tapes. If they want to listen on the move, they’ll have to carry around vast piles of cassettes and back-up batteries for their Sony Walkmans. As for television, there are just four channels, with no access to their huge vaults of past programmes unless they wish to screen them. In the high street, the video rental store is king – even if the shop never, ever has the film you want. You spend a lot of time dreaming of things you’d like to see.

    Then there are holidays. Gen Z will find they have to go to a travel agents in the high street to book a trip and there are few budget tickets (my first return flight to Spain, in the late nineties, cost £300, and that felt a fair price). If you want to read while you’re away, you have to take a stack of novels with you, and a heavy guidebook too for the cities you’re planning to visit (oh, and be warned, many suitcases still don’t have wheels on them).

    Finding a hotel room, unless you’ve fixed it from your home country, involves making call after call to different places and, in high season, getting turned down by all of them. On the plus side, travelling will feel freer – no one can contact you on the road and if, in remoter countries, you want updates from home, you can probably read a week-old newspaper at the British Council.

    There’s no such thing as ‘online information’. Facts you can access with a single click these days might, in the 1990s, take a whole afternoon in a library. Your home will be stuffed with reference books – encyclopedias, OEDs, dictionaries of biography – which along with your collection of paperbacks, VHS cassettes, LPs etc. will take up far more space.

    It’s with morality that Gen Z will find themselves on another planet

    Then there are those coffee table books you’ll have to own if you ever want to look at things like art without going to a gallery. Which of course, will require a coffee table too. And you must have a desk – there are no laptop computers, typewriters are too heavy to hold on your knees, and for handwriting (you’ll do a lot of it, and know all your friends’ styles by heart) you’ll need a surface to lean on. Everything takes longer, everything is lingered over a little bit more. We’re able to vanish into the books we’re reading and the films we watch.

    But it’s with morality that Gen Z will find themselves on another planet. In workplaces thick with cigarette smoke and noisy with the sounds of clacking typewriters, people tease and flirt with each other (‘banter’ is about the only thing that makes life bearable) and sometimes come back drunk after lunchtime. To complain about such things will mark you out as a ninny or a prig and you’ll have no friends at all.

    There’s an entirely different attitude to sex in the 1990s too. Some people are having a lot of it, others are trying to, and for a while we can talk or think of little else. At my university, a visiting elderly novelist confesses, in a Q&A session with students, that he has to masturbate before each writing session or he can’t focus on his work. The undergrads merely giggle as though they’re hearing something daring. At the same time, though, future services like Porn Hub, OnlyFans, or the very idea students will one day fund themselves through uni by selling their bodies to strangers, are an inferno our minds can’t conceive.

    In general, we’re a generation who’d rather laugh than moralise – to be ‘judgmental’ is out in the 90s. This is the time (or just after it) when Oliver Reed can turn up blind drunk to a TV discussion programme, aggressively fondle a feminist’s breasts and emerge with his reputation oddly enhanced. Hellraisers like Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris or Keith Allen are celebrated, even if nearly all the world’s bad behaviour goes unwitnessed except by immediate bystanders. There’s no CCTV, no X to tweet their misdemeanours, no phone camera to record it.

    And that’s another thing, Generation Z: photography. If you want photos, you’ll have to carry a camera, put film in it and be very sparing with its use. Having your photos printed – expensive – will mean going to Boots or SnappySnaps and then waiting, sometimes for days. ‘If only I’d had a camera on me,’ is something you’ll say in life, again and again.

    In comedy, or just around a dinner table, jokes tend to be wilder, and you’d better buckle in. The culture is lighter, less keen to trace the moral and human consequence of every act. At times this is a straight denial of pain; at others it makes that pain easier to shrug off and turn into a funny story. We have different ways of coping, different ethics. We forgive much and don’t blame others so readily for our unhappiness, which we’re pretty sure is just a part of life. Loyalty to friends is more important than loyalty to ideology, and the rules of discretion are still a sort of ideal. Private letters, generally, are not shown to others. Some people can keep secrets; they may not always tell. Should you enter the 1990s with a moral code shaped in 2024, you’ll seem very odd indeed.

    The past is a foreign country, L.P. Hartley said, though most foreign countries these days are a lot less different than this. Even those of us who reached adulthood in that time would find, returning to it, a baffling, sometimes jaw-dropping culture to find our way around. As for Gen Z-ers, they’d surely take one look and scurry back mortified to the present day. Maybe it feels that with their retro Calvin Klein perfumes they’re buying a kind of bottled freedom, the scent of an easier age. But those with a real time-machine might find that earlier decades, to paraphrase author Mary Wesley, are a bit like coffee – the smell is nearly always better than the taste.

    WRITTEN BY
    Robin Ashenden
    Robin Ashenden is founder and ex-editor of the Central and Eastern European London Review. He is currently writing a novel about Solzhenitsyn, Khrushchev’s Thaw and the Hungarian Uprising.

    1. How do they succeed in making cheap aftershave lotion smell cheap and nasty while the stuff that smells good is horribly expensive?

      Any suggestions for a reasonably priced after-shave lotion?

      1. I can't live with cheap scents. They are all made from a mixture of chemicals, that is why they are cheap.

        I prefer the Creed rang of fragrances; they are expensive but that money is well spent since they use natural floral sources for their exquisite colognes and perfumes.

        I still have some of Creed's Old English Leather, though it is now discontinued. Their Silver Mountain Water is simply sublime.

      2. Why use any? I never have. I have always thought there was something tacky about it. Don't like women that over use perfume either, most do, but a hint is just right.

        1. SWMBO neither uses perfume or makeup, unless we're going out somewhere you need to dress up a lot. I approve. She's a gorgeous lass without adornment and facepaint.

          1. I don't much care for facial hair, but why the need for "after shave lotion?" If it's sore from scraping, some cream would be better.

          3. Male perfume, Ndovu ..prefer a man with a beard (moustache is OK with a beard but not without a beard :-D)

          4. I prefer cologne. After shave always left my face burning. I had a beard when I was in my early twenties, my father hated it. Eventually I shaved it off making my baby daughter burst into tears when she saw me beardless. Everyone said I looked much younger without it.
            I began a new white beard this summer and everyone said it made me look much younger and more approachable (or less grumpy).
            It needs trimming every few weeks but this is not a problem with the myriad of Moroccan barbers which surround me.

          6. You know I live in Spain. The last guy who fixed my beard had the Koran being chanted in the background. Gosh, I thought, if it had been a Spanish hairdresser listening to the rosary we would all have been laughing at him. But the Koran just adds to the barber’s mystique.

          8. Look pretty good to me, Rastus. Riddle me this…would Caroline change eg her hairstyle if you disapproved?

          11. I have changed my hairstyle because Richard disapproved! I used to have a perm (which he didn't like) and I tried to have much shorter hair (he didn't like that either). His argument was that he had to look at me more often than I looked at myself, which seems reasonable enough. He put up a lot of resistance over the whiskers, though…

          12. Ah…do you remember those huge crazy perms around 50 years ago? what were we thinking. Currently my hair is long and grey 👵. I think whiskers be quite cool, especially if you had the teeth too….😄

        2. Do you rhyme it with Nut, Put or Fruit?

          My pronouncement is that it is cheap and nasty and I call it Polecat. And there's another horrible one that I call Skunk -the name of which I can't recall.

          When I was younger and vainer I used to use Chanel Pour Monsieur but it is ridiculously expensive.

    2. Funnily enough, I was just talking about this with my Gen Z daughter. She says that most girls she know (not her*)s bitterly regret early sxual experiences, and are determined their daughters shan't go through similar. I said that I thought Gen X had more of a "just get on with it" attitude, and therefore put their trauma one side and coped with it. Perhaps that is why nothing changed and the media got away with continued filth and immorality being peddled to teens.

      *I asked her if she now appreciated my (allegedly draconian) rules when she and her siblings were teenagers – she does….

