Thursday 28 March: Unfair regulations and net zero are piling pressure on British farmers

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

785 thoughts on “Thursday 28 March: Unfair regulations and net zero are piling pressure on British farmers”

  1. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) list

    WHY MEN ARE SELDOM DEPRESSED

    Men Are Just Happier People – What would you expect from such simple creatures?
    Your last name stays put.
    The garage is all yours.
    Wedding plans take care of themselves.
    Chocolate is just another snack.
    You can never be pregnant.
    You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park.
    You can wear NO shirt to a water park.
    Car mechanics tell you the truth.
    The world is your urinal.
    You never have to drive to another petrol station toilet because this one is just too icky.
    You don’t have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
    Same work, more pay.
    Wrinkles add character.
    Wedding dress – £5,000. Dinner Jacket rental – £100.
    People never stare at your chest when you’re talking to them.
    New shoes don’t cut, blister, or mangle your feet.
    One mood all the time.
    Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
    You know stuff about tanks.
    A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
    You can open all your own jars.
    You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
    If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.
    Your underwear is £4.95 for a three-pack.
    Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.
    You almost never have strap problems in public.
    You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
    Everything on your face stays its original colour.
    The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
    You only have to shave your face and neck.
    You can play with toys all your life.
    One wallet and one pair of shoes — one colour for all seasons.
    You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
    You can ‘do’ your nails with a pocket knife.
    You have freedom of choice concerning growing a moustache.
    You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.
    No wonder men are happier. Men Are Just Happier People

  3. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/27/crunch-meeting-at-thames-water-amid-scramble-for-750m/
    Good morning.
    Why the Hell should the taxpayer or consumer be forced to bailout Thames Water? Put it into administration, wipe out the shareholders and lenders, and renationalise with taxpayer funding so at least the taxpayer owns the new debt free entity. It’s what the government should have done to the banks in 2008.
    Why should appallingly run huge businesses get special treatment? Enough of crony capitalism. Let’s have free enterprise back.

        1. Bloody slaughter is hardly the answer. We’ve seen how effective the vaccines were in killing off the population.

        2. Bloody slaughter is hardly the answer. We’ve seen how effective the vaccines were in killing off the population.

      2. Talking about reservoirs:

        The white men in Rhodesia built Kariba dam in 3 1/2 years, it was over 100 miles long and had full hydro-electric capability.

        Southern water are building a reservoir at Broad Oak, it will take nine years to build and have no hydro-electric capability.

        2. Step-father’s brother-in-law, Jim McFadyen, was one of the senior engineers on the Kariba Dam project.

          2. Sadly he died 50 odd years ago.
            I’ve still got his Crombie overcoat though.

  4. Wordle 1,013 6/6

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

    Just made Wordle today. Now to read Sir Jasper’s funny before heading away for the day. See you all tomorrow morning. Enjoy your day.

    1. Same here, a quick wordle then off for the day. On the big drive home with Virginia to Pennsylvania today (not driving too fast, it’s cold up there).

      Wordle 1,013 4/6

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

  10. The asylum system is completely broken

    Individual cases can often tell a story far better than a welter of statistics. The way Abdul Ezedi, who attacked a woman and her children in Clapham, south London, was granted asylum in this country encapsulates everything that is wrong with the system.

    I must admit that never occurred to me. Standing at the Arrivals in any airport or on the beach at Dover on the other hand.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/27/the-asylum-system-is-completely-broken/

    1. Yo and Good Moaning to you all.

      I am sure that I saw Oberstleutnant in that beige sweater, ( the one the man on the front row is now wearing)
      before he gave it to his local Charity Shop

    2. Yo and Good Moaning to you all.

      I am sure that I saw Oberstleutnant in that beige sweater, ( the one the man on the front row is now wearing)
      before he gave it to his local Charity Shop

      1. Those were my thoughts as I looked at them . They look just like us. Northern European.

  12. Britain is too terrified of its enemies to defend itself. Con Coughlin. 28 March 2024.

    Here we go again. The Government finds itself confronted with incontrovertible evidence that hostile states are seeking to do us harm, and its immediate response is not to take any action that might be seen as a provocation.

    It is a mindset that, for the past two years, has informed Whitehall’s response to the Ukraine conflict. While Russia instigated the war with its unprovoked invasion, the willingness of Western powers like Britain and the US to support Kyiv has been inhibited by their desire not to provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    I’m not frightened of China or Xi. I don’t like them and have never done so. They are on the other side of the planet and do not possess the means to attack us directly. I have never been concerned about Vladimir Putin and Russia, though they do have the means, since they have the nuclear capability. Neither of these Governments or their rulers concern me. That is the one in Westminster that is the enemy of the British people and everything that this country has ever stood for.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/28/britain-too-terrified-of-its-enemies-to-defend-itself/

    1. China will just subvert our government and academia so that nobody can ever criticise China, buy up our farm land to produce food for China and/or buy up all our industry, shipping in their own people to work in it. Conquest without guns.

        1. They bought local industry (leatherwork and shoes) in northern Italy and imported their own workers.
          In the US, they have bought a lot of farm land.

  13. Unfair regulations and net zero are piling pressure on British farmers

    Is this news?
    Conspiracy theory made truth

    1. Another way of putting this headline would be “Net zero fanatics set up conditions for famine”

    2. How is it that someone with wealth beyond the dreams of most of us can’t find a tailor who could make him a suit that fits? He coukd probably get a better fit at Primark.

  15. Morrisons posted widening losses in the first quarter after the retailer was weighed down by debt finance costs tied to its private equity takeover.
    The supermarket chain revealed pre-tax losses of £156m over the 13 weeks to January, which comes as the business pursues an ambitious turnaround plan.
    Losses at the Bradford-based retailer deepened after recording £141m of finance costs over the period, driven by higher interest rates.

    Morrisons has faced huge financial pressure since it was bought by private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) for £10bn in 2021. I knew CDR, a US LBO house, when it bought Brake Brothers and near killed it 20 years ago.
    It’s long past time that huge leverage buyouts of established businesses by private equity and foreign investors were effectively banned. One way to do it would to phase out the tax deductibility of debt interest costs as well as having a very strict public interest and financial resilience tests.

    I’m fed up with greedy b*stards in the City and elsewhere looting British industry and wrecking it in the process.

      1. What private equity correction, for those of us without Terriblegraph subscriptions? A one sentence summary of links would be much appreciated!

        1. The Bank of England has warned that private equity poses a risk to financial stability as it launches a review of the $8 trillion (£6.3 trillion) industry.
          Officials are concerned about the value of assets controlled by private equity companies, such as commercial property and businesses.
          It is also unclear how much money had been lent against them, raising the risk of a dangerous chain reaction should values suddenly drop.
          It comes after years of takeovers and borrowing by private equity, fuelled by ultra-cheap credit before interest rates began to rise in December 2021.

          2. Yep. Particularly exacerbated by the scamdemic and consequent WFH. I’d have thought all public transport must be in a similar predicament. As you say, who’d a thought it!

    4. They are arguing that making Thames Water provide clean water and avoid polluting the rivers and the beaches would render the entire business uninvestable. Thatcherites must have known that, but they privatised it anyway.

      1. No, that’s not correct about Thatcherites. The problem started when Blair got rid of the golden shares and these businesses were taken over by asset strippers.

    1. It is surely logical to land the wingless plane in a swamp, nice and muddy and preferable run by Thames Water with lots of soft brown stuff to absorb the impact. I wouldn’t want to eat the passengers that went down with E-coli though.

      1. Perhaps you’d be on time if you didn’t waste it correcting other people’s syntax in other countries? 🙂

  21. Ramadan lights on display in central London over Easter. 28 March 2024.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/09a29aa70e4ba1542fe3989eae28df21f91419f089018c1c1b4e4254ed80f6b1.jpg

    The holy month – the most significant in the Islamic calendar – is being celebrated with lights in Oxford Street and between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. They were switched on earlier this month by Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, after Westminster’s Labour-run council gave the go-ahead.

    Welcome to the European Capital of the Caliphate.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/27/ramadan-lights-on-display-in-central-london-over-easter/

    2. Pimping for the Muslim vote…..

      Morning Minty & All. I’m not sure I can take much more of the insanity known as ‘news’…….

    4. The signs are ridiculous. Ramadan is the Muslim equivalent of Lent. It is a time for self-denial, almsgiving and examination of one’s conscience; it is not a time to be “happy”. Christians keep that for Easter, and Muslims for Eid.

      I suggest rather it is a piece of political gloating by Khan. Londoners know who’s boss.

    5. ‘Happy’ Ramadan? It’s supposed to be a time of fasting and abstinence – you wouldn’t say ‘Happy Lent’.

      1. Quite, Ramadan fasting is to briefly feel the pain of those who suffer daily across the world.

    6. Funny how they can adapt their medieval cultures to comply with modern technology, but never have any respect for, or comply with expectations in the country they have arrived in.

  23. I don’t go along with the Baltimore ship “attack”. theory There were TWO Port Authority pilots on board. Were they, too, part of the conspiracy to wreck their own city? I think not.

    1. I agree. However, if the ship had computerised controls for navigation /steering is it possible they may have been hacked remotely? After all one can monitor the passage of any ship via the web…..

    2. I agree. However, if the ship had computerised controls for navigation /steering is it possible they may have been hacked remotely? After all one can monitor the passage of any ship via the web…..

    4. I don’t think any theory suggests that the pilots went along with any conspiracy.
      *If* there was foul play, computers overruled remotely would seem the likeliest. As sosraboc pointed out yesterday, and I agree – the ultra quick response from the US government, where they appeared to have investigated satisfactorily, decided it was an accident and offered taxpayer funds to pay for the – already insured – damage to be fixed – by 8.30 am(?) on the morning after the 1.30 am crash – is …. odd.

      1. Insurers face record $3bn bill from Baltimore bridge collapse

        Payout will be up to double the claim for Costa Concordia wreck, say analysts

        Michael Bow
        27 March 2024 • 7:19pm

        Insurers face a record bill of up to $3bn (£2.4bn) from the Baltimore bridge disaster, analysts have warned.

        The total payout once all claims are assessed could potentially be between $1bn and $3bn, according to experts at Barclays.

        The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed on Tuesday morning after Singapore-registered container cargo ship Dali ran into the structure.

        Although claims are likely to take years to assess and settle, an initial estimate from Barclays suggests the disaster could come in at double the previous record for a maritime claim.

        The biggest payout so far was $1.5bn, recorded when the Costa Concordia cruise ship ran aground in 2012.

        The value of the bridge itself has been pegged at around $1.2bn, although the insurance attached to the structure has not yet been determined.

        Dali was covered by the Britannia Steam Ship Insurance Association, a so-called “protection and indemnity” club which pools liability for shipping groups.

        Such P&I clubs often buy insurance themselves from reinsurers, which means many of the claims could eventually settle in the reinsurance market.

        Barclays said: “We believe reinsurers may have to pay $1bn plus in claims for the Baltimore bridge collapse, particularly via P&I club reinsurance in case the ship’s operator is deemed at fault.

        “We don’t expect outsized individual shares, as the marine market is heavily syndicated.”

        Many specialist reinsurers base themselves in Lloyd’s of London, which declined to comment.

        Britannia said: “We are working closely with the ship manager and relevant authorities to establish the facts and to help ensure that this situation is dealt with quickly and professionally.”

        Neil Roberts, head of maritime at the Lloyd’s Market Association, which represents insurers, said: “It is too early to determine all the reasons behind the accident itself but it was fortunate that the impact occurred when the bridge was less busy.

