Sunday 9 April: Jeremy Hunt could learn from Nigel Lawson how to inspire as Chancellor

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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497 thoughts on “Sunday 9 April: Jeremy Hunt could learn from Nigel Lawson how to inspire as Chancellor”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story – actually, a little list

    An American Visits the UK
    This Is His Description of British Life
    A good laugh. Most of it’s correct!
    If you’re from Britain it’s quite easy to often forget how great this place is. If you’re not from Britain, however, we probably seem like quite an odd bunch at times.
    The following Facebook post, written by 66-year-old American Scott Waters, pretty much fits both of the above. Penned following a visit to the UK one summer (most of which appears to have been in Cornwall), Waters wrote up the various cultural differences and posted them to the world of social media. The post promptly went viral and has been shared almost 50,000 times.
    Here’s what he had to say about us:
    I was in England again a few weeks ago, mostly in small towns, but here’s some of what I learned:
    * Almost everyone is very polite.
    * There are no guns.
    * There are too many narrow stairs.
    * The pubs close too early.
    * The reason they drive on the left is because all their cars are built backwards.
    * Pubs are not bars; they are community living rooms.
    * You’d better like peas, potatoes and sausage.
    * Refrigerators and washing machines are very small.
    * Everything is generally older, smaller and shorter.
    * People don’t seem to be afraid of their neighbours or the government.
    * Their paper money makes sense, the coins don’t.
    * Everyone has a washing machine but driers are rare.
    * Hot and cold-water faucets. Remember them?
    * Pants are called “trousers”, underwear are “pants” and sweaters are “jumpers”.
    * The bathroom light is a string hanging from the ceiling.
    * “Fanny” is a naughty word, as is “shag”.
    * All the signs are well designed with beautiful typography and written in full sentences with proper grammar.
    * There’s no dress code.
    * Doors close by themselves, but they don’t always open.
    * They eat with their forks upside down.
    * The English are as crazy about their gardens as Americans are about cars.
    * They don’t seem to use facecloths or napkins or maybe they’re just neater than we are.
    * The wall outlets all have switches, some don’t do anything.
    * There are hardly any cops or police cars.
    * 5,000 year ago, someone arranged a lot of rocks all over, but no one is sure why.
    * When you do see police, they seem to be in male & female pairs and often smiling.
    * Black people are just people: they didn’t quite do slavery here.
    * Everything comes with chips, which are French fries. You put vinegar on them.
    * Cookies are “biscuits” and potato chips are “crisps”.
    * HP sauce is better than catsup.
    * Obama is considered a hero; Bush is considered an idiot.
    * After fish and chips, curry is the most popular food.
    * The water controls in showers need detailed instructions.
    * They can boil anything.
    * Folks don’t always lock their bikes.
    * It’s not unusual to see people dressed differently and speaking different languages.
    * Your electronic devices will work fine with just a plug adaptor.
    * Nearly everyone is better educated than we are.
    * If someone buys you a drink you must do the same.
    * Look right, walk left. Again; look right, walk left. You’re welcome.
    * Avoid British wine and French beer.
    * It’s not that hard to eat with the fork in your left hand with a little practice. If you don’t, everyone knows you’re an American.
    * Many of the roads are the size of our sidewalks.
    * There’s no AC.
    * Instead of turning the heat up, you put on a jumper.
    * Gas is “petrol”, it costs about $6 a gallon and is sold by the litre.
    * If you speed on a motorway, you get a ticket. Period. Always.
    * You don’t have to tip, really!
    * There are no guns.
    * Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall really are different countries.
    * Only 14% of Americans have a passport, everyone in the UK does.
    * You pay the price marked on products because the taxes (VAT) are built in.
    * Walking is the national pastime.
    * Their TV looks and sounds much better than ours.
    * They took the street signs down during WWII, but haven’t put them all back up yet.
    * Everyone enjoys a good joke.
    * Dogs are very well behaved and welcome everywhere.
    * There are no window screens.
    * You can get on a bus and end up in Paris.
    * Everyone knows more about our history than we do.
    * Radio is still a big deal. The BBC is quite good.
    * The newspapers can be awful.
    * Everything costs the same but our money is worth less so you have to add 50% to the price to figure what you’re paying.
    * Beer comes in large, completely filled, actual pint glasses and the closer the brewery the better the beer.
    * Butter and eggs aren’t refrigerated.
    * The beer isn’t warm; each style is served at the proper temperature.
    * Cider (alcoholic) is quite good.
    * Excess cider consumption can be very painful.
    * The universal greeting is “Cheers” (pronounced “cheeahz” unless you are from Cornwall, then it’s “chairz”)
    * Their cash makes ours look like Monopoly money.
    * Cars don’t have bumper stickers.
    * Many doorknobs, buildings and tools are older than America.
    * By law, there are no crappy, old cars.
    * When the sign says something was built in 456, they didn’t lose the “1”.
    * Cake is pudding, ice cream is pudding, and anything served for dessert is pudding, even pudding.
    * Everything closes by 1800 (6pm)
    * Very few people smoke, those who do often roll their own.
    * You’re defined by your accent.
    * No one in Cornwall knows what the hell a Cornish Game Hen is.
    * Soccer is a religion, religion is a sport.
    * Europeans dress better than the British, we dress worse.
    * The trains work: a three-minute delay is regrettable.
    * Drinks don’t come with ice.
    * There are far fewer fat English people.
    * There are a lot of healthy old folks around participating in life instead of hiding at home watching TV.
    * If you’re over 60, you get free TV and bus and rail passes.
    * They don’t use Bose anything anywhere
    * Displaying your political or religious affiliation is considered very bad taste
    * Every pub has a pet drunk
    * Their healthcare works, but they still bitch about it
    * Cake is one of the major food groups
    * Their coffee is mediocre but their tea is wonderful
    * There are still no guns
    * They have towel warmers!

    2. Hi Tom
      Watching a pipe band in Dufftown on YouTube – remind me, were you Pipe Major?

      1. Not that good on the Bagpipes but I was tall, had a loud voice and knew how all the pipe tunes went, plus the Drum Major Signals, so that’s where I ended up – in front of the band.

        1. With all the twirling as well?
          How cool is that? Just watched a clip of Mull of Kintyre, where the pipe band are strugging with a pebble beach, then Dufftown, where all is in order and so tidy. Made me think of you. Did you lead the band over rough surfaces?

          1. All the ‘twirling’ was referred to as ‘The Dandy Walk’, lots of strutting front with the mace to the side and then brought back across the chest before repeat on the other side.

            You’ll note that the Drum Major doesn’t have a plaid, the cloth that hangs down behind, because it could cause a problem while the mace is twirled behind.

  4. Happy Easter to everybody.

    Lovely morning here. In the field behind, I have been watching a brace of mad March hares doing their thing in April; ‘my’ resident barn owl scooting around looking for breakfast; two cock pheasants trying to get fruity with the many hens; a magnificent moon; and lots of sky vermin (pigeons).

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F06e8fd08-d55a-11ed-a747-57887c44a580.jpg?crop=1793%2C1195%2C198%2C3&resize=900

    1. I thought it was one of the former deputy leaders of his party who really liked them.

      1. I don’t wish to mock the beliefs of people of faith. But I was sorely tempted to post “I wish my cakes were”. (Sorry, Joseph B. Fox.)

  6. Enough already. Another sleepless night so I’m going back to catch up on zeds.

    1. Go to bed, set alarm for 7 hours. get up and do not go to sleep again till you go to bed at night again. just saying.

    2. You know, Tom, I slept like a baby for a good eight hours, but still feel in need of further zeds myself. I may follow your example.
      PS – a good few jokes from you today.

  7. Capitalism not slavery made Britain rich. It’s time we stopped apologising for our past

    The UK did play its part in the Atlantic slave trade, but so did many other kingdoms. Where we are unique is in our role towards ending it

    How bizarre that, in a world where slavery was near-universal, we should train our ire almost exclusively on the country that distinguished itself by its abolitionism. It is true that, during the eighteenth century, Britain had been heavily involved with the slave trade. At that time, human bondage was taken for granted almost everywhere. It had been practised by Aztecs and Incas, Arabs and Persians, Chinese and Koreans, Polynesians and Maori. Barbary slavers had seized more than a million Europeans, raiding as far as Cork and Cornwall. Some 17 million Africans were sold in the Arab world, a trade that continued well into the twentieth century.

    I’m not a fan of Daniel Hannan but this is worth a read for the quality of the research he’s put into the article. WE don’t owe these people anything, in fact we should charge them for their fares to the New World!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/08/capitalism-not-slavery-made-britain-rich/

    1. No doubt money was made at the time by everyone concerned, including the Africans that captured sold these people at the time to Europeans in the hundreds of thousands.

      But the idea that that Britain became a wealthy first world country on the back of the slave trade that was abolished centuries ago is stretching things a little bit.

      One would have to have limited intelligence to believe that cultural Marxist twist on history

      2. And which member of the royal family seems to be of the most limited intelligence?

        Yes, strong competition but I think that the King edges his younger son into second place.

    2. I wish folk would focus on the role and cost (in lives and pounds) of the West Africa Squadron.

      1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron
        The West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 ships involved in the slave trade and freed 150,000 slaves who were aboard these vessels between 1807 and 1860. Approximately 1 600 sailors died, mostly of disease.
        Robert Pape and Chaim Kaufmann have declared the Squadron the most expensive international moral action in modern history

        1. There were also anti-slavery patrols off the East African coast in the latter half of the 1800s as part of the effort to stamp out the Arab Slave Trade which continued for long after the Atlantic Trade was stopped and which, in fact, continues today.

          1. Not having access to the relevant l archives, I am unable to give an exact date, but the French were flagging slaving vessels in the Red Sea until approximately 1910. The British patrol boats were unable to intervene.

      1. “Perhaps £45 million”?

