Thursday 16 June: For too long immigration policy has been at the mercy of liberal lawyers

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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665 thoughts on “Thursday 16 June: For too long immigration policy has been at the mercy of liberal lawyers”

  2. Good morrow, gentle NoTTLing folk.
    Nursing shortages
    SIR – In the House of Lords later today we will debate a report from the Royal College of Nursing, which sets out how acute the staffing difficulties are.
    Findings from 20,000 front-line nursing staff are clear: eight in 10 (83 per cent) said that the staffing levels on their last shift were not sufficient to meet patient needs, and only a quarter of shifts had the planned number of registered nurses….
    …More blah, blah
    Signed
    Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (Crossbench)
    Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party)
    Baroness Tyler of Enfield (Liberal Democrats)
    Baroness Brinton of Kenardington (Liberal Democrats)
    BTL
    The four Baronesses, whingeing about the shortage of nursing staff, need look no further than the top-heavy administrators.
    Slash their numbers (particularly HR and Diversity Empire-builders) and there will be plenty to finance most of the shortages of nursing staff. If it’s not, slash again until there is.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/06/16/letters-long-immigration-policy-has-mercy-liberal-lawyers/

    1. If you were an ambitious career woman with equal rights, would you choose to wipe the bottoms of sick, overweight pensioners or get a nice cushy job analysing Diversity returns?

      1. Ah, I see it now. There’s an excreta theme running through both occupations you describe.

        ‘Morning Jeremy and all.

      2. So, get rid of the diversity analysers or put them on bum-wiping duties. Sounds like a plan, jeremy

    2. I seem to remember threats of staff being sacked for not getting an experimental gene therapy jab too.
      Staffing difficulties, eh? Who’d a thunk it?

      1. My first thought; I don’t suppose these pantomime dames looked behind them to see the horde of unvaxxed former staff standing there.

      2. In New Zealand that has happened, by a Prime Ministerial edict.

        They now have a shortage of nurses, doctors and teachers.

        Who’d a thunk it?

        1. In one county in Germany, they have had to take back the requirement for medical staff to be jabbed, due to a shortage of medical staff.
          Who wants to take the jobs though when the diktat might come back in at any moment?
          I’ve posted before, that a friend of my daughter’s was a nurse in Germany, she is now training to be a pharmacist. I doubt she or others like her will go back to nursing.

    3. Many educated young women will not touch nursing with a barge pole ..

      Modern women do not want to nurture the public , nor do they like the idea of messy jobs .

      Their social lives , nails, hair , and attention to patient details are at odds with each other .

      Training to be a nurse is now an expensive business.

      This is why so many hospitals are staffed by foreign girls , the British government is shameful , bringing trained women into Britain from 3rd world countries , when it would have been easier to finance and train those here who genuinelywant to become qualified medical staff.

      1. I think there was a BTL comment identifying that the problem happened when the NHS changed nursing from a vocation to a profession by introducing the need for a university degree with all the attendant costs to the potential nurse.

        1. Plus a degree means you are too highly qualified to get your hands dirty in many people’s minds.

  3. Britain is in ruins thanks to the failed dogmas of our permanent Leftist elite. 16 June 2022.

    Who governs Britain? It certainly isn’t Boris Johnson. You may support his Rwandan refugee policy, or you may loathe it. But the central promise of his Government was that such important decisions would be taken in the UK, with the ballot box the ultimate arbiter. The European Court of Human Rights’ decision to effectively block the Government from sending refugees to Rwanda thus symbolises the moral and practical implosion of his project. He was elected to take back control, to give a voice to the culturally conservative majority, to wrestle power from acronym-wielding experts, and yet is proving laughably ineffective at influencing, let alone directing, affairs of state.

    Judging by this and other recent articles by Mr Heath he’s become a Nottler. He’s discovered that Westminster Government is a sham. That the conversion of the UK into a Marxist State has taken us up a blind alley from which there is no democratic exit.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/15/britain-ruins-thanks-failed-dogmas-permanent-leftist-elite/

    1. Is it conceivable that Johnson, Patel and the mandarins in the Home Office didn’t foresee the challenges to this Rwandan fiasco? Patel’s Rwandan plan is nothing but theatre designed to keep the electorate a tad convinced that the government is doing something when the intention is quite the opposite. Now, the bad guys/gals are those members of the ECHR who are frustrating Ms Patel et al. Frauds, the lot of them!

      1. Maybe the ECHR could legislate against all these people getting on dinghies in the first place?

        1. An interesting proposition. However, it would appear that it is the illegals’ human right to invade any country that takes their fancy.

      2. To be fair, Korky, is it possible that this is Patel’s cunning plan to get us out of the ECHR – and might she also have more than half an eye on the repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998?

        Blair’s well-laid trap to keep Mrs Big Gob in dibs.

        1. A good idea if Patel, Johnson & Co could be trusted with the people of the UK’s human rights. Having this rogue government meddling in that area would, I am convinced, place the people between a rock and a very hard place.

    2. Heath still fails to observe that it is the European CONVENTION on Human Rights; this conflation makes them out to be larger than just more legalise meddling by the warmonger Blair and his slot-gobbed maven.

  4. Lord Geidt resigns as Boris Johnson’s ethics chief
    Adviser quits a day after saying that PM’s partygate fine may represent a breach of ministerial code.

    My BTL comment:

    It comes as no surprise that Lord Geidt has resigned as Johnson’s Ethics Advisor.
    It will have come as no surprise, either to Lord Geidt, or the vast majority of us, that Johnson doesn’t have an ethical bone in his body and, as with the far-left crowd, it’s gimme, gimme, gimme, me first, all the way.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/06/15/boris-johnsons-ethics-adviser-lord-geidt-resigns/#comment

    1. ‘Morning, Nanners. His resignation is no great surprise. He must have found it so frustrating having to advise an oaf like Johnson on something so basic.

  5. Bee Orchids

    I’ve only just seen Sos’ and Ndovu’s postings yesterday about wild orchids.

    Two days ago a sharp-eyed neighbour told me that she had seen Bee Orchids growing in the grass verge on our housing development in Kent, just 100 yards from my house.

    Though I got my first university degree in Microbiology and Botany in 1962 I had never seen one, other than in books, so I rushed out with my camera and got this photo. There were several of the much commoner Pyramidal Orchids around as well.

    I have deliberately blurred the background houses to head off any trowel-equipped plant hunters and I sincerely hope that our local authority is so cash-strapped that it cannot afford to mow the verges, at least until the orchids have died back. Though they may look big, the flowers really are bee-sized.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b9588a0e63808d0650b7a693bf378e40a8cfb4ae678ea8397887697fb5480a9e.jpg.

    1. Wonderful orchid.
      Bath city council has I’m told rejected the use of weed-killers to spray pavements and kerbsides, for environmental and probably cost reasons. I’m also told that the Council is urging local house holders to tend footpaths and kerbsides. I suspect if they are bothered at all some with simply use weed-killers. In the meantime the weeds and grasses are having a lovely time ‘making hay whilst the sunshines’. In so doing tarmac is being lifted and presumably as paving conditions deteriorate the Council /Ratepayers of the future will be faced with the repair bill…….?

      1. Yes , and all the grasses grow high and untidily , obscuring road corners , cutting back on visual clarity when driving , roundabouts are a mess and the hunting ground for our owls and raptors is diminished , how can they see a mole or a vole or even a rat.

        1. Not really a problem, Maggie, if the owls and the raptors wish to see a rat they only have to fly to Downing Street. Lol.

        2. Most of the sightlines for road junctions here are cut – the rest is left to get tall.

        3. I think the raptors will be fine. Better cover means more tiny squeaky snacks will reproduce, so they won’t go hungry.

        4. They managed before all the verges were mown. The worst time was in the 70s when everything was sprayed with Jeyes fluid and the wild flowers were killed off. It took many years before they recovered.

        5. Your point about corners and driving is well made – around here some junctions are tricky at the best of times but with waist high [or worse] grass and cow parsley growing unchecked it becomes almost impossible to see approaching traffic. In previous years the council used to cut back the offending stuff at least twice every summer – no sign of even one cut so far! On a slightly related topic we spotted a vole yesterday – in the living room! It’s [hopefully] now back outside!!

      2. Our local park next to the Primary school has been ‘rewilded’! By which I mean they leave vast swathes of high grasses etc unmown! Great breeding ground for adders and ticks and whatever else! On the plus side when I took the dogs out for a run, there are cornflowers, poppies, cowslips and forget me nots and a host of wild flowers. Just got to check the doglets for ticks!

      3. I like wildflower verges, but many road signs are now obscured; irritating when you’re not a local and wish to drive somewhere particular.

        A bit of me wonders if it’s deliberately pushing us to use only digital means to navigate; most of it, I suspect, is council penny-pinching, though.

    4. Well spotted.
      Mine have finished flowering and I’m delighted to see that there are several fat seed pods on a few of them so I’m hopeful they will spread. I shall be cutting them soon, when the pods have split, with the rotary mower and leaving the cuttings in situe so any residue seeds can settle near the original ones. The seed grains are miniscule and blow easily in the warm air, so I’m doing my bit for the locality.

  6. ‘Morning, Peeps.  Brief visit today (bus driving, thank goodness for air conitioning!)

    Another bravest of the brave has departed:

    Flight Lieutenant Sydney Grimes, Lancaster gunner and wireless operator who flew on the raid that sank the Tirpitz – obituary

    As well as helping to sink ‘the Beast’, he flew in raids all over Germany, but he was shocked when he saw the devastation wrought in Hamburg

    Thirty-seven Lancasters took off and arrived over the battleship as clouds rolled in to obscure it. Bombs were dropped on the estimated position but no hits were registered. On November 12 another raid was mounted. This time the weather was clear and two direct hits and several near-misses resulted in the Tirpitz capsizing with great loss of life.

    Over the next few weeks, Grimes attacked dams in south Germany and E-boat pens in the Netherlands using Tallboys. His crew bombed the synthetic oil plant at Pölitz (now Police in Poland), and on December 31 attacked German cruisers in Oslofjord.

    During an attack on U-boat pens near Rotterdam, his Lancaster was damaged by flak. This was followed by a series of attacks against key railway viaducts using Tallboy bombs. On March 14 a key viaduct at Bielefeld was finally destroyed.

    ByTelegraph Obituaries 15 June 2022 • 2:12pm

    Flight Lieutenant Sydney Grimes, who has died aged 100, flew with 617 Squadron on the raid that finally sank the German battleship Tirpitz.

    His squadron, together with IX Squadron, made three raids on “the Beast”, as Winston Churchill described the battleship. Grimes flew as a wireless operator on the last two raids.

    Together with his New Zealand pilot, Flight Lieutenant Barney Gumbley DFM, he joined 617 Squadron at the end of September 1944. Their first operation, on October 29, was to attack the Tirpitz, which was moored in a fjord near Tromsø in northern Norway.

    At the extreme range of the Lancaster – and carrying a Barnes Wallis 12,000lb “Tallboy” bomb – the bombers mounted the raid from airfields in the north of Scotland.

    On March 21 Grimes’s crew were allocated a Lancaster BI (Special) aircraft. This carried a crew of five and Grimes was stood down. His crew took off to attack a railway bridge near Bremen.

    Waiting for his friends back at Woodhall Spa, Sydney Grimes watched the other Lancasters return from the raid, and his anxiety turned to dread as the minutes, lengthening into hours, dragged by with no sign of them. The agonising suspense finally ended when one of the returning crewmen broke the news to him. His crew had perished.

    “These were my friends who I’d fought alongside,” Grimes said, “and been through so much with them. If I’d had my way, I’d have been on that aircraft too.”

    The son of a Thames bargeman, Sydney Victor Grimes was born in Great Wakering, near Southend-on-Sea, on May 6 1922.

    On the outbreak of war he was working for EK Cole Ltd (EKCO Radio), and in 1940 he volunteered for the RAF. After training as a wireless operator/air gunner and converting to the Lancaster, he joined 106 Squadron at Syerston, near Newark.

    His arrival in April 1943 coincided with the Battle of the Ruhr. On the 4th he flew his first operation when he attacked the port of Kiel; a week later the target was Frankfurt.

    On April 13 Grimes attacked the docks at La Spezia in Italy, a sortie lasting longer than 10 hours. Over the next few nights he went on three more long-range operations, to Stettin (now Szczecin in Poland), the Czech city Pilsen, and back to La Spezia.

    On the return from Stettin, his Lancaster was badly damaged by flak. The ground crew counted more than 100 holes in the aircraft when they got back, and it had to be written off.

    Duisburg was the target on May 12, and over the next three months Grimes attacked targets in Germany, mostly in the Ruhr. By this stage the Pathfinder Force had become well established and the raids were increasingly accurate, but losses were heavy.

    On July 24, Bomber Command turned its attention to Germany’s second city and biggest port, Hamburg. Grimes and his crew were among the 791 aircraft that attacked the city. Three nights later the city was the target again, a devastating raid that caused a firestorm. Grimes returned for the third time on July 29.

