Sunday 7 January: Who will answer for the rampant crime making Londoners afraid to go out?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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517 thoughts on “Sunday 7 January: Who will answer for the rampant crime making Londoners afraid to go out?”

  2. Good morrow, Gentlefolk. today’s story

    UNHAPPY DRIVER

    A guy in a car smacks into the back of a car at the traffic lights.
    Its driver, who happens to be a midget, jumps out and tells the guy behind that he is not happy.
    “OK, so which one are you?” asks the guy.

    2. When that miserable little dwarf, John Bercow, was the Speaker of the House of Commons he once remonstrated with a Conservative MP that he was “Not happy”, to which the same MP quipped straight back, “Well, which one are you then?” The Commons was in uproar at that.

  7. Sunak pledges to cut taxes by curbing welfare spending. 7 January 2024.

    Rishi Sunak has pledged to curb benefits and government spending to fund tax cuts before and after a general election.

    In an interview with The Telegraph, the Prime Minister made his most explicit commitment yet to further tax cuts before an election, saying: “When I say that I want to keep cutting taxes, that’s what we’re going to deliver.”

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Conservative Teacher.

    I’ll believe it when I see it.

    My wife’s friend’s brother has to just tricked his way into PIP when he’s able bodied. He copied his dad’s answers and only had to speak over the phone with someone.

    Now they’ve backdated him 3k straight into his bank account, bought him a mobility scooter and he’s now got a car on mobility.

    How can this be affordable or ethical?

    Is there anyone who actually believes Sunak? Even Mr Conservative Teacher is more convincing.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/06/rishi-sunak-pledges-curb-benefits-public-sector-cut-taxes/

    1. We, the tax payer, are mugs. It is infuriating.

      On th pe news earlier was that policing the Gaza protests has cost £20m. What an utter waste of money. It makes me want to weep.

    2. Yet, at 79, I’m too OLD for PIP but.t have very limited mobility, other than costly taxis.

  8. Good morning, chums. I trust you’ve all taken down your Christmas decorations now. Enjoy the day.

    1. I’ve still got one tree left to undecorate and stow away, Elsie. Apart from that, Christmas is finished for this season.

    1. I saw that last week, at least the show allowed Angus to get an airing, is Farage controlled opposition? the jury must be out.
      He couldn’t of been that naive to trust Boris with Brexit, could he? or is Tice?

      1. Farage’s capitulation to Johnson over standing down Brexit Party candidates against sitting Conservative MPs in the 2019 general election was a catastrophe and has done more to ruin Farage’s reputation and produce the pathetic Brexit Johnson achieved than anything else he has done.

        The trouble is that there is no other right of centre politician with the ability that Farage has to inspire people to dump both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.

        .

      2. 381523+ up ticks,

        Morning B3,

        Bob, in all fairness ask yourself where, under the successful leadership of Gerard Batten for a year plus would the UKIP party be now ?
        Batten ask the membership for £100000 & received £300000 in reply
        The only party in the black.

        Other pro Batten groups showing signs of unity as in forming a united front.
        As he said he would after a year
        re- stand in a leadership election only to have the current party nec say in so many words & with farage blessing via a letter, that Batten was an unfit candidate and he was denied standing.

        Low & behold the brexit party under
        the grand old duke farage went a marching.

        In retrospect over the years imho farage was more use to the opposition when in UKIP leadership.

  11. Wordle 932 4/6

    Got it in four today – a splendid result.

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

  12. White farmers in Zimbabwe live and die with the toxic legacy of Mugabe’s brutal land grab. 7 January 2024.

    Philip Rankin had long hoped for compensation after his family farm in Zimbabwe was seized because he was white, but cancer caught up with him first.

    The 65-year-old farmer died in early December, nearly seven years after he was handcuffed and forcibly removed from his farm by truckloads of police from Robert Mugabe’s government.

    Like many of the thousands of white Zimbabwean farmers who have faced the same fate since Mugabe’s farm invasions and takeovers began in early 2000, he found life difficult without the land his family had farmed for more than 30 years.

    I couldn’t read all of this. For some reason; though I have never been to Zimbabwe; or as I prefer it Rhodesia, provokes me to absolute rage. It is probably more to do with the part that Wilson’s government played in its fate than Mugabe’s actions. They actually assisted his murderous campaign. It was treachery of the most fundamental kind and as we can see has become a part of the political system in the UK.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/06/white-farmers-zimbabwe-toxic-legacy-mugabe-land-grab/

        1. “Unlike” on the Telegraph BTL sections indicates that you have already clicked on the “Thumbs Up” button and that is where you click a 2nd time if you change your mind.
          To vote down a comment you click on the Thumbs Down button.

  13. White farmers in Zimbabwe live and die with the toxic legacy of Mugabe’s brutal land grab. 7 January 2024.

    Philip Rankin had long hoped for compensation after his family farm in Zimbabwe was seized because he was white, but cancer caught up with him first.

    The 65-year-old farmer died in early December, nearly seven years after he was handcuffed and forcibly removed from his farm by truckloads of police from Robert Mugabe’s government.

    Like many of the thousands of white Zimbabwean farmers who have faced the same fate since Mugabe’s farm invasions and takeovers began in early 2000, he found life difficult without the land his family had farmed for more than 30 years.

    I couldn’t read all of this. For some reason; though I have never been to Zimbabwe; or as I prefer it Rhodesia, provokes me to absolute rage. It is probably more to do with the part that Wilson’s government played in its fate than Mugabe’s actions. They actually assisted his murderous campaign. It was treachery of the most fundamental kind and as we can see has become a part of the political system in the UK.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/06/white-farmers-zimbabwe-toxic-legacy-mugabe-land-grab/

  14. 381487+ up ticks,

    Sunday 7 January: Who will answer for the rampant crime making Londoners afraid to go out?

    Could this be put down as an influx issue when using the term “londoners” in so far as, the ex capital is no way overflowing with pearly kings and queens is it.

    Could very well be a case of felons working from home

  16. Ye Gods! It takes a strong constitution to read the damned News and and seething BTL comments…

    ‘Tis an unweeded garden that goes to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely..

    The above quote by the Late Mr Shakespeare encapsulates the state of C21st Western societies….

    I wish you all a good morning.

  18. Good morning, all. Broken light cloud, a very thin waning crescent Moon in the south east and the best news, it’s not raining.

    Whatever has happened to the Met and law and order in London? Other police “services” are available.

    Obvious two tier policing continues unabated. The Met have sown the wind…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fc9063b971646c1c17135ec1fb4219581c43c0105c4e5bdecbb77abcca3d4efc.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7911586f1dc4acfddd7500fa10066819f8daab245640e06b9b7e5a7560ebca97.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/815b86a0dd1aa158e41a8f4eb59395150a46a671703b76ae7d26b4fb8a16af06.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b77b7922ae40f4fb11c4c453218c46712be74f2b12aba375706fee54d9b80d99.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/089f1a95f55ab8a73b08165e43114bc817b2266c6d49ebe04906c319e80f5d04.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d253eaf3d8592a3a74f05def0d51f72c84f2550b973390f6e1222b55a08d5252.png

  19. Good morning good people!
    0°C outside with little wind and a heavy overcast but at least it’s not raining.
    Jobs for today?
    Tidying up where I’ve been sawing and chopping the firewood seems to be the order of the day.
    Then I might get some of the larger logs sawn and stacked for chopping & stacking after we’ve exhausted the Holly Bush Stack.

  21. Tired Zelensky looks too weak to achieve victory. 7 January 2024.

    So far he has not put forward any real strategy – beyond suggesting that the centre of gravity would shift to Crimea and the Black Sea while defending against potential Russian advances in the east, which is not good enough if he expects the West to keep putting its hands in its pockets.

    Nor is it adequate to tell the West that Ukrainians are fighting not just for their own country, but for the whole of Europe which will itself be under threat from Moscow if Putin succeeds in this war. That is certainly true, but there is no sign that the US president or Western European leaders really believe it. If they did, they would long ago have pulled out all the stops to contain Putin and to supply Ukraine with the massive amounts of weaponry it needs to defeat Russia.

    This piece is by Richard “Two Horses” Kemp who changes his views with the weather. The second paragraph is symptomatic of his opinions. Russia has so far been unable to overcome Ukraine and yet is supposed to be able to defeat an American backed NATO. The real reasons for the reluctance of Biden and the rest to support a Zelensky victory is that it would require a direct intervention which would almost certainly escalate to a nuclear exchange.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/06/tired-volodymyr-zelensky-looks-too-weak-to-achieve-victory/

    1. IMO there exists another reason why an end to the conflict would be a bad idea at the moment. Currently the war has created a conduit for billions of dollars, pounds and euros to flow into the laundry. All manner of crooks and racketeers are benefitting from this deal. Only when the Ukraine has been ‘cleaned up’ e.g. bio-labs erased and ill-gotten gains converted to bullion, land etc. will the conflict wind down. Then, the rebuilding of Ukraine will commence and the second branch of the lucrative laundry company will open for business.
      The players in this war do not have the good of humanity as a goal.

