Tuesday 14 February: Does Nato have a viable strategy for preventing stalemate in Ukraine?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
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.

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

521 thoughts on “Tuesday 14 February: Does Nato have a viable strategy for preventing stalemate in Ukraine?”

    4. Well done Boss

      You were up early enough to beat The Ctrl V posters, who are poised with their comments ready for us

      I bet you cannot beat them again!!!!

  2. Thank you Geoff, now please go back to sleep.
    Honey and lemon having been consumed, I shall now try to follow my own advice.

  3. Frightening to witness a complete lack of coverage of the train derailment in Ohio on Friday yet the concentration of a boughten media on imaginary aliens flying helium balloons over Alaska and Lake Huron.

    We are witnessing one of the worst environmental, ecological and humanitarian disasters ever inflicted on the US by its own government with the complicity of the mainstream media over there and over here.

    Then I read ‘over here’, so to speak, that the Indian dwarf billionaire and comedian Sunak is still promoting a conflict in Ukraine against Russia this putting OUR COUNTRY at grave risk of annihilation.

    How in Devil’s name have we arrived at this situation. What on God’s Earth have we little people done to deserve this. The answer is of course that we have done NOTHING. We need to depose Sunak a sort of Little Indian Hitler asap.

  4. Queen Consort Camilla has tested positive for Covid. The Royals however continue to insist they are all fully vaccinated and boosted and continue to urge the rest of us plebs to take the multiple jabs.

    I truly doubt that any of the Royals have actually submitted to the clot-shots. Had they taken the jabs, several of them, probably the younger more vulnerable ones, will by now have suffered serious harm or else dropped dead.

    I suppose I am a complete idiot to enquire as to the nature of the Covid test the Queen Consort has undertaken. I respectfully suggest that all of the tests are bogus and if she had actual symptoms such as a sniffle then it is likely the common cold or at worst a dose of the flu.

    When are the Covid pushers ever to give up. They lost the game. Nobody with a couple of brain cells still believes in their deception. Jesus Wept. Give it a rest.

    1. Not everybody dies after the clot shot, Corrim – just too many for it to be coincidence.

      1. Everyone I know has had the clot shot, we know of only one person who has died* and that was from galloping lung cancer. He was perfectly ok until the shot. Several months later he was dead, six weeks after diagnosis. He was 82. And that is how they get away with it. Old age.

        *However we do know plenty of people who have become ill in some way following the shot, nearly everyone in fact, either genetic, hereditary illness or a resurgence of illness to a worse degree they already had had in the past. But because everyone has a different illness, they don’t put two and two together.

    2. Morning all. Funny you should mention the tests etc. etc and that nobody. Still believes in their deception. I’m sorry to say you are wrong there. Happened to bump into our next door neighbour yesterday and, talking about our son who had double pneumonia November 2020/2021, neighbour insisted it was covid! Wouldn’t hear of anything else.

  5. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Lucky Golfer

    A golfer playing in Ireland hooked his drive into the woods. Looking for his ball, he found a little Leprechaun flat on his back, a big bump on his head and the golfer’s ball beside him. Horrified, the golfer got his water bottle from the cart and poured it over the little guy, reviving him.

    ‘Arrgh! What happened?’ the Leprechaun asked.

    ‘I’m afraid I hit you with my golf ball,’ the golfer says.

    ‘Oh, I see. Well, ye got me fair and square. Ye get three wishes, so whaddya want?’

    ‘Thank God, you’re all right!’ the golfer answers in relief. ‘I don’t want anything, I’m just glad you’re OK, and I apologise.’

    And the golfer walks off. ‘What a nice guy,’ the Leprechaun says to himself. ‘I have to do something for him. I’ll give him the three things I would want… a great golf game, all the money he ever needs, and a fantastic sex life.’

