Thursday 26 September: Sir Keir Starmer’s latest excuses for accepting freebies don’t add up

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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677 thoughts on “Thursday 26 September: Sir Keir Starmer’s latest excuses for accepting freebies don’t add up”

  2. Good morning, chums and Geoff.

    Wordle 1,195 3/6

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    1. There's something wrong with that cartoon; there's a woman sitting next to the ayatollah on the front row – he'd have made sure she was in the women's place (at the back).

    1. Ashlea Simon.. she's heading for a hate crime trial.

      Co-Leader of Britain First, the UK’s fastest growing patriotic and nationalist political party:
      @BFirstParty
      Registered with the Electoral Commission.

    2. No previous administration in the past 1,000 years (up to 1990) would send them back. They would be treated as insurgent invaders — and a threat to the realm — and summarily dealt with accordingly.

  9. University fired professor who spoke out against trans surgery for children

    Judge rules decision to dismiss Dr Allan Josephson violated his right to free speech

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/en-us/news/2024/09/25/TELEMMGLPICT000395497366_17272942715610_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq5joAdfxTo02wh5rsO2Oce6u3ZX1rwBdDhewlVpbHZ_8.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Allan Josephson is an award-winning academic in child and adolescent psychiatry, but the incident ended his 40-year career Alliance Defending Freedom

    Cameron Henderson
    25 September 2024 9:02pm

    A university fired a professor of child psychology for expressing the view that young people should not be given hormone-altering drugs and transgender surgeries.

    Dr Allan Josephson, formerly division chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Louisville claims he was harassed, demoted and eventually fired in 2017 after making the comments at an outside event.

    A judge has now ruled that Dr Josephson’s right to free speech was violated.

    The professor’s lawyer said the decision “affirmed that basic truth” that “public universities have no business punishing professors” for their views.

    In autumn 2017, award-winning Dr Josephson, who specialises in child and adolescent psychiatry, took part in a Heritage Foundation panel in his own time to discuss treatments for young people who think that they may be transgender.

    Childhood confusion
    At the event, he said that childhood gender dysphoria was a social-cultural psychological phenomenon that cannot be fully treated with drugs and surgery.

    Dr Josephson said medical staff should instead explore and address what causes children’s confusion over their gender identity.

    Addressing the link between gender dysphoria and mental health problems, Dr Josephson said that, while parents should “affirm” and “love” a child who identifies as the opposite sex, they should not allow medical transition.

    “You don’t affirm a bad idea,” Dr Josephson said.

    Court documents told how the professor had developed concerns about doctors rushing to prescribe puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones as far back as 2014.

    Prior to losing his job at the university, he had served as an expert witness in several cases, in which he outlined that children are not equipped to make far-reaching life decisions that pose medical consequences they cannot fully appreciate until adulthood, and that gender dysphoria usually subsides by late adolescence.

    When Dr Josephson informed his superiors of this work, he was allowed to pursue it.

    Yet a week after the Heritage Foundation event, Louisville’s LGBT centre complained to the university, claiming Dr Josephson’s comments “might be violating the ethical standards of psychiatry”, according to court documents.

    University of Louisville
    Dr Josephson had led Louisville’s division of child and adult psychiatry since 2003 iStock Unreleased
    Dr Toni Ganzel, the School of Medicine’s dean at the time, replied by saying that Dr Josephson’s view “doesn’t reflect the culture we are trying so hard to promote”.

    Following further complaints from colleagues in the ensuing weeks, university officials responded by demoting him to the role of a junior faculty member.

    Over the next year, Dr Josephson was ostracised, stripped of teaching duties, and subjected to other forms of hostility, he told the court.

    His contract was terminated in February 2019, ending his 40-year career.

    The professor, who had led Louisville’s division of child and adult psychiatry since 2003, sued the school, alleging his first and fourteenth amendment rights were violated by the defendants’ retaliating against him for expressing his views on gender dysphoria.

    A federal district court ruled in his favour in March 2023. This decision was affirmed by the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit earlier this month, which ruled that university officials will now stand trial.

    Protected speech
    “Viewing the evidence in the light most favourable to Josephson, as we must, Josephson has shown that he engaged in protected speech when he spoke as part of the Heritage Foundation panel,” the court wrote in its opinion. “Defendants should have known that Josephson’s speech was protected and that retaliating against Josephson for his speech would violate his First Amendment rights.”

    Travis Barham, a senior counsel from Alliance Defending Freedom who represented Dr Josephson, said: “Dr Josephson had a long and distinguished career at the University of Louisville, leading and rebuilding its child psychiatry program. On his own time, he spoke about treatments for children struggling with their sex, and the university punished him for expressing his opinion.

    “That’s exactly what the First Amendment prohibits, and when public universities disregard our nation’s highest law, they must be held accountable. We look forward to continuing to protect Dr Josephson’s clearly established right to free speech and reminding all public universities that they are marketplaces of ideas.”

    The University of Louisville was approached for comment.

  10. UK tells Putin: You’re a slave-owning mafia boss. 25 September 2024.

    “Your invasion is in your own interests,” he said. “Yours alone. To expand your mafia state into a mafia empire. An empire built on corruption.”

    He added, “Mr President, I speak not only as a Briton, as a Londoner, and as a foreign secretary.

    “But I say to the Russian representative, on his phone as I speak, that I stand here also as a Black man whose ancestors were taken in chains from Africa, at the barrel of a gun to be enslaved, whose ancestors rose up and fought in a great rebellion of the enslaved.

    “Imperialism: I know it when I see it. And I will call it out for what it is,” Lammy said.

    Obsessed much? His ancestors were purchased from the locals. His Great Great Grandmother went to Guyana from India as an indentured servant. The Great Rebellion lasted two days.

    Lammy has a self-serving history. Pretty much all of it is the product of like sophistry. His education is particularly suspect, his Wikipedia entry suffering from the same malady.

    https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-vladimir-putin-david-lammy-diplomacy-slave-mafia-state/

    4. The Russian was probably using his phone to video Lammy in case other Russians couldn't believe that the British would actually let an idiot like Lammy represent them??

    5. Lammy is beyond parody. If someone gave him a revolver with one empty chamber and told him to play Russian roulette for a tenner he would complain about the missing round, Now where did I put that old Smith & Wesson?

    1. When the Government does something really stupid, it can't even get THAT right. How can they muck up stupid?

  12. Labour’s non-dom plan could raise no extra funds, officials fear

    Cost of super-rich leaving UK may exceed money raked in by new system, say Treasury source

    Sir Keir Starmer's non-dom plans were originally predicted to bring in £3.2bn a year

    Tim Sigsworth
    25 September 2024 10:22pm

    Officials believe that Sir Keir Starmer’s crackdown on non-doms could reduce tax revenues rather than raise them, it has been reported.

    According to The Guardian, treasury sources are worried that new estimates could suggest the money raised may be exceeded by the costs of super-rich individuals leaving Britain.

    Currently, non-doms can avoid paying tax on overseas income and gains for up to 15 years.

    But from April 2025, this system will be scrapped and replaced by a less generous residence-based regime that only allows wealthy foreigners to claim the tax break for four years.

    The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) originally forecast that scrapping the tax status could raise about £3.2 billion a year.

    At the time, the watchdog admitted that this estimate was highly uncertain because it was difficult to predict how non-doms would react to the proposals.

    But senior government sources have told The Guardian they fear that new estimates set to be released by the OBR will reveal that the policy is predicted to raise no extra tax.

    A Treasury source told the newspaper that ministers would listen to what the OBR said on tax and would prioritise the raising of greater revenues.

    It was reported that the Chancellor is understood to be minded to press ahead with the tax changes at next month’s Budget and has publicly made a moral case in favour of the wealthy making a greater contribution.

    If correct, the new forecasts would leave a £1 billion hole in the Government’s spending plans for schools and hospitals.

    Labour had previously said it would spend £1 billion raised through the policy on universal school breakfast clubs and more hospital and dental appointments.

    But its plans could be scuppered if the super-rich instead limit the amount of time they spend in Britain.

    Earlier this month, Oxford Economics forecast that Britain’s non-dom population could fall by 32 per cent because of Labour’s reforms and that tax revenue could subsequently drop by £0.9 billion in 2029-30 because fewer wealthy foreigners will be living in the country.

    The end of non-dom status was first announced by the Conservatives in March at the Spring Budget.

    The party claimed that the move, set to be rolled out in April next year, would raise £2.7 billion.

    Labour has proceeded with those plans and claims that closing loopholes in the Tories’ non-dom abolition plans would raise a further £2.6 billion over the course of this Parliament.

    Around 55,000 non-doms claim tax relief in Britain, according to HMRC.

    Non-doms only have to pay tax to the Treasury on the money they earn in Britain, meaning they are not taxed on earnings made overseas.

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

    M J A Church
    1 min ago
    Shall we start a list of all these tax changes that will reduce tax take ;
    Non doms,
    Vat on school fees ,
    CGT hike,
    Potentially removal of WFA.
    All these presented as tax raising are likely to end up as costing more.
    Dumb is a kind interpretation.
    Sectarian and vindictive is closer to the truth.

    Zaichik Blin
    8 hrs ago
    all the senior execs in my companies UK operation were US expats here with non-dom status, so paying UK tax on their earnings. The non-dom status being paid for (by the company) in order to protect their US assets from UK inheritance tax in the case of death.
    they have all now left, moving the UK operation to Italy and the UK operation has made redundant about 40 support staff as those roles will now be re-hired in Italy.
    I dont think this is uncommon. the companies treasury/financing is going to transition back to the US too, so a large chunk of the corp tax paid here will also cease.

    1. All so bloody predictable unless you suffer from the green eye.
      Yesterday I treated myself to clothes and books. A bit less dosh for the IHT kommissars to prise from my lifeless fingers.

      2. I am looking round to see what I need to replace and am about to buy anything I need. Stuff Starmer.

    2. It's easy to predict how the non-doms will behave. They will leave. They have enough money to live where they like, so why would they stay to have much of it stolen by the state?
      Look to Norway. Our richest citizens now live in Switzerland, due to the current Labour government increasing their tax bill, so ALL the money is gone – and that really hurts the councils, as the biggest council tax payers are absent now – to the extent of almost bakrupting the councils and forcing emergency budgets, inclusing school cuts.
      Good one, Labour.

      1. The Laffer Curve has become the gangrene of finance; it spreads and it rots, leaving amputations in its wake. We cannot even afford to defend the nation any longer. Perhaps we should be addressing why so much of our wealth is being directed to the super-rich and why so much of it is mobile?

        I would like to think a start might be to improve the quality of life, so that folk would want to live here, despite the taxes. They tried that in Sweden once, but then got swamped by those who want to live here because of the handouts to mobile foreigners and their extended families and religious and legal advisers eager for a better life.

      2. Some of us remember the brain drain of the seventies when all those who could voted with their feet thanks to Labour's onerous tax regime.

  13. Good Moaning, say all the frogs and ducks in N.E. Essex.

    This is an actual Telegraph letter:

    "SIR – I read with interest the plans to clear the NHS backlog by deploying “high intensity theatre lists” with two operating theatres running side by side (report, September 25).

    This was the norm when I started as a consultant surgeon in 1986, and I was able to perform more than 300 major cases a year. Then came the European Working Time Directive, diktats from the Royal Colleges, and complicity by management. There was no evidence that the Department of Health really understood the seismic changes that were occurring and the catastrophic impact on productivity. By retirement, I was only able to perform 120 major operations per year.

    I wish Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, luck in overcoming the well-established headwinds generated by “the blob”.

    Edward Smith FRCS
    London SW20"

    1. If they can only do about 50% of the previous workload, then they need double the staff. That'll bugger the wage bill royally – and, are there enough qualified people around to man up to that extent?
      They could always visit other countries and see how they deal with the peoblem. France has a good reputation, maybe learning from them could be a good plan? Somehow, just working more doesn't look like a good solution, and France is also subject to the same working time directive.

      2. This is effectively what they did as they massively increased the number of ‘consultants’. To achieve that increase but principally in order to harmonise with other EU countries, they reduced the length of postgraduate training required before becoming eligible to apply for a consultant job. Unfortunately, they retained the basic structure of hospital medical careers which should have been reformed in recognition of the shorter postgrad training requirements. In the 80s a typical situation would be that a doctor was appointed as an NHS consultant 12 years after graduating and with those years having been spent working anything from 50 to 100 hours per week depending on the job. They would then be one of 4-6 consultants in their department and provide on-call on top of a full working week. Today, the equivalent would be at least 25 consultants per department but the younger ones will have generally been appointed a mere 7 or 8 years after qualifying and with a maximum of about 48 hours per week worked during those years. Yet there is no distinction of status in the NHS between the newbie with very limited experience and the old salt with at least 5 times as much. A decent system would have tiers of consultants with scope for promotion to the more senior levels but the BMA has always opposed the concept of ‘junior consultants’. This seems ridiculous to me – everyone has to pretend that the 32 year old who does the school run before coming in to work, diversifies into ‘education’ to cut down their clinical work and exploits the right to extra leave for having children under 5 , provides equal value to the 55+year old who has very substantial experience and often a rather different work ethic.
        There is nothing wrong with having domestic commitments and/or wanting to work part time for various other reasons but, in any other walk of life, one accepts that career progression is not as swift or as complete as for those who give all to the job and that the most experienced people tend to be higher up the hierarchy.

    2. I think a number of these chaps would relish working in a MASH if they could with Whirlybirds dropping off the next casualty just outside the tent flaps! 🙂

      Edit to add. Morning Anne and all….

    3. I think a number of these chaps would relish working in a MASH if they could with Whirlybirds dropping off the next casualty just outside the tent flaps! 🙂

      Edit to add. Morning Anne and all….

  14. Morning, all Y'all.
    Threats of frost in the next few days. Better get the lemon trees under cover.

    1. Lemon tree very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet,
      But the fruit of the lemon is impossible to eat 🙂

  16. Oh No!! Wotta surprise!

    New York mayor Eric Adams indicted on federal charges – report

    Democrat declares his innocence but is set to be first New York mayor to be charged while in office
    *
    *
    AOC leads calls for Adams to step down
    Earlier on Wednesday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York representative, called on the beleaguered New York mayor to step down.

    “I do not see how Mayor Adams can continue governing New York City,” the Democrat wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

    “The flood of resignations and vacancies are threatening [government] function. Nonstop investigations will make it impossible to recruit and retain a qualified administration.

    ”For the good of the city, he should resign.”

  17. Good morning all,

    Sunny at McPhee towers at the moment but showers expected. Wind South-West, 12℃, 15℃ expected this afternoon.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0b43219746a661c16451eed37f56e5985ab06a64e59a8d0b91718a451e15beb.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/26/civilians-must-be-ready-to-fight-as-army-so-small-say-lords/

    With what? Against whom, pray tell? These people are so far out of touch they don't realise that very many people view THEM as our enemies?

    3. Are they referring to foreign wars or something closer to home? There's a conveyor belt of fully manned RIBs arriving at the end of the line in Dover that needs addressing.

      1. Report to Captain Mainwaring at Walmington-on-sea barracks. Just down the coast from you.

        Stupid Boy!

    5. Crazed teacher friend reckons it's only days before Putin, personally, marches across Western Europe to the Atlantic coast, and we're all doomed.
      Hell, Russia can't even finish Ukraine, let alone Poland, Germany, France… and the rest of NATO. The woman is deluded, typical lefty fashion.

      1. Let me know when he reaches Skåne. I'll be waiting in the street with an enormous cauldron of hot borscht.

        I'll be shouting at the tanks: "Сверните! Сверните! Приходи и возьми свой борсвт, Иван."