    His final operation was on August 23, when Berlin was the target. This proved to be Bomber Command’s greatest loss of aircraft in one night so far in the war, but Grimes and his crew returned safely. In a post-war interview he commented: “My crew was only the second one to finish a tour whilst I was there.” He was Mentioned in Despatches.

    After the loss of his crew on 617 Squadron Grimes left the squadron having completed 41 operations. He joined IX Squadron briefly before finishing his flying career in September 1945 after three months with 50 Squadron.

    He served with the RAF in Germany before being released in the summer of 1946. He returned to work at EKCO and became an accountant, rising to finance director.

    In later life he reflected on his wartime service: “I was religious before the war, but my faith diminished when I saw the effects of the bombing. After the war, in late 1945, I was an adjutant based near Hamburg and I was shocked by the sight of the city. Whole areas were a wasteland – no bricks, no buildings, nothing, just the entrances to cellars; the houses didn’t exist, but people still lived in their cellars.

    “That really affected me. I understood what we had done in Bomber Command. I still thought it was necessary and the only way to defeat the Nazis, but I now saw war in its entirety and how those on the receiving end were affected. I had always understood the bomber, but now I was understanding the bombed. Those sights still live in my memory.”

    To celebrate his 100th birthday, members of the current 617 Squadron visited him in his care home. “I felt honoured,” Grimes commented. “It definitely made it extra special.”

    Sydney Grimes married his childhood sweetheart Iris in 1944; she died in 2019. They had a son and two daughters.

    Sydney Grimes, born May 6 1922, died May 27 2022
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f5be97fe76974f6b49a0520b9bb416e01047dab28361c37e7f60df46de4a791.jpg

  7. Returning to the original theme of today’s posting:-

    It’s no good blaming liberal lawyers. They just take advantage of the legislation.

    If they didn’t take every legal advantage on behalf of their clients they could probably be sued for negligence.

    If the populace really want things to change then the legislation must be changed and improved.

    For a start, unlimited Legal Aid must be cancelled, or severely limited.

    Secondly, illegal entry to our nation must not be rewarded so free accommodation, free sim cards and free clothing for illegal

    migrants should be cancelled. These items are not “free”, they are paid for by the taxpayers.

    Thirdly, any “charity” encouraging illegal acts should have its charitable status revoked. [ This would also stop “charities” from

    blocking the Queen’s highways].

    If you agree with us an uptick would be appreciated.

      1. Thank you Elsie.

        Sorry, we missed your post yesterday, but it’s well worth emphasising anyway.

        1. Agreed, Janet. The only reason illegal migrants leave perfectly safe European countries is because of the attraction of British benefits. Cut the benefits to the bone, impose crushing consequences, and kill the attraction.

        2. Correction to my earlier post, Janet. My remarks about cutting illegal immigration were posted by me on Tuesday of this week and not yesterday.

    2. Legal aid is not available to most of the population- yet these unwanted invaders all get it.

      1. We agree Ndovu. However the important point is that illegal migrants are given unlimited Legal Aid so that they can continually

        appeal and dispute court decisions, thus ultimately frustrating all court decisions not to their liking.

        The cost to taxpayers must be enormous.

  8. SIR – On June 21 – the first day of three strikes planned by the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (report, June 15) – I have a 10am appointment at a central London hospital. If I take three buses it may be possible to get there, but doubtless everyone else who has essential business will also be struggling to get on one.

    I am worried for myself, but I am also concerned about the hospital staff who must struggle to work every day and without whom my care would be compromised. The majority of these staff will earn nothing like the salaries drawn by members of the RMT and Aslef.

    Elizabeth Balsom
    London SW15

    Quite right, Ms Balsom. The well-paid train drivers are being led by the nose into a political strike by other well-paid greedy bastards!

    1. Good morning HJ

      Some one told me that train drivers need to be well paid .. the shock and horror that can befall them when they are greeted with bodies on the line , but no one considers the horrible examples of human frailty that medical staff confront .

    1. 353248+ up ticks,

      Morning Rik,
      Under the Batten leadership so very,very true, was being tailor made to combat todays odious issues, sadly since the treachery now a tory (ino) party asset.

      Agreed though that lad should go far.

  12. 353248+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Thursday 16 June: For too long immigration policy has been at the mercy of liberal lawyers

    Won’t wash and no matter how many times you rinse, these governing party’s will never ever gain a shade of whiteness, riddled through & through with anti United Kingdom treachery ALL part & parcel of the same NWO / reset / replace agenda.

    A LL this finding favor with with the majority of the electorate via the polling booth many conveniently forgetting the likes of the wretch cameron pledging to reduce numbers of foreign illegal incomers then promptly raising the intake.

    The only immigration policy’s followed by the mass uncontrolled immigration / paedophile umbrella , COALITION party has ALWAYS been at above the DANGER, flood level line, DOVER is just serving now as a successful topping up campaign.

    Remember the party ( coalition) needs MUST come before the Country’s
    if we are ever going to obtain a successful reset & all the trimmings,
    free prayer mats etc,etc.

  13. I guess it’s time another long walk with the Lab this morning.
    Nothing seems to wear her out.

  14. For too long immigration policy has been at the mercy of liberal lawyers

    They don’t seem very liberal to me, they appear to be very one sided, mostly towards the side that earns them the most income.

    1. These issues were obvious and should have been managed. Legal aid for immigration ended, the HRA removed, ECHR judiciary oversight dismantled. All could have been done slowly as soon as the gimmigrants started getting here but no. Now they shrug and say ‘oh well.’

  15. Good morning all

    Warm night , wasn’t it . I must replace the winter duvet with a lighter one.

    14c here and getting warmer . Blue sky and loads of aircraft contrails overhead, so airports must be quite busy .

    1. ‘Morning, Maggie, I’ll bet that none of those contrails are heading for Rwanda.

    3. I swapped my winter duvet for the spring/autumn one in April. A fortnight ago I swapped that for the lightweight summer one.

      1. Moh is a cold soul , he is always cold , unless the temp is blazing hot and then he wears shorts

        He still wears warm jim jams .

          2. Personally I think the ridiculous notion of a chap wearing pyjamas is TMI. Almost as ridiculous as wearing a nightshirt and a Wee Willie Winkie hat!

          3. Ditto me.
            Even when I’m camping in the van!
            The remoteness of the Wainsfleet Ranges I camped at over the weekend meant that when I got up and did my 1st mug of tea, there was no urgency to get dressed! I just had to make sure I had something to pull on if I heard a car coming down the road.

    4. I had some nit complain those were ‘geo engineering’. I really think some people genuinely shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

      1. In the UK he’d be arrested. Heck, chances are the communists are trying to work out how they can.

    2. However many statistics we are bombarded with by the MSM and the politicians our own experience does not support what we are being told.

      Our own experience tells us that those who have ben triple jabbed are suffering with Covid far worse than those who have not been jabbed at all.

      Caroline plays at funerals : the number of deaths in our commune has increased dramatically since the introduction of the ‘vaccines’ and sudden, unexplained deaths of people under the age of 60 has rocketed.

      Our observations are, of course, just our observations and we are told that they are not statistically valid and we must ignore what we see.

    2. I agree that it is a brilliant clip. Kind of supports Grizzly’s view that world IQ is declining.

  18. Has anyone else noticed that Prayer for the Day (05:43 R4) is now presented by a female voice almost exclusively? You have to go back to 20th May to hear a male presenter. No coincidence I’m sure.

  20. One major reason we don’t make anything any more (glass,aluminium,cement etc) is the energy costs and with Wind and Solar currently providing 9% of requirements this ain’t changing anytime soon……..

    https://gridwatch.co.uk/?oldgw=
    Frack baby,Frack

  22. UK food price rises could hit 15% over summer, report says. 16 June 2022.

    Food price rises in the UK could hit 15% this summer – the highest level in more than 20 years – with inflation lasting into the middle of next year, according to a report.

    Meat, cereals, dairy, fruit and vegetables are likely to be the worst affected as the war in Ukraine combines with production lockdowns in China and export bans on key food stuffs such as palm oil from Indonesia and wheat from India, the grocery trade body IGD warns.

    Products that rely on wheat, such as chicken, pork and bakery items, are likely to face the most rapid price rises as problems with exports and production from Ukraine, a big producer of grain, combine with sanctions on Russia, another key producer.

    I think 15% is a quite modest estimate. I bought a bag of frozen chopped onions yesterday and they have increased by some 40% since my last purchase. Prices are not only increasing in line with inflation but producers and sellers are using it as an excuse to increase their profit margins and future proof their sales. This is going to turn pretty nasty. Food riots and possibly worse are not an impossibility next winter! Nottlers should stock up!

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/16/uk-food-price-rises-inflation-summer-report-ukraine-china-brexit-wheat

    3. Does the guardian suggest why that is? Does it consider the high taxes on energy and fuel? I’d bet it doesn’t, as that would mean it’d have to acknowledge the climate change twaddle being the root cause of the problem.

    4. One is inclined to ask why you are buying frozen chopped onions instead of a fresh onion and chopping it yourself?

  23. Here we go again……..

    “Is UK at start of new Covid wave driven by BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants?

    Virus may be evolving to refavour infecting lung tissue. We assess what this could mean for the course of the pandemic”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/14/uk-at-start-of-new-covid-wave-driven-by-ba4-and-ba5-new-data-suggests

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b2416c91235e8b77dfa1f886af230e7cc900e64a37f6d6f848414eb77f6959aa.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a16d5247be17b26513179a8f17f0654276560dc86a3e1e23fa94fc61eeaf0f3a.gif
    These outlets must be missing their government paid fear advertising badly…….

    1. Morning Rik. Monkey Pox seems to have failed but they are ramping up the “We’re all going to drown” story. It was on BBC last night.

      1. ‘Morning Minty
        Perhaps we should all seek asylum in the Maldives,there seems to be no danger of them drowning……….

      2. Monkey pox has been put on the back burner during ‘pride’ month. TPTB can’t have the great unwashed joining the dots.

          1. To each their own and all that, but it does no one any favours to ignore the distinct overlap occurring between some lifestyles and subsequent spread of disease.

            Monkey pox ‘hot spots’ and ‘pride’ gatherings in Amsterdam and Brazil, amongst other transport hubs, are not coincidental.

          2. To each their own and all that, but it does no one any favours to ignore the distinct overlap occurring between some lifestyles and subsequent spread of disease.

            Monkey pox ‘hot spots’ and ‘pride’ gatherings in Amsterdam and Brazil, amongst other transport hubs, are not coincidental.

      3. Remember the Monkey Pox simulation exercise they did at the start of the year.
        It was due to be launched in May (which happened), and it’s due to ramp up at the end of the year.
        All on target so far!

    2. Graham Greene wrote a novel in 1943 entitled: The Ministry of Fear.

      It seems that this has now become Britain’s most important, most active and most effective ministry.

  24. Sorry to witter on , but I am absolutely certain we are facing a species extinction .

    I really do feel very tearful saying this . but we have walked the dogs far and wide over meadows , water meadows , heathland , coastal paths , and quarries including Portland Bill and NOT A SIGN of swallows, martins and swifts .. the lack of insects is also noticeable , inclding moths at night .

    A few years ago we had 2 species of bat flying around the garden at night , we have security lights that used to attract moths , no ladybirds , no butterflies .

    We are bang next door to farmed land , and a few miles away a large dairy herd and slurry ponds … which we can smell sometimes , and also slurry that is spread on fields .. which is probably full of antibiotics and preventive stuff that they fill animals full of … could this be the reason that insect eating birds are diminishing ?

    1. The last several nights OH has been out in the garden with his bat detector and says he’s never seen so many flying around here. Noctules, pipistrelles and of course, our swifts have given us some great displays since the weather cleared. They are all insect eaters of course. Most farmland round here is grazing land. We also have the cattle on the common which is untouched grassland.

      1. The sort of land that insects like. Who knew? Organic cattle farming is good for the planet. Well, everyone knew except moronic Lefties and DEFRA trying to force vegetablism.

    2. I think it may be very likely. The stuff put on to crops is intended to kill. There is a lot of pressure on farmers to produce more, better and cheaper.
      Insecticides like the neonicotinoids kill bees. This insecticide is applied to seeds before they are sold for planting. Insects which chew or eat the growing plants then die.
      We have four or five house martin nests this year and one swallow nest. This is low average. One year we had seven nests. I have noted that sparrows are very aggressive towards house martins. They destroy they nests as soon as the house martins leave for the South. This aggression has become more apparent year on year and I think that they are attacking nests before the house martins leave, but it is difficult to tell.

      https://www.treehugger.com/neonicotinoids-what-home-gardeners-need-to-know-4863832
      https://www.panna.org/gmos-pesticides-profit/big-ags-dirty-little-secret
      https://www.panna.org/pesticides-big-picture/pesticides-101
      https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/neonicotinoid (See”Avian Toxicology” which is about loss of insects as food for birds.)