  46. Why was Socrates killed?
    Socrates, the greatest philosopher of all time, was actually the most hated man in Athens.
    He has been charged with cruelty and corruption of young people.
    The people's court, Elijah, sentenced him to death: and Socrates, one of the most brilliant minds in history, died drinking hemp.
    But why all of this?
    Turns out Socrates wasn't doing anything dangerous.
    He was simply asking questions, talking to everyone: with nobles, with common citizens, with young people.
    But his questions, in their frankness, in their simplicity, demolish the certainties of his interlocutors, forcing them to confront with the emptiness of their own certainties, with the inconsistency of their reasoning.
    He was teaching me to doubt.
    Socrates was too uncomfortable with the doubts he inculcated.
    He had the audacity to expose corrupt politicians and false teachers who propagated false truths and false knowledge.
    That's why he was sentenced to death. He was a threat to the status quo, a danger to be eliminated.
    During the trial, Socrates didn't want to repent or beg for mercy.
    He also refused to be assisted by a speaker.
    Intelligence is uncomfortable, this teaches us the process against Socrates.
    The masses want illusions and not truth; they want to be flattered and live happy in ignorance.
    Intelligent men are embarrassing.
    They are forbidden, ostracized, despised, because they disturb the sleep of the masses, they question the authority, they reveal the deceptions of the institutions.

      1. That the truth should be silent I had almost forgot.

        [Enobarbus: Antony and Cleopatra]

        1. Thank you for reminding me, Rastus. My father said I should always tell the truth ('I cannot abide a liar'), but I think he meant only to him…have found discretion the better part of valour.

      2. That's what I thought too. I hope they have the sense to look after and protect him. Poor fella.

    2. The death of Socrates was on my political philosophy course. He was tacitly expected not to die, but to escape from Athens and go somewhere else. The real sentence was exile under threat of death if he returned. But one of the things he had been teaching was that if you accept the benefits that living in a society provides, you must obey its rules. Therefore he took the poison rather than have people call him a hypocrite.

      1. Popular opinion is so often largely misinformed and stupid. Intelligent people should be a protected group – they are certainly a minority.

    4. Socrates was executed by drinking Hemlock. The capital punishment for Athenian citizens. A first hand and moving account of his death can be read in Plato's Phaedo.

  47. Good morning all. Seems to be pretty quiet today, gloomy, so what's different for autumn! Only thing that struck me in the Telegraph was the story of a cottage about to fall over a cliff. Struck me as a visual metaphor of what is happening to the UK.

    A chant for Sunday and in praise of the Kings spirituality.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlvT0kL64HQ

    1. There have been several terrible storms in the Valencia area. A big difference today is that the EU and the UN have banned the dredging of rivers and other "biodiversity protection measures" have been introduced that have made it much harder to control extreme rainfall.

        1. At least earlier this year it was admitted the floods in Dubai were caused by cloud seeding.

        1. Morning ish….
          Try as i may i just cannot get my email for work i cant reply the screen goes blank. I'll have to get on to virgin tomorrow.
          From the websites you sent and the one Gov pension credits one in the letter they sent me. It seems because our joint income is above their set allowance, I do not qualify for the credit.
          How ever thank you for your help again T very decent of you do do so x

    2. Sums it all up properly doesn't it.

      52 and 53 floods in North Devon and South East England.

        1. Probably not on the mainstream but they might in the relevant regional channel.
          A few years ago I heard a BBC radio documentary telling about Ukraine from the perspective of the ethnic Russians which was not at all complimentary about the Ukrainian Govt.
          I doubt they would do that now either.

          1. Before the current conflict, the Guardian used to excoriate Ukraine as the home of Naziism – which it was/is!

      1. Because a minority of the majority vote them in. Especially the Scots, I'm afraid, who are now moaning that they are going to get 50,000 immigrants sent up to them… Well they did say they wanted more, and we were accused of being racist.

        Will the Scots ever learn not to vote Labour/SNP?

        Edit: I only mean the majority of the Scots not all Scots. (I am married to one! and of course there are the lovely ones on NoTTL.)

    2. We won't even be allowed to voice a guess as to the culprit/s. Can't be Begum as isn't back in the country, is she?

    3. Ouch ! Hope it's splinted so as not to cause further damage.

      Poor you. Drink honey and lemon and a tot of whisky on the hour every hour !

        1. 🤣😄 As most of us have already discovered 'keeping fit' may not have been such a good idea.

    6. My sympathies. I ended up with a strained right thumb from an eye drop vial which is so unyielding that it is on the boundary of being impossible to use This sort of unthinking packaging seems to be endemic to containers for medications. I use a tiny pill that is in a large lozenge shaped blister in which, no exaggeration, you could fit ten of the pills. Instead you have to hunt around for the pill once you have managed to split open the container. on more than one occasion, the pill has gone flying, never to be found, from the force of opening the blister. There are several other things that always make me think they would be impossible to open if one had arthritis, prednisolone is an example, used by arthritics. Even difficult to pop open if you have normal use of your fingers. It is all so stupid.

      2. The moral is, if you want a child-proof container opened, ask a child! They have no problems while we arthritics struggle.

      3. I once dropped a whole load of Viagra tablets just after taking one. I had to get down on all fives to gather them up…

      1. No: short story, there is a team in our hockey league who (it turns out) shouldn’t be; at least, the team they fielded yesterday should be divisions ahead.

        I do understand, it’s a university team and they should field mixed team of their 1s, 2s and3s, depending on availability; yesterday we got their whole 1 XI but when all their 1s are available they should have the nous to dial it down a bit. They would still win, without the drama.

        Ours is a mixed team, too: we have youngsters taking their first hockey steps; women who used to play and have returned; oldies like me who have played all my life; and one lady in our squad is 80 and turns up for a 10 minute run-around for fun.

        We started with 3 subs but by half-time we were 3 metaphorical men down so our poor 80 year old had to play most of the match, against a bunch of very determined 20 year olds. Well done, them!

        But, there’s no fun in it for us, playing these types. We just want to have fun.

        1. I hated hockey when I was at school – but playing a team so much better can’t have been much fun for any of you – especially the old lady.

          1. That happened in my primary school when we lads were having a playtime kick about. The girls challenged us and adopted the Moscow Dynamo tactics of surround the one with the ball. Being (aspiring) gentlemen, we didn't go in hard and failed to get near the ball. We lost.

        2. A long long time ago at my school, the girls challenged the boys football team with a hockey match.
          They beat us to death…. well almost.

        3. Puts a bit of a lid on the "it's the taking part that matters" attitude. University teams are so often humourless and rather robotic in their attitudes nowadays.

        4. Puts a bit of a lid on the "it's the taking part that matters" attitude. University teams are so often humourless and rather robotic in their attitudes nowadays.

        5. Puts a bit of a lid on the "it's the taking part that matters" attitude. University teams are so often humourless and rather robotic in their attitudes nowadays.

      2. No: short story, there is a team in our hockey league who (it turns out) shouldn’t be; at least, the team they fielded yesterday should be divisions ahead.

        I do understand, it’s a university team and they should field mixed team of their 1s, 2s and3s, depending on availability; yesterday we got their whole 1 XI but when all their 1s are available they should have the nous to dial it down a bit. They would still win, without the drama.

        Ours is a mixed team, too: we have youngsters taking their first hockey steps; women who used to play and have returned; oldies like me who have played all my life; and one lady in our squad is 80 and turns up for a 10 minute run-around for fun.

        We started with 3 subs but by half-time we were 3 metaphorical men down so our poor 80 year old had to play most of the match, against a bunch of very determined 20 year olds. Well done, them!

        But, there’s no fun in it for us, playing these types. We just want to have fun.

    8. Hope you feel better soon, Mif. We plod along with whatever chronic ailments we have and sometimes forget that a nasty cold/fractured thumb on top is a REAL BIND.

  55. Fyou, Few, Phew!
    Wordle 1,233 6/6

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    1. Indeed
      Wordle 1,233 5/6

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    2. Awkward
      Wordle 1,233 5/6

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    3. Awkward. I went through half the alphabet.

      Wordle 1,233 5/6

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

    4. Wordle 1,233 6/6

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

  57. The BBC proudly proclaiming its impartiality again this morning. 45 Minutes with Ed Sourface Stourton denouncing Donald Trump followed by 10 minutes of Jimmy Knockknees denouncing Trump then another 10 minutes or so of another Harris hugger attempting to denigrate Trump – but failing miserably.

    Aren't we lucky to have an independent and impartial national and worldwide broadcasting service? I'll bet even the Russians, the Chinese and the North Koreans are weeping with jealousy when they switch on their gas driven radios in the morning.

    Why do they endlessly repeat that the vote is too close to call? Instructions from CIA/WEF? Something fishy going on.