  18. Good morning all,

    Sunny at McPhee towers at the moment but showers expected. Wind South-West, 12℃, 15℃ expected this afternoon.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0b43219746a661c16451eed37f56e5985ab06a64e59a8d0b91718a451e15beb.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/26/civilians-must-be-ready-to-fight-as-army-so-small-say-lords/

    With what? Against whom, pray tell? These people are so far out of touch they don't realise that very many people view THEM as our enemies?

  19. Good morning all,

    Sunny at McPhee towers at the moment but showers expected. Wind South-West, 12℃, 15℃ expected this afternoon.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0b43219746a661c16451eed37f56e5985ab06a64e59a8d0b91718a451e15beb.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/26/civilians-must-be-ready-to-fight-as-army-so-small-say-lords/

    With what? Against whom, pray tell? These people are so far out of touch they don't realise that very many people view THEM as our enemies?

  20. Australian children held in Syrian camp feel abandoned as other countries repatriate citizens. 26 September 2024.

    Australian children held in a Syrian detention camp for more than five years – some born in the camp and having never left it – are despairing as they watch hundreds of other foreign children leave for home.

    “They can’t understand why they don’t have a chance to be saved like the other Australians and given a shot at a normal life,” one mother in the camp told Guardian Australia.

    “They want to go to school and make friends, and go to a park that’s not caged in by a fence with soldiers that scream and point their guns at them when they try to play.”

    This article is about Australians but the same applies to Brits. These people are not in this camp because their Tour Bus broke down. They volunteered to go. Not to spread Peace and Enlightenment to the locals but to assist in murdering them. One of the most interesting aspects of their incarceration is that none of them have recanted their beliefs to assist in their release. They are still what they were. They just want to do it somewhere more comfortable.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/26/australian-children-syrian-detention-camp-repatriation

      1. And are the children the same age as the children who arrive on the South Coast of England in rubber dinghies?

    1. When I visited The City of Angels in 1980 the air was crystal clear. It was hot and sunny and each night a curtain of clouds drew in from the Pacific and it rained, cleansing the streets before drawing back before dawn.

      A local explained that this was unusual since the city was always normally shrouded in smog. He told me that citizens wandered around breathing in the crap and it made them stupid.

      He went on to tell me that the recent eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington State had produced weather systems that had blown away all the smog and, for the first time in decades, Angelinos could actually see each other.

    2. Can't we send Kahnt across to sort that out, incase the pollution blows across to his own London.

  24. I'd like to know what the non doms have done so wrong, they have done nothing illegal or broken any rules, why is Labour persecuting them?
    Perhaps not enough freebies have come their way.
    As Labour keeps saying, they have not broken any rules eithe

      1. Come now, Paul. Many of the "rich" pensioners have worked hard, paid taxes, been prudent, tried to take care of their future. That puts them eminently in the wrong in Starmer's eyes.

  25. Starmer Filmed Queen Elizabeth Death Broadcast at Lord Alli’s Penthouse

    Recognise the shelves? This is unravelling…

    UPDATE: Again there is no declaration of the penthouse’s use as a gift.

    25 September 2024 @ 19:16

    Questions ‘Mr Rules’ Starmer Must Answer Over Pretending Alli’s Home Was His Own

    As Guido has uncovered, Starmer pretended Lord Alli’s penthouse was his own during his righteous Covid broadcast, where he condemned Boris and lauded the “Plan B” restrictions. Here are some pressing questions our “Mr Integrity” Prime Minister must answer:

    December 2021 was Plan B—guidance rather than rules—but we know he criticised Boris for breaching guidance. Why did he ignore the guidance to work from one’s home if possible?
    Plan B clearly stated to “work from home if you can“—he even acknowledges this in his video. So why did he accuse others of breaching guidance while he was working from someone else’s home?
    If the Privileges Committee focused on breaches of guidance rather than the rules, why didn’t he follow the same standard?
    Did he declare the use of someone else’s home as a benefit when MPs must register any gifts, benefits, or hospitality they receive from UK sources with a value over £300?
    How long did he stay at Alli’s penthouse in 2021?
    Why did he put pictures of his own family on the shelves behind him to make it seem like it was his own home?
    Why, if he claims to want no photos of kids out in public, did he include that in the background?
    Some for the transparency Starmer preaches, surely?

    25 September 2024 @ 17:31

    1. Recognise the shelves?

      The bloomin bookshelves again.. My word Starmer is sooooo thick, doesn't he know everybody always takes a peek at the book shelves behind during podcasts.
      That's why I line up all the heavy-weights in prime view.. Dostoevsky.. Salman Rushdie.. Michel Houellebecq.. Friedrich Nietzsche.. Joey Barton

        1. So are mine, but the ones in the drawing room are rather more intellectual than the ones in the bedroom 🙂

      2. Joey Barton lol actually i listened to a podcast he was in about 9 months ago and am a convert

  26. 'Morning All
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7b8beb9131334e4d95635d83bbfa033f76c7f16f64e4f92a810cb66ccb67fb95.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5ac4a1e3f72c342500586befffa2c90c6e3d5d3666bb751e86ec033e1fa52ea0.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fb8334a97acbf1251e919c47497f5a4d351cb31acf0d8485f8eec02fce35447e.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/32756b1fee7c0f7406ee752753cf3ac8f889a859cf51e688dda1ea0116d13344.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/636f10bf62a733004e22be5084381369dddb4921cbbdab12f6a5b5a0d1fdbfe6.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/29e9afc11374dcc2e02e81df290e7d95bb5615a5d6e3f3ff433f689b42e676e0.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/954a9fd83735249d832060268a8f60214acd45c1a220fb6650aa3da047048f9f.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48cda921e404dd03da63b4166611f0e8a94845806e5021ceef57fb0c6ae00515.jpg

    1. They will save the “real thing” for our diverse peaceful brethren who disavow all things porcine – except lying.

  28. Entire German Green Party Leadership Resigns over Election Failures as Public Rejects Mass Migration, Climate Hysteria

    The entire federal executive board of the German Green party resigned on Wednesday after a string of disastrous regional election results as the leftist party is haemorrhaging voters amid growing opposition to core pillars of its platform such as the green agenda, support for the war in Ukraine, and open borders.

    Announcing their early resignation, Green leaders Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang said that the party is in “the deepest crisis in a decade”.

    Their decision to cede control of the party comes after yet another embarrassing defeat at the ballot box, with the Greens only managing to win 4.1 per cent of the vote in the Brandenburg elections over the weekend, falling below the five per cent threshold to be represented in the state’s parliament.

    1. The real cause of the voting collapse is that the population as a whole is becoming very adversely affected by Green mania, Immigration dystopia, and the costs and direct threats of escalation of the war in Ukraine at a personal rather than at an abstract level.

      Being a Lefty is OK when imposing lunacies on others, just so one can feel the smug moral superiority, but never as good when one is to be affected directly.

    3. A good German name, Nouripour? Wiki: "Nouripour was born in Tehran.[ In 1988, aged 13, Nouripour immigrated to Frankfurt, West Germany, with his family. He studied German, political science, law, sociology, philosophy and economics at the University of Mainz, but did not earn a degree. In 2002, Nouripour became a German citizen. Because Iran does not allow its citizens to relinquish their citizenship, that country considers him an Iranian citizen as well."

  29. Good morning all,

    Rained heavily all night , slight gap in the sky now, dry enough for dog to dash out into the garden and come back in five minutes later , quite dry . 14c.

    A lot of drama in the village late yesterday afternoon , the last harvest to be collected is the maize .. it is chomped by machinery into little pieces and transported to the grain stores near here , for animal food and other uses

    Tractors and their equipment have been working non stop day and night to get the crops in , and contractors are really busy.. we know that they usually have a few weeks to clear the fields.. so hold ups and go slows have to be tolerated on our roads . Maize is the last crop to be harvested .

    A tractor carrying its load somehow or other collided with the level crossing gates .. result , all the Weymouth Waterloo trains were unable to finish their journey.. and of course all traffic had to be re routed , blooming chaos on our minor roads .

  31. Labour's very own Kristallnachtjahr will consist of killing off the pensioners (winter fuel payments cancelled) and castrating all the children (making transgenderism compulsory).

    What a spiffing way of reducing the natural population while increasing devotion, among those remaining, to the cause of The Party.

    Free sausages for the faithful.

    1. Perhaps all of us pensioners should join in with what now are lifes everyday occurrences. And all claim and complain of mental health issues. Clearly the people in politics hate us all. Even elderly politicians are leaving the forum since the Junta has taken over.

  32. Morning all 😊🙂
    Some broken cloud allowing brief bright hope and It's been raining.
    The quicker a vote of no confidence has taken place in Parliament the safer and less threatened and less worried for the future of our country we will all feel.
    It seems that the last election has led to an alien invasion.

    1. 393515+ up ticks,

      Morning RE,

      The invasion started long ago under "mirander,"
      payback I believe for having suffered a sexual knockback from another male in a park public toilet whilst on a cotteging mission.

      1. That’s why he built an 8 foot high brick wall around their property in the Buckinghamshire countryside.
        And we will still be paying out for his personal protection.

      1. 393515+ up ticks,

        Morning KJ,

        As in discontent among thieves.
        I do believe that IF hancock of the prior political carpetbaggers were to go down, he would NOT go alone.

        1. Morning ogga 🙂 Ah yes…wonder why the reason/s for his uncharacteristic silence, whatever could that be. Rogues and Scoundrels Gallery…quite a large collection.

    1. Class 1 sh*t. There are many rescue places who'd accept them, although….if they prove to be unplaceable, they will be euthanised, according to a vet acquaintance. Was quite surprised lately to discover local rescue charges £xxx for dogs and £xx for cats, plus donations welcomed. A business model.

      1. Oscar cost me £120 – it would have been more had he been younger (he was nearly 12) and/or female. Given that they don't have to buy the dogs, it's profiteering, in my view. My first rescue dog (a pedigree) was free, but they encouraged a donation. Even the Dogs Trust just asked for a donation (in 1987). Now it's a business (and you have to jump through so many hoops to be allowed to rescue a dog).

        1. Exactly so, Conway. One of the many things that changed during lockdown/s, but didn’t revert. Oscar sounds fab 🙂 I’ve had all mixes of mutts, all turned out fab apart from one – husband got an ex-racer, first thing it did was bite one of the smaller dogs. Regretfully had to return, racing greyhounds are often brutally treated, trained to bite other dogs. For a dog lover, that’s a no-no. Everything is monetised – I had a look at Pets4Homes recently, prices high, some women raising puppies in their outbuilding. Took a look at one once, living room several cages each with a bitch and pups. Soon left.

          1. Sadly I lost Oscar last February. He had the best of everything for 2 years and 8 months (and nearly emptied my bank account through his vet’s bills!). He was a Fox Terrier.

          2. So sorry to read that, Fox Terriers are handsome dogs imo :-)) Agree re vet bills – mine are on a scheme, get wormers/flea n tick meds and also 10% off prescription meds. They once refused that on operation meds, I protested – senior vet called in and said I could. Used to be packed some years ago, not now. Doubt I’ll have any more dogs, even rescue places charge fees now, in addition to donations.

          3. You missed the saga of my trials and tribulations with Oscar (documented on here over the years) 🙂 He was an unhappy, grumpy, snappy dog when I got him and it took a lot of work to turn him round and get him to want cuddles (he didn't even want to be touched when I got him and grooming was always a fraught proposition). I miss him a lot, which is surprising as I had him for the shortest time of all my dogs. Probably because I had to invest so much time and effort into making him less of a grouch. In the end, he developed a rare neurological problem (everything about him was rare and expensive!) which we couldn't overcome and I had to have him put to sleep because effectively, he'd gone off his legs. I had him insured for the first year I had him, but the bills were always just a bit less than the excess and the following year they put up the premium by £100 and the excess by a further £50! I decided I'd put the money aside and pay the bills out of that. I think, on the whole, I broke even.

          4. I’ve had similar experiences with dogs, one turned out to be quite vicious – once put it in a cage for safety, bent the cage bars with strong jaws – a cross breed with a space between eyes suggesting staffie. Dogs react both to their surroundings and the people around them – you did a terrific job with Oscar, he reacted to you accordingly. I think Pet Insurance a scam, a lot of older people live alone with their pet for company, an easy target. I doubt I’ll have more when these two ‘cross the rainbow bridge’, will you have another pet, Conway?

          5. Yes. I live on my own with no family nearby, so the companionship is vital to my wellbeing and social life. Plus, having a dog makes me get out and about whatever the weather.

  35. Idle comment from my trip up to London yesterday.

    The loos at Waterloo station have been closed for two years while they refurbished them and are now finally in use (and the alternative loos in the Sidings area were closed yesterday, permanently or not I don't know).

    They claim they have new facilities for the unisexed…. Well the first thing you notice is that they have swapped the gents and the ladies, ie we now go down the steps which the ladies used, now prominently labelled 'men's toilets'. The old gents stairs have signs for ladies, disabled (a couple of booths on the landing so they don't use the stairs) and a strange unisex symbol as well.

    They seem to have spent loads of money on new fitments, including these clever hand driers above the sinks, but otherwise looks pretty much the same. But you don't exit via the steps you just came down, you are routed towards the ladies area and a big open plan bit and exit via the ladies steps. Not sure where the unisex things are, didn't explore that, but the whole exit bit is unisex…. Very strange.

    How on earth it took two years I know not, OK they had to knock down a few walls but apart from that just screw in some new fittings.

    Oh and by the way when you use the pedestrian crossings at Trafalgar Square all those show fancy unisex symbols in various combinations on the lights, they look quite weird. What is the world coming to?

    1. I was working in Bristol yesterday and saw the strange symbol on the loo door for the first time. Also a large basket full of free tampons. I’ve grown out of that phase but a wicked thought did cross my mind. What would the trannies do with them though?

    2. There's a dirty stinking piss-house to the North of Waterloo,
      There's another one for Ladies further down,
      And it's kept by Sally Tucker,
      For a shilling you can **** her,
      You can sleep with her for only half a crown.

    1. It is, Rastus. But it hasn't been a Conservative leaning publication under Nelson. Coincidentally, my sub renewed yesterday before I could cancel it. One of life's many small pleasures. So I'll see how it progresses, open mind and all that (but suspect I'll be cancelling, as many btl subbers seem to indicate). Good morning, btw:-)

  37. SIR – It is not only among artistic types that there is a high proportion of left-handedness (Letters, September 24).

    I used to teach in the local council sector and would do a sweep of the room to find fellow lefties. The number was always much higher than the national average. The record was a meeting of six people, where five were left-handed.

    I find it amusing in period dramas when left-handed characters are depicted, as historically lefties were not allowed to write with their natural hand. Even my brother, who is 75, was forced by an old-fashioned headmistress to write with his right hand.

    Janet Haines
    Reading, Berkshire

    How many left handed Nottlers are commenting on here ?

    1. My mother, father and brother are all left handed.

      My mother’s brother and my father’s brother likewise.

      I do everything “wrong” as i was brought up in an openly left-handed household. None of them ever tried to hide it.

      1. I am right handed, like my father, but mother and 3 remaining siblings are left handed .

        My husband is ambidextrous , of my 2 sons..one is lefthanded .

    3. My mum was left handed, had her arm tied behind her back at school. One of my grandchildren is left handed, his teachers have left him to it. Times have changed at least positively in that regard, thankfully.

    4. I’m mostly left-handed but not with everything. In cricket I am a left-handed bowler but a right-handed batsman. I used to shoot competitively, right-handed with a rifle but left-handed with a pistol. I write with my left hand but can write mirror-image with my right, from right to left across the page.