        In the 1750’s a pound coin was a gold sovereign. A gold sovereign should contain slightly in excess of 7 grammes of fine gold. Last week a gold sovereign was worth (plus or minus) £350, so the King of Dahomey would have been receiving the equivalent of £87.5 million per annum.

        Of course, trade goods were thrown into the equation, which enabled manufacturers in UK to flourish thanks to sales of firearms and cloth, etc.

    4. We know that what ever takes place around the world is usually always whities fault.
      But as you point out this was not the case at all.
      But Nobody else is available to accept any responsibility. Especially the Romans or the muslim’s in Europe who actually started it all.
      The worse aspects of slavery in Europe were centered around Islamic Spain when they use to sail around the south parts of the British Isles and Ireland capturing children.
      They kept them in caves near Alhambra, for the use of. And threw them into the cage’s of their captured lions, when they had finished with the poor little souls.
      When are the islamics going to admit responsibility. Never I suggest.

    5. Morning all.

      About time someone whose name we know came out with something like this. I’m so sick of people whingeing about “our role in slavery”. DH ought to send his article to KC3.

    6. The fact that our current monarch thinks his family should pay reparations for slavery shows that we have a mental defective as the head of state.

    7. Interesting that when we were in Iceland [the country, not the food store!!] a few years ago the guide was telling us about the frequent raids along the coast by Barbary pirates, looking for slaves!

  8. 373215+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    A cross border rhetorical battle of a party so arrogant in it’s stance towards it’s robotic AI core members whos channeled brain power will not be activated until polling day, for one day.

    The current underlying question never asked for the voting herd majority is “do you want the present quota of paedophiles to stay as is or should it be raised”

    Dt,

    Tory fury as Douglas Ross says Scots should vote Labour to oust SNP
    Holyrood Conservative leader sparks backlash with call for tactical voting in Telegraph interview

  9. ‘Morning All

    Confused by the blizzard of black and tranny adverts??

    The Mail has broken cover over ESG and CEI

    One of the key players in the dynamic is

    BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, one of the top shareholders in major companies

    including Nike and Anheuser-Busch who oversees assets worth $8.6

    trillion.

    Fink, who has been dubbed

    ‘the face of ESG’, showed his hand in 2018 in a notorious letter to top

    CEOs titled ‘A Sense of Purpose’, which threatened to demote those who

    didn’t fall in line.

    Arguing that

    companies need to serve a ‘social purpose’, Fink said: ‘To prosper over

    time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but

    also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.’

    ‘If a company doesn’t engage with the community and have a sense of

    purpose, it will ultimately lose the license to operate from key

    stakeholders,’ he warned. ‘The big

    fund managers like BlackRock all embrace this ESG orthodoxy in how they

    apply pressure to top corporate management teams and boards and they

    determine, in many cases, executive compensation and bonuses and who

    gets reelected or re-appointed to boards,’ said Vivek Ramaswamy, to The New York Post.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11952127/Big-brands-use-trans-star-Dylan-Mulvaney-increase-Corporate-Equality-Index-scores.html
    1 Comments obviously rapidly closed,only 2 with thousands of votes
    2 As has been said here “Blackrock is just an investment company” Aye Right…….

    1. So many companies are side lined by interfearing in things that are nothing to do with their business. They are there to make a profit first and foremost.

      1. I went off the AA when it started selling books and insurance and the roadside breakdown service ceased to be swift and reliable.

    2. So many companies are side lined by interfearing in things that are nothing to do with their business. They are there to make a profit first and foremost.

      1. ESG – short for Environmental, Social and Governance – is a set of standards measuring a business’s impact on society, the environment, and how transparent and accountable it is.
        IE obey our rules or we’ll disinvest in your company and use our power to fire the directors
        The easy way to submit is via the advertising hence why whites are vanishing from adverts
        For the rest Read the bloody article!!

      2. ESG is green marxism. It’s the reason why there is so much pointless virtue-signalling by every company and on every product.

          1. Me too, OLT. (That doesn’t mean that I’m going to sue you for millions because you winked at me in my younger days.)

        2. I had a missive from Vanguard which made a big thing of it’s green products. I – and many others from looking at the results – continually replied saying ‘don’t care. Make me money.’

          1. I get questionnaires every so often from Scottish Power asking me if SP’s green intitiatives make me more likely to use the company. Less likely – I want efficient production and lower prices!

        1. Or Charles and Henry.

          The workforce at the Rolls-Royce aero-engine plant in Derby routinely call the company “Royce’s”.

          1. That’s where t’Lad works. Or rather will work when the doctors eventually declare him fit enough to return!

          2. True, Grizzly. Having been born in Derby and lived there in my teenage years that is exactly what I called Rolls-Royce.

    1. 373215+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      What it boils down to Og is how much do the supporters of this treacherous political shite coalition value their families, they certainly know the score by now

    3. I’ve already had two reminders from my GP practice to have new booster jabs. I notice that AZ has now been removed from the list.
      When I and hundreds of thousands of others get compensation from Oxford AZ. Perhaps I might consider it. But not until. Which will be never again.

    4. 373215+ up ticks,

      O2O.

      Og, could the MHRA adopt a more descriptive name among decent / sane peoples, such as the King Herod group ?

      1. The plan to restrict freedom of travel is going well, then?For many, an EV will become an unaffordable luxury, as well as being completely impractical. This ban-everything government must be delighted with its progress. At the next GE I will feel obliged to show my appreciation of their efforts. Not Zero = greenwash or hogwash? Same thing, really. They will be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour’s from the back benches – those that survive, of course.

        1. The trouble is that the odious political system offers no escape. The Conservatives are repulsive but the Lib/Dumbs, SNP and Labour are just as odious in their repulsiveness.

      2. The plan to restrict freedom of travel is going well, then. For many, a car will become an unaffordable luxury, as well as being completely impractical. This ban-everything government must be delighted with its progress. At the next GE I will feel obliged to show my appreciation of their efforts. Not Zero = greenwash or hogwash? Same thing, really. They will be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour’s from the back benches- those that survive, of course.

      3. The plan to restrict freedom of travel is going well, then. For many, a car will become an unaffordable luxury, as well as being completely impractical. This ban-everything government must be delighted with its progress. At the next GE I will feel obliged to show my appreciation of their efforts. Not Zero = greenwash or hogwash? Same thing, really. They will be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour’s from the back benches- those that survive, of course.

  12. Sunday Medley

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/26531195174306fffea83175bebbb307dbf5d2da7199f519f71d16519d2755db.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f341cf25cc199b63021ea822d192d76b8016fb72e2bedd5d65ddef32c9f757dc.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6c3d945d29b90e5d8e748366ba00eab767f67a79a77f9b907661cf34deb794dd.jpg

    https://westernrifleshooters.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/a86151c15f8aba42.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1653ca0188a0c9bbfa8f2947aa50c9d75d449d93efd891ebf3d98867d2704266.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8a454265f61e6fe3fda2b23cfb0967f61894d57adcdb0fbedcbb5ddf90acc24f.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/21215cd275940b50f7dfc072b99b49e3f789b288eae79d3d24e6778bb4ea1e7b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9ac158bf2dbb57947abca0a421c1b59da2057bf71527ca375ed1878a3aa9d86e.jpg

    2. Rather agree with the climate change one. It’s clear to anyone now that the Left are not interested in ecology or environment, only about getting their own way.

      Why don’t we give them their own island where they can live without any energy whatsoever. After they get bored and find that medicine, clothing, food, fuel all require energy and want to come back we can say nope, not a chance, Lefties!

  13. Good morning, all, and a very Happy Easter. Early fog has been replaced by watery sunshine.

    In a rare moment of compassion, perhaps the “depression” that Welmeaning is banging on about (and depression is’t funny) is brought on by his unconscious realisation that he his completely out of his depth – and in the wrong job.

    1. I saw a red sun appear over the hill an hour or so ago and now it’s overcast with thick cloud.

      1. After 8 when I got up to thick mist clinging to the valley sides, though ground level was quite clear.
        13:00 now and quite sunny.

      1. Good morning Ndovu.
        He’s as unsuited to his job as the King is to being ‘Defender of THE faith.’
        Apparently, Charles is ‘ at odds with’ the C of E over his wish to give roles in his pantomime coronation to representatives of other faiths, clashing with cannon law. I hope tradition wins – though with Wetby in charge, I won’t hold my breath.
        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11952937/Charles-odds-Church-England-role-faiths-play-Coronation.html

        Busy day in the garden. Rhubarb to pull and blanche, seeds to be sown and, oh joy, weed, feed & modeller to be spread. For the latter job, I will use a face nappy. (They do have some uses 😁)

        1. ‘Morning, Mum. I sense that I may not be the only one going out of my way to avoid much of the coronation. And at the first hint of a gospel choir, or the appearance of certain rainbow-coloured paraphernalia, I shall find something useful to do in the garden.

          Incidentally, I note that you blanch your rhubarb. We never bothered; it was all chopped up and bunged in the freezer. Never had a problem. Runner beans, on the other hand, were deffo substandard if not blanched.

          1. I have just put mine in a flat dish to cool. The next batch, I will freeze as suggested.

        2. Yeah, busy day for me too. Should probably get out of bed. Maybe another few hours.

          1. I am only indoors because I really do not want to get on with the lawn treatment job.

      1. Don’t worry; once Willum feels nauseous from scoffing his Easter egg, he’ll be back to his normal acerbic self.

      2. I couldn’t find anorther word beginning “WEL” that properly reflected my true view of this charlatan.

    5. I always imagine Welby would be far happier doling out welfare cheques and finding ways to buck the system to reward ‘special friends’. He seems utterly unsuited to being the head of the Church of England – hating both England, the Church and all they represent.

      1. As I have said here before – the atheist Cameron knew that by appointing his fellow Etonian to the position of Archpillock of Canterbury it would lead to the disintegration of the Church of England.