      1. It is a completely inedible in its fishiness – to the extent of being as poisonous as the Puffer fish.

    2. Aren't we lucky to have..
      And you are forced to pay for it too.. £169.50! or face jail.

      1. I heard an advert on Spotify this morning from TV Licensing claiming that it opens the door to 400 TV channels.

  58. Why would I, or anyone else, ever trust the Tories again? Their brand is broken
    The sense of betrayal felt by millions of 2019 voters will not be undone by a new leader
    Nigel Farage : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/02/never-trust-the-tories-again-brand-broken-reform-kemi/

    Under the First Past the Post System either the Conservative Party or the Reform Party will need to be completely wiped out if Labour is to be defeated.

    If the two parties cannot form some sort of coalition then we are up a gum tree! – But in order to do this the Conservative Party must get rid of all its left of centre MPs and members. Personally I think it is time for the Conservative Party to admit that they are finished and disband – after such treachery of the electorate they should have no way back.

    BTL

    There is not room for both the Conservative Party and the Reform Party in a FPTP system – with PR it would be a different matter. Looking at the 2024 General election results by PR Parliamentary seats would have been distributed approximately as follows:

    Labour – 219 seats
    Conservative – 154 seats
    Reform – 93 seats
    Lib/Dems – 79 seats
    Greens – 44 seats
    SNP – 16 seats

    This would have meant that the Labour Party would have had fewer seats than the Conservatives and Reform combined and would have had to have had a coalition government with other parties.

    1. The very middle class Nigel Farage and Richard Tice have not yet accepted that their potential voters are not those of middle England. The middle class shires, villiages and rural areas which tend to be Conservative but are Lib Dem atm. Reforms potential voters ( will echo the 2 new council regions ) manual workers, those on the edges of council estates and red wall voters but there is an utter snobbery which doesn't allow them to accept this, hence the snobbery against Tommy Robinson. Farage should be attacking Labour.

      1. I agree and if you have read my posts here in the last few days I have condemned Farage and Tice for their senseless snobbishness against Tommy Robinson who shares many of the Reform Party's expressed views on immigration.

        I would like to see a discussion on TV with either Douglas Murray or Jordan Peterson taking Farage to task on his anti-Robinson prejudice!

      2. You appear to have no concept of the political environment and how to re-establish a right leaning party into power. It's not snobbery against TR, it's political reality.

        1. Actually, on the part of Farage it is treachery. As I pointed out. Farage asked TR to have his followers vote for Reform and then, when TR obliged, Farage stabbed him in the back. If you want that sort of behaviour for a right wing party, you can keep it because it the same venal politics we are now burdened with.

          1. The only route to recovering our country is through the ballot box. As much as I admire TR, whether we like it or not, he is politically toxic in the context of politics. Farage knows that so he has to be extremely cautious with these sorts of connections. It's the world we live in and we won't turn the ship around in a short time period. Peaceful street protest is great, it has its part to play, but it isn't the decisive route. I bet TR understands that as much as anybody.

        2. Actually, on the part of Farage it is treachery. As I pointed out. Farage asked TR to have his followers vote for Reform and then, when TR obliged, Farage stabbed him in the back. If you want that sort of behaviour for a right wing party, you can keep it because it the same venal politics we are now burdened with.

        3. There are also ways of doing things, and in my view (and some in Reform) it was rather clumsily done.

    2. PR in the UK would result in coalition governments on a regular basis, and like all coalition governments disproportionate power would be handed to minority parties.
      The thought of an Islamist party holding the balance of power and what its inevitable demands would be fills me with horror.

      1. Yes – so either the Conservative Party or the Reform Party must go –

        "There ain't enough room in this town for both of them."

    3. This is what makes our country so undemocratic and so stupid, 386 seats against the 'government's' 219 The main concern of a Government is to run the country in the way the majority would like and needs it to be run.
      This has to stop.

      1. Yes, it does, but it only stops when we have referism, recall and direct democracy with the revocation of universal franchise.

        1. The way it should happen is and in this current situation. The party with the lowest joint amount of votes. Are obviously the least popular. Should become the ‘opposition’ the rest should then run the country jointly and democratically.
          And take notice of public opinion. Not just invent a process to suit their own political adgenda. The country should be run in a mature sensible business like manner. Not kow-towing to any form of party politics.

    5. "Labour Party would have … had to have a coalition government with other parties."

      Which it would have achieved easily on those figures. However, what we do not know is what the vote would have been with PR. It could have produced a very different result.

      1. It would easily have a coalition with the LibDem tarts (the politicians, not the voters), who will sleep with anyone.

    6. I have mentioned it before but as with happened in Canada, it will take several elections before the right wing parties accept that they need to merge and form a new party that can win.

      in the meantime all you can do is hope that socialists don't wreck the country like Trudeau has done to Canada.

    7. I have lost interest in the Conservatives but I also have problems with Reform, mainly because I perceive Farage and Tice as unethical, just more of the same corrupt politicians. I am still a member of Reform but I am quite indifferent to the idea of being thrown out. At this point I would regard it as a badge of integrity. So dilemma, don't know who to support, rather cautious of Nick Tenconi. Still there's 5 years to decide unless a glorious revolution takes place before that.

  60. A brilliant David Starkey article at the Spectator about the evils of Blairism amongst other words.

  61. 395759+ up ticks,

    May one ask,
    Is there ever going to be a consolidated, unified,one party outside of the Palace of Westminster fight back ?

    I do believe parliament to be a dirty radiation zone, ALL within contaminated with power crazed, ego pursuing,
    bank balance building, WEF/NWO / RESET constructing cretins.

    Why not make the farmers the centre core of the fight back no politics involved only a will to survive for decent peoples against an enemy who are denying people the bread of life

    https://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1853025483690000806

  62. Sunak’s disastrous decision to call an early election has cost parents thousands
    If the former prime minister had waited until the autumn, it is very unlikely VAT would have gone on fees this school year
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/03/vat-school-fees-early-election-disaster/

    BTL

    To be fair to Sunak I think that nobody expected that the depth of petty spite, envy and sheer nastiness of the Labour Party was so deep as to impose the VAT on private school fees in the middle of the academic school year.

    1. Sunak was a coward. There were some chickens coming home to roost and he wants to be in sunny California a.s.a.p.

      Edit – apart from that, as he is going anyway I'm sure he couldn't care less what Labour does to this country.

    2. Sunak was a coward. There were some chickens coming home to roost and he wants to be in sunny California a.s.a.p.

      Edit – apart from that, as he is going anyway I'm sure he couldn't care less what Labour does to this country.

    3. nobody expected that the depth of petty spite..

      Peter Hitchens, people say you're always right.
      Ah, but unfortunately always too late,

      1. University fees are high enough, in fact, as Rastus has said many times, the interest rate on the loans are usurious.

        1. I don’t disagree, but what are universities other than educational establishments similar in many ways to public schools?

          1. You’re right of course. This whole budget is a disaster. I cannot see anything good about it from Joe Public’s point of view or that of businesses. The cost of everything will go up.

  63. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    Throughout the Russian invasion, China has, for the most part, refused to be drawn into the conflict. It has not condemned Russia or asked Putin to pull back (except when the threat of nuclear warfare was on the table). But it has also acquiesced to western sanctions and refrained from giving Russia lethal aid. In the meantime, the invasion has allowed Beijing to pull Moscow closer to its own economic orbit and use Russia’s gas reserves to secure its own energy imports. All this has come as western military and economic resources are bogged down in Europe, depleting the same resources which might eventually be turned to containing China in the Indo-Pacific. Win, win, win.

    American officials will be making much of this divergence of interests

    But the latest development in the war will make it harder than ever before for China to keep its distance from the conflict. According to American intelligence, North Korea has sent some 10,000 soldiers to Russia for training, most of whom are now deployed to the Kursk region and may see active combat in the coming days. This comes after Kim Jong Un visited Putin at a Russian spaceport in September last year, and the signing of a North Korean-Russian mutual defense pact earlier this year (going further than even Beijing and Moscow’s ‘no limits’ friendship).

    This is a new and unwelcome intercontinental dimension to the war, making any leverage that China has more vital than at any point in the conflict so far. Already, South Korea is considering sending lethal aid to Ukraine in response.