        1. https://entomologytoday.org/2015/05/18/hippoboscidae-flies-live-birth/ I used to hate handling swifts and house martins, in particular, when I was a bird-ringer. Both species seemed to be infected by their own particular brand of flat-fly (ectoparasite). Sometimes these damned things would crawl out of the bird’s plumage and over your hand! Ugh! I didn’t come across any on barn swallows or sand martins, nor any other species for that matter.

          1. Swifts have a parasite called Kraterina pallida, which is a louse fly. Very gruesome to look at. Ours in the nest boxes look to be free of them this year. After they’d gone last year, OH had a clear-out of all the pupae that were left in the nests. This is a still from a video I took last year of a young swift in the box, doing press-ups to strengthen its wings. You can see the kraterina on its tail.
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b362f2667830f1f4fbecf0db93994d50c713d6e8c36c31678e4cfe760cc2ef1c.jpg

          2. Yes, they are indeed disgusting. Their larvae remain in the nest boxes overwinter ready to infest the following year’s brood.

          3. I discovered them when a house martin took a tumble over Ham pits when taking a sip from the water. Saw them crawling all over the blighter as I picked it out of the water.

        2. Yes. I meant to do that this year. I am not good with heights, e.g. anything above the bottom rung of a ladder.

      2. Brilliant links , HP.

        I will study them later .

        Extract from a farming diary in this area ..

        The crops we grow (wheat, barley, oil seed rape, oats and maize) are primarily grown to provide feed and straw bedding for our own livestock, with any produce left being sold for further processing, such as porridge and biscuits. We crop rotate our grounds over the space of 5 years so the soil keeps it’s best.
        Grass is plentiful in the Isle of Purbeck! We cut down our grass to produce our own clamp silage to feed to the dairy cows, wrap silage/haylage bales for the beef cattle, and make hay to feed to the sheep throughout the winter months when they’re indoors. Otherwise, the animals are roaming the greenery as much as they can when the conditions allow, and we mix how the graze the grounds throughout the year (sheep late winter/early spring, then cattle after that).
        We manage slurry, discarded bedding and farmyard manure as a natural fertiliser as best as we can, spreading it on cut crop ground to plough back in (stubble), or on short grass ground to help it grow. It’s in our interest to do this to reduce fertiliser costs!

        However , there are a couple of huge landowners who intensively farm … almost like dairy factories.. hundreds of cows, not far from us .

        Also as this is a tourist area ,small roads , thousands of cars and caravans , quarry lorries erc the price one has to pay re traffic fumes .. and a rail way crossing where people do NOT turn off their car engines .

        1

    4. Morning, Maggie.

      Is it something to do with the overcrowding on that sceptred isle that gets incrementally worse by the day? I have good numbers of all the species you mention … and many more.

      1. We have as well! Loads of swifts on the meadows, and swallows have been back at daughters farm for about a month!

        1. Thanks, Maggie. It certainly seems that way at present. All the negatives about moving to another country are more than made up for in the way of positives. The locals, in particular, have been extremely friendly and very welcoming to me.

    5. Everything here in east Cornwall seems pretty much as normal this year despite the chilly spring weather. Having said that, some of the migrators do appear to be a bit late and lowish in number. Certainly the cuckoos aren’t as plentiful, locally at least, as usual. Insect life appears pretty good now it’s warming up. Sometimes one doesn’t notice things missing until something jogs the memory so I’ll keep an eye, and an ear, out for swallow, swift and martin numbers.

      1. Please do that Mm.

        Also moths .. I know you say you wander off to the pub, we still have light evenings , but when our security lights come on when a cat is passing through the garden or I take the dogs into the garden for last minute wees , no moths around the lights , and no bats flitting through either x

    6. There is something wrong. Last year our feeders were covered with blue tits, coal tits etc. We even had a nuthatch and a woodpecker. This year I have seen one blue tit on the feeder.

      1. There is something very badly wrong . Where I walk in a wood near here , there were colonies of nuthatches , long tailed tits , chaffinches , yellowhammers on the edge of the wood .

        I used to see beetles, butterflies and many different damsel flies dragon flies , wasp varieties on the greenery on the edge of the pond .

        I don’t want to be alarmist , but why isn’t anyone else worried ?

      2. The bluetits in our nest box laid eight eggs. None of the chicks survived, although the parents were very attentive. It could have been a lack of the little green caterpillars they use to feed their young.

      3. We had several earlier in the year. Now, I think, they are getting their food elsewhere (lots of berries in the garden).

    7. Notably Jeremy Clarkson did a really good piece on this in his Rewilding episode. Whatever you may think of the man, he’s right. However a lot of that comes down to people building cramped sprawling houses on land that used to be fields.

      There is a particularly obtuse government that wants to rewild farmland thus reducing food AND build on green belt to house gimmigrants.

      No food, not enough fuel, not enough energy, too many people. What precisely do they think will happen?

    8. Hundreds of little bees in my garden. No aphids this year which probably explains the lack of ladybirds. There is an absolute cacophony of birdsong in the hawthorns. I keep having to tell them to keep the noise down !

    9. We have swallows, martins and swifts around, Belle. Perhaps not as many as in the past, but certainly more than in the past two years when there seemed to be a dearth (except swifts). Also a welcome return of the song thrush, which has been missing for some years, and I have also heard a cuckoo, also missing for some years. Forty years ago, when we first moved in here all of these were more plentiful during the summer months. I fear it is something to do with increased and more successful methods of entrapment in the Mediterranean countries, as well as fewer insects, all play their part.

    10. Don’t worry Belle, they are all here – we have loads of swallows, and I’ve heard swifts too, not seen them. I have the impression that there are more insects than last year too.

    12. I am cultivating some maggots in the dustbin. Little bluebottles are a great delicacy for swallows, and if there are too many of the little white blighters I throw them into the pond.

    13. It does vary a lot from year to year.
      We’ve had years with few sparrows, others where there are plenty.
      Same with the blasted grey squirrels; apparently with them there has been a lurgy of some sort.

    14. The moths have clearly migrated to North Shropshire; they were battering at my bathroom windows last night like something out or The Haunting of Toby Jugg!

  27. Lifeboatmen,a Police Officer and now 5 Firemen,it’s all so tiresome………..

    “He queried what he believes was Cornwall Council’s heavy handedness

    as the firefighters in question had used a private messaging app and not

    used official council email addresses, for example, and their exchange

    was made outside work. He said: “Cornwall Council needs to learn to draw

    a clear boundary between what’s work and what’s private and what’s

    acceptable as a council employee at work and in your private life. As a

    council employee does your responsibility to behave in a certain way

    ends when you leave work at the end of the day or are you a council

    ambassador 24/7?”

    Cllr Martin said that while everything had to

    be done to ensure the work place is welcoming and accepting of

    everyone’s differences, a balance has to be struck between inclusiveness

    and making it more difficult to recruit staff like firefighters at a

    time when there is already a shortage.

    He said: “If you want men

    and women who will go into burning buildings to rescue people or pull

    people out of wrecked cars covered in blood and guts, you need a certain

    type of people to do that and you can’t have people who are snowflakes.

    People are ultimately responsible for their own actions but there is a

    need to strike a right balance between having a workplace that’s

    welcoming and inclusive and being too heavy handed and risking putting

    people off applying for those jobs. We’re struggling to get community

    firefighters as it is.”

    https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/lostwithiel-firefighters-sacked-over-inappropriate-7209320

    1. There is a remark there, asking if they should be ambassadors for Cornwall CC 24/7.

      My response would be, “Yes, if they’re paid 24/7.”

    2. It seems they were bitching about a colleague. That’s just a bit silly. Are people entitled to a private life away from work? Yes, without question and sometimes having someone to whinge to about the nonsense of day to day life is essential.

  28. A woman in her 50s in good health has just died suddenly in the parish – her husband woke up yesterday morning to find his wife dead beside him and she had gone to sleep normally the previous night.

    Funeral on Saturday at which Caroline is going to play. She is also down to play at the woman’s daughter’s wedding in August.

    The woman was a midwife and had been jabbed four times.

    Second fully jabbed person in their 50s this week in our small parish to die suddenly.

    What is going on?

    1. Hells bells, that’s more than a bit upsetting and worrying. What is the general local opinion on the cause?
      Good morning by the way.

      1. More and more people are beginning to believe that they are victims of an enormous and deadly scam. Even the most ardent pro-vaxers are beginning to have severe doubts.

    2. Hells bells, that’s more than a bit upsetting and worrying. What is the general local opinion on the cause?
      Good morning by the way.

    3. That’s a very quick funeral – they seem to be taking longer and longer after a person dies – three or four weeks these days.

      1. Three or four days here – mind you we live in a fairly rural parish which is not very religiously diverse – just Catholics and Atheists (who still want a Christion burial just in case).

    5. Is it a very large parish? As a rural area, presumably quite a small population. Two in their 50s in a week is quite frightening.

  29. Good morning all. Bright & sunny, a tad under 10°C with clear sky and a light breeze.

    1. 14 and climbing. It’s me. The weather follows me. By 11 it’ll be a molten nuclear fame an inch from my head.

  30. Russia’s economy in for a bumpy ride as sanctions bite. 16 June 2022.

    Nearly four months after the invasion of Ukraine, the new Lada sort of sums up the Russian economy: it’s still functioning, despite lacking some of the parts.

    “Still functioning” is an achievement. Russia is now the most sanctioned country in the world. According to data service Statista, more than 10,500 restrictions have been imposed on Russian individuals and companies. More than 7,500 of those were implemented in the last four months.

    Yes one wonders how they are managing on 8% inflation; a massive balance of payments surplus and petrol at £0.89 a litre. It must be hell!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61796067

    1. “Sanctions do not mean, of course, that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse, or in your bank, has been devalued” – Go tell it to the Marines!

    2. The BBC keeps bashing on about how Russia is being hurt by sanctions yet… it’s us who are struggling with high fuel prices, not Russia.

      1. The public under no circumstances must twig the fact that the sanctions were specifically and purposefully designed to hurt us, not Russia.

    1. “the government had struck a deal with EDF to keep West Burton power station online”

      EDF? The Frogs not only send 100.000+ gimmigrants to the UK each year but they have both hands round the throat of the UK’s energy supply. The wretched bunch of EU ar*e licking politicians, that have enslaved the taxpayers and robbed them over the past 40 years or so, need a good thrashing and sending into exile – Rwanda would be a good place to send them.

      1. But it’s entirely out own fault for not providing sufficiently for our own needs. The interconnects – this idea that ‘the wind is always blowing somewhere’ is silly as dividing the energy capacity by those countries needing it, plus the loss through the grid to get to us… they’re a folly.

    2. Yet the government refuses to consider it. It really is infuriatingly ignorant. All on the altar of green. The intent has always been to force up the price of energy to make it unaffordable.

      1. Demand for fuel is relatively inelastic and that’s why any of our governments like fuel as a vehicle for taxation. With duty & VAT and price increase tends to swell the Exchequer’s coffers without the need for a Chancellor to announce a tax hike.

        1. Spot on, ditto for fuel. They’ve got something people cannot avoid and thus they tax it to force change. Either stop people using it – which people can’t, or make it so expensive they soak tax from it. It is deeply, deeply disgusting as it’s a thoroughly regressive tax least affecting the well off and punishing the low earner.

        2. I presume that despite the inelasticity over some of the demand curve, that because demand always become elastic at a low enough volume, the Laffer curve (revenue starts to fall) must apply at some rate of fuel tax/VAT.

          2. Thus the scrabbling to find a way to tax electric cars and the high prices of electricity. It’s all by design. However it isn’t really about tax. It’s about control.

  32. Planet Normal: The battle is on for the soul of the Conservative Party
    Conservatives are clashing over economic policy as traditional Tory party identity is challenged under Boris Johnson’s leadership
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/06/16/planet-normal-battle-soul-conservative-party/

    DT: Liam Halligan, Claire Fox and Zoe Hitch,

    BTL

    The writing was on the wall when Johnson and Gove interfered with Frost’s negotiations by arriving in Brussels at the last minute and ensuring that the UK accepted the NI Protocol, accepted the continued presence of the ECHR in British matters and accepted that our fishermen would not have their fishing grounds protected against EU fishing fleets.

    From this very moment the EU realised that Johnson was weak and could be beaten and the Remainers saw that their battle was not yet lost and that they could get Britain back into the EU if they continued to work at it and that the EU could be guaranteed to do everything possible to punish Britain for its turpitude.

      1. Only metaphorically – they don’t have the requisite tackle if they have been castramonorated!

        1. Yes, the political class nationalists. Knowing many Scottish folk who think Sturgeon’s a complete wingnut that was rather a daft thing of me to say!

    3. “Least visible trans group”? Is that because they’ve got nothing to show for it?

    4. It’s easy to get things caught on brambles and gates when wearing a kilt.

    5. All fans of Goebbels?

      (Hitler was mono-testicular, Göring and Himmler had two small testicles apiece but don’t you knock Goebbels – he was the real deal as far as having no testicles at all is concerned!)