        Remember Henry ll ? It did not end well for his best friend, the one with whom he used to go boozing and whoring. Look what happened to Tommy Boy in his cathedral after Henry had made him Archbishop of Canterbury!

  14. ‘Morning, Peeps. A happy Easter Sunday to one and all. Here, we are promised a dry and mostly sunny day, with a rather miserly 10°C.

    A rather tedious set of letters to day, but this BTL comment eased my disappointment:

    Anastasias Revenge
    6 HRS AGO
    5 or 6 cops, 15 stuffed toys – serious questions need to be asked if this was a sensible and appropriate use of police manpower. Somebody senior okayed that raid, in the numbers which attended. That somebody has the same stuff between their ears as the culprits they bagged and took away.

    * * *

    Bravo, it needed saying! Well, Essex Plod…I’m still waiting for the press release explaining this nonsense…more virtue signalling I suppose? Under which part of the criminal law will this be ‘justified’?

        1. I thought perhaps it was an April Fool prank but apparently the complaint was made in February. The police clearly haven’t enough crime to deal with.

          1. Oh come on, Jules – they have got all those cars to paint rainbow coloured…..

        2. For goodness sake. What is wrong with plod? A hate crime? Thoughtcrime? Have they lost their minds?

          Ohh, someone was upset. Good! You’re living in a world where you should be upset! It does not revolve around you, you useless, insulated, thick headed nutjob!

    2. I hope the owners employ a good solicitor to take the Essex “Con”stabulary to the cleaners.

    3. The most useful phrase I learned when I worked in a court was ‘provide me with the statutory authority’. A Court Clerk would ask that if a solicitor if he made a point. The solicitor would have to provide the Act, section and subsection.
      Would have been a lovely question to pose to the plods.

  15. Morning, Campers.
    What a lovely day for a drive round the Highlands in a £110K camper van.
    All 92 year olds should be out and about on this fine Spring day. I’m sure Mrs. Murrell senior will lead the way.
    (£110K is not a million miles from £107K – the amount Mr. Murrell magicked up from his bank account to plug a gap in the SNP’s independence campaign funds. £3K discount for cash?)

    1. Yo anne

      Now, the Mail on Sunday can reveal another morning raid has taken place in connection with the SNP fraud probe – at a sleepy, private estate in Dunfermline, Fife.

      What is a ‘private estate’ in UK, controlled entry and gated community or just ‘No council houses or gimmegrants’ allowed?

      1. It is noticeable a nearby ‘gated community’ has lost patience with the arrangement and the gates are permanently open.
        I think it means lots of rabbit hutches thrown up for a quick profit – preferably on a meadow or a retired rubbish dump.

        1. That’s definitely how I would describe Dunfermline! Or Dunfermalino as Billy Connolly used to call it!

  16. Gidday all,

    A little foggy at McPhee Towers first thing but it’s clearing already, 6℃ with SE wind, some sunshine promised.

    Much support for the Nigel Lawson approach to public finance in the letters which I can do nothing but agree with except that Lawson did not (could not) go far enough to lighten the tax burden. Much more revealing is this report:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/08/liz-truss-oecd-global-cartel-of-complacency-taxes/

    Truss was not up to the job of being PM because she caved in and sacked Kwarteng when she should have stood her ground and doubled down on her chosen path. What is this idea of ‘funded tax cuts’ in any case when the truth is the reverse, that it is government expenditure which needs to be funded through tax and borrowing? Tax cuts are cuts in government activity; tax cuts are reductions in state theft.

    The very idea that some supra national organisation should have a say in tax rates within a sovereign nation should be seen by all as anathema. The fact that it is proposed tells us that our governments do not represent US. They represent something else altogether.

        1. Yes, but it’s nearly gone now. Poor old garden looks a terrible shambles, dead leaves, twigs and goodness-knows what everywhere. Sigh.

          1. Can’t be as bad as that bit of hillside that passes its self off as “my garden”.

  19. Good morning all.
    A dry but rather misty start to the day with low cloud clinging to the sides of the valley and a cool 2½°C on the yard thermometer.

  20. Good morning everyone ,

    Happy Easter .. it is a beautiful sunny early morning .

    Moh was up and about at 0630 readying himself for the golf competition .

    Eldest son was also awake early , to run 10k then visit the gym .

    I am watching a Sky Arts prog .. Easter in Art .. and it is a wonderful programme. Old Masters depicting the Easter story , the paintings are overwhelming and the narrative is very commendable .

    1. Morning TB.
      I really miss my place in the Sunday morning golf swindle at Mid Herts.
      Nick names drawn out of the hat and pairs selected against pairs. It was great fun.
      And at least its one thing the die-versity nutters haven’t tried to change yet.
      The colours of the participants of the Easter story. But I expect that it’s on their Dopey Wokies adgenda.

    2. Yo T_B

      The whole point of Gyms having (big) car parks is so that you can drive there

      1. I don’t know why landlords don’t name their pubs ‘The Gym’ so people can say I’m just going down to the Gym

  23. Jeremy Hunt could learn from Nigel Lawson how to inspire as Chancellor

    I thought that Hunt was the direct opposite of Lawson, that is why he was appointed by our globalist masters.

    1. Yup, Lawson wanted to grow the economy. Hunt wants to destroy it. Why would Hunt enact policies that would be of benefit?

      I read a poster expounding the virtues of Hayek and Keynes who whinged that high taxes were good for an economy, and that healthy happy workers were what was needed. Such idiots refuse to accept the truth that you can only have health and happiness when you have work and wealth, which come from low taxes and small government. In addition, arguing that low taxes do no =t grow an economy when the evidence is all around you that they do is the ultimate in idiocy!

  24. Glad Påsk to all NoTTLers.

    Following numerous contemporary threads (and newspaper articles) on where to buy the ‘best’ hot cross buns, I have to say that I bake my own traditional English teacakes throughout the year and I find them to be much tastier than any bought ones, under any guise. Teacakes and hot cross buns are, effectively, made from the same recipe. I enjoy eating mine toasted and untoasted equally, but a lot of butter is necessary.

    I never add a white cross on any of mine (at any time of year). This is not because I am not religious, nor do I abhor symbolism; it is simply because I do not enjoy eating a flour/water paste, which ruins the tasty crusty top of my teacakes.

    When I was a young engineering apprentice, I would frequently take an untoasted fruit teacake to work for my ‘snap’. I would butter it and fill it with grated cheddar (or Lancashire) cheese and Branston pickle. Delicious.

        1. Yo Mr G

          I hope that your set has not slide into the dough mix

          “Set” Jackspeak for beard

    2. Good morning Grizzly.

      Hotcross buns are quite nice and tasty with a small slice of grilled streaky bacon embedded in the fruity spicey innards of the bun !

      Happy Easter .

  25. Glad Påsk to all NoTTLers.

    Following numerous contemporary threads (and newspaper articles) on where to buy the ‘best’ hot cross buns, I have to say that I bake my own traditional English teacakes throughout the year and I find them to be much tastier than any bought ones, under any guise. Teacakes and hot cross buns are, effectively, made from the same recipe. I enjoy eating mine toasted and untoasted equally, but a lot of butter is necessary.

    I never add a white cross on any of mine (at any time of year). This is not because I am not religious, nor do I abhor symbolism; it is simply because I do not enjoy eating a flour/water paste, which ruins the tasty crusty top of my teacakes.

    When I was a young engineering apprentice, I would frequently take an untoasted fruit teacake to work for my ‘snap’. I would butter it and fill it with grated cheddar (or Lancashire) cheese and Branston pickle. Delicious.

  26. Glad Påsk to all NoTTLers.

    Following numerous contemporary threads (and newspaper articles) on where to buy the ‘best’ hot cross buns, I have to say that I bake my own traditional English teacakes throughout the year and I find them to be much tastier than any bought ones, under any guise. Teacakes and hot cross buns are, effectively, made from the same recipe. I enjoy eating mine toasted and untoasted equally, but a lot of butter is necessary.

    I never add a white cross on any of mine (at any time of year). This is not because I am not religious, nor do I abhor symbolism; it is simply because I do not enjoy eating a flour/water paste, which ruins the tasty crusty top of my teacakes.

    When I was a young engineering apprentice, I would frequently take an untoasted fruit teacake to work for my ‘snap’. I would butter it and fill it with grated cheddar (or Lancashire) cheese and Branston pickle. Delicious.

  27. Morning all 🙂😉😊
    Happy Easter to all, not a bad start today although rain again later, then for the rest of the week 🤔
    I can’t see any of our current political clowns learning anything whatsoever from our past successful ministers. Do you know who I am self-centerism is the obvious current trend.

  28. This BTL Comment has got me thinking;

    Anastasias Revenge
    8 HRS AGO
    “Draconian’ law letting staff sue bosses over rude customers is shelved after backlash”
    Can we please find the person(s) who made the decision to shelve this nonsense and reward them with knighthoods or something (If Starmer or Williamson can be knighted, anyone can).

    What have they slipped through whilst our attention was distracted by this?

      1. Well said Jane7 – the so called government [of whatever tribe] are utter morons!

      2. It is becoming more and more clear that none of these sorts of measures have anything to do with the environment but everything to do with destroying small businesses and impoverishing ordinary people. In the same way the whole raison d’être of Covid is to terrify and control and enrich Big Pharma for their harmful vaccines gene therapy.

        If this is what the GREAT RESET and BUILD BACK BETTER is all about then who wants it?

        BEWARE OF FALSE PROPHYLACTICS

        Why are none of the mainline politicians remotely interested in the welfare of ordinary people any more?