    It’s no surprise, then, that Washington has repeated its pleas to Beijing to take a more active role in ending the conflict. Specifically, it wants Beijing to get a message through to Kim, and ideally dial down the North Korean support. The New York Times reports that this week senior State Department officials visited the home of the Chinese ambassador to Washington and held a meeting with Chinese counterparts discussing this issue over several hours. Could this escalation finally pull China into the conflict?

    Washington has good reason to hope. China may be North Korea’s biggest benefactor in terms of aid and trade, but that’s less down to ideological alignment than the role North Korea plays as a crucial buffer zone between the PRC and America’s allies in the region (South Korea and Japan). So China winces whenever the Kim dynasty tests intercontinental missiles or ramps up its nuclear research. A war breaking out on the Korean peninsula or with Japan would not serve the interests of the world’s second largest economy as it tries to catch up with the first. Cynicism runs through Beijing’s foreign policy, best described as a ‘what’s in it for me?’ mentality.

    Little of this is new – behind the Iron Curtain, the triangular relations between Russia, China and North Korea have long been uneasy. Though Mao Zedong’s regime began by lauding the USSR as China’s ‘Big Brother’, it wasn’t long before the two communist juggernauts fell out and China actively prepared for the possibility of an invasion by the Soviets. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather Kim Il Sung made much of his policy of ‘juche’ – playing North Korea’s two communist neighbours against each other to maximise North Korean ransom.

    In the 21st century, China is now the ‘Big Brother’, but the fraternity hasn’t got any less fraught. Beijing remains concerned that North Korea could make technological breakthroughs that will give its military threats real teeth. Is this the price that Kim has extracted for Putin in exchange for manpower? If so, could Beijing still have leverage over Pyongyang or prevent it firing off a nuclear warhead in a diplomatic huff?

    American officials will be making much of this divergence of interests in their entreaties to their Chinese counterparts. One way to read the caginess of China’s official line on the issue is that Beijing is still deciding what to do. When asked whether China knew about the reports of the 8,000 North Korean soldiers sent to Kursk, the Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jianqiang claimed: ‘I don’t have information on the situation’ and that ‘Russia and North Korea are two independent sovereign countries. How bilateral relations develop is their own matter’. When I asked an usually reliable senior military source about his views, his answer was revealing: ‘I haven’t decided what I think yet’.

    China is likely waiting for the results of the American election before deciding what to do. And to intervene would be breaking with its traditional foreign policy habit – China has been reluctant to follow in the steps of America and become a ‘global policeman’, resistant to the idea that with its increasing power comes an increasing responsibility to ensure global stability. In fact, I’m told that one of the biggest surprises within the Chinese establishment since the outbreak of war in Ukraine was that the rest of the world (including Europe) expected China to take a position, according to the same military source. The traditional Chinese view is that this conflict is happening on a different continent and has nothing to do with Beijing. There are some within the Chinese side, now, who are calling for China to start taking a more active, constructive role in mediation.

    In the end, the State Department’s hopes may fall flat on a simple calculus from Beijing, the same kind of logic that has stopped it from doing more to dissuade Russia – that to support the West in Ukraine would only expedite the pivoting of American military attention towards Asia. Xi may well decide that there is little harm in the warming of relations between Putin and Kim – so long as Big Brother can keep his little brothers under a watchful eye, and away from playing with the nuclear codes.

    Cindy Yu
    WRITTEN BY
    Cindy Yu
    Cindy Yu is an assistant editor of The Spectator and presenter of our Chinese Whispers podcast. She was brought up in Nanjing. She tweets at @CindyXiaodanYu

    1. To achieve clarity, the opening of the above Speccy article needs editing:

      "Throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China has, for the most part, refused to be drawn . . ."

      1. Was there a video, Eddy? I can only see a blank space and got a message about something being removed 'for my safety'…

          2. Not sure, I just like the way the Russians deal with their problems.
            Just get on with it.

  66. Gentle reminder: the 60th quadrennial presidential election, is scheduled on Tuesday, November 5, 2024.

    Will they cheat (again)?
    Will they accept defeat graciously?
    Will Trump actually be able to clear the swamp?
    Will this be the start of a civil war?

    The Guardian says.. Excruciatingly close.

    pah.. The polls are wrong. No one likes Harris and Trump has a clear lead. It's a repeat of the Ronald Reagan’s 49-state landslide victory in 1984.. the result will be obvious within hours.

      1. One does get the impression that the actual people voting don't have as much say in the matter as they should have.

      2. My fear is that however great the victory is for Trump the Democrats will still steal it again,

    2. I am not that convinced because I think there is the real possibility that the Democrats have rigged the election like they did last time round.

      1. The Dems have too much to lose by letting the electorate choose. Its a fight to the death for them.

      1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

        It looked as if they were looking up to the hills as they sang.

    1. I am very fearful that the government wants Tommy Robinson dead.

      I fear that he will be murdered in prison by a jihadist and, surprise, surprise, they will not be able to find out who did it and so nobody will be punished.

      If that does happen then I very much hope that the country will become ungovernable until this catastrophic government is removed.

      2. I agree, but if the murder doesnt happen then plan B is that the terror and uncertainty brought about by the way TR has been handled will serve as a warning about what his treatment will be if he continues to cause trouble for the state and is banged up again. How disappointing for 2TK that the 'far right thugs' were all terribly well behaved at the demos.

    2. Could the major problem of most (?) prisons being either controlled by or heavily influenced by these dangerous islamist creatures could be vastly improved by them being kept completely separate from normal prisoners?

  73. Protesters throw mud at Spanish king on visit to flood-stricken Valencia. 3 November 2024.

    A crowd of furious flood survivors threw mud and shouted insults at King Felipe VI as he visited a devastated town in Spain’s Valencia region.

    The king was accompanied by Queen Letizia and government officials who tried to talk to locals in Paiporta, which experienced around a year’s worth of rain on Tuesday.

    I’m not completely au fait with the Spanish Royal Family but it looks to me that they are blaming the wrong man here. That plonker of a Prime Minister would surely make a much better target?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/03/protesters-throw-mud-king-spain-flooding-valencia/

  74. We had a guest preacher at church this morning. The Bishop of South Sudan. He and Fr Marcus met at a conference in the US last year. One of the servers likened him to Bishop Michael Curry preaching at the wedding of Harry and Meghan and he’s not wrong. Volume and bombast but not much content. He burst into song at one point and he does have a very good singing voice. He referred to Christians in Sudan being persecuted but unbowed though didn’t identify the persecutors. We all know, of course?

    2. Some years ago, had a contract in South Sudan. Before it became too awful.
      Nice people.

    3. I was born on July 1st 1946 in Erkowit in the Sudan and Christened in the Anglican Cathedral in Khartoum in 1947.

      Reading the accounts of the vandalism that has been done to the place should warn us what is likely to happen to cathedrals in Britain when those of the same faith and morality as these vandals have control but I very much doubt if either the Archpillock or the Idiot King gives a damn.

    4. Fr Philip took our service as usual on the first Sunday in the month. His sermon was that we are all saints, every one of us. I thought back to my incandescence over the last 100 days and thought that maybe he'd got it wrong!

      1. Sanctification is an ongoing process, and often a slow one, not complete until the resurrection to eternal life.

        1. It was mainly based on Paul's letters, addressing his audience as "saints". We may be closer to the end of times than we think! He said it was eschatological. What's happening to the UK at the moment seems nearer to scatological to me 🙁

    3. Signed, but I'm not holding my breath. The morons in the Government seem incapable of realising they have made a mistake – "we are never wrong" seems to be the default setting.

    6. Signed and distributed.
      Anything to give these vindictive bastards a boot up the backside.

    2. My Great-Aunt Hilda was nicknamed "Tommy". She was tiny, took no nonsense from any bugger.
      Nearest I ever had to a grandmother. Loved her to bits.

  79. A message from Kemi was sent to all members.
    This is the sentence that jumped out at me.

    And yes, a reformed CCHQ also means no more candidate stitch ups.

    Aymen, Sister. Go, Kemi, and cleanse the stables.

    2. That's assuming local constituency people can select their candidates unfettered.
      What would CCHQ do if a constituency selected Tommy Robinson?

      2. When CCHQ took over the candidate sifting, they stopped a time honoured and successful practice.
        In short, local candidates i.e. those who had been councillors, local activists or worthies were guaranteed a place in final four line-up.
        Just imagine, choosing a candidate who knew and loved their patch instead of some metropolitan smart arse who knows nothing other than playing political games.