  22. Who will answer for the rampant crime making Londoners afraid to go out?

    Nobody, it will all just go unreported, I suppose.

  23. Good morning all,

    A lovely dawn here in the McPhee corner of North-West Hampshire, a partly cloudy day with sunny periods beckons, wind in the North and chilly at 1→3℃.

    Anyone else think that Richard Tice has made another strategic blunder?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5e59db782c9cf2f5ecec940570b066e35833e0714ad0dbdbc68d2af7eceb5487.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/06/reform-uk-boycott-chris-skidmore-by-election-gloucester/

    It doesn’t matter what it will cost the local council since the funds come from central government anyway because that’s where the majority of council tax goes (not a lot of people know that).

    Reform should stand to test the water at least. A by-election so close to a general election with its inevitable low turn-out is surely a great opportunity to get the party’s first MP even if it’s only for a few months. The right person could make some noise alongside Andrew Bridgen.

    Tice has bottled it again. Under his leadership Reform is going nowhere. Is he an establishment plant, a gate-keeper? I think so.

    1. Tice may be an establishment plant, or he could be preserving party funding, rather than waste it on the nothing burger of a temporary ‘win’. Either way, the uniparty blob will be able to use the full force of their compliant media to portray them as a minor protest party rather than a viable alternative.

      Sunak and co are suddenly attempting to sound tough on the gimmegrants and hinting at tax cuts; Starmer continues to avoid scrutiny of his policies by remaining firmly clenched on the fence; Eid Davey’s past sins, whilst in coalition government, are coming back to haunt him.

      Yet, against all the uniparty subterfuge, Reform will always be punching upwards, handicapped by a hostile media.

    2. The seat disappears altogether at the next GE.
      Even if Reform won it they would lose it and their MP, if they even managed to get in. The MP would have virtually no time to persuade the next electorate that they are any good but sufficient time to show they aren’t. It’s a costly lose/lose trap.

        1. More likely they will make the labour/libdem win look more decisive if the Conservatives put up a candidate.
          By not standing, and making a great deal of noise about the cost, they are showing fiscal responsibility and saving money that will be better spent on a general election campaign.
          If the seat wasn’t about to vanish I could see some point.

    3. I think councils should be funded from a low tax – say 10% on the profits of local businesses. Councils cannot increase this but they can reduce it. Business pays no other taxes – as they’re just lumped on to customers anyway.

      This ensures councils are in hoc to how well and many local companies are doing and are forced into a competitive race to the bottom on tax rates – which is how it should be – to improve efficiency and provide the best public services. Smaller towns and villages could then present plans to escape bigger ones with lower taxes and better services. Councils would have to save up for capital investment OR ask business to fund it, again, forcing efficiency.

      At a stroke, local councils are beholden to the local area. They’re in a market with other councils for income and are required to work harder.

      And the slogans on the podium are silly. Britain is already great. They should all say the same thing and it should be Let’s make Britain greater. Yes, it’s a grammatical nonsense but it reinforces confidence in the country, it’s a ‘we’re here, let’s get to there’ attitude.

    4. “,,,firts MPO?” What does that mean? Yes, I’m a pedant with my beautiful language and such garbage calls for a check. Please explain.

    5. Tice is not much good. Farage might be more inspiring but he lacks the inner grit that is needed.

      And remember how Farage bottled it in the 2019 general election? He caved in to Johnson and did not stand any Brexit Party candidates in any seats held by sitting Conservative MPs. The consequence of this bottling was that the HoC stayed stuffed with remainers and we got the miserable Brexit which betrayed British fisherman and Northern Ireland.

    6. My Parish Council has to keep a certain amount of money in reserves to cover the costs of elections.

  24. Good morning all,

    A lovely dawn here in the McPhee corner of North-West Hampshire, a partly cloudy day with sunny periods beckons, wind in the North and chilly at 1→3℃.

    Anyone else think that Richard Tice has made another strategic blunder?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5e59db782c9cf2f5ecec940570b066e35833e0714ad0dbdbc68d2af7eceb5487.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/06/reform-uk-boycott-chris-skidmore-by-election-gloucester/

    It doesn’t matter what it will cost the local council since the funds come from central government anyway because that’s where the majority of council tax goes (not a lot of people know that).

    Reform should stand to test the water at least. A by-election so close to a general election with its inevitable low turn-out is surely a great opportunity to get the party’s first MP even if it’s only for a few months. The right person could make some noise alongside Andrew Bridgen.

    Tice has bottled it again. Under his leadership Reform is going nowhere. Is he an establishment plant, a gate-keeper? I think so.

  25. Good morning Nottlers, it’s crisp and clear on the Costa Clyde as the sun finally peeks over the horizon. Currently -2°C, which should make for interesting golf this morning. Not sure whether to wear spikes or crampons.

  26. SIR – There has been a lot of rain – far more than usual. Yet this would not be a problem if the ditches and drains were kept clear. Very sadly, councils no longer see the need to undertake preventive maintenance on ditches and drains beside the highways, and that is why many roads are flooded.

    Where I live in Suffolk, it has taken five years of persistent chasing for the council to clear a blocked drain, which flooded the road whenever we got rain. It pleads lack of funds, but that’s probably because a disproportionate amount of our taxes are squandered on support for people who will not work. Perhaps the unemployed could clear ditches and drains.

    I find it unfortunate that last Tuesday, aged 79, it was necessary for me to be out in the rain doing the council’s work.

    Terry Holloway
    Great Wratting, Suffolk

    This is one of three excellent-quality letters in today’s Sunday Telegraph on varying topics.

    Warnings have been placed (from manifold sources) over the past several decades that local councils’ failure to maintain drainage systems would lead, directly, to more and more flooding events. Of course, these warnings were dismissed because those same councillors had other, more urgent, reasons to squander tax- and rate-payers monies, willy-nilly, instead of using it more sensibly.

    Their rationale was to blame “climate change”, “global warming” and other idiotic inventions of nonsense to mitigate their ineptitude and inaction.

    As with all politicians, you get the councillors you deserve.

  27. SIR – There has been a lot of rain – far more than usual. Yet this would not be a problem if the ditches and drains were kept clear. Very sadly, councils no longer see the need to undertake preventive maintenance on ditches and drains beside the highways, and that is why many roads are flooded.

    Where I live in Suffolk, it has taken five years of persistent chasing for the council to clear a blocked drain, which flooded the road whenever we got rain. It pleads lack of funds, but that’s probably because a disproportionate amount of our taxes are squandered on support for people who will not work. Perhaps the unemployed could clear ditches and drains.

    I find it unfortunate that last Tuesday, aged 79, it was necessary for me to be out in the rain doing the council’s work.

    Terry Holloway
    Great Wratting, Suffolk

    This is one of three excellent-quality letters in today’s Sunday Telegraph on varying topics.

    Warnings have been placed (from manifold sources) over the past several decades that local councils’ failure to maintain drainage systems would lead, directly, to more and more flooding events. Of course, these warnings were dismissed because those same councillors had other, more urgent, reasons to squander tax- and rate-payers monies, willy-nilly, instead of using it more sensibly.

    Their rationale was to blame “climate change”, “global warming” and other idiotic inventions of nonsense to mitigate their ineptitude and inaction.

    As with all politicians, you get the councillors you deserve.

    1. BTL regarding the flooding:-

      R. Spowart
      19 MIN AGO
      Message Actions
      Who was the minister, a woman I believe, who, during the flooding of the Somerset Levels, was reported as commenting that she’d like to see a limpet mine placed on every pumping station?

      1. I discovered this piece, written by Christopher Booker in 2014.

        “Devastating evidence has now come to light not just that the floods covering 65 square miles of the Somerset Levels could have been prevented, but that they were deliberately engineered by Labour ministers in 2009, regardless of the property and human rights of the thousands of people whose homes and livelihoods would be affected. Furthermore, that wildly misleading Met Office forecast in November led the Environment Agency to take a step that has made the flooding infinitely more disastrous than it need have been.

        The “smoking guns” begin with a policy decision announced in 2005 by Labour’s “floods minister” Elliot Morley, later to be jailed for fraudulently claiming more than £30,000 on his MP’s expenses. Under the heading “Saving wetland habitats: more money for key sites”, Morley directed that, to comply with the EU’s habitats directive and a part-EU-funded study involving the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the WWF and the Environment Agency, flooding in Somerset should be artificially promoted, because “wildlife will benefit from increased water levels”. The 13 local drainage boards, responsible for keeping the Levels properly managed, were all to be co-opted into implementing this policy.

        The Environment Agency had already stopped proper dredging of the River Parrett, which provides the main channel draining floodwater on the Levels to the sea, because of the exorbitant cost of disposing of silt under EU waste regulations. And Morley had vetoed a proposal to build a new pumping station at Dunball, at the end of the massive Kings Sedgemoor Drain, which would have allowed much more effective, 24-hour pumping of flood water into the mouth of the Parrett estuary.”