        “For their part, insurers and brokers will be working together to respond as efficiently as possible.”

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

        norma desmond
        10 HRS AGO
        At least one person working in the port complex has said to reporters that this ship had multiple electrical failures whilst docked – why did it attempt to sail?

          1. Maybe – but I still don’t believe the attack theory. I may be a cynic, but even I have limits!

          2. Probably. There are accidents and accidents though, for example what do you call it when people with protected characteristics are recruited and mustn’t be criticised, and then things go wrong in the workplace?

            When there was that spate of incidents in the late 80s that included the Piper Alpha disaster, and Zeebrugge, the left tried to identify some culture change due to Thatcherism that had led to the catastrophes. I have never seen a convincing non-random explanation of why they all came so close together though.

          3. Zeebrugge was simply sloppy seamanship. Trying to cut corners for no good purpose.

          5. So the two pilots were Chinese/slammers/Russians….who deliberately set out to destroy the bridge? Why not sink the ship, as well…??

          6. No! There is no suggestion that the pilots sabotaged the ship!
            Merely that more systems seem to have failed simultaneously than first thought.

    5. Now, if that ship had been going down the Thames and ran into the House of Commons, it would be a day of joy.

    6. The ship sounds like a cut and shunt job.
      It reads like the problem could have happened any time. The failure occurred in a relatively confined space.

      1. It looked as if it was overload and could have caused the problems.
        Perhaps the pilots should have refused it entry.

    7. I think the bridge crash has to be seen in the context of a series of disasters that have befallen the US since about 2017.

      The most unlikely ones, and the ones where there is actual evidence of malfeasance, have received the smallest amount of media coverage and government help. So-called wildfires in Lahaina and on the mainland are examples. There is a long and detailed video by a fire investigator out on the internet demonstrating discrepancies and photographic evidence collected by him, but the official line is still “wildfires started by accident.”
      Spate of fires at food plants across the US between about 2017 and 2022. They seem to have stopped now, coincidentally after the sequence was noticed and each fire started getting more publicity.
      Lack of response and help after the toxic chemicals spillage at East Palestine in Ohio.
      Non-material events like the 2020 election which required people to believe unlikely things; describing a few Trump supporters walking round the White House as an insurrection while BLM riots were ‘largely peaceful
      George Floyd receiving saturation media coverage while Timothy Coffman died in the same way, completely unremarked.
      Covid
      Climate fraud/CO2

      The list just goes on and on, of events where people are told not to believe the evidence of their eyes, and instructed to believe an essentially unlikely version of what is happening.
      In particular, the media plays down or ignores stuff they don’t want us to notice, other times they play up fairly unimportant things that they want us talking about.

      For people who only get their news from the mainstream, it’ll be a no-brainer that it’s an accident. For people who are aware that the mainstream ignores or denies important things, it seems rational to question even what looks on the face of it like an obvious accident.

  24. I don’t go along with the Baltimore ship “attack”. theory There were TWO Port Authority pilots on board. Were they, too, part of the conspiracy to wreck their own city? I think not.

  25. Good morning all.
    After the heavy rain in the small hours, it’s a bright sunny morning with a somewhat chillier 1°C on the Yard Thermometer.

    Dear God! Can the NHS get any worse???

    NHS workers asked if they are greyromantic, abrosexual or endosex
    LGBTQIA network survey wanted to know ‘current sex’ and ‘what umbrella would your romantic orientation fall under’

    Michael Searles,
    HEALTH CORRESPONDENT
    27 March 2024 • 8:20pm

    NHS workers have been asked if they identify as ‘greyromantic’, ‘abrosexual’ and ‘endosex’ in an LGBTQIA network survey.

    The survey asked members their “current sex” and what “umbrella would your romantic orientation fall under” among other characteristics.

    The survey explains that “greyromantic” or “greysexual” means “rarely or only under certain conditions do they experience romantic/sexual attraction”, while “demi” means it only occurs when “an emotional bond” is formed and “abro” means attraction “changes over time”.

    The network said it would “contribute towards actions and strategy, not just for the network but for the organisation”.

    It is understood the leaked survey was never signed off by NHS bosses.

    Alice Sullivan, professor of sociology at University College London, said it was “the ne plus ultra of bad survey questions”.

    Kathleen Stock, the writer and co-director at the Lesbian Project who unearthed the questionnaire, said it was a “bats— survey”.

    One question asked respondents what their “current sex” is, with multiple choice answers including “in between male and female”, “both male and female” or “leaning” toward male or female.

    Another asks “what umbrella your romantic orientation falls under”, with a list of possible answers: abroromantic, aromantic, alloromantic, greyromantic, demiromantic, queer and questioning.

    Abroromantic attraction is understood to mean fluidity within romantic attraction, aromantic means experiencing little or no romantic feeling and demiromantic is someone who only develops romantic feelings when they form a strong emotional connection to the person.

    Someone who is queer can be wanting to reject specific labels of romantic orientation, whereas questioning is someone who is questioning how they identify romantically.

    The same question was posed for sexual orientation with the same prefixed options.

    Other questions asked for people to share their pronouns, including the options “fae/faer/faers” and “xe/xer/xears”, as well as “are you endosex or intersex”.

    The pronouns are classed as “neopronouns”, it is understood, which are an alternative to “they/them”.

    An endosex person is someone whose sexual characteristics fit the medical definitions of male and female, whereas an intersex is a person who is born with both male and female biological traits.

    Kate Barker, chief executive of LGB Alliance said the survey was “infantile, meaningless, and insulting to gay and lesbian people”.

    “Sex and sexuality are protected characteristics – these made-up identities and non-existent sexualities are not. They are a poor substitute for what we used to call ‘personalities’,” she said.

    “Grouping LGB people – who may well experience genuine discrimination – with self-declared ‘male-leaning’ or ‘greysexual’ people makes a mockery of our sexuality. This kind of nonsense is a perfect example of why LGB people want to organise on the basis of sexuality, not identity.”

    Milli Hill, author and campaigner for women’s rights in childbirth, said the survey “conflates the meaning of sex and gender, which is typical for any organisation in thrall to gender ideology”.

    “There are only two sexes, so it is nonsensical to suggest you can be ‘between’ the two, be ’neither’, or be ‘leaning’ towards one or the other,” she said.

    “If the survey is to ‘contribute towards actions and strategy’, then the respondents sex is clearly relevant,” she added. “You would hope for something less ideologically captured and more rooted in biological reality from a public health body such as NHS England.”

    It comes as early this month the NHS was criticised for publishing new menopause guidance that said “not everyone who experiences menopause is a woman”.

    NHS England published a 17-page draft of a booklet online, which was titled the “national menopause people policy framework”.

    ‘Transgender may also experience menopause’
    It was swiftly withdrawn, amid an outcry over the language it used and the focus placed on those other than women, with sources close to Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, telling the Telegraph the matter would be raised with the NHS.

    The document, which detailed what help is available to women in the workplace, said: “Transgender, non-binary, and intersex colleagues may also experience menopause and will have specific needs.”

    The draft document was deleted with NHS officials claiming it was published in error ahead of a final version being published online next month.

    Ms Atkins recently expressed frustration with attempts by the NHS to erase women from their language, criticising the use of terms like “chestfeeding” and “birthing person”.

    The source said: “The Secretary of State has been crystal clear that biological sex matters and that it’s important that language – including language used by the NHS – recognises the different biological needs of men and women.

    “That is really not an unreasonable expectation.”

    Regarding the questionnaire issued by NHS England’s LGBTQIA Network, an NHS England spokesman said it was “not an NHS England approved survey”.

        1. “A malign organisation that should never be allowed anywhere near the public purse…”

          Whoops, I read that as “ A malign organisation that should never be allowed anywhere near the public arse…”

    2. BTL Comments on the above:-

      Celia Butterfield
      7 HRS AGO
      NHS workers asked if they are greyromantic, abrosexual or endosex.
      What on earth is that about? Yes, I have read on but please- why ? Get back to organising the curing of sick people you managerial twits.

      Anastasias Revenge
      7 HRS AGO
      Reply to Celia Butterfield
      What, what and what?
      Is that anything to do with slugs?

      Celia Butterfield
      7 HRS AGO
      Reply to Anastasias Revenge
      Most probably- sounds extremely apt!

      Anastasias Revenge
      7 HRS AGO
      Reply to Celia Butterfield
      To think that I once taught biology (all girls grammar – nightmare) and have never heard of any of these terms. Now silly of me.

      R. Spowart
      3 HRS AGO
      Reply to Celia Butterfield
      Message Actions
      Having looked up and read the article,
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/27/nhs-workers-asked-if-greyromantic-abrosexual-or-endosex/
      I note the sentence “It is understood the leaked survey was never signed off by NHS bosses.”
      Perhaps not, but I do think it highly unlikely they were unaware of it and very likely they did nothing to prevent it.

      Celia Butterfield
      1 HR AGO
      Reply to R. Spowart
      Good morning R. I too , out of curiosity, read the article before my earlier post. I am firmly of the belief that NHS bosses totally knew about this, approval given or not. This is stupidity beyond reason.

      Rusty Nail
      1 HR AGO
      Reply to Celia Butterfield – view message
      Next, touchy-feely NHS DEI managers will be asking patients either waiting to go into the operating theatre; or withering around in A&E with a knife in their head, “Are you greyromantic, abrosexual or endosex? Oh, and please get your gender pronouns correct otherwise we will not help you!”

    3. They’re all bonkers and any sane society would be connecting them up to the Grid for electro-convulsive therapy to straighten them out.

    6. “NHS workers have been asked if they identify as ‘greyromantic’, ‘abrosexual’ and ‘endosex’ in an LGBTQIA network survey.

      The survey asked members their “current sex” and what “umbrella would your romantic orientation fall under” among other characteristics.”

      Maybe they have a 5th columnist with a sense of humour. Almost like they are taking the piss out of themselves.

    7. There was a brilliant tweet from Zarah Bukake MP @XRLlareggub yesterday;

      “Why do we need a trans day of visibility? No one has ever had any difficulty in spotting them.”

      Harsh, but fair.

  27. The Union Flag, being flown on the second tractor, on the lead in DT picture, is upside down!

    (it has the broad white stripe at the bottom)

    Or is it:

    “It is often said that when the Union Flag is flown upside down, it is a form of distress signal – a coded signal – and
    should only be used as such.” In the UK, flying a flag upside down canbe considered an insult, even if it is an honest mistake.

    Wihout a doubt, UK is in a State of Distress

    https://projectbritain.com/geography/flag/correct.jpg

    2. As an artist, that’s always bothered me. Why couldn’t they have put the broad stripes on top on both sides?

  29. ‘Morning All

    The stench of desperation gets ever fouler……

    The little-known bacteria behind the rising rates of cancer in under 40s

    Ultra-processed foods, alcohol and oral sex are among the possible factors for the sharp rise in cancer in younger people

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/conditions/cancer/rising-cancer-younger-people-bacteria-oral-hygiene/

    Meanwhile,that’s awkward

    https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F68827277-53b9-4e9f-8072-6138d6eab040_1125x1745.jpeg

    Rest

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/38ceea8c2c7b7c835085dc189d4f0c06395b56cd00e3a67ef520cb5dea0bc3ee.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ea292cb7433773e12636877873cadafc02cf7c6984d9b4f1cdf19d3587d4228b.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b27a7fc74c2233ebafda7047ec9ccad7eb380b64340d82cfa0ee85f3e8ee39cb.jpg

      1. The young Irish colleen thought that Fellatio was a character from Romeo and Juliet and Cunnilingus was an Irish airline.