    7. And there was me thinking that it would be insulting to refer to post-op transwomen as eunuchs…

      Eu-jocks, north of the Border anyway, surely?

    10. What the heck is a “eunuch identified” person? Either you’ve had your dangly bits chopped off or you haven’t.

  34. Another letter bunged off to the DT which they will not publish!

    Sir,

    Given the fact that the ECHR is so selective in choosing its causes célèbres and has such a murky history on the subject of immigration it strikes many people that the ECHR’s intervention on the flight to Rwanda was nothing to do with human rights and everything to do with politics.

    Rastus C. Tastey

    1. Bon Jaw monsieur.
      Perhaps you should have signed it………….. Dick Tracey Secret agent Richard. 🤔

  36. Morning all 😊.
    Busy day again looking after grandchildren hair cut midmorning.
    Just been witnessing more absolute hypocrisy on Morning TV. The report started with the reporter standing in coniferous woodland obviously planted 20-30 years ago. Leading onto all the trees being felled and turned into wood chips to be burned. But that’s okay because as explained the trees were not destined for structural use, but were being destroyed to heat water for old people in a nearby care home who probably pay up to two thousand pounds per week. To the forgien owner.
    So much for the green adgenda eh. Once cleared of obstacles the land will probably be built on.

  37. Just watching BBC Morning Live a few minutes ago and the virtues of biomass boilers was being extolled.
    Whilst I note that the Government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme now includes grants for installing wood chip boilers has it escaped polititians notice that wood chips come from trees.

    OK so we are planting trees at a phenominal rate to save the planet but can they supply the potential demand sustainably?

    There was just one brief caveat during the piece when the interviewee said biomass heating would be sustainable if we can grow the trees as fast as we cut them down. Perhaps biomass isn’t that green after all!

    1. Perhaps biomass isn’t that green after all- especially when you factor in the energy needed to cut trees down, chip them and then transport the chips to their destination!

    1. Give them an inch….and you stand a good chance of catching monkey pox apparently….!

  39. Have I missed something? It is forty years since one thousand British servicemen were killed or injured liberating the Falkland Islands from a dictatorial regime. The BBC spends vast amounts of time and money reporting every single death amongst illegal immigrants fleeing the terrors of life in French towns and cities. Surely they could spare a few seconds for the suffering and deaths of the sons and daughters of the people who pay their excessively exorbitant salaries?

    1. I suppose he has to go through the motions of pretending to be a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer.

    2. He’ll do what they always do and drop one but hike another so it makes no difference. Then the election comes around and they don’t actually implement the cut at all, or raise another stealth tax to really cripple us.

      1. Brown was the sleight of hand supremo. Get rid of the 20% band and then trumpet that the top rate is being reduced to 22%!

      2. Lupins are always healthy. I don’t have much luck here though with delphiniums, hollyhocks or gladioli. They all remain stunted.

  43. A cheeky birdie three today

    Wordle 362 3/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. A frustrating Bogey Five for me …
      Wordle 362 5/6

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

  46. I am having a problem with Nottl – it is taking ages and ages to scroll and show posts. Anyone else got the same problem?

    3. Get something like Ccleaner to clear out all the accumulated dross – trackers, old history etc. Then reboot.

      2. A friend of mine who regularly went to football matches said that when certain players got the ball the crowd made monkey noises and threw bananas onto the pitch.

        And Alastair Stewart was sacked by the BBC because his interviewee objected to Stewart quoting from Measure For Measure:

        “But man, proud man,
        Dressed in a little brief authority,
        Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
        His glassy essence, like an angry ape
        Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
        As makes the angels weep…”

      3. It really is idiotic. What next? Changing the black chess set to ‘mocha and ‘cream’? For goodness sake.

      2. A pox on the WHO

        (But I hope Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend were given the all clear when they last visited the clinic.)

    4. More inclusive? So they want to kid us that we’ve all got it. None-chimptomatic Allpox.

        1. Snigger, snigger….. (is ‘snigger’ allowed these days? It felt very odd typing out those last six letters…). Is this the virus which Gates ‘the next one will certainly make them sit up”?

  48. From: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/15/britain-ruins-thanks-failed-dogmas-permanent-leftist-elite/

    Who governs Britain? It certainly isn’t Boris Johnson. You may support his Rwandan refugee policy, or you may loathe it. But the central promise of his Government was that such important decisions would be taken in the UK, with the ballot box the ultimate arbiter. The European Court of Human Rights’ decision to effectively block the Government from sending refugees to Rwanda thus symbolises the moral and practical implosion of his project. He was elected to take back control, to give a voice to the culturally conservative majority, to wrestle power from acronym-wielding experts, and yet is proving laughably ineffective at influencing, let alone directing, affairs of state.

    Even the Supreme Court agreed that there was no reason why the plane couldn’t take off – but then the judges in Strasbourg swept in, reminding Britain that it isn’t in charge. The Government knew this might happen, but took no measures to prepare, and I doubt it will really do anything meaningful about it now. That is why so many Tory voters have lost patience with Johnson: he is all talk, and no delivery.

    The Blob is naturally making the most of a weak Government that doesn’t seem keen to exercise power. Take education: ministers don’t believe in “decolonising” universities, so why is it happening? The Tories don’t think that girls should be banned from wearing skirts, so why are some schools imposing such absurd rules? How come the Education Secretary wasn’t even aware that his own bill contained provisions that would revoke the independence of free schools?

    Or take welfare: during Covid, the sanctions imposed on recipients who turn down jobs or miss meetings were suspended. The Government says that it wants to fully reintroduce conditionality, but so far this has not fully happened, which is one reason why the total number of people on out of work benefits is above 5 million at a time of extreme labour shortages. As to taxation, Treasury mandarins believe that it should go up, and that tax cuts today would be inflationary, and the Government simply acquiesces. Or inflation: the Bank of England isn’t being held accountable. Devolution, an ultimate Blairite project, doesn’t work as currently constituted, but keeps being extended by clueless Tories.

    Tony Blair was devastated by the referendum, but he is having the last laugh. We’ve ended up with a technical Brexit in which Britain is subservient to a permanent Left-wing, politico-managerial class. Many Tory MPs might as well be Labour MPs, and vice versa. Nothing has changed: Whitehall Blairites seized the power relinquished by Brussels’ social-democrats.

    More money is being spent on the NHS and the public sector than even Blair could have dreamt of; taxes have shot up far more quickly than under Labour. All of Gordon Brown’s extensions of the welfare state remain largely intact, and now social care is being nationalised, creating yet more dependents on state largesse. Command and control environmentalism pervades all policy, and price controls are back. The labour market is more regulated than ever.

    The Government’s debilitating inability to say anything intelligent on human rights sums up the predicament of Tory Britain. One of the big Left-wing untruths of the moment is that membership of the European Convention of Human Rights is necessary to enjoy human rights, and that without it we would turn into a totalitarian hell-hole. It is absurd – none of the non-European liberal democracies are members, and yet all protect human rights – but still the Left is winning.

    The ECHR was originally proposed by Churchill to enshrine rights and protect democracy across a Europe that had only just emerged from the horrors of fascism, genocide and the Second World War. It made sense, in the context of the time, for the likes of Germany, Italy and France to sign up, but Britain should have pursued its own path, just as America, Canada or Australia chose to rely on their own domestic rules and courts. Churchill didn’t realise how a well-intentioned document would be weaponised by a new generation of anti-democratic Left-wing activists.

    England had led the world on individual rights with the Magna Carta in 1215, Habeas Corpus in 1679 and the Bill of Rights in 1689, and the common law, the judiciary and the jury system were hugely effective at protecting the individual against the power of the executive. Relative to almost everybody else, we were a human rights success story. It is true that a number of gaps soon became apparent – for example, British free speech was insufficiently protected – but we could have resolved all of these domestically through legislation. There was also (and remains) a case for another, broader modernised Bill of Rights, but that too should be a national endeavour.

    By the 1980s, the Left had become obsessed with the idea of granting the ECHR judges more power over an ever-broader conception of human rights. They wanted to build an international, technocratic class divorced from national accountability and from the common law tradition, and loved the activist nature of the Strasbourg court. By enshrining the ECHR into British law via the Human Rights Act of 1998, Blair helped cement his cultural putsch.

    Real rights violations by rogue states weren’t blocked – absurdly, Russia ratified the ECHR in 1998 and will only be properly kicked out in September – but the court dedicated itself to creating new rights out of thin air, deciding that prisoners should be allowed to vote. It extended its reach into overseas military occupied areas and war zones, and decreed that “whole life” sentences violate human rights unless they are “reducible”.

    The problem is that extricating ourselves from this madness would take great political skill and energy. The ECHR and the Council of Europe are separate from the EU, but the latter insisted on membership of the ECHR as part of the Withdrawal Agreement, and Blair baked ECHR membership into the Good Friday Agreement and the legislation that created Scottish devolution. Dominic Raab’s strategy is to largely return to the pre-1998 settlement and dilute the Human Rights Act, rather than to tear the whole of it up. I doubt these reforms will be enough, but the tragedy of what should have been a great reforming government is that Johnson has run out of time to take back control.

    1. You know, the sad thing is, he’s right. The state is utterly determined to remain chained. It fights any attempt at genuine reform. It has made us slaves. It keeps presenting the same lies: we need the money for social care, well, why isn’t it improving? What will it be spent on, specifically? There’s no analysis because the money is just going into more pockets. It’s not improving services.

      Without tax hypothecation, referism, recall and direct democracy nothing will improve. The beast must be starved for our own good.

    2. I am sick to the back teeth of the mainstream corporate media ignoring the elephant in the room.
      Johnson is a WEF young leader – he was NEVER going to take back control from a Common Purpose, Soros, Wellcome Trust and Gates funded establishment.

    3. “Russia ratified the ECHR in 1998 and will only be properly kicked out in September ” -Sounds like a win for Russia!

    4. “By enshrining the ECHR into British law via the Human Rights Act of 1998, Blair helped cement his cultural putsch Cherie to make unfeasibly huge amounts of money.

        1. She was busily setting up Matrix Chambers while the act was still passing through Parliament.
          (In case of any doubt “passing through” was a deliberate choice of words.)

    2. Father’s Day – That’s racist! How many ‘you know who’s’ even know who their father is and how would they get their gifts and greetings past the prison guards?

    3. Father’s Day – That’s racist! How many ‘you know who’s’ even know who their father is and how would they get their gifts and greetings past the prison guards?

    4. Father’s Day – That’s racist! How many ‘you know who’s’ even know who their father is and how would they get their gifts and greetings past the prison guards?

  50. Good afternoon everyone. Pedant alert!
    Bryony Gordon, career journalist, has written this:
    “When Joanna Scanlan won the Bafta for Leading Actress at the beginning
    of the year, she made an acceptance speech that was so moving it reduced
    fellow thesps to tears. “Some stories have surprise endings, don’t
    they?” said the 60-year-old, in front of an audience of Hollywood
    luminaires … ”
    It’s easy to confuse the word ‘luminaire’ with ‘luminary’, but surely the Telegraph could afford a sub editor.

    1. ‘Bryony Gordon’! Two words to strike fear into the hearts of normal, happy, healthy people! 😱

          1. Transgressed at the Buffet more like.

            (did she not lose weight subsequently?)

          1. The Telegraph thinks I’m going to pay a subscription to be lectured by her?
            They can jog on!

          2. And she never ever allows comments! Can’t imagine why! Prolly bad for her mental ‘elf!

        3. If you drag the image into ‘Image search’ it leads you to weight gain bryony gordon.

          2. I don’t think I’d be able to after 6 pints – drewers broop donchaknow

          3. Of course the Dunsinane Porter knew all about the effects of drink:

            Porter
            ‘Faith sir, we were carousing till the
            second cock: and drink, sir, is a great
            provoker of three things.
            MACDUFF
            What three things does drink especially provoke?
            Porter
            Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and
            urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
            it provokes the desire, but it takes
            away the performance: therefore, much drink
            may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
            it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
            him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,
            and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
            not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him
            in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

    5. Bryony Gordon: daughter of former Telegraph columnist Jane Gordon.

      Nepotism will always usurp skill.

        1. Indeed, Mrs Macfarlane.
          Bryony Gordon is the daughter of Jane Gordon.
          Jay Rayner is the son of Claire Rayner.
          Claudia Winkelman is the daughter of Eve Pollard.
          There seems to be some kind of eclectic theme going on here.
          Did Marjorie Proops have any journalist offspring?

  51. Good afternoon everyone. Pedant alert!
    Bryony Gordon, career journalist, has written this:
    “When Joanna Scanlan won the Bafta for Leading Actress at the beginning
    of the year, she made an acceptance speech that was so moving it reduced
    fellow thesps to tears. “Some stories have surprise endings, don’t
    they?” said the 60-year-old, in front of an audience of Hollywood
    luminaires … ”
    It’s easy to confuse the word ‘luminaire’ with ‘luminary’, but surely the Telegraph could afford a sub editor.