    A year goes by and the golfer is back. On the same hole, he again hits a bad drive into the woods and the Leprechaun is there waiting for him. ‘Twas me that made ye hit the ball here,’ the little guy says. ‘I just want to ask ye, how’s yer golf game?’

    ‘My game is fantastic!’ the golfer answers. I’m an internationally famous golfer now.’ He adds, ‘By the way, it’s good to see you’re all right.’

    ‘Oh, I’m fine now, thank ye. I did that fer yer golf game, you know. And tell me, how’s yer money situation?’

    ‘Why, it’s just wonderful!’ the golfer states. ‘When I need cash, I just reach in my pocket and pull out $100.00 bills. I didn’t even know they were there!’

    ‘I did that fer ye also.’ And tell me, how’s yer sex life?’

    The golfer blushes, turns his head away in embarrassment, and says shyly, ‘It’s OK.’

    C’mon, c’mon now,’ urged the Leprechaun, ‘I’m wanting to know if I did a good job. How many times a week?’

    Blushing even more, the golfer looks around then whispers, ‘Once, sometimes twice a week.’

    ‘What??’ responds the Leprechaun in shock. ‘That’s all? Only once or twice a week?’

    ‘Well,’ says the golfer, ‘I figure that’s not bad for a Catholic priest in a small parish.’

  10. Jens Stoltenberg is quitting as NATO General Secretary on 1st October.
    One possible replacement is Ursula Fond of Lying, from the EU. Another is Raja Kallas, PM of Estonia (apparently, it’s the girls turn)
    The thing about UvdL is she comes from a lrge country, and the US only like GS from small countries, so I hope she has ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER!

  11. ‘Russia isn’t ‘adopting’ Ukraine’s children – they are being kidnapped’. 14 February 2023.

    The Kremlin, meanwhile, has its own designs on Ukrainian children’s future. Since the war started, an estimated 14,000 Ukrainian children – including non-orphans – have been forcibly removed to Russia, according to Ukrainian officials. Some were removed during “humanitarian evacuations” of cities that came under Kremlin control, such as Mariupol. Others were taken by Russian troops if found wandering around unaccompanied, according to Horbachova.

    Bit of propaganda here. I particularly liked the way this paragraph was phrased; as if the children were carried kicking and screaming across the border. Of course, if the Russians hadn’t evacuated them, and they had then been killed in the fighting they would have been accused of indifference, if not worse, to their fate!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/14/nina-horbachova-russia-isnt-adopting-ukraines-children-kidnapped/

  12. ‘Russia isn’t ‘adopting’ Ukraine’s children – they are being kidnapped’. 14 February 2023.

    The Kremlin, meanwhile, has its own designs on Ukrainian children’s future. Since the war started, an estimated 14,000 Ukrainian children – including non-orphans – have been forcibly removed to Russia, according to Ukrainian officials. Some were removed during “humanitarian evacuations” of cities that came under Kremlin control, such as Mariupol. Others were taken by Russian troops if found wandering around unaccompanied, according to Horbachova.

    Bit of propaganda here. I particularly liked the way this paragraph was phrased; as if the children were carried kicking and screaming across the border. Of course, if the Russians hadn’t evacuated them, and they had then been killed in the fighting they would have been accused of indifference, if not worse, to their fate!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/14/nina-horbachova-russia-isnt-adopting-ukraines-children-kidnapped/

  16. Good morning all. A light frost today with -1°C outside, a bit of a change from the past couple of days but at least it’s still dry.

  17. Brexit is finally dead – and the Tory party will soon suffer the same fate. 14 February 2023.

    We could dwell at length on who exactly killed Brexit. But in truth, as on Agatha Christie’s Orient Express, everybody wielded the knife. It was Theresa May who squandered her parliamentary majority and thus gravely weakened Britain’s negotiating position against Brussels. It was the political class who could never see the project as more than a damage limitation exercise. And it was the Brexiteers who failed to muster a compellingly modern vision – preferring to glory in buccaneering fantasies of free trade than focus on regulatory divergence to jump-start science and tech.