    2. The empty green benches are like the debate on the Hunting Bill. Virtually nobody attended the debate. Come the division, though, they appeared out of the woodwork to vote for ending sensible vermin control in the country (a strange place of which they know, in the main, nothing).

        1. Yikes. That would worry me sick, although a grandson enjoys the tamer indoor version (let’s hope it stays that way).

      1. At least he won’t need a rescue team to risk their lives if he falls, just a mopping up squad.

    7. Slightly misleading photo and caption – free climbing is NOT soloing, it’s climbing without using any aid. While Adam Ondra is a brilliant climber and has done some extremely hard free climbs in Yosemite and elsewhere, the general feeling is that the photo has been doctored to remove the rope and protection that seem to have been present in the original? Here’s one comment from an experienced Yosemite climber

      ” Ondra isn’t free soloing here, he’s free climbing. The
      bolts/draws/ropes he’s using have either been edited out or are hard to
      spot., This picture and the title are a bit misleading. Adam Ondra HAS
      free-climbed a route like this on El Cap (I believe this is the Dawn
      Wall). But he has NOT free soloed anything like this. This is a common
      mix up. Free soloing is what Alex Honnold made famous in mainstream
      media, climbing without any protection. No ropes, draws, bolts, or cams.
      This type of climbing is only practiced by a very small subset of
      climbers. Free climbing on the other hand is what you think of as
      typical rock climbing. It does utilize those forms of protection to stay
      safe, but not to progress up the wall. In other words, free climbing
      would use ropes and bolts to stay safe in the case of a fall, but you
      can’t ascend the rope to skip a section of climbing, or stand on a bolt
      to rest. The protection can’t aid you in your progression up the wall.
      If you are using it to move up the wall, that type of climbing is
      referred to as aid-climbing.

        1. On the ropeless image the attachment to his shoe is still visible. Still crazy though.

  33. 385074+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Thursday 28 March: Unfair regulations and net zero are piling pressure on British farmers

    Net zero linked with governance controlled morally illegal ( Dover) immigration,
    ( race replacement), politico / pharmaceutical
    linked, strongly alledged culling actions,evidence
    of such gaining strength daily begs the question where in hells name is SPARTACUS.

    Thursday 28 March: Unfair regulations and net zero are piling pressure on British farmers, plumbers, brickies, sparks, coalmen, milkmen and uncle Tom Cobley inclusive.

    A coalition ( aka the scamming governance politico’s) vote will, without doubt, guarantee us much more of the same, the only thing to fear in reality going into the future, is the past three plus decades majority voter.

  34. The truth is slowly seeping out about the Crocus City Hall terrorists. One for the 77th, this.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RMFLQVym7M

    It seems that the terrorists, who didn’t do the usual jihadi thing of fighting to the death, were recruited in Tajikistan by the Ukraine Embassy, were trained in Turkey by members of the UK special forces and paid by either Ukraine (which means the USA), the USA directly or the UK.

    Victoria Nuland’s fingerprints are all over this.

    Oh dear.

    One thing is for sure, the Russian FSB will make the prisoners sing.

    1. Oh, boy. That’ll bring trouble.
      What was the point of state-sponsored terrorism like that?
      Unless that was misinformation, of course.

    3. I suspect that after a few days in custody of the FSB the terrorists would be singing like sopranos and prepared to swear that they were hired by Martians on behalf of Santa Claus who is really an agent of CIA, CBI and Uncle Tom Cobleigh.
      I wouldn’t believe a word of it.

    2. She is absolutely horrible, why any gives that vile old bat airtime I just don’t know.
      Vine likes her. Perhaps they should get a tandem.

    3. She’s of Indian extraction and born in Uganda. Why on earth doesn’t she wish to go home?

    6. She’s an appallingly ungrateful old hag – the sooner she leaves, the better although I see she’s still here despite previous promises to go!!

  36. 385074+ up ticks,

    I believe the tall story club has been burning the midnight oil for months polishing treacherous
    rhetorical / action turds trying to raise a glimmer of credible honesty.

    Revelatory’ documentary to tell story of Theresa May’s days in Downing Street
    ITV programme will include rarely seen archive footage and chart ex-PM’s travails in delivering Brexit

    1. So true, but as I found out yesterday my own gp was not on site again yesterday. That’s two days a week now.

    1. But what we have remember is Ogga, our own government and Whitehall are all completely and utterly stupid.
      They might even be competing against each other for the first prize.

      1. 385074+ up ticks,

        Morning RE,
        I never forget they are , self proven treacherously dangerous bastards

        They are rotating power, with gullible fools via the polling stations supplying
        a replacement power source.

    2. A vast numbers of Middle Easteners now reside in the UK.

      They are not allowed to ‘Postal Vote’ either

      This is carried out for them by their 1mam

      (got posted in wrong place)

    3. Is there still time for Sunak to change the rules about postal voting?

      I doubt it – but even if there were time would he have the testicular strength to do it?

  40. Morning all 🙂😊
    Sunny start again but that south westerly is unusually chilly. Must be glowball warming or someone has left the door open on the south coast.
    Why is our own government (again) being so obviously and so pointlessly stupid towards our own farmers ?
    I can only imagine one possible reason, a lack of diversity in agriculture ?

    1. DEFRA refuse to change farming policy away from the CAP. Government has done absolutely nothing to replace the farming subsidy the CAP provided. They didn’t expect Brexit to pass and have done absolutely nothing whatsoever to change.

      They, like all other government departments are fervently intent on doing so much damage – by refusing to accept Brexit – as possible expecting we will be forced back inn soon and they don’t want the hassle of realigning with the EU.

      Harry Metcalfe has presented on the absurdity of farmers getting paid to ‘rewild’ All part of net zero, of course. It’s insanity. No food, no fuel, no energy. We have already had a shortage of salad goods. Soon that’ll be any sort of food. The state is utterly, completely insane.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEudP3Sa3uk

  41. 385074+ up ticks,

    Is this a call from the 650 politico’s finding their personal protection not being adequate enough ?

    Why it’s time to end our war on rats – and learn to live with them
    A growing movement says they deserve a place in our cities, while elsewhere rodents are busy saving human lives. Is it time we love vermin?

    1. A vast numbers of Middle Easteners now reside in the UK.

      They are not allowed to ‘Postal Vote’ either

      This is carried out for them by their 1mam

    2. A vast numbers of Middle Easteners now reside in the UK.

      They are not allowed to ‘Postal Vote’ either

      This is carried out for them by their 1mam

    3. So, the careless dropping of Fast Foods and Restaurants with loads of black bags out the back is really an unplanned “urban re-wilding”.

    4. Well, 68% of Londoners are already vermin, so the rats are probably bringing the standards up.

  43. On TV this morning Discussing the huge rise in knife crime incidents. They never really hit the proverbial and obvious nail on the head.
    “People behaving incredibly badly”.
    Of course, but seemingly the same sort of people.
    Now the rising aggression in schools and classrooms. One in five teachers have been attacked.

    1. A TA told me the other day that a 4 year old – one of the diversity – told her to ‘f off b[female dog].’

      A four year old. When scum are paid to breed this is the society you get. When savages are forcibly imported you get savagery ingrained. Then they band together and re-create their stone age barbarism.

      We’ve got to stop paying people to breed. The invasion of ‘diversity’ must be reversed.

      1. Everybody found guilty of an indictable offence for a second time should be offered a reduced sentence in return for being sterilised

    2. In the 35 years we have been running our courses in France neither Caroline nor I have ever been been attacked and for the 16 years in which I taught in independent schools in the UK I was never attacked either!

      When Mitterrand threatened to close down all the private schools in France the teachers unanimously declared that they would all resign from their jobs immediately and leave teaching altogether. The effect of this would have completely overwhelmed the state sector and Mitterrand had to climb down.

      The fact that the Conservative Party – the so-called party of small enterprises – does not oppose these Old Labour vindictive policies of spite and envy shows that it has lost all reason and justification for its continued existence.

  44. Good morning all,
    Wet wet wet ! 7c.

    Article here , off topic , butt you will be really wiped out when you have read this !

    If you believe in bamboo loo roll you’re being bumboozled
    Deborah Ross
    Thursday March 28 2024, 12.01am, The Times

    This week it was reported that some of the toilet paper brands that claim to be eco-friendly (Naked Sprout, Bazoo, Bumboo) and say their products are made of bamboo actually contain very little. Just 2.7 per cent, in one instance, and otherwise it’s virgin woods, some of which have been heavily implicated in deforestation. Did you fall for this lark? I know I did. Don’t you now feel a fool? And also: an idiot, a chump and a total moron? You thought you were doing right by your bum, and all this time it was probably laughing at you? (“Stupid woman. When will she ever learn? YOU’RE BEING BUMBOOZLED, LOVE!”)

    Fair point, bum. When will I ever learn? When will we ever learn? Don’t pretend you’re not an idiot, a chump and a total moron sometimes. Don’t pretend, if you fell for it, your bum isn’t now calling you out. You hear derisory laughter? And there is no one else in the house? I think we can all guess where that’s coming from. (Quieten down. I’m trying to get some work done here.)

    But is it our fault? Given there is so much greenwashing around? Listen, you can care about the planet, or not, I don’t give a fig, but it’s the outrageous amount of sheer deception that gets my (vegan) goat. What? Hang on. You can’t have vegan goat? True, but you can’t have vegan leather either, and since when has that stopped anyone? However, on a more positive note, I am hopeful that “vegan leather” will win the Oxymoron Championships in October. Who am I kidding? It wins every year. (Apologies if that’s a spoiler.) I can see why it wouldn’t want to change its name to what it actually is, which is plastic, as that would put an end to its winning streak. “Comfortable bra” would probably win that year.

    I think companies should be forced to provide us with, at the very least, wholly accurate, descriptive labels. A £4 cotton T-shirt from some fast fashion outlet? So tempting. But what if the label said “Made in disastrously dangerous conditions by a nine-year-old Bangladeshi girl who should be in school and is being paid a pittance. Happy now?” Or “Enjoy this before it falls apart in, roughly, ten minutes”. You can continue with the purchase. But what you can no longer do is practise wilful ignorance.

    Also, those clothing companies that boast that their products are made using recycled water bottles. “This happy jacket is made from 22 old water bottles!” I’ve just read on a website. Yippee doodle doo. I’ll take five. One in every colour. This is such a great idea. I feel so much better about my consumption now. But here’s what I have, in fact, learnt: whereas plastic bottles are capable of being recycled back into bottles an infinite number of times, once they’re incorporated into a garment along with other materials that’s it, end of, no future, apart from the dump, where it will not biodegrade. Put a label in it. Put a label in it that says “Destined for landfill, my friend”. Or “Thanks for purchasing a jacket that’ll end up blighting nature for generations to come”. Seriously, we should have the Greenwashing Awards, so long as they don’t conflict with the Oxymoron Championships. I would nominate Starbucks for dispensing with plastic straws — well done, Starbucks; classy — and introducing sippy lids which, it was then discovered … contained more plastic than the plastic straws! That’s some brass neck. If it is brass. Chances are it’s PVC.

    And we could extend this generally. San Pellegrino’s Limonata, which is sold as an upmarket, more health-conscious fizzy drink? That could be called “More Sugar Than Coke, Baby!” And instead of fair-trade coffee how about they tell us when it’s unfairly traded? (“We have proudly been unfairly trading with Guatemala since 1865.”)