        1. Too many people wrongly believe that the government is incompetent over these matters. Not so, these moves have been long in the planning along with the similar threat being raised on landlords and people wishing to sell their homes.
          In matters of farming the government is working towards reducing production of crops and animal stock whilst demanding an increase in both re-wilding and provision of solar arrays. Government is using climate change/net zero as cover for an insidious agenda that will destroy much of what is required to run an efficient and prosperous nation of >70 million people. As for Labour under Starmer…

      3. That is in the same plan that, unless they meet ‘energy performance level’ c (Extremely difficult and eye-wateringly expensive), we will be banned from selling or renting our homes.

      4. ‘Green’ is not about the environment. It’s about control. It’s just another desperate attempt by the Left to control what people can do.

    2. That idiotic employee suing employer comes straight form the EU as part of the EUHR. Another reason why we should repeal it.

    1. Fabulous Belle! The female, Dorcha has just arrived back this morning at Loch Arkaig! Now the male, Louis is awol!

  32. Very trick par four today

    Wordle 659 4/6

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

    1. A birdie, but no other ‘word’ it could have been.
      Wordle 659 3/6

      🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Odd one, wasn’t it.

        Wordle 659 3/6

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

      1. Me too: Bogey Five.

        Wordle 659 5/6
        ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
        🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜
        🟩⬜🟩🟨⬜
        🟩⬜🟩⬜🟨
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  33. The Observer view on Afghanistan: withdrawal should be a cause for lasting shame in Britain and the US. 9 April 2023.

    The fall of Kabul in August 2021 and the accompanying chaotic evacuation of US and UK forces, foreign nationals and limited numbers of Afghan civilians marked the end of a 20-year, western war-fighting and nation-building intervention in Afghanistan begun after the 9/11 attacks.

    It also marked the starkest, most humiliating reverse for US and British foreign policy in recent memory. It is extraordinary that, almost two years later, no one in either government has taken responsibility for this fiasco.

    The fiasco was inevitable from the moment the US decided that it was going to stay and save it from the Taliban. Afghanistan, due to its religion, geography and social order, is unconquerable. This is not a secret. Any schoolboy that has read the Flashman novels could tell you so. Britain’s involvement in the country and its catastrophic defeats in the Nineteenth century is witness to it. The place should be avoided like the plague. It is not worth the life of one single western soldier.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/09/the-observer-view-on-afghanistan-wests-betrayal-should-be-a-cause-for-shame-in-britain-and-the-us

    1. Afghanistan is an area, not a country; if anything, it should be divided into two states, each with a capital city.

  34. The Observer view on Afghanistan: withdrawal should be a cause for lasting shame in Britain and the US. 9 April 2023.

    The fall of Kabul in August 2021 and the accompanying chaotic evacuation of US and UK forces, foreign nationals and limited numbers of Afghan civilians marked the end of a 20-year, western war-fighting and nation-building intervention in Afghanistan begun after the 9/11 attacks.

    It also marked the starkest, most humiliating reverse for US and British foreign policy in recent memory. It is extraordinary that, almost two years later, no one in either government has taken responsibility for this fiasco.

    The fiasco was inevitable from the moment the US decided that it was going to stay and save it from the Taliban. Afghanistan, due to its religion, geography and social order, is unconquerable. This is not a secret. Any schoolboy that has read the Flashman novels could tell you so. Britain’s involvement in the country and its catastrophic defeats in Nineteenth century is witness to it. The place should be avoided like the plague. It is not worth the life of one single western soldier.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/09/the-observer-view-on-afghanistan-wests-betrayal-should-be-a-cause-for-shame-in-britain-and-the-us

  36. It’s cold out there! Not nice for gardening or taking photos of hedgehogs. Will have to see if it warms up a bit later.

    1. As I have often posted, when I was a lad they would have been in the local loonie bin. Of course there were very few of them back then. Very, very few but it would still be the best place for them where they could be rescued from the grip of this destructive, neo-Marxist, post-modern ideology.

    2. I see they allowed no comments. That mother went through hell but at least her boy saw sense in the end. Many others will be damaged for life. What are these ‘influencers’ playing at?

    3. There are a lot of evil people preying on the normal hang-ups and fears of young children and those going through puberty.

    4. Tavistock and all its offshoots should be shut down, ideally with extreme prejudice.

    1. Marriage is a legal, as well as a (sometimes) religious institution. How on earth (this, or Fuller’s) could such a ceremony legally take place?

      1. They want to destroy marriage and one of the campaigns against it is the never-ending stream of ridiculous “stories” about women marrying themselves, a tree, a ghost etc in the popular press.

      2. 373215+ up ticks,

        Afternoon G,

        But tis not of this planet tis held via a median / seance all for three half crowns.

  43. Time to end cousin marriage in the UK
    The Catholic Church banned the practice centuries ago. To stem disease and crime, we need to do it again
    Matthew Syed
    Sunday April 09 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    The problem, though, is that while kin marriage binds people more closely within ethnic groups, it simultaneously strengthens divides between groups — a truth noted by the British anthropologist Sir Jack Goody. This, in turn, permits the emergence of parallel values, animosities and rivalries. Joseph Henrich of Harvard has found that the higher the rate of cousin marriage in a nation, the higher the level of corruption, nepotism and poverty — and the lower the level of trust. This, of course, is the daily reality of sectarian societies from the Middle East to sub-Saharan Africa.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/time-to-end-cousin-marriage-in-the-uk-ktqqg3t26?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_conversation&spot_im_redirect_source=notifications&spot_im_comment_id=sp_nNNHCgsN_24c7d8b8-d635-11ed-8767-655ab54998a8_c_2OBHXs8oPACP02ldkpGT1cMRwTB_r_2OBKDZcAWEB8NfKTcz8ZGMf3Rxr&spot_im_highlight_immediate=true

    2. Joseph Henrich of Harvard has found that the higher the rate of cousin marriage in a nation, the higher the level of corruption, nepotism and poverty — and the lower the level of trust.

      That would be Pakistan – Par Excellence.

      Afternoon Belle.

  44. Here I am , Easter Sunday, all on my own , gardening , line full of clean washing drying in the sunshine , dogs waiting to go out .

    Moh still golfing, son came home from his 10k run and then dressed himself in his biking gear and headed for WestBay near Bridport ,

    Phone has just rung , Jerry on the other end , motor bike tyre has puncture..

    I might have to take the tyre inflator and repair kit and search him out .. botheration , and all I wanted to do was get out and about with the dogs

    1. My OH is pottering about in the garden, but it’s cold out there. We have some watery sunshine. We took some hedgehog photos, but yesterday or Friday might have been better. Still, there we are. Hopefully one or two might be good enough for calendar and cards.

  45. Happy Easter to you all. The weather has finally remembered it’s spring and the sun is out, blue sky and mild.
    Going to tidy the kitchen which looks as though there’s been an explosion and then go and sit outside and soak up some heat and rays.

    1. Not warm enough here for sitting outside – there’s a cold wind. Happy Easter to you both!

    2. “ the kitchen … looks as though there’s been an explosion” – is that coz your husband cooked yesterday? 😉😉😉

      ETA: Happy Easter to one and all. Hooray the sun is peeping through the clouds every so often.

      1. Yes, and given that he cooked most of it in a wok…..I don’t know where the rest came from.

    3. And the same to you.

      Sun is shining, sky is blue but there is a bit of frost on the cars so I will not sit outside but we do have a nice south facing bay window that I can park myself in..

      No kitchen tidy up, I was well behaved and put everything in the dishwasher.

  47. Too young to be blamed for rape — why, then, would you let them vote?
    Rod Liddle
    Sunday April 09 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    Another truly fascinating week in the life of Europe’s hippest, most progressive banana republic, Scotland. We’ve had coppers peering intently at Nicola Sturgeon’s garden barbecue and a rapist greatly cheered by the fact that he won’t have to go to prison for his crimes because he’s too young. I’ll leave the first of those stories (while keeping my fingers crossed) if that’s OK, and deal with the second — because it is yet another wonderful example of post-rational liberal ideology coming into conflict with that most awkward of things, reality. And, indeed, of the various strands of post-rational liberal ideology coming into conflict with one another, as always happens.

    Sean Hogg, 21, raped a 13-year-old girl in a park, several times, when he was 17. At his trial the presiding judge, Lord Lake, told him that prison was not appropriate on account of his tender years and bunged him some community service instead. This caused a bit of an uproar. Remember, it happened only a couple of months after the Scottish government decided that a women’s prison was an excellent destination for a male serial rapist — until, again, everybody went berserk, and it suddenly changed its mind. Politicians seems a bit confused on the issue of rape and gender up there, as they are on so many issues that most of us find perfectly straightforward.

    By “too young”, Lake meant that Hogg was under the age of 25. I don’t doubt that Hogg’s youth should be a mitigating factor — for reasons I’ll come to — but for a crime as heinous as rape, common sense would demand something called “punishment”. Trouble is, the Scottish legal system, being ultra-woke, does not agree with the concept of punishment, and so Hogg effectively went free.

    The law as it affects people under the age of 25 has its basis in very strong science. It is generally accepted that before that age the brain is not fully developed. In particular, the prefrontal cortex is not properly formed in teenagers and people in their early twenties — and the prefrontal cortex plays an important role in decision-making, moderating social behaviour and acting in a rational manner. Everybody is agreed about this, and I see no reason to dispute it.

    But if it is true that someone under the age of 25 does not possess the mental faculties to recognise the gravity of a crime such as rape — why, then, would you let them vote? Why would you let them flounce into a polling booth to demonstrate their almost complete lack of sanity? Why would you let them make such a momentous decision as to change gender? You can register to vote in Scotland aged 14.

    At the last Holyrood election 58 per cent of voters aged 16-34 voted for the Scottish National Party. And there you have it: the pre-rational voting for the post-rational.

    The left sees young people as “vibrant” and “passionate” and thus deserving of suffrage. Many of them, I dare say, are. But they are also incapable, for well-documented reasons, of coming to a rational decision. For the lefties, however, the science is of importance only when it comes to criminal justice, in which case they will reach for any excuse to stop a perpetrator receiving his or her just deserts.