    5. I'm left handed. On average we are more intelligent than the right handers as you have no doubt noticed in your dealings with the poor things Belle 😁

  38. Keir Starmer Covid broadcast urging work from home came from donor’s £18m penthouse. 26 September 2024.

    Sir Keir Starmer urged the public to work from home in a Covid-era broadcast from a Labour donor’s £18 million penthouse.

    The Christmas message was reportedly filmed in Lord Alli’s flat in December 2021, when Sir Keir was leader of the opposition.

    I think that we know enough now. This is the home of Lord and Lady Starmer. God knows what else went off there.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/25/starmer-covid-broadcast-work-from-home-lord-alli-flat/#comment

    2. What is the meaning of the word demagog?
      dem·​a·​gogue ˈde-mə-ˌgäg. variants or less commonly demagog. Synonyms of demagogue. 1. : a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.

      Modern demagogues include Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and Joseph McCarthy, all of whom built mass followings the same way that Cleon did: by exciting the passions of the masses against customs and norms of the aristocratic elites of their times.

      Starmer .. we know too much now.

  39. Today's Tale
    Where did I come from?

    Dad, where do I come from?”
    This was a question Dad dreaded hearing. He explained all about the birds and the bees, about sperm and ejaculation, egg and ovulation and childbirth.
    “Do you understand now?” asked Dad.
    “Not really,” said the boy. “Angelo said he comes from Italy and Jimmy Lee comes from Hong Kong. So where do I come from?”

    Where do babies come from. Mummy?”
    “The stork brings them, of course.”
    “Well, who f**ks the stork?”

    Mummy, where did I come from?”
    “The stork brought you.”
    “And where did you come from, Mummy?”
    “The stork brought me, too.”
    “And what about Grandma?"
    “Yes, the stork brought her too.”
    “Gee, doesn’t it ever worry you to think that there have been no natural births in our family for three generations?”

  40. From TCW Readers' Forum, posted when the stats are released by simonstephenson:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8065ba235b50fb624ca1f115e687f9472f7cdeecfcc0a2254dd2a556a2583ec6.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/efc58e27b039f8978e28a43f0201cd10220fb3fd556cb713a5cb147e59ed3349.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6170d561d5cca632826350aa5a7456cd33b1f3ecc14870c280570739f641002.png

    That's 52,665 more per year than pre-ScamPlandemic. Eh, what's up, Doc?

  41. SIR – The missing plastic lids on pots of hummus, tzatziki and taramasalata are a nuisance (“We want the lids back on, say shoppers”, report, September 24), but more so are the missing lids on pots of cream, which, when spilled, make a sticky mess of everything.
    At least the cat’s happy.
    Valerie Thompson
    West Horsley,
    Surrey

    Here's a wizard tip. Stop buying pre-made 'food'. Simply buy fresh, raw ingredients (or grow your own) and cook your own food, It sounds radical but it is what a more intelligent form of Homo sapiens did for two million years. It was only since the inception of Homo imbecilus, around 1975, that the moronic and ingrained purchasing — and consuming — of ready 'meals', full of abominable crap, commenced.

        1. There are two types of roe to make taramasalata.
          The off white/beige is superior in flavour to the pink. But even pink tarama isn't that ghastly neon colour.
          Buy your own white roes and make it yourself. 30 seconds in a blender and completely different to the nasty pink gloop.

    2. Good morning Grizzly:-) Guardian's full of the humus lid story…oh no…whatever will we do….RfKjr is on the same page as your good self, citing conditions such as autism were vanishingly rare prior to consumption of processed 'crap', he's rightly concerned about younger people.

      1. People didn't parade their disabled in public as they do now; it was often seen as a cause for shame, not Pride. So, one met many fewer.

      2. Good morning, Katy. Indeed he is.

        Few people realise that, prior to the start of the 20th century, very few 'modern' diseases, conditions or ailments were recorded in the historical record of the world. This following list makes astonishing — terrifying —reading since occurrences of these ailments have accelerated rapidly since 1975:

        ● Obesity. ● Coronary Heart Disease
        ● Cancers/Leukaemia ● Strokes and Transient Ischaemic Attacks
        ● Atherosclerosis (fatty deposits in artery walls) ● Fatty Liver
        ● Insulin Resistance/Erratic Blood Sugar Levels ● Type 2 Diabetes
        ● Metabolic Syndrome ● DNA Damage
        ● Macular Degeneration ● Cataracts/Blurred Vision
        ● Auto-immune Disease ● Enlarged Prostate Glands
        ● Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) ● Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
        ● Low Testosterone ● Infertility/Erectile Dysfunction
        ● Bipolar Disorder ● Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)
        ● Autism. ● Parkinson’s Disease
        ● Acid Reflux ● ‘Brain Fog’/Inability to Concentrate
        ● Anxiety and Depression ● Postpartum Depression
        ● Schizophrenia ● Alzheimer’s Disease/Dementia
        ● Skin Disease/Acne/Eczema ● Crohn’s Disease
        ● Hypertension (high blood pressure) ● Hypoglycaemia
        ● Fibrosis ● Menstrual and Menopausal Irregularities
        ● Lupus ● Kidney Stones and Failure
        ● Arthritis/Joint Pain ● Asthma
        ● Sleep Apnoea /Insomnia ● Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
        ● Pre-Ventricular Contractions (PVCs) ●Allergies
        ● Tendon and Ligament inflammation ● Dyspnea (Air Hunger, Shortness of Breath)
        ● Anger/Mood Swings. ● Fatigue/Ennui/Lack of Motivation
        ● Listlessness/ Paucity of Energy ● Gingivitis/Gum Disease.
        ● Morning Halitosis ● Body Odour
        ● Insomnia ● Cataracts/Deteriorating Vision
        ● Panic Attacks ● Gout
        ● Halitosis ● General Acute and Chronic Pain
        ● Stupidity

        The trigger for all diseases is inflammation, and this is directly caused by an inappropriate diet and lifestyle.
        Sobering thought that, eh?

        1. It is indeed, Grizzly, it is indeed. When will the GBP, and the ‘establishment’ wake up. I don’t bother with my GP post Covid, how dare they hide in their surgeries, behind masked receptionists.

          1. Half the time they are hiding in the comfort of their own homes – no doubt come Winter WFH will increase as heating increases as a tax-deductible expense of WFH. I want nothing to do with my GP surgery.

          2. Some say it’s due to the rise in female GPs, Hertslass, needing certain hours/time off to fit in with school holidays and times, and the start was Gordon Brown’s contract with GPs. Yawn. Beyond explanations, would like actions.

          3. Then the surgeries should be time-allocated with more part-timers covering different times. Other professions manage to do that, so why not GPs?

          4. Excellent suggestion, exactly why it won’t be taken up, even locally for a brief time to see how it pans out. The private sector will continue to grow. One thing I have noticed, is that if we’ve gone privately to see the same consultant we often saw the same nurse/s – but with quite different attitudes…

        2. Maybe better diagnostic techniques and longer lives also account for the greater recorded number.
          "Bloody flux" can mean anything; dysentery or bowel cancer are more specific.
          "Neurasthenia" is now sub-divided into post viral syndrome, Guillain-Barré syndrome, myalgia etc….
          Consumption probably covered rather more than pulmonary tuberculosis.

          1. Better diagnostic techniques do not account for the rapid, exponential, and unstoppable rise in morbid obesity since the late 1970s.
            Nor does it account for the fact that few people suffered heart disease before 1908 but the number doing so now is off the scale.
            Same with cancers.

      1. Good morning, Dear Maggie.
        And doesn’t that just show how utterly cretinous the decision to ban plastic lids is, especially when such lids are available for sale, online, quite cheaply?
        I save used jam-jars and substantial screw-top plastic containers and re-use them time after time.

        2. My only comment is on the lids for tins – I always thought that food in tins should always be decanted into another container because the air makes it react with the tin?

          1. I always decant the unused contents of an opened tin, Dukke. A used screw-top ice-cream tub does that job very well.

        3. My only comment is on the lids for tins – I always thought that food in tins should always be decanted into another container because the air makes it react with the tin?

  42. From today’s City AM:

    “The era of ESG and DEI finally seems to be waning, thank god! So why can’t Britain also let Woke Capitalism go, asks Fred de Fossard

    After riding high for many years, the twin tenets of “woke capitalism” – environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) rules – are faltering. Large American businesses, the engine room of these ideas, have started abandoning diversity targets, and are moving away from promoting ESG-compliant funds. This has been aided by a political backlash in the United States where many state legislatures have passed anti-ESG laws.

    Blackrock, for example, supported only four per cent of ESG resolutions proposed in its portfolio in the year to June 2024, down from a massive 47 per cent in 2021. As the Legatum Institute paper, Woke Capitalism: Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Cure, published this summer, showed, the sheen has come off ESG in the era of higher energy prices and higher interest rates.

    Indeed, it is hard to support policies which make it harder for defence companies to raise capital when the West is spending money to support Ukraine and which threaten Britain’s own energy security by driving money away from North Sea oil and gas.

    In light of this, one would hope that government policy reflects this reality. Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case. While we have a government and bureaucratic blob which claims it cares about economic growth, it remains wedded to the failed ideas behind woke capitalism.
    Take financial services regulation as one example. While the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has introduced deregulations to make listing in London more competitive, it is also going full steam ahead on imposing ESG and DEI, just as corporates finally start to question it. In an attack on freedom of association and private enterprise, it has proposed mandating diversity-related reporting requirements, and potentially hiring quotas, on FCA-regulated companies.
    For a regulator with a remit to promote competitiveness, it is extraordinary that it should mandate such requirements on private businesses, but this is what its recent consultation suggests.     If enacted, it would be a serious blow to the City of London and would likely benefit New York, London’s main rival.

    The government claims it cares about increasing private investment in the economy. This is nothing new. Prime Ministers and Chancellors of all stripes have said this. But what are we about to get? A mess of contradictions and proposals which will make businesses run a mile. While new changes to financial regulations are being implemented to make it easier for small businesses and infrastructure projects to gain access to capital, businesses of all shapes and sizes are about to be hit with new regulations on working from home, four-day weeks and even racial equality in the workplace. A boon for lawyers and human resources executives, but little else.

    The government’s rush for net zero does not include practical ideas like the deregulation of planning and development rules for nuclear power. Instead, it is increasing subsidies for wind farms despite their poor economic case, deliberately destroying the North Sea oil and gas economy and spending taxpayers’ money on a fresh batch of decarbonisation projects under the guise of a National Wealth Fund.

    This is not an economic agenda which inspires confidence. It is a combination of the worst aspects of industrial strategy, with a blind commitment to net zero at any cost and retrograde labour market regulations thrown on top. The worst of the 20th and 21st centuries’ economic ideas rolled up together.

    While woke capitalism starts to sink on the global stage, the British state is trying to lash the British people to its mast. British regulators and ministers alike seem stubbornly committed to a command and control, socially progressive, economic model which offers little more than compliance cost and bungs for rent seekers. Even the regulatory behemoth that is the EU is having second thoughts about stifling the European economy in progressive red tape.

    It is unlikely the current government will change course soon. If it wishes to do so, the solutions are simple: cut back corporate reporting requirements to the financial necessities, as before 2006, and update the FCA’s regulatory principles to exclude DEI and terminate its diversity policies, ensuring it refocuses on economic growth through its existing strategic objectives. These will provide the sort of course-correction necessary to allow Britain’s greatest asset – its people – to flourish.

    Fred de Fossard is head of the British Prosperity Unit at the Legatum Institute”

    1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      Sky News has lost its way
      Douglas Murray
      Occasionally I am told that I go too hard on the BBC. It is an understandable gripe which I sometimes hear from disgruntled journos from Broadcasting House. So let me start by saying that, as an equal-opportunities insulter, I would like to put on the record how completely rancid Sky News in the UK has become.

      To give an idea of where Sky UK has gone wrong since being sold, allow me to highlight one story as the channel reported it this week. After the targeted strikes on Hezbollah operatives via their pagers and walkie-talkies, Sky ran a story headlined: ‘Hezbollah has been provoked like never before by Israel and may be tempted to unleash its firepower.’

      That is truly fascinating framing. For it suggests that the terrorists of Hezbollah should be allowed to fire thousands of rockets into Israel with impunity, and that if Israel responds to this – even in the most targeted and personal way possible – it is being ‘provocative’. Poor Hezbollah. It’s just too beastly – can’t it be allowed to fire missiles at Israeli civilians in peace?

      Joining a ‘fighting group’ like Hezbollah should be seen for what it is: a distinctly bad career choice
      Much of the broadcast media in Britain has been similarly skewy. The BBC news website last week led with ‘Lebanon reels from two days of device attacks’. ITV News lamented not just the pager and walkie-talkie explosions but Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah arms dumps. Presenting these as though they were strikes on civilian targets, ITV – in its own footage – showed the secondary explosions in the buildings Israel had hit. Which gives the game away, surely?

      I have seen all this before. I was on the Israel-Lebanon border 18 years ago during the last Israel-Hezbollah war. Back in 2006 much of the media played the same game. Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into Israel, Israel responded and before you knew it the world was running headlines about Israel striking Lebanon. I remember being in a hospital on the Israeli side of the border that had been hit by Hezbollah. There was no mention of this in the next day’s media outside of Israel but there were plenty of reports about Israeli ‘aggression’ against Hezbollah.

      That conflict ended with a UN resolution (1701) which was meant to ensure that Hezbollah would not be allowed to rebuild its stockpile of rockets in southern Lebanon. Over the succeeding years Hezbollah more than replenished these supplies. By last year the group that has done so much to destroy Lebanon – and to decimate its Christian population, among others – was estimated to have around 160,000 missiles in position to launch at Israel.

      Labour and Conservative governments never had very much to say about this – and certainly did nothing about it. Under successive governments, people who generally enjoy talking about UN resolutions were silent about 1701. Hezbollah more than rebuilt its armoury, and then, from 8 October last year, it started firing its missiles into Israel again, keen as it was not to miss out on the genocidal opportunities opened up by its Hamas colleagues the previous day.

      Over the past year I have witnessed plenty of this activity for myself. On a normal day a few dozen missiles might be fired by Hezbollah into Israel. On some days – like this past week – hundreds are fired over. This almost never makes the British news. But many thousands of Iranian-gifted rockets have been fired by Hezbollah into Israel in the past year. And all this has happened under the watchful eye of UN ‘peacekeepers’ whose effectiveness approximates to that of a eunuch in a harem.

      Meantime the court eunuchs in the western media rarely mention that Hezbollah fires the occasional rocket. When they do they tend to suggest it is simply trying – utterly reasonably, of course – to target Israeli military sites. As to why Hezbollah fired rockets into a playground in a northern Israeli town, killing a dozen Israeli Druze children playing football, nobody will say. It’s just one of life’s little mysteries.

      If there is anyone left in Britain who still watches Sky News then they will be almost uniquely misinformed about what is actually happening in the world. In the past week its crack squad of misinformants, led by someone called Dominic Waghorn and Alex Crawford, did manage to utter the word ‘terror’. But they used it while referring to the ‘two days of terror’ recently suffered by the ‘fighting group’ Hezbollah.

      I am sure Hezbollah terrorists were terrorised when they found their balls blown off by exploding pager devices. But that is probably one of the job hazards that comes if you make the mistake of joining a terrorist group and then try to wipe out your neighbours on the orders of the Revolutionary Islamic government in Iran. Decisions have consequences, and joining what Ms Crawford calls a ‘fighting group’ should be seen for what it is: a distinctly bad career choice. Worse even than entering broadcast journalism.