    Of course, none of this is actually going to happen because it’s anti-capitalist and the bottom line is corporate profit, but one can dream. Personally, as I’m crazy about dogs, my biggest dream is to see Crufts renamed the Annual Carnival of Perverted Eugenics. It’s the most famous Annual Carnival of Perverted Eugenics in the world! Book a ticket today!

    Alan’s new airbrushed denim look
    Obviously, jeans will now have to be renamed and henceforward should be known as “Alan Titchmarsh’s Imperial Trousers”. Just for the crack of it. What are you wearing tonight? “Smart casual, I thought. Maybe my Alan Titchmarsh Imperial Trousers but with a jacket?” You look nice today. “What, in these old Alan Titchmarsh Imperial Trousers?”

    Here’s the story, in case you missed it, which I hope you didn’t because you’re 24 hours behind on enjoying it. So: a 2010 episode of Alan Titchmarsh’s Garden Secrets was shown on North Korean television but because he was wearing jeans, and jeans are banned there — they’re seen as a symbol of American imperialism — his bottom half was blurred out, allowing his torso to seemingly float.

    First thought: what do North Koreans make of gardening in Hertfordshire? Second thought: did they stay for the item on how to turn a regular table into an alfresco one? Third thought: did no one at the BBC think to warn Alan Titchmarsh that if the programme were sold to North Korea, his Imperial Trousers wouldn’t go down very well? Cultural sensitivity and all that?

    You can, of course, get Alan Titchmarsh Imperial Trousers in all sorts of cuts. There’s wide-legged Alan Titchmarsh Imperial Trousers and skinny Alan Titchmarsh Imperial Trousers and cropped Alan Titchmarsh Imperial Trousers, but my favourite Alan Titchmarsh Imperial Trousers are Boyfriend Alan Titchmarsh Imperial Trousers. Because they’re looser and 100 per cent bum-approved. (“Yup, nice and roomy down here.”)

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/if-you-believe-in-bamboo-loo-roll-youre-being-bumboozled-kngsr0blw

    1. Woah, hold on there. The market has responded to the demand for green products. Same as it did for organic/not mass farmed food. You bought it, it’s your decision to buy it.

      That you didn’t understand the ramifications is on you. That you didn’t really want to read the description and understand the manufacturing process is your fault.

      Oh, that little 9 year old who should be in school? If she were not inn a factory she’d be making clay bricks, or sorting scrap metal. Their attitudes are different to our own, so stop demanding everywhere be ‘like us’ and grow up – better yet, realise why everything is made over there. No doubt you’ll run head first into cognitive dissonance of your desperate green agenda being the reason that kid is making t shirts, breaking down ships or making bricks and that’ll hurt – you but no doubt, being the ignorant Lefty you’ll sail right past that and demand more regulation from the supply chain.

      Then no doubt you’ll complain that prices are higher on clothes and food, but that’ll give you another column of verbiage.

  47. Ref the report yesterday (here) and in the press today, of the coon knifing some poor sod almost to death on a train in London – thee is a brilliant bit of “perlice speak”: ““A man sustained serious injuries consistent with being stabbed,” British Transport Police said.”

    1. And the stabber is, of course, a diversity. A typical black savage. No doubt he’ll have a string of convictions, likely be a criminal immigrant… it’s blasted tiresome now. It’s always the same damned problem, one the state is deliberately causing.

        1. I think it’s outrageous that politicians think the best way to bring up children is to send the mothers out to work and then pay someone minimum wage to look after the children.
          Perverse in my opinion.

  48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wroz5dPg_wo

    Here’s the lass who ran a women only forum that a trans is suing to get into. What will happen of course is she (the owner) will lose because the world is utterly insane and the man will join, then the women will all leave and the platform will shut down.

    This, ultimately; is what the Left want: to tear everything down. The more they destroy the happier they are.

    As Tolkien said – and has become a rallying cry against the abysmal Rings of power tv farce: “Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.”.

  49. Misogyny? Creepy? Doesn’t quite understand that if you are endowed with a dick and lots of testosterone then it’s nailed on that you’re a male.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/17a61ee93140507ce213ba6e5b4dff31de7185abd25c805ac7faa120bc4778e7.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7d9bcd96a29bd041db937d11e097fb90d7ff1119da4e0e6aece6b29ea01d7676.png

    Asking a politician is likely to end in silence and a quick retreat to his/her comfort zone.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1d59f5b0a18f24ed8bf3c67d69bb5bbbb51e794504bc23c5014dc5648e9bcd4f.png

    There’s a lot of this about at the moment.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d3707352d9c8f2b42eeb200c06fec7e08c42e5095571303808a1bb6e29b26642.png

  50. Nippy at t’market this morning. Sadly no slammers there – all at “prayers” I suppose. Morrisons have some good wine offers – if one searches diligently. Their OB “Soave Classico” is £18 for THREE. Bagged the last six…!

    Then after all the hustle and aggro of shopping – a gentle drive through the fields to the farm where we buy the freshest eggs known to man (or hen).

  51. I just realised that it is FORTY NINE years since I started on the JY Prog (when I was told that the gig was for just three weeks – definitely no longer).

    Funny old world, eh?

        1. Bit like still being an incomer in Fulmodeston after a mere 40 years.

          Not sure WHEN I joined the DT letters – must be about 12 years ago. Then managed to find NTTL when the DT shut off comments. That was certainly before 2014

          1. Nottl came into being on 1st April 2016. I started reading the DT letters page comments after I retired in 2011 but it was a long time before I joined in and said something.

          3. Me too. It was from the DT letters (of which I was an avid reader during my lunch breaks) that I learned about the 11 aims of the Frankfurt School, although I was aware of them in the shadowy hinterlands of the background of my mind, I hadn’t actually looked it/them up because we had not long had access to the internet and I had other things on my mind, such as work and getting fledgling adults launched into life. I recall sitting at work at my desk and reading these 11 aims shocked, as everything fell into place, I could see it was happening all around us. It set the foundation for everything since. I wasn’t poppiesmum in those early DT letters days, I was someone else! I suppose I became poppiesmum for internet purposes round about 2011.

    2. Used to listen to JY and, especially you, when I was on my travels as a salesman.
      How long did you do?

          1. Which I why I stopped. Whine had stood in for JY several times and I found him shallow, self-obsessed and objectionable (as well as a know-all). Though the producer pleaded with me to stay, I was never going to do so.

            In addition, there were people working on the prog who were not BORN when I started – an I was aware that some thought I was a tedious old fogey.

        2. I started at the Beeb in April 1991. I remember typing internal memos on Wordstar. We didn’t have email. It was a very different organisation then?

  52. “Outrage as Saudi Arabia is chosen to lead UN women’s rights group – despite ‘abysmal’ record on equality in kingdom where wives can be stoned to death for adultery”

    Sorry – can’t see the problem here…{:¬)

    1. On pain of pain…Muslim women are not allowed to discuss politics or sex. Their husbands make all the decisions in those areas.

      I don’t see what the problem is.
      Women’s brains overheat when they try to grasp the minutiae of what is in their husband’s underpants.

  53. “Outrage as Saudi Arabia is chosen to lead UN women’s rights group – despite ‘abysmal’ record on equality in kingdom where wives can be stoned to death for adultery”

    Sorry – can’t see the problem here…{:¬)

  54. I gather that the so-called Archbishop of Canterbury will NOT be at the Cathedral tomorrow, Good Friday – because he is in charge of prayers at London’s largest mosque…

    (sarc)

  56. 25 Years ago we were bombing Belgrade. I know some RAF pilots were very uneasy about what they were ordered to do.

    Alex Thomson in UK Column News Extra on 25th put me onto this:

    Top secret papers reviewed by The Grayzone reveal Tony Blair demanded strikes on civilian targets in Yugoslavia days before NATO attacked them. While the UK military acknowledged a NATO strike on Hotel Jugoslavia would mean inflicting “some civilian casualties,” it insisted the deaths were “worth the cost.”

    https://thegrayzone.com/2024/03/24/kosovo-war-blairs-secret-invasion-plot-milosevic/

    By April 29, 1999, NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia had entered its fifth week. On that date, Richard Hatfield, then-Policy Director of Britain’s Ministry of Defence, dispatched a “Strategic Planning Group discussion paper on Kosovo ground force options” to London’s military, security, and intelligence apparatus. In a document marked “Secret – UK eyes only,” Hatfield demanded an “immediate” decision on whether to formally invade Yugoslavia:

    “If we are to influence US thinking on ground force options, we need to pass the paper to them very quickly…Our planning is ahead of the US, other allies and [NATO HQ]…We believe the US may be developing its initial thinking on ground force options this week. Our paper could exercise significant influence on their conclusions. The [Chiefs of Staff] therefore agreed we should pass it to the US privately (through military and policy channels) as quickly as possible.”

    According to Hatfield, London had to “overcome” a “great deal of reluctance and scepticism” in Washington regarding a formal ground invasion, so “decisions need to be taken quickly if we are to launch an operation before Winter.” Evidently, a firm timeline for action had germinated in London. It was simultaneously vital to “make clear” to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair that “although we can influence planning for a possible ground campaign, we cannot expect the US or NATO to accept British views easily or unreservedly.”

    Therefore, an “early agreement in principle to a ground campaign” was considered “more important than the details,” the document states. In other words, securing US commitment to putting boots on the ground trumped all basic technical concerns. After all, Blair’s invasion fantasy hinged entirely on Washington dispatching hundreds of thousands of US soldiers to Yugoslavia. London would by contrast deploy just 50,000—most of the available British Army at the time. This disparity was likely a key source of American “reluctance and scepticism.”

    London therefore drafted four separate scenarios for the war. This included invading Kosovo alone and “liberating” the province from Belgrade’s control. This option would limit “overspill into other areas of Serbia”, while guaranteeing “no permanent military presence elsewhere” in the country. Another proposal, dubbed “wider opposed,” would see NATO invade Yugoslavia outright, with the aim of “defeating the Serb armed forces and if necessary toppling Milosevic.” The latter forecast an “organised Serb resistance” at every level in response.

    =============

    Despite the apparent infeasibility of a ground invasion, British officials—Blair in particular—were completely determined to push ahead in Yugoslavia. Their bombing campaign was a failure. Limited to the skies, NATO jets relentlessly blitzed Serbian civilian, government, and industrial infrastructure, killing over a thousand innocent people—including children—and violently disrupting daily life for millions. But Yugoslav forces cunningly deployed decoy vehicles to divert the military alliance, while concealing their anti-KLA operations under adverse weather and deception tactics.

    In public, NATO military apparatchiks, political pawns, and media minions exalted their stunning success and inevitable victory on the battlefield. But the declassified files show Ministry of Defence officials spent much of their time bemoaning the fact that their bombs were neither intimidating Milosevic, nor hindering the Yugoslav army’s war on the KLA. Belgrade’s forces were said to have consistently deceived NATO “very successfully” via extensive use of “camouflage, dummy targets, concealment and bunkers.”

    British officials repeatedly expressed concern that the Yugoslav army could actually succeed in expelling the KLA from Kosovo entirely, allowing Milosevic to declare victory and dictate peace terms to NATO. Blair was reportedly determined to reject any such offer. Moreover, it was well-understood that NATO’s bombing had rallied citizens to support their leader. As one paper conceded, alliance airstrikes on Yugoslavia’s Interior Ministry “demonstrated to Belgrade citizens just how vulnerable their city is, but achieved little else.”

    —————-

    Since 1945, British officials have been overwhelmingly preoccupied with maintaining the bigger, richer, more powerful US Empire’s global dominance, so as to surreptitiously guide it in direction of their choosing. Rarely is this sinister mission so candidly articulated as in the documents presented here. While Blair’s reverie of “toppling” Milosevic via US force was unrequited, Washington’s calamitous post-9/11 “Global War on Terror” was explicitly British-inspired.