    4. As I wrote just after she was selected:

      She could make a lot worse first step than to give local associations the sole right to select their own candidates rather than have them foisted upon them by central office.

  82. Good afternoon and welcome to my new desktop – it is about the size of a paperback novel… When Tim produced it from his bag, assumed that it was part of the "proper" machine! Everything works, more or less. There will be some tinkering and the odd bit of swearing. But I am really delighted.

    The whole cost (it was a reconditioned machine with a brand new hard disk) plus the essential software was HALF the price of the PC I has thought of buying new…… How about that! And, of course, he drove here – a round trip of 200 miles – to install it and make sure all the (many) connections were connected.

    Have I missed any news?

    2. The world has gone to hell in a handcart. Good news about your computer! My laptop at work was playing up last week and I feared I’d have to have a new one. I hate having to get used to new machines. Anyway one of our IT support guys, who’s been round the block a few times and knows tricks the others don’t, solved the problem by “resetting” the battery. He takes it out, fiddles with some bits and puts it back. All good now. It was showing as working from the battery when it was actually plugged in and the power supply was fine, plus it displayed 0% battery power then 100% but was really at 75%. Aren’t machines wonderful?

      1. Don’t get me started on the phone situation at MIR Towers. Long and complicated* but at the moment neither of my delightful offspring has a functioning one (which means I can’t use the “find my progeny” function to cyber-stalk them).

        We have one new (second hand) phone, bought from my delightful work colleague a few weeks ago when he upgraded to the new iPhone, which they are going to have to fight over next weekend. I tried to swap my phone for this new (second hand) one but failed miserably in the process. So one of them will get a bargain; the other can chose from a selection of old iPhone 5s and 6s. Yep, that old!

        *My darling daughter misplaced hers and my sweetheart son thought he would get his phone’s cracked screen replaced at an unauthorised dealer. Giuess what. The repair didn’t work.

      2. Don’t get me started on the phone situation at MIR Towers. Long and complicated* but at the moment neither of my delightful offspring has a functioning one (which means I can’t use the “find my progeny” function to cyber-stalk them).

        We have one new (second hand) phone, bought from my delightful work colleague a few weeks ago when he upgraded to the new iPhone, which they are going to have to fight over next weekend. I tried to swap my phone for this new (second hand) one but failed miserably in the process. So one of them will get a bargain.

        *My darling daughter misplaced hers and my sweetheart son thought he would get his phone’s cracked screen replaced at an unauthorised dealer. Giuess what. The repair didn’t work.

        1. There is no way I could have done it.
          To make matters even more hairy, we ended up having to change a password.

        1. Oh dear. There is always stuff only but most of it is depressing – how about some old comedies?

      1. Ah yes…the McOtaru clan played a leading role in the '45 but turned back at Derby when they found it already occupied by the Fukawi.

          1. Love it! Riff on the civil war(s)(I am reliably informed we have to call them wars these days not war due to the theatre of war)

  85. Nicked
    I'm sure variations on this theme could bugger the thieving bastards
    A few years ago a man in the West Country bought a Railway Station and a stretch of land where the tracks and sidings used to be.
    He converted the station into his house and turned the rest of the land into a garden.
    Five years after he had completed everything the Railway Company slapped a compulsory purchase on him to re-open the line.
    At this stage he sold off all his land in one metre squares to a consortium of single buyers at £2-50 a square.
    This meant that to reclaim the land the Railway Company would have to take 500 people to court to repossess. They decided this was not feasible and the man won.

    I tell this story because if Farmers were to sell 1/100th of their land to each other the IHT charge would disappear overnight because all farmers would have a smaller land holding which would be impossible to claim against.
    If one farmer owned 1/100th of a 100 farms it would also be harder to instigate compulsory purchase orders.

    5. This was done to try and save Otmoor when the M40 was built over it. They put a Bill through parliament to nullify the owners' rights iirc.
      Might work for a consortium of farmers? the administration would be hairy though.

      1. I'm sure that at the planning stage the M40 was re-aligned to avoid going across Otmoor, which is why between jcts 8 and 9 the line of the motorway goes further to the East than a smooth line between the junctions would take. I have more than a passing knowledge of this because I was one of the registered objectors at the planning approval stage to the route across Otmoor. Every time I drive along that stretch of the M40, including the noticable sharp curve (to the left when northbound) I think to myself that I am partly responsible for its existence.(!)

        1. It was (thank you!), and they did move it a bit, but the revised map looked as though they had moved the word ‘Otmoor’ too!
          It cuts across the edge of it. It hasn’t brought advantages to the area – just yet more building over fields.

    6. I'd like to know which station that was. In the SW, some have been reopened on existing lines but no public lines have been rebuilt from a railless condition (heritage lines excluded). The Exeter-Okehampton line was goods only and saw occasional passenger specials and experimental services before its full reopening. However, some projected reopenings may run into difficulties as you describe i.e. private occupiers. There are cases of original station buildings remaining privately occupied at reopened stations.

  86. Moors Valley Country Park is looking very Autumnal now.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/77ce8e28f7c3a9a7f366625a75d53c1ccd797e5b2ee93cec5712009085c7d92e.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/de212e642a18f310542fb3bf21012089970cc0bcae358fc6919da51f8e22e1bb.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/44d8c6748e47c35c6809d20d781ade9cd48415277c43bff09684b25421310351.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4d289562564a102374d1fd04cb4ced137f690ecfb64290250b36b8dc47aac800.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/535b22932ae5df95cf063f2ecf22f32cf683769b7f661bfe7872e99577a59041.jpg

    4. It take me back. I use to love going to the lake park in St Albans with our boys and feeding the lovely swans
      For such large birds, they were always so gentle when taking the bread from our hands.

  87. The cover up of a potential ricin attack is arguably the worst atrocity this 'government' (for want of a better word) has so far committed against the British people.
    If they are willing to hide this kind of evil, and make no mistake, ricin is evil within the full Biblical meaning of the word, what else are they willing to bury ''for the sake of diversity''?

        2. If Uncle Tom is a pejorative term for a black person who courts the friendship of white people do we have a word for white politicians who suck up to black people?

    2. DT article

      Government delayed Southport suspect terrorism charge over Chris Kaba riot fears, reports claim

      The Government delayed announcing new charges against the Southport stabbings suspect by up to two weeks amid fears of fresh riots, it has been reported.

      Riot police were reportedly placed on standby earlier last month but the new charges of possessing al-Qaeda material and producing ricin were not announced until more than a week later.

      According to reports the delay occurred during the high-profile Chris Kaba murder trial, with police worried that if he had been found guilty hundreds of firearms officers could go on strike in protest.

      As ever, the article and the headline do not match. The thinking seems to be; firearms officer found guilty of murder, hundreds of firearms officers down tools (shurely guns). Government comes clean about the ricin etc. Riots break out.

      I presume they mean that the far-Right (yes, I know) riots would re-start. But why would they need firearms officers?

  88. Flashy Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,233 3/6
    🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Well done, Lacoste, par here.
      Wordle 1,233 4/6

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

    2. Well done. Five here.

      Wordle 1,233 5/6

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

    1. I have never been a fan but I really hope he does win and fixes all the nasties that are deeply embedded in world politics.

      1. The National Guard have been alerted and positioned in strategic towns and cities .

        There will be trouble ahead , horrible thought , but there will be jiggery pokery to cope with.

      2. As the dollar's about to go titsup, they're handing him a poison chalice. Hopefully the Trump team will manage the carnage as well as possible.

    2. They're now talking about having Ron Paul in the government…that would really give the Democrats something to cry about!

  90. Signing off – exhausted! Tomorrow, AGA man comes for the 6 month service. So a cold start to the day….

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain – possibly.

    1. And Japanese Knot weed is illegal.
      This country will never get over this terrible human invasion. Never !

        1. I'll drink to that! Have Hansa IPA at correct strength (8%), and it's excellent. Ideal for a dark Sunday evening, in front of the fire. Cheers!
          (hic!)

  93. 'Afternoon Peeps.