      People sometimes wonder why the media in a country like Britain has gone so partisan on a story which should not be that complicated to report. A number of reasons present themselves. The one I am most prone to is simply that failing television networks attract less and less talent and that Sky, ITV and even the BBC just don’t get the best or brightest any more. The idea that they have been ‘bought’ or compromised in some way seems to me a little too conspiratorial.

      Then I notice that just about the only regular sponsor of Sky News UK is the terrorist-supporting slave state of Qatar, through its national airline. The Qataris are, of course, not just funders of Hamas but also hosts to the Taliban. But I am sure this is a coincidence and their efforts to provoke their remaining viewers into reaching for the ‘off’ button comes from ignorance rather than anything worse.

      2. Our MSM would have been blaming the then defenceless Jewish people for WW2 if they had been around back then.
        The media has quite deliberately turned the situation around and are Blaming the Jews for defending themselves.

  45. Glad tidings of comfort….oh Joy!

    Putin Lowers Threshold Of Nuclear Weapons Use In Dramatic Warning Aimed At NATO

    THURSDAY, SEP 26, 2024 – 02:45 AM
    At a moment the West – especially the US and UK – are still mulling whether to allow Ukraine forces to attack Russian territory using NATO-provided long-range missiles, President Vladimir Putin has just issued a hugely significant statement regarding his country's nuclear doctrine.

    Putin on Wednesday very clearly lowered the threshold regarding Russian strategic forces' use of nukes. He in a televised address to Russia’s Security Council said nuclear doctrine has been effectively revised in light of the "emergence of new sources of military threats and risks for Russia and our allies." This is clearly in response to the latest series of escalated cross-border attacks from Ukraine deep into Russian territory. Some of these have threatened to hit Moscow.
    He went on to describe that in the event Western powers assist another nation in a major attack on Russian soil, those same Western powers will also be held responsible. This can trigger Russian nuclear launch, according to the new doctrine. This lowers the bar for what can be considered an 'existential threat' against the Russian homeland and its population.

    Putin laid out, according to a translation: "The updated version of the document proposes that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear-weapon state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear-weapon state, should be considered as a joint attack on the Russian Federation."
    While not stating that this would automatically greenlight the ability of Russia to respond with nuclear weapons, he did assert that the threshold for their use would be met based on "reliable information about a massive launch of aerospace attack means and their crossing of our State border."
    He then included defense of Belarus as being part of the change: "We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against Russia and Belarus as a member of the Union State," Putin said.

    The below is a paraphrase of Putin's words and some further details of the changes by state-run RT:
    Moscow would also “consider” resorting to a nuclear response if it gets “reliable information” about a “massive” missile or air strike launched by another state against Russia, or its closest ally, Belarus, according to Putin. The weapons used in an enemy’s potential strike could include anything from ballistic or cruise missiles to strategic aircraft and drones, he stated.

    The timing of this dramatic and serious alteration in nuclear policy is without doubt aimed at Zelensky's visit to the United States, where he is presenting Ukraine's 'victory plan' separately to President Biden, VP Harris, as well as Donald Trump.

    1. Why would Vlad bother?
      The West is quite happily consigning itself to history without Russia wasting any of its expensive nukes.

  46. We've all been there.

    "An inexperienced Secret Service agent was stuck on a drone helpline during the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally, a Senate investigation has found."

      1. We eat Lancashire cheese most weeks its that sharpness that we like.Toasted is always the best. We mix it into a paste and spread it on, then toast. Brought up on it.

        1. Interesting. I think the media is clamping down on that sort of thing, they fear the people. The riots are driven by Islamists.

          2. I think the powers that be are afraid to admit that they cannot do much because they have allowed to many hostiles into the country and, if they really kicked off,they would be helpless to control it. Better to run away, cajole and cater, than inflame.

          3. It was the same with all the gilet jaune protests every week for months. When questioned the BBC said they didn't consider it newsworthy.

  49. Back from t'market – where it started to drizzle. Our weekly treat on getting home is a cup of coffee and a crumpet. Duly enjoyed.

    Before you all get euphoric at the end of the Liebour Gift Gig Conference, remember that the ghastly Tories will be starting their self-immolation shortly.

    1. I think there may be some confusion.
      Unless Gates has the same carpet too the picture was taken on Starmer's patch when Gates came to visit.

      Probably to insert his hand up the puppet.

      1. Oh right.
        I remember seeing Gates posing somewhere and I assumed it was in his own office. Not Starmers.

    1. Par four

      Wordle 1,195 4/6

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

  52. It's starting to look a lot like that Lord Alli pretty much owns the Labour Government, while Sue Gray is running it.
    While the ministers are just there to take the flack while getting well looked after for their trouble

    1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      Labour’s two-tier prison plans
      Andrew Tettenborn26 September 2024, 8:30am
      There are not many women in prison, but those who are inside show worryingly high rates of mental illness, suicide and self-harm; their families suffer badly while they are inside, and when they are released, few of them come out rehabilitated in any real sense. Given this, you can see why the new Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, told the Labour conference that she wanted to reduce the number of female prisoners and announced the setting up of a Women’s Justice Board under prisons minister, Lord Timpson, to see how this could be done.

      For every woman locked up in this country, there are something like 25 men
      Sounds good? Possibly. I’d suggest a degree of caution. One point is that, looked at closely, what is being proposed is not so much action as rather more bureaucracy. What will the new board do? It will ‘bring together senior leaders in the criminal justice system, charities and government departments’ and – you’ve guessed it – publish a strategy and then meet regularly to discuss it. More paperwork. Nor is this the only proposed collection of functionaries. There will also be yet another body, to be called the Women in Justice Partnership Delivery Group, composed of ‘experts from the voluntary and community sector’, recruited by open competition (i.e., the rather hidebound Whitehall application process open to the great and the good), whose job will be to supervise the first group and publish reports on its progress. No doubt this piling of committees upon committees went down very nicely on the Liverpool waterfront, but don’t hold your breath when it comes to these bodies actually doing very much.

      Nor is this very surprising. The problem faced by Shabana Mahmood is that her political possibilities are actually rather constricted. The Crown Prosecution Service can hardly be called on to discriminate between the male and female accused, nor to instruct its prosecutors to argue for less onerous sentences for women. Still less can a government be seen to be leaning in any way on magistrates or judges to exercise their sentencing powers so as to imprison women less than men.

      Of course, it remains true that some crimes are over-represented in the female prison population. Ah, you might ask: why not discourage imprisonment for those, knowing that this could have an indirect but dramatic effect on the number of women incarcerated? Unfortunately, this too causes problems. A classic crime of this sort is shoplifting, accounting as it does for about twice the proportion of women locked up as it does for men. However, even the most leaden Labour parliamentarian will be perfectly aware that a policy of discouraging imprisonment for shoplifting would play disastrously, particularly in light of the fact that Labour’s own King’s Speech a couple of months ago specifically promised a clampdown on shop theft.

      The real difficulty lies in the fact that Shabana Mahmood is attempting, in good Labour style, to present the issue of women in prison as a matter not so much of penal policy as of feminism. This is a difficult line to hold. One problem is that while the UK has an uncomfortably high proportion of its population in prison (at present about 140 out of every 100,000), it is one area where women have a massive advantage over men: for every woman locked up in this country, there are something like 25 men. For someone who believes in the promotion of equality, it looks a bit odd to concentrate on reducing the former rather than the latter figure.

      Another difficulty is that the issues Shabana Mahmood has chosen to highlight – self-harm, mental health problems, recidivism, the inappropriateness of locking up at least some non-violent offenders and so on – are serious problems throughout the prison estate. Yes, those problems are more severe among the (much smaller) female prison population, but are we to disregard the men whop face those same problems? Furthermore, because of the sheer numbers of male prisoners, these issues pose a greater threat to order in our prisons and society as a whole. To announce measures to deal with these problems specifically among women prisoners rather than among prisoners generally looks simply perverse.

      It would have been wiser for the government to look for ways of reducing the numbers of prisoners as a whole and improving the lot of all those who have to be locked up. Instead, Labour is focusing on the 3,000 or so women in the prison estate with no mention of the problems of the 80,000 male prisoners holed up in stinking jails up and down the kingdom. Starmer has already earned the name ‘two-tier Kier’: if she is not careful, Shabana Mahmood may find that she is accused of the same thing.

      1. The first and sensible step would be to empty the prisons of all foreign criminals and send them back to their country of origin. Said countries of origin may not want them back but so what.

        1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

          Fewer women should be in jail
          Julie Bindel25 September 2024, 2:03pm
          Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is right about one thing: when it comes to addressing crimes committed by women, prison doesn’t work.

          Mahmood said at the Labour party conference on Tuesday that she is looking at alternatives to custody, such as community-based sanctions and programmes. Having campaigned on behalf of numerous women in prison over the decades, I have seen the reality of what life is like behind bars. There is very little rehabilitation, drugs are usually available – and pretty much every woman, with a few rare exceptions, has previously been subjected to horrendous male violence, including domestic abuse and rape. A significant number grew up within the care system, and have histories of neglect and self-harm. Prisons have become dumping grounds for the most disenfranchised women in society. But whatever the background of these women, there are currently far too many in prison.

          People mention that some women – Rosemary West, Lucy Letby – are extremely violent and dangerous, and need to be contained. Yes, there are exceptions. Mothers also shouldn’t be allowed to get away with crime, just because they have children. Yet most primary carers are women, and the effect of separating mothers from their children can be catastrophic for all parties. Women removed from their children tend to self-harm, develop serious mental ill-health, and are even more like to turn to drugs and other coping mechanisms. The children are often placed in care, and so the whole cycle begins again. Mothers should not be given get-out-of-jail-free cards – but we really should consider matters very seriously before we lock them up.

          As for the men in the prison estate, many of them should not be locked up either. It is of course true that more men commit violent crimes, including towards women and girls, and those men, particularly where they are repeat and serious offenders, should be contained. But men’s prisons are full of violence, rape and sexual assault, and we should be doing everything we can to keep nonviolent male offenders out of prison.

          For women, prison can be even more devastating, particularly given what we know about the problem of sexual harassment and assault by some male prison staff. The women’s prison population in England and Wales has increased rapidly over the past two decades: we now have one of the highest rates of women’s imprisonment in Western Europe. Numbers of women imprisoned are growing at a faster rate those of their male counterparts: there are currently 10 per cent more women in prison than there were a year ago, partly because of increased poverty, so women might be shoplifting or committing fraud, and also because mandatory sentencing guidelines have changed and tend to be much more punitive. There are also a number of women in prison for defending themselves against domestic violence.

          The causes and patterns of women’s offending are usually significantly different from those of men, and most can be managed within the community. It is now 15 years since the Corston report on women in prison was published, and few, if any, of its recommendations have been implemented. These include not just a reduction to the numbers of women in prison, but also a fundamental rethink about women in the criminal justice system. The gist of that report was that unless a woman is a harm to the public, she should not be in there. In 2018, the government published a Female Offender Strategy, which looks brilliant on paper but has simply not been implemented. The recommendations include early intervention and crime prevention, as well as effective community programmes.

          When we put women in prison we increase the harms inflicted by the criminal justice system on women, their families and their communities. Fewer women should be in prison, and there needs to be an end to custodial sentences for nonviolent offences, or offences where the woman has simply defended herself against ongoing sexual or domestic abuse..

          Levels of self-harm amongst female prisoners are higher than ever, and the charity Women in Prison has found that 82 per cent of female prisoners suffer from mental ill-health. We should be looking at the prevention of crime and why women break the law. So many women are jailed for petty crimes, whilst many others have offended in order to support a man’s drug habit. We must stop pretending that prison is always a means of keeping the public safe. These women are the public, and prison is not safe for them.

          1. This begs an obvious question: how can a government that believes a woman is anybody who claims to be a woman, regardless of hard physical evidence, even begin to address the specific issues of women in the criminal justice system?

  53. Morning all.

    New today is a view from the USA by substacker Elizabeth Nickson on their immigration problem and, especially the way the US MSM distorts the truth when reporting on the subject. Needless to say, we will all recognise the similarities. In addition to that we have what is probably the best-written car review ever, an article by Youtube motoring magnus Tony Goodman on the excitement and adventure of driving an electric car.
    And if you missed it, Xandra H's article on raising children is highly recommended.

    https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/

  54. I have yet another hospital appointment this afternoon.1 pm for two hours some sort of lecture/discussion regarding knee surgery. They already know what needs (scuz the pun) to be done I have already had two pre op appointments and all the tests that go along with that. The first one several months ago the second one more recently and time limit is about to expire. Omar Gourd it's all driving me nuts ! My pile (scuz the pun) of paperwork from the NHS is now 6 nearly inches high. Now they are chasing me to stick a tube up my back side !!!!!!!!!!

    1. Husband had a similar experience with hip. Finally asked the consultant did he do private work, answer yes. We're part of a Health Package from General Medical, he said worth every penny to finally be pain free, has had no trouble since. I know this can't be the answer for everyone, just to illustrate the consultant did both NHS and private work – have since discovered many, if not the majority do. Good luck Eddy, ask them the questions you need answers to and don't be put off 🙂

      1. I had my cataract removed at a private hospital under the NHS it didn’t all go to plan but the aftercare was NHS.

        1. I hope a success and you’re doing OK, Eddy. We were quite surprised to learn the Eye Clinic was on a new small business site just around the corner from the hospital, state of the art. It can be done on the NHS, and it should be with the amount of funding they get.

    2. I have decided that 90% of what the NHS does for you is useless. I keep being asked to perform like a seal in a circus of absurd repetition. I have become fed up with it. Told them that I do not want their scheduled appointments because they just keep telling me the same thing anyway. So I have told them not to bother me. I will call them when they are needed. I have the feeling that an awful lot of what they do is 'make work' and not useful to the patient at all. But good luck to you anyway, Eddy.

    3. I have decided that 90% of what the NHS does for you is useless. I keep being asked to perform like a seal in a circus of absurd repetition. I have become fed up with it. Told them that I do not want their scheduled appointments because they just keep telling me the same thing anyway. So I have told them not to bother me. I will call them when they are needed. I have the feeling that an awful lot of what they do is 'make work' and not useful to the patient at all. But good luck to you anyway, Eddy.

    4. My dad was bandy-legged and we used to say he looked like his horse had bolted from under him. His knees were knackered from a life down t'pit and he had two knee replacements within a two-year period after his retirement.

      It didn't stop him from being bandy-legged though.

      Best wishes, Eddy.👍🏻

    5. Frustrating, isn't it. The NHS is so wasteful with its anally retentive attitude to procedures.

      When I had an inflamed tendon in my left thumb, which became immobile and made writing difficult, I went first to the physio at the BBC Club Gym (we still had one then) and he correctly diagnosed the problem and gave me a referral letter explaining that and the required solution. The NHS wasted months pushing me from pillar to post and doing x-rays and ultrasound scans only to come to exactly the same conclusion and finally do what he recommended, which worked perfectly.

      1. I’ve just got home from the ‘seminar’ 25 elderly people sitting and intently listening to two different nurses (pre and post op) and a physiotherapist expertly explaining every single aspect of the knee operations wether full or partial as mine is. They had life-size models of before during and after the operations. Expert advice.
        I had the feeling that everyone there was filled with confidence as I now am.
        It hardly compares with DH starmers opinion of the NHS.

    1. Feargal has a Good Heart and that's where he got his Teenage Kicks. Maybe, though, he should have Listened To His Father more instead of his Perfect Cousin.

    2. Rather than the HS2 white elephant, HMG should have invested in a national water grid.
      But here in north London as I’ve just, yet again, rushed out to bring the washing in from the rain, and where the reservoirs in Walthamstow wetlands were full when I last went there a month ago (since when it has rained a fair amount), it doesn’t seem credible that there is a water shortage.