        1. We are incredibly lucky that our village is protected still by an Inland drainage Board (we’re fen edge) which still, twice a year, clears the dyke running through the village. Nearby villages and businesses which are not covered by this board are still under water from rivers and streams which topped or broke their banks. It won’t stop our house insurance being massively hiked at next renewal.

    2. Even if one is to believe in man-made climate change, it must be obvious that any money spent should be directed towards projects dealing with and preventing the effects rather than trying to cut carbon emissions. The UK has already cut its emissions by 50% over the past couple of decades. It isn’t the UK which produces most CO2, as we only account for 1% of the global total. Any effort to reduce our emissions even further will have no discernible effect on the Earth’s climate. Better to spend the money where it will be put to good use, rather than tilting at windmills (pun intended).

      2. It’s a scam. A complete hoax. The state knows this, the gravy train troughers know this. There are useful idiots who think it’s about the environment and keep the lie going but the simple truth is it’s a tax scam.

        If climate change were a genuine and real threat then there would be far, far more activity: house building would be changing to give people more physical space, using different materials with a demand for much more insulation, inside and out. Solar would be tax deductible (as that’s the sensible option, not big lump projects but local ones).

        It is simply the latest attempt at forcing a planned, command economy on the public. Control freakery writ large.

        1. Climate is changing and has been since the earth was formed but there’s no way humans can stop or reverse it but it’s being used as a tool by interested parties to control us and make them richer

    3. And remember the flooding of the Somerset Levels which was caused by the fact that EU rules prohibited dredging which had worked satisfactorily for generations?

      Owen Paterson, one of the very few competent ministers in Cameron’s government, was the Minister of Environment at the time and he did his best to draw attention to this fact. Cameron was very afraid of Paterson’s common sense and so he was sacked and replaced by Liz Truss.

      Paterson was never forgiven and became the victim of a witch hunt and they managed to get rid of him.

    4. They want it to flood, so that they can use it as evidence of “global climate emergency” and all the lemmings will believe them, they will then use it as a n excuse to control us by banning us from driving or leaving our 15 minute exclusion zones.

      1. At this point voting is pointless. It’s blatantly clear that our government is happy to take orders from globalists. I appreciate international law is important but as an example the WHO can ground and block all traffic in and out of a country. China just ignored this and the WHO boss, in the pay of the Chinese said ‘fair enough’.

        The EU held up vaccine deliveries because we were getting ahead of them (because their buyers were confused over who would get the obligatory padding from the expected backhanders). The UN is pointedly incompetent and irrelevant.

      2. Reminds me of my electioneering slogan when I ran for the Apathetic Party at the UEA student presidential election in 1968:

        “A vote cast is a vote wasted!”

        When I did not win I claimed that I had won by a large majority because those who did not bother to vote far outnumbered those who did.

    2. A vote for Sunak keeps the Zombie Conservative Party half-alive.

      Far better to vote Reform and kill it off finally.

      Some deluded people, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, still love the party because of what it used to be. Those days are gone and the sooner the Conservative Party is killed cleanly at the ballot box the sooner something far better will fill the space it now occupies.

      “Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
      By each let this be heard,
      Some do it with a bitter look,
      Some with a flattering word,
      The coward does it with a kiss,
      The brave man with a sword.

      [Oscar Wilde]

  29. SIR – Lord Fellowes’s discussion of the advantages of children learning by rote (report, December 31) led to my looking at my school reports from 1956 to 1961, when I was aged six to 11. The class size ranged from 50 to 57. Learning was by rote: we recited times tables, poetry and historic dates, and read aloud from the board.

    Few pupils were disruptive, as discipline was very tough, which would not be acceptable today. The ruler or cane was always the threat if you stepped out of line. We all learnt the basics of reading and arithmetic – with some taking these much further.

    As a family we lived in a council house and were very short of money, but I went on to grammar school and university. Rote learning provided me with a useful way of establishing fundamental facts in a subject, so I could be creative in learning from there. An extension of rote learning in action is to impart basic theories, then engage in a discussion and teach from what arises from students’ viewpoints.

    It requires very able teachers to make this kind of learning worthwhile and exciting; but it is a way of opening a door to so much more.

    Judith Witter
    Leatherhead, Surrey

    Today’s second excellent Letter to the Editor.

    1. Somehow, no matter the objections, these things always go through. It’s far too familiar. No doubt there’s a chum on the council or a nice back hander waiting to get the ‘right’ decision.

    2. I remember a class of first years in 1967 being asked what their favourite subject was. Nearly everyone said ‘Maths’. This was down to a splendid fruitcake called Walter J O’Connor, who was not only taught Maths very effectively, his lessons were a pantomime of entertainment throughout.

      His not-so-secret weapon of choice for any attempted disruption of the flow was a splintered and well worn metre rule called Excalibur. In silence, he would stop the lesson, walk very slowly to the blackboard, pick up a piece of chalk with one hand and Excalibur with the other, and with great ceremony, chalk an ‘X’ on the splintered end before gesturing to the offender to come to the front for execution as the class looked on in horror.

      1. I remember at least one teacher who was deadly accurate with a piece of chalk. There was another who had a non-British surname and we surmised that he was originally a Nazi spy, probably retired, but possibly not.

        1. We had similar suspicions about the man who taught German – he didn’t even bother to hide his admiration of Hitler.

        2. I was taught by teachers who were deadly with both chalk and a board rubber (the wooden kind with a felt pad to erase the chalk).

    3. Agreed, George, I too was learning by rote in those days and it served me well in later trials and tribulations, as a boy under an apprenticeship in the Royal Air Force.

      We survived!

    5. If parents found out their son or daughter had been in trouble at school, they were frequently also in trouble at home for whatever the transgression was. I remember my younger brother threatening me that if I told our parents he’d been in trouble at school I’d be ‘in for it.’
      When my younger son was in primary school, I once found him and his partner in crime sitting outside the head teacher’s door. His reward from me was ‘The Look’ – funnily enough, there was no further play-fighting in the playground.

    6. Of course, the key phrase to establishing this kind of learning is “few pupils were disruptive as discipline was very tough”.

  30. SIR – As a Kettering resident, I was interested to read about Boughton House and the lives of Lord Charlie Montagu Douglas Scott and his wife, Flora (Money, December 31). They certainly make a valued contribution to the local community and the village of Geddington.

    Unfortunately, their family company, Buccleuch Property, has little support in the local area. At a planning inquiry in December, more than 40 local residents, aged from seven to 70, gave speeches against Buccleuch’s plans to build on a treasured local meadow.

    Deemed to be of high value by The Wildlife Trusts, Weekley Hall Wood meadow is home to more than 2,500 species, including the red-listed grasshopper warbler and the rare dingy skipper butterfly. The walking routes through the meadow are enjoyed by hundreds of Kettering people every week.

    Buccleuch Property wishes to destroy this meadow and build five large warehouses and one large industrial unit in its place, in a town already surrounded by warehouses.

    A petition against the plans was signed by 30,000 local people and together we raised £35,000 to pay a barrister to fight the case at the planning inquiry. In your article, Flora and Charlie say the family company has a “built-in responsibility to do the right thing”. They say that in a family company: “It’s your name on the tin. You’ve had a responsibility to people, communities and your environment for hundreds of years. You can’t screw that up because you’ve tried to turn a quick buck on something.”

    We would be very happy to meet with Charlie and Flora to explain just what this area means to the local community and its landscape. We make this open offer, hoping that they will be true to their words and exert some influence over their family company.

    Martin Toms
    Kettering, Northamptonshire

    Today’s third excellent Letter to the Editor.

    1. On the presumption of innocence over the Horizon lark, the Left do not like due process. They actively dislike courts of law. Heck, they don’t really like law at all because they don’t control any of these things. They can’t guarantee the result they want. Oh, they can impose ‘the right’ judge, stack the deck, waste time and public money but they can never be sure it’ll go their way.

      That’s why rather than have all the annoyance of evidence, justice, jury, procedure htey much prefer shouting to the crowd and letting the mob do what they want to their enemies. Much easier.

    2. Now that the police are involved there’s no chance of a fair outcome.
      Despite any amount of compensation the perpetrators are stil free. Those people who have been subjected to such terrible events will never get back to normal life.
      The police will help the perpetrators cover up the cracks. If anyone complains they’ll be treated like Tommy Robinson.

      1. “… the perpetrators are still free”

        And likely to remain so. English justice – bullshit.

        1. From the top down, so called justice only exists against those who have no chance of proving that they are innocent. We have many classic examples.
          All as Guilty as anyone or anything could possibly be. Getting Richer by the hour and will never be brought to defend their past or on-going crimes.
          Tommy Robinson (not a fan) but arrested by a dozen or more ‘king coppers for seemingly sitting down and having a coffee.

    3. Thank you Anne and this caught my eye further down his article. What is.has happened to our country?

      Case with two judges… and one issue

      Have you ever heard of the same court case being tried twice, in front of two different judges? This must be very rare, yet the event has attracted little attention – except in The Mail on Sunday.