  52. Good afternoon everyone. Pedant alert!
    Bryony Gordon, career journalist, has written this:
    “When Joanna Scanlan won the Bafta for Leading Actress at the beginning
    of the year, she made an acceptance speech that was so moving it reduced
    fellow thesps to tears. “Some stories have surprise endings, don’t
    they?” said the 60-year-old, in front of an audience of Hollywood
    luminaires … ”
    It’s easy to confuse the word ‘luminaire’ with ‘luminary’, but surely the Telegraph could afford a sub editor.

  53. Some Jock ‘expert’ on Radio 4 says any more than three glasses of wine per WEEK and you have an alcohol problem!

    All Nottlrs report to your local clinic immediately!

      1. The neighbours behind us in CT quite often invited us for dinner. One evening our host was showing us his new wine glasses. Goldfish bowls on stems!
        These are for when my doctor says I can only have one glass of wine a day- he told us.

    4. If I don’t drain the glass but refill it, does that still count as one glass?

    9. As the old saying goes. “Todays expert is often tomorrows fool”.
      And breath……..
      When i was admitted over night from A&E last August, the nurse came up to the bedside with a clip board and started asking me box ticking questions. One of course was how much alcohol do you drink a day ?
      I replied I’ve never thought that I had to measure it. I asked her if she knew if they asked the same questions in the rest of Europe namely France Italy Germany Spain etc. She walked away and didn’t come back.

    3. My instinctive response is not wow record floods must be climate change but more like OK, who did what to cause this so they could wreak havoc and claim it’s climate change?

      3. Apparently it erupts every 600,000 years and time is up. I’ve thought for a long time that a number of volcanoes erupting over a short period of time is more likely than ‘climate change’
        I think my guess is as good as anyone else’s.

    2. Observation dependant on the temperatures aloft/cloud cover/night or day. Or if its our day for chemical suppression, naturally.

      1. I watched out for my son’s plane earlier passing over Brecon heading to Orlando. All the other planes were trailing but not Virgin 91. Not reached sufficient altitude.

          1. Flight to Perth a while or two ago – we were so full with fuel that we couldn’t reach ultimate cruising altitude until half-past India. Life-stopping view of Himalayas as the sun was rising and just hitting the peaks. Will remember that until I die.

        2. There is a defined temperature for non persistent con trails and persistent contrails.

  56. Good Moa Afternoon.
    This keeping the house in an unnatural state of neatness is exhausting. Add being polite to whey faced nit pickers and my molars are being ground down to smooth surfaces.

    1. Much sympathy, especially about the tidiness. I don’t know how people do that!

      1. I do laundry and dishwasher stuff. The cleaner comes once a fortnight to do everything else. I enjoy being lazy.

        1. Our cleaner cleans. She doesn’t put away. Sometimes, there’s not much surface visible to clean…

          1. I do sometimes shift stuff. If i see the mantlepiece getting dusty i clear it as a hint.

  57. You thought that the wallpaper at no 10 was a touch excessive when Borix was ordered to redecorate?

    It appears that black face Trudeau just spent $735,000 on kitchen renovations at the PMs cottage just outside Ottawa. That is setting a good example for everyone who is feeling the financial squeeze. Add to that the cost of catering on some of his recent photo op flights and even the media is starting to see that his government is out of touch.
    Not to be outdone, the Governor General racked up a bigger bill for catering than they spent on fuel for a recent trip to the middle east.

    Boris is a bit of a beginner when it comes to that type of extravagance.

  58. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5920c6c8e6ec5098c28adc7d4866106eb2174f89fec27cf224c6a685dafda98a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/19d7703f249072e477cd89ce0fb048240f58107ea613d2420171fdadb59f571d.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b75eb04a832ba1076fa11e75a1805ad41320e367705264dc3fa2818df5b2b56d.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5411e2a244eeaf99031d0a1cce9964c94926c8849645b1a3b5108bfe279f4e34.jpg Spent the morning watching a nesting pair of common redstarts busily collecting grubs and caterpillars from the garden for their hungry brood. Yesterday I came across a very confiding fledgling common wheatear that wasn’t bothered in the least by my close presence. And one of the local broods of fledgling white wagtails came for a closer look at me.

    1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4818e57f3c7ef75e6425fb6184c3069c40dbc073ac8b0ab5094ee802e6a0dd62.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9ecba379721921db08b1b33d6142efad040363874248bc77c3cc36d21067d3f8.jpg A dazzling male blackbird came into the garden this morning as I was watching the redstarts and wagtails. Also one of the resident tree sparrows was busily collecting food. Tree sparrows are far more common here than house sparrows, which seem to be on the decline.

  59. From the US:
    “Negotiations between major railroads and their unions have stalled, setting up for what could be a significant railroad shut down before the midterm elections that could paralyze an already-strained US supply chain.

    Railway Age reports the National Mediation Board (NMB) on June 14 began what could be a “ticking time bomb” toward a national railroad shut down within 90 days, following its board of three, two Democratic members agreeing with rail labor and NMB’s only Republican disagreeing that means a voluntary agreement to amend unionized rail worker wages, benefits and work rules won’t be achievable.

    It’s almost as if it was being coordinated….

    2. I think thats what the dinghy drivers get when they arrive. Maybe the rest of us should receive it as part of leveling up.

  61. Time for me to don a tin hat….

    Young Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighbouring kingdom. The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur’s youth and ideals. So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question. Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and, if, after a year, he still had no answer, he would be put to death.
    The question?… What do women really want? Such a question would perplex even the most knowledgeable man, and to young Arthur, it seemed an impossible query. But, since it was better than death, he accepted the monarch’s proposition to have an answer by year’s end.

    He returned to his kingdom and began to poll everyone: the princess, the priests, the wise men and even the court jester. He spoke with everyone, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer.
    Many people advised him to consult the old ugly woman, for only she would have the answer.
    But the price would be high; as the woman was famous throughout the kingdom for the exorbitant prices she charged.

    The last day of the year arrived and Arthur had no choice but to talk to the old woman. She agreed to answer the question, but he would have to agree to her price first.
    The old ugly woman wanted to marry Sir Lancelot, the most noble of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur’s closest friend!
    Young Arthur was horrified. She was hunchbacked and hideous, had only one tooth, smelled like sewage, made obscene noises, etc. He had never encountered such a repugnant creature in all his life.
    He refused to force his friend to marry her and endure such a terrible burden; but Lancelot, learning of the proposal, spoke with Arthur.
    He said nothing was too big of a sacrifice compared to Arthur’s life and the preservation of the Round Table.

    Hence, a wedding was proclaimed and the woman answered Arthur’s question thus:
    What a woman really wants, she answered….is to be in charge of her own life.
    Everyone in the kingdom instantly knew that the woman had uttered a great truth and that Arthur’s life would be spared.
    And so it was, the neighbouring monarch granted Arthur his freedom and Lancelot and the ugly woman had a wonderful wedding.

    The honeymoon hour approached and Lancelot, steeling himself for a horrific experience, entered the bedroom. But, what a sight awaited him. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen lay before him on the bed. The astounded Lancelot asked what had happened.
    The young beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she appeared ugly, she would henceforth, be her horrible deformed self only half the time and the beautiful maiden the other half.

    Which would he prefer? Beautiful during the day — or night?

    Lancelot pondered the predicament. During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends, but at night, in the privacy of his castle, an old ugly woman? Or, would he prefer having a hideous woman during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous intimate moments?

    What would YOU do?

    What Lancelot chose is below.
    BUT — make YOUR choice before you scroll down below.

    OK?

    Noble Lancelot said that he would allow HER to make the choice herself .
    Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time because he had respected her enough to let her be in charge of her own life.
    Now….what is the moral to this story?

    The moral is —

    If you don’t let a woman have her own way…
    Things are going to be ugly…

    1. As you might have guessed I am a huge fan of the Arthurian legends. I rather liked that story.

      1. For those of you who also like the Arthurian legends…..may I recommend The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Well written and from the female point of view. Have read it several times.

    1. 353248+ up ticks,

      Afternoon Rik,
      The hard core lab/lib/con member / voters are proving them right.

    2. The thing is, most people are too young to remember and they reckon that those of us who are old enough will be too senile!

    3. On the dreaded Look East they were warning the elderly about the heat.
      I wondered how they’d managed to live long enough to get old.

      1. There is only one alternative to growing old and I’m not ready for it yet!

          1. I have a plant called Snow in Summer in my garden 🙂 One year I set off for an interview in June and it snowed as I got on the train.

          2. 1975 and again in 76 my wife tells me.
            I was in Cyprus (enjoying my self, so she says). Actually those dates and location should prompt a memory cell or two.

          3. A country invaded a sovereign state to “protect” the individuals who preferred to be considered Turkish?

          4. You confused me for a second. Of course Cyprus in 1974. But a large part of what they now call Ukraine – the Black Sea coast and Crimea – was under Turkish rule for some 3 centuries+ too and people there have Greco-Turkish names.

          5. Over-thrown government, puppets put in place, stalemate, refusal to withdraw, population displacement interference from numerous counties/ NGOs; the only thing really missing in Ukraine is the very marked religious element.

          6. One could look at it that way, yes.
            From my point of view, it was 6 of 1 and half a dozen of the other.
            Nothing changes does it.

        1. It’s the one thing I love about YouTube: so much available if one knows the right search question.

    3. I’m outside in the garden room and Dolly is in her basket under the table. In the shade. No walk for her today. Too hot.

  66. 353248+ up ticks,

    Tweet
    See new Tweets
    Conversation
    David Atherton
    @DaveAtherton20
    Meet Asad Rasool Mohmand who was in contact with 13 year old girls.

    He asked for indecent images, while sending his own, including 3 where he was self-abusing. The day he was arrested he had been in the country for 17 days.

    He was jailed for 3 years 9 months.
    He will be out be out and super fit in 30 months on regular diet , sleep & exercise an asset the any paedophile ring.

    Another form of self abuser is to be found in the electorate could be said the two factions have close links as one would NOT be in a position to act out paedophilia in this country without the other.

    1. In another report a farmer in the US farming 3500 acres uses 2000 US gallons of diesel per month. Diesel has virtually doubled in price from just over $3 per gallon to a little over $6 so the farmer’s costs have increased by approx $6,000 per month – Ouch!

      1. I tell you something else that has shot up in price – the wrap for bales of haylage.

        1. This is us having to pay back the overspending governments over the last many years. Inflation is caused by governments over spending and printing money. It is no suprise to me at all.

    2. It’s just as well there are an awful lot of calories in alcoholic drinks. For example 2 pints of larger contain the same amount of calories as a cheese burger & chips….

  68. BREAKING NEWS:

    Solar radiation has turned the American flags on the moon pure white.

    So now it looks like France landed there first.

    1. ♬Space may be the final frontier, but it’s made in a Hollywood basement…”♬

      [Californication, Red Hot Chilli Peppers]

    2. There’s a clip on Youtube of Buzz Aldrin confirming they never went there

    1. As the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke remarked: “Can you imagine what would happen if I pulled my finger out?”

      1. That story is utter rubbish! Clare Balding would never permit a little Dutch boy (or one of any other nationality) to get anywhere near her!

  70. UK aims sanctions at Russians accused of abducting Ukrainian children. 16 June 2022.

    The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said: “Today we are targeting the enablers and perpetrators of Putin’s war who have brought untold suffering to Ukraine, including the forced transfer and adoption of children. We will not tire of defending freedom and democracy, and keeping up the pressure on Putin, until Ukraine succeeds.”

    Giving MPs an update on the state of the fighting, she said: “We are now approaching a critical moment. Russia is bombarding towns and cities in the east.

    “Some outside Ukraine are questioning whether the free world can sustain its support and claiming that some are beginning tire of this war. The people of Ukraine do not have that luxury. Our answer must be clear. We will never tire of defending freedom and democracy. Russian aggression cannot be appeased.”

    These children are being evacuated from a War Zone, something that the Ukies should have done as soon as hostilities broke out. As to defending “Freedom and Democracy”; these are just words. I’ll take my chances with Vlad!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/16/uk-aims-sanctions-at-russians-accused-of-abducting-ukrainian-children-maria-lvova-belova

    1. Just abducting them, I thought they would be eating them by now, perhaps that’s being saved for next week.

  71. UK aims sanctions at Russians accused of abducting Ukrainian children. 16 June 2022.

    The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said: “Today we are targeting the enablers and perpetrators of Putin’s war who have brought untold suffering to Ukraine, including the forced transfer and adoption of children. We will not tire of defending freedom and democracy, and keeping up the pressure on Putin, until Ukraine succeeds.”

    Giving MPs an update on the state of the fighting, she said: “We are now approaching a critical moment. Russia is bombarding towns and cities in the east.

    “Some outside Ukraine are questioning whether the free world can sustain its support and claiming that some are beginning tire of this war. The people of Ukraine do not have that luxury. Our answer must be clear. We will never tire of defending freedom and democracy. Russian aggression cannot be appeased.”