  56. Images with captions.. nice one.
    Now, the next step. Many years ago as a student I rented a room off a director at The Economist. He had loads of tips and stories about running a publication house. Anyhow, the next step with the caption is the most difficult. A very "witty caption". Short n sweet. There's some great one liners you can nick from the deplorable commentators on Guido Fawkes.

    1. Thanks KLB.

      I started FSB with no idea of publishing, let alone any experience. Fortunately my No.2 son is a website wizard who did all the clever programming stuff. If you have any tips, please let me know.

  57. Morning all. It is about to storm here, just had to turn on the light, very dark. Hope everyone is OK today?
    I have yet another English History video, Rafe Heydel Mankoo, talking to the two guys from Trigonometry. Rafe is a mine of information. This is a video that bears at least two viewings. Has leads that promise highways to new sources of learning. A fascinating journey of discovery. Hope you all find it interesting.
    "They're Lying About Your History" – Rafe Heydel-Mankoo
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O9eS4UDP6U&t=2880s

    1. Dire warnings which will not be heeded until it is too late – if it is not already too late.

      1. Hallo Rastus! I watched last night an offering by the "Lotus Eaters" terribly interesting, "Should We Flee England?" The Lotus Eaters are young conservative minded men in their 20-30. Their argument is that we are in a period of transition where the old must give way to the new. But the problem is that those in power are still trying to solve new problems with the tools of the old paradigm and are, therefore, failing.

        Some time ago I read a book by Ilya Prigogine, 'Order Out of Chaos', you may be familiar with him? He won the Nobel Prize for his work on the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium systems (a mouthful) but his work has now been applied, with important practical results, to systems of a sociological nature and give hope where non seems to be. His work is well worth reading but it is a good hard slog.

        Like many others I am trying to understand what is going on. But it does demand a lot of study, taking in new information that is by no means easy. But, I think, there is room for optimism. We may not see it because the new has yet to come to birth. But Konstantine Kisin, I believe, is right, when he says, the truth will out, that the current affliction of Marxism/Wokism and its hatred for the West and in particular for England, cannot stand for long because it is based on lies and half truths. So it is really a waiting game.
        If you want to watch
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG-cfD5JUiU&t=11s
        ,

  59. Talk about making ourselves sausages to fortune. We have just booked a holiday for the first week of September 2025!!

    2. The above will of course not apply to anyone off a dinghy, who will be paid to stay in a warm hotel with 3 meals a day…

  61. OT – for fans of creekit. Just finished (read almost at one sitting) Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic. I had thought of buying it or having it on audio (the reading was off-putting) – but decided to go mad and get it from t'library.

    Good stuff. Brings back all sort of memories.

      1. I'm trying to find any Spexiteers who might be in contact with "Audrey and Myself".If anyone is in contact with her, would you kindly let me know; she is not on our NoTTLer list so I can't contact her directly to give her a message but I can give her a contact address (one of mine). NoTTLers can vouch for my messaging facility.

      1. We are doing a trial run in January – for two nights in Ostend. All being well, that should be over and done with within 4 hours.

          3. We are there to celebrate what seems like my centenary birthday. I’ll offer to pay…natch…{:¬))

  63. Credit DT Obituary:
    Sir George Radda, who has died aged 88, came to Britain as a penniless refugee after a remarkable escape from Hungary after the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising and went on to become an eminent biochemist, a pioneer of MRI scanning, chief executive of the Medical Research Council (MRC) and a fellow of the Royal Society.

    He was born György Károly Radda into a Catholic family in Győr, north-west Hungary, on June 9 1936. Both his parents were doctors. He was educated by Benedictine monks, but as the Communist regime established itself postwar, it became clear that, with his middle-class background, unless he joined the Party he was unlikely to be admitted to university.
    “One route was, however, a possibility,” he told Hungarian Review in 2016. “If I were to finish my education with top marks in every subject every year and in the final examination, even this evil system would not keep me out.”

    He did just that, and in 1955 went up to Eötvös University in Budapest to read chemistry. In fact, he had wanted to study literature, but to do so he would have had to accept that only Marxist-Leninist writing had any significance. Chemistry was the pragmatic choice.
    He loved university, becoming passionate about opera and jazz. But he had to do compulsory military training during vacations – and there was “the constant fear that at any moment we could get a knock on the door in the middle of the night from the Secret Police that might take us away never to be seen again”.

    On October 23 1956, Hungarian students began a peaceful demonstration against the Soviet-backed government which ended in violence and spawned a countrywide uprising. Within two days the government had been overthrown and a new government established under the independent communist Imre Nagy.
    “Then, on November 1, came the dreadful news over the radio that a very large contingent of Russian forces led by hundreds of tanks and heavy artillery had entered Hungary and were approaching the capital,” Radda recalled.
    By November 4 they were in Budapest. “Soon we heard heavy gunfire and the radio urged people to take cover in cellars and bunkers… We all hoped that somehow the West would come to our aid, but not knowing at the time that the Suez Crisis and the uprising in Egypt were more important to them.”

    The following morning Radda went with a group of friends to the university, “avoiding all the dead bodies in the streets, covered with lime, and watched a group removing a Russian flag from the top of the building. As the flag dropped, the tanks opened fire and several students fell from the roof, while we on the ground scattered to avoid the bullets. This went on for several days.”

    By November 10 the uprising had been crushed, with thousands of Hungarians killed. Nagy was arrested, to be executed two years later.
    Radda decided to join the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians fleeing the country. His father encouraged him, but insisted he take his sister and younger brother with him, so, hiding in cattle wagons, he travelled by rail to Győr to pick them up.

    His father stuffed his pockets with cash, the plan being for the siblings to travel by taxi to Sopron, a town close to the Austrian border, pretending to do some shopping but hoping to find a way to cross. Turned back by guards short of Sopron, the taxi driver took them to friends in a nearby village who agreed to hide them and take them as close to the border as they dared.
    They took them to a border bridge: “It was then that I probably took the biggest gamble of my life. I took my brother and sister by the hand and walked up to the soldiers guarding the bridge. I pulled a wodge of Hungarian notes out of my pocket and said to the soldiers, ‘If we are on the other side of the bridge we will have no use for this money.’ They took the money and we walked across to freedom.”

    A man in an Austrian border camp lent them the bus fare to Vienna, where they stayed for a while with a Benedictine monk friend of Radda’s father. There were many organisations in the Austrian capital helping Hungarian refugees, and the Raddas met a businessman with a factory near Innsbruck who offered to look after George’s brother as part of his family and see him through his schooling. His sister bumped into some friends of the family, fellow refugees with connections in Belgium, and she went with them.

    Though he spoke no English, George was determined to attend an English-speaking university as the best route to a career in science. One day he met a journalist who told him of two professors from Oxford University who were in Vienna interviewing potential students. He went to see them:
    “They waved me to take a seat and we began talking in German. They tried to find out what I knew and did at university and after about an hour’s conversation they said: ‘There is a plane leaving for London tomorrow evening, would you like to be on it?’ Without hesitation I said yes. Twenty-four hours later, at around midnight, I found myself with a bunch of other Hungarian students at Blackbushe Airport.”

    The next day, he travelled to Oxford by bus for an interview with the chemistry tutor at Merton College, who could only speak English: “The Periodic Table was our common language, and somehow I managed to convince [the] tutor that I knew enough chemistry to join the first-year students in the second term, provided I learnt English between December 6 and January 15, when I would have to start my studies. On January 15, 80 days after the revolution, I was ready to attend lectures, tutorials and write weekly essays in English.”

    Within 10 years, while still in his 20s, Radda was appointed fellow and tutor at Merton and lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry.
    Radda developed an interest in the structure and function of enzymes in relation to human diseases, particularly heart disease. By 1970 he had built up a large research group, becoming a prominent member of the Oxford Enzyme Group, chaired by Sir Rex Richards.

    Radda became interested in using spectroscopic methods to study complex biological material, and in 1974 he published a paper advocating the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to study metabolic disorders in the brain and other tissues.
    In 1981 he and his colleagues published the first scientific report on the clinical application of NMR. This resulted in the installation in 1983 of a scanner large enough to accommodate the whole human body at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford; it paved the way for the worldwide use of MRI scanning in human disease diagnosis.

    Radda went on to research the effects of different enzyme levels in a variety of human organs. The author of more than 800 publications, he served as head of Oxford University’s Department of Biochemistry (1991-96) and British Heart Foundation Professor of Molecular Cardiology (1984-2003). From 2005 to 2008 he was Professor and head of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at Oxford.

    From 1988 he led the Biochemistry and Clinical Magnetic Resonance Division of the MRC, becoming chief executive of the whole organisation in 1996. During his eight years in this role he reorganised funding arrangements to provide more long-term funding and encourage greater collaboration and interdisciplinary research.

    He also established strong links with biomedical research centres in Singapore, and in 2009 he was appointed chairman of Singapore’s Biomedical Research Council.
    Among numerous international honours and awards, Radda was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980, appointed CBE in 1993 and knighted in 2000.

    In Hungary, he had become engaged to a girl called Agi, but she stayed behind when he fled and he never heard from her again. In 1961 he married Mary O’Brien, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. The marriage was dissolved in 1995, and the same year he married Sue Bailey, who survives him with his children.

    Sir George Radda, born June 9 1936, died September 13 2024

    3. A truly riveting account. I hope he met up with his family again. I wonder how successful were his siblings.

  64. 393515+ up ticks,

    The labour planned return should trigger the peoples justified RESET as in a new Magna Carter & peoples rights restored,as was.

    Plus the incarceration of the political 650, remanded for trials in the far future

    By this time it should also be the last call for those to leave who desire to live under the EUs diabolical rulings, as in, WINGE OVER THERE.

    https://x.com/AgainBraine/status/1839240348872102158

    2. Given how appallingly destructive, corrupt, insulting and comically, desperately anti democratic this government is the intent is clearly to undo Brexit.

      Starmer said the state provides control – what if you don't want the state to have the control it does? As everything is better delivered by markets. Why? Because they offer choice. Starmer offers no choices, only force. He doens't understand why this is a bad thing.

      In a market there would be no 'climate change' tax scam. Everything the state controls is done badly.

  65. Man stabbed at commuter station during rush hour. 26 September 2024.

    A man was stabbed during rush hour at Barnes station on Thursday morning.

    British Transport Police officers responded to reports of a serious assault at Barnes railway station at about 7.10am.

    Paramedics also attended and the victim was taken to hospital with injuries considered to be life-threatening.

    The perpetrator was a white heterosexual Christian. (Nervously)

    P.S. No comments allowed.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/26/man-stabbed-barnes-station-rush-hour/

    1. “There is absolutely no place for violence on the railway network and faaaar right thugs should not exploit this incident by spreading divisive hate. They deserve to be jailed. In fact we will jail them."

      Next up.. Manchester Airport attack victims Fahir Amaaz, his brother Muhammad Amaad and mother Shameem Akhtar tell their amazing story of survival.

      1. When they don't announce the attacker it's obviously a muslim/black/gimmigrant. It's tiresome. We know they're trying to hide it, they know they're trying to hide it, why don't they just admit it? Trying to destroy this country through massive uncontrolled criminal invasion of foreigners was always going to fail.

    2. Interesting, that’s where a lot of my friends live. I’m told it was chaos at Mortlake station this morning and now we know why

          1. I haven't been there for years, but it was always quite expensive (not as much as Richmond etc. of course) especially around Barnes Common. I often went to the Boileau when it was a Jazz place, before it became the Old Rangoon.

    1. We used to have lots (a charm, isn't that a great collective noun) but not seen for a number of years. Perhaps a virus – green finches developed club foot, also not seen for many years. Lucky you, mola – I envy you :-))

      1. Pretty common locally. The adults are much better behaved than the young ‘uns. They squawk and squabble around the feeder. A charm of adult goldfinches but a gang of fledglings.

  67. DesperateDansCowPie
    31m
    LieLabours now stock answer to all questions
    about gifts and freebies. Apparently when the Tories

    were doing the same thing it was a capital offence as far as Labour were concerned

     https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/800cd28e312fb9f73711ffd7208981c4c69dfcaf132058c05397d71ecfae05fd.jpg

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

    Downing Street’s Fake Covid Home Defence Proven Wrong Within 30 Minutes

    Yesterday Guido revealed the PM filmed his 2021 Christmas Covid broadcast from Lord Alli’s £18 million Covent Garden penthouse. He urged people to work from home as he sat in someone else’s home…

    Downing Street sought to calm the storm by saying no rules were broken – heard that one before – and it was a ‘one-off’ use of the place. One-off eh…

    The Guardian wrote:

    “No 10 said Starmer was completely confident he had broken no rules when in Alli’s flat. The clip was recorded for work purposes and it is understood he was only using the flat as a one-off.”

    Unfortunately for Downing Street, exactly 37 minutes after their line was published Guido went to pixel with evidence that Starmer paid tribute to the Queen on the day of her death from the very same ‘one-off’ penthouse. Gone were the family photos – replaced with some dark urns and books including an Obama biography…

    This is going to become untenable for Keir Starmer. The revelations about Lord Alli’s apartment have only just started…

    26 September 2024 @ 07:57

    1. Once you realise Starmers true sexual orientation, his whole life, and the decisions he has made are explained

        2. You do have a way with words, Susan. Hope Bristol as welcoming and that you didn't look too statuesque lest you be thrown in the river by some lefty BLM mob like that nice Mr Colston.

      4. ………………………………………... My strange and self-abuse
        Is the initiate fear that wants hard use.
        [The Scottish Play]

        Why did Starmer ever need a wife when he is sexually self-sufficient?

    2. I honestly don't think he has the faintest idea why people are angry. To him, he has done nothing wrong. That he is clearly a corrupt, bent hypocrite is irrelevant. It's all about the letter of the law.

      This is also why he doesn't believe Gray's salary is relevant. It's none of anyone else's business because he simply doesn't consider the public relevant. It's about power and control.

      1. TTK is convinced of his goodness; his mental picture of himself is the perfect man topped with a halo.
        He can do no wrong. Every action is bathed in holiness. His every thought is sacred. He proceeds through this wicked world wrapped in an aura of sanctity. He can do no wrong.
        Those who dare to question him are EVIL!!!!!!

    3. They trough to the Left, they trough to the Right.
      Those dirty scumbag troughers, trough day and night.

  68. Strange how publishing such data is Islamophobic, even if it is true.

    Could more wi-fi hotspots be targeted in 'Islamophobic' cyber attack? Fears public networks in airports, hospitals, schools and restaurants face shutdown after 'Nightsleeper-style' hackers hit major railway stations

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13894331/Network-Rail-cyber-attack-wifi-hotspots-Nightsleeper.html

    Of course the message is blanked out everywhere, so who can tell?

    1. It's 'islamophobic' in that it tels the truth about muslim terrorism. That's why the content is hidden. You can find it if you really look for it, but the mainstream press are desperate to hide muslim terrorism. For some insane, deceitful, moronic reason, they protect muslims despite them by a hilarious statistical marin being the most dangerous – by body count – group in the world.

      Every single day that passes muslim kill people. Every. Single. Day:

      https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.aspx

  69. Brendan O'Neill
    Is anyone convinced by Starmer’s feeble excuses?

    The Prime Minister’s attempts to weasel out of ‘donor-gate’ are just making a bad situation worse

    There is nothing wrong with a Prime Minister telling benefits claimants to look for work. There is also nothing wrong with a Prime Minister getting the loan of a plush flat so that his kid can study in peace.

    But for these two things to become news stories on the same day – now that’s bad. It adds up, surely, to one of the most cataclysmic failures of optics of recent times.

