Tuesday 13 May: What Labour’s immigration reforms will mean for the care sector

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

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424 thoughts on “Tuesday 13 May: What Labour’s immigration reforms will mean for the care sector”

    1. Good morning Geoff.
      I know, I'm already on it!
      Thank you anyway and hope you're keeping well.

    2. Morning Geoff. No it isn't, It's here. Are you OK? I would like some assurance.

  2. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe page.

    Wordle 1,424 5/6

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    1. Morning Elsie and all
      Wordle 1,424 4/6

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    2. My favourite 1st word stood me in good stead this morning.

      Wordle 1,424 2/6

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  4. Good morning all.
    Another bright and sunny day. Clear blue skies and a temperature of a tad under 12½°C with still no sign of rain.
    I've moved the thermometer to a new location so that it stays in the shade the whole day and we got up to a tad over 22½°C yesterday.

    1. Starmer's performance since becoming PM has been so disastrous it's very unlikely that he is capable of redeeming the position he has created. His latest stance on immigration, following on from Reform's performance in the local elections, is pure reaction to Labour's failure/weakness on this issue. So many U-turns, lies and poor decisions e.g. the WFA debacle, have exposed him as untrustworthy.

      2. I doubt #TwoTierKeir will follow through on any of these u-turns on Immigration. It's just performative art for the headlines, written by his Spads. He lacks integrity, and is driving the country down on behalf of his Davos chums and the other followers of the #Schwabstika.

      3. I realise that vox pop interviews are carefully edited, but even the Beeb found people who didn't believe a word Stoma uttered.

    2. I will admit that I detested Tony Blair before he was even elected, but I do agree he is reaching new lows in British politics.

      1. Someone out there, a body of evil people out there have been lining up these terrible people who are wrecking our country and lives for many decades. Even Johnson carried out his apprenticeship as London mayor before being moved in to Drowning Street.

      2. Blair is still worth detesting. His recent headline grab 'against' Nett Zero was not on behalf of the UK consumer, it was in support of his digital handcuffs for all. His comment re Nett Zero was released the day after the Iberian Peninsula did it's impression of North Korea, halting any electronic business transactions. Blair's beloved CBDC and digital ID aspirations need a regular power supply, not Mad Ed Millimong and his fluctuating, heavily subsidised renwables

        1. I think Boris would have fared better if Covid hadn't happened on his watch.

          2. He was tested and totaly failed. I would never vote for him. He should have represned the people to keep all the others off our backs.

    5. I've said it before and I'll say it again, he's made himself a sausage to fortune.

  9. Good morning all ,

    Sunshine on a cloudy day!

    Moh is 79 years old today , and I will cook a nice bacon breakfast for him .

    My sisters have moved on , Fran has gone home to SA and my other has driven back to the the North to say farewell to cousins then catch her flight from Newcastle to Capetown via Holland on Friday .

    Moh and I are emotionally exhausted .. the build up and grand tidy up and preparation prior to their visit three months before has been very trying , in particular .. for reasons of which there are many concerning the middle sister !!!!!

    Who has been single all her life !!!

    It has been difficult .

    1. Well, make your OH his breakfast, take the dog for a walk and you can both relax.

    2. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
      Happy Birthday to the Golfer 🤗🏌‍♂️🏌

      "When it's cold out side i've got the month of May".

    3. Wish him a happy birthday, how has he coped with the Southampton FC situation?

      1. Morning Mm,

        Poor Moh is gutted that Southampton has plummeted so quickly to the bottom .. and will lose it's Premiership position .. I dread the new season .. He will still stream their games if poss , but Autumn and Winter will be miserable for him.. He might switch his allegiance to Bournemouth !!!

        1. Why not introduce him to less stressful pastimes?
          A nice embroidery kit for his birthday. Or maybe Uncle Bill could send an emergency supply of used puzzles.

        2. There's always the Portsmouth/Southampton derbies to look forward to.

    6. We've missed you here while you were busy entertaining – I hope you and the sisters enjoyed their visit. You must be exhausted though – it's not easy adjusting your lifestyle to fit in with visitors.

  10. 405543+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Rudi was certainly on the money, to me these George Orwell type peoples were stationed throughout our past history as
    pre warned is pre armed, beware quicksand of a rhetorical nature ahead guardians.

    The only thing we as a species over the decades have not tried is,
    LISTENING.

    https://x.com/stopvaccinating/status/1921645197055959171

  12. Morning, all Y'all.
    Overcast, very windy. Lots of wasps around these last two days, massive buggers that take a half-tin of insecticide to bring down.

      1. Not fat enough, but long, and with a good bass buzz. Horrible things.

  15. * Waltzes in Good morning on this lovely spring day .

  16. Good morning, all. Another beautiful start to the day. I will not be taking the controversial advice of those who advocate remaining indoors and out of the sunlight.

    If the figures below are anywhere near correct then the woman in the video is supporting the demise of food production in South Africa. Zimbabwe is a recent example of the collapse of farming after white farmers were removed from the land: clearly a case of history repeating itself because people have not learned the lesson from previous events.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6fc160f08eb13ba4f699a4c2d01839b5db2966d44caf6303ab2a9bd7046cb6f5.png

    https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1922126834692436294

    Cato Institute

    South Africa’s government has recently flirted with the idea of changing its constitution to let the state expropriate farmland without compensation. They need only look north to Zimbabwe to see the disastrous consequences of this kind of policy.

    In the early 2000s, Zimbabwe’s former dictator Robert Mugabe gave the green light to his paramilitary supporters to invade commercial farms, seizing some 23 million acres of land. The property rights of commercial farmers were revoked and the state resettled the confiscated farms with small-scale agriculturalists.

    The results of Mugabe’s harebrained populism were only too predictable.

    Most of the new would-be farmers had no real knowledge of commercial agriculture and many soon returned to subsistence farming. With much of the country’s arable land now uncultivated, agricultural production quickly dwindled. The actual commercial farmers left for other African countries such as Zambia, Nigeria, and Ghana, taking with them their intricate knowledge of farming practices.

    The result was a devastating food shortages in a nation once dubbed the “breadbasket” of Africa. Total food production fell a staggering 60 per cent in the space of ten years…

    2. Does she realise that the Bantu tribal group, who form the black majority of South Africa, did not arrive in South Africa until long after the Boers arrived?
      And the Boers were Dutch not German.

      1. Correct, Jan Anthony Van Riebeeck.
        The only tribe in the south where Hoten Tots.
        Most native Africans moved south to revel in the wonderful land of opportunity created by the boers.
        Now as has happened in Zimbabwe their devil may care attitude has wrecked the culture and social structure of the whole country.

      2. And Shaka Zulu eliminated many thousands of other Bantu tribes on the way. He was a brutal genocidal maniac.

        2. And I will also point out that the Zulus were only a small part of the Bantu expansion.

    3. They’ll drive out the white farmers and when the blacks are starving, they’ll hold out the begging bowl and expect the white man to fill it.

      1. They have been blaming all the problems on apartheid since their Hero Mandela took over the leadership of the wrecking crew.

      3. I've worked in Zimbabwe and Mozambique (Approx two months) and seen mud huts being built. I despair. I will ne er give any money to any "charities" which beg for Africans. They are incapable of getting off their backsides and helping them selves.

    5. Does she know that mugabe murder (from another tribe) around 20 thousand people because he knew that they would never vote for him. That's part of how he effed up the wonderful self sufficient Rhodesia.

  17. White South Africans granted refugee status by Trump. 13 May 2025.

    Donald Trump has granted refugee status to white South Africans who claim they face racial discrimination in their home country.

    A group of 49 white South Africans boarded a charter flight from Johannesburg on Sunday night and are set to arrive at Washington DC’s Dulles international airport on Monday, in a move that ratchets up tensions between the two nations.

    Good.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/05/12/white-south-africans-granted-refugee-status-by-trump/

    1. Good morning, yes it is good. I remember, though unsure of the time frame, that Putin had previously offered land to SA farmers. After all, there is an abundance of arable land in Russia and having professional farmers work that land is a win-win situation. The media were against, proving to me that it was a good offer, but I don't know if any of the farmers took up the opportunity.

        1. Husband follows a Canadian family who emigrated there, think they manage farmland. (He's a Russophile, would move there in a heartbeat, I say don't believe everything you see online……)

  18. Shocker. Starmer upsets his core activist voters by talking mildy tough about immigration.. then gets a firebomb on his front door.

    Fast track long sentence for the arrested suspect?
    Taking his voters for granted.. straight out of the Johnson playbook. He won't last long now. Then it'll be prime minister Ange. Gawd, imagine that.

    A Met statement said: “The 21-year-old was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday May 13 on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life. He remains in custody.

    2. So the rumour that the fire had started in the seat of #TwoTierKeirs trousers was incorrect?

  19. 405543+ up ticks,

    Two trains of thought, is he too be considered a villain or a freedom fighter, after making sure te property was empty can this act be a much needed warning to the leading political TOOL and his kits actions that will no longer be tolerated and allowed to continue without consequences.

    One line of thought will I am sure be, a twenty one year old
    gripping the nettle of reality does make my glimpse of the future NOT so bleak.

    Man arrested after ‘firebomb’ attack at Starmer’s home
    21-year-old arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life following reports of damage to north London property

    1. Why has Starmers place not been seized by Khan and filled with gimmegrants?

  20. Morning All 🙂😊
    Sunny start again, how long can this carry on?
    And expected plus 20 c later.
    We're not use to all this.
    But sadly what we are all use to is our useless politicians wrecking every single thing they come into contact with.
    Funny how starmer was not at home when the alleged arson incident happened. Little damage, but Nice timing eh.
    His 24/7/365 security must have been elsewhere.

    1. Apparently he rents it out.
      Seems to have another des.res. in Londonistan.

  21. Another cracker of a canny deal from Starmer..
    With the 2027 EU trade deal transition coming to an end Starmer hands over control of waters & fish in return for the chance to join the EU army.

    Up there with Chagos.

    1. Starmer sincerely believes that there is nothing wrong with lying.

  23. 405543+up ticks,

    So seemingly once,twice,thrice plus betrayals by the combined coalition added to the mass paedophilic rape & abuse of the country's children and the giving mass political succour 5* bed and board to the incoming, daily invaders ongoing, I would personally consider these political criminal cartels to have failed
    many decades ago.