    These children are being evacuated from a War Zone, something that the Ukies should have done as soon as hostilities broke out. As to defending “Freedom and Democracy”; these are just words. I’ll take my chances with Vlad!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/16/uk-aims-sanctions-at-russians-accused-of-abducting-ukrainian-children-maria-lvova-belova

    3. It’s a pity that it couldn’t play a game of Yellowstone with Washington’s politicians and other hangers-on.

      1. Well, the river did try to wash out the Watergate building and some parts of Georgetown….trouble is the Capitol is on a hill, hence the term “Capitol Hill” so the pols live on!!

      1. As an ex-Brummie, I am always amazed at how big the sky really is, especially at night! Lovely photos, what camera do you use?

        1. Yow can never be an ex-Brummie. Yow will always be a Brummie, wherever yow go! 👍🏻

          [A friend who has lived in Australia since he was 19 and has a long-term Australian wife told me that he considers himself to be a 100% Aussie. Hearing this, his wife sneered and told him, “You’ll always be a Pom!” 🤣]

        2. Yow can never be an ex-Brummie. Yow will always be a Brummie, wherever yow go! 👍🏻

          [A friend who has lived in Australia since he was 19 and has a long-term Australian wife told me that he considers himself to be a 100% Aussie. Hearing this, his wife sneered and told him, “You’ll always be a Pom!” 🤣]

        3. Nikon D90 Digital SLR with a Sigma 10-20mm wide angle zoom lens for that one.

    5. Wow, Jill, that’s fabulous!
      Is it autumn or fall where you are? No leaves on the trees…

      1. That was taken last winter. At this time of year, early summer (currently 32degrees C with 62% humidity at 1.13pm) it’s hard to see the river through the trees!

  73. Afternoon all. With both Rwanda and the looming rail strikes, Boris really has a chance to show us his mettle. Take off the gloves, channel his inner Churchill, use that 80-seat majority we gave him and send the Lefty Lawyers and Union bosses running.

    GAassspp….Sorry, I couldn’t hold my breath any longer…

    1. Boris needs to beef up a bit – he is hardly a top cut of prime meat but more like a hamburger made out of gristle and mince and not even a Burger King hamburger but a WIMPY!

      1. nothing wrong with Wimpy! Many happy childhood memories there. He’s a nothing burger.

        1. He should certainly burgher off and get David Frost to take over.

          Brexit seems to be its death throes owing to Johnson’s incompetence and failure to deliver on any of his election promises. There is probably nobody else in the misnamed Conservative Party who can save it other than possibly JRM or Steve Baker. However neither of them will win a leadership vote and so we shall get Hunt, and when Hunt loses the next election we shall get a Starmer coalition and that will be the end of Britain’s bid for independence.

          1. Mogg is a busted flush. He never showed up when he had the chance. He is, in fact, as useful as an ice lolly in a vagina! (see above. It seems to be a thing)

          4. Grease Smogg has been a great disappointment.

            He can be very amusing but he lacks grit. The fact that both he and Boris Johnson voted for May’s disastrous WA having voted against it twice shows that they crumble when under pressure.

            Starmer is just as weak

            Is there anybody in parliament with the same force of character as Margaret Thatcher had?

          1. Wimpy was and is better than the rest. More civilised. Hardly any around now. Mores the pity.

          2. I remember having a Wimpy when I was nobbut a sprog. I didn’t like it at all. Their hamburgers tasted like the ones from the Co-op. 85% bread and hardly any beef content.

          3. They’re still in Aldershot and Farnborough, for what it’s worth. I’m not too impressed. MaccyD is at least consistent, and I quite like their breakfast menu. BK may be UK owned, but it doesn’t come close to the US equivalent. I’ve never crossed the pond, but I worked on a site at RAF Lakenheath for a while, and their Drive Thru was unashamedly American-sourced..

        3. Wimpy used cutlery. That’s why they failed. I had a friend that sailed into Portsmouth and could always be found at the Wimpy having breakfast.

    2. Had someone today saying they supported the train strikers as they put up with some awful verbal abuse. They then said that they had been rude to a rail worker many times.

      I couldn’t help but think ‘stop being a prat!’

  75. Placing a cloth over your baby’s pram in heatwave ‘could risk sudden death infant syndrome’
    Covering a buggy with a blanket to shield children from the sun may increase danger of overheating, charity warns

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2022/06/16/placing-cloth-babys-pram-heatwave-could-risk-sudden-death-infant/

    We have had no infant deaths in the parish in the last year but some pregnant women are becoming increasingly worried about having being jabbed

    I wonder who posted this BTL comment and how long it will stay up until it is taken down

    My wife plays the organ in our parish church in rural Brittany. There have been an extraordinary number of unexpected deaths of adults aged under 60 recently – indeed the death rate in the last 12 months has been more than double that of the previous 12 months.

    There is one thing all these people who suffered from sudden inexplicable death had in common : they were all at least triple vaccinated but the authorities assure us that this is just a coincidence and have refused requests for full post-mortem examinations.

    2. Turned up at Church last Sunday, to be told that many wouldn’t be coming, since they had Covid.

      I made two observations:

      “Presumably, they’ve all had their latest boosters?”

      “We’re not testing any more. How do they know?”

      1. Hey, Sadie the Cleaning Lady! How’s it all going? Hope you are staying sane. Nothing worse than having one’s house on the market.

        1. Diary is interesting (when I can decipher the scrawl). Life is very much progressing in fits and starts.
          As our son said, “You just have to get on with life, otherwise you go mad”.
          You can tell as people come through the door who genuinely appreciates High Victorian.

    2. LIne-acre is the archetypal media divot. Grossly Over paid and nobody likes him.

  79. Junior’s birthday not far away. Bought a big pile of stuff after he’s been saving up and some surprises. However, despite the hoped for delivery date of Saturday (for next week) there’s no sign of allocation or shipping yet.

    1. I ordered a sweat shirt that i believed to be coming from Birmingham and it actually comes from China.

    2. From my journal:

      In the summer sun, snakes swim surprising swiftly, silently and seemingly serenely, swerving from side to side in the slow stream.

      “When you first see the slender green and yellow hosepipe swimming ahead of you in the water it takes a moment or two to register that it is in fact a grass snake, some 30 inches long swimming serenely and silently through the tepid water, warmed by the summer sun. A clump of reeds and it is lost to view. There is no such problem with recognition when you see your second grass snake swimming at the edge of the canal, which is lined with Armco. The height of the vertical bank makes it impossible for the snake to lift itself from the water so therefore we travel together for a while in the same direction, until eventually the snake can seek refuge in a large clump of weeds and grass that overhangs the Armco down to the water’s edge

    4. Beautiful. I once caught one in a stream many years ago and as I handled it it vomited up a tiny brown trout. They like their fish.

  81. True-Belle is having problems accessing Nottl/Disqus. I seem to be OK at the moment and haven’t yet been asked to log in even though I never log out – but I wonder if anyone else has had difficulty getting in?

    4. No problems today – though it does happen occasionally. The last time I had a problem was a couple of weeks ago on my phone – and it appeared to find an old account I hadn’t used for years. I gave it a photo so I’d know which one I was using. Then after a couple of days it reverted to the one I usually use on my phone.

      I’ve been in and out a bit today, so haven’t noticed any problems.

    1. There is a really simple solution. Privateers commissioned to intercept dinghies in French waters, rescue the occupants and transport them back to the nearest port….in France….

        1. Mola wouldn’t like all the pollution. But wrecking the dinghies and disposing of them responsibly would tick all the green boxes!

          1. 353248+ up ticks,

            Evening S,

            Post notice in 27 tongues in Calais No welfare or accommodation.

    1. Ooops! Posted above before I got to yours. Well, great minds…don’t work for the WHO.

          2. Mother has a boat-floating volume in bottles. Can’t bring it here, will have to drink a load whilst packing the house, and give the rest away…

          6. I’ll stick to sherry….HIC!

            Oddly enough, sherry came up in a crossword ….of course I got it right away!

          10. I disagree totally. Really dislike the stuff. Too much oak, and it all tastes the same.

          2. Hey, it’s only 4 pm, hold the fort for another hour…..then I’ll drop anchor and open the bottle!!!

          3. Mine is pain relief right now and it is just gone 9 here. I will be with you in spirit;-)

  85. Things can only get Bitter!

    European NatGas Soars 70% In Week Amid Freeport Delays And Russian Cuts
    THURSDAY, JUN 16, 2022 – 03:26 PM
    A combination of factors this week and last have put a massive squeeze on crucial natural gas flows to Europe, sending prices sky-high.

    Dutch front-month NatGas futures, the European benchmark, jumped as much as 24% Thursday morning, adding to the 46% increase this week and last. Flow reductions began last Wednesday when an explosion rocked the Freeport LNG Terminal in Quintana, Texas. Most LNG exports from that facility end up in Europe as the continent weens off Russian supplies.

    More bad news to come later in the year….here

    https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/european-natgas-soars-70-week-amid-freeport-explosion-and-russian-cuts

    1. Beats me, sweetie ! … x
      I had an effing Five
      Wordle 362 5/6

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

    2. #metoo!

      Wordle 362 4/6

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

    3. I thought it was quite easy today
      Wordle 362 3/6

      ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Yesterday ranked in the top 4000 out of 600,000+ entrants and that includes the computer entrants

  88. Mr Douche Baig.

    All four men died as a result of multiple injuries and fatal burns when the car was crushed and caught fire upon landing in a nearby field.

    An inquest today was told that the car is thought to have been travelling at up to 107mph at the time of the crash, while Mr Baig was found to be over the drink drive limit.

    She said: ‘Mr Baig was engaging in horseplay and messing around with Mr Iqbal when he accidentally slapped another individual and they were asked to leave.’

    She said Mr Baig was involved in a tussle with door staff. As he walked to his car he seemed very unsteady on his feet, she said.

    You should read the eulogies of the guy who killed three mates. All the usual guff.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10923387/Drink-driver-three-passengers-burned-death-BMW-fireball-crash-inquest-hears.html

    2. Curious that such an apparently saintly figure would attempt to drive while over the limit and then go at up to 107 mph.

  89. I had my fourth jab this afternoon . Moderna .

    Staff say we will also have an Autumn jab .. this thing is not going away, and there are areas here that are full of it , thanks to the tourist industry .

      1. My husband had his over a week ago and I said no thanks .

        Conversations got a bit heated re my bout of Covid in March which lingered for weeks and required antibiotics and gawd knows what .

        What ever happens now ,well, I am now shrugging my shoulders

    2. I had another big red spot come up on my arm this afternoon. No way I am having any more. But you must decide what is best for you.

    4. You’ve had Covid though, haven’t you, Belle? I’m sure that gives you a good immunity to future infections.

      1. I hope you’re right …Mo
        I believe I had Covid, although I thought it was just seasonal flu. However soon after the Covid
        bug hit….
        Hopefully I built up my own immune system….
        not sure how long it lasts?

        1. I’m certainly not one to say what we should all do. I had a damned ‘booster’ just so I could go on the boys fishing trip to the Canaries.

        2. There are many out there who think ‘covid’ is flu and colds rebranded. Coronavirus is after all a generic winter virus along with adenovirus and rhinovirus. The ONS shows that the death rate for 2020 was slightly down on average. Not what you would expect in a so-called ‘pandemic’ year. The incidence of cv increased during 2021 due to ‘vaccination’, again not what one would expect in a vaccinated population. It seems the ‘vaccine’ wipes out natural immunity.

          Pfizer wanted to keep the data hidden on the ‘vaccine’ for 75 years. The US Supreme Court demanded it be published. From the trial of 44,000 people, 1220-ish died, 42,000 had adverse effects. 270 women during the trial became pregnant…. most of that data does not appear, it went AWOL, but it seems there was one live birth only out of 30-ish remaining within the data. There is a big question mark hanging over its effect on fertility. Usually if just one person dies on a trial then the ‘vaccine’ is pulled.

          Pfizer claimed 95% effectiveness. This turned out to be 12% for 7 days, thereafter reduced to 0.84% for a few weeks. It is not surprising that Pfizer wanted to keep this information under wraps until an entire generation had passed from birth to death. ModeRNA has never before brought a vaccine to the market.

          There has been no long term testing, no testing on how both these ‘vaccines’ interact with drugs people may be taking nor its effect on the illnesses suffered, nor its effect on the elderly. Test subjects were limited to a cut-off at 55 years.

          The 64 thousand dollar question is….. what is this all about.

        3. I don’t think we have had any form of “covid”, neither have we had flu or colds. Apart from our other somewhat serious ailments, all we have had is an occasional tummy bug- early this week for e.g.

        4. I think the bug I had (a heavy cold-type bug) in January 2020 was probably covid. I haven’t been ill at all since then.

          1. Similar here. I had a weird flu-like illness spring 2020 after a conference at the airport, bad enough I went to the doctor, but survived anyway.
            After that, and no vax, nowt. Plenty vitamin D just to be sure, though.