    Incidentally, I would raise the minimum age at which a person can drive a car or motorbike to 25. It would prevent thousands of deaths and serious injuries every year. The under-25s are hugely overrepresented in the accident stats for exactly the same reason the rapist Hogg was spared prison. In short, they don’t know what they’re doing. They make the wrong decisions.

    But then there is this. As you might have envisaged, it is also the left that is particularly exercised about the leniency shown to Hogg. This is because rape is, for the left, a politicised crime, and it is an article of faith that an insufficient number of men are prosecuted and convicted of it. It is probably right about that. The trouble is, though, if you spend the rest of your time insisting that the criminal justice system should not dispense punishment at all but confine itself simply to rehabilitating offenders, you can’t suddenly change your mind when it comes to an offence that, for political reasons, you take more seriously than any other.

    Rape is indeed a vile and serious crime and the victim deserves redress: she deserves to see punishment take place. But then so does someone who has been glassed by a bloke called Jimmy in Sauchiehall Street and has what they call, these days, life-changing injuries. Punishment still has a part to play in the criminal justice system, no matter what age you are.

    Junior doctors tested

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F3a20ff52-d624-11ed-8767-655ab54998a8.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=846

    You can pay me in gold sovereigns
    Like you, I am delighted that King Charles intends to investigate the monarchy’s involvement with slavery, with a view to perhaps paying reparations.

    While he’s on the case, could he also investigate and put a value on the monarchy’s links to the following: the subjugation, exploitation and starvation of the poorest British people for a millennium; the extrajudicial kidnapping, torture and murder of political opponents; the persecution and murder of, at various times, Jews, Protestants and Roman Catholics; the malign alien occupation of Scotland, Wales and Ireland; chopping the heads off loads of women; and the expropriation of land and wealth. Oh, and my friend Mohammed wants a word about the Crusades.

    I’m sure I’m due a bung on at least one of the above. I’ll take a cheque. No complaints, you jug-eared clown — you opened the box.

    Labour’s poster isn’t working
    I am hugely grateful to the Labour Party for alerting me to the fact that our prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is happy to allow the sexual abuse of children. I had not known this — and find it surprising. The party’s latest poster suggests he is averse to sending paedophiles to prison (and, I dunno, would perhaps prefer them to do community service in a youth club. If there still are youth clubs).

    It went a bit far for some Labour MPs, such as John McDonnell. Even Lucy Powell seemed to have her doubts. What it says to me is that for the first time in a very long while Sir Keir and co may be getting a little worried.

    Grease is the worst
    In 1978 I asked a girl I had a crush on if she wanted to see the film Grease. This was, I thought, a clever move, because all girls wanted to see Grease and no boys did.

    Sadly, she said yes, and so I sat there in appalled horror as the inane, witless confection spooled by. “No girl is worth this suffering,” I thought to myself. “It could not be any worse.”

    Oh yes, it could. It’s being revived (yet again) for the West End stage. This time the girls are apparently “empowered” and “diverse”. And Peter Andre is in it. It’s as if Satan has created a whole new circle of hell.

    1. “No complaints, you jug-eared clown — you opened the box.” – as I posted a couple of days ago – pandora’s box is now open, and the demands that result will never be satisfied.

    2. I think they should just prosecute the crime. Allowing rapists to go free is a smack in the face to the victims.

    3. “Incidentally, I would raise the minimum age at which a person can drive a car or motorbike to 25. It would prevent thousands of deaths and serious injuries every year.”

      I would go further than that. I would ban all under 25s from entering public houses, under any circumstances.

      1. I agree but it would have a direct effect on the survivability of Pubs. Perhaps under 25 only venues where alcohol is strictly limited.

    4. “Oh, and my friend Mohammed wants a word about the Crusades”. The Mohammedans beat us, largely because the crusades were undermanned and underfunded. Does he want to apologise for being the victor?

  48. An amusing throwback.

    My beloved granddaughter phoned to wish me a Happy Easter. During the chat, I said I was looking forward to the photos of her Choir tour in Belgium and Germany.

    She said that she would send me copies: “When I have had the film developed”…..

    She shared my laughter…that, in 2023, a teenager should even think of using a camera with a film in it! She explained that when she does DofE and some school trips, mobile phones are not allowed – so an old-fashioned camera solves the photo problem!!

    1. I expect we will find, if we haven’t already, that ‘old-fasioned cameras with film’, like vinyl LP records, are better than the digital products. Just as ICE cars are better than EVs, gas-fired boilers are better than heat pumps and coal and wood-burning stoves are better than electric ones.

      1. I understand from a professional photographer that film cameras give better quality results than digital.

    2. I expect we will find, if we haven’t already, that ‘old-fasioned cameras with film’, like vinyl LP records, are better than the digital products. Just as ICE cars are better than EVs, gas-fired boilers are better than heat pumps and coal and wood-burning stoves are better than electric ones.

    4. SWMBO has a reflex camera that doesn’t use film. Excellent optics, can take billions of pictures taht you can get printed with excellent resolution – and you can check the quality of the picture immediately, and if you like, manipulate it with software.

  49. Phew!
    That’s one 20 shovel mix of mortar mixed and 19½ blocks laid. All on 2 mugs of tea!
    Now sat enjoying my well earned 3rd mug of the day.
    I now plan leaving it for a couple of days before I begin putting the stone facing onto it.

  50. Britain’s new elite doesn’t live in the real world

    They are observers, not doers – and think practical constraints on policy can be overcome by hectoring

    DAVID FROST

    University professor Matt Goodwin has been annoying our intellectuals. His latest book Values, Voice and Virtue argues that British politics has been shaped by a “new elite” that is progressive, pro-migration, obsessed with diversity and out of touch with the values of much of Britain. The reaction against that, he says, is what has driven the Brexit revolt and the growth of populism.

    He’s obviously right about that, but it hasn’t stopped that new elite huffily shuffling off on Twitter any responsibility for the state of the nation, pointing out that it’s the Conservative Government, not they, who are in power. That’s obviously right, too. But anyone can still see that our politics is heavily influenced by this new elite. One way, as Goodwin points out, is through their woke values. I want to point out another.

    Two elements are crucial in it. First, precisely because they aren’t in government, this new class isn’t used to taking responsibility. They are observers, not doers. They believe that they can control complex human activity through laws and hectoring. Second, they have non-physical jobs. They are commentators, university lecturers, lawyers and judges, and similar. If they run businesses, they are in finance or the new economy, not in building or making things.

    So: they don’t govern, and they don’t make things. They just talk. As a consequence they have become disconnected from the challenges of actually making things happen: from the real world where major projects can’t just be done overnight, and where resources, time and people matter.

    Take one example. We are often told that, to solve the so-called “climate crisis”, we must insulate every building in Britain. Yet the advocates of this policy seem to have no sense of the scale of the task. Former Cambridge professor Michael Kelly has pointed out that, over 30 years, it would cost about £3.5 trillion (150 per cent of GDP) and require an extra half a million workers (who can’t be imported, as we must assume other countries are doing the same thing – or if they are not, then there is no point in us doing so either). It is an irrational, fantasy policy – but it won’t stop them advocating it.

    Take another example. Of course we want cleaner rivers. But as Thérèse Coffey has rightly pointed out this week, we are dealing with a Victorian sewage system. Upgrading it costs billions. It can’t be done overnight. [Not entirely, Mr F. Failing to provide for new developments is the bigger problem outside urban Britain.]

    We want to encourage cycling? Just disrupt Britain’s roads for decades by building cycle lanes at huge expense. Better transport? Let’s build a new tram system or extend the Bakerloo Line, instead of extra buses or making driving easier. Drawing lines on maps is easy, but making them real is time-consuming and expensive.

    I think this explains the impact of Jeremy Clarkson’s programme on farming. Many seem surprised there are still jobs where certain things have to happen at a particular time and where it matters if it rains – where physical reality counts. But this isn’t true only of farming, it’s true of the whole economy.

    Why does this disconnect from responsibility and physical reality matter? Because when our elites ask why the Government won’t pursue their favoured plans, they won’t accept the answer is “because it’s complicated, time-consuming, expensive, and less important than other things”. Instead, they say it’s “because the Conservative Government is made up of bad people, who could do these things, but won’t”. This touch of Extinction Rebellion in our new elites is one reason for the coarsening of our political debate.

    The truth is that our modern world really is miraculous. Out of nothing, we have created a globally networked economy and mastered our environment with physical artefacts of massive complexity. This has been driven by the free market – the economic system that uses resources most efficiently, is always trying to find new solutions, and can build complex outputs through decentralised knowledge. (Just think, for example, that no single person knows how to make a pencil or a toaster, let alone an aircraft carrier or a skyscraper.)

    Our intellectuals don’t seem to understand this. They think that the economy “just works” and that if you want something it will just happen. They don’t understand opportunity cost – that if you do one thing, you can’t do another thing with the same resources. They think that we can install unreliable wind power because somebody will invent viable battery storage. They want electric cars and dismiss the challenge of tripling our grid capacity. They want water on demand without building reservoirs, goods in shops without road transport in cities, homes for all without building houses. The fragility, the complexity, the efficiency of it all escapes them.

    George Orwell wrote in 1942: “The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions. Where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly.” That’s what happens when your elite doesn’t live in the real world – and that’s what we see in Britain today.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/06/david-frost-matt-goodwin-is-right-about-new-elites/

    1. The best answer to ‘what should we do’ is ‘nothing’. If the government left people alone to live their lives, gradually cutting taxes and just buggering off- the country – the world, would be in a vastly better state..