    Not long after planes hit the World Trade Center that fateful day, Blair dispatched a bust of Winston Churchill to the White House, evoking the wartime leader’s famed December 1941 address to Congress, which heralded Washington’s entry into World War II. At the same time, the British premier privately wrote to President George W. Bush, urging him to exploit “maximum” global sympathy produced by 9/11 to launch military interventions across West Asia. This wave of belligerence was foreshadowed during Blair’s 1997 election campaign:

    “Century upon century it has been the destiny of Britain to lead other nations. That should not be a destiny that is part of our history. It should be part of our future… We are a leader of nations, or we are nothing.”

    A British-steered global Pax Americana was forged in Yugoslavia 25 years ago, in an incendiary baptism of airstrikes and atrocity propaganda, which subsequently inflicted death, destruction, and misery throughout the Global South. Today, untold millions across the world grapple with the painful legacy of Blair’s determination to fulfill London’s “destiny.”

    The section on UK Column finishes with some shots of the declassified document and a memo from Tony Blair in which he is the first to use the phrase “coalition of the willing”. It seems he coined it.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/83b4cafafd6dc160a41ca224343d6f72ccd1be2dd918fd7ce01270d9d4155f01.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e2391c558df31627b20be802a9c12f7d055ecb65798585fc8daefc1e4e8dc1c3.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d0b255d6ab8b92e7e74d79b67027ee8b35be152f1966cfb3e4d48edd26c448f6.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d0a77242523b0766774a34a97ca3f7c6a379e8488f79c5fa13fbc9a31340653e.png

    Alex Thomson: “TB, Tony Blair, architect of the Yugoslav war.”

    Brian Gerrish: “Initials of an unpleasant disease”.

    Will the war criminal ever be brought to book?

    2. Probably not. It was all done on the pretence that the Serbs were committing genocide against the Moslems. Years later the UN quietly acknowledged that there was no evidence of any attempted genocide. Are they going to try the same ruse with Israel? Does Victoria Nuland have even a shred of decency in her? Do any of them?

      1. It was the massacre in Srebrenica that provided the evidence of an attempted genocide by the Serbs. This was well documented at the time, so I am rather surprised that the UN may have later denied it happened.

        Likewise beyond Israeli fabricated propaganda, there seems fairly damning evidence that the systematic bombardment of civilian areas, safe havens and essential infrastructure whilst maintaining a stranglehold over humanitarian aid points convincingly to a genocide by the Israelis against “Arabs” in Gaza.

        Israel denies that there are anything like the 32,000 dead Gazans reported by Hamas sources. Considering the number of people who perished in one tower block, set alight in North London, and multiplied by the number of people in inhabited residential blocks demolished by Israeli incoming and the odd rogue Hamas rocket, then I rather feel that number to be an underestimate, and may not count those still buried in the rubble.

        1. Hamas are not likely to be trying to understate the civilian death toll, old chap. And do try to remember that this group, cheered to the echo by ordinary Gazans, have committed some of the the most bestial atrocities imaginable. Personally I’d be delighted if the entire populace of Gaza were exterminated.

        2. It’s a strange sort of genocide when the population is growing at these rates:

          The U.S. Census Bureau International Database data estimates that Gaza’s Palestinian population increased from only 265,800 in 1960 to 342,700 in 1970, 431,600 in 1980, 645,100 in 1990, 1,1 million in 2000, 1.5 million in 2010, and 2.1 million in 2023.

          1. So they breed like rabbits. All that proves is a motive for genocide!

            How many since October 2023?

      1. I haven’t seen that side of Bobble. He does like to be in the garden on the occasions when the weather permits me to be out there. Likes a bit of rolling on his back/tummy exposure. Never short of a purr …

        2. Next door’s cat used to like to come in the garden when I was weeding. He’d drape himself over my shoulders and purr in my ear!

    3. There’s a bit of border collie in there!

      is Bobble a cog or a dat? Who’s the father?

      1. About 6 Gardens down on the parallel street at the back. He has youngish children in his house.

  60. Re the cargo ship crash in Baltimore harbour.

    Given a few recent problems over US air traffic control, a cynic asks

    Were the pilots on the bridge DIE hires?

    1. If they don’t know their male from their female they can hardly be expected to discern between ‘port’ and ‘starboard’.

      1. Poor confused people, do you think they were green in their attitude to port or were they right to have left it on the red sideboard?

        To remember it I was taught that one left ones red port right on the green sideboard.

      2. It’s so easy to remember though…..which direction does port get passed, traditionally?

          1. Even so, I assume these people serve port at the end of a meal? They’re not actual savages, are they?

            Erm…..let me rethink that!😂

    1. Marion Marechal, the granddaughter of far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen and a popular far-right politician herself, spoke on Sud Radio of a “defeat of the state” in the face of “the Islamist gangrene”.

      Not something you would hear in Westminster one imagines!

      1. The French, in my experience, tend to be more robust when confronting islam than our dhimmi lot in Wastemonster.

    1. 385074+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      “They” were NOT missed they were CONCEALED via governance
      councils and employees to give the festering odious issue a veneer of a decent diverse society operating in unison.

      The Jay report revealed that it most certainly was nothing of the sort.

  64. As we keep getting endlessly told that it is white men that are the problem and I think they are right,
    Just look at this example
    This man at least wears a mask to prevent the spread of covid while out on a rampage

    https://scontent.flhr10-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/433866230_7318188031582657_6175558280377732638_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=MGY8-fyu7goAX-0JOlu&_nc_ht=scontent.flhr10-2.fna&oh=00_AfAXAaNVRA3LCQAeyRNcqr5pormedjE4R1eo4UmfhtnlXg&oe=660A688A

    1. Erm, do you think it is possible he may be wearing a mask to conceal his face? Like the baddies in the old Western movies did? Being a golly he has not thought to conceal his blade or wear a hat!

      2. If it’s the same nasty piece of work who stabbed the guy on the train. He had a huge hood on at the time of the attack.

    2. Erm, do you think it is possible he may be wearing a mask to conceal his face? Like the baddies in the old Western movies did? Being a golly he has not thought to conceal his blade or wear a hat!

    3. Erm, do you think it is possible he may be wearing a mask to conceal his face? Like the baddies in the old Western movies did? Being a golly he has not thought to conceal his blade or wear a hat!

      1. Would you carry one? I might, I suppose, but in my entire life there has never been a moment when it would have been useful so lugging the thing about might become tiresome.

        There is also the slight risk that those vibrant and diverse groups whose presence here so enriches our inner cities might decide to add a handgun to the daggers they already carry, don’t you think?

        1. Been around guns since before teens, own several, both long arms and handguns.
          Carrying a gun is supposed to be comforting, not necessarily comfortable.

          1. Well it would be comforting as long as I had one but I also knew that no one else did.

    6. In the newspaper, they even pixelated his hand, – the one holding the knife – for heaven’s sake.

    8. It is said that in North London there are lots of Blue Plaques denoting where famous people once lived. In South London there are lots of Yellow Boards asking: “Did you see this Murder?”

    9. It is said that in North London there are lots of Blue Plaques denoting where famous people once lived. In South London there are lots of Yellow Boards asking: “Did you see this Murder?”

  65. Even more snow today. There’s even snow at ground level inland. Why can’t the weather sort itself out? At Christmas time when everyone wants snow and carols such as In the bleak midwinter insist there should be some of the white stuff, forget it. Now, at the fag-end of March, daffodils past their best, lambs frolicking in the fields etc we get snow.😡

      1. Outrageous! What happened to our promised global warming? I have been keenly looking forward to the transformation of our wet and grey skies into the clear blues of the Mediterranean.

        1. And it was only the other day (as it seems) that it was the 1960s and we were warned about the impending new Ice Age.

          3. My Aussie friend is convinced we need to be more worried about global dimming (of the sun).

          4. Now you have confused me. I believe your friend to be correct yet he is still an Australian.🤯

          5. 1963 when we had the really cold spell the big freeze minus 17c. I was on the Number 18 bus from Harrow to Edgware.
            The bus went straight on at Belmont circle. Near Canons park, and the bus was stuck. I had to walk home via Edgware Mill Hill Broadway to almost Mill Hill East, near Devonshire road. No phone to let my parents what had happened. Hot bath to warm up, Dinner in the oven at nearly 8 pm.

          6. Pah! You should have seen the weather in January 1684! Absolutely freezing. The Thames was frozen for two months as far as London Bridge.

          8. I remember it well. Bedpans were needed to warm the chairs, never mind the beds. You forget that when that rascal Fielding wrote about me in 1749 he was referring to events in the past. In 1684 I was a young lad.😁

    2. And the lovely blossom on the trees die. Some Cherry Plumb and Blackthorns in full display.
      I hold my hand up it’s probably my fault, I’ve had my small olive tree protected with bubble wrap and a plastic bag for most of the winter.
      I uncovered it yesterday. It was almost wiped out last winter, lots of pruning needed.

      1. Someone else posted this yesterday, but it was so good I thought it deserved another outing.

    2. Interesting. There are a few old mines near here which might provide a bit of shelter from a nuclear holocaust but I’m not sure it would be worth surviving.

      1. There’s an ex MOD site a mile down the road which over the past 5 years or so has been redeveloped and now contains hundreds of expensive shoe box size houses. I’m considering writing to the Russian Embassy to ask them to confirm they’ve amended their targeting data. Not that I’m a fan of the shoe boxes – it’s just that they are a bit too near for comfort!

    3. Nonetheless, it was entirely newsworthy that he named the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine as the likely puppet masters of the terror act.

      I haven’t yet decided whether I believe this or not. Like the Baltic Pipeline you usually have to wait for the truth to seep out in dribs and drabs. This said it doesn’t look good at the moment. The Telegraph has produced a whole rash of denials which speaks for a guilty conscience.

      1. Minty, I have a good deal of respect for your judgement and a low opinion of our politicians but I just can’t see any of them egging on some deranged Islamist to murder as many Russian civilians as possible in an indiscriminate attack.

        1. Afternoon Squire. These people appear to have been paid. An unusual arrangement for Fanatics. Their reasons seem to be vague as well. Why now? Why Russia? The Ukies are becoming, in my view, increasingly desperate. Their propaganda is becoming deranged. I believe that they would leap at any opportunity to distract the Russians. We need to wait a while. Holes don’t usually begin to appear in the narratives until five or six weeks after!

        3. I can, if the end result was to provoke a War with Russia for which it seems the Deep States in the West is gagging. Don’t forget, as far as psychopaths are concerned, the end always justifies the means. They have lost all sense of reason – the covid hoax and the vax demonstrates that. Five years ago you would have been saying exactly the same about ‘covid’ and all that it entailed. Fortunately for us Putin knows when he is being provoked and manipulated, it took him eight years to commence military operations on the border with Ukraine.

      1. Maybe we should invite him to visit the Falklands, kidnap him and install him in No.10?

    3. If all the equivalents in the UK were closed I suspect it would be a lot more than 70,000 on their bikes.

  72. Yes, they were paid and that is presumably why they tried to escape to enjoy the proceeds rather than wear a martyr’s crown as is more usually the case. I would imagine they were paid by one of the usual Islamist groupings who sponsor these terror attacks whilst taking care not to put their own lives on the line.

  73. No, not even him. What does it achieve in terms of policy objectives which would appeal to a rational western politician?

    1. Read Max Hastings on the Vietnam war and you’ll not lots of similarities in US approach to policy. Blair was all for bombing in Europe, as was noted on an earlier post today.