      The case is that of Graham Phillips, the British former civil servant and video blogger who has been sanctioned by his own Government, apparently for holding and spreading the wrong opinions about Ukraine.

      It is necessary to say here that I do not like or agree with Mr Phillips. But I think his opinions are none of the business of the British Government, which has frozen his assets and made his life almost unliveable, by decree.

      As his lawyer, Joshua Hitchens (no relation) has argued: ‘There is an enormous and crushing effect this decision has on my client. He is unable to pay rent, unable to return to Britain, he lives in a friend’s flat in a warzone.’

      The issue was first tried before Mr Justice Swift, but then had to be held again when it turned out this judge had himself been sanctioned… by the Kremlin.

      My colleague Cameron Charters attended both trials (I was abroad when the second was rather suddenly held) and reported that the second judge, Mr Justice Johnson, asked the Government lawyers a rather pertinent question: ‘If you are concerned about what he is saying, why do you not challenge what he is saying rather than impose very, very rigorous sanctions on him which do not actually stop him doing what you do not want him doing?’

      It may be some weeks before the outcome of this unique and rather important trial, which is about a vital issue – whether the Government can arbitrarily punish people who say things it doesn’t like. In the meantime, I hope more people take an interest in it.

        2. Part of signing us up to the supremacy of corpus juris, I think. Double jeopardy went, along with the presumption of innocence, the right to remain silent and in some cases, trial by jury in an adversarial system. They didn’t quite manage to get rid of that last, but it was in the pipeline, I understand, in order to bring us in line with continental practices. Habeas corpus was destroyed by the European Arrest Warrant.

    4. The whole board of Post Office from Crozier to present day should be charged with Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice where the highest penalty is Life Imprisonment.

    5. I think Ian Hislop does. I posted about Sam Bankman-Fraud and then that name appeared in the November issue of Private Eye.

  32. Jesus, but there are some dumbasses around.
    Just read an article in Aftenposten on the Ukraine warwhere the comments are of the type “Just send B-2s to bomb Moscow, and it’ll all be over quickly!”
    Aye, it certainly will be over quickly – ending in a radioactive wasteland.
    Where do these people come from?

    1. Gung ho idiots who think war solves problems, as if Russia will just happily sit there ignoring the bombing then pop up with a white flag.

      The way to nobble Russia is by not needing to buy it’s goods. If we were not dependent on it for fuel then we could really bring it to the table. Sadly, because our political class are utter, stinking morons who pretend China isn’t buying Russia rare earths for the pointless monuments to folly they dump in the sea.

      It is a monumental deceit.

      1. Good morning Wibbling and everyone.
        Ignoring for one millisecond the tragic violence in the Ukraine, why would anyone want to ‘nobble Russia’? Wealthy states with developed economies are, IMHO, less of a nuisance than failed countries with sh*thole regimes and cultures.

      2. Good morning Wibbling and everyone.
        Ignoring for one millisecond the tragic violence in the Ukraine, why would anyone want to ‘nobble Russia’? Wealthy states with developed economies are, IMHO, less of a nuisance than failed countries with sh*thole regimes and cultures.

      3. Putin was happy to come to the table, but Johnson refused via his proxy puppet Zelensky. I do not think Russia and Putin is the problem.

      4. Russia has BRICS as a market. Sanctions have rebounded on the West.
        All the oil they were selling to Europe, they are now selling to India and China. And not using dollars for the trade, either!

      5. Could always have not demonised Russia, and instead sincerely worked to have them as friends. Just a thought.

      6. I don’t think we really need to nobble Russia. There are plenty of other regimes that could do with nobbling first if nobbling is needed.

    2. At the height of the Thatcher years, didn’t they put a Conservative Spokesman on the platform at the Tory Conference with the unforgettable programme “Let’s bomb Russia; let’s kick MIchael Foot’s stick away”?

      Lest we forget, this man of influence was the one who brought ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ to the nation’s attention despite all the efforts by the record industry to suppress it.

      Some jokers are best not taken too seriously!

    3. A Norwegian, a Swede and a Finn went out together on the razzle and got rat-arsed. Staggering back home afterwards they came upon a pigsty. They made a bet to see who could enter the pigsty and sit with the pigs for the longest period.

      The Swede entered first but after ten minutes ran out screaming, “The pig farted, the pig farted!”
      The Finn was the second to go in but he only lasted 15 minutes before running out screaming, “The pig farted, the pig farted!”
      Lastly the Norwegian entered the sty. 20 minutes later the pig ran out screaming, “Bellman farted, Bellman farted!”

      This is a typical Swedish joke about Norwegians (who they refer to as ‘Bellman’ after a famous comedian). It is similar to the British making jokes about the Irish.

      1. :-D)
        Earlier, the Swede, Finn & Weegie were in the bar, drinking heavily, in silence.
        At one point, the Swede forgets himself and raises his glass with a cheery “Skål!” (Cheers).
        At this point, the Finn becomes furious, and shouts “Are we here to drink or to talk?”

        1. 🤣🤣 I remember the hotel I stayed at in what was then Peterburg being literally overrun by unbelievably drunken Finns in the late 80s. I was so impressed by men who made the Russians look moderate!!

      2. It’s true, then.

        When I was in Stockholm on an Ericsson telecommunications course the course members and the lecturers ended up, after an excellent feast at an ancient inn, at one of Ericsson’s exchanges in a suburb of Stockholm. During the guided tour one of the experts pointed out the cooling system for the exchange, water cooling via pipes laid above the electronic apparatus. He finished his talk by saying only the Norwegians were stupid enough to buy this system. This expert had spent many years working in the UK and actually made the link between the Swedish – Norwegian and British – Irish joke situation.

        Pre-Christmas 1986, snow, snow, more snow and freezing temperatures unheard of over here.

        Ericsson were wonderful hosts and their system after a bit of a shaky start, not all down to their product, was excellent to work with.

        1. We got a design changed for offshore control room computers that was like that.
          “What if there’s a leak?” we asked.
          “Fizz! Crackle!” said the supplier of said cooling.
          So it was changed so that leaks didn’t run into the electronics.

      3. Back in the 70’s, as the Irish were Thier Gods (and Policemen), all Oirish jokes became Polish one

  33. Reposted from late last night

    Sunday 7th January

    The Lady of the Lake’s birthday

    R.I.P. Ann – You are fondly remembered by many of us Nottlers.

      1. Sounds good. I make a similar thick soup with roasted root veg and chicken stock. The bacon is important, I cut a thick smoked and steeped (in treacle) back bacon into tiny lardons and fry until brown and crisp.
        It’s good you kept in contact with them.

  34. Today is Christmas Day for us, The Orthodox. As you can see it is a church under persecution in Ukraine. Priests are being arrested, monks and nuns are being driven out of their monasteries and nunneries. The Church is a convenient scapegoat for Zelensky’s failures as a leader. If in doubt persecute some one or something to cause a massive distraction from your own inadequacies and failures.
    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/zelensky-warned-over-banning-country-s-oldest-church/ar-AA1myOfn?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=93cd1f68a11b42b48577c886100ebe34&ei=5

    Here is a piece of church music from Rimsky Korsakov. Not well known in the West is that most of the famous Russian composers wrote church music too. Hope you enjoy it. Good music for Sunday and Christmas day and it’s short 😊 My God bless you all.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzqOR1fjIoU

    1. Happy Christmas, Johnathan!
      I’m all too ignorant on the subject of Orthodox Church, I’m afraid, but the concept of a second Christmas here in the West sounds a good one!

      1. It’s because the Orthodox Church wouldn’t accept Pope Gregory’s reform to the calendar in 1582 (Britain didn’t accept it until 1752, by which time it was out by eleven days).

      2. I think people in the West, should study the Orthodox Church far more than they do. Think of this, how much has English changed in 1000 years, then apply that length of time to Christianity, a huge divergence has taken place between the Eastern Church and the Western Churches in that time. We would say, that what we teach is real Christianity and that the reason for the degeneration of Christianity in the West is that you are Christians in name only. The West lost the true teaching a long while ago thanks, frankly, to the Catholic church and its corrupt teachings.

          3. Are you referring to church instrumental music? Because the answer is no. Instrumental music is not used in Orthodox Churches. As far as instrumental music in general is concerned than I would say the the Russian composers and others in Eastern Europe, such as Tchaikovsky etc are concerned, they are just as good as their Western counterparts.

          5. Then no. It could most certainly be sung by an individual, , but with a choir. There are some choral pieces in the Russian tradition that were heavily influenced by Western opera. They are very beautiful, amounting to an operatic aria sung, in particular by women, but the typical Russian choir standing in for instruments. I would not be at all surprised to find that Ave Maria has been subjected to the same treatment. I will try to find some of that style for you. But I haven’t come across it online. Nonsuch, a record company that specialized in ethnic music had an L.P. in that style of Russian Church music, I played it an awful lot. Perhaps they turned it into a modern disc? If so I would love to have it again.
            Matter of taste of course but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDqbUKZXuwI
            I would give it a thumbs down.