    It was killed by the deliberate indifference of the Political Elites! They made sure that it never worked! They hated the very thought that the peasants had destroyed their EU dream!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/13/brexit-finally-dead-tory-party-will-soon-suffer-fate/

    1. Free trade isn’t a fantasy. It’s unMarxist, so not popular with the civil service and bbc.

  18. Bullshite from Sadiq Kahnt’s office.
    Note the reference to Imperial College London:-

    Science behind Ulez
    SIR – Questions have been raised by some outer-London boroughs about the scientific evidence showing the number of premature deaths in the capital due to toxic air pollution, and the justification for expanding the ultra-low emission zone (“Khan accused of using ‘nonsense data’ to make his case for Ulez”, report, February 13).

    To be clear, these figures are from world-leading experts at Imperial College London, and to dismiss them by calling them nonsense is pure science denial. Toxic air in London is leading to around 4,000 Londoners dying prematurely every year. It’s shocking to see some suggest that because these deaths may be among older people who are more vulnerable to the impacts of air pollution, we don’t need to act. For the Mayor of London, the impacts on vulnerable communities make the need to act even more urgent.

    Some of these councils are not only denying the science, but are contradicting their own Government, as it’s data from world-leading experts from Imperial that are used as the basis for national policies to reduce air pollution in other British cities, such as Birmingham and Bristol.

    New figures from last week show that the Ulez has had a transformational impact so far, with dangerous emissions dropping by 26 per cent within the existing Ulez area compared to what pollution levels would have been. Everyone has a right to breathe clean air and it would be a dereliction of duty for these Conservative councils to try to deprive their residents of the benefits of being able to breathe cleaner air.

    For the Mayor, this is a moral issue. Those in positions of power who are trying to obstruct action to reduce our toxic air are no different from those in the past who argued against legislation to save children from the dangers of tobacco smoke and to the minority today still denying the science around climate change. They will go down as being on the wrong side of history.

    Shirley Rodrigues
    London Deputy Mayor for Transport and Energy
    London E16

      1. She gets hammered BTL. Some examples:-

        Anastasias Revenge
        6 HRS AGO
        When I read who had produced the “science” behind ULEZ any credibility went right out the window.
        Remember their Covid “modelling”?

        Jane Lane
        5 HRS AGO
        I know it is probably unfair of me, but as soon as I read the words ‘Imperial College modellers’ I disbelieve what follows. Of course that fool Ferguson is still carrying on there, and will be listened to with reverence when the next virus arrives by the even greater fools in government.

        Anastasias Revenge
        5 HRS AGO
        Not unfair… their entire academic credibility is on a par with my tortoise… and she is brumating at the moment.
        They are a nonesense institution with zero academic and scientific rigour. If they had any Ferguson would have been shown the door long before Covid.

        Paul Isherwood
        5 MIN AGO
        ICL……….. Communists…or useful idiots……or both? EDITED

        Ian Lander
        6 HRS AGO
        Regarding ULEZ: Would Shirley Rodrigues, London Deputy Mayor for Transport and Energy, please provide referenced sources for her assertions, produced by qualified scientists who are specialists in the relevant fields.
        The only conclusion from the letter is that like Thundberg, XR, JSO and many other minority pressure groups, all this propaganda is regurgitating tired statistics produced by non specialists.
        Make a claim and reference the source otherwise don’t spout rubbish without justification..

        Jane Lane
        5 HRS AGO
        You’re asking for a lot there! Don’t you know the facts are all over FaceTwit, so cannot be denied?

    3. “…the minority today still denying the science around climate change.”

      And where would this swivel-eyed, foam-flecked, ultra-Right minority be found lurking, I wonder?

      1. Grizz ! I thought you were joking ! How kind and generous you are. Your parcel arrived on the same wagon as my order. So now i have two Pruneaux d’agen à l’Armagnac.