    Telegraph View
    Labour cannot afford to fail on immigration
    The penalty for betraying the electorate yet again would be electoral extinction

  25. Yvette Cooper refuses to take down webpage promising home and £49 a week to asylum seekers

    1. Just plain stoopid. Their mistakes just pile up before them.
      And later they'll just walk away.

    1. There is only room in Starmer's head for the latest instruction from the Bilderberg group.

  28. Pope’s brother let rip potty-mouth tirade

    The Daily Telegraph 13 May 2025 By Nick Squires

    A BROTHER of Pope Leo XIV shared posts on social media calling the Democrat politician Nancy Pelosi a “drunken cunt”, it has emerged.
    While the Pope has been critical of the Trump administration and its migration policies, his brother Louis has different opinions. He has posted or reposted comments memes that suggest the Democratic party is overrun with Communists and that the US should return to isolationism.
    The social media content indicates that Mr Prevost, 73, who lives in Florida, is an ardent Donald Trump supporter.

    His most inflammatory comment seems to be a reposting of a video in which Ms Pelosi is described as a “cunt”. “These fucking liberals crying about tariffs is just unreal. Do they not know that there is a thing called video? Just listen to what this drunk cunt has to say in the mid-90s long before her husband had Grindr dates,” says the caption to the video.

    Critics regularly labelled Ms Pelosi a drunk as she began to slur words occasionally in her old age. There is no suggestion her husband used gay dating app, Grindr. Another repost invokes the power of prayer to insult Democrats, with the caption: “Please pray for the 33 per cent who approve of Biden, that they be healed of their mental affliction.”

    Mr Prevost is keen for the US to embrace an isolationist foreign policy. Washington should let Europe “go their own way into complete socialism and ultimately communism,” he wrote. He also said that “lefty” Democrats should be “tarred, feathered and rode out of town on a donkey”.

    I love it! Is Louis Prevost this decade's Terry Major-Ball?

    3. One of the things that Starmer needs is a brother like Piers Corbyn who can remind me just what a squalid little twerp he is.

        1. I will judge such figures on their own actions. not those of their family. Pure lazy tabloid sneering.

        2. I will judge such figures on their own actions. not those of their family. Pure lazy tabloid sneering.

    6. A distraction, Grizz, there's also been pics (AI?) of her with white powder on her lip beneath her nose…better employed looking into Ms Pelosi and husband share dealings…….

  29. Good Morning!

    Today on FSB John Hamer gives us the very key to comprehending the full extent of the depopulation agenda as, oddly enough, found on the Georgia Guidestones , erected in a field near Elberton in northeast Georgia, USA but since mysteriously blown up. It's a story and a half, so don't miss it, and please don't forget to comment.

    James Gatehouse pondering on the significance and thinking' behind abandining BAME for Global Majority in his Who are the Global Majority? helped me make some sense out of it. If you missed it, please read and do leave a comment.

    freespeechbacklash.com

  30. Cur Ikea Slammer promises to crack down on illegal asylum. But makes no mention of the tens of thousands arriving in rubber boats. Funny that.

    1. He will wait until there is a storm in the Channel and then take credit for stopping the boats.

    2. He can't crackdown on legal asylum seekers as long as UK embraces ECHR (which is part of NI Agreement thanks to Sunak)…we need to leave that asap if not before, as MacGregor is trying to do in Ireland. Legal numbers are 90% of the total, boaties around 10%…so which is the biggest problem….

    3. Last time I looked, France was not a war torn country. I am not expecting to arrive on the front line when I go back to Normandy next month. They are NOT asylum seekers, they are invaders.

    4. We haven't seen much in recent years of the people who waft around CO2 monitors to see if there's anyone in the back of artics.

      Do illegals bother with the back of a lorry method these days?

      1. They used to make a big thing of that.
        Particularly areas like East Anglia with major Europe facing ports.

    5. We haven't seen much in recent years of the people who waft around CO2 monitors to see if there's anyone in the back of artics.

      Do illegals bother with the back of a lorry method these days?

      1. And I've just had my breakfast.
        I suspect only nurses – retired or otherwise – will keep it down.
        (Oooer, Missus.)

  32. Got to go to town. The MR has to prove that she is alive – the Town Hall stamp a document to confirm it! Back later.

    Then to deal with the tomatoes.

      1. Yes. They left to kill loads of Christians and now they are back in their taxpayer funded houses.

        1. Ready to kill shedloads more Christians; preferably children and teenagers.

  34. A zinger of an article by Allison Pearson. I hope she has dug a moat and pulled up the drawbridge before EssexPlod rock up.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/12/starmers-tough-policy-on-immigration-is-the-biggest-con/

    "Starmer’s tough policy on migration is the biggest con since Meg Ryan simulated an orgasm in a diner

    Be under no illusions – our Prime Minister cares not one jot about immigration.

    Does Keir Starmer really want to reduce immigration? Does an alcoholic willingly hand over a vodka bottle? Our Prime Minister has never met an immigrant or asylum seeker he didn’t like. The small-boat illegals who break into our country in their tens of thousands are all “vulnerable people being ruthlessly exploited by vile gangs”, as far as this north London human rights lawyer is concerned, no matter the cost to the British people in sexual assaults, acid attacks, diluted national values and culture, increased competition for public services and rental accommodation.

    We are supposed to believe the Labour leader who coldly threatened the protestors after the Southport massacre with harsh punishment for their “far-Right thuggery” has had a Damascene conversion. (Protestors were not “far-Right” at all, as an official report just concluded, they were simply distraught about what had become of their country now it contained maniacs from places where they machete small children to death.) Suddenly, two-tier Keir can’t wait to impose tough new immigration rules: “Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together,” he intoned in that watery croak.

    Oh, please. Pass the sickbag, Marjorie. What a charlatan, what a shameless shape-shifter, what a snake. Keir Starmer is worried that Britain is at “risk” of becoming “an island of strangers”. KEIR STARMER!

    Keir Starmer, the open-borders champ who loses no opportunity to demonise anyone who dares to express doubts about Labour’s beloved “communities” full of such “strangers”.

    Keir Starmer, who has voted against almost every measure to reduce immigration, opposing any attempt to deter illegal migration by processing arrivals offshore – like the unceremoniously-dumped Rwanda scheme.

    Keir Starmer, who won’t authorise a national inquiry into the rape gangs lest it reveals the Faustian pact between his party and immigrants who have not only refused to integrate, but have played on liberal idiots like him so skilfully they are apparently able to rape white girls almost with impunity.

    Keir Starmer, whose government is drawing up a new definition of Islamophobia that could amount to a de facto blasphemy law – silencing people who would really rather their Christian country was not the Western capital for sharia law courts.

    Keir Starmer, the former shadow immigration minister to Jeremy Corbyn, who wrote in 2020: “Britain is economically, culturally and socially richer as a result of immigration. We should celebrate this and the huge contribution migration has made to our country. If I am elected leader of the Labour Party, I will always defend migrants’ rights and make the positive case for immigration. We must never accept the Tory or media narrative that often scapegoats and demonises migrants. Problems of low pay, housing and public services are not caused by migrants…” Of course not, heaven forbid!

    Keir Starmer who went on to criticise the Tory “obsession with chasing arbitrary, unenforceable and unachievable immigration targets. I would never adopt such a target-based approach to immigration”. So it was goodbye to the hostile-environment approach, vowed Starmer. He planned to close “cruel” immigration detention centres and relax the family reunion rules. Because people fleeing war or persecution “should not face a lengthy and restrictive” process before they are reunited in the UK with 27 of their closest relatives and three of their wives who can’t wait to claim benefits in Hounslow and take a flat from an indigenous family. (OK, he didn’t say that last bit, but it’s what his attitude means in practice.)

    Keir Starmer who, five years ago, said his approach to immigration was “welcoming and compassionate”. Or soft, deluded, catastrophic and a threat to national security and everything we hold dear as voters who backed Reform UK at the local elections see it.

    ‘I’ve got your back!’

    Ah, yes, Reform. Make no mistake, behind the PM’s new, tough-guy stance on immigration lurks the terror of his Government being swept away at the general election by a turquoise tsunami. (Just wait and see what Reform does to Welsh Labour at the Senedd elections next year; I hear that a large number of serving ministers are standing down for fear of Farage.)

    “The Tories lost control of our borders and let net migration soar to record levels undercutting hard-working Brits, I won’t stand for it,” said the PM in a cringeworthy, try-too-hard tweet. “I promised to restore control and cut migration, and I’m delivering with tough new measures. British workers – I’ve got your back!”

    Ugh. Can we believe that the arch-globalist kissing cousin of Emmanuel Macron, the EU-philiac who did everything he could to engineer a re-run of the Referendum, is suddenly best mates with the workers who voted in their millions to be an independent, sovereign nation, taking back control of our borders? Don’t be ridiculous. Keir Starmer is the biggest fake since Meg Ryan simulated an orgasm in a diner, and at least Ryan’s performance hit the entertainment G-spot. Starmer’s fills you with a kind of bemused contempt.

    Unfortunately for the Conservatives, the Labour leader is right about the scale of their betrayal – the deafening numbers admitted in the so-called Boriswave created vast and permanent demographic change and the Tories were rightly annihilated after letting in almost a million migrants within 12 months. It is all very well for Kemi Badenoch to say, as she did at the weekend, “Our country is a home, not a hotel” when, in the final years of her party’s 14-year rule, the UK was less a precious home and more a sprawling, all-inclusive Butlins. We were promised an Australian points-based system admitting highly-skilled individuals, not a salary threshold for admission so low it let in the (third) world and his wife.

    At least with their proposed “Deportations Bill”, the Tories show they realise they are on death row as far as the electorate is concerned. It’s deport or die. The bill has provisions for the removal “of all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, tougher visa rules”. The Human Rights Act will be disabled for immigration cases, asylum support will be repayable and there is no permanent right to stay in the UK if you rely on benefits. All good, as far as it goes. But still no pledge to leave the European Court of Human Rights, essential if we are serious about controlling our borders and derailing the immigration-lawyers’ gravy train. At this rate, Labour will promise to leave the ECHR before the Conservatives!

    Do you think I am being a tad harsh, ladies and gents, on the Prime Minister’s stirring new stance on immigration? After all, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents etcetera… I really don’t think so. It is the work of decades to repair the damage excess immigration has done to our nation, and the longer it’s postponed the uglier the reckoning will be. If you look at the Government’s new measures, they are pretty paltry. A bit of tinkering with the length of time foreign students can stay without getting a good job, a ban on recruitment of overseas workers (unclear how, or indeed if, this would work), a reduction in the number of work visas that looks a lot better than it actually is, a toughening up of English language requirements which you just know will never be enforced. The NHS has already decided that expecting nurses to speak the language of most patients was “discriminatory” .

    While the Government’s white paper does agree that we should have a much more selective system, with far lower levels of net migration, the policies come nowhere near delivering that. Karl Williams, of the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, says it looks like Labour “are aiming for between 200,000 and 300,000 immigrants per annum”, as during the 2010s. “While that’s a two-thirds reduction on recent highs that’s still extraordinarily high.”