      1. OT, Sos, I saw your re-hab regime yesterday, when do you start? Hope all goes well and HG will be keeping her eye on you!!

  75. Reform UK has hit a new record high in poll support.
    A YouGov survey conducted between March 26-27 and published today put Richard Tice’s party on 16 per cent of the vote.
    That was up by one point on last week and YouGov said it was “another highest ever result” for the party in its polling.
    Meanwhile, Labour was down by four points on 40 per cent of the vote and the Tories were up by two points on 21 per cent.

    1. You have cheered me up no end…..and I was feeling cheerful to begin with. It can’t be long before Lord Farage assumes his proper rôle as leader of the Party and crushes the fake-Tories flatter than that dead pheasant I saw in the road this morning.

      1. I think that that is no longer the case. But we shall see whether you are right or wrong before the year is out.

      2. I disagree. If you use the electoral calculus calculator you can input your own figures to see how it would play out in an election. Take the results from 2019, subtract 20% from the Conservative vote share and give those votes to Reform. You will find they are then predicted to win 100 or so seats.

    3. Once Reform beats Conservatives in the polls the floodgates will open and people will find the confidence actually to vote Reform in the real election and the Conservatives will be completely wiped out.

      The sooner the better.

      1. Recent publication by the ONS stated that the Tories have 200,000 members

        Labour have 400.000 members

        Libdems have 74,000 members

        Reform has 1,200, 000 members

        It would appear that if your politics are centre or right then a vote for Conservatives is a wasted vote.

      2. I think that there’s a psychological element to it; Reform really needs to pick up a few seats at least in order to be seen by the general public as a ‘real’ party. My worry is that they’ll not get any in spite of garnering millions of votes.

      1. Yet another damned swimming pool for yet another house.

        Smug looking bastard, isn’t he?

        1. I think that is a look of pain at the prospect of having to hand over circa £3.2 million to HMRC…….

        2. I think if I was being paid £8m I might feel a bit smug! (Especially if I didn’t actually do anything)

        3. Smug? He looks queer. You know how to tell if someone is queer or not by their name. Chris..Steve or Bill. Always !

    4. Shameless. Nobody is worth 8 million. It’s not as though he started the company himself, in which case as the owner he would be entitled to the profits.

      1. Well at least voting for Labour there’s a positive outcome – an earlier than expected total demise of what was once the United Kingdom……

  80. PROJECT FEAR LIVES – Not only slammer signs all over London’s West End – BUT ALSO

    “Storm Nelson’s 70mph gales batter Britain: Terrifying moment easyJet plane aborts Gatwick landing at last second in strong winds, as UK battens down the hatches with parks closing early, rail firms warning of delays and ferry services cancelled”

    Best to stay in bed, I guess.

    4. Lovely calm, sunny and warm on Costa del Skeg

      Sun is shining, Solar Batteries charging, sea like a mill pond

      What more could we ask for…. (I mean just weatherwise of course)

      1. I’m staying adjacent to the south west coastal path. It has been too windy to stand up straight,

      1. Rehab? I just think of that word in connection with alcoholics… What does it mean. Cross-country running; weight-lifting?

    2. His rehab course will mean at the end of it he will be a Triathlete champion (or expired)

  84. Caroline’s birthday was on Tuesday.

    Last night our son Henry telephoned to ask if the flowers he sent her had arrived.

    They had not and we were at home at the time they were said to have been delivered.

    Henry has chased the company (Aquarelle) and has been sent a print out copy by e-mail of a receipt with a false signature on it which is illegible.

    So either:

    a) the delivery person delivered it to the wrong address and the recipient decided to keep the flowers for him/herself and forge a bogus signature;

    or

    b) the deliverer could not be bothered to deliver the flowers and decided to keep them for him/herself, fill in the receipt form and sign it him/herself.

    Have any other Nottlers been cheated in this way? Is this a common scam?

    1. It is the reason i have cctv across the front of my bungalow. The driver says it was delivered and i post the footage to his boss showing it wasn’t.
      Sorry Caroline didn’t get her flowers.

      Henry needs to speak to the vendor.

    2. That’s bad luck. We’ve had flowers from them and they have been superb.
      We’ve certainly lost things too, but the local Aquarelle members have been faultless.

    3. MOH sent a Christmas parcel for her cousin and families within UK by tracked Post Office parcel service. It traked to the destination delivery centre in the Midlands but after that its existence vanished. Post Office said thay had lost it. Insurance claim from PO required purchase receipts but contents were MOH’s handmade knitware.

    4. Yes. All these delivery systems are doubtful at best and crooked at worst. I’ve ordered both a freezer and a tv online and tracked them to my front door where they vanished without trace. Smaller items seem to do better!

    1. I don’t tend to have such problems where i am. I know the drivers are under enormous pressure though.

      I sent a friend a silk scarf (Aspinals..dontcha know). Given how much it cost i insured it plus recorded delivery.
      It didn’t arrive. I raised a complaint and the Post Office refunded me £150.
      It arrived two days later. I kept schtum. :@(

        1. It gets worser….
          A similar thing happened when i bought a box from Loch Fyne. £200. They emailed me and told me they couldn’t make the delivery date. I was annoyed ! It was for a special Birthday. I told them i was not at all pleased…using F words and other words i am not proud of. I had paid through Worldpay. They refunded me the money. Loch Fyne then delivered the goods.

          I kept schtum again……………
          Does that make me a bad person? … :o)

      2. I ordered a couple of fishing hats that didn’t arrive but were declared delivered. Complained and they said they’d refund me as they had no more. A neighbour brought my parcel found an hour later where they’d been misdelivered. I put a couple of quid in the hospice tin at the pub. I have a conscience.

          1. They must make a fortune from your penance payments. A worthwhile cause and Ndovu is to be praised for her work.

  86. – Note they hide the Happy Easter message on the top of the box where nobody can see it on the shelves.
    Suppose someone bought this thinking it was a gesture egg, can they sue Cadbury

    https://scontent.flhr10-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/432117384_434461942304312_4347058740418993884_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_s720x720&_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=e3Y6bj8LTH4AX-pujQn&_nc_ht=scontent.flhr10-1.fna&oh=00_AfChCf4E6e0ft77J_ogEwtc8AQW2BIYBitxwN3A5LK5pTA&oe=660A5752

    1. If they’ve got pots of money to waste -Yes. If not it would be a futile gesture….

    3. is this some sort of joke? If not, then for crying out loud!!!. I couldn’t give a flying one if the “HAPPY EASTER” message is obscured by its shelf placing. Not once in my life has my Easter ever been diminished because I wasn’t wished a happy one.

      By the way, I’ll eat a chocolate egg whether it’s an Easter or gesture one.

  88. Blood from the vaxxed may not be safe for transfusions, say researchers
    By
    Neville Hodgkinson

    March 27, 2024

    Gawd help us all (Maggie speak )

    JUST when TCW readers might have thought they had heard enough about the covid jab harms, a major review has called for the vaccination campaign to be suspended pending studies of the risks to blood transfusion and organ transplant recipients.

    A team of researchers in Japan say that, based on the volume of evidence that has come to light about post-vaccination harms, medical professionals worldwide should be alerted to potential dangers in using blood derived from people who have had the jab, as well as from those suffering persistent symptoms from covid itself (‘long covid’). They say methods to identify and remove the contaminants are urgently needed, and propose a range of specific tests and regulations to deal with the risks. https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/blood-from-the-vaxxed-may-not-be-safe-for-transfusions-say-researchers/

    The lead author of the 20-page report, posted on March 15, is Jun Ueda, associate professor in the department of advanced medical science, Asahikawa Medical University. The highly referenced paper is a preprint, not yet peer-reviewed.

    In it, the researchers say that intensive studies of the covid virus itself have shown its key mechanism of harm to be the way its spike protein binds to blood vessel walls, triggering blood clots.

    ‘However, it has been reported from various countries around the world that genetic vaccines such as mRNA vaccines encoding spike proteins have also caused a wide variety of diseases in all organs and systems, including the nervous system, in addition to thrombosis and resulting cardiovascular disorders.’ This is because the gene products go beyond the site of the jab to organs and tissues throughout the body.

    Contrary to initial expectations, the genes and proteins are now known to persist in the blood for prolonged periods, and post-vaccination syndrome, or ‘spikeopathy’, has become a major global problem, the researchers say. The jabs should have been regarded as biomedicine, but because they were classified as vaccines, huge numbers of people were inoculated and many areas of medicine are beginning to become involved with the consequences. ‘This has never happened before in the history of biomedicine, and consequently it is highly suspected that blood products for transfusion have been affected.’

    A search of the medical literature on diseases related to blood and blood vessels, combined with the key words ‘Covid-19 vaccine’ and ‘side effects’, yielded several hundred articles. In addition to abnormally shaped red blood cells, microscopic examination has shown grossly abnormal materials floating in the blood of some mRNA-vaccinated individuals.

    The spike protein can cause amyloidosis (a rare disease in which a protein called amyloid builds up in organs such as the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen, nervous system and digestive tract). It can also cause prolonged immune dysfunction, increasing infection risk, and can cross the blood-brain barrier, with the potential to affect brain function.

    ‘Thus, there is no longer any doubt that the spike protein used as an antigen in genetic vaccines is itself toxic . . . From the perspective of traditional containment of infectious diseases, greater caution is required in the collection of blood from genetic vaccine recipients and the subsequent handling of blood products, as well as during solid organ transplantation and even surgical procedures.’

    The review says that because blood contamination affects so many areas of health care, blood donors should be interviewed so that records can be kept of when and how many genetic jabs they have received. Since it is not known how long the jab products persist in the body, their blood should be used with extreme caution.

    The paper sets out a range of tests needed to confirm the safety of blood products from gene vaccine recipients, and to check for contamination with spike protein or the modified genes used in the jabs. It says guidelines are needed on how to handle blood found to contain the contaminants.

    ‘If the blood product is found to contain the spike protein or a modified gene derived from the genetic vaccine, it is essential to remove them,’ the researchers say. But since there is currently no reliable way to do so, ‘we suggest that all such blood products be discarded until a definitive solution is found’.

    Medical facilities unable to take such a step immediately should explain the possibility of contamination with spike protein or other foreign substances to prospective patients, and include this warning on the consent form.

    The most important initial action is to make the relevant medical personnel aware of the situation, the review states. ‘Unless accurate tests are established, no conclusions can be drawn about the risk or safety of blood transfusions using blood products from gene vaccine recipients.

    ‘Thorough and continuous investigation is therefore necessary. To accomplish this, all potential donors should be registered, traceability of blood products should be ensured, and rigorous recipient outcome studies and meta-analyses should be maintained.’

    1. When the NHS sourced blood from America they poisoned the recipients because it came from druggies and prisoners. HIV.

      The people affected are still waiting for compensation. Those that are still alive.
      I don’t hold out much hope for the Post Masters.

      1. When Luc Montagnier, French Nobel laureate, commented on his COVID’s RNA strand analysis he said that he had seen the insertion of an HIV segment in the COVID strand – something that could not have happened without human intervention.

        It is likely that a vaccination for COVID contains an agent to allow the body to recognise the HIV insertion as part of the body’s immune system – could be like getting prisoners’ blood transfusion from America.

        1. I read that early on. I wonder if the information is still available on the internet.

          1. I saw a televised interview where he explained his findings based on analysis in an RNA computer model. He declined to comment on who may have been responsible for such a creation.