    Headline in the DT this afternoon:

    "Britain importing record amounts of electricity from Europe
    The UK warned its growing dependence on imports leaves it at risk of outages"

    Right now gridwatch templar shows demand at 37.79 GW. This is being met by gas (54.86%), nuclear (12.72%), wind (2.83%) and for the remainder our undersea interconnectors are mostly flat out or very close to it. It is beyond shameful that our 11,500 wind turbines are currently next to useless. Add to that the fact that all but one of our ageing nuclear stations will be closed during this decade and the countries operating the interconnectors are beginning to realise that they will not be able to go on supplying power to us at this rate because they need to retain more of their own. We are indeed fortunate that the current high pressure system stuck over this country has not coincided with really cold weather. However, when it does (as it surely will) perhaps the time has come to regard power cuts as a blessing in disguise; it might finally shake the government out of its fatal complacency, even though this will mean that some of the old and vulnerable may not survive and our economy will nosedive.

    Fear not, however – our energy department is on to it:

    "On Friday, a spokesman for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “We are committed to boosting Britain’s energy security.

    “Our mission is for clean power by 2030 because this is the best way to achieve energy independence, protect bill payers and reduce imports.

    “We only import from international partners when energy is cheaper in Europe, so families pay lower prices for their energy.”

    A more fatuous and completely ridiculous comment is hard to imagine!

    1. We drove through a large section of France last week and of dozens and dozens of windmills we passed only one was turning as there was almost no breeze, even the roadside windsocks weren't moving.

        1. Indeed, but when a real power emergency happens do the morons in the UK really believe France et al will use it themselves or pass it to the UK?

          1. True, but my point was the fact that the UK is pretending that wind and solar can give us energy security.

      2. Meanwhile, Milipede is spending £mega millions on dodgy and energy-intensive 'research projects' . . .

        1. If I had to select a group of the most deranged people on the planet he’d certainly be part of it.

      3. If it was just the one turning, it would be a trickle of electricity moving the blades to stop the ball bearings getting squashed.

  95. Iran student strips in protest over strict hijab dress code
    Footage shows student being forcibly bungled into vehicle by several security guards at university in Tehran. Her whereabouts is unknown
     https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/03/iran-student-strips-in-protest-over-strict-hijab-dress-code/

    Betjeman's bombs should be diverted from Slough to Tehran.

    We should not be under any illusion that once we are ruled by ayatollahs we shall not be treated like this if we step out of line.

  96. I have been musing on the IHT/Private Pension thing.

    Clever Financial Services (FS) companies would do well to devise annuities which would pay out to spouses and children in the event of the policy holder’s death. Works best if you know when you are going to die. But for example at 78-85, if you think you have a few years left, take a big chunk of your remaining pot and stick in such a policy. I’d rather my money went to a FS company than HM Govt.

    1. We have a small second death annuity, but the income loss was quite substantial, it would be even worse if children were to be paid, a lot worse.

      1. Early days in my thinking. Plus, in my defence, I am not a specialist in this (or for that matter any other) field.

        interestingly my mother once was investigated by HMCE and she declared afterwards she would rather be cremated with her money than pay any more over when she died, only to be told burning coin of the realm is illegal.

    2. In 1066 and All That they told us that as soon as anyone got near solving the Irish Question the Irish went and changed the question.

      The repulsive Labour government is more than capable of cheating by changing tax rules retroactively as soon as someone finds a way round them.

      Before returning to university to get a P.G.Cert.Ed I worked for a firm of life assurance brokers (Noble, Lowndes and Partners – known as Nobbly Loins in the trade) which specialised in finding any loopholes in the tax arrangements which we could breach with annuities, life assurance policies written under trust, independent pension policies or life assurance bonds. It was a game of cat and mouse and each time we found a loophole the government closed it. But in those days they played fair and did not apply the new rules on contracts which pre-dated the tax changes. The last thing that Starmer will ever do is play fair.

      There used to be a distinction between tax evasion which was illegal and tax avoidance which was not. I was dismayed to hear a government spokesman explain that those who tried to avoid VAT on school fees by paying the fees in advance were 'guilty' of tax avoidance which used to be perfectly acceptable.

    1. Anyone with any common sense knows every illegal arrival should be immediately taken to a secure holding facility.
      And if they can't be deported, they should be stored in very secure and very basic facilities. No halal food either.
      I am glad there are no hotels nearby.

  101. Just seen this post by one “Huxleypiggles” over on the Daily Sceptic:

    “Tommy Robinson update.

    ADMIN POST.

    Important update.

    Tommy has had a visit from his daughters today, despite the turmoil he’s facing, he remains in good spirits and was overjoyed to see his girls.

    Tomorrow, HMP Woodhill have said they’ll have an organized routine of exercise and visits.

    You can continue to send letters, cards etc, prison number: A2084CG

    With Tommy being locked up again this Christmas, he’s unable to work and provide at this special time of year, which hurts him more than anything.”

  103. Jeremy Clarkson accuses Labour of trying to 'nationalise the countryside' and jokes 'one day all this will be Rachel Reeves' as fury over farming inheritance tax raid grows..

    "Farmers. I know that you have been shafted today. But please don’t despair. Just look after yourselves for five short years and this shower will be gone."

    1. Another open goal for Badenoch.

      Promise to reverse the policy as soon as the Conservatives are elected.
      I suspect every rural by-election would go Tory, eating away slowly at Labour's majority.

      Unfortunately by-elections are few and far between, but perhaps constituencies could become so disenchanted that recall petitions start to succeed.
      One can but hope

      1. Many will agree with Reeves.
        Haven't you heard the grumbling about rich farmers? I'd wager that 60+% of the population would be delighted to be quit farmers. Until the food shortages start, of couse, and that will be the farmer's fault, too.

        1. Mainly pig ignorant townies, and I very much doubt your 60% figure would be accurate.

          I can't work out what a "quit farmer" might be, unless it's a typo.

          1. I suspect the 60% is an underestimate. Sadly.
            They would like revenge to be visited on farmers and their big houses. An envy on "the toffs", get rid of them all, as food (as we all know) comes from Waitrose.
            It's a Class thing. Nobody sees the work, skill, investment that goes in to farming, just the big (inherited) house and massive tractor. So, get rid of the farmers, tax them out of existence, the ungrateful bastards.
            I've been farming, and still do to some extent. Lots of job satisfaction, eff-all money, and huge amounts of physical work.

          2. On an hourly rate it's probably one of the worst paid jobs in the country.

            There are times when I would like the farmers to go on strike and eat their own product for a few months, so that shops run out of all the basics, from milk and meat to bread and vegetables and fruits.
            At the same time blocking ports with their tractors, no oil, no food, etc.

          3. There was a tractor run taking place this morning – vintage types doing about 15-20mph. Good job I allowed plenty of time to get to church.

          4. Perfect for the march on London, where the limit is 20 and you are lucky to do 15.

          5. There's a bloke up the village with a Meadows engined ERF tractor unit he takes to rallies and out for occasional runs. It sounds brilliant, but to keep the balance when running without a trailer, he has a 1 ton counter-weight on the 5th wheel.

      3. Trouble is, over the years they've promised so much and delivered so little that it's difficult to believe or trust them ever again.

    2. I'm always surprised by the view that in five years time they will be gone!

      They will gerrymander the electoral boundaries.
      They will reduce the voting age to 16 (or lower if they can get away with it) – the stupidity of youth…..
      They will ensure a torrent of 'incomers' supportive of their endless beneficence
      They will grow the Public Sector, their very own client voters, to historical (hysterical?) levels

      We're well and truly stuffed. Only mass insurrection and civil disobedience can save us now……

  107. Normally I'm an "it's the car that is the most decisive factor", but the winner of today's F1 GP was unbelievably skilled. An amazing performance.

    1. He's a bit special, isnt he?

      Although, unfortunately like most of them (eg Hamilton) he does appear to be an incorrigible little shit…..

      1. I would be absolutely delighted if Mercedes dominated F1 next year and Ferrari hardly featured.

        As you might guess, I’m not a Hamilton fan.

    1. I hadn't believed the story before. I would go into spectacular violence mode if someone, whoever, tried to take my Oscar away.

          3. It was a jealous Instagram influencer in Texas who complained to NYC council – she was jealous because the poor squirrel got more views and ticks and wotsits than she did. This is such a pathetic sad case. However, that aside, if it is illegal to have wild animals inside one's home I'd have been jolly careful about letting that fact be known on social media. A poor old racoon was also forced to bite the dust from the same rescue home at the same time. Peanut and Fred, Rest in Peace.