    The Prime Minister has cunningly not set a cap on overall numbers, arguing that the failure of successive Tory governments to meet a series of targets “undermined trust”. Hmm. Nothing like failing to set a target at all, Sir Keir, to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, eh?

    The only party that can beat Reform is Reform

    The Office for National Statistics has predicted that net migration will settle at 340,000 from 2028, but some experts say that, with more people staying here longer, just over 500,000 is nearer the mark. Yet again, we see how the people are gaslit by their leaders to accept as totally normal levels of immigration which are far greater than at any time in our history, and ruinous for national cohesion and the wellbeing of those who were born here.

    Do the British people want an extra half a million foreigners, a city the size of Edinburgh, coming to their knackered, overstretched, increasingly ghettoised country every single year? I make that a resounding No.

    That is why Reform’s “net zero immigration” and pledge to deport all illegal arrivals while taking a draconian approach to the small boats is winning so many votes – they scored an astonishing 33 per cent in the most recent poll (Labour on 20 per cent, Tories on life support at 16). On that showing, the only party that can beat Reform is Reform. Starmer will live to regret his grandstanding on immigration as it becomes clear he’s all talk and no action.

    In private, I’m told that ministers are relying on a significant fall in the legal immigration figures due to measures brought in by the outgoing Tory home secretary James Cleverly. Downing Street will be delighted to take the credit for that decrease and hope it placates the mounting public fury over uncontrolled immigration. Give the voters’ little heads a reassuring pat, do next to nothing, quietly park the issue and hope that’s enough to get them off your case.

    Sir Keir Starmer knows full well why Reform are surging in the polls, but the man has a profound distaste for implementing the measures that could help Labour close the gap. He adores immigration, he abhors borders, and he thinks his is the moral, enlightened view and the rest of us who don’t agree are a bunch of bigots. Perhaps we could pay for him to have some of those English lessons so he understands the country he notionally leads?

    Instead of having the back of British workers, as he claims, Sir Keir is about to stick a knife between their shoulder blades while claiming to be a brilliant osteopath. It’s a con."

    2. Well it's a good article but strictly inside the Overton window. Starmer is wreaking his quota of havoc before the baton is passed on to the Reform who will mysteriously be unable to reverse any of the destruction of the last quarter century. They'll probably be allowed to stop the boats when enough young men have entered to do for our country once and for all. But it's OK because we're allowed to hate Starmer now.

      1. That is what worries me.
        Throughout my life – apart from Maggie – no Conservative government has ever reversed the ratchet.
        And Farage does seem to have a problem with anyone in Reform, other than him, getting attention.

      2. When Rupert Lowe suggested that all existing illegals still resident in the UK should be deported he was vilified, slandered and attacked by Farage and Zia Yousef and kicked out of The Reform Party.

    3. More people arrived on these shores since 1997 than had come in the previous centuries since 1066!

  35. A zinger of an article by Allison Pearson. I hope she has dug a moat and pulled up the drawbridge before EssexPlod rock up.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/12/starmers-tough-policy-on-immigration-is-the-biggest-con/

    "Starmer’s tough policy on migration is the biggest con since Meg Ryan simulated an orgasm in a diner

    Be under no illusions – our Prime Minister cares not one jot about immigration.

    Does Keir Starmer really want to reduce immigration? Does an alcoholic willingly hand over a vodka bottle? Our Prime Minister has never met an immigrant or asylum seeker he didn’t like. The small-boat illegals who break into our country in their tens of thousands are all “vulnerable people being ruthlessly exploited by vile gangs”, as far as this north London human rights lawyer is concerned, no matter the cost to the British people in sexual assaults, acid attacks, diluted national values and culture, increased competition for public services and rental accommodation.

    We are supposed to believe the Labour leader who coldly threatened the protestors after the Southport massacre with harsh punishment for their “far-Right thuggery” has had a Damascene conversion. (Protestors were not “far-Right” at all, as an official report just concluded, they were simply distraught about what had become of their country now it contained maniacs from places where they machete small children to death.) Suddenly, two-tier Keir can’t wait to impose tough new immigration rules: “Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together,” he intoned in that watery croak.

    Oh, please. Pass the sickbag, Marjorie. What a charlatan, what a shameless shape-shifter, what a snake. Keir Starmer is worried that Britain is at “risk” of becoming “an island of strangers”. KEIR STARMER!

    Keir Starmer, the open-borders champ who loses no opportunity to demonise anyone who dares to express doubts about Labour’s beloved “communities” full of such “strangers”.

    Keir Starmer, who has voted against almost every measure to reduce immigration, opposing any attempt to deter illegal migration by processing arrivals offshore – like the unceremoniously-dumped Rwanda scheme.

    Keir Starmer, who won’t authorise a national inquiry into the rape gangs lest it reveals the Faustian pact between his party and immigrants who have not only refused to integrate, but have played on liberal idiots like him so skilfully they are apparently able to rape white girls almost with impunity.

    Keir Starmer, whose government is drawing up a new definition of Islamophobia that could amount to a de facto blasphemy law – silencing people who would really rather their Christian country was not the Western capital for sharia law courts.

    Keir Starmer, the former shadow immigration minister to Jeremy Corbyn, who wrote in 2020: “Britain is economically, culturally and socially richer as a result of immigration. We should celebrate this and the huge contribution migration has made to our country. If I am elected leader of the Labour Party, I will always defend migrants’ rights and make the positive case for immigration. We must never accept the Tory or media narrative that often scapegoats and demonises migrants. Problems of low pay, housing and public services are not caused by migrants…” Of course not, heaven forbid!

    Keir Starmer who went on to criticise the Tory “obsession with chasing arbitrary, unenforceable and unachievable immigration targets. I would never adopt such a target-based approach to immigration”. So it was goodbye to the hostile-environment approach, vowed Starmer. He planned to close “cruel” immigration detention centres and relax the family reunion rules. Because people fleeing war or persecution “should not face a lengthy and restrictive” process before they are reunited in the UK with 27 of their closest relatives and three of their wives who can’t wait to claim benefits in Hounslow and take a flat from an indigenous family. (OK, he didn’t say that last bit, but it’s what his attitude means in practice.)

    Keir Starmer who, five years ago, said his approach to immigration was “welcoming and compassionate”. Or soft, deluded, catastrophic and a threat to national security and everything we hold dear as voters who backed Reform UK at the local elections see it.

    ‘I’ve got your back!’

    Ah, yes, Reform. Make no mistake, behind the PM’s new, tough-guy stance on immigration lurks the terror of his Government being swept away at the general election by a turquoise tsunami. (Just wait and see what Reform does to Welsh Labour at the Senedd elections next year; I hear that a large number of serving ministers are standing down for fear of Farage.)

    “The Tories lost control of our borders and let net migration soar to record levels undercutting hard-working Brits, I won’t stand for it,” said the PM in a cringeworthy, try-too-hard tweet. “I promised to restore control and cut migration, and I’m delivering with tough new measures. British workers – I’ve got your back!”

    Ugh. Can we believe that the arch-globalist kissing cousin of Emmanuel Macron, the EU-philiac who did everything he could to engineer a re-run of the Referendum, is suddenly best mates with the workers who voted in their millions to be an independent, sovereign nation, taking back control of our borders? Don’t be ridiculous. Keir Starmer is the biggest fake since Meg Ryan simulated an orgasm in a diner, and at least Ryan’s performance hit the entertainment G-spot. Starmer’s fills you with a kind of bemused contempt.

    Unfortunately for the Conservatives, the Labour leader is right about the scale of their betrayal – the deafening numbers admitted in the so-called Boriswave created vast and permanent demographic change and the Tories were rightly annihilated after letting in almost a million migrants within 12 months. It is all very well for Kemi Badenoch to say, as she did at the weekend, “Our country is a home, not a hotel” when, in the final years of her party’s 14-year rule, the UK was less a precious home and more a sprawling, all-inclusive Butlins. We were promised an Australian points-based system admitting highly-skilled individuals, not a salary threshold for admission so low it let in the (third) world and his wife.

    At least with their proposed “Deportations Bill”, the Tories show they realise they are on death row as far as the electorate is concerned. It’s deport or die. The bill has provisions for the removal “of all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, tougher visa rules”. The Human Rights Act will be disabled for immigration cases, asylum support will be repayable and there is no permanent right to stay in the UK if you rely on benefits. All good, as far as it goes. But still no pledge to leave the European Court of Human Rights, essential if we are serious about controlling our borders and derailing the immigration-lawyers’ gravy train. At this rate, Labour will promise to leave the ECHR before the Conservatives!

    Do you think I am being a tad harsh, ladies and gents, on the Prime Minister’s stirring new stance on immigration? After all, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents etcetera… I really don’t think so. It is the work of decades to repair the damage excess immigration has done to our nation, and the longer it’s postponed the uglier the reckoning will be. If you look at the Government’s new measures, they are pretty paltry. A bit of tinkering with the length of time foreign students can stay without getting a good job, a ban on recruitment of overseas workers (unclear how, or indeed if, this would work), a reduction in the number of work visas that looks a lot better than it actually is, a toughening up of English language requirements which you just know will never be enforced. The NHS has already decided that expecting nurses to speak the language of most patients was “discriminatory” .

    While the Government’s white paper does agree that we should have a much more selective system, with far lower levels of net migration, the policies come nowhere near delivering that. Karl Williams, of the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, says it looks like Labour “are aiming for between 200,000 and 300,000 immigrants per annum”, as during the 2010s. “While that’s a two-thirds reduction on recent highs that’s still extraordinarily high.”

    The Prime Minister has cunningly not set a cap on overall numbers, arguing that the failure of successive Tory governments to meet a series of targets “undermined trust”. Hmm. Nothing like failing to set a target at all, Sir Keir, to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, eh?

    The only party that can beat Reform is Reform

    The Office for National Statistics has predicted that net migration will settle at 340,000 from 2028, but some experts say that, with more people staying here longer, just over 500,000 is nearer the mark. Yet again, we see how the people are gaslit by their leaders to accept as totally normal levels of immigration which are far greater than at any time in our history, and ruinous for national cohesion and the wellbeing of those who were born here.

    Do the British people want an extra half a million foreigners, a city the size of Edinburgh, coming to their knackered, overstretched, increasingly ghettoised country every single year? I make that a resounding No.

    That is why Reform’s “net zero immigration” and pledge to deport all illegal arrivals while taking a draconian approach to the small boats is winning so many votes – they scored an astonishing 33 per cent in the most recent poll (Labour on 20 per cent, Tories on life support at 16). On that showing, the only party that can beat Reform is Reform. Starmer will live to regret his grandstanding on immigration as it becomes clear he’s all talk and no action.

    In private, I’m told that ministers are relying on a significant fall in the legal immigration figures due to measures brought in by the outgoing Tory home secretary James Cleverly. Downing Street will be delighted to take the credit for that decrease and hope it placates the mounting public fury over uncontrolled immigration. Give the voters’ little heads a reassuring pat, do next to nothing, quietly park the issue and hope that’s enough to get them off your case.