      2. I haven’t noticed too much mea culpa in the voluntary sector which encouraged people with Haemophilia to demand US products rather than home produced Factor VIII concentrates. I was working in a unit in the late 70s where the mother of one child was so aggressive about this that we dreaded her coming in.

    2. Thank you Françoise, our wonderful GP, for the advice you gave us which might have saved our lives but which got you sacked. Another one of you patients, a nurse in her 50s, was told that she would lose her job if she did not have the Covid jabs. Against her better judgement she gave in and is now having to receive devastating chemo-therapy for her cancer which arrived a few months after she had been jabbed.

      I have yet to meet an un-Covid-jabbed person who wishes he/she had had the jabs. Plenty of people – such as Caroline and I – thank God and thank Françoise for the fact that we never were fooled into having them.,

      1. I tried to warn everyone on here – several times – there were so many red flags, but I suspect no-one took any notice… I don’t wear a white coat. There are simply some details to which I pay attention.

    4. How long did it take the police to arrive? And why are gollys so fond of knives?

          1. My good old mate use to live in a flat above the officers mess at the Ingliss barracks. He dad was the manager of the setup.
            All gone now even rifle range and the REME opposite Mill Hill East Station.
            A huge housing estate. As is the land where the National Reserch center use to be. The old gas works and storage containers at Mill Hill. Shops and housing. Pubs knocked down for development. Driving north through Hendon occasionally, via Arkley on to the A1 at the old thatched barn. Brings back so many memories.

  90. Discurse going dotty again – keeps repeating notifications even when one has read ad “cleared” them. Expect furtherer and worser isshoos.

  91. OK – convert that ” membership” into existing MPs.

    With half as many members as Liebour, the Tories (spit) have most MPs.

  92. Well let’s put it this way a few years back when having done some Christmas shopping in a department store I noticed on the credit payment receipt that the staff had missed an item. I telephoned the store and the member of staff was very grateful to take the payment over the phone.

    1. I did similar recently. Sainsbury’s delivered me two items i hadn’t ordered. Gyozu dumplings at £10. I emailed them and told them the error. They said to keep them and because they appreciated my honesty they comped me with a £10 voucher.

      SEE !!!

  94. It would be if it was the full term followed by automatic deportation to the land of his forebears ….

      1. 385142+ up ticks,

        Morning Siadc,

        I can tell by his expression he knows he has just joined the “follow through” club.

      1. 385142+ up ticks,

        Morning SW,

        Firstly go to the root as in, the tribal party before Country first, then the best of the worst, voters, then the politico’s they, the majority voter hired.

  96. Very very bad indeed. Choice of the naughty step or a romantic date with Michelle Obama for you!

    1. Lidl’s 74% dark chocolate bars are just the ticket. But I don’t suppose you demean yourself by shopping in such places.

      1. You’re kidding !
        I buy their chocolate in bulk.

        Fab for cooking and pretty good for sex parties too. Ahem…

  99. A blabby Bogey Five!

    Wordle 1,013 5/6
    ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
    🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨
    ⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
    🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Par here.

      Wordle 1,013 4/6

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

    2. Par for me. Always surprised.

      Wordle 1,013 4/6

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

    5. Lucky par here……

      Do all the other Wordlers on here do Quordle and Octordle?

      Wordle 1,013 4/6

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

      1. Do all the other Wordlers on here do Quordle and Octordle?

        Not knowingly, GGGGaspar!

        1. Well, if not, they are excellent extensions to the original game.

          Quordle involves solving four Wordle problems at the same time and is on the Merriam Webster site (simple Google search finds it) – there is also a Quordle consecutive were you have to solve the first before you can move to the second etc.

          Octordle is similar but involves eight (there’s a surprise!) Wordle problems and can be found on the Britannica site.

          I do all of them at the same time in the morning – it gets the synapses working!!

  101. We must realign our antennae in order to fathom out what is going on in politics today! A sea change is on the way!

    Remember it was Ariel in The Tempest who sang:

    Full fathom five thy father lies;
    Of his bones are coral made;
    Those are pearls that were his eyes:
    Nothing of him that doth fade,
    But doth suffer a sea-change
    Into something rich and strange.
    Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
    Ding-dong.
    Hark! now I hear them,—ding-dong, bell.

  102. It’s one of those days, repeated heavy showers with temperature drops and gusting winds, when I’m doubly happy to be indoors. Shortly my wife will phone and tell me how sunny (and 20c very warm for late March) it’s been in s. Central Poland.

    1. I think you are too hard on Civil Servants. I think they should be paid full salary and not be expected to do any work at all.

    2. I spent the first 20 years of my working life as an employee but since 1989 Caroline and I have been self-employed running our own business.

    3. I spent the first 20 years of my working life as an employee but since 1989 Caroline and I have been self-employed running our own business.

        1. Yep. As you go in, the first exhibit is “Britain’s First Line of Defence” – I and my ROC mates down a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere. Fills one with confidence, doesn’t it?

      2. They were kept secret until prised out of the hands of the PO. Apparently the PO’s lawyers went to trial knowing that the Fujitsu system wasn’t 100% reliable….

        1. Fortunately the PO’s lawyers made a large gift (reported as £285,000) to Sir Ed Davey so

          we imagine that no questions will be asked in the House.

          We’d like to ask one —- “What for?”

    2. However there is some good news in this document.

      Paula Vennels, the head of the Post Office, who was given a bonus for every prosecution, has not been asked

      to return those bonuses to the Treasury…… so somebody is happy !

    3. I want to see torture Mike Young and Paula Vennels. Slowly. Drawn out over the length of time the Postmasters have suffered. Then do it again.

      1. A little extra something needs to be added to destroy their lives after the torture, you know, like what they inflicted on some of their employees.

        1. What i find shocking is that it is still going on ! Postmasters are still being threatened !

  109. Unfunny Angela Rayner released from bunker to help Starmer launch Labour’s local elections campaign
    Deputy party leader is brought out of hiding after council house row
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/28/angela-rayner-released-bunker-starmer-local-elections-keir/

    BTL

    Of course Mark Steyn was not popular in Labour circles when he joked about the Ginger Whinger when Ange crossed and uncrossed her legs for Boris Johnson’s benefit.

    For some reason this reminded me of the daughter of the Mayor Bridgewater about whom we used to sing in the bus home after a rugby match.

  113. Evening, all. Just a quick ave atque vale as I’ll be off to church shortly, it being Holy Thursday (aka Maundy Thursday). The weather has been even worse than yesterday, if possible! The downpours had sleet in them accompanied by a really strong, bitingly cold wind. Needless to say, no gardening got done.

    The government doesn’t like the countryside – too white and traditional – and as for farmers, well they’d like everyone to starve (themselves excepted, of course). I bet the phrase “unfair regulations” is short for EU regs that haven’t been repealed (the CAP never did suit our farming methods) and we all know the lunacy of net zero.

  114. I know who the ‘enforcer’ is. Not a word i would use in company but it begins with ‘C’.

  117. On the 16th March I was a Steward in Bath Abbey for the Minerva Choir’s rendition of this piece with ‘a host of international soloists led by James Gilchrist as the Evangelist with the orchestral expertise of Bristol Baroque Ensemble”….

    2. I think this weather is normal, though not particularly nice. I remember loads of wet springs in the past.

      1. Wet and cold (freezingly so) and gales in March when I was a young girl. 1950s and early 1960s. It all seems surprisingly familiar. I wish that other aspects of our life would do likewise.

    3. April in a day or three. Is it April that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb?

  120. That’s me for what turned out to be a very cold day. Stove and CH trying to keep us warm. No post tomorrow, of course.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

    1. Appalling that right up til now, the ex Post Office bosses are STILL sitting tight and hoping to get away with it. One would expect more from someone who felt called to the priesthood….
      I wonder if Vennells was being groomed to be a back-up Welby, in case he didn’t get the Archbishopric or stood down?

      1. Certainly they had her in the frame for Bish of London – instead the ghastly midwife was appointed.

        1. There need to be a lot harder questions asked about these people who float into the priesthood from well-connected top jobs in industry or the civil service.
          People don’t see the Church of England as a prize worth stealing – it speaks volumes that the parasite class does see it as an important target to take down.

  122. This morning you would never have thought my grandson had had surgery 2 days ago.
    Up at 7:30 and off to play football in the snow with his uncle for a couple of hours and then dragged uncle into a hotel for a big breakfast. He now has a mobile phone. I am messaging him on Whatsap. I think he will cope for a few days with no hearing.

  123. 385074+up ticks,

    Another name change in the pipeline,

    The brexit party worn out marching up and down hills at the command of “nige” to satisfy that bojo chap, then reform, hoping the foot weary will forget,then accepting ship jumping tory (ino) party members will seamlessly morph into the tory (ino) party MK2.

    Reform is right about Tory failings, admits MP Danny Kruger in leaked recordings
    Leading Conservative goes against leader’s stance and tells local members that he is very worried about new Right-wing rivals

    1. My worry exactly. I don’t like the recent flirtations with the Tories. Nigel needs to shut up about them and concentrate on making Reform a real party.

    2. In the meantime, Labour will sweep to a massive Common’s majority. Still, you can sleep easy knowing you’ve maintained your ideological purity.

      1. 385074+ up ticks,

        Evening DW,
        Word association,

        labour =rotherham.

        I was UKIP for many year.

  127. Off topic
    The garden sounds like owl central, I don’t know if they are courting or marking territory, but there must be at least four sounding off at the moment.
    Eyrie, ho ho, but pleasant.

      1. With all the rain we have had reproduction will go down, …..its too wet to woo.

    3. If there are tawny owls there calling, the males and females make different sounds. The ‘twitt’ is the female and the ‘whooo’ is the male.

      1. Definitely tawny here.
        I’ve also seen little owls, barn owls and by far and away the “best” bird in the garden, a Grand Duc.
        Quite magnificent.

    4. We used to get Scopp’s owls in the far south. Possibly the smallest owl, they make a sound not dissimilar to some sort of electronic surveillance system. A single whoo every 20 seconds. There is still so much of the natural world left in France.

      1. One year we had three Little Owl fledglings perched together on a garden bench.
        Cottage guests called me over to show me and when I said they were Little Owls they thought I was taking the mick until I explained they were baby Little Owls.
        Tempting as it was, I didn’t pick them up. The parents will have been around, and eventually they flew off. Although it was more the bird equivalent of a wobble.

    5. Here they tend to do it at the alleged darkest hour (just before dawn) and most particularly when there is a full moon. I’ve no idea why, it’s just something that is noticeable.

    2. The rates have escalated here over the past 12-18 months and resistance to treatment is also a growing problem.
      Better stewardship of ABs needed.

      1. Agreed
        Being in the profession you will be more aware than most people how dishing them out willy-nilly for problems that didn’t need them and people not finishing the course, because they thought they were cured, has created a resistance problem that will only become worse.

    2. He still hasn’t grown up judging by the speech he gave in the court. Terminally immature, even after all that has happened. I would feel sorry for him if I hadn’t read how his company was used to launder money to Ukraine. Victimless crime it was not.

    4. At the time of his bankruptcy it was already known that he had donated $500,000,000 to the Democratic Party. His parents were involved in their idiot son’s promotions and are equally corrupt.

      I doubt that $500,000,000 will be recovered from the Democrats. It probably was recycled via Ukraine along with every other crooked Biden deal and used by the Azov Battalions to shelter behind their own people using them as human shields (much as Hamas has done in Gaza) and then to fire on their own people.

      Patrick Lancaster has videoed Ukrainians testifying from a supposed nuclear proof bunker beneath a hospital in Mariupol to this effect.