      1. It’s all Greek to me 😁But Schastlivogo Rozhdestva, Счастливого Рождества! to you too.

    3. Marvellous. I even managed to sing along to a few bars of the Bass line towards the end!

      Merry Christmas.

    6. Gorgeous music. Thank you, and Happy Christmas.

      I particularly enjoyed the black basses.

    7. Merry Christmas. I’ve just chalked up the Epiphany formula by my front door (chalk was blessed in church last night but it was dark when I got back).

  35. Morning all 🙂😊
    I even had a glimps of the current bun ⛅️ about half an hour ago. Now hiding.
    On the headline, our police farce have given up trying to control crime. The problem being, they already know who the likely criminals are and fear any contact, let alone control. Unless they change their dreadful and disturbing habits I’m afraid our future is doomed.

  36. They are not really making enough about how the post office scandal begun under a Labour government

  38. Good morning, all. Very late again. At bedtime, I took a teaspoon of Night Nurse – Wow!

        1. Nah! The EU removed the effective constituent of NN, and we never got round to putting it back! Same with Snowfire, kaolin and morph, Benylin and many more!

          1. Funny that. I bought cough medicine in Malta and it had all the goodies left in. The stuff we get here is just sugar syrup.

          3. I can’t understand why, now that we are a free, independent, sovereign state, having voted to leave the EU, we haven’t ditched all of their stupid rules and regulations. I mean, it’s almost as though we’ve never left …

      1. As it happens – you are right about the tonic.

        NN tastes filthy. I take a small glass of tonic at bedtime against cramp in the night. So, last night, I mixed them!

  39. While I am sorry that Derek Draper (some low-grade political hack) caught some horrible disease and eventually died from it – there seems to me to be a touch of overkill in the reporting. Could that have anything to do with his wife being a good-looking telly person?

      1. He was one of Blair’s many acolytes.

        I very much doubt that Rishi Sunak has even one single acolyte!

    1. Rochester was a city until losing its status as one in 1998 following the forming of Medway and failing to protect its status as a city. Apparently, the new Council neglected to appoint charter trustees to preserve its city status after the Department of the Environment informed them that they would need to do so. However, no trustees were appointed and the city status was therefore lost when Rochester-upon-Medway was abolished as a local government district.

  41. Huff!
    That’s us, last boxes of decorations put away, pine needles vacuumed up, and coffee made. Christmas over for another year; house looks dull and bare, but the cats will be happy – thye don’t understand this bringing-in of wild plants…

  42. ‘Morning All

    Start with a Neil Oliver that will be close to NoTTL hearts…….

    https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1743703095777923374?s=20

    Rest

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2f0a0afce1ba064de76e7d1b6e036bcd4b78cb3289f0e752c14d7f27ae01bff2.png

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a5b25d57cd092831924f0c4f68edb887eb4010b9d8fe4219aad5571d00ef1ebf.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/676b397cce471ddc6a88e4435c88ca94932f045cf37f1a7e0a766ee5d7efcd94.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4b20b46bb8060394b8670003aab90a41607d01558328d1cf268b7ce4a3b2baa8.jpg

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GDLk7FFWsAA_tNx.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6da93d800776f86f222cfb7a092b0b1f129fe6edc171b1dd3efcb4a1ab4d4f4a.jpg

    1. This is up to the standard of a Dead Tanker Monty Python sketch.

      Oil tankers are obviously still vulnerable to WTF* felloff syndrome.

      *Why The Front

  44. I see Claudia Winkleman has won the double. Yesterday, she was the subject of the Telegraph’s ‘My Saturday’ column and today the subject of the Observer/Guardian’s ‘Sunday with’ column. Saturday and Sunday with her seem remarkably similar.

  45. Right! That’s my busy morning over! Removed the remaining holly from the dining room (I have been known to find it at Easter!) decorations stored away, tree chopped up and two pots of soup made from chicken carcass. Broccoli and Stilton, and a mean lentil and bacon! We are expecting a lodger today – our heavily pregnant vet daughters young Lab is coming to stay. Daughter is having muscular pain and is struggling to walk Fern and she refuses to go out with farmer husband! Takes after her predecessor! Anyway it will do the old man and I’ve a world of good to get walking again since Hector left us. Will let you know how the naked cat and Phoebe react to her coming back again!

    1. “our heavily pregnant vet daughters young Lab is coming to stay”

      Crikey, that’s a mouthful.

      1. Sorry! Dreadful punctuation! Yes, vet daughter! 3rd child due next month (another boy!) Fern is only 10 months old!

          1. I know! We’re so lucky and blessed with 2 beautiful daughters, lovely sons in law and (nearly 5) glorious grandchildren! They really do fill us with joy, and make us very grateful! And tired!

          4. ‘Pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen’! Sorry, couldn’t resist! My daughters would have a fit!

          6. You’re right about the sentiment. ‘They’ appear to hate the ‘normal’ family and what it stands for.

  46. Just opened a can of Imperial Stout. Lovely, so it is, dark, almost liquorice, smooth, and 12%.
    Top Sunday lunchtime beer, this, now the day’s work is done.
    Cheersh!

    1. And it’s a truly beautiful day: Clear blue sky, sun, snow, nobody around, totally silent out there, and cold as fcuk! Sunday lunchtime is perfect for drinking excellent beer at that strength – to be followed by a snooze, covered in cats.
      This is the life. Only standing up to put another log on the fire, or get another powerful beer.
      Hoping all Y’all are having a top-quality Sunday.

      1. Reminds me a little of January 1990, when I moved to work in Aberdeen, leaving my lovely wife in our house in West Sussex (that was hard). Only accommodation I could get was a mobile home at Maryculter. Cold, or what? That’s when I discovered Chimay beers, from Belgium. The White Label is clear and uncontrovertible evidence that there is a God, and He wishes us well.
        I enquired of very many bottles over an extended period, and always got the same answer.
        Getting the same response from this Imperial Stout. There is a God.

        2. It was in the late 80s that Belgian beers began to be noticed in this country, in a large part a result of the C4 series by Michael Jackson. Chimay Blue had been available for some time – I had had some in the 1980 but didn’t care for it much back then. That changed! In 1990, four of us went to Holland and Belgium on a drinking holiday and what a time we had. The three days in Bruges were the best. I still have the notes I took as we worked our way through the menus: Trappist and abbey beers, spiced ales, lambics, sour browns and more.

          Rochefort 10 was our absolute favourite, a dark, chocolatey brew at 11%. Sadly, the last time I had it here a few years ago, it was no longer what it had been, having become impossibly fizzy and with a fruity edge. I must look it out again to see if it’s returned to the old standard.

  47. Well,well.well

    Just when you thought the stench of the Post Office scandal couldn’t get any worse we learn that Ed Davey former Post Office Minister was paid £275,000 by the law firm that prosecuted the innocent……….

    https://twitter.com/CPierceUK/status/1743879606933811665
    I wonder what valuable services he provided………
    Long past time for criminal charges for all the vermin involved but I wont hold my breath Common Purpose management looks after its own

    2. I wonder if there is a Civil Servant with access to ministerial minutes of what he knew / was told of the scandal. I do hope so and that he /she is brave enough to blow the whistle?!

    4. I don’t think Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice has a statute of limitation as the ultimate sentence is Life Imprisonment and it’s Contrary to Common Law.

    5. It’s all very well saying he must to go – he should never have come in the first place!

      The Lib/Dems are completely incapable of ever choosing the right person to lead their party.

    6. I think this comment, my Brother heard in passing on Regent Street might apply , “The mans’s a cunt, an absolute shit.“

  49. Brother-in-Law’s birthday today. He would have been 60, if he hadn’t died a couple of years ago of a massive heart attack – he came downstairs to his wife, said “Babes, I feel weird”, fell down & died. I’m surprised how upset I am, I thought I’d got over it, as we weren’t very close.
    Heart attack could have been covid vax-related, but nobody would check or PM.

    1. It is very sad when someone dies suddenly. But i am reminded of our LOTL whose birthday it would also have been today. The poor woman suffered a great deal before she finally succumbed. She was a trooper though.

      1. She was the kind of woman that made the British Empire the biggest ever seen. Never gave up, always pushing on.
        RIP, Ann. There are precious few of you left these days, and by God do we need you.

    2. Yes, I remember how shocked you were.
      And yes, it can catch you unawares years later.

    3. Grief is a weird thing and can crop up years later, after you think you have put it behind you. My oldest brother passed away a fair few years ago and now most of the time I remember the fond memories I have of him, but occasionally I feel like I did at his funeral. I suppose it has something to do with whether I’m feeling a bit low generally, especially this time of year when it is fairly gloomy and miserable.