    Sir Keir Starmer knows full well why Reform are surging in the polls, but the man has a profound distaste for implementing the measures that could help Labour close the gap. He adores immigration, he abhors borders, and he thinks his is the moral, enlightened view and the rest of us who don’t agree are a bunch of bigots. Perhaps we could pay for him to have some of those English lessons so he understands the country he notionally leads?

    Instead of having the back of British workers, as he claims, Sir Keir is about to stick a knife between their shoulder blades while claiming to be a brilliant osteopath. It’s a con."

    1. This is I assume some form of fake AI animation. It does however beg the question why these three decided to go to Kiev by train.

  38. It's not the legals that are the main issue, it's the illegals! Shoot them on the beach as the come ashore.

    1. I've always thought that you would only have to sink a couple of the rubber boats to stop this trafficking. Sounds harsh, but it would work.

      1. And stop the benefits they get when they arrive. Lock them up somewhere uncomfortable.

  39. Yes, it's a spoof AI.

    Apparently it's not considered safe to fly to Kiev so it's a 15 hour train ride from Poland.

    Obviously they needed something to jolly things along and Z had just the right thing!

  40. Yes, it's a spoof AI.

    Apparently it's not considered safe to fly to Kiev so it's a 15 hour train ride from Poland.

    Obviously they needed something to jolly things along and Z had just the right thing!

    2. Starmer Dad Dancing.
      I can take most things ….. but ………………………..

  43. Well, until I acquire more soil or similar to backfill the steps I'm doing, that's as much as I can do done.
    I'll probably restart taking excess soil from the roadside verge as I was doing a couple of years ago.

    In the meantime, I've a wood shelter to get restacked.

  44. Morning all. Scorchio here. Took the dogs out about 08.45 and it was already hot. I lay out for a while on the chaise longue but it was so hot I had to come in. Even Winston didn’t have the energy to chew his bone.

    Starmer’s immigration rules will have no impact whatsoever; they’ll never be implemented. A few legitimate people trying to get here legally will no doubt be inconvenienced, but that will be it.

    1. He gives the impression of being unaware of the daily cross-channel arrivals. Tens of thousands. Extraordinary.

        1. He's definitely being managed by his head honcho, who knows who that might be.

      2. Described by Douglas Adams as an SEP – if you deliberately don't see a problem, you don't have to deal with it, as it's someone else's problem.

      1. It will be the opposite of what he says it’s going to be, that’s for sure.

  45. With his immigration speech – surely only performative in an attempt to fight off Reform – Starmer has trodden where the likes of Kevin Maguire fear to tread. On cue, whilst lambasting Starmer's stance(?) he, Maguire, has to bring in "Tory racist" Enoch Powell: the latter, far more erudite than either Starmer or Maguire, foretold what would happen if the UK carried on with mass immigration. And here we are!

    Can Maguire & Co make a cogent argument in denial of what Powell predicted?

    Starmer losing moral ground? How I chuckled on that one.

    https://x.com/JamesMelville/status/1922201063014212053

  47. 405543+ up ticks,

    My belief for what it is worth is, no more party name changes required,what is required is party leadership change.

    Weigh farage in with a K so he can mingle with his ilk in the house of lords receiving £300 sobs a day for his sig.

    Replace with a true patriotic Anglo Saxon type along the lines of Tommy Robinson.

    Then stand and applaud the rapid regaining of England to be returned to, this time, carefully selected English hands and NOT the tribal criminal fools who lost it.

    https://x.com/UnityNewsNet/status/1922220131880505843

  48. Michael Deacon is becoming a must-read.
    Just off to hide my back copies of the Spekkie under the cushions in the summer house. They'll never loo ……. ah, who's that knocking at the door?

    Poirot and the Mystery of the Very Brexity Things
    Scene: an English country house. The brilliant Belgian detective Hercule Poirot has gathered all the suspects into the drawing room.

    Poirot: “Ladies and gentlemen, I do not mind admitting to you that this has been one of the most difficult cases that I have ever investigated. It tested my little grey cells to the very limit. But I can now reveal which of you is the murderer. It is none other than… the Reverend Honeysuckle!”

    Everyone gasps.

    Random posh man: “The vicar? But it can’t be!”

    Random posh woman: “The Reverend Honeysuckle would never dream of doing something so awful! He is an unimpeachable pillar of our local community!”

    Rev Honeysuckle: “No, no, my dear. I’m afraid that what Monsieur Poirot says is correct. I did indeed murder the dowager countess with a badminton racquet in the library last Saturday afternoon while everyone else was attending the village fete. But tell me, Monsieur Poirot: how on earth did you work out that it was me?”

    Poirot: “You did very well to cover your tracks, monsieur vicar. Unfortunately for you, however, your guilt was given away by a single telltale clue.”

    Rev Honeysuckle: “What in heaven’s name was it?”

    Poirot: “On your bookshelves, I discovered the latest bestseller by Douglas Murray!”

    Everyone gasps again.

    Poirot: “And not only that. I also found that you possess several back issues of the Spectator magazine, a eurosceptic history of Britain’s entry into the Common Market, and numerous other reading materials that my good friend Hastings has so appositely described as ‘very Brexity things’. As soon as I stumbled upon this incriminating evidence, I knew at once that their owner must be a monster of moral depravity, with a mind hell-bent upon perpetrating acts of the most appalling evil.”

    Rev Honeysuckle [bursting into tears of shame]: “Yes, yes! It’s all true! I am a monster! I believe that net immigration of almost one million people a year is unsustainable! I think there should be a full national inquiry into the grooming gangs! And I still haven’t watched a single episode of Adolescence!”

    Yet more gasps. Sounds of retching. A maid faints on to a chaise longue.

    Poirot: “Inspector Japp, instruct your officers to take this man away – before we are subjected to any more of his sickening dog whistles.”

    Inspector Japp: “Well, it seems that congratulations are in order once again, Monsieur Poirot. All I can say is, I can’t believe my men overlooked all that evidence when they were searching the villain’s property. They’re normally very good at spotting that sort of thing.”

    1. I have copies of Race Differences in Intelligence by Richard Lynn and The Bell Curve by Charles A. Murray and Richard Herrnstein. Not to mention three Douglas Murray books, two by Andrew Doyle and oh, a whole lot besides. A hanging offence, shurely? I can probably get away with two translations of Dante, on the basis that it's highly unlikely any of these ignorant bastards even know in which circle of Hell he finds Mahomet.

      1. Many years ago, Prof. Hans Eysenck created controversy by linking IQ with genetics. A deeply unpopular idea at a time when the accepted belief among the cognoscenti, was that nurture, not nature was the differentiating factor in people's IQ's. He got beaten up at an LSE lecture for his views, but looking around the world, there seems to me to be much evidence to suggest he was a lot more right than wrong.

  50. Free Speech Union fundraising for Julian Foulkes' action against KentPlod now up to £52,030.

  51. George Soros’ son, Alex Soros.

    Arm in arm with Lammy and a metaphor for the Starmer administration!

      1. Continuous since at least 1997. Except for just over a month with Truss which is why she didn’t last long in No 10.

        I think that’s also why Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Johnson didn’t write about Soros in their memoirs despite very close connections to him.

  52. 'Afternoon All
    Nicked
    Read an article this week: bottom line, EU countries are speeding up by years giving millions of recent arrivals citizenship, most are young, Starmer will sign up to under 30s freedom of movement and the EU will push them into the UK.
    'Bout Right
    Crackdown on Gimmegration??
    I hurt myself laffing

    3. The whites seem very good this year, sometimes look a bit washed out compared to the lilac coloured. Lovely photo 🙂

  54. Received an EMail from AlBeeb asking for opinion on the same. A pretty weak questionnaire which asked what one watched in very broad terms then asked, for example if you answered "drama" would you like more, less, the same or don't know. There was an opportunity to write a freehand response but the general impression was it was a box ticking exercise to claim they have consulted viewers. No opportunity to comment on radio as far as I could see. Nothing about paying for the licence or anything like that.

    1. The annual BBC Staff Survey is a multiple choice questionnaire that asks all the wrong questions and provides the answers. And they wonder why it isn't met with great enthusiasm and 100% participation.

      2. Today I received my umpteenth letter from BBC Licensing. They are worried that I haven't got a licence and would like to help. The letter joined about 40 others in an envelope file.

  55. Recent Topic:

    I've already posted some comments about the Spanish blackout:

    My conclusions were that causes were either one or more of:

    a) too much renewable energy from solar and wind
    b) not enough inertial backup from synchronous turbines
    c) a Spanish grid control failure
    d) a renewable energy policy failure of the Spanish government
    e) a failure of the French Connection
    f) an act of God

    You can look at this video and make up your own mind where renewable energy is going and what the UK's energy policy should be.

    https://youtu.be/yNiZE82nTQo?si=SKVPPq6dO9m4AYHz

    Could there be a reason for the requirement for all new UK houses to have solar panels and would it be better for them to be able to use off-grid battery storage to mitigate against the likelihood of grid blackouts?

  56. Recent Topic:

    I've already posted some comments about the Spanish blackout:

    My conclusions were that causes were either one or more of:

    a) too much renewable energy from solar and wind
    b) not enough inertial backup from synchronous turbines
    c) a Spanish grid control failure
    d) a renewable energy policy failure of the Spanish government
    e) a failure of the French Connection
    f) an act of God

    You can look at this video and make up your own mind where renewable energy is going and what the UK's energy policy should be.

    https://youtu.be/yNiZE82nTQo?si=SKVPPq6dO9m4AYHz

    Could there be a reason for the requirement for all new UK houses to have solar panels and would it be better for them to be able to use off-grid battery storage to mitigate against the likelihood of grid blackouts?

  57. Peter Sullivan, convicted in 1987 of a murder which new DNA tests reveal he did not commit, is thought to be the victim of the longest miscarriage of justice for a living prisoner in British history. His conviction has been quashed and he is now a free man after 38 years.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde24zj6y69o

    3. He didn't give up.

      Mr Sullivan had previously applied to the CCRC in 2008 raising questions about DNA evidence, but forensic experts said that further testing was unlikely to reveal a DNA profile.

      He applied to the High Court for permission to appeal against his conviction in 2019 over bite mark evidence, but this was rejected by the Court of Appeal in 2021.