        I’m absolutely chuffed. Cheers mate !

  19. Brexit is finally dead – and the Tory party will soon suffer the same fate

    The ruling class are mistaken to think that we can simply return to the failed status quo

    SHERELLE JACOBS 13 February 2023 • 9:00pm

    The cliché goes that “time is running out” to make something of Brexit. But on Thursday Feb 9, the last speck of sand in the hourglass finally fell. It really is all over. And how fitting that Brexit was finally condemned to death in the gilded splendour of Ditchley Park – a discreet yet decadent retreat for this country’s most powerful since the reign of Elizabeth I.

    Of course, the status-quo order is trying to be subtle, even polite, about its magnificent triumph over Leaver populism. Last week’s gathering – which saw executives of major banks commune with senior political figures on both sides of the Brexit debate, including Michael Gove and David Lammy – wasn’t particularly secret, despite some attempts to hype it up as so. It also took place under a fairly bland working title: “How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?”

    But let’s not be naive. The exchange dwelled heavily on the fact that “Brexit is not delivering”, and there was broad support for a closer relationship with the EU. In other words, both sides agreed that the dream of meaningful divergence had fallen into a deep coma. A proverbial contract to switch off the project’s life-support machine was subsequently signed. Not that Brexit’s demise was all part of some elaborate plot; the project has been mortally wounded for some time, and there simply wasn’t the political will to save it.

    We could dwell at length on who exactly killed Brexit. But in truth, as on Agatha Christie’s Orient Express, everybody wielded the knife. It was Theresa May who squandered her parliamentary majority and thus gravely weakened Britain’s negotiating position against Brussels. It was the political class who could never see the project as more than a damage limitation exercise. And it was the Brexiteers who failed to muster a compellingly modern vision – preferring to glory in buccaneering fantasies of free trade than focus on regulatory divergence to jump-start science and tech.

    Regardless, the fact remains that Brexit is dead. The only thing left to do is the political equivalent of disposing of the body. This may start with furtive steps nobody can contest: reviving the Erasmus exchange program and co-operating with Brussels in new areas like energy. Meanwhile, Parliament will likely drop works in progress, such as the Bill to take thousands of Brussels laws off the statute books by 2023.

    Then, under pressure from big business, the Government might well seek to relieve labour market shortages by, for example, expanding the agricultural workers scheme. It may even introduce primary legislation to automatically update UK standards in line with EU changes.

    Put bluntly, even before there is another referendum, we will most probably reach a point which feels a lot like being back in the Single Market. And ultimately, as support for Brexit plummets, we can expect a fresh vote within five to seven years.

    But here’s the hitch. There is no way that the ruling class can get away with terminating Brexit without seismic consequences. For one thing, it is highly unlikely that the Tories would be able to survive.

    In order for the country to heal, the Conservative Party would have to be permanently destroyed through the ballot box. Fair or not, this is merely the way of history and the logic of populism. In a cleansing, cathartic act, the masses must find a way to acknowledge the revolution’s betrayals and perversions, while keeping the purity of the people’s will intact.

    The second explosive effect of Brexit’s death is that it has put the ruling class back on a collision course with the masses. People voted to Leave for two reasons. The first was to exercise control over who comes into the country. The second was out of frustration that the economic status quo is failing, to the point where millions were willing to take a massive gamble on Schumpeterian disruption.

    Therein lies the nub of the problem with returning to business as usual. Such a bid would run roughshod over popular appetite for greater sovereignty and radical change. And it wouldn’t even solve the country’s economic problems. Remainers may think that reversing Brexit will stir the economy out of the doldrums. It won’t. Even before we left the EU, signs of the economic crisis were all around, from stagnant wages and corporate addiction to cheap labour and the worst productivity slump since the 19th century.

    The reality, so often missed, is that our current economic woes are not rooted in issues of trade or “business uncertainty”, but rather a profound global slowdown in technological innovation.