      1. This is a very difficult one to call. I have no idea how rapes and grotesque murders of Israelis equate to deaths of Palestinian women, children and babies in the rubble of Gaza. Perhaps the United Nations should set up a panel that evaluates how many Palestinian babies should be fairly blasted by Israeli missiles and mortars in exchange for the prior disembowelling of Israeli babies. If only those babies had acted in defiance of Hamas. Yes, Hamas and the IDF should have gone head-to-head, but there was not a single soul who could make it happen.

        1. The deliberate placing of women and children and the sick and elderly in the line of fire has been a tactic of Islamic terrorist groups for years.
          The problem is intractable, but i believe the best way is to destroy the vipers’ nests.
          I fear that at some point the presence of significant numbers of militant Muslims will result in civil wars in countries across the West.

  134. Only 25 years for Bankman-Fried. He’s essentially got away with it. Quelle surprise.

      1. Because the King is a Right Charlie. He has no idea (and no connection to the people). He needs to study Elizabeth I.

        1. He has connection with people who share his mindset. There are millions of them.

          1. But they are not his loyal subjects. He is behaving very foolishly. So unlike his wonderful mother.

          2. Worldwide. In the Caliphate. He has no connection to the average indigenous Englishman (or woman).

          3. Of course he does. The are hundreds of thousands, millions even, of English indegenes who share his attitudes.

          4. Sorry, not among my acquaintances, neighbours or friends. You must operate in very different circles from me.

          5. I see it in the number of people who take to the streets and those who, like me, passively stand by and do nothing. There are nowhere near enough people willing to stop it.

          6. Being too apathetic to stop it and supporting/agreeing with it are not the same thing. Don’t tell me “silence implies assent” because one might have tried, failed and become disillusioned.

          7. I’ve done nothing in my life to dissuade King Charles from allowing Muslims to break their Ramadan fast in Windsor Castle. Then again, I’ve done nothing to dissuade young people from having their septum pierced, and I don’t like that either.

          8. I, on the other hand, have tried very hard to make people (including clergymen) understand the true nature of islam. It’s like beating one’s head against a brick wall.

          9. This morning I’ve been listening to Catherine Austin Fitts being being interviewed on The Highwire. She gets to the point of talking about revolution and history shows that civil disobedience is a more successful form of revolution than is violence. In addition, it only requires around 3.5% of the population to effect a successful revolution.

            If we take the UK population at 70 Million then around 2.5 Million people could, by making civil disobedience their strategy, engineer a successful revolution.

            Mass non-compliance with diktats from lawless out-of-control governments, by that I mean governments controlled by unelected outside interests e.g. the WHO, the UN etc, would have a huge impact on how the Country would be run.

            Basically, there are many more of us than there is of them. They must be made to bend to the wishes of the majority. If you want to stand and do nothing, so be it, but do not get in the way of those who will act.

    3. Just to let you know, Belle, that the male osprey Louis has arrived back at the nest at Loch Arkaig! Very early – it’s normally April! Are they back at Poole Harbour?

    5. How is it made to stop? Pitchforks and torches? There is nobody with both the will and the means to make it stop. Individually we are powerless and there is no collectiveness.

        1. You know perfectly well that’s not what she said. Stop perpetuating this myth.

          1. In full…

            I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people
            have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s
            job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to
            cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so
            they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is
            no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families
            and no government can do anything except through people and people look
            to themselves first.

      1. I lost all respect for him when it became common knowledge about his appalling upbringing and his terrible time at Gordonstoun. Oh dear…poor him. Talk about white privilege.

        1. The obvious is to stop paying welfare. If we cut off child benefit and housing benefit the 70% muslim demographic who do not work would find themselves stuffed.

          2. Sure, but then they would just obtain money by menaces — “your wallet or I chop chop you”.

    1. Well done that woman. I doubt that a white one would have got away with it. Hey ho.

        1. Disagree. In victim bingo, it is our peaceful Religious (sic) friends which win hands down every time. Hence the utter mess we are in.

    3. They aren’t all this obnoxious, so why did he even think someone else’s behaviour was his to comment on?

      It sounds worryingly like he expected to be obeyed. This goes some way to explain why they’re so uppity. Frankly, they need reminding that they’re guests – increasingly unwelcome ones and will obey the rules of the house or get out.

      1. Muslim men are taught that they are superior to everyone else. Women, children, infidels….

      2. A thought has just occurred to me. Would he have picked on a guy for eating in his presence?i.e is this misogyny in practice?

      3. A thought has just occurred to me. Would he have picked on a guy for eating in his presence?i.e is this misogyny in practice?

    4. If the Mozzie had simply stuck to a line of anti-social behaviour – the eating of hot food on public transport – I’d be with him.

      1. Very poor idea. Never support a Muslim in anything they do. They are our enemies.

          1. By his truculent and scowling demeanour I expect. Alternatively his disgust at democracy and general stupidity would have given a clue don’t you think?

          2. ‘…truculent and scowling demeanour…’
            That’s a majority of the population, white ancestral British included.

            ‘…his disgust at democracy…’
            No mention of it.

          3. Haha! I’m sure your side will win the culture wars. But I doubt you’ll enjoy the results.

          4. I have no idea what you’re on about. I simply made the observation that eating hot food on public transport is rank bad manners.

          5. Can’t argue with that. I was brought up to believe that eating in the street was ‘common’

          9. ‘…truculent and scowling demeanour…’
            That is the normal ‘resting’ face’…We got that from the cave man.

    5. I am now going to keep a bacon sandwich in my pocket whenever i am unfortunate enough to use public transport.

    6. Goof for her!!! Would that i could respond in such a way in a similar situation; i , being hWite, would be deemed “waysist”.

  138. I went to a meeting the other day about achievement in schools by black kids. It was grandly titled ‘narrowing the attainment gap’ or something.

    Turns out that black kids don’t do as well in school, get lower grades and fewer overall points, with far higher drop out levels.

    The lecturer was very earnest and sincere in his pontificating but at no point did he address the underlying problem – parenting, specifically, 2.

      1. Surely it’s far more racist to ‘adjust’ grades for black kids so they appear comparable with whites? Heck, why not just pass them regardless? Why not let the incompetent into every industry based on colour of skin?

        Isn’t that the height of racism?

        Instead of disguising the problem, let’s address it and make them work harder to catch up? Heck, no one says ‘white kids are behind the Chinese children. We must make it easier for the white folk!

        2. When i went to college in Birmingham their was a cohort of Iranians. They did the same course as me and none of them failed. I found that strange at the time as English wasn’t their first language.

          1. At UCL Bartlett School of Architecture in the seventies I was one of about a dozen Englishmen and women in a class of about 35.

            The rest were foreigners from such exotic places as Canada, US America, Iran, Sierra Leone, Australia, Malaysia, India, Korea, Pakistan and an assortment of other foreign countries.

            Every effort was made by the University authorities to facilitate these students and enable them to obtain their diplomas. This despite the fact that most of them were incapable of designing a rabbit hutch.

            I knew the that it was all about fees. One night I took a lift with my friend and the student from Sierra Leone, from a party sponsored by a lecturer in living in a grand house near Reading to London. We were stopped by Police on the M4 because of his somewhat erratic driving. The vehicle was a sporty Ford Capri but had CD plates. My friend’s father was a diplomat in the Sierra Leone Embassy in London.

            We were asked by the Police to ensure that we stopped at the next service station and to give the driver coffee before continuing our journey.

            That my friends is how the system works. The experience certainly opened my eyes to the way the system operates.

        1. Hope so too, though on past performance her husband probably bought her a mop and bucket.

          2. :@) I’m always naughty !
            I am well thank you for asking. Besides all my debilitating conditions !
            I lost a crown yesterday. One at the front :@(
            Luckily my wonderful Dentist sorted me out this morning.
            Hope you are in fine fettle.

    1. It’s the arrogance in believing he could even say it that worries me. It shows a complete disconnect with the social mores of this country. He should have been told he was rude, to sit down, shut up and keep to himself.

      1. In his mind, this IS his country; it will be made to submit. After all, his book tells him he’s the master race.

        1. A few years ago there was a protest in France which featured very many burka-ed up young women holding up banners saying “If you don’t like the way I dress get out of my country”. I think it was in response to macron trying to reinforce the secular state and to ban religious fetishism in schools.

          1. The sheer bl00dy arrogance of these creatures. They are parasitic filth.
            Recently, there were a couple of totally black-shrouded (apart from the slits) things wandering around M&S in a nearby S E Lincolnshire market town. We are used to the town sounding like a satellite of an East European country, but at least those people are compatible with civilisation.
            It was decidedly intimidating seeing the hostile things there. Hopefully, it was just an isolated occurrence rather than a sign of spreading out from Peterborough.

          3. Stamford is considerably more expensive than Peterborough. There’s a reason why Peterborough is relatively cheap …….

          4. But much nicer and with far more attractive houses. Convenient for schools at Oakham and Uppingham. Peterborough is full of those diverse and enriching stabbers.

            Does it really matter whether you have 3 or 4 bedrooms?
            Or 18?

          6. It is. A fine Norman building. I am slightly prejudiced against it as I embarrassed myself there. I was playing the organ aged 17 at a significant service for Uppingham and Oakham schools. The organ has four manuals and I was used to three. I had not set any stops for the Choir (4th) manual and was met with a deafening silence for the right hand at the climax of Mulet’s Carillon-Sortie.

          7. Peterborough Cathedral was severely damaged by smoke when a dosser, of which there are many in Peterborough, lit a fire in order to keep warm but ignited a stack of plastic chairs in the aisle. The result was inordinate surface damage to the painted vaulting.

            On the plus side Cathedrals are now prohibited from using plastic chairs but must use wooden stackable chairs with fire treated upholstery.

          8. Decent primary schools in Stamford but the secondary school is rather dire, and has been for many years.

          10. If the parents can afford the fees, uniform and other financial obligations. One of our younger son’s friends was moved from state grammar to Oakham for 6th form. (There were some ‘issues’ in their state school at the time, and many of the brightest were moved to alternative schools for 6th form.)

          11. Let me assure you, once you spot two cockroaches, it won’t be long before there’s a tribe sharing your M & S.

    2. I really must read threads in full before i post!!!! Yes same thought occurred to me.

  140. Beautiful start to the day and a bloody foul afternoon once the rain started just after lunchtime.
    Got a load of logs sawn ready for chopping & stacking and even managed to get some I did t’other day stacked by unemployed Graduate Son, but rain stopped further work.
    Off to bed so g’night all.

  141. E’ening all.
    Foul weather today and water a food deep in many places on the road home.
    Last weekend, I decided I’d go to Brighton this w/e – never visited the Pavilion so I booked a night’s stay in a hotel.

    Judging y the forecast Ì think I’ll spend the w/e looking out of the hotel window.

    1. Weather might be better in Brighton, you never know. It has been foul here all day and the roads were flooded, too.

    2. Will you be home by Monday? I can do Brighton on the ThamesLink. Do go to the art museum across the green from the Pavilion. They have a very good collection, including some nice Angelika Kauffman pictures.

    3. Brighton ? Are you mad? Why the bloody hell didn’t you come to me instead? I know lots of sleazy haunts !

    1. There has been snow here, the mountains are covered with the damned stuff. I want snow at Christmas not Easter. I blame Greta Thunberg and her halfwit friends for this.

      Vote Reform for the correct weather for each season!

      1. Lol!

        In 1997 i was a bridesmaid on 6th april; our dresses were flimsy and luckily we had delightful warm weather and were perfectly warm outside. The following year on the same day it snowed and I remember being glad the wedding had not been on that day!

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