  59. There is evil afoot in France…

    Whatever your views are on euthanasia – or "assisted dying" as some people would prefer to call it – the proposed French law which is currently being examined in parliament has certain elements which should unite everyone in horror. Namely a 15,000€ fine for anyone trying to prevent euthanasia (including preventing someone from finding out about euthanasia, even the mentally ill); medical practitioners will not be allowed to exercise a conscience clause, so if they are opposed to euthanasia they will still have to carry it out if requested to do so; only a single doctor's opinion is required, and at the oral request of the sole patient, euthanasia can be carried out immediately. No procedural checks until after the event – which is, of course, irreversible. Macron is all for it; we can only hope that Parliament will throw it out – how can legislation sink so low?

    For French speakers, and particularly those Nottlers living in France, I urge you to read this article. https://fr.aleteia.org/2025/05/12/une-loi-pour-mettre-fin-a-la-vie-ouvrons-les-yeux

    For non-French speakers, below you will find a GPT translation of the article – I don't have time to do it myself as it is a long article – so apologies if the English is a bit peculiar.

    “It will be easier to obtain euthanasia than to get a pain consultation.” This stark warning, reiterated by Professor Philippe Juvin, anesthesiologist-intensivist and Member of Parliament, should alone awaken our country, which is on the verge of tipping over. In the National Assembly on Monday, May 12, the grim, deadly, and deceitful bill arrives in the hands of the deputies. No one can look away any longer. Deceitful? The pinnacle is this amendment adopted in a special committee, which proclaims that “a person whose death results from assisted dying is deemed to have died of natural causes.” Induced death, a natural death…? Astounding.

    A tide of lies

    You heard about an end-of-life law? Know that it has just changed its name. One of the latest amendments adopted in committee renamed it “law concerning the right to assisted dying.” A modification intended to emphasize the notion of enforceable rights… But behind this gentle euphemism, it is indeed euthanasia (death induced by a third party) and assisted suicide (an act by which the person causes their own death) that are at stake, even if the authors and defenders of this text have always refused to acknowledge these two words.

    Note that this name change, in this tide of lies, for once sounds quite accurate. It is not about end of life. At its core, it may never have been about end of life. But rather about ending life. This law could indeed concern thousands of people who are not at the end of life. Because those eligible would include people with chronic illnesses, cancers, diabetes, kidney failure, and certain disabilities (including those related to an accident). And this, with expedited implementation timelines. In 48 hours, everything can be settled. When one realizes that this is the most irreversible act there is—the death of someone—there is reason to tremble. As we hope the hands and consciences of our deputies, who will have to take a stand and vote in a few days, will tremble.

    An inverted fraternity

    The person requesting assisted dying does not even have to do it in writing… Then, the doctor would have a maximum of 15 days to give their opinion on eligibility for induced death (but they can do it the same day…). The patient would then have a minimum of two days to reflect and confirm. Two days! A period that can be further shortened at the person's request… All this, knowing that there would be no need for collegiality in this decision, the agreement of the sole doctor chosen by the patient would suffice: they would only seek the opinion of another doctor (who can oppose, but without having the final say) and a healthcare assistant (without assurance that they are not subordinate to the primary doctor…). An amendment was adopted specifying that “the opinion of all professionals involved with the person is no longer required.” As for possible appeals by relatives or caregivers, they risk being impossible, even condemned. The patient will find themselves isolated, with their decision.

    Because France, which is showing notable creativity in this area, is in the process of developing the worst law in the world. It provides for an “obstruction offense” to punish with one year of imprisonment and a €15,000 fine anyone who prevents or attempts to prevent the practice of euthanasia or prevents a person from obtaining information about assisted dying. A relative could not try to save someone who is unwell, nor could a psychiatrist save their depressed patient… But where are we heading? Into an inverted fraternity… into a weakening of suicide prevention, into an undermining of the duty to assist a person in danger and freedom of expression. It's surreal. Especially since an amendment creating an offense of inciting assisted dying was rejected… We are clearly on the side of death. And not of life. Of the irreversible. And not of hope.

    Conscience clause prohibited

    Moreover, in addition to expedited timelines, the act could take place in any possible location: including in public spaces… For those who would like to “stage” their death? Moreover, in the law as drafted by the committee, the person could choose either euthanasia or assisted suicide. Thus, even if they are capable of performing the act themselves, they can demand that someone else do it. By creating equal access to these two acts, their differences are erased, starting with the imposition on a third party to be directly involved in the act that kills, with euthanasia. On this very serious point, it should be known that not all caregivers would have access to a conscience clause. Pharmacists, notably, who are on the front lines as they are responsible for preparing and dispensing the lethal substance. Forcing someone by law to perform an act that their conscience disapproves of. What an abysmal regression. To think that some dare to sell this law as a law of progress!

    In reality, we are indeed dealing with a law promoted by those who have embarked on this modern chimera of the individual's “self-determination.” As evidence, President Emmanuel Macron reminded that he was in favor of this text before the Freemasons last week, congratulating them on carrying “this ambition to make man the measure of the world, the free actor of his life, from birth to death.” Man, the measure of the world. That is indeed a phrase that says a lot about the philosophy that engenders it and what it inevitably leads to.

    No medical consensus on life prognosis

    Let's come to the contours of this law, totally vague and ineffective from a scientific and medical point of view. To understand, here are the criteria that have so far been retained to “benefit” from this “right”: “To be suffering from a serious and incurable condition, regardless of the cause, that engages the vital prognosis, in an advanced or terminal phase.” Serious and incurable condition, regardless of the cause: indeed, the list of pathologies is immense… That engages the vital prognosis: this criterion is not robust. A vital prognosis can be engaged without it meaning that it is an end of life, and without the disease necessarily leading to death. In an advanced or terminal phase: again, it's very complicated, even the High Authority of Health (HAS), which has just issued its opinion on this point, confirms: “It proves impossible to objectively define a temporal prognosis applicable to every individual situation.” There is no medical consensus on the definition of a vital prognosis engaged “in the medium term,” nor on the notion of “advanced phase” when considered in an individual approach. Many parameters, often evolving, come into consideration. One cannot integrate the uniqueness of the sick person and the possible progression of the disease nor the subjective biases in the sick person (their emotional state, the appreciation of their quality of life, etc.).

    Great vagueness on suffering and consent

    Let's continue examining the law: “The person must present physical or psychological suffering related to this condition, which is either refractory to treatments or unbearable according to the person when they have chosen not to receive or to stop receiving treatment.” This is another inoperative criterion, as it is totally subjective, and which of course includes psychological suffering, not just physical pain. Now, in this text, suffering is defined “according to the person.” Thus, here, everyone will define this criterion themselves. And we are talking about suffering felt even when the patient may have refused any treatment for it. Moreover, an amendment proposing that “palliative care must be a prerequisite to assisted dying” was rejected by the rapporteur of this law, on the grounds that “it would be an infringement of patients' rights.” Proposing to do everything to relieve before euthanizing did not seem preferable to him… We are not surprised. We can still be shocked.

    As for consent, here too, vagueness will inevitably arise. The text states that one must “be able to express their will freely and in an informed manner.” But are we free when we suffer, especially psychologically, or when we may feel like a burden to others? How to verify people's freedom, ensure that they are not under any pressure, starting with that of society which will look at them as people eligible for this right? How to prevent this supposed right to die from becoming a duty to die? “Opening up to everyone a right to die under condition can take away from some the right not to think about it,” wrote philosophy professor Julien Auriach pertinently in La Vie.

    "Foot in the Door"

    It is important to know that the Special Commission rejected many restrictive amendments, and that in itself is very telling: the one requiring a psychologist to ensure that the applicant was not under any pressure, the one requiring a doctor to verify that the applicant's judgment was not impaired, and even the one aimed at excluding people with intellectual disabilities from this "right." "When the physician has doubts about the free and informed nature of the patient's request, they must refer to a psychiatrist": amendment rejected. There you have it. Q.E.D.

    Certainly, the rapporteur of the text, Olivier Falorni, claims to have defended a "balanced" version of the bill—by refusing, for example, to include minors or to allow death requests to be included in advance directives. That is undoubtedly tactical, to make the bill more acceptable. But let us not be deceived—those changes could come later. The goal is to "get a foot in the door," as former MP Jean-Louis Touraine, an openly declared Freemason and long-time advocate for euthanasia for all, even newborns, bluntly and coldly explained. As early as 2018, he stated in La Vie magazine: "We must not do everything all at once, but proceed step by step—first ask adults capable of giving an opinion, then later consider the case of severely premature infants, for example." A recent 2024 video of him speaking openly has gone viral. "Once we get our foot in the door," he says, "we must come back every year and say we want to expand this right. […] Once we get a law for ALS, for certain generalized cancers, we can expand it." His targets: minors, Alzheimer’s patients… As I said, a death-dealing law.

    A Transformed Society

    We can’t say we didn’t know. It’s all right before our eyes—if we’re willing to open them. This law wouldn’t affect just a few people far from us, but every one of us. It would transform society. It would reshape how we view human frailty and vulnerability. It would alter the trust between caregivers and those they care for. Let there be no doubt about that.

    “If we want to address current suffering, we must also consider the suffering of future patients—those who will live with the consequences of an euthanasia law that is, for now, just a proposal. We must anticipate these insidious restrictions on liberty brought about by the erosion of the taboos that safeguard it,” warns Julien Auriach.

    Let us be reassured—or not—a review commission will be established. But the reviews will be… after the fact. That is, after the person has died. At least there, no risk of obstruction… But what madness! As aptly summarized by Erwan Le Morhedec, lawyer and palliative care volunteer: “There are no abuses of euthanasia. Euthanasia is an abuse.”

    This Monday, May 12, the association Alliance VITA is inviting the French public to mobilize in about fifty cities under this urgent, common-sense slogan: “We want care, not euthanasia.” There is still time to make your voice heard—and to write to your Member of Parliament.

    1. It's uncanny how these governments are in lockstep – bringing in this "end of life" bill just at the same time as the UK one is going through Parliament. There seems to be an agenda here.

    3. Doctors forced to carry it out against their conscience may well leave the profession and surrender their licence to practice. I would.

    4. Dear god!

      I am in two minds about the whole thing, but – killing someone in a public place?? How on earth could anyone think that was a good idea?

      1. Pierrepoint the last hangman UK I think, Kathie? See also Ruth Ellis hanged I think '55. I think in the dim and distant when a number hanged the same day, in France – folks would have a day out to watch, take a picnic with them…….now we just abuse online….

        1. Images of the knitting Madame Lafarge at the foot of the guillotine.

          1. Who, me? I used to have a knitting machine, and I made children’s sweaters…one of my children came home from school and told me ‘mummy, every single person in my class today was wearing one of your sweaters’…….so maybe I do qualify for the guillotine after all, Rastus!

          2. God, KJ! I had an early knitting machine – who knows how many years ago – it was seriously awful. One of my very lovely and creative friends has modern ones and does lovely things on them. But they are now very techno.

    5. Coincidentally, this was posted earlier today by an online acquaintance of mine who is dreadfully ill. It has moved me to tears. (Again, the original was French, this is a GPT translation).