    2. We are now a “can’t do” country. As I’ve said before, the exact opposite to UAE. I’m spa lot of respects “one man one vote” is a really good thing. The Sheikh decides and it is made to happen. There are ministers but I think the S has the final say. We are an old country, things are wearing out, and we have a lot of first world problems as DF says. HMG is shooting the U.K. in the foot by following the ridiculous eco net zero policy – that’s the worst. We’re ding led down the path of serfdom via starvation, freezing to death , death of industry and small business, compulsory mRNA jabs for anything they can dream up and all they seem to do is worry about wokeness. I hope the Cons are wiped out in the elections and yes, I do realise that the other parties are no different.

  51. Celebrate the Good Friday Agreement by freeing Northern Ireland’s economy
    The region could be one of the richest parts of Europe
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/04/09/celebrate-good-friday-agreement-northern-ireland-free/

    Percy may have gone mad – but his solution seems no worse than the sort of half-in, half-out coitus interruptus sort of arrangement they have at the moment.

    BTL Percival Wrattstrangler

    Northern Ireland should declare UDI.
    There are three dodos holding Northern Ireland back: the EU, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.
    They must be given a referendum!

    1. Northern Ireland is heavily subsidised by England. The Republic by fellow EU member states.
      An island economy cannot compete with that of a large land mass nearby, unless there is some form of low cost fixed link. (and lo and behold, it would no longer be an island)
      Edit: I will read the article later, but do you know the acronym MRN? You will need one (or loads) to trade goods between NI and the UK. Ditto between Germany and UK.

      https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/930056/8120_CDS_Movement_Reference_Number__MRN__guide_v7_accessible.pdf

      1. Fatal Attraction movie….the bloke, married, has an affair with the woman who is a nutter. She boils his kids’ pet bunny in a saucepan.

        Well, you did ask.

      3. The original ‘bunny boiler’ as portrayed by Glenn Close in ‘Fatal Attraction’ and the cur, as played by Michael Douglas. 👍

  53. Just home from church. Lingered for tea and chat in the cloister today. No evensong. My watch packed up at 10.45 am. In some ways it’s good timing as I can’t buy a new one today and I have nothing to do for the rest of the day. There’s housework but one of the things about still working full time in my late 60s is that whenever there isn’t an obligation to work and provided everything is clean enough that I don’t get sick, I do nowt. No gardening. No garden.

    1. I concur, Sue. I gave up ‘real’ full-time work some years ago, but I still do the church stuff. So Saturdays are rather stressy, given that the Rector is inevitably somewhat tardy with his input to the weekly newsletter. Then there are the errors. And waiting for approval of the final version (he’s not a great proof reader). Then, I print them, upload to the website, and send out a mailshot. It’s usually at this stage when some smartarse points out an error. I may or may not reprint it. By the way, since one can pick up ex-lease commercial copier/printers on eBay for next to nothing, as well as toner, I doubt whether any CofE parish has cheaper printing costs.

      Then, having wangled a lift (in the absence of public transport hereabouts), I’ll play for a 9.00 am service, followed by one at 10.30. We have two folk who voluntarily play at the other 10.30 am service. When they’re available. Both prefer to play at Puttenham. Otherwise, I’ll record the hymn accompaniments, transfer them to an old smartphone, to be played on the sound system. I allocate my services based on who is doing what, where – since I need a lift between the two morning services. So then I get ‘feedback’ from the church I didn’t play at, that ‘I’m never there’.

      So I attend weekly practices at Puttenham. This generally involves a £3 train journey to Guildford, followed by a £20 taxi ride to Puttenham. If I’m lucky, someone will give me a lift home. If anyone turns up. If no-one does, I can always catch the 65 Alton-Guildford bus, and use the return part of my rail ticket.

      Back to Sundays. Frankly, by the time I get home at lunchtime on Sundays, I’m exhausted. There’s much housework and gardening to do, but – forgive the ecclesiastical term – I just can’t be arsed.

  54. Why water rationing is coming down the pipeline. Spiked. 9 April 2023.

    Instead of securing our water supply, the government plans to radically reduce home usage.

    The plan is spelled out in a new 81-page report put out this week by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Titled Our Integrated Plan for Delivering Clean and Plentiful Water (or Our Plan for Water, for short), the document details how the government intends to plug what it believes will be a shortage of four billion litres per day in the public water supply by 2050. In part, this will be done, under the Environment Act 2021, by cutting household water use from an average of 144 litres per person per day to 122 per person per day in 2038, and then to just 110 litres per person per day by 2050.

    There’s obviously ample time to build new reservoirs, pipe water down from Scotland, build de-salination plants etc. This is all about the creation of a new Serf Class. Under educated, underpaid and reduced to the bare minimum of existence to compel their obedience. The helots of the New World Order.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/09/why-water-rationing-is-coming-down-the-pipeline/

      1. Afternoon Bleau. Water meters will of course allow for the punishment of those who exceed their allowance!

      3. I shall not follow any more diktats from this asinine government. They can all go and….well you know;-)

        1. Hi, LotL. I think you meant ‘They can all go and fuck themselves.’ We need to stop being polite now. Time to start saying what you think.

          1. Well hello, Mr. Prez. I was being polite, alien to my nature, because it is Easter Sunday and I didn’t want to offend the people of faith.
            But you’re right, that’s exactly what I meant!!

          2. :o). Well, hello, LotL. I think the time for politeness with these people is over. We need to start saying what we think. And all this Net Zero, ban this, ban that nonsense is just that. Nonsense. And it’s time the Great British Public stood up and said so.
            Clearly and firmly.

          3. Absolutely and I will raise a glass to that!
            And this “alert ” nonsense is yet another method of control. I know I am not the only one who’s had enough.

          5. And getting organised. Otherwise its going to happen and we’ll be just sitting back, watching them and nodding sagely to each other saying “I told you so”.

    2. Simples. Reduce the population by deporting around 15 million gimmegrants and dependents. ‘Problem’ solvedl

    3. And there will be “progressive” pricing along the way to “persuade” us to use less.

      But never mind all the gimmegrunts flooding into the country using as much as they like at no cost to them.

    4. Why does it never occur to the politicians that when the infra-structure is overstretched the last thing needed is more people.

    1. Thank you, Tom. We rocked that one this morning. I even persuaded the Swell Sub-Octave coupler to work, for the first time since lockdown had a deleterious effect on the organ stop contacts. They don’t like not being used…

  57. For those who like pictorial updates, four images of The Wall after today’s exertions:-

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fc99a11a44d0c7b6569df2e2799aeb8c0916755ad19129e82827d7bd6e1026c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/711e5e5f32a16ab33607bcde945dc3282b5de61b6d430cc4186a5e26c64cc948.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/09fa79403b0bd8fba89992101a198dc79fadfc6b3bb5c25e8fcf2a6483e489cd.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/82abfd999f2f1390ddf9912035ca8912d63d13fe8f9b0997c4bbc0ab9ab0d120.jpg

    And this is the holly bush woodpile I finished restacking yesterday:-
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75b922f1ff1a941bf47d56fc21efe8ede6a66f26f5f49a06140ef8f61ef784e0.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2c93ab72b78bc2f06732bf617618da560b85f6b9a644d3f6111fdec6be643c4.jpg

          1. Can run to some decent bottles of ale! We’ve Dancing Duck, Titanic and Peak breweries near here, plus some of my home made chutney! Also might JUST be able to dig out one of my bottles of slow gin from the last batch I made a couple of years back!

          2. Sounds splendid but alas, I am neither a beer or gin drinker. I’ll support your efforts from here !

    6. You say that panthers are rare, but I’ve yet to see a melanistic cougar, or lion, or tiger, or lynx, or jaguar, or cheetah.

      1. I’ve seen a White Lion – Bristol Street Birmingham.

        I’ll get me coat…

    7. My aunt had a lovely black cat with yellow eyes – do all pure black cats have yellow eyes?

    8. My aunt had a lovely black cat with yellow eyes – do all pure black cats have yellow eyes?

          7. The family that lived opposite in Birmingham were very in to it. I met the commander or whatever they call themselves. Fat bastard.

            They taught the young girls to rob the dead on the battle scenes. Not real dead of course.

    2. No wonder you enjoy playing Donovan’s Colours with the lines:

      ………… in the morning when we rise!
      In the morning when we rise –
      That’s the time
      That’s the time
      We love the best!

    3. As my former and late mother in law told me, she was a nurse, they were referred to as tent poles;-)

    1. We’re critically short of ringers. Next Saturday we’re holding a bell ringing open day, to attract newcomers. I’m not hopeful, but who knows. The bells at Seale are particularly harmonious – unlike the ones in the next village, Puttenham, which have a rather unsettling harmonic thing going on. Wanborough has a single bell, which manages to be slightly out of concert pitch, and clashes horribly with the “organ” (digital piano, really) if I’m playing it.

      1. I love a peal of bells. Nowt like it in Yurrup.
        I’d volunteer like a flash, but I have no rhythm or music in me, so it wouldn’t work.
        I’ll gladly listen, though!

          3. But Norway doesn’t do peals. Just tuneless clanging. Still, missed it this morning.

          4. ‘Twas the same when I moved to Flowton in Suffolk. Single bell in that St Mary’s.

          7. Moffat has a full Westminster Chime every quarter of an hour – and it always sounds dismal to me.

      2. At age 15, I was a campanologist for the peal of bells at St Mary’s Church, Bungay.

        Being smaller at that time, I was on the smallest tenor bell.

    2. Since moving from Seale, with it’s glorious AONB views, and a delightful house – with bugger all insulation, I’m far better off, with a rail station across the road, and an EPC rating which should be ‘C’, despite the fact that the assessor missed the substantial loft insulation, and the filled holes in the walls which show that cavity wall insulation has been installed.

      But I miss the the fact that I’m no longer across the road from the church, with the clock striking the hour, and weekly ringing practices. That, and the ready availability of a pipe organ for practice purposes, which I prolly never took full advantage of, when I was there.