          1. Especially as they’re still using the spike protein from the original strain of covid, which is long gone.

          3. Not being a chemist, I can’t give you the scientific explanation. However, when the first tier of MRNA vaccines were tested on cats/ferrets some time ago, everything was ok until they met the virus in the wild. The cats/ferrets died, all of them. When this ‘vaccine’ was developed, they missed out the animal testing, to get it through under ’emergency circumstances – if the animals had died it would have had to have been abandoned.

            This switching off of the immune system would explain why people are catching ‘covid’ once they have had the vax, especially in the two weeks after injection when the immune system is switched off and before the vaccine’s synthetic system switches on. Check out Dr Mike Yeadon, former CEO of Pfizer, Dr Bhakdi, Reiner Fuellmich, Dr Naomi Wolfe for much more detailed information. Not all the batches of ‘vaccine’ are identical, it has been established that there are at least three different ‘mixes’ being used.

          1. I’ve read alot of stuff but it does seem that the jabs make the natural immune system less robust. Hence the multi-jabbed getting infected.

    6. All my jabs have been Pfizer with no ill effects thankfully. Hope you feel better soon.

    7. How many are you prepared to have Belle?
      Surely it can’t be good for you or your body to be filled with these chemicals.

    10. I’m sorry you felt you needed to take another of these things. I’m convinced they cause more harm than good.

    11. No Belle! There are people who have tested positive. Our daughters parents in law have had every vax and booster going, and yet surprise surprise – they have covid – again! Wonderful things these ‘vaccinations’ which don’t prevent the disease!
      Sorry you felt pressured to have yet another dose.

      1. Unfortunately Sue it is easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled.
        No disrespect to Belle.

        1. My crazed teacher friend became somewhere between hysterical and furious when I made that sort of comment, backed up by evidence.
          I think I lost a friend there, and that hurt. Still does – and I have precious few friends (still alive) that I can afford to lose any. But, she doesn’t communicate any more. The hurt comes from that, had there been no SWMBO, I would have hoped to marry the lady.

          1. Our children think I’m mad (conspiracy theorist!) and my sister and several friends think the same. So we don’t discuss it now! Sorry you’ve got to that stage.

          3. I was upset that she has become so, well, wet. She was a ball-breaker, a real role model for girls getting what they wanted, ex-Military lass, not afraid of anything, capable… then the scamdemic, and she turned into a blubbering pile of fear.
            But – I am really upset about the development. That hurt – a lot.

          4. Oddly, I have been watching the latest episode of The Highwire. The leading guest this week is Mattias Desmet, Professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University. He is a leading expert on Mass Formation, usually referred to as Mass Formation Psychosis, the latter term he does not use. His explanation of how people change under MF fits with your experience of your friend. I have experienced a little hostility and exclusion over my stance on inoculation and masking. As time has worn on most have accepted my decision: perhaps they have discovered some truth but are loth to admit to it.

          5. That’s an interesting point you make, Korky.
            I wondered whether it was fear for herself that led to this – my opinions unacceptable, because what would that mean for her? Under threat from clotting.

          6. My elder son has had no jabs, the younger one had his – but he probably wouldn’t have been able to come from Switzerland if he hadn’t had those before Christmas. I haven’t asked im if he had the booster.

        2. Ah! Good old Mark Twain! I have used the quote a number of times recently!
          I think Belle is brave! As I said to her – the stuff doesn’t work – whatever it is!

          1. All those I know who had covid have been multiply vaxxes.
            Believe I had it right at the beginning, before it became fashionable, and have never been vaxxed.

          3. Friend Dianne was on a HF holiday over New Year 2000, and went down with ‘the worst flu ever’. I went to her new place mid-Jan to build a truckload of Ikea furniture. Early Feb I had a week with a moist, rather than runny, nose. Rather like a helthy dog. But in that month, I also had an episode whereI woke around 3 am, feeling tight around the chest, and short of breath. So I got up, made a cup of tea, and it went away. Fast forward a few days, and my usual porridge and tea didn’t taste of anything. By lunchtime, senses were restored.

            It was only some months later that lack of smell/taste were proposed as Covid-related.

            Bottom line is that – despite being diabetic, so presumably at risk – I’ve had not so much as a sniffle.

            I took my AZ jabs, with some reluctance, because it looked for a while that I’d never be allowed in a pub again without a vaccine passport. The bursitis of the left elbow eventually wore off. The Ulnar Nerve Palsy after the 2nd jab is prolly permanent. I’m grateful that the feeling in my right hand has returned to the extent that I can play the organ again. But 4th and 5th fingers are still somewhat numb…

    12. With all due respect, didn’t the last three work ? surely that’s like feeding the fire and hoping it will go out.

    13. Are you taking vitamin D3 min 5,000 international units. That will boost you immune system and it’s a natural product. vw and I have been taking it for about 30 months. I had blood test recently and asked for a Vitamin D test. The minimum level is 50 and the upper level 209 according to my doctor. She was delighted with my result and told me to carry on taking it.
      Please consider it for you and your husband. We buy 1000 for £23. No big profit for big pharma.

      1. We’ve been taking 4,000 iu vit D3 for the last two winters – taking a break for the summer as we’re getting some natural sunshine exposure. We’ll start again in September or October. Vit C as well 1000 mg. I’m sure it’s keeping us well, much better than any jabs. Plus we have a good diet.

        The only reason I had the two AZ jabs was the trip I had booked. I’m not having any boosters.

        1. I think we’re very similar. We don’t take Vit C as we eat a lot of fruit.
          I really can’t understand people happily taking untested chemicals but refusing natural products.

        2. Yo, Jools. Hopefully, you had no adverse reaction to the AZ jabs. I wish I could say the same, but I’m better off than our Rector’s wife, who has similar, but worse, issues, compared to my Ulnar Nerve Palsy. At least, I’ve regained some feeling in my right hand, and I think this is as good as it gets.

          I’ve been taking 3000 iU Vit D3 tablets since ealy 2020. And I seem to have survived…

          1. Not sure if it caused the stiff shoulder when I had the second one – it was painful especially when changing gear in the car. But it’s now worn off some time ago and I had no other reactions.

            You probably count as ‘vulnerable’ as well. OH was pressured into having the winter booster, but he’s declined the latest one.

          2. Fairy nuff. I also take their Vit B12, based on a post by Paul a couple of years ago. Don’t know whether they help, but they don’t seem to do any harm…

          3. I think they’ve been keeping us well. I’ve certainly not had any sort of illness since January 2020 and that was nothing much, covid or not – I’ve had far worse cold-type bugs than that.

    14. Good evening Maggiebelle

      Our personal experience tells us that those who have been jabbed several times suffer far worse than the unjabbed if they catch Covid. As you know Caroline and I are unjabbed and we had Covid in February – Caroline had it so mildly she only knew she had it when I got it and we were both tested. I had a temperature, went to bed for a day and slept. The next day I was fine.

      Yes, we were lucky but Vitamin D, Vitamin C and zinc seem to have served us very well.

  90. We are sacrificing our children on the altar of a brutal, far-Left ideology

    The medical profession is crumbling in response to radical transgender activists

    JORDAN PETERSON

    There is good evidence that many ancient societies sacrificed children to their gods. Parents in ancient Phoenician colonies in Carthage, Sicily, Sardinia and Malta slew their offspring prior to cremating them, hoping that the gods would hear their voices and bless them.

    We are rightly appalled by this, though sometimes I wonder whether we understand child sacrifice far more than we’d like to admit.

    I saw a video the other day featuring an American surgeon bragging that he had performed more than 3,000 double mastectomies on young women who had paid for gender reassignment, individuals confused – one might say encouraged – by those who profit from it into believing that their adolescent emotional trials can be ‘cured’, and happiness reign forever, if they subject themselves to this brutal practice.

    And it is brutal – a process that often includes not only the aforementioned mastectomies but other appalling surgical processes: orchiectomy (that’s castration, in blunter language), the removal of the uterus, the demolition of the musculature of the forearm to make what is not a penis but must be referred to as such – all of that.

    For someone purporting to be a physician to perform this on children, to me at least, seems like something worthy of a prison sentence.

    Whatever happened to the doctrine expressed by the ancient language as primum non nocere – first, do no harm?

    The Hippocratic Oath has been replaced by a delusion: a belief that can be summarised as ‘by blocking the puberty of children, and then surgically altering them, we are only restoring what is theirs by right. A child’s feelings are the final arbiters of their reproductive destiny, and any attempt to contest their gender identity risks increasing their proclivity for suicide’.

    Lies. Lies. Lies. Then butchery.

    Changing standards

    Psychologists – those in my own personal field of medicine – have also surrendered to this groupthink. The American Psychological Association’s ‘Task Force on Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People (TGNC)’ insists that psychologists and other professional counsellors offer “trans-affirmative” care, starting with such niceties as displaying “TGNC-affirmative resources in waiting areas”. Practitioners are also asked to examine “how their language (e.g. use of incorrect pronouns and names) may reinforce the gender binary in overt or subtle and unintentional ways”.

    These guidelines first read like a manual of indoctrination written by Marxist ideologues, and second like a document designed to undermine and destroy the practice of therapy itself.

    But at an alarming rate these ‘guidelines’ have transformed themselves into punitive laws governing what a psychologist or counsellor may say and think in relation to their clients.

    Let me make myself perfectly clear: speaking as a professional, whether in America, Britain, or anywhere, it is not the place of a therapist to “affirm” or, conversely, to deny, the “identity” of anyone whom they take into their care. People come to see a therapist, often after long and painful deliberation, because they are suffering, confused, or both. The job of that therapist is to listen, to question, and proceed with due caution, neither providing cheap advice (and thereby stealing their client’s successes or heaping failure upon them) nor assuming special knowledge of the proper outcome for a given individual.

    There is simply no way that I would ever tell an 18-year old woman that she is absolutely correct if sometimes she feels more masculine than feminine (however that feeling might emerge), and that if she feels that surgery is the answer then recommend hormones that day. I would instead spend many weeks, perhaps even months or years, listening to her unwrap her story, using caution as my watchword, and help her come to some thorough and well-developed understanding of both her autobiographical history and her destiny.

    That is not “affirmation” and neither is it “denial.” How could I possibly dare to do either when someone has come to me because they are mixed up and desperate – a state of twinned experience indicating a profound confusion about identity itself?

    Radical new guidelines

    I am focusing on the American Psychological Association (APA) because it is the body charged with establishing the norms and ideals for clinical practice in the most populous democracy on Earth – principles that will, and are, spreading around the West more broadly, including in Britain. Some of their ‘guidelines’ are appalling enough to deserve dissection:

    “Guideline 1. Psychologists understand that gender is a nonbinary construct that allows for a range of gender identities and that a person’s gender identity may not align with sex assigned at birth.”

    I don’t understand this radical postmodern definition of gender, one that rests on a person’s “deeply felt” or “inherent sense” of being one sex over another, regardless of biology.

    Psychologically it is indisputably the case that a non-trivial proportion of males have a feminine temperament (which essentially means that they experience higher levels of negative emotions such as anxiety and the analogs of pain – grief, frustration, disappointment, depression) and are more agreeable (compassionate/polite) than typical males, and equally true that a non-trivial proportion of females have a masculine temperament. But this does not change how, objectively, professionals should measure a person’s gender.

    Psychologists once cared if measurement followed standard practices of validity and reliability. Try reading, for example, a document published by the APA itself in 2014, where you will learn that a psychologist worth their [sic] salt is obliged to utilise “constructs” (i.e. terms such as “gender”) in a technically appropriate manner. This means, at the very least, that fundamental attributes must be measurable and measured properly.

    But all that goes out the window when we are discussing the magic of “gender” now, which is entirely subjectively defined, even though that insistence indubitably contravenes the earlier standards. But feelings über alles, folks. And it’s no joke. Particularly if you’re 15, and have undergone surgery that makes you incapable of reproducing, often to foster someone else’s sense of moral superiority or sense of self-attributed “compassion”– a word that increasingly makes me shudder when I encounter it.

    New doctrines

    Psychologists are also now adopting the simple-minded and anything-but-revolutionary doctrine of “intersectionality” without question. And what is that doctrine? Nothing more than the claim that human beings are characterised by identities that span multiple dimensions. Any given person has a race, ethnicity, sex, temperament (five dimensions there alone), intelligence level, etc. We’ve known that forever. It’s only become a hot cultural item since fools noted the obvious fact that minority status might be additive or multiplicative. I hate to even point that out given that anyone with any sense whatsoever also knew, without any statistical training, that it was possible to be of Latino extraction, say (or even ‘LatinX’, to use that absurd, demeaning and patronising term) and female simultaneously.

    One cannot question this, however, without fear of being ostracised by one’s colleagues. Note the chilling wording of Guideline 7:

    “Psychologists understand the need to promote social change that reduces the negative effects of stigma on the health and well-being of TGNC people.”