    Surf the news sites today and you’ll see Keir Starmer doing one of two things.

    Either sternly telling people on long-term sickness benefits that it might be time to peel themselves off the sofa and get a job. Or fending off questions about the time his pal Lord Alli let the Starmers use his £18 million pad in Covent Garden so their 16-year-old son could swot up in solitude for his GCSEs.

    Alli loaned his swanky apartment to the Starmers in June and July. A studious retreat worth over £20,000, according to the register of MPs’ interests.

    It’s not a good look, is it? A PM fretting over the scourge of “worklessness” in one breath, and in the next saying he was fully justified in providing his teen with unimaginable luxury during those difficult GCSE weeks.

    But even worse than the bad optics are the bad excuses.

    Starmer says it was election time, there were reporters outside his home, so he decided to decamp to Lord Alli’s leafy, quiet splendour for the sake of his revising son.

    After all, when you’re 16 and doing your GCSEs, “it’s your one chance in life”, he says. And he wanted to boost his son’s one chance however he could.

    Come on, Keir. Who do you think you are kidding?

    Having a few chatty hacks outside your home is hardly the most burdensome distraction for a studying teenager.

    As someone who studied for his GCSEs in a terraced council house with five noisy siblings (one of whom was a newborn), my parents and a lodger, I take offence at the idea that Covent Garden opulence was a burning necessity for Starmer Jnr.

    If I could prep for my exams while a baby wailed and my brothers watched Why Don’t You? on full volume, then surely a middle-class schoolkid can suffer the occasional distant murmur of a bored reporter.

    Also, the idea that GCSEs are your “one chance in life” when you’re the son of the PM, of the one-time Director of Public Prosecutions, is total poppycock.

    GCSE results rarely determine the fate of any child, least of all one whose dad is the most powerful person in the country.

    Look, a good dad will do all he can to help his children get ahead. That is clearly what Starmer was doing here.

    And yet the whiff of hypocrisy is strong. It’s positively pungent.

    Starmer frequently wrings his hands over the unfairness of inherited wealth.

    His government plans to impose VAT on private-school fees, which will make such citadels of learning unaffordable primarily to working-class families who’ve done well for themselves and want their children to get up that social ladder. Yet it turns out that his own son’s educational chances were boosted to the tune of twenty grand.

    Apparently it is bad for parents to work hard so that they can stump up £15,000 or so for their kid to go to private school, but it’s okay for Starmer to get the £20,000 freebie of a sumptuous study room for his son. This might be one of the worst cases ever of that haughty decree, “One rule for me, another for thee”.

    It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the spectacle of well-paid ministers trying to win the sympathy of a struggling nation. Alongside Starmer’s pained defence of the freebie flat, he’s also said he needed all those complimentary football tickets because he’s a public figure. Which is a hard-knock life. The poor dear might get mobbed by oiks.

    Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves have also offered self-pitying justifications for the free frocks they received. Forgive me for failing to shed a tear for the politician in a skirt that cost more than my phone.

    They really do expect us to play a violin for their imaginary woes. Sublimely unaware that there are folk in this country who’d probably burn a violin if they had one – might be a good way to keep warm following Labour’s scrapping of the winter fuel allowance.

    I propose that Starmer Snr return to that luxury pad and do some studying of his own, perhaps on the fate of politicians who live it up while pushing others down. He might learn something.

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

    O TT
    19 hrs ago
    So as far as we can surmise, this Alli bloke, who’s never stood for office, has basically bought the Labour front bench for a couple of hundred grand all in. Banana republic doesn’t begin to cover it. 2TK is the most despicably hypocritical politician we’ve seen in this country for many a year. A weasel in prig’s clothing (paid for by Alli of course).

    Chris Walker
    3 hrs ago
    Reply to O TT
    What makes Starmer been found out for using Alli's penthouse for a covid broadcast does is clearly demonstrate that he has been taking freebies from him for at least the last four years.

    Kyt Thompson
    1 hr ago
    Reply to O TT
    He's not just hypoctical. He's sanctimonious, he's arrogant, he's self righteous. he's dissembling and he lacks humanity.

    Jim Lewin
    19 hrs ago
    Yep. And check out Guido's Starmer story today. It doesn't get any better.
    But why did the media not do more to expose Starmer BEFORE the election?

    M Wheeler
    4 hrs ago
    Reply to Jim Lewin
    The end of this loathsome prig maybe…one can but hope. At the least he has lost all credibility and to govern without any will be difficult . Why is Sunack not laying into him with a passion I ask nor Farage?

    Sharon Jagger
    3 hrs ago
    Reply to M Wheeler – view message
    There's an article written by Allison Pearson, different topic, but the press get threatened if they publish certain stories!

  70. Following my prior whinges about the backlog of washing and what, one has been a bit less silly and is putting two lots on today. The only thing is I've also cwashed Junior's mattress topper as with small boy and big dog that gets a bit crufty very quickly.

    However… it means the bed cannot be remade until the wash has finished and the topper dried…

  71. That's because he cares so much about community relations – just not the British community. I wonder if the propensity of certain people to stab, blow up and set fire to others is part of the reason? What Thatcher called "frit."

  72. Somebody ought to tell Starmer, Reeves and their fellows in the Labour Party that:

    THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH

    An extract from Allison Pearson's article about Fayed:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/25/mohamed-fayed-allegations-truth0/

    "….Like The Godfather’s Don Corleone, to whom Penny Simpson compares him, Fayed would shower the powerful and famous with gifts and freebies; favours he could call in at any time. There were 30 flats at 60 Park Lane and many household names enjoyed his hospitality. "

    This is how Muslim Arabs work; this is their modus operandi.

    Labour politicians are being showered with the use of apartments and money, clothes, tickets to concerts, special facilities at football matches etc. etc.. One Labour MP was even able to borrow money to buy her sister a house:

    Labour MP took £1.2m loan from Lord Alli to buy house for her sister
    Siobhain McDonagh says peer was ‘best friends’ with terminally ill sibling Margaret, Labour’s first female general secretary

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/26/labour-mp-lord-alli-loan-buy-flat-sister-siobhain-mcdonagh/

    When will Lord Attri decide to call all the favours in and what will be his price?

    3. When will some politicians recognise a compromising deal when they're offered one..it's almost as though they've spent no time in the world that the rest of us inhabit.

    4. As others will have noted Starmer has announced just a single policy. That policy is his unequivocal support for Ukraine. Those of us who could use the Winter Fuel allowance to fill half a tank of oil must be spitting blood at the thought that our entitlement will be pissed up against the walls of Kiev to no good purpose whatsoever.

      We are told by Starmer that we must suffer hardship against a frightening backdrop of escalating food and fuel prices whilst he and his wrenches both seek and accept lavish gifts from a suspect “Lord”. The optics are the worst ever and make the expenses scandal and Partygate look like small change affairs.

      When Starmer decided to appoint Sue Gray, an uneducated chancer and former head of part of the Civil Service, as his Chief of Staff we knew the fix was in and what to expect from a Labour government.

      And so it goes from absurdity to full exposure of the utter corruption of this cretinous bench of prize fools. They must be gone by Christmas.

  73. Been hissing it down again here today, ten to fifteen minutes af continuous rain. I don't know how we are going to cope. That makes nearly half an inch of rain in the the past three weeks. Even the roads are wet. When will it end?

    1. No problems with the roads being wet, Ped, it's when the rain covers the potholes that gives my car tyres problems.

    2. The pot holes around here have re-opened , as expected. Why? Because bodging them in with some tarmac is not fixing the underlying problem.

  74. This is what the market delivers:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpraXaw7dyc
    Imagine this as a home helper for the injured, blind or wheel chair bound – oh, hang on, Musk is already working on Neural links to allow almost cyborg exo skeleton support.

    Then you get Starmer and Labour, wasting hundreds of billions on windmills.

    1. That reminds me of Joe Biden – why didn't Elon Musk call the robot POTUS?
      I think POTUS is running on 20% charge when most of the non essential functions are switched off.

  75. https://lowstatus.substack.com/p/needs-musk

    I post this because I subscribe to low status opinions. I like how he writes and what he says.

    And this post I agree with entirely. Musk is fought on every turn by the statist failures of big government because, as LSO notes, he shows them up as venal, corrupt, fundamentally incompetent, moronic fools.

    The era of big state, of national government is ending. The crippling debts, the corruption, the utter, complete incompetence – we're seeing the death throes of a failed institution. The last gasp will be frantic control over the currency but when that's destroyed to irrelevance those who can will simply ignore it. The day M&S announce they take orders in satoshi's it's all over and people like Starmer, the welfarist, the public sector non-job are done forever.

    1. I listened to this Darkhorse podcast earlier. Although it relates to the US, it is addressing the same threat that we have here in the UK with our current (and previous) government(s).
      https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bret-weinstein-darkhorse-podcast/id1471581521?i=1000670601528

      Bret Weinstein speaks with Matt Taibbi on the subject of the censorship industrial complex. They discuss their views on the recent lack of reaction by traditional liberals to violations of America’s First Amendment.. Towards the end:

      ““I don't really view this as Trump versus Kamala Harris. I view, I think Donald Trump is almost irrelevant.

      It's a strange thing to say. But I've been watching this progression of accumulating secrecy, surveillance, state power since 9-11 with increasing alarm. And I just think there's that and kind of everybody else, right?

      And there's really only voting for that and voting against that to me. And we've reached a point where, you know, voting for it, I think, is suicide. So I think it's going to be pretty clear what I'm saying.

      But I'm going to try to make the point that, you know, what I'm going to try to do is argue to people that it's not something that you can put off anymore. Because, you know, this, I again, I was in Russia in 99 and 2000, where I basically watched the kind of newly hatched freedom of speech disappear. And it does not come back.

      This is how these things work. And, you know, there has to be a major upheaval for anyone to even consider it. And we're in this place right now, the Americans, we just don't have a lot of experience[…]”

      From DarkHorse Podcast: The Constitution, Unplugged: Matt Taibbi on DarkHorse, 25 Sep 2024
      https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bret-weinstein-darkhorse-podcast/id1471581521?i=1000670601528
      This material may be protected by copyright.”

    2. What comes after national government? Supranational or world government. Will that be better? Same evil bastards, just bigger.

  76. Another excellent Eigen Values: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/miliband-doubles-down-expensive-energy

    If I were Mr Turver I'd be a foaming loon by now, so clearly are the political class ruining our lives. Again, we should be able to stop these cretins from damaging our economy and country. The socialist desperation that is the climate change tax scam needs to be exposed. It cannot be fought on scientific grounds because that's not what the green agenda is remotely about.

    1. It also can’t be fought on the basis of science as none of the cretins seem to understand even the basics

  77. HMS Veteran (D 72).
    Destroyer (Admiralty V&W).

    Complement:
    235 officers and men (235 dead – no survivors).

    At 10.36 hours on 26th September 1942, U-404 (Otto von Bülow) fired a spread of three torpedoes at a destroyer near convoy RB-1 and heard two detonations on the vessel and a third later and thought that they had hit another ship in convoy. However, HMS Veteran (D 72) (LtCdr T.H. Garwood, RN) was apparently hit by two torpedoes and sank immediately with all hands. The commander, eight officers and 150 ratings were lost. The destroyer had picked up 47 survivors from Boston, 28 survivors from New York and the chief officer of the British steam merchant New Bedford.

    Type VIIC U-Boat U-404 was sunk on 28th July 1943 in the Bay of Biscay north-west of Cape Ortegal, Spain by depth charges from two US Liberator aircraft (4th A/S Sqn USAAF) and a British Liberator aircraft (224 Sqn RAF). 51 dead (all hands lost).

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/27ccc22fb694681c6a0097660ffd728ae883e1538d61318a226e946ad038b53e.jpg

    2. My fruit and veg production (for personal consumption only) has been minimal this year. Never known a year like it.

  79. Yo and good day to you all, back from Costa (lot at) Blackpool to Costa del Skeg

    The return journey was a pleasure,

  80. "I’m not mates with ‘abhorrent’ Huw Edwards, insists Jon Sopel
    The News Agents host says the two have never ‘seen each other socially’, despite backing the disgraced BBC anchor in initial revelation."

    Judas Iscariot also did a good line in friendship. And he has had many reincarnations!

  81. The Pru sent Mother a letter saying she has to change her login password. I'm trying to do this, but it needs a telephone call as there's some issue. So far, I've been hanging on 20 minutes "All of the team are busy"… mobile phone, international rates. That will use the whole value of the policy in the call on it's own!
    Plus, the inability to advance is very frustrating!

    1. Hi Paul…can you email them from their website, asking them to call you asap on an urgent issue, to do with your mum's insurance (try to make it sound as though you're thinking of taking out more insurance, you've been trying to get through for ages and need to speak to someone for advice, yadda yadda…)…good luck..

      1. I got the nice Indian lady to give me the email address for the department dealing with these things, so mailed them.
        Then went and bashed my head in with a sledgehammer. The frustration is really getting to me!
        Just had a "Received" automatic response.

        1. I imagine they get a number of repeated requests because they don’t reply within 24 hrs. A lousy place to work. May I ask if the policy is still on a regular payment – if yes, threaten to stop it (BUT DON’T), they may respond to that. If you look at mum’s documentation, there may be agent details if she took it out through one, if so try contacting them. Good luck Paul, I know how frustrating it is, even tho’ my dad had granted me PoA, still had paperwork to wade through.

          7. Hair’s good – they have a hairdresser in every few days so all the ladies can get a primp.

          2. He stayed for years, probably to avoid the draft, but was only awarded an honorary degree, surprisingly not in sexual harassment, after he became POTUS

  85. The rainstorms are arriving in 10minute bursts .. hard slashing rain, and then sunshine .

    We visited a farm shop near Wareham , and we saw a low flattish rainbow just a colourful stripe low on the horizon and some huge funnel clouds .

    Snow in South Africa https://www.iol.co.za/news/weather/big-freeze-more-snow-and-rain-expected-as-cold-front-blows-through-south-africa-c44115ff-d81e-49a1-a932-08824c08fd11

    My family (Siblings ) in South Africa sent me video recordings of Elephants and other animals knee deep in snow,

    SA is not equipped to cope with bad weather and sadly don't have enough power either .

    2. My neice who lives in Somerset West sent me some lovely photos of snowy Drakensburg from their climbing walking trips yesterday.

  86. Not long back from Snorbens hospital.
    A wonderful almost two hour experience served by two nurses and a physiotherapist. 25 elderly people treated to pre op, op and post op services.
    Very well explained with life-size models of knee joints and the proceedings of the experience its self.
    I think if starmer had stood up when 'any questions' were invited. And said the NHS is broken, he'd be under strong anesthetic right now.

    1. Have you been asked to confirm your gender and if you are pregnant yet?

      Apparently Toronto City Council have decided that application forms for services should no longer ask if an applicant is male or female. The correct term will now be used – cis male or cis female.

        1. Nope, it's what is happening, Toronto council is to the left of Trudeau.

          To avoid upsetting the permanently upset complainers, they have just blown a million dollars renaming Dundas square.

      3. How on earth do they put up with that DH Trudeau ?
        I’ll get in touch with my friend who use to be a nurse in Toronto..

  87. BTL on Guido

    JackCoitus
    2h
    How wonderfully ironic, many people blogging here for many many months have rightly accused Starmer of being a lawyer first and untested politician second.
    Many on here also brought up the interesting fact that how a barrister, within the very particular and controlled environment of the courtroom, can manipulate and lie, within the procedural limits, to his or her hearts content.

    Amazing how poorly that translates to the real world where people can argue back without permission from a judge.