      1. Sorry for your loss, GQ. It’s hard.
        Some are worse than others, bizarrely. I still get all broken up over a friend who committed suicide back in about 2000 (pills and vodka, in her car), leaving husband and two small boys. Guilty feelings over that if I had been a better friend, she might have talked to me about what troubled her so, rather than ending it all. Miss her like hell.

        1. I had a good friend with husband and 2 young children, who tried to fall under a bus. Result was a broken arm. 6 months later she lay down on a railway line. The funeral was packed and I don’t think any of us could understand why she had no one to help her. It was a very sombre time.

          1. Oh, Lord, Sue. How appalling… and all those who loved her, too.
            The lessons are:
            1) Talk to somebody, if you’re having a bad time. Close friends who love you are a good choice, otherwise your GP, or even a strange voice on the phone.
            2) Suicide REALLY upsets those who love you. Do you want to poke your finger in their eye like that? What about the children? They need both parents, not to be deserted horribly by one parent.
            3) Imagine what it would be like for the poor bastards who find the body, and have to clear up? What if that were your children, your spouse? That would damage them for life – you really want to do that?

          2. If you’d seen her you couldn’t have imagined what was in her head. Her husband was a gem and her children were gorgeous. She was beautiful. The perfect family. But what goes on underneath…I think of her family often.

          5. Trouble is, those are rational thoughts. When you are at the bottom of a pit of depression, rationality goes out the window.

          6. Agreed, Connors, I arrive there too often, it’s horrible. Only my faith keeps me alive.

        2. The grieving ‘process’ (a horrible word in this context) is a very necessary part of being Human.
          I try to convince myself that I am not grieving for the one I have lost, but the ones they have left behind, after all they have gone, and it doesn’t matter what your system of belief is, whether death is just a part of the journey the Immortal Soul is on and has gone to it’s ultimate reward, or whether you believe death is final and that’s your lot, the fact is the deceased is well out of it and has moved on beyond this World.

        3. Take it from me (similar scenario with a good friend), nothing you could have said or done would have made any difference. Still makes me feel guilty that I didn’t do more, though, and I expect you feel the same.

  50. HMS Tweed (K 250).
    Frigate (River).
    .
    At 17.11 hours on 7th January 1944, HMS Tweed (K 250) (LtCdr R.S. Miller, DSC, RNR) of the 5th Escort Group was hit on the starboard side by a Gnat (acoustic torpedo) from U-305 (Rudolf Bahr) and sank within two minutes southwest of Ireland. Two officers and 81 ratings were lost. The survivors were rescued by HMS Nene (K 270) (Cdr J.D. Birch, RNR).

    Type VIIC U-Boat U-305 was sunk on 16th January 1944 in the North Atlantic north-east of the Azores probably by one of its own torpedoes. 51 dead (all hands lost).

    https://www.naval-history.net/Photo15frRiverTowy1NPBobHanley.JPG

    1. Gain of function with the good intention of stopping them, if used by an enemy.
      The road to Hell is very well paved.

    2. I don’t think they will ever release a really lethal virus, because anyone could catch it, including the ultra-rich. If they were making the spike more lethal, it was only for the injections. But actually, I doubt that anyone would have told that to the Daily Mail!

      1. ‘They will take the cure before the lethal virus is released. ‘Them’ and their chosen slaves. End of resources problems.

        1. If I were them, I wouldn’t do that, it would be too risky.
          I’d release a very mild virus, or I would just use the normal seasonal flu, I’d create a huge PR campaign and prepare jabs that manufacture the actual lethal spike in people’s bodies and then I’d push for every country to make the jabs mandatory.

          2. yes, I think they did, and it was actually a pretty good strategy if you’re an evil bastard who thinks there are too many peasants. I’d be surprised if we get anything radically different in the future. A glance at Twitt shows that there is still a hard core of covid crazies who boast about sleeping in their masks (true!), who will run with any new scare campaign. Maybe if food gets short, infectious disease will kill more people as it did in the past.

        1. Yes.

          Investigation of sub-atomic particles required a cloud chamber to reveal what the little invisible critters were doing by the tracks they left.

          The visualisation of sub-molecular activity also uses the power of the cloud but in this case to present the 3D imaging of DNA structures.
          The Nobel Prize winner who discovered the HIV virus used a computer model to reach his conclusion that the COVID virus had not evolved naturally:

          https://youtu.be/usyQgPU-VrI?si=oJoxGQ8Rqn1Tgppf

          Evidence increasingly supports the conjecture the origin of the COVID virus as being a bioweapon.

  52. Morning, all! Happy to report that last night’s dinner party, hosted by the ravilious Greek lawyer, was fabulous. I was very glad to have brought along Mother’s pink pearls, as the setting was extremely luxurious. His wagyu beef was absolutely delicious, the excellent wine flowed, and for once I didn’t even have to sing for my supper!! (He is, I think, amused by my lack of political correctness. A natural Nottler!)

    Now to potter over with a thank-you note en route to a class followed by a milonga. Life is good! 😎

      1. You’re projecting, Bill! 😉🤣

        It’s the social dance; an organiser provides a space – can be inside or out, the latter being wonderful in summer- and a DJ. A place to put into practice everything I am learning, and just enjoy the dance. 🙂

        (Confusingly, the milonga is also the name of one of the three types of tango – being tango, vals and milonga.)

        1. Ah, I can tango but only the tango as dictated by the International Dance Teachers Association rules. The ballroom version. Amateur medalist exams and competitions class Ballroom Dancing as the waltz, quickstep, foxtrot and tango and I have a good collection of medals, which also means too stuck in my ways to relearn the tango. At dancing school we nicknamed it the crab dance.

          Your Spanish must be pretty good?

          3. La cucuracha is a step sequence in the rumba and cha cha cha. It’s a side to side rocking step so not really sure why it’s called the cockroach but there it is. Tango is the crab dance because you walk sideways across yourself.

          6. You obviously haven’t met the lady. Just the sort of person to sit next to at table.
            And before you say it … at the last lunch two of the participants were as deaf as you are and they still enjoyed themselves !

          10. I did look after them yes. Made sure there was some decent Malbec in front of them. In a group of 14 on a long table you don’t have to speak to everyone at the same time.
            We could stick you on a adjacent table for one and ignore you.
            Pat you on the head as we go passed sort of thing.

          12. Ah; then you dance the beautiful bits. The spectacular figures, the high drama, the energy. Fabulous!

            As you know, Argentine tango isn’t about that. Occasionally the leader might open the embrace and have fun with a few figures , but generally there isn’t space for that on the dancefloor. And I’m glad -more time to enjoy the abrazo cerrado (close embrace; nearest thing to heaven I’ve found).

            Yes, I’m getting better at the lingo. 🙂 They call I Castellano here- a few minor differences

          14. I must admit when you showed me the ’embrace’ my heart rate shot up. Fight or flight probably !

      2. More like The Perfumed Garden or Japanese Pillow Talk, I would have thought 🙂 [I’m very well read, me]

      1. Actually, I prefer not to drink when dancing (apologies for the shock to those who’ve met me!! 🤣🤣). Learning to keep one’s balance at all times when twirling around on one foot is really not helped by alcohol.

        So drinking excellent wine in good company was a real treat! 🙂

    5. It’s that season again. Last night dinner party round at one of our church members. Venison stew seemed star of the show, along with some fresh trout. And all sorts of other tasty dishes, they really go out of the way to please us.

    6. And there is me getting confused with the occasional mambo dance step in cardio classes at the gym. Any kind of tango step would be too much for little two left feet here.

    7. Good to know, Katy, that you was brought up proper, to send a ‘thank you’ after the event.

    8. Good to know, Katy, that you was brought up proper, to send a ‘thank you’ after the event.

  53. Afternoon, all. I’m here early because I’m off to a Plough Sunday service a bit later. We rustics here in the sticks like to keep up the old ways 🙂

    One person who will never answer for the rampant crime is Khan (all part an parcel of life in Karachi a big city) or MPs who sat on their hands while criminals were imported.

      2. I shouldn’t think she would; she appears to be totally urban. I shall be going back for the BCP service on Wednesday because she’s away again. At this rate, I shouldn’t have a problem keeping myself qualified to remain on the PCC! The vicarette who did the Plough Sunday service used to watch her father ploughing, albeit with a tractor (my grandfather ploughed with horses) I did refuse to go along with the bit in the pledge that signed us up for “climate change”, though.

  54. An email going to the ‘B’BC:

    Hi BBC,
    I realise this story isn’t in keeping with your role of EU propagandist but surely even you must realise it’s time to start reporting the German farmers protests? It appears that they have been offered support by the Dutch farmers, the protests of whom you have also studiously ignored, and it is only a matter of time before they link up with the French farmers, who are also protesting.
    Yours,
    GQ.

    PS. On the off chance you do report it try to avoid the phrase ‘Far Right’ because frankly that is getting a little bit tired

    newswatch@bbc.co.uk

      1. Thank you Sue.
        Writing to the ‘B’BC and my MP, one Simon Ho@re, brings out the acerbic part of me.

        1. I remember going to a local fundraising dinner dance in a small town boarding school which we christened St Custard’s and Simon Hoare was in the party (years before he became an MP). Simon was entranced by this elderly man who kept repeating that what Britain needed was more Dukes. I never liked him so much as that evening (he was capable of being a shifty little blighter), the evening was great fun and very entertaining.