      In palliative care, for an orphan disease, which means incurable.
      I will be eligible for euthanasia.
      Even if one believes in God, if He alone matters in our eyes at a certain point, even if we love Him,
      When we find ourselves in the hospital, alone, helpless, in immense distress and pain, most often humiliated,
      If someone brings us a pre-filled syringe and says: "You are free" … to put it in your IV. To inject it into yourself, which we know how to do.
      Then I am certain that in a moment of discouragement, of despair, of fear … the person does it.
      Me too, maybe, one day.
      Unintentionally.
      Out of weakness. Out of helplessness. Out of fear. Out of the desire to leave all this behind.
      No one knows how heavily our soul can be burdened by the adversary, who prowls like a lion that never sleeps.
      I have been in intensive palliative care for six months, with a disease that has been worsening for over twenty years.
      Yesterday, they decided to extend it, given the events of the past month and a half.
      At what point does one not lose courage?
      Lord, stay with us. Stay with us.

      2. The Lord never tests us beyond our capacity to cope. A thought I cling on to.

    6. Absolutely horrific. Let us be in no doubt that any proposed euthanasia bill in the UK would be pushed by people with a similar lust to kill.

    7. That is even looser than the Canadian euthanasia (sorry, Medically Assistance in Dying). At least we have a pretense of control and two medical opinions are needed before the act.

    8. (Un)Holy Smoke.
      Presumably saving someone's life, whether by antibiotics or resuscitation could be fined 15,000€ if the recovered patient wasn't too chuffed.

      1. Mine had a dozen, but half lost through miscarriages. Only girl died of meningitis, aged seven. Grandmother would have thought in heaven if she had the NHS back then.

          2. I'm the baby and the sole remaining child of my parents' three children. My sister Mary died 15 years ago aged 73; my sister Belinda died last month aged 89 and I shall be 79 in July. Belinda is still very much in my thoughts – she was a marvellous woman.

        2. All eleven survived infancy and had a reasonable life span except my Uncle Geoffrey who was killed in WW1 in 1914 at the age of 19.

          My grandfather was a GP and four of his children were also medical doctors.

          1. All my uncles and my father served WW2, my grandmother thought herself blessed that all survived. I still remember my first GP as a very young child, early ’50s..can still see him clear as a bell, my mum thought him practically a god 🙂

  62. Another by-election coming up.. why bother? Just award it to Farage Ltd. Save all the fuss.

    A Conservative MP

    Patrick Spencer, 37, who represents Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, was today charged with two counts of sexual assault after two alleged incidents involving two women at London's exclusive Groucho Club.
    He has now been charged with two counts of sexual assault, contrary to Section 3(1) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, relating to two alleged incidents in August 2023.

    1. Has anyone read the Gavin Menzies' book 1434 about the Chinese discovery of America before Columbus?

      There was a powerful political class of eunuchs who remained focused because they were not diverted by carnal distractions.

      Perhaps we need rather more people like them in Westminster?

  63. Saudi Arabia trumps Sir Keir Starmer of Southport.. close call.. only just.. plenty of time yet.

    A British father-of-four has been reportedly sentenced to a decade in prison in Saudi Arabia over a removed social media post from a Twitter/X account with just 37 followers.

      1. My daughter bought it in Woolworths for 15p about 40 years ago.
        No evidence of climbing. MOH almost dug it up.

        1. It’s really something, and always the reminder your daughter bought it. Ach ..never let a man have a shovel, no telling what he might do…..😂

  65. Oh look Carney is announcing his new cabinet to further destroy Canada. No thought of competence in the selections, it is all gender equity, ethnic background and regional balance. I suppose if ability counted for anything, most of the Trudeau era ministers would be out of a job.

    Why oh why do they hamstring government by keeping up this woke dei concept

    1. Do they include the Red Indians? (I can't keep up with the latest acceptable terminology so have decided to ditch political correctness altogether unless I know their actual tribal names.)

        1. Oh yes it is first nations now, can't call them Indians or redskins anymore.

          Real Indians are in the cabinet – a mix of Sikh and Hindu – cannot upset the votes can we!

          1. Don't they get called by their tribal names? eg, Shoshone, Cree, Crow, Ojibwa, Navajo, Cheyenne, Sioux, Apache, Comanche, etc, instead of all being lumped together?

          2. Whilst most moved around a lot, those are essentially USA rather than Canada.

      2. In the US they are called Native Americans. Not really native, as they came in from Asia. Just our first illegal immigrants…

    2. It's all Trump's fault for some reason, to do with tarriffs. Woker than WokeWokeMcWoke in Canada. Quite glad Carney didn't stay UK.

  66. Knackered now after potting up my fuschias. I bought them from Morrisons over the last few weeks and found most of them are Dollar Princess – supposedly hardy – so they may last the winter, if I'm lucky. Not quite such a good selection this year – I couldn't find any trailing ones.

    1. They'll be fab. I have a bush of the old hardy type, purple & red, many years old, think it may be Dollar Princess.

        1. Garden…I’m no longer ‘allowed’ pots because someone trips over them..it must be at least a decade old, was cut back recent upheaval of the border, looks more like a bush now.

          1. I had a huge one which got ‘got’ by a late frost 3 years ago! I honestly thought I’d lost it along with a 40 year old clematis Montana, but a very tiny green shoot appeared and now it’s back to its original glory! And the clematis is making progress!

          2. I thought you might like to see this! It’s a clematis of some description which I bought in Asda 2 years ago (3 for £5!) and shoved in the side garden behind the gate! They really took off and have created a bower of loveliness!

          4. Result! They can be very hardy…have a Nelly Moser here, gone quite mad this year.

    1. I left an Episcopal church once because their religion was progressivism, not Christianity. Two-faced, smug people.

  68. Phew!
    21½°C in the shade behind the house, but the "garden" is in full sunlight and it's bloody roasting up there!

  69. re Caroline Tracey's recent post on French assisted dying.
    This has just come in from "The Connexion"
    Published Tuesday 13 May 2025 – 13:28

    As lawmakers prepare to vote on a bill that could make assisted dying legal, we take a look at the debate surrounding assisted suicide and euthanasia in France.
    Is assisted dying legal in France?
    No, assisted dying is not legal in France.
    France currently allows deep sedation before death. Legalised in 2016, this allows terminally ill patients to be placed in a deep coma when they are very close to the end of life.
    An assisted dying bill was introduced in France in May 2024, but an examination by MPs was disrupted when President Macron called snap legislative elections.
    The issue is back on the agenda this year. But Prime Minister Bayrou has split the bill into two – one focusing on improving palliative care and one that would legalise ‘aid in dying’. This will allow MPs to vote separately on the two issues.
    What is the current bill?
    Olivier Falorni's (MoDem) bill on assisted dying was adopted in committee on May 2 by 28 MPs against 15, with one abstention.
    It arrived in the Assemblée nationale on Monday May 12. The debates are set to last for two weeks, with two formal votes scheduled for May 27.
    The bill on improving palliative care is expected to be passed, but MPs are more divided on the bill on legalising assisted dying.
    What does the assisted dying bill say?
    The assisted dying bill would allow patients suffering from a “serious and incurable condition” which is “life-threatening” and in an “advanced or terminal phase” to receive or administer a lethal substance to end their life.
    France’s National Authority of Health (Haute Autorité de Santé – HAS) defined the “advanced phase” as "the onset of an irreversible process marked by a worsening of health that affects quality of life." The government intends to adopt this definition in an amendment.
    The bill would not allow patients suffering from psychological illnesses to end their own life.
    The patient would need to get permission from their doctor, as well as approval by one other doctor and a caregiver within 15 days.
    The bill avoids using the terms ‘assisted suicide’ and ‘euthanasia’ but both would be covered.
    Assisted suicide means a patient would end their own life by taking a lethal drink or medication, while euthanasia means someone else would administer the legal injection for the sick person if they could not swallow the product themselves.
    Who will not be able to end their own life?
    Minors and anyone suffering from a psychiatric or neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer’s will not be covered under the bill.
    Who supports the bill and who is against it?
    The bill is supported by parties on the left and Macronist groups, and opposed by the Rassemblement National and Les Républicains.
    President Macron expressed his support for legalising assisted dying in March 2024 after a citizens convention found that three-quarters of French supported a law on the issue.
    Macron announces plans for allowing aid for sick to die in France
    The government is divided on the issue, however. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau is a fierce opponent, and has called the bill “profoundly unbalanced”, while Health Minister Catherine Vautrin, supports the bill, which she has described as “an alternative to intolerable suffering”.
    Arguments for
    Widespread public support
    A citizens convention made up of 184 people from across France voted by 76% in favour of some form of euthanasia or assisted dying.
    An Ifop poll for the Association pour le droit à mourir dans la dignité (Association for the right to die in dignity – ADMD) in May 2025 found almost three-quarters of doctors supported assisted dying.
    France is behind other countries
    Neighbouring Belgium legalised assisted dying in 2002, just behind the Netherlands, which was the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia in 2001.
    Assisted dying is legal in 10 states in the US. Oregon was the first state to legalise assisted dying, in 1997.
    Assisted suicide and euthanasia are currently both illegal in the UK.
    “We are very late compared to other countries,” Anne Raynaud, from the ADMD, which has been campaigning for the legalisation of assisted dying since it was created in 1980, told The Connexion.
    ‘We have never been so close’: Why France may soon legalise assisted dying
    Patients should decide for themselves
    The patient themselves is in the best position to decide when their suffering has become too much, organisations such as ADMD believe.
    “Nobody is in a better place than them to decide,” said Ms Raynaud.
    Olivier Falorni, who brought the bill on assisted dying, defended the option as a “last resort” saying “there is something even worse than death, when life has become nothing but inexorable agony”.
    Arguments against
    Focus should be on palliative care
    Many opponents to the bill argue the government should be putting its focus – and money – into improving palliative care rather than legalising assisted dying.
    France’s Cour des Comptes, in a 2023 report, said palliative care was non-existent outside of French hospitals and called for a strengthening of the care in nursing homes and in patients' own homes.
    It said half of patients who could benefit from better palliative care still do not have access to it.
    Palliative care ‘non-existent’ away from French hospitals, says report
    Tugdual Derville, of the pro-life Alliance Vita association has said France needs to reform its healthcare system to make palliative care more accessible before assisted dying should be considered.
    Lack of family input
    Critics worry that the bill does not require any input from family members.
    Mr Derville, of Alliance Vita, told France 24 that the bill had too few safeguards to prevent abuse and impulsive decisions. "It promotes an individualistic conception of existence," he said, adding that elderly people would be able to make the decision alone, without needing to involve loved ones.
    Religious grounds
    Some people oppose any legalisation of assisted dying on religious grounds. Religious groups have been strong critics of the bill, arguing that only God can decide when life ends.