    In response to this charge, the Whitehall orthodoxy can only babble about a “productivity puzzle” and “poor British management practices” as it clings to a defunct neoclassical economic approach that puts price competition, rather than innovation competition, at its heart. That is how deep the Brexit ditch has become – not only do our elites have no compelling plan for fixing things, they don’t even intellectually understand the core issues.

    The question now is what those who believe in growth should do. Brexiteers might be tempted to wallow in conspiratorial rage at the “deep state” who were “never going to let us leave”. But there is no time to mourn. The predicament of this country is too grave. Trussites have decided to focus on pressuring Sunak on tax cuts. But more urgent is a realistic growth plan that can be effective even in spite of high taxes and irksome EU regulation. This will be difficult, yet not impossible. After all, although serious taxes were levied during the Industrial Revolution, this actually incentivised entrepreneurs to cut costs by innovating with new steam-powered machinery.

    A good start would be a growth coalition across all (surviving) major parties that can lobby to overhaul net zero and the planning system, and ensure that a DARPA-style innovation agency in the pipeline gets the cash and autonomy it needs to thrive. If this doesn’t happen, one dreads to think what comes next. We will no doubt sink deeper into decline. And we may also face a second populist wave far more extreme than the first.

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

    Ian Bland
    9 HRS AGO
    And we should thoroughly ponder the deep state. Brexit has truly pulled back the curtain and revealed it. It has shown that our own ruling class are as big a problem as the EU were, that the bad things they did were their own will and could not be blamed on the EU forcing their hand, that their real vision for Britain is its managed decline and extinction, that they have no sense of common identity or sympathy with us at all. That, if nothing else, is a positive result from Brexit. It showed who the enemy are without any shadow of doubt.

    And lots of Remainers running around in glee BTL yelling “Told ya so!”

    1. I think the plan is to cancel Brexit without anyone noticing and to be fair, did anyone feel like we had actually left to begin with.

    2. New Brexit deal nears as Northern Ireland deadlock comes to an end

      Announcement expected in the next fortnight as hardline resistance to rulings by European judges in the province is watered down

      By Ben Riley-Smith, POLITICAL EDITOR ; Joe Barnes, BRUSSELS CORRESPONDENT and Nick Gutteridge, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
      13 February 2023 • 9:44pm

      A new Brexit deal is expected to be announced in the next fortnight after the UK watered down its hardline resistance to European judges ruling on issues in Northern Ireland.

      Sources close to the talks have indicated to The Telegraph that an agreement to end the row over the Northern Ireland Protocol is set to be revealed within two weeks.

      Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, is due to speak to some European leaders later this week, with next week initially pencilled in by UK negotiators as the date for announcement.

      The broad shape of the deal has now become clear, according to two sources from the European Union and two in the UK, with final sign-off still to come from Number 10.

      Under the plan, goods travelling from the mainland UK destined only for Northern Ireland will not face physical customs checks thanks to a new system of “red” and “green” lanes.

      Role of European Court of Justice
      One of the most sensitive areas of agreement, about the exact role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Northern Ireland, is likely to be presented differently by the EU and UK.

      Sources in Brussels believe the agreement will show that the ECJ will be the ultimate arbiter of disputes about EU law that emerge from Northern Ireland.

      UK sources close to the deal are insisting that the vast majority of legal clashes about trade in Northern Ireland will not involve the ECJ, playing up the role of the province’s own judges.

      But the UK Government is no longer insisting that the ECJ must not be the ultimate arbiter on EU law issues in Northern Ireland. That had been the UK position under Liz Truss and for much of Boris Johnson’s premiership.

      New language stressing that the ECJ will only be used as a court of last resort is expected in a joint EU-UK statement when the deal is announced, according to multiple UK and EU sources.

      There is also a belief among UK government figures familiar with negotiations that the deal would mean Downing Street effectively drops the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which is still going through Parliament.