    1. A friend, a lawyer, told me that a prosecuting attorney is only concerned with winning and they have no guilt about how they do it. Enter Herr Starmerfuhrer, who is clearly indifferent to the damage he causes as long as he gets where he wants to be.

      1. Not just prosecutors play that game. many defence lawyers would appear to twist the law to win a not guilty verdict – for the right fee of course.

    2. Nah, goes deeper. According, to the clever clogs on the tinernet the man is damaged & has definitely not moved beyond his childhood.
      Suffered from a 'parentasized' childhood (child role reversal is the process of role reversal whereby a child or adolescent is obliged to care for a parent). They lack any sense of introspection, zero imagination, lack optimism, believe the world is harsh & unstable, and under pressure they tend to attack the world.

    1. A new poster on FSB has just admonished the thread for making fun out of the hostage/sausage crisis. It has trebled the pleasure I have had from this cartoon. Lol.

    2. A new poster on FSB has just admonished the thread for making fun out of the hostage/sausage crisis. It has trebled the pleasure I have had from this cartoon. Lol.

    3. The one on the left is a beef sausage; the one on the right is a veggie sausage; but the one in the middle is a pork sausage who has to put up with Christianophobia.

    1. Par for me.

      Wordle 1,195 4/6

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    3. Boring par – you're on a bit of a roll, arent you?

      Wordle 1,195 4/6

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  97. Rod Liddle
    My lessons for David Lammy
    From magazine issue:
    28 September 2024

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Rod-Getty_e64421.png No matter what, he always looks so really, really stupid.

    There is worryingly little time left to make the appropriate preparations for Bridget Phillipson’s official birthday, on 19 December. As far as I am aware, no venue has been booked as yet – and given that the minister for women and incalculable self entitlement has her birthday slap bang in the middle of the festive season, finding a suitable place may prove problematic. The Royal Albert Hall, for example, is already booked out for an evening with Guy Barker’s Big Band Christmas, but I dare say that if pressure was brought to bear this could be junked so that the celebrations for Bridget’s 41st might be housed in a suitable location.

    Last year, if you remember, she was forced to slum it at the Hoare Memorial Hall, SW1, the bill being picked up by the Labour donor Lord Alli. It is hoped that he can be prevailed upon to fork out for the cost of spray-painting gold 100 naked Filipino dwarfs, who will be charged with the task of carrying her litter into the hall – but I am not sure that even this is in hand, let alone the various complex arrangements for the performing geese.

    It may be that the government will be required to pass a law which enshrines the date of 19 December in the public mind and charges various ministries of state with the responsibility for organising this important commemorative event. A recourse to law does have some precedence – in 2013 a new law was enacted simply to ensure that Sir Keir Starmer didn’t have to pay any extra tax above £1 million on his pension, accrued when he was the Director of Public Prosecutions. It is to Sir Keir’s enormous credit that this canny little sliver of tax avoidance hasn’t engendered in him a sentimentality towards pensioners in general.

    Either way, I hope the government takes my suggestion of legislation seriously: it is unconscionable that someone of Phillipson’s stature should be forced to spend both her official and unofficial birthdays eating pizza with members of her family.

    I am also worried about the Deputy Prime Minister’s decision to hire a personal photographer on the paltry wage of £68,000 per annum. Perhaps she was worried that a much more considerable sum would have nettled the taxpayers, who pick up the bill. My concern is that this may be a short-sighted, if well-meaning, decision. The photographs of Ms Rayner must be of the very highest quality – and this is especially the case if there are to be what I believe are known as ‘growler shots’, as well as the more humdrum portraits of a fully clothed Angela condescending to members of the public. If much more intimate photography must be done – and frankly, I would warn against it – then you need someone behind the lens who displays a certain taste and elegance. No crass framing.

    Ms Rayner is the first Deputy Prime Minister to demand a personal photographer and needs to set a precedent by hiring someone who is at the very peak of their profession. A Diego Velazquez or Hans Holbein of the camera – nothing less will do. Again, it is to Ms Rayner’s credit that while she once excoriated Boris Johnson, during his time as prime minister, for his use of ‘vanity photographers’, she has shown sufficient flexibility of mind to change her opinion by 180 degrees immediately upon taking office.

    Incidentally, I intend to use this column to offer helpful advice to the new government on a weekly basis, much as I have done in those paragraphs above. It is always difficult for an incoming administration making that transition from opposition to governance with, all the while, political enemies sniping away. I am determined to take a much more constructive approach. And so, Sir Keir – we’ve got to talk about David Lammy. Now, there is nobody in the present administration for whom I have more respect. To have ascended with a second-class degree from one of the country’s worst universities, SOAS, to attain a place at Harvard is a remarkable and even mystifying achievement.

    Further, for a person of colour to have succeeded in an organisation dedicated to keeping such folk as far from the levers of power as possible – by which I mean the Labour party – is to his immense credit. He now holds one of the great offices of state – he is our Foreign Secretary. And this is the problem because for one reason or another his grasp of geopolitics seems as slender as it was in 2008 when, appearing on ‘Celebrity’ Mastermind, he pronounced that the Rose Revolution had just taken place in Yugoslavia, a country which had ceased to exist almost two decades previously.

    Indeed it was put to me by an American correspondent who had watched David’s performance in the USA that ‘he seems not to know anything about anything’. As evidence, one might cite his recent deep confusion over Azerbaijan’s bullying of Armenia or indeed his contention that the single most pressing and imminent international problem we face right now is global warming. My suspicion is that he mixed up Azerbaijan with Azkaban from the Harry Potter books, but clearly he needs some sort of short course in knowing what countries are where and what the people in them get up to, and whether we should like them or not.

    It is not absolutely crucial to being foreign secretary – various American presidents have breezed through with only a slightly better grasp than David’s – but I think it would help to make the chap feel more secure when he is pontificating about foreign affairs to assorted journalists.

    A day or two in front of an atlas and a few important places – Moscow, Washington, Beijing etc – scribbled down in a notebook would, I think, make a world of difference and boost his confidence. If he could do that before his next foreign assignment, so much the better.

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

    Chiel
    10 hours ago
    Is something wrong with me. I keeping seeing Idi Amin Jnr in a tight suit posing as Foreign Secretary.

    Terry Richards Chiel
    10 hours ago
    How dare you taint the memory of that outstanding African leader.

    Ianess Terry Richards
    7 hours ago
    At least, Idi loved his people. Preferably, roasted with apple sauce on the side.

    1. Brilliant! Have a relative in AUS, we generally find a local florist and order directly from them rather than go through the condom of Interflora 😀

  100. Maybe I need to be more aggressive in selections

    Wordle 1,195 4/6

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  101. Sad news I’m afraid, another family member has left us. She had a good innings though reaching 83. That makes 2 in 3 months, we are all at that age but I am determined to make the most of what time I have left.
    My poor old cousin had a good sense of humour and would enjoy what is coming next, has anyone got Lord Alli’s number, I think I need a new suit for her funeral.

  102. 'Night all
    Nicked comment 'bout right
    "The journalists going after Starmer now are the same journalists who already knew of his corruption but stayed quiet about it. They are going after him now because they have been told they can. They aren't real journalists, but instead are narrative controllers.

    Whoever is responsible for exposing Starmer also knows who will be annointed as his replacement. As some have said, he appears to have been the Trojan Horse to get the real chosen one in charge. I suspect Starmer blotted his copybook in the eyes of TPTB when he said he preferred to be in Davos than Westminster. Possibly the only honest interview he has given recently."
    The MSM are there to feed us bullshit
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/764c0df4c339f8b73075607bcc90031c825b54810cdb1ba5d00651dc50a8f222.jpg

  103. Radio 4 Now: The BBC has found a solution to the Hamas/Hezbollah problem. All Chews to move into the Gaza Desert and Dead Sea and surrender their houses and fortunes to the peace loving Mozzies who will look after them and their dependants for the rest of their lives. Why didn't Trump and Farage and all the other Far Right fanatics think of that? It is so obvious!

  106. Do other NoTTLers share my rage at the fake "English" word invented on the Continong – "Wellness"? It is bad enough to see it widely used across the Channel – but it is spreading into the UK. GRRR.

  107. Had a fox pass in front of the house yesterday then later on, saw a huge deer, about the size of a horse, cross the road about a quarter of a mile from the house. I have also found out that there are four or more wild wolves in the area. Foxes and deer I can deal with but wolves are a different matter.

    2. They'll go for unprotected sheep first of all, if there are any in your area. Quite a few wolves in northern France.

  108. Douglas Murray
    Sky News has lost its way
    From magazine issue:
    28 September 2024

    Occasionally I am told that I go too hard on the BBC. It is an understandable gripe which I sometimes hear from disgruntled journos from Broadcasting House. So let me start by saying that, as an equal-opportunities insulter, I would like to put on the record how completely rancid Sky News in the UK has become.

    To give an idea of where Sky UK has gone wrong since being sold, allow me to highlight one story as the channel reported it this week. After the targeted strikes on Hezbollah operatives via their pagers and walkie-talkies, Sky ran a story headlined: ‘Hezbollah has been provoked like never before by Israel and may be tempted to unleash its firepower.’

    That is truly fascinating framing. For it suggests that the terrorists of Hezbollah should be allowed to fire thousands of rockets into Israel with impunity, and that if Israel responds to this – even in the most targeted and personal way possible – it is being ‘provocative’. Poor Hezbollah. It’s just too beastly – can’t it be allowed to fire missiles at Israeli civilians in peace?

    Much of the broadcast media in Britain has been similarly skewy. The BBC news website last week led with ‘Lebanon reels from two days of device attacks’. ITV News lamented not just the pager and walkie-talkie explosions but Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah arms dumps. Presenting these as though they were strikes on civilian targets, ITV – in its own footage – showed the secondary explosions in the buildings Israel had hit. Which gives the game away, surely?

    I have seen all this before. I was on the Israel-Lebanon border 18 years ago during the last Israel-Hezbollah war. Back in 2006 much of the media played the same game. Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into Israel, Israel responded and before you knew it the world was running headlines about Israel striking Lebanon. I remember being in a hospital on the Israeli side of the border that had been hit by Hezbollah. There was no mention of this in the next day’s media outside of Israel but there were plenty of reports about Israeli ‘aggression’ against Hezbollah.

    That conflict ended with a UN resolution (1701) which was meant to ensure that Hezbollah would not be allowed to rebuild its stockpile of rockets in southern Lebanon. Over the succeeding years Hezbollah more than replenished these supplies. By last year the group that has done so much to destroy Lebanon – and to decimate its Christian population, among others – was estimated to have around 160,000 missiles in position to launch at Israel.

    Labour and Conservative governments never had very much to say about this – and certainly did nothing about it. Under successive governments, people who generally enjoy talking about UN resolutions were silent about 1701. Hezbollah more than rebuilt its armoury, and then, from 8 October last year, it started firing its missiles into Israel again, keen as it was not to miss out on the genocidal opportunities opened up by its Hamas colleagues the previous day.

    Over the past year I have witnessed plenty of this activity for myself. On a normal day a few dozen missiles might be fired by Hezbollah into Israel. On some days – like this past week – hundreds are fired over. This almost never makes the British news. But many thousands of Iranian-gifted rockets have been fired by Hezbollah into Israel in the past year. And all this has happened under the watchful eye of UN ‘peacekeepers’ whose effectiveness approximates to that of a eunuch in a harem.

    Meantime the court eunuchs in the western media rarely mention that Hezbollah fires the occasional rocket. When they do they tend to suggest it is simply trying – utterly reasonably, of course – to target Israeli military sites. As to why Hezbollah fired rockets into a playground in a northern Israeli town, killing a dozen Israeli Druze children playing football, nobody will say. It’s just one of life’s little mysteries.

    If there is anyone left in Britain who still watches Sky News then they will be almost uniquely misinformed about what is actually happening in the world. In the past week its crack squad of misinformants, led by someone called Dominic Waghorn and Alex Crawford, did manage to utter the word ‘terror’. But they used it while referring to the ‘two days of terror’ recently suffered by the ‘fighting group’ Hezbollah.

    I am sure Hezbollah terrorists were terrorised when they found their balls blown off by exploding pager devices. But that is probably one of the job hazards that comes if you make the mistake of joining a terrorist group and then try to wipe out your neighbours on the orders of the Revolutionary Islamic government in Iran. Decisions have consequences, and joining what Ms Crawford calls a ‘fighting group’ should be seen for what it is: a distinctly bad career choice. Worse even than entering broadcast journalism.

    People sometimes wonder why the media in a country like Britain has gone so partisan on a story which should not be that complicated to report. A number of reasons present themselves. The one I am most prone to is simply that failing television networks attract less and less talent and that Sky, ITV and even the BBC just don’t get the best or brightest any more. The idea that they have been ‘bought’ or compromised in some way seems to me a little too conspiratorial.

    Then I notice that just about the only regular sponsor of Sky News UK is the terrorist-supporting slave state of Qatar, through its national airline. The Qataris are, of course, not just funders of Hamas but also hosts to the Taliban. But I am sure this is a coincidence and their efforts to provoke their remaining viewers into reaching for the ‘off’ button comes from ignorance rather than anything worse.

        1. Yes. You could tell by those nasty little dishes that it was going to be tasteless trash. Joke is on me though, the previous owners attached one to the roof of our cottage, and there it sits until today…

  109. I note that the Prime Minister when questioned about his time leading the CPS and people like Savile, the grooming gangs and now the former Harrods owner, usually replies that they never came across his desk.
    An unfortunate turn of phrase, I think

  110. Signing off. Rain started – likely to continue for 24 hours. Gosh -the nights are drawing in. Yesterday the MR went to her Keep Kit class at 6 pm in the sun – and returned at 7.15 pm in the dark. Hate this time of year.

    Have a jolly evening – I have just lit the woodburner.

    A demain

  112. Electoral Law Issues for Starmer Over Penthouse Campaign Stay

    The Starmers say they moved into Lord Alli’s £18 million penthouse in Soho on 29th May and ceased to use it on 13th July this year. They valued this period of use at a bargain £20,437.28. Starmer said this week:

    “I promised him we would move somewhere, get out of the house and go somewhere where he could be peacefully studying”… “if you are putting to me Beth that I should have stayed in my Kentish Town home and disrupted my son’s GCSEs… then I think you should put that to me.”

    This suggests Starmer was actively living in the penthouse for the entirety of the period – using it as his primary residence. This would have started just before nominations opened for the General Election on June 4th….

    When in 2017 UKIP’s Paul Nuttall claimed on his nomination papers he lived at a house he hadn’t yet moved into, it was made clear that the address had to be the place where he was actually resident at the moment of nomination. Peter Stanyon, deputy chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said: “The general provision will clearly be that it needs to be a factual statement made at the point the nomination was being submitted.” Starmer’s nomination paper claims he was living at an address in Holborn and St. Pancras on that day. But we now know he was at Alli’s penthouse is in the Cities of London and Westminster…

    https://i0.wp.com/order-order.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/nomination.png?w=1086&ssl=1
    Nuttall was investigated by police. He managed to prove to them that he used his house regularly as a “base” in the campaign for the 2017 Stoke By-Election. Starmer has accidentally admitted that he lived in a different property to the one on his declaration – did he campaign from his Kentish Town house? Downing Street will have to say so…

    In addition, Starmer’s stated explanation for his use of the donated penthouse is that he needed the accommodation for his son’s exams. In itself this would mean it is not subject to Labour’s national general election campaign expense. But it would be if he held any campaign meetings there, used the property for campaign purposes or did campaign work there…

    It could also shift into the local expense in his capacity as an MP. There is no declaration of the donation during a regulated election period on Starmer’s Electoral Commission entries. Starmer’s period of residence at Lord Alli’s therefore may have breached electoral law. Twice…

    3. If this was similar to America and prosecution persecution of Trump, Starmer would be buried in lawfare.

  113. Starmer would appear to have the cerebellum of a rostellum

    rostellum -a small beaklike part, such as the hooked projection on the head of a tapeworm.