    1. The compulsory aspect for the medics disturbs me. I wouldn't do it, as a matter of conscience.
      The casual approach to requesting and confirming euthanasia disturbs me greatly.
      I believe that the family should be consulted, and the doomed one makes a documented decision to ask for it based on informed consent, and the medic must document that it is an informed decision made without coercion or being conned.
      Still, don't involve me.

        2. True, but, call me selfish in hoping I can obtain a bottle of this painless cough mixture that carries you off.

          If I was marketing it I would call it 'Afore ye go!'.

          © molamola

          6. I don’t think you would get away with it. Bell’s Whisky has “Afore Ye Go” on the neck of every bottle. It used to be on a separate paper label near the bottles’ shoulders but is now on the lower part of the cap.

  71. Am I a fuddy-duddy a stuffed shirt, a stick-in-the-mud? Once again I am in the presence of a loud-mouthed woman who swears like a trooper, not just in the vicinity of children, but directly at them. This is not yesterday's pub, nor yesterday's woman, but the obligatory tattoos are visible. I think it uncalled for, but I'm clearly behind the times. I know I'm holding these women to a different standard to that of men, but I'm a bit old-fashioned in this regard.

      1. I have been on the receiving end of children swearing at me when I was teaching.

        1. Indeed. Not nice, but one is supposed to be the grown-up in such circumstances.

        2. Were they teens, Conway…or younger? I remember watching The Commitments and being quite shocked at the children swearing.

    2. I don't think anyone, man or woman, should be loudly swearing in public, at children or adults – or even at their dog.

      But chavs will be chavs.

      Where was this, by the way?

      2. The Pied Piper, a pub on a housing estate built in the 1950s in my home town of Stevenage, Hertfordshire.

    6. Just look at films and television programmes made before 20-or-so years ago. Swearing was very infrequent if heard at all. [Go back 50 years and it was non-existent.] So-called comedians, these days, cannot tell a joke that is not littered with banal obscenities.

      These days it seems no film or programme can be made that is not staccatoed throughout with every expletive imaginable.

      Just yesterday I watched a YouTube archive film of the hilarious 1960s comedian, Arthur Haynes. I was splitting my sides at a genuinely funny man and not an obscenity was uttered throughout.

      1. A lot of what is called comedy these days, Grizzly, is people shouting obscenities and toeing the establishment line. It's not funny, and audiences don't laugh, they just clap like seals and whoop like god knows what. "Fuck Fatcher" is the oh so original shout that will draw the most applause. Good grief"

        1. Today's 'comedy', Opop, is exactly the same as today's popular 'music'. A cacophonous, repetitious, and terminally annoying mindless noise.

          The wartime generation, who valiantly defended our nation, would be outraged to discover what a clueless coterie the zombie-like morons making up their fourth generation of descendants had turned out to be.

      2. I remember him, Grizzly….and watching with my dad, both laughing our socks off. He wouldn't have dreamt of letting me watch anything with swearing included.

    7. Just look at films and television programmes made before 20-or-so years ago. Swearing was very infrequent if heard at all. [Go back 50 years and it was non-existent.] So-called comedians, these days, cannot tell a joke that is not littered with banal obscenities.

      These days it seems no film or programme can be made that is not staccatoed throughout with every expletive imaginable.

      Just yesterday I watched a YouTube archive film of the hilarious 1960s comedian, Arthur Haynes. I was splitting my sides at a genuinely funny man and not an obscenity was uttered throughout.

    8. Huge difference between swearing "at" people and swearing in front of them, although neither is intrinsically good..

      Swearing at children – calling them obscene names – is appalling, no-one decent would disagree. Swearing in front of them is unavoidable if you are a person who habitually swears. Take, for example, the word "fucking", which is used by many as a form of punctuation these days (in the USA this could be motherfuckin' ) = unwelcome, but a whole generation and class uses both words thus, egged on by movies.

      When such people really need an intensifier, they leave the word out. It's fascinating.

  72. Wordle No. 1,424 3/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩
    ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 13 May 2025

    Savvy Birdy Three?

    1. Well done, good start here.

      Wordle 1,424 2/6

      🟩🟨⬜⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. Nice one – just a par today…..

      Wordle 1,424 4/6

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

        1. Did it earlier sos, time was 31.31 – a bit disappointing as levels 9 (8.53) and 10 (11.46) meant I spent over 21 mins on the last two levels, but I guess that’s to be expected, they are the hardest after all…..

          1. 24.01, 7th in my group.
            9 was my doom.
            I was too clever by half, should have gone the simpler route and I would have saved at least 5 and probably far more.

          2. Good time! Surprised you’re only 7th – 9 was a bugger! (but 10 even more so for me….)

    4. I am with the par people
      Wordle 1,424 4/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟩
      ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  73. From https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/jobs/secret-life-of-a-private-school-teacher/

    ‘I earn £70k as a private school teacher. My state school experience was horrific’
    Working at an elite boarding school can be a dream: the beautiful grounds, the excellent students, the traditions.
    But for the eight months that you’re in term time, it’s boom or bust. There is no life; no time for personal development. It’s a Monday-to-Saturday role, and occasionally Sundays too. You start lessons around 8.30am, and then the days can go on until 11pm if you’re on evening duties at the boarding houses.
    Yes, you get four months off across the year. But by the time summer holidays come around, you need it – you’re so mentally gaunt. Then, as the end of the holidays approaches, you think: “I don’t want to go back into captivity!”
    That said, we’re definitely better off than teachers in state schools. They can easily put in 60 to 70 hours a week, including marking and lesson prep. To think they start on around £30,000 – it’s horrendous. It’s no surprise many teachers end up thinking “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze”.
    Relative to that, it’s definitely more comfortable at a private school; it’s just intense in a different way. My salary is now around £70,000, and then on top of that there’s cheaper (or, for some, free) accommodation, plus meals. You can work your way up the pay scale fairly quickly with extracurricular duties, or heading up a department.
    The pension traditionally has also been very generous. With the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, the employer contribution is more than 20pc, which is unheard of. That’s gold plated, so it’s no surprise why private schools are withdrawing – they simply can’t afford it.
    I don’t have a lot of sympathy for (private school) peers who are complaining that their pensions will be reduced. I think: “Take a hike, I know you work hard, but you have no idea what’s going on in the working world if you think you’re hard done by.”
    I knew pretty early on that I wanted to be in education. I had an exceptional teacher who I’d see reading on breaks, and that had a big influence on me.
    I got a job at my current school straight out of university, so it’s the only place I’ve ever taught full time. But I did have a brief placement at a failing state school as part of my training. That was horrific. They talk about classroom control, but all you do there is riot control. I got spat on. A Year 7 once squared up to me and said “come and fight me”. I was tempted to throw in the towel right then.
    I don’t think I could teach in the state sector. I’m just not cut out for what I saw. Some teachers are – and they probably have far more impact than I do, teaching spoon-fed kids.
    That experience did give me confidence around controlling the classroom. While private schools tend to have less acute behavioural issues, students can misbehave in other ways. They’re very smart, and they can immediately sense weakness if you’re junior. It’s a form of bullying. Especially with young female teachers, an all-boys class can be cruel.
    You have to avoid getting pulled in. I once got in an open confrontation with a slightly difficult character, and it was a public showdown, which is never a good idea. He took me on, and I lost all authority. It can take a few years to really get that institutional knowledge and show them you know what you’re doing.
    Generally, the students at schools like mine have a lot of natural talent. When they’re good, they’re stratospheric. But truthfully, you’d expect to see more, given the access they have to this insane level of education. Basic smarts will normally only get you so far. We really have to push students to do the legwork.
    They often fall down when they go to Oxbridge interviews. State school students will have put 10 times more work in, and they’ll shine. Whereas some of our boys have this air of entitlement that can be hard to shake.
    As for the parents, overall they’re very respectful. I only had one parent who blamed me after her son did poorly on his GCSE mocks. I tried to explain his track record across the board, and she pushed back by referring to herself as a “customer”, and told me I should do more.
    That’s rare in my experience, although perhaps I’d be the same if I were paying what they are. The fees are north of £10,000, and that’s gone up since the VAT rule changes by the Government.
    Labour’s VAT raid
    The changes to the VAT rules on private schools have been challenging for many institutions, particularly because it was introduced mid-year. That was a disaster for financial planning, and many schools had to absorb the cost rather than pass it on to parents.
    It’s a difficult political debate; should you charge tax on private schools? Personally, I think the answer is probably yes. That said, I think the Government has gone about it the wrong way and with the wrong motivation.
    The Chancellor shackled herself by saying she would not increase working people’s taxes, so then they had to target employers’ National Insurance and VAT instead. That meant private schools got a double hit, which was pretty steep.
    I’m not worried about my school because it has a very good reputation. But there’s been a climate of fear around what the VAT changes will mean for private boarding schools which rely on domestic appetite. You’re hitting the middle to high-income earners. It might hurt some schools, which don’t have much of an international reputation.
    It’s also why there are reports of bursaries at lots of schools getting cut. My school currently has a pretty generous charitable arm, and I’m sure that will be affected in the future.
    I just hope this isn’t in vain and they actually invest in the state schools with the extra money they’re generating. I’d like to see them pay the teachers more and reduce class sizes. You’d see immediate benefits from that.
    Over the years, I have seriously considered changing careers. The hardest thing is that teaching is widely undervalued, especially given its potential to change lives.
    But schools like mine are a hard place to leave, and we do get a lot of lifers. It’s also not easy to pivot out of the sector. You’d need to retrain, because your main skill is … well, teaching. It’s quite scary. So many end up staying in education in one form or another – even if it’s just tutoring.
    Ultimately, though, this job is hugely fulfilling. It never repeats; it just rhymes. It’s a very sociable job and it keeps you in touch with the young generation.
    When you have a really good lesson, you’ll just walk away with this strange glow. That’s what you hold on to – and if you get that once a month, you’re doing well

    1. Some of us did things outside education when we escaped. I worked in racehorse training. The wheel has come full circle, though; I am now a dressage coach.

  74. 405543+ up ticks,

    May one ask are the indigenous peoples of this nation enjoying being asset stripped and daily suffering under a mafia type political overseeing cartel,because that is the very impression it is giving the world.

    Questions are being asked in the HOC,followed by questions are being asked in the HOC followed by questions are being asked in the HOC.

    And every day the invasion continues.

    https://x.com/FarmersToAction/status/1922230864303345758

  75. That's me gone. A very busy day. The MR, it was discovered, IS still alive! This arvo – preparing half the greenhouse for tomatoes – which meant digging out four barrows of soil and replacing it with new stuff and manure. The other half to be attacked to tomorrow. A dozen plants out in the garden – under cover. Then watering. It is all go.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain (dentist…hoorah).