  61. For a quiet, reflective moment in all life’s busyness, this cannot be beaten. Worth taking a moment out of life to remember those that aren’t with us any more, and regretfully, haven’t been resurrected.
    https://youtu.be/7O049oi2Dxw

  62. Police ‘seize luxury campervan’ from Nicola Sturgeon’s mother-in-law. 9 April 2023.

    Police have reportedly seized a luxury campervan from the home of Nicola Sturgeon’s mother-in-law the same morning they raided the former First Minister’s house.

    Officers confiscated the vehicle from outside the home of Margaret Murrell, the 92-year-old mother of Peter Murrell, on Wednesday morning. She lives in a private estate in Dunfermline, Fife.

    Obviously she’s a keen tourer!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/09/nicola-sturgeon-campervan-mother-in-law-siezed-snp/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

    1. Never money laundering? Shurely shome mishtake…{:¬)) The Murrells are such a straight family….(serious face)….

    3. There was a lad in the West Country who made a bit of money and in the 1990s he bought a luxury campervan for his elderly mother. They could go and park at a clifftop carpark and watch the ocean, have a cup of tea and use the lavatory without exposing the old lady to the elements. I expect that Edward is still alive, but his mother would be well over 100.

  63. Well- that was nearly a very nasty end to the afternoon. I was sitting on the terrace in a folding garden chair, enjoying a well-earned mug of tea* – when the plastic seat gave way. I fell into the “well” of the chair – FORTUNATELY the frame gripped my body and prevented my coccyx hitting the paving slabs….. It took five minutes for the MR to extricate me – by tipping the chair backwards so that I could wriggle out, er, backwards.

    A truly horrible moment. Now that it is all over, and I have dismantled the chair to produce four hoops to support fleece over the vegetables in due course, it’s rather funny. Not at the time…

    * © Robert…!!

        1. Sorry to hear that, Bill. No, it’s certainly not funny and that split second when you can’t control the outcome is horrible! Glad it wasn’t worse! Enjoy the long awaited medicine! 😘

          2. Lent finished at noon today in this household. It was my mother’s House Rule and she used to mark the event with a large slug of sherry.

          5. Both really! Her last sherry was out of a Tommy Tippee cup about an hour before she died aged 88!

          6. Not so dignified, but practical.
            Dry, medium, sweet? Sounds like a lady of discernment!

          7. Amontillado! Over ice! And a No. 6 ‘coffin nail’! She was a tough little lady!

          8. Oh, excellent! Another who likes sherry over ice! Chilled sweet sherry, ice, on a hot afternoon – wonderful!
            I’d have liked her – I do already!

          9. She played County Vet. golf until she was 77. She and my Mum played whole rounds with a driver, a 5 iron and a putter, and a bottle of sherry and glasses in their golf bags!

          10. Wow! How cool is that? A fine specimen of British womanhood!
            Met ladies of that calibre, in Nigeria in the 1960s. Tough. No need for feminism, they were no shrinking violets. Mother was one – her response, for example, to #metoo, was “expletive deleted” – nothing a shoe scraped down the shin would not have solved.

          12. Absolutely! That’s how my Mum was and so are my sister and me! I don’t need someone to fight my battles for me – but it is very nice sometimes! 🥰

          13. Then I’ll raise the second half of the glass to you, Sue!
            More power to your elbow!

          15. Smart lady, your Mother.
            As all Mothers.
            Mine was crap at raising children, but one of the first women in the UK to receive a Ph.D.
            SWMBO is just awesome.

    2. My late dad had all sorts of mishaps with deck chairs. At times, it reduced my brother and I to fits of giggles.

      1. I have never liked deck chairs – the old wooden onse. Difficult to unfold; easy to trap fingers (especially when young); fiendish to fold after use. And the material was wont to perish…

    3. I’m always wary of plastic seats in this area, the sun soon causes the plastic to become brittle.

          2. It could have been a LOT worse, the MR might have watched Casino Royale and extracted a terrible revenge!

    4. Am very jealous of the hoops! I am currently casting round for similar to cover my cabbages. Can’t find anything that’s strong and flexible enough.
      I am currently thinking of using one of those mosquito nets that hangs from a ring to cover the whole bed, but it’s not ideal.

        1. Thanks! I need to raid the garden centre I suppose. Was hoping to find something I could re-use.

  64. I wonder how much of the Palestinian attacking of Israel at the moment is being stimulated by the Ukraine war.

    Iran and Saudi Arabia surreptitiously supporting the rocket and other attacks to create another American front behind the scenes.
    It helps Russia. China would love it. And Muslims around the world would be celebrating.
    Any oil price movements harm Western economies whilst they are still vulnerable.

    1. Same with China sabre-rattling at Taiwan.
      US shows weakness – what else would you expect?

  65. That’s me for this eventful day. Lots of useful garden and greenhouse work. Nice and sunny, as well. Rain forecast on and off for most of the week, Tedious – but we DO need it. The well is still nowhere near the right level.

    Last night we watched a Chinese film “So long, my son“. A curious story – quite tricky to follow, not least because the actors all looked alike! Really!! But a fascinating glimpse of the consequences of the dreadful “One child policy” on ordinary folk.

    It was on t’telly BBC4 so anyone interested could find it on catch up …

    Have a spiffing evening – we are having Mutton dressed as Lamb.

    A demain

    1. We watched that a few days ago Bill.

      It was brilliant , we had little glimpses into Chinese life , rules and regulations and loyalties , plus the atrocious relinquishing of unplanned pregnancy to keep the one child policy.

  67. Just watched “The Footage Detectives” on Talking Pictures TV, which is a bit of a busman’s holiday given what I do for a living but they had a feature on doll’s hospitals and showed the one in York that I remember from childhood. Long gone as is my “pot” baby doll bought in 1957 and taken to the hospital to have her voice box and wig replaced on a number of occasions!

  68. I observed the comments lower down the thread regarding Sherry.

    Plum, if you’re out there, I hope you had an excellent Easter and that all is well with you and that your glass runneth over…

    1. I spoke to Plum at Sherry O’Clock (my Prosecco Cocktail O’Clock) at 5.00pm, srb.

      She is in good form, regretting forced retirement from tennis, beginning to enjoy Spring – it’s still too cold – and has decided to get a dog – and has finally persuaded her daughter that would be a Good Move!

      She enquired how all us NoTTLers are doing; I replied good in spots – like the weather.

      She sends her best wishes.

        2. It seems to be the loss of one’s furry companion that precipitates an earlier retirement from life than would have been the case otherwise. It hits very hard, and brings with it the knowledge that one really is getting older oneself.. I have to say that I have known contentment I hadn’t experienced before when walking through the rural pathways and copses with Poppie, just us and our dog – unlike with children I didn’t have to worry about schools, how she was going to turn out in life, how life was going to treat her – we could just live in that moment with none of the baggage that comes with one’s offspring. Losing one’s little companion is so hard and painful, especially when you live by yourself.

      4. Many thanks for that, greatly appreciated; and please pass on my best wishes next time you’re in contact.
        I’m pleased to read about the dog, not Maud, but maybe Claude?

      5. Thanks lacoste! Great to have news of Plum! She is much missed and I hope all her plans come to fruition!

  69. Britain is ruled by identikit political pygmies

    Nigel Lawson was a rare figure in politics today: a free-thinker and sceptic who changed his mind

    MADELINE GRANT, Parliamentary Sketchwriter

    ‘If you reward enterprise, you get more of it.” So said Nigel Lawson, a man who truly understood the power of incentives. He was one of the animating spirits behind the extraordinary revolution that took place under Margaret Thatcher; and it’s easy to forget, especially for those of us who never lived through it, just how much did change.

    By the time Lawson left office, the economy was enjoying annual growth rates of 5 per cent: a concept, let alone a figure, unimaginable today. Gone were the exchange controls, which Lawson had pushed for abolishing as financial secretary. Share ownership burgeoned – eventually exceeding trade union membership. His tax reforms stimulated enterprise, while Big Bang helped trigger the City of London’s re-emergence as the supreme international financial centre. Mrs Thatcher may have given her name to the period of radical change between 1979 and 1990, but it was Lawson’s engine room in No 11 that helped make the Lady’s dreams a cast-iron reality.

    His death also marks the departure of something less tangible; an almost-vanished breed of freethinking politician; intellectually fearless, with a rich hinterland and, above all, a sense of supreme confidence. Watch Lawson being interviewed, and you’ll see what I mean. He often paused for a moment before launching into an answer that was invariably considered, thoughtful, fluent. I suspect that confidence came from formulating much of his thinking beforehand, having entered politics relatively late, aged 42, after a distinguished career in journalism.

    Lawson’s journalistic background no doubt explained his gift for an elegant turn of phrase, like his famous apercu on the NHS; “The closest thing the English have to a religion, with those who practise in it regarding themselves as a priesthood.” But his late arrival into politics also provided ample opportunity to observe post-war Britain from different vantage points. The clarity of his utterances suggested someone wielding power for an actual purpose, rather than holding power in the hope that beliefs and values will spring from it. Nowadays too much policy seems invented on the hoof, with any intellectualisation happening during its formulation, or tacked on afterwards. Political language has become correspondingly vague and stodgy, too.

    Yet for one widely regarded as an archetypal Thatcherite (and latterly, a Eurosceptic), it is surprising how much his views changed over time. As an undergraduate, he avoided the Oxford Union, but instead became president of the “Strasbourg Club” – a society favouring the “then-unfashionable cause of European Union”, as he wrote in his memoirs. He supported the ERM†, then became a staunch Brexiteer. Beware the thinker who has never changed their mind about anything.