          1. That's mine, that is. Bought it for SWMBO who is "deadeye dickless" with it!
            Firstborn's hands, though.

          2. That's mine, that is. Bought it for SWMBO who is "deadeye dickless" with it!
            Firstborn's hands, though.

          3. That's mine, that is. Bought it for SWMBO who is "deadeye dickless" with it!
            Firstborn's hands, though.

  114. Evening, all .Damp here, unfortunately. I did manage to cut some of the branches that needed to be removed for the new tank in between the showers, but then I had to give up. Have had a very frustrating time trying (and failing) to put more credit on my PAYG phone. EE is useless.

    Starmer's excuses don't add up because he's lying through his teeth. Odious pipsqueak.

    2. I had a drive to Belper and picked up 3 dozen mushroom trays (that is EMPTY mushroom trays, NOT trays full of mushrooms) and got 10 of them filled up with sticks for t'Lad's woodburner.
      Welder Son will probably have a share of them.

      1. I shall have some logs when I've cut the thick ones up. At the moment, I'm just concentrating on cutting them off at ground level.

      2. BoB, you are such a delightful Tigger! Everything you say and do is full of cheer. Thank you so much. It is GREAT in these apparently darkening times.

      1. It's a pity somebody can't drop him in an isolated spot with only eco-non-CO2 stuff or electricity and expect him to survive for a month.

        2. I saw him once in person. A political hack through and through. I’d be surprised if he could survive for five minutes outside a city let alone in the wild.

        3. I saw him once in person. A political hack through and through. I’d be surprised if he could survive for five minutes outside a city let alone in the wild.

      2. It's a pity somebody can't drop him in an isolated spot with only eco-non-CO2 stuff or electricity and expect him to survive for a month.

    3. My domestic energy rates from Oct 1st 2024 are:

      Gas: 6.16 p/kWh
      Night Rate Elec: 13.51 p/kWh
      Day Ratee Elec: 31.42 p/kWh

      I used to reckon on a doubling of energy rates over this range before energy costs went haywire.
      They used to be 4:8:16 p/kWh.

      Gas remains the cheapest way of using energy 24 hrs a day – ideal for running an AGA, CH and HW.
      The AGA is ideal for cooking and background heating for the house 24/7 – this takes the load off the gas boiler in maintaining desired living and sleeping area temperatures. Gas for HW needs to run for only two periods of 30 mins a day to keep the HW storage tank up to its max of 60 degC.

      With these new energy ratios the idea of replacing gas energy with air/ground source heating using electricity becomes ridiculously unecomic bearing in mind that my condensing boiler is near enough 100% efficicient and air/ground source energy gains are of the order of three.

      At the prices from 1st October 2024 my house heating from an electrically driven air/ground source system would need to reach an energy gain of at least five before any installation overhead cost saving could be factored in.

    4. By avoiding the Nuclear option as a backstop, Millipede is putting the entire UK economy at risk of collapse.

    5. By avoiding the Nuclear option as a backstop, Millipede is putting the entire UK economy at risk of collapse.

      1. Labour MPs would never go for that. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, especially if they've only been in the job for a few weeks.

          6. Preferably in the middle of the North Sea. The RNLI can divert from bringing in the illegals to look for him.

        2. Even Blair, May and Cameron avoided suspicion until they left office whereupon they gorged on favours returned in cash for non- existent speeches, book deals and the rest. Nobody but a prize bunch of fools would have taken gifts of the nature revealed before taking office or during office.

      2. The withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Allowmce is likely illegal because no cost benefit studies were carried out. Lawyers are looking into this at the present time.

        There are myriad suspicions and rumours surrounding Starmer’s conduct over a decade and more. As a lawyer and later as chief of the Public Prosecution Service he has shielded execrable persons such as Jimmy Saville and countless hundreds of Pakistani Muslim gang rapists in cities from Oxford to Doncaster and beyond.

        The shear scale of the revelations concerning bribes for influence and the sums involved indicate that the entire front bench and upper echelons of both the Labour Party and the Civil Service are corrupt. The lot of them should go and go now. The Police should be actively investigating this rabble and bringing charges.

  129. If the rumours about Starmer's exit are true I can only remind the populace of Belloc's poem, Jim.
    And always keep a-hold of Nurse
    For fear of finding something worse.

    1. I hope it will be someone worse. The country needs its nose rubbing in the filth that we now have as main stream political parties.

        1. We have a first grandchild due next month and I'm getting more and more worried about how interesting things are becoming.

      2. I've just seen a list of donations amounting to over 200 thousand pounds to another prominent Labour politician.
        I didn't compile it but it looks fairly genuine.

      1. True_Belle has posted a number of links suggesting that Starmer may be about to be forced to resign.

        2. I think it's all a cunning ploy to deceive Mr Putin that with the unnecessary early election and the election of a pseudo-competent new administration, that the Uk couldn't run a Whelk Stall at Dover even if it had a queue of 700 hungry new arrivals willing to pay for the produce…!

    3. Susan Gray (born 1957 or 1958) is a British special adviser and former civil servant who has served as Downing Street Chief of Staff and currently earns more than the Prime Minister, may try to influence the succession . . .

  130. Well, chums, I have had a tiring day, so I shall retire an hour earlier tonight. Good Night, sleep well, and see you all tomorrow.

  131. Just read the suggestion that Rayner could take over.
    shudder…
    Can you imagine, Rayner in the UK and Harris in the US? What an appallingly unfunny joke that would be!

  133. Rumours abound that Starmer will have to resign
    We need another election if Starmer goes, the country cannot take another shoo-in leader nobody wants.
    Farage could be PM by Christmas.
    Trump President.

  134. My weary head is about to come into contact with my pillow. As usual because I'm reasonably fortunate I'll be asleep in 10 minutes for 5-6 hours a quick visit to the bathroom and off again till 7 – 8am.
    Good night all sleep well as well.
    😴

  136. From 1990 to 2016, the number of prevalent cases of schizophrenia increased globally, largely due to significant population growth in regions like Eastern sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa/Middle East, which experienced the largest percentage increases in schizophrenia cases. These demographic insights are crucial for targeting public health interventions and resource allocation to address and manage schizophrenia effectively across different populations and regions.

    Ho hum!.. as if there aren't enough problems with our indigenous tribes .

    1. "Symptoms of schizophrenia can include:

      hallucinations – hearing or seeing things that do not exist outside of the mind
      delusions – unusual beliefs not based on reality
      muddled thoughts and speech based on hallucinations or delusions"

      Sounds like our present and recent governments, Maggie.

        1. I think they have delusions of grandeur promised by the WEF et al. They’ll soon wake up to the fact they are mere minions in the grand scheme of things.

  138. James Melville 🚜
    @JamesMelville
    As someone who has been a lifelong old school liberal and left of centre, it’s pretty obvious that Keir Starmer and the Labour government are not these things. Instead, they are authoritarian, hypocritical and using sanctimonious fake virtue to try and mask some pretty appalling optics even within their first 3 months of being in government.

    The winter fuel allowance is a huge symbolism of this. No previous Labour government would have ever have considered punishing pensioners like this. So while Starmer repeatedly wangs on about “fixing the foundations” of the economy and a £22bn black hole (which he knew about before the election – as stated by him even in May 2024), how is it economically fair and indeed morally viable to cut £1.6bn by abolishing the winter fuel allowance for millions of pensions yet spaff £11.6bn on overseas climate change or give over £220m to consultants at KPMG to train civil servants?

    But it’s not just the winter fuel allowance. This Labour government has already shown itself to be completely devoid of vision and empathy towards the mood of the British people. The country is rotting (largely due to the 14 years of appalling neglect and nefarious policies from the Tory government). The new Labour government had a chance to create a national conversation with the people and really listen and act accordingly to their many valid concerns. Tragically, they didn’t. Instead, they have indulged in the politics of punishment, austerity and misery and communicated by a po-faced Prime Minister who comes across as a modern day equivalent to the pompous, authoritarian Malvolio from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

    The Labour government is already drowning in backdated hypocrisy of broken promises and bare-faced duplicity combined with an angry divide and rule self-righteousness that only loses friends and alienates voters. And that’s why they are plummeting in the approval polls.

    Keir Starmer is hammering millions of pensioners with the removal of the winter fuel allowance while he is trousering north of £750,000 in donations and £100,000 in freebies. It’s disgusting and deeply hypocritical.

    He promised to clean up the mess in politics and be a Prime Minister with integrity, yet he’s claiming grotesque amounts of freebies, and in that dreadful po-faced manner of his, savagely cutting the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners whilst repeatedly sanctimoniously lecturing to the public like we are all naughty schoolchildren.

    He’s now disliked to the point that he’s become a national laughing stock. But hypocritical pomposity on this scale deserves nothing but ridicule.

    Labour has tragically abandoned its “for the working people” traditions. “The Labour Party” in name has become an oxymoron. It is no longer committed to its original mission of improving living conditions and the opportunities of working people in Britain, standing against greedy corporations and the military-industrial complex, whilst protecting freedom of speech. Instead, it is the exact opposite – it’s in thrall to greedy corporatism. The over inflated payments to net zero based (largely overseas) corporations is a prime example of this.

    To bookend where I began this post, as I often say, I haven’t left the left, but sadly this Labour government have left me. They aren’t anywhere near the values of the liberal left that used to serve Labour and their core voters well.

    John Smith (former Labour Party Leader) once said, “People in Britain today are angry: not just disappointed, not just disillusioned, but angry. They are angry at the state of Britain; angry at the total absence of leadership; angry at the absence of vision; angry at the hypocrisy and double standards; and they are angry at the incessant incompetence of a Government they no longer respect and increasingly despise.”

    And tragically, his words of wisdom (aimed back then against the Tory government) could equally apply to Keir Starmer’s government of today.
    2:59 PM · Sep 25, 2024
    ·
    157.1K
    Views

    1. New leader will restore the winter fuel allowance, thus allowing greater evils such as giving the country away to the one world government to pass unnoticed?
      At this point, rearranging the deckchairs isn't going to make any difference.
      And the unsavoury truth is that we can't afford the winter fuel allowance. We can't afford the migrants, the stonewall consultancies, the ESG, most of the civil service, benefits, even pensions. We can't afford any of it because we've been broke and printing money to pay for it for some years now.
      People rightly revolt at the idea that the ultra rich keep looting the system whilst the fuel allowance is taken away from pensioners, but the fact is that decades of looting in the west, with the poor hoovering up the crumbs, has left us massively in debt with a joke paper currency. Whoever is to blame, the effect is the same.

    2. And if people are angry they need to show it. Refuse service in shops, pubs restaurants etc to each and every elected labour official from the lowest town councillor to the highest biggest bar steward in Westminster. Let them be in no doubt just how much contempt we feel for them. Then repeat the process for all the other grifters who put party before country.
      Stop moaning and do something about it, join a political party that promises real change, volunteer at a local level and start voting to change things for the better.
      Ogga 1 and I may disagree who should get our votes but I admire his desire to try and change things for the better.

  139. I see a number of comments saying ‘Content not available’. Have I mistakenly blocked someone and if so how can I check?

    1. As somebody noted last week on a similar problem, note where the comments are; log out and go back to where they are and you should be able to see them.

    2. Go to your Disqus profile, John. Select 'blocked users'. But blocking is two way, so those posters may have blocked you…

      Eric has it nailed. Log out and return. The 'blockers' will be revealed. A similar thing exists at the absolutly, hand on heart, nothing remotely to do with Disqus comments at the Speccie. Once blocked, there's no way to reverse it, since there are no user profiles. But have enough Speccie pages and comments open, and the system breaks down. Commenting is no longer an option, but you can see CARTER, Nick Harman -oops, I meamt Robert Bidochon and Lion's posts, regardless.

      1. Thanks Geoff, I think I have inadvertently blocked Paul, Oberst. Are you saying there’s nothing i can do to get him back?
        I have never knowingly blocked anyone.

        1. Go to your profile. Select “Settings” – i.e. the cog wheel in the top RH corner. Then the last option on the LH side is “Blocking”. If no-one is listed, then they have blocked you.

    3. I see them too, Alf. I think they are 'Phizzee's' ramblings. I wish he'd do something about it. I have blocked no-one!
      You can check for any blocks, by going to 'Your (my)profile'.

  140. Oh dear. T'Lad has got me to put bids on some engineering stuff located at Denbigh.
    Same place I went to a couple of weeks back, so at least I know where to go!
    If bids are successful, then I plan picking up next Thu or Fri with Thu night B&B. As the DT will be on days off both days I'm planning to take her with me.
    You never know, I might be able to swap her for something!

    And with that, I'm off to bed. Good night all.

  142. 393515+ up ticks,

    The understatement of the millennium, his dangerous twatologist slip is showing.

    History will name it as, "the great scamming era".

    Dt,
    Chris Whitty: I worry we overstated danger of Covid at start of pandemic

    1. He’s on video very early on saying that it was nothing to worry about but then suddenly he became a millionaire and began to lie.

        1. Define sentient, Geoff. I’m still seeing face masks and hearing “I’ve tested positive for Covid”.

          2. You Sue are very observant. In fact I've come to the conclusion that you, like a good many others here, can see through things very quickly!

  143. 393515+ up ticks,

    I assume he means politicians, he is right of course.

    Dt,
    Rory Geoghegan
    Criminals are now the luckiest group in Britain

        1. I imagine it was one of those automatic honours for very senior public servants – see also ‘Dame’ Alison Saunders, his successor (or was she his predecessor – they don’t last long) and all the permanent secretaries of Whitehall departments.

    2. There is apparently some land he has in the SE that will be worth more than billions when the planning laws are relaxed.

    3. I wouldn't trust him to make me a decent latte. So – he's a barrister. But they come in all shapes and sizes. I remember a dispute with a subcontractor, many years ago. They had a dispute, claimed to be barristers. I met them at their office, and blew away all their arguments. Me – I'm not even a barista. I left an integrated 'bean to cup machine' behind at the last place. For reasons of space, I now have a filter coffee machine and a grinder. The results are just as good.

      1. Our recent dealings with our so called barrister at pre-trial and then mediation left us both in awe of his crappiness.

    1. A friend who’s a lawyer once told me, “What you need to understand is that you don’t have to be intelligent to be a lawyer”. I think of that every time I listen to Starmer and Lammy.

    2. A friend who’s a lawyer once told me, “What you need to understand is that you don’t have to be intelligent to be a lawyer”. I think of that every time I listen to Starmer and Lammy.

    3. I have a close neighbour who was the top planning lawyer and KC favoured by government to see the Crossrail Bill through the Lords. He is a very clever man and both his father and brother were and are KC’s. His father was Sir Francis Brooks Puchas (Bob Purchas after his South African nickname for ‘boy’) and who was the distinguished Court of Appeal judge tasked with settling the Thalidomide claims.

      When you meet and become acquainted with really top Lawyers you can see the gulf between them and the wretched Sir Kier Starmer. There can be no comparison.

      1. My experience of barristers is mercifully brief (pun intended).
        Many years ago I assisted an old friend embroiled in a vexatious complaint to the medical regulator. It was a complex case that the complainant had clearly spent some years developing and, most of those involved in the early stages were unable or unwilling to cut through the elaborate crap she had served up. Fortunately, the barrister was of a higher calibre.

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