  110. Rachel Reeves responded to a future beneficiary of the capital rich family owned farm by saying that should the farm be jointly owned then the standard £2m joint IHT allowance would be increased to £3m on the death of both owners and after that IHT would be charged at 20%.

    Pending such a death could the survivor of a jointly owned farm marry the beneficiary?

  111. Rachel Reeves responded to a future beneficiary of the capital rich family owned farm by saying that should the farm be jointly owned then the standard £2m joint IHT allowance would be increased to £3m on the death of both owners and after that IHT would be charged at 20%.

    Pending such a death could the survivor of a jointly owned farm marry the beneficiary?

  112. Evening, all. Busy day for me; church followed by a trip to Shrewsbury for a meeting which didn't go exactly to plan, largely because a lot of people who should have been there and who didn't send their apologies didn't turn up. Such is life.

    Kemi won't unite this personal part of the right; the conservative party left me a decade or more ago and as far as I can see they are nowhere near coming back to what I believe in.

    1. Good grief, Conners, I just misread this as Kadi won't unite this personal part of the right. Lol.

      1. No I don't suppose he will, either 🙂 He'd only vote for more biscuits and unlimited cuddles.

          1. Pretty much the only thing on Mongo, Lucy and , well, not Oscar's manifesto would be tummy rubs and rabbit treats.

            Mongo might put in a case for shorter walks.

          2. My dog 15th year, shortest possible walk for him. Rabbit treats look good, will try him on them…probably wuff down the lot, bag and all, if he gets his paws on it.

          3. I've bought Kadi some rabbit ears as a Christmas treat to put in his stocking. It's okay, I can tell you because he can't see the screen 🙂

  113. Kemi Badenoch has has made her first appt – chief whip
    Very impressive in her own right- Rebecca Harris – 57 year old MP for South Benfleet and Hadleigh. Worked in business most of her life, started off as a delivery driver .
    Believes the House of Commons needs those with business experience- very much a supporter of small business, fights for green belt areas. Very much a staunch Eurosceptic – very much pro Brexit who has had many battles with Remainers in the House of Commons. Rebecca is a very good choice.

    2. Noooooo!

      What we need are people who have never worked in the private sector, nor turned the slightest profit, since to do so would equal slavery.

      Have I got this right, Keir?

    3. Lets see how she does before we make up our minds. I do not trust any of them untill proved wrong.

    1. We really, truly should simply be able to sack them and recall the government, refusing whatever nonsense demented crackpot stupidity these fools (on either side) want to impose on us.

      Imagine if the public had said no to Brown's original pensions raid, no to his fuel tax hikes. Imagine if when Mlioaf forced the cliamte change act on us we had refused it, sacked and jailed him?

    1. Lot of reports claiming their neck n neck etc. For me, even if they declare Trump has lost, he's the winner. We've all seen the footage of voting machines seemingly changing to a Harris vote from a Trump vote (h/t Marjorie Taylor Green).

  116. For those of you who know who Caitlyn Jenner is:

    If you had to guess which way he/she voted I suspect you would have assumed as I did.

        1. Why? Bruce is a real Trans. Not one masquerading as one to get into little girls knickers or to rape women in prison.

    1. Remember me sounding off yesterday about some friends posting chain letters on Facebook? Well the person who actually replied to one of them stating in no uncertain terms exactly what I was thinking was Laurie who now calls himself Tina. He’s mad as a box of frogs but his post on that issue was well expressed and spot on. It happens.

          2. Only if they come from anonymous sources. People are routinely copying guff they haven’t written and can’t trace to source.

          5. I've seen lots of those. I sometimes reply with where we first met but I don't copy and paste. Lots of the other sort are about mental health issues; while I don't disagree that it's important, I don't want to plaster it all over my own page. Most of my pics are either of real events or pics of animals – my own photos , not someone else's.

  119. As a sneaky tactic, if I was in Trump's shoes I would be very tempted to announce that the time has come to stop the political lawfare and that one of his first acts as President would be to give a Presidential pardon the Hunter Biden, wipe the slate clean, and start government by politicians not lawyers.

      1. True.
        But something needs to be done about the lawfare.
        Even if Trump gets elected he'll be bogged down by it.
        I give it less than 6 months before impeachment proceedings start

    2. I might go for that but only if he was prepared to sing like the proverbial (which I suspect he'd never do).

  120. If anybody was just watching Free Speech Nation on GB News, this is a link to Tyler Fischer’s x account and a 7 minute talk by him regarding his ban from Delta airlines for his “tweet”.

    (For those not watching, he’s a US comedian who has been given a “permanent ban” from flying Delta airlines for a tweet he made about (paraphrasing now) not needing to know whether or not the flight attendants are gay or not).

    https://x.com/TyTheFisch/status/1849581341643305126

    1. Not sure here. He admits to tweeting (a pretty foul-mouthed) post that incudes the faces of the flight attendants concerned. If he has as many followers as he says, then the fact he deleted it would probably be immaterial as it's already been forwarded many times. His 'X' or Tweet also says perhaps he should be looking for a new airline to fly.
      Edit; I think he grounded himself to be honest.

  122. All dogs and humans fed. All heading to bed as it's not especially warm (but not cold enough to put heating on). Junior in the main bathroom, I waddled to the smaller one while the warqueen does what she does in the cupboard sized one in the bedroom. It's funny that each dog follows their preferred human.

    Spot of top gear before taking sleeping tablet – I'm not at the moment – and then car in to the body shop on the morrow.

    Not been about much as try to avoid comps at the weekend and I imagine most are grateful for that! Howveer, night all.

    1. Goodnight. So Mongo follows Junior and Oscar follows the Warqueen. Has Lucy adopted you?

  123. Well, another day of burning brash up the hill.
    The hole created by the rotten stump burning out has got quite a bit bigger and there is a decent sized hole going under the ground to one side where one of the roots must have been!

    I've cleared a small patch of ground and am considering what to do with it. One idea is put a textile mat down with turf over that.
    Then plant 4 to 6 fruit trees from the selection of seed grown saplings I have.

    Of those seed grown saplings, two of them, one planted on the Upper Level and another still in a (rather large) pot actually produced a tiny apple each this year. The one on the Upper Level was VERY acid, but the pot grown one was rather nice! I also have some chestnut and walnut to get planted too.

    1. Today Network Rail were doing things to the track , slight delays over our crossing .. in fact we have 2 crossings one each end of the village the latter being the station .

      Honest to goodness we had to wait for one of the longest freight / rail track trains to pass whilst we were waiting at the level crossing .. the trucks went on and on slowly , must have been twenty or more .. and they were pulled by a very unusual heavy engine .

      We still don't know what they were doing.

      2. Freight trains in the UK move slowly.

        When staying in a hotel next to the Tyne in Newcastle a few years back at night I was mesmerised by the freight train activity visible on the other side of the river. There was constant movement of very long trains but all moved slowly.

      3. Sounds like re-railing or re-ballasting and that train would not have been freight but an engineer’s train.

    2. BoB, did you take any before, during and after photos? I would love to see what you are doing if you have time tomorrow.

  126. I think I'll turn in soon, cough easing off at last and not had to endure the bad side effects of any anti biotics.
    Good night all.

  127. And that is me off to bed.
    Forecast suggests a misty/foggy start leading to a dry but overcast day.

    Good night all.

      1. We've just sat down after dinner…………. we had roast pork and I'm a bit stuffed as I don't eat so much these days.

  129. Right, chums, I'm off to bed now. Good Night, sleep well, and hope to see you all tomorrow.

    1. Blimey! We were there last week and the weather was perfect – clear blue skies and a gentle sea breeze all week long.

  132. From the Spectator

    Tanya Gold
    Toffee apples: a dangerous food for frightening nights
    From magazine issue:
    02 November 2024

    Bonfire night is more about burning Catholics than haute cuisine and it shows. I’ve always felt for Catholic friends at this time of year, but I am a Jew, and I am told I am oversensitive. It’s also three decades since I made £150 doing ‘Penny for the Guy’ on Hampstead High Street. The last time I went to a bonfire night party it was hosted by a Catholic, and this confused me, until I remembered: she is an English Catholic.

    If Christmas is for the goose, and Easter for the hot cross bun, bonfire night has the toffee apple. Because this is a desolate festival, it has neither toffee on the apple – we will get to that – nor, too often, a bonfire. I’m not for burning Guido in effigy like those pyromaniac loons in Lewes, about whom I always think: who will they burn next? But if I go to bonfire night, I want a bonfire, and they are often cancelled because they are dangerous, which is the point of them, and a bonfire night without a bonfire is a Christmas without Christ. The toffee apple suits its festival: you need fire to make it.