    Lawson also continued to share his insights after leaving politics, in a way that has become sadly rare. The House of Lords once benefited from the depth and experience of elder statesmen from across the political spectrum; from Tessa Jowell and Shirley Williams, to Lawson and Thatcher herself. More recent luminaries such as Brown, Blair, Cameron, Major and Osborne have preferred to give their time to the amassing of wealth, either total silence or the occasional snipe from the sidelines rather than contributing to parliamentary debates about legislation.

    Unusually for someone very much of the establishment, Lawson was willing to stick his neck out on unfashionable causes; particularly in his dissent from green orthodoxy. He was a champion of fracking and presciently warned about European over-dependence on Russian energy. Though green campaigners denounced his pronouncements as dangerous, the environmental scientist James Lovelock, who formulated the “Gaia Hypothesis”, identified scepticism as a valuable contribution to the debate. “In good science you need critics that make you think: ‘Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?'” Lawson, he believed, was one such sceptic.

    A healthy public sphere demands those who will swim against the tide. The pitfalls of over-conformity are visible in everything from problems in meeting net zero targets to the lack of debate about the Covid regulations. Modern politics feels micromanaged as never before; consider Dominic Cummings’s top-down approach to problem solving or CCHQ’s centralised candidate selection process. Not that this is entirely new. Having secured her position, Thatcher famously ejected Cabinet “wets” in favour of “true believers” such as Cecil Parkinson and Lawson himself. But they were still independent-minded men, not afraid of expressing their opinions and reservations. As, of course, Mrs Thatcher eventually discovered.

    Back to the pygmy-like present: on both sides of the House, we see an uptick in machine-made politicians, favouring identikit policies, often parroting the same slogans word for word. A few obvious Tory exceptions spring to mind, among them Danny Kruger, Miriam Cates, David Davis and Sir Charles Walker – but they stick out precisely because they are in a minority.

    Excessive consensus is a feature, not a bug, of the Opposition too. As the journalist Michael Crick, a keen observer of Labour candidate selections, notes, the party is busily purging itself of anyone deemed “too Left-wing” or of a trade union persuasion – a consequence of which may be to leave only “yes men” standing. As Lovelock knew, conformity of thought in any movement or institution is a risk in itself, a danger to be resisted. Few resisted it better than Nigel Lawson.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/05/britain-is-ruled-by-identikit-political-pygmies/

    † It was this that disqualified him from being awarded the title ‘Greatest Chancellor of the 20th Century’. Of course, he wasn’t Chancellor at the time the UK entered – that was Mr Underpants – but three years of shadowing the Dmark, a move that was at first kept secret from Mrs T, led to the recession of the early 90s that did so much to undermine the Tories. It was a supreme irony that Mr Hush Puppies, arch-europhile, should rescue the economy but he couldn’t rescue the party. Major and Maastricht gave Blair his golden legacy which, like so many wastrel heirs to great fortunes, he squandered.

    1. “ I suspect that confidence came from formulating much of his thinking beforehand, having entered politics relatively late, aged 42, after a distinguished career in journalism.”

      And that’s the problem with today’s “professional politicians”. They’ve never done a proper job let alone one where the business is required to make a profit to be able to survive.

    1. I’m reminded of a Good Friday, many years ago. My own church took part in a morning “Walk of Witness” in Brandon High Street. Then a devotional service around noon. Nearby Mildenhall had a three hour Good Friday service, and I had agreed with two organist colleagues to do the last hour. By which time, the clergy appeared to have run out of appropriate hymns. I don’t know if anyone is familiar with “Low in the grave he lay”, but singing “Up from the grave He arose” on Good Friday afternoon seemed somewhat premature, at least. In the end, I attended Choral Evensong at St Edmundsbury Cathedral in an attempt to restore equilibrium.

      1. One of my sisters lived in Brandon, but sold up to live in Spain about 10 years ago. Too hot for her, they are back in Norfolk again, near Burnham Market.
        They lived in a nice little modern bungalow opposite the garage north end of town.

        1. Brandon was/is full of bungalows. I almost bought one. They were marketed to retirees in the East End, as some sort of rural idyll. I see that the one remaining bit of evidence of my time there (I erected the sign, with the other churchwarden) has acquired an addition…

  71. 373215+ up ticks,

    In case she does a runner ?

    Police ‘seize luxury camper van’ from Nicola Sturgeon’s mother-in-law
    The confiscation of the vehicle, models of which can sell for around £110,000, reportedly took place on Wednesday

    I believe armed police, the gollywog squad, were on standby in case the 92 year old got uppity.

    1. Surely that can’t be true?
      If so, then he won’t be king in the eyes of many Britons.

    2. If this is true, then non-Christian ‘prayers’ will be said in a Christian church. Since Islam denies the divinity of Christ, then the recital from the Koran in Westminster Abbey would be tantamount to heresy.

      1. There is no other country on earth who would even dream of reciting prayers from any other religious book than their own.

        He is making the most enormous mistake. We may not all go to church but I do believe we are mostly Christians still and other religious works should play no part in the coronation. Invite their representatives to attend, if he must, but it should be entirely a Christian ceremony.

          1. Actually. from my reading of history, St. Dunstan who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 10th century, refused to crown Edgar the Peaceful until he cleaned his act up- i.e. stick with the woman he married;-)

          1. I wish. It’s a moribund organisation, apparently determined to destroy one’s faith. Locally, we have a decent, utterly un-woke, Rector. He’s an exception. My current organist contract expires in 30 months. Will there still be a CofE by then? I’m not holding my breath…

          2. Friday night I listened to Elgar’s Coronation Odes. Totally uplifting and it would be nice if they, or some of them could be sung at the Coronation. The King loves music but I am not sure he is an Elgar fan.
            Zadok the Priest better be in the playlist !!

      4. 373215+ up ticks,

        Evening A,

        Maybe the construction of a bloody great wicker man wearing a crown would be a wee hint, via the peoples RESET.

      5. The thing we must never forget is that the poor chap is quite phenomenally stupid.

        When they were handing out brains he didn’t show up on time and when he finally did show up there were none left.

    3. If he wants this crap, perhaps he should do a temple/mosque tour of Britain and be crowned in each.

    4. Isaiah 45:5

      I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me:

  74. James
    @SoNowUknow2
    ·
    1h
    Whoever is advising him at
    @RoyalFamily
    is giving him false information that will harm the Royal family.
    Quote Tweet
    patsypixie2
    @patsypixie2
    ·
    1h
    King Charles defender of the faith is going to read from the Quran at the Coronation, and read in Arabic. I will not be watching. He wants to be careful, this lot could have their eyes on Buckingham palace – perfectly situated for a mosque which added to the 400 in London = 401

    1. I don’t seem to be able to find any reputable reference to the assertion that the Koran will be used in the Coronation service.

      1. Reported in the Mail. The order of service is apparently being held up because the King wants other faiths to take part.

      2. King Charles has been at loggerheads with Church leaders over the role other faiths should play in his Coronation, The Mail on Sunday understands.

        Church sources say the monarch has been told that his desire for a ‘diverse’ ceremony, including participation by non-Christians, risks clashing with centuries- old canon law, which bars Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and other faith leaders from reading out prayers during the service.

        Religious affairs commentator Catherine Pepinster claims today she has been told that this wrangle has delayed the release of the Coronation’s Order of Service with barely four weeks to go until the ceremony. However, Buckingham Palace sources have denied there is any delay. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11952937/Charles-odds-Church-England-role-faiths-play-Coronation.html

        1. Yes, along with the bible and holy books of other religions, and of course, none at all for atheists. But the Houses of Parliament are not a Christian church.

          1. 373268+ up ticks,

            Morning A,

            Granted and true but when it comes to the governance and welfare of the indigenous peoples both issues are of major importance.

            This comes about when we have no
            unsettling issues with other religions.

    2. By comparison there were up to 8,000 illegals a month arriving in Canada from the US.

      Just walk across the border and claim asylum to get all of the freebies. Thanks to stupid laws, if you crossed where there is not an immigration point, you could stay.

      Hardly matters to us, the village idiot has an immigration target of 500,000 a year so a few illegals doesn’t matter.

  77. That’s me off to bed.
    A decent morning’s work done so I feel satisfied!

  79. I had another bad experience again today just carrying out some light gardening work. I desperately hope my GP practice can bring my appointment forward. I’ll hopefully find out this coming week.
    I found a message I had sent to a friend just before Christmas. It was when I was in hospital for 3 days, I was telling her how brilliant the front line NHS was. But how awful it is the deeper you have to go past that stage.
    I’m off to bed after the Agatha Christie story on TV. 15 minutes.
    Good night all.

    1. Eddy, I do so sympathise…I am going to call the GP surgery on Tues to get one of them to call back. I was supposed to be going to see the consultant coming Friday; got a letter putting in back to Sept 22. After a long wait I spoke to a surly female who said it was all because of the junior doctors’ strike.
      Grudgingly she found me an appointment for the end of May.
      I can’t wait that long. Am in very great pain and it ain’t going away unless something is done.
      NHS- envy of the world- don’t make me laugh.

      1. Morning to you Ann.
        Thanks for your sympathy, behind the front line the NHS is a nightmare. It’s been redesigned to either kill people off or force them to pay, if they can afford it. As I worked and paid into the system for 53 years I’m not going to pay.
        My main concern is I don’t really see how anyone should be subjected to this type of torture, it’s the equivalent of being put in the stocks or on a ward of a Victorian looney bin. How can anyone be expected to suffer for ten months when those bastards already know what the problem is and how to treat it. It takes no longer than 4 hours at the most.
        These people at the hospital told me I would have to wait 3-4 months. They are bare faced liars.

  80. Good night, chums. I have just watched Antonioni’s THE RED DESERT – I was not impressed.

    1. Meanwhile, in China, differential calculus is the order of the day….. here, it’s drag story time.

    1. Here we are again, awake since 01:30 and listening to bird song from 05:00 including the occasional ‘Cark’ of the local crows.

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