    2. The BBC might mention it, but, as you say, they’d be ‘far Right populists’. What would not be raised – because the BBC lies by omission – is discussing the background of the protests and the problems Germany is having.

    5. The use of “Far-Right”, “Extreme-Right”, “Hard-Right” and other demonstrably (and idiotically) false appellations also applies.

  56. We managed the walk that was cancelled yesterday. Jolly nippy out – so walked fast – which is quite a challenge for me. A side effect was that concentrating on, er, walking fast – made me less conscious of the constant pain in my back. I must try it again before the year is out!

    1. Focusing on pain amplifies it. As you have discovered.
      Try a Tens machine. Worked wonders for the pain caused by the partial disc collapse at C3 vertebra. You only need the pads on for half an hour and the muscles relax and the pain evaporates.

          6. They don’t work for everybody, Pip. I tried one and could not get on with it; it did nothing for the pain, but the pulsing made me feel sick.

          7. I don’t know what to say except electronic interference of pain signals to the brain worked for me.

          8. I wasn’t best pleased that I couldn’t get on with it because I’d heard good reports from other people. Just me, I suppose.

      2. Thank you – I have told poppiesdad who is suffering from backpain/ache at the moment i.e. since before Christmas.

  57. I didn’t know that…..

    “Mr Benko was ousted from Signa late last year. The embattled property company had amassed some of the world’s most iconic properties, including the Chrysler Building in New York and Berlin’s KaDeWe luxury department store – some of which could be up for grabs in a looming fire sale.
    Signa boomed in the era of cheap debt, although high interest rates and plummeting valuations pushed the company to the brink.
    The business bought Selfridges in a £4bn deal in 2021 with Thailand’s Central Group.
    However, the Thai retailer has since seized control of the British retailer after it became a majority shareholder in November last year…..

      1. They’ve changed Selfridges and I’m not sure I like the changes but business appears good. The new owners seem to understand their market. I prefer continuity.

        1. Entirely O/T

          Suggestion for what to do with annoying house guests…

          Tales from the towpath: running the length of the Kennet & Avon Canal

          Birds, barges, beer and bridges … the glories of running all 96 miles of this stunning canal from Bristol to Reading

          https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6f75216f422cb61d20ad621cf079c58c8172e607/0_81_6016_3608/master/6016.jpg?width=965&dpr=2&s=none

          https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2024/jan/07/running-the-kennet-and-avon-canal-martin-love

          1. At least once a year there’s an organised long distant run along the canal from Bristol to London. If I recall they are supposed to complete the run in 48 hours – dozens enter (I’m not sure how many finish!)…

          2. There used to be a canoe race too but someone died doing it a few years ago so I don’t know if they still do it. I used to catch them coming through Richmond about 8am on Easter Sundays.

          4. I helped with radio comms for St John Ambulance one year when I used to live with the parents in Gt Bedwyn.

  59. 381487+ up ticks,

    IMHO was triggered to commence some four decades ago
    Well organised and executed as seemingly were many of the casualties.

    It would not surprise me if we are going to witness the last
    General Election, prior to either massive peoples non compliance, or a full blown civil war.

    We in my book have also played a large part in the construction of our present odious wellbeing via lethargy,
    trust in parties that have, time & again & again
    proven untrustworthy.

    https://x.com/kevinnbass/status/1743726844392706423?s=20

    1. “Have the vaccine and prevent yourself from transmitting the virus to others”.

      What fucking universe — with alternative laws of physics to ours — do these moronic twats live on?

      1. Trouble is, Grizz, there are millions who absorb that sort of stuff. One example. The eminently sensible woman who has been our cleaner for 35 years. Had as many jabs/boosters/extras as were going. Always wore a mask. Gels her hands on arrival. Her Dad has ‘flu just now – so she wears an effing mask in our house for fear that she might “be a carrier”. I have tried reasoning but she believes all the propaganda 150%.

  60. After all the red alerts for flooding last week I now see we have a new amber warning of severe cold weather – from no other than the UKHSA. Forecast here is for it not to drop below freezing all week with most days around 4C. What has the world come to when we have be scared off because of normal January weather. Just back from my afternoon walk, very pleasant despite it being a tad chilly. Central heating off here until it comes on at 5pm, almost warm inside.

      1. Wet Office warning:

        “It will get DARK after 4.30 – and travelling may be dangerous because you won’t be able to see much.
        People are ADVISED to stay indoors until at least 6.30 am”

        1. It’s still dark here on the western fringes at 06.30. Given the sort of weather we’ve had recently, it’s been dark here at 07.30!

        1. That explains it. That’s where the Wet Office has its HQ – so there must always be shocking weather to warn people about!

          1. No longer Bill, they moved down to Exeter in 2004. But we still refer to ‘The Met Office Roundabout’ next to where their offices were, now a huge block of flats. Had a visit there many years ago, fascinating place, but the popular joke is that the forecasting room has no windows so they have no idea what is happening outside!

          2. Ah – I am, as always, behind the Times. Perhaps the weather in Bracknell was SO bad….that Exeter seemed an improvement!

          3. Its not just the weather in Bracknell that’s bad. We had our UIK office in Bracknell for many years and I spent quite a bit of time there. It had a wonderful hotel built above the shopping centre but forgot that people would want to get into a hotel outside normal shopping hours.

    3. -5C over here in the frozen north with a forecast high of +5C on Wednesday. People are complaining about global warming.

      We must be soft over here, our central heating goes on whenever the indoor temperature goes below about 18C. Even so, our gas bill is only about $50 a month during winter.

      1. My central heating (the Rayburn) is lit when the outside temperature falls below double figures. Then it’s on 24/7.

    1. The next election is going to be interesting watching how the powers that be try to get voters back on the uniparty narrative, lots of project fear, I guess.
      The problem is that they are all wedded to the same agenda.
      If Labour get a big majority they will be like Trudeau Ardern and Rutte on steroids with net zero, Labour love a bit of totalitarianism.

      2. They will get a big majority but on a very low turnout. Their mandate will be non-existent but unfortunately legitimate

        1. Any white person that votes Labour is voting to put their children and grand children on the path to second class citizenry and extinction, they will feel like the white farmers in South Africa.

        2. Any white person that votes Labour is voting to put their children and grand children on the path to second class citizenry and extinction, they will feel like the white farmers in South Africa.

      3. They will get a big majority but on a very low turnout. Their mandate will be non-existent but unfortunately legitimate

      4. There are far too many people who just shout ‘vote Labour!’ without thinking. They rant on about ‘da werkers’ and ‘da torees are toffs’ and other such twaddle as if it’s the 1970s. These people vote Labour if you tape the rosette to a cat.

  62. So, after clearing a bit of space so that I can stack logs to await splitting, I’ve sawn all of the larger diameter logs, from 15″ down to about 3″ or so.
    Then finished a quick job on the folding table I’ve put in the back of the van.

    I think that’s about me for the day!

  63. An unfortunate Bogey Five!

    Wordle 932 5/6
    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
    🟩⬜🟩⬜🟨
    🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Four here

      Wordle 932 4/6

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

    4. Par today.

      Wordle 932 4/6

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

    5. Better than me. 7+ today. I had the first three letters but there were too many options.

    5. “The massive Plantation of our homeland is being massively resisted. The Native Irish are rising.”

      Protestants to keep their beaks out…

  65. Latest in appeasement.

    Our Hamas loves are protesting again, the police are not cracking heads even when the protests are in predominantly Jewish areas. After stopping the protesters from moving into a residential area, the latest coverage shows the police delivering coffee to the protesters. The police claim that they are just trying to keep the peace.

    Many are comparing the police actions yesterday to the way they bashed heads at the Truckers convoy not that long ago.

    2. I’ll defer to your ability to comment on what may or may not be “boyish good looks”

    1. Why does any sane woman convert to Islam? Come to think of it, why does anyone convert to Islam?

      1. It gives them a feeling of certainty (and for the men, a feeling of superiority) in an uncertain world. Where things are relative and chaotic, islam takes away the need to think.

        1. They must have very low self-esteem if they feel the need to be told what to do and live a submissive life.

          1. Maybe the upbringing encourages that mindset.
            God help me if I tell SWMBO what to do…

      2. They always offer people two choices.
        Choice one: Convert or I’ll cut your head off
        Choice two: Convert or I’ll get your head off

      5. My mother’s cousin converted. I’ve always thought it’s because they can’t cope with modern life and making decisions so they need a very strict code which takes all thought out of life.

        Edit: Conners below expresses my thoughts more eloquently

      6. My mother’s cousin converted. I’ve always thought it’s because they can’t cope with modern life and making decisions so they need a very strict code which takes all thought out of life.