    In summary: if you’re not an activist (and one of our activists) then you better be watching over your shoulder.

    So what should govern my behaviour as a therapist, and your expectations as a client? The answer to that is: whatever the activists deem a priority at their whim. And remember that in court, folks.

    Active malevolence

    I’m increasingly ashamed to be a clinical psychologist given the utter cowardice, spinelessness and apathy that characterises many colleagues and even more so my professional associations. At least in 20 years when we all come to regret this terrible social experiment I will be able to say “I said no when they all came to insist that we participate in the sacrifice of our children.” Other countries, and Britain in particular, must not make the same mistakes as in the US and elsewhere.

    I cannot consent to what we are doing. I cannot abide by what have become the doctrines of my discipline. I believe that the acts of the medical ‘professional’ rushing to disfigure, sterilise, and harm young people with what are clearly ill-advised, dangerous, experimental procedures cross the line from ‘do no harm’ to outright harm.

    Only if we bury our heads in the sand will sterility, impaired or absent sexual function, complex reactions to poorly understood hormones, expense – and, intermingled with all that, misery and confusion – continue for countless young people. We must address the threat posed to the integrity of the entire education system as indoctrination into the same philosophy that spawned this surgical enterprise and the APA ‘guidelines’ grows. It threatens general public trust that our peace and prosperity depends upon.

    And, by the way: it will definitely be the case that a disproportionate number of children “freed” from their gender confusion would have grown up to be physically intact and fully functional gay adults. Need I point out that this unpalatable fact makes a mockery of any claim that the extended alphabet world of the LGBTQ+ coterie constitutes a homogeneous and unified “community.”

    We have crossed the line from ideological possession to active malevolence – and we are multiplying our sin (there’s an intersection for you) by attributing our appalling actions to “compassion”. Heaven help us. Truly.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/16/sacrificing-children-altar-brutal-far-left-ideology/

      2. 353248+ up ticks,

        S, a shortage we will never suffer ALL the time the lab/lib/con coalition member / voters have rear exits.

          1. 353248+ up ticks,
            S,
            Sadly you could be right, but that has got to be tried first, that’s for sure.

            Jaw ,jaw, has always been the way to go……. at first.

    2. Oh dear I can’t be bothered to read all of that. I’m currently sitting on one of our patios after dinner and two glass of, enjoying the bird song and the cool evening air.
      But strangley enough people who have private medical insurance don’t seem to have to wait so long for an appointment.
      Suggesting there are still plenty of doctors but many have taken extra curricular employment. And remember that the private patients are actually paying twice for what they get.

      1. Jordan Peterson is writing about the madness of sex changes, not NHS waiting lists!

        1. I like Jordan because he is fearless in pointing out the LBQTie Emperors have no clothes and they look absolutely stupid bollock naked

      2. Down voted you because actually we all need to care about the Woke virus.

        1. It’s not just Woke – it’s criminal damage being done to impressionable young people.

    1. I don’t suppose the thick, gobby trollop has anything to say about supply and demand.

    2. Congrats on the appointment. The treatment date, however, is most likely going to need a diary for 2023/24.

  92. English language upholds ‘white superiority’, academics told

    Open University’s ‘anti-racist’ staff training course criticised as a ‘sad reflection of woke brainwashing’

    By Craig Simpson • 15 June 2022 • 6:28pm

    The English language upholds “white superiority”, an Open University training course has informed academics. The “anti-racist” training programme titled Union Black teaches university staff that the idea of “white hegemony” has been “covertly weaved” into people’s minds. This sense of superiority is ingrained in the “cultural psychology of the English language”, according to course material that has now been studied by academics at almost 100 UK universities, which argues that white Europeans have most “successfully” imposed racist ideas.

    Material in a module titled “What is whiteness?” states: “Along with religion, politics, laws and customs, white superiority is embedded in the linguistic and cultural psychology of the English language. “Consequently, given the global reach of the English language, the assumption of white hegemony has been covertly weaved into the consciousness of white people, black people and people of colour.”

    This programme of study was drawn up by a group of Open University diversity experts, backed by a £500,000 investment from Santander, and has been taken up by universities including Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, and Imperial College London.

    The material does not offer direct advice on how to address “white hegemony” upheld by the English language, but calls on university staff taking the training programme to address unconscious biases which all people are either “unaware of” or “in denial about”.

    White dominance a ‘political problem’

    The course launched in 2021 argues that the problem of white dominance is not only linguistic but political, stating: “Historically, British politics has maintained white hegemony, making immigration an existential threat to white Britons.”

    It adds the debated claim that: “In 1955, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, won a general election with a ‘Keep England White’ theme.”

    What “whiteness” is, the Open University course defines as “the systemic and structural domination and oppression of ‘non-white’ peoples”, informing students that “‘white’ people only exist in opposition to ‘black’ people, both of which are socially constructed ideologies”. Course material claims that the majority group experiencing “reverse racism” from the ministry group is a “mythical” idea – as groups need power to be racist – further arguing that “some people have been improperly educated about what racism truly means”.

    A module on the course titled “Who can be racist?” suggests that white European people have been the most successful in this regard. It states: “A dispassionate analysis regarding who can be racist suggests that no other ethnic or so-called racial group has so successfully ideologically and economically imposed racialised ideas and practices on the collective psyche of their own and other groups comparative to white Europeans.”

    Claims are ‘characteristically woke’

    The Open University course’s claims about race and the English language have been branded “ignorant” by Dr Zareer Masani, historian of the British Empire, who said: “It is characteristically woke, and it’s an alarming sign of how wokedom is taking over academia. It’s unhistorical, it’s ignorant, and it’s illiterate.”

    He added: “This is a sad reflection of woke brainwashing of our future academics. It betrays abysmal ignorance of how any language evolves, assimilating diverse influences along the way. It completely ignores non-white contribution to the English language. It totally dismisses the role of people ranging from Achebe to Rushdie who have enriched English by writing in English.”

    Santander has said the Union Black course was conceived in response to a report highlighting the racial inequality in higher education, and that feedback has been positive.

    A spokesman for the Open University said: “We are proud to have worked together with Santander on developing this course which is aimed at increasing awareness of racism and building allyship to support inclusion. Feedback from participants on the course has been extremely positive, and we are recommending it to staff and students across all UK universities.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/15/english-language-upholds-white-superiority-open-university-tells

      1. Yes i agree; we are (whether they like it or not) a “White”society so why shouldn’t our society reflect this? These people are sick – literally

    2. The OU was established by a White politician therefore it should be shut down immediately!

    4. English language upholds “white superiority”.
      Svenska upprätthåller “vit överlägsenhet”.
      La langue francaise défend la « supériorité blanche ».
      Deutsche Sprache bestätigt „weiße Überlegenheit“.
      La lingua italiano sostiene la “superiorità bianca”.
      El idioma espanol defiende la ‘superioridad blanca’.
      Lugha ya Kiswahili inashikilia ‘ubora wa watu weusi’.

  93. English language upholds ‘white superiority’, academics told

    Open University’s ‘anti-racist’ staff training course criticised as a ‘sad reflection of woke brainwashing’

    By Craig Simpson • 15 June 2022 • 6:28pm

    The English language upholds “white superiority”, an Open University training course has informed academics. The “anti-racist” training programme titled Union Black teaches university staff that the idea of “white hegemony” has been “covertly weaved” into people’s minds. This sense of superiority is ingrained in the “cultural psychology of the English language”, according to course material that has now been studied by academics at almost 100 UK universities, which argues that white Europeans have most “successfully” imposed racist ideas.

    Material in a module titled “What is whiteness?” states: “Along with religion, politics, laws and customs, white superiority is embedded in the linguistic and cultural psychology of the English language. “Consequently, given the global reach of the English language, the assumption of white hegemony has been covertly weaved into the consciousness of white people, black people and people of colour.”

    This programme of study was drawn up by a group of Open University diversity experts, backed by a £500,000 investment from Santander, and has been taken up by universities including Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, and Imperial College London.

    The material does not offer direct advice on how to address “white hegemony” upheld by the English language, but calls on university staff taking the training programme to address unconscious biases which all people are either “unaware of” or “in denial about”.

    White dominance a ‘political problem’

    The course launched in 2021 argues that the problem of white dominance is not only linguistic but political, stating: “Historically, British politics has maintained white hegemony, making immigration an existential threat to white Britons.”

    It adds the debated claim that: “In 1955, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, won a general election with a ‘Keep England White’ theme.”

    What “whiteness” is, the Open University course defines as “the systemic and structural domination and oppression of ‘non-white’ peoples”, informing students that “‘white’ people only exist in opposition to ‘black’ people, both of which are socially constructed ideologies”. Course material claims that the majority group experiencing “reverse racism” from the ministry group is a “mythical” idea – as groups need power to be racist – further arguing that “some people have been improperly educated about what racism truly means”.

    A module on the course titled “Who can be racist?” suggests that white European people have been the most successful in this regard. It states: “A dispassionate analysis regarding who can be racist suggests that no other ethnic or so-called racial group has so successfully ideologically and economically imposed racialised ideas and practices on the collective psyche of their own and other groups comparative to white Europeans.”

    Claims are ‘characteristically woke’

    The Open University course’s claims about race and the English language have been branded “ignorant” by Dr Zareer Masani, historian of the British Empire, who said: “It is characteristically woke, and it’s an alarming sign of how wokedom is taking over academia. It’s unhistorical, it’s ignorant, and it’s illiterate.”

    He added: “This is a sad reflection of woke brainwashing of our future academics. It betrays abysmal ignorance of how any language evolves, assimilating diverse influences along the way. It completely ignores non-white contribution to the English language. It totally dismisses the role of people ranging from Achebe to Rushdie who have enriched English by writing in English.”

    Santander has said the Union Black course was conceived in response to a report highlighting the racial inequality in higher education, and that feedback has been positive.

    A spokesman for the Open University said: “We are proud to have worked together with Santander on developing this course which is aimed at increasing awareness of racism and building allyship to support inclusion. Feedback from participants on the course has been extremely positive, and we are recommending it to staff and students across all UK universities.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/15/english-language-upholds-white-superiority-open-university-tells

  94. This evening we’ve been treated to a most wonderful display of flying by the swifts – swooping and whirling round the house while we had our dinner. We eat in the conservatory, so it’s a natural hide. Ther were seven or eiight flying around the house, and. we have a new swift which has moved into box 6 and is still in there. We don’t know if it has a mate, yet. There are swifts in box 3 and 5. brooding their chicks.

    Husband is still outside now, with his bat detecctor, watching the last few swifts, as it gets dark, and the bats come out.

    1. Wonderful aren’t they? I took the two dogs for a romp in the rewilded meadow and, because it’s warm, still and a bit thundery the swifts were at knee height! Absolute mastery of their flying skills, passing so close to the tops of the flowers and insects. At least a dozen of them. And all this less than 100 yards from the motorway! It has been so well screened with varied woodland – larch, spruce, hazel, birch, beech and sycamore, plus hawthorn and dog rose. Lots of nesting and feeding birds. It made me very happy!

      1. Another one has moved into box 14! We’re watching it now on the camera. All the hard work that OH put in last year and early this year, while the scaffolding was up, is paying off now. This box goes into our loft space.

  95. Husband just said that it’s only 4 more sleeps until my Frankenstein visit. Am going to bed now…worn out.
    Was lovely sitting outside today. Isn’t England beautiful when the weather is nice?
    See Y’all tomorrow.

      1. Thank you. Waiting for MH to get out the downstairs loo so I can go and then head upstairs.

    1. Not many families in that boat. These young men fleeing danger have left heir families behind.

    1. The Gov wombles are worse than you ever thought they could be. Right wing terrorists, yeah, of course. Any chance of stopping an invasion of potential islamic terrorists. Nope, thought not, just give them benefits and a hotel and permission to stay.

  101. ‘They’re being cooked’: baby swifts die leaving nests as heatwave hits Spain
    Ecologists raise concern over chicks’ attempts to escape high temperatures during one of earliest heatwaves on record

    Hundreds of baby swifts in southern Spain have died after leaving their nests prematurely, in what ecologists described as an attempt to escape the extreme temperatures during one of the country’s earliest heatwaves on record.

    Concerns were raised for the protected species late last week after residents in Seville and Córdoba noticed dozens of recently hatched birds scattered across sidewalks.

    “You would walk down the street and there would be 100 chicks, lying at the foot of a building, some dying and some barely alive,” said the biologist Elena Moreno Portillo of Ecourbe, a Seville-based association dedicated to conservation in urban areas.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/16/spain-heatwave-baby-swifts-die-leaving-nest?CMP=share_btn_tw

    1. Goodnight Elsie

      I have just enjoyed the first QT for ages … thoroughly entertaining , and of course , loads of sense and sensibiliyt from the people of Newcastle

      1. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman) that Jane Austen was in the audience? Lol.

    1. Great reset. We aren’t supposed to eat any animal products any more. Like XR, the police will be holding their coats while they bully the public.

Comments are closed.