    1. Me too. The joiner finally came to repair my studio, the chiropodist came to repair my feet and now I have been sorting out stuff for a car boot on Sunday for the Twinning Association, which will be meeting in my sitting room shortly.

  76. Interesting new trend.. seven boats arrived yesterday (as Sir Enoch Powell was delivering his speech.. LOL).. according to the processing centre every single migrant was dangerous aggressive violent type.

    1. "We are a mosaic of neighbours, friends and families from across the world."

      But none from the white bits…

      1. Today’s Lotus Eaters Rumble/podcast was good on this subject…

        1. Gin? You must be joking. A disgusting drink. Now, a nice glass of rosé – before moving on the the real suff….

  78. The view on immigration from a town transformed by it

    Hussein was born in Pakistan and moved here forty years ago. He now runs a thriving mobile phone shop at Tommyfield indoor market. He tells the BBC he is so frustrated with rising immigration he voted for Brexit in 2016 and has since written to Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner about his concerns.

    "We are already short of jobs," he tells us. "If we are getting professionals from outside, what are you going to do about the professionals in this country? It means they're going to hurt the working class."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg7vpj9p0zo

    Steady on, Hussein. Paul Mason and his white, left-wing rent-a-mob will be around to correct your views. Board up your windows!

    1. "Looks suspiciously like a hate mail to me, Super. Shall I smash up the paki's premises?"

      1. If he's got the Spectator in the house, he's doomed.
        Book by Douglas Murray and he's banged up for life

    2. "Mr Hussein" is the nom-de-plume of a faaaar-right, white, former private school teacher who loathes wogs.

      Just saying.

  79. 'Night All
    Funny Old World Irony at its worst
    Bloke released after 38 years in jail for a rape and murder he didn't commit having protested his innocence the whole time
    If he had said he was guilty he probably would have served half the time he did as to get out on licence you must confess your guilt and show remorse
    What a shiteshow no wonder I as a former death penalty supporter I now reject it my trust in the state and judiciary is now zero

    1. He prolly did something else that justified him losing most of his life. They all do.

      (Sarc)

      1. He was several sandwiches short of a picnic, was not properly represented, confessed, retracted and so forth. Poor guy. What a disgusting legal system we have in this country now.

        1. I like to think, opo, that today there would be some sort of online support/petition…but it's only a thought, rapidly losing it with judiciary, medics, education, press…and the rest.

          1. KJ, I think that Justice is in retreat here now. I think that this guy would be treated just as badly as he was, although maybe the DNA would have helped. If his politics, though, were outta line…God knows.

          2. Going to need to build a lot of new jails…or something……God knows how he'll settle, a different world now, been institutionalised.

  80. Isn't it long past time to withdraw the RNLI from the Channel and commission Privateers to rescue those who set out in rubber boats and return them to France?

    3. Since RNLI are volunteers, don't their employers get fed up with them being called out so often?

  83. Anyone with knowledge about self-administering insulin, I have a question.
    When I started a couple weeks ago, it was all fine – I'd inject & shortly after get a strong desire for sugar, suggesting it was working, and a low blood sugar the next morning.
    Now, following the same procedure, I don't get a desire for sweetness, and don't get a low blood sugar the next morning. But, I notice that, on withdrawing the needle, there's a drop of insulin on the tiå, suggesting I'm not getting the full dose. I test the system before spiking myself, and there's a good spray ont a tissue before resetting the unit measure and spiking my midriff. Thoughts? Am I doing it wrong? Following the instructions, but am new to this shit.
    Doctor has gone AWOL, so can't ask her, also can't seem to contact anyone else. ARGH!

    1. Hello, Paul…my husband was a Type2 for a couple of decades until he started carnivore diet…….but back to diabetic days, our surgery had a designated nurse 'Diabetic Nurse' especially for diabetes patients, perhaps your surgery has similar. We can also send messages via their website, check if yours does too? Hope you get sorted asap, Kate x

      1. There used to be a Diabetes Doctor, called Gro, but I guess she retired. No replacement. Searched using Chat GPT, and it seems the only diabetes specialists are 50 miles away and don't do communication.
        I need to get this sorted for 02 June., so changing to carnivore won't help short-term.
        Tonights shot seems to have worked, in that I feel the injection site burning a little, and strong desire to eat honey from the jar with a spoon… but Jayzuz, what amateur bullshit it all is.

        1. Do you have a pharmacy nearby, often one with 24/7 advice, as part of a rota…failing that, search online, you won't be the first, or the last. Good luck x lay off the honey, especially off the shelf, bees often fed on sugar syrup or similar. When you get sorted, find a routine suits you and stick to it, important to regulate your food/drinks/snacks…..(especially if eating out).

          1. All I need is blood sugar reliably under 7 mmol/l by 02 June, for the test. Next day, who cares? But even the equipment seema against me… 🙁

  84. Some photos of the steps I'm putting in. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1aaa063c1d3fa698d21fef7a8409203364f0ddc26a0f29a440c40e8c0243a8ef.jpg The kerbstones are dug in by about 4 or 5 inches
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/115b950dbcb8caea1bb7ddf93b0ceaa622a5fb359084611a766de29fbaaec6e2.jpg and the uphill sides will be backfilled when I get something to backfill with https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f2da49df812801729cbaa206e889cdd91b4a4866318d9b22a3f40ecc44d2ad74.jpg And as others are showing off their garden plants, here's some of mine:-
    The horse chestnuts are looking splendid this year
    This photo will need enlarging https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4e7172b9a74c7ad741b1c393bed3b8c0ec758a010c3dc55c989c7371ef40e334.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d8e3a52877a4ba4ebe771dfb562b2f43610e143887038e3c263a2c8d3375bc83.jpg And a lot of hawthorn too https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e26c4234837cf9561f9596d22b4baf0b26717d41332730b78b0453f73d8e7586.jpg And a view of the lilac https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/314dddb89f0039f70a370510342443281ea438e4f177ad76f7c258d9939232fa.jpg And some more hawthorne https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0134f4895e47e0a6af078a26a97f6be8846084dcd73b3700c8d80392d758c450.jpg

      1. By & large used ones scrounged off the lads replacing them.
        Also bought half a dozen when I first did the steps.

    4. That first one looks like the Aztec Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan (ok so google it…) – the Aztec capital – but then again I have a fairly lively imagination…

    2. I did that years ago Obs, I built a very nice stone fireplace in our first home in Hertfordshire, made from worn sandstone steps from a house in Hampstead. It had a solid teak shelf made from an old door.
      Reformed new replacement steps in concrete over entrance to the basement flat.

      1. Cool!
        I just love the ease and flow of the blows to the chisel, a very few strokes and the block falls into the right-sized pieces. Beautiful to see skill demonstrated like that!

  87. Eye appointment went well today, very friendly people at Boots WGC. After a few problems it seems to be settling down at no extra expense.
    Next job is my knee op. I sat opposite an elderly lady at the opticians today she had a long scar on each knee. Obviously had the same problem. Mine won't be on display very often.
    Also went into Vodafone while i was out and about and had my phone updated to 4G for a small fee.
    I'll pop orff soon. It's been a tiring day. Just getting older and out and about brings it on.
    Goodnight Nottlers 😴

  88. Moh has just come home from doing a worthwile task at the golf club.

    A team of about 30 bods / players have volunteered to patch the mess caused by divots thrown up by golf iron strikes , grass and soil .. Moh and a team of many were accompanied by a tractor loaded with sand and seed and loads of buckets and the guys threw the sand and seed down on the destroyed areas and then stamped the repair down with their feet .

    Moh thought it was a good deed , many people who play replace their divots , but guests and societies who visit don't bother .

    When they had finished doing half the course , they were rewarded with a curry supper and a beer .. Now, Moh thought that was a nice way to spend a birthday evening , the activity has exhausted him , and he is playing in a match tomorrow.

  89. Children struggle to hold pencils as motor skills decline
    Surveys of primary school teachers reveal fears over pupils’ development and the effects of neglecting arts in the curriculum

    Fewer children are able to use scissors or grip pencils properly, according to a survey of teachers, amid fears young pupils are increasingly struggling to master fine motor skills.

    The poll found that 77 per cent of respondents had seen a deterioration in the last five years.

    Some feared this meant pupils would not be able to access creative parts of the curriculum. The survey, commissioned by an art class provider Art-K, was representative of teachers across the country.

    Parenting newsletter Click here to join our community receiving weekly advice and personal stories. Sign up with one click
    More than three quarters — 76 per cent — agreed that art education is not prioritised in schools, with 18 per cent reporting that they spend no time at all teaching art in an average week. Only 12 per cent of teachers managed to provide more than 60 minutes of art education weekly and only 26 per cent of primary school teachers believed students are reaching their artistic potential within the present curriculum.

    Seventy-one per cent of the 560 teachers in the YouGov survey believed there was a direct relationship between art activities, handwriting development and mathematical problem-solving abilities, and 81 per cent said better art education would lead to enhanced wellbeing among pupils.

    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/children-struggle-to-hold-pencils-motor-skills-decline-primary-school-kpgw7wqpl

    1. This is ridiculous. I have never met a non=curious child. What are these monstrous creatures doing to them?

      1. Too much screen time, which does not require much in the way of motor skills.

    3. The latest Disaffected Podcast (“White Guilt”) notes the astounding levels of “autism” amongst the children of the Somali immigrant community in America.

      My friend in Cardiff says the Somalis there are lazy barstewards.

      how they must laugh at us.

  90. On my way home this evening I saw a girl walking up Wood Lane past TV Centre wearing a very short jersey skirt which had ridden up at the back and was exposing bare buttocks. No problem with her not wearing knickers. Until the 19th century no one did but nor did they expose themselves. Skirts were long and lined with petticoats. Is it “victim blaming” to say this girl is asking for trouble?

      1. …of a short term nature. And the "no knickers" might have meant she was wearing a thong.

    2. I think I'd need photographic evidence before I could pass judgement……. (cue Harold Steptoe – you dirty 'ol man…)

    3. School girls bare their very fat thighs by rolling up their school unform skirts , and what on earth do their parents say about that?

    1. That's excellent news, Conners. Good Night to you – and Kadi and Winston.

  95. Well, chums, bedtime calls. So I will wish you all a Good Night. Sleep well, and I hope to see you all early in the morning.

  96. Good morning all ,

    Another fine day , still no rain!

    Todays letters are rather flat.

    Re care workers , ( migrants)

    I guess now , most migrants who arrived here 60 years ago + are getting old , so they will require help as they become frailer .. and of course there will still be language difficulties .

    Getting older is a self perpetuating lark , isn't it

  97. 'Urry up, Geoff! Maggie and I are waiting with baited breath. – PS to all literate NoTTLers – Is it "baited" or "bated"?

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