        Edit: Conners below expresses my thoughts more eloquently

      7. Babies are born into islam; there is a penalty for leaving which is rather life limiting..

      8. “Why does any sane woman convert to Islam?”

        No sane woman has ever converted to Islam. Anyone (man or woman) converting to Islam is demonstrably insane!

  69. That’s me gone for this Plough Sunday (thanks, Conwy). Managed a 2 mile walk. The weather is chilly but nothing one cannot put up with.

    Have a spiffing evening. Tomorrow first thing I am going to the GP for an “annual checkup”.

    Funny thing. They mailed me on Wednesday to ask me to book an apptmt. When doing so, (on Wednesday) I was told that there were no appoints FOR ANYTHING for two weeks. Same day, the apptmt for tomorrow – ie FIVE days later (with a weekend in between) Weird or what? Don’t answer.

    A demain

        1. I’m not clicking on that again! I’ve done it twice (the second time after restarting the laptop) and each time it has locked everything up and the sound turned to a blare.

    2. Chilly… I exercised today by:
      Drinking fearsomely strong beer
      Sleeping in the sofa
      Feeding the fire
      Tidying after SWMBO cooking.

  70. Ammonia is being targeted now by BBC Countryfile as being complicit in causing significant indirect particulate pollution in cities.
    Ammonia is however an essential ingredient of fertilizers.
    The UK has signed an international agreement to meet reduced targets of ammonia ‘ pollution’.

    I don’t think Countryfile is adequately explaining the scientific basis of the cost/benefit tradeoffs of ammonia production in farming and is treating what essentially is a relatively fast dissipating gas with no direct harmful effects on health yet having important uses in the role of fertlizers.

    Countryfile
    07 Jan 2024 – 6:00pm – 7:00pm

    2. I had to turn it off, they have obviously jumped onto the idiotic band wagon of absolute fakery and pathological lying. It seems some one has told them to stir up a ban on agriculture.
      Perhaps that will free up more green belt space for hundreds of thousands of new free homes for the invaders.

    3. They’re not renowned for explaining very much, I’m afraid. Unless it involves Glowball boiling, rewilding, animal cruelty or veganism.

      1. This advice to eat 5 veg per day is quite ridiculous. Its more red meat that people need to eat. I did my share today with wonderful Abedeen Angus beef.

          1. That’s why they have the arrangement of teeth they have and only a very small appendix.

          2. Thats what they are trying to turn us into so they have weak people who will obey.

    4. Ammonia is also a component in urine (particularly horse urine – mucking out can seriously clear your sinuses!).

      1. There are plenty of very stuffed up people in Wastemonster, Whitehall and all of the peripheral areas.

      2. Ironically AdBlue, used to clean up diesel vehicle emissions, uses both ammonia and carbon dioxide in its manufacture.

      3. Horse piss from carriages over centuries promoted mossy lichens and caused the Base Court at Hampton Court Palace to be referred to historically as the Green Court.

        Accordingly this received the attention of Victorians who supposed it referred to green grass and replaced its cobbled surfaces with grass.

        I used a bit of common sense and reference to similar courtyards, such as the adjacent Anne Boleyns’ Court and Eton College to prepare resurfacing proposals and to specify broken stone cobbles and Purbeck limestone ‘flatners’.

        My scheme was placed on hold for several years because of cost overruns at the Tower of London Representation of the Crown Jewels project. My design was subsequently carried out by others who had the barefaced cheek to accept awards and claim to have been the Architect.

        When working at Hampton Court a good tip in ageing new tiled roof repairs was to ask the men to take an early morning piss on the repair work.

    1. I’ve an all hands meeting tomorrow. That’ll make time stop. There’s already a book open on which of the two windbags will speak for longest.

      The record so far is 34 minutes – of a 60 minute meeting. You wouldn’t mind but they just didn’t stop – other people tried to hush them to let people respond but they just kept droning on over any one else.

  73. Just watching Ben Fogle standing next to the wrecked reactor no. 4 at Chernobyl, doing a piece to camera. Interesting stuff.

      1. What went wrong, how the Ukrainians have sealed off an area the size of Luxembourg, and how it’s rewilding itself.

    2. Read a good novel set in the area post-meltdown. Martin Cruz Smith’s ‘Wolves Eat Dogs’.

  74. Only around 14 hours to go and still no, but much expectated cancelled of the appointment for my much needed Ultra Sound guided cortisone knee injection. 🤫🤞 Please let it happen.
    Night all.

    1. I’ve an appointment to remove an 18 month old 8mm kidney stone. If they cancel it I’ll cut it out in A&E myself.

          1. Lithotripsy treats kidney stones by sending focused ultrasonic energy or shock waves directly to the stone first located with fluoroscopy (a type of X-ray “movie”) or ultrasound (high frequency sound waves). The shock waves break a large stone into smaller stones that will pass through the urinary system.

          2. I sat outside the suite when my husband had his treatment. It was quite a racket, despite being very effective! It sounded as though he was being thumped in the kidney!

  76. Just throwing this out there, to see if anyone else hase experienced this.

    Dianne the Ex-yet-still-good-friend moved to Devon late 2019. She took up a combined broadband / mobile deal with Virgin. A few months ago, Virgin announced that they were ‘migrating’ their mobile service to O2. Leaving aside some nonsense re. deliivering a new SIM card while she was here in Surrey, the transfer took place.

    Since moving here in 2020, Vodafone didn’t work at all. I switched to a SIM-only deal with O2. It was better, but not great. At the end of that minimum contract, I switched to Three, which remains the best (& cheapest) option, living here.

    Recently – for a couple of months – when Dianne has tried to call my mobile, she’s told “number not recognised”. This is obvious nonsense, since my number is valid, has been for a few decades, and everyone else on the planet can call me. So her communications are now exclusiely by WhatsApp. Which is just as well, since she’s gone orff to warmer climes in the Far East for 2-3 months.

    Yesterday, I had a WhatsApp voice call from a Cumbrian friend from school days. “What’s wrong wih your phone? The number isn’t recognised”. Several calls had been rejected, and I was blissfully unaware of them. It transpired tha former schoolfriend was also a Virgin Media customer, who had also been ‘migrated’ to O2…

    There’s nothing online that I can find. I suspect that – as a former O2 customer who has left – their systems now refuse to connect to former O2 numbers. But this is merely conjecture, and I could be wrong. Bloody annoying, though.

    Interested to hear whether any other Nottlers have experienced this…

    1. Sorry, Geoff, the mobile signal at the bottom of the valley (O2) is so crap I’ve recently, 1 year, joined Lebara. This was to obtain Wifi calling which we couldn’t get with giffgaff. The ins and outs of mobiles are beyond my ken.

      1. No worries. Lebara is on the Vodafone network. Before I moved here, I was happily using Vodafone for mobile and 4G data (the latter being twice as fast as landline broadband and half the cost). On arrival here, Vodafone may as well not have existed.

        Having set up card payment systems in 3 of our 4 churches in the last couple of years, one is using a 4G tablet on Vodafone, one a 4G router also on Vodafone (where I used to live), and the potentially more difficult one (no-one has a signal in church) is happily working on a £5 Smarty SIM (on the Three network), but only because it’s at the top of the church tower.

    2. I hate using my mobile, apart from as a mini computer and for What’s App. I dislike making or receiving calls. Though at the moment our landline doesn’t work and eventually they will migrate the landline to Digital Voice.

      1. Thanks, Angie. I’m no convinced it’s quite the same issue, but clearly the Virgin > O2 migration has been less than entirely successful. I was with o2 for a year, but the signal was rubbish. So I moved to Three, and the signal is rubbish, but less so. I suspect that my number, having previously been with O2 for a year, is being blocked by them.

  77. Good night, chums. Just tried to read, but my eyes keep closing. See you all tomorrow. Sleep well.

    2. It’s funny how the German green Left seek to outlaw AfD smearing them as ‘Far Right’ when it is the Left who are doing exactly as Hitler did. They’ve got to accept it: all evil is Left wing. All the dictators, abusers, thugs, sociopaths, fascists, warmongers – they were and always will be Left wing misanthropic psychotics.

    1. Good morning Rastus. Please will you pass on the advice about floaters in the eye, I have quite a large one in my right eye and if there’s a way of getting rid I’d be delighted to know.

    1. Good night, Conners – and Oscar and Kadi. (I left it a bit late, this has been typed at almost 7 am whilst awaiting Geoff’s Monday page link.)

  83. It’s cold. Proper cold. We had Oscar on the bed as the warqueen was cold.

    Mongo has been sleeping in Junior’s for the last few weeks. He hasn’t said anything but it’s hard to hide the fluff.

    I don’t really know what to do. Apparently we can’t move for at least a year due to money laundering. I even spoke to the Halifax to explain the situation. 30 minutes on hold to be told ‘stop bothering us, we can’t be arsed to answer’.

      1. Dressed and wearing my fleece. The Warqueen left for work at half 6. She doesn’t start until 9. Earliest a person gets to their office is 8.

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