    As with most famous dishes, the origin of the toffee apple is contested (not as much as better foods, but still). Honey and sugar were used as preservatives in ancient times, and it’s not impossible that sugar was heated to coat the apple. But I like to think wise ancients were more careful of their teeth: a toffee apple can steal a molar and laugh. It’s likely the Victorians knew how to make them, and I found a food blogger who called them a Russian delicacy.

    We know this: in 1908, a confectioner called William W. Kolb of Newark, New Jersey, made a series of bright red sugared apples with cinnamon for his Christmas window display. These are candy apples, not toffee apples – you need butter or cream to make toffee. Even so, people liked them. Like Cassandras predicting late-stage capitalism, widespread morbid obesity and misnaming common things, they ate the window display. If this story is true, the toffee apple is an accidental food like the Caesar salad, which was invented in Mexico when a chef had a panic attack. It is also not a toffee apple. It is a candy apple.

    Now they are everywhere in autumn, when apples are plentiful. Purists make caramel apples, which are really toffee apples, because they contain butter, or cream. Hunter’s Candy in Moscow, Idaho, sold them from 1936 but, as with the toffee apple that should be called a candy apple, it is likely that they existed earlier. There are variations wherever you find apples: you can add chocolate or nuts and if you are grandiose you can paint them. They were sent to the front in the second world war, alongside salami.

    But the caramel apple isn’t the same. Not enough sugar. You want the crack of the sugar, and the sourness of a Granny Smith. A sweet apple cannot be a toffee apple. It makes no sense. Nor can a waxed apple. The sugar slides off. Nor can a soft apple, which collapses. If you make your own, beware. For a toffee apple, the sugar must be heated to 140°C for the desired ‘hard crack’. This is a dangerous foodstuff for frightened nights, and that’s apt.

    Tanya Gold
    WRITTEN BY
    Tanya Gold
    Tanya Gold is The Spectator's restaurant critic.

  133. From the Daily Telegraph

    Amanda Knox has been accused of continually profiting from the murder of her British room-mate Meredith Kercher as filming gets underway in Italy for a new TV series about the brutal killing.

    Shooting began in the hilltop town of Orvieto, north of Rome, last week and is expected to continue at several locations this week in Perugia, the mediaeval town in Umbria, where Kercher died in November 2007.

    Ms Knox, who was definitively acquitted of Kercher’s murder and sexual assault charges in 2015, is one of the producers of the eight-part series to be aired by Hulu, the US streaming service owned by Disney.

    The series, also backed by Alt Ending Productions – the production company run by Bill Clinton’s former intern Monica Lewinsky – and stars 27-year-old actress, Grace Van Patten, in the lead role.

    Hulu has said the series is “based on the true story of how Knox was wrongfully convicted for the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, and her 16-year odyssey to set herself free”.

    Amanda Knox in Florence, June 2024, before a hearing in a slander case connected to the killing of Meredith Kercher
    Amanda Knox in Florence, June 2024, before a hearing in a slander case connected to the killing of Meredith Kercher
    But Kercher’s sister, Stephanie, questioned the purpose for the new series in a heartfelt statement issued by the family on Sunday.

    “Meredith will always be remembered for her own fight for life, and yet in her absence, her love and personality continue to shine,” she said.

    “Our family has been through so much and it is difficult to understand how this serves any purpose.”

    Francesco Maresca, the lawyer representing the Kercher family, went further and accused Knox of repeatedly seeking to profit from the victim’s murder.

    “On the one hand Amanda says the trial created so much suffering for her but then she tries to have it all – the fame and the money,” Mr Maresca said.

    Grace Van Patten will play Amanda Knox in the Hulu series

    “She continues to make money from it. This time she has no qualms about doing it in Perugia, one of the least appropriate places to return to 17 years since Meredith’s death.

    “Knox is only interested in the profits she continues to make from an affair on which she should be silent.”

    In a crime that made headlines around the world, Kercher, 21, was found dead after being stabbed multiple times.

    During the trial prosecutors insisted that her murder was the outcome of rough group sex involving the British student, Knox and her then Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

    While Ms Knox was ultimately cleared of the murder and assault charges, a Florence court in June this year upheld a previous three-year conviction for slandering Congolese bar owner, Patrick Lumumba, who she wrongly implicated in the murder after her arrest in 2007.

    Ms Knox’s lawyer, Carlo dalla Vedova, could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

    Rudy Guede, a small-time drug dealer, is the only person convicted of the murder of Ms Kercher
    Rudy Guede, a small-time drug dealer, is the only person convicted of the murder of Ms Kercher Credit: ITALIAN POLICE
    But Ms Knox has often used social media to highlight the challenges she faced when she emerged from prison and announced her involvement in the Hulu production on International Women’s Day on X saying: ‘’I’m excited to be partnering with some kickass women to bring my story to life.’’

    In a recent X post to promote her forthcoming book, Free, the 37-year-old said: ‘’I was the girl accused of murder. I was trapped in that story. I didn’t feel free. It’s taken me over a decade to make meaning out of my misfortune. I created my own freedom.’’

    She also shared her experiences in her 2013 memoir Waiting to be Heard and was the focus of a Netflix documentary, as well as the 2014 English film entitled, The Face of an Angel, and the film, Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy.

    Only one person was definitively convicted of the murder of Kercher – Rudy Guede, a small-time drug dealer born in the Ivory Coast who lived in Perugia. He was sentenced to 16 years in jail and was released early in 2021.

    1. Kamala Harris stands no chance even in the traditional swing states. Americans have only to look at the wholesale destruction she has visited on California where once beautiful cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles have become cesspits where the politicians are under the thumb of the Mexican Drug Cartels.

      This disaster can be laid at the feet of Kamala Harris and the tiny gated community of her backers comprising the Getty family, the Newcombe, Pelosi and Brown political fraternities. These bastards live in Pacific Heights, totally immune to the problems they have created in the cities and lesser suburbs.

      Kamala Harris is a walking, talking disaster area. No sane American would vote for Komealot. She is a lazy and sleazy person with absolutely no accomplishments.

    3. God, I bloody hope so.
      She'd be a disaster not just for the United States, but the West in general.

  136. ”MARKS and Spencer have apologised after advertising bras for teenage girls as being for “young things”.
    A poster on display in the lingerie section of one of the retailer’s outlets reads “first bras for fearless young things” alongside an image of two smiling teenage girls.
    Women’s-rights campaigners have accused M&S of “dehumanising all young women” and of kowtowing to transgender ideology.
    The language was spotted by Beverly Turner, a journalist, who shared a picture of the poster on X on Friday afternoon.
    In a direct address to M&S, Ms
    Turner, a GB News presenter, wrote: “Your shop is a crucial part of British identity. You are important and you need to thrive.
    “But this sign dehumanises all young women at the very moment when they must not feel embarrassed or ashamed of their femininity.”
    She added: “We need to celebrate them becoming adult females – not erase them.”
    “It is not the job of our daughters to make confused boys in bras feel better about themselves. I’m truly shocked.”
    A spokesman for M&S confirmed they were taking the poster down and commented that “we’re sorry we got it wrong this time”.”

    You don’t say!

  138. “MARKS and Spencer have apologised after advertising bras for teenage girls as being for “young things”.

    A poster on display in the lingerie section of one of the retailer’s outlets reads “first bras for fearless young things” alongside an image of two smiling teenage girls.

    Women’s-rights campaigners have accused M&S of “dehumanising all young women” and of kowtowing to transgender ideology.

    The language was spotted by Beverly Turner, a journalist, who shared a picture of the poster on X on Friday afternoon.
    In a direct address to M&S, Ms
    Turner, a GB News presenter, wrote: “Your shop is a crucial part of British identity. You are important and you need to thrive.
    “But this sign dehumanises all young women at the very moment when they must not feel embarrassed or ashamed of their femininity.”

    She added: “We need to celebrate them becoming adult females – not erase them.”
    “It is not the job of our daughters to make confused boys in bras feel better about themselves. I’m truly shocked.”

    A spokesman for M&S confirmed they were taking the poster down and commented that “we’re sorry we got it wrong this time”.”

    You don’t say!

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