      The legislation in its early form passed the House of Commons but has been put on pause ahead of an expected clash in the House of Lords, where the Tories do not have a majority.

      Successive Tory governments have said that a negotiated settlement was preferable to the Bill, which would give the UK the powers to change trading rules without EU agreement.

      The legislation is likely to be indefinitely paused after the deal is negotiated, even if Downing Street insists it could theoretically one day be brought back, according to one UK source.

      The role of the ECJ and the passing of the Protocol Bill have been championed by Conservative Eurosceptics and are being closely watched.

      Downing Street insiders stressed that elements of the final package are still moving, but did not deny that the announcement of the deal was expected soon.

      A government spokesman said: “Intensive talks between UK and EU technical teams are ongoing, with more talks due on potential solutions across all areas.”

      Rishi Sunak heavily involved in Brexit deal
      UK figures involved in the talks have noted how involved Mr Sunak and Downing Street have been heavily involved in the process, rather than leaving it to the departments theoretically in charge.

      It echoes the Prime Minister’s approach to other issues deemed most pressing, including how to bring down the number of small boats carrying migrants across the English Channel.

      Sir Tim Barrow, who was made the national security adviser in September, has become the point person for negotiations, according to sources, spending much time in Brussels.

      Sir Tim has a permanent office in the UK mission in Brussels and is often accompanied on trips with Treasury officials, according to Brussels sources.

      The Northern Ireland Protocol was struck between the UK and the EU to govern the terms of trade in the province after Brexit.

      To keep the land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland open, the deal effectively created a customs border for goods travelling from the mainland UK into the province.

      One of the major political challenges for Downing Street will be squaring Eurosceptics on the Tory back benches and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.

      The European Research Group of Tory MPs is “in lockstep” with the Unionists in Northern Ireland over the need to eliminate all border checks and remove EU law from the province.

      Both groups have warned No 10 they are alive to any attempts to pursue a divide and conquer strategy by claiming the other is willing to accept a softer stance.

      An ERG source said cross-party contacts had reassured the Unionists of their support and Tory backbenchers that the DUP will not “go wobbly” when presented with a deal.

      “The Government was constantly trying to play us off against each other last time, so we know how all that works,” said the source.

      Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, has insisted that his party “is not prepared to tolerate a situation where we are treated like an EU colony”.

      He has warned that Unionists can only accept an agreement that ends the “democratic deficit” and gives Belfast a say over the rules that govern it.

      “We have tried to explain this to ministers again and again and they keep faffing around about some kind of arbitration system,” said one Tory MP.

      Brexiteers could reopen old wounds
      Earlier this month senior Brexiteers, led by veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash, relaunched a 1990s campaign group to hold the Prime Minister to account on Brexit.

      Members of the European Foundation, founded to support the Maastricht rebellion, vowed to push for the “full restoration of Northern Ireland as part of a sovereign UK”.

      There are thought to be around 30 regular members of the ERG, around 10 short of the number that would be needed to overturn the Government’s majority.

      But if they fiercely opposed a deal, it would reopen old wounds within the party and threaten to mire Mr Sunak’s premiership in a fresh round of Brexit battles in the Commons.

      Micheal Martin, the Irish deputy prime minister, insisted on Monday that EU negotiators “fully understand” the strength of Unionist concerns about any deal.

      He also warned that Brussels would be unlikely to agree to reopen any agreement should it prove unsatisfactory “given the energy and effort” that has gone into the talks.

  21. Does Nato have a viable strategy for preventing stalemate in Ukraine?

    Stalemate is the plan, they have something to blame while they complete the great reset

  22. After the cowardly attack on migrants in Knowsley, a warning to ministers: your words can start fires. 14 February 2023.

    Inflammatory rhetoric – and action – against asylum seekers in Britain is reaching a tipping point. After last year’s petrol bomb attack in Dover, we now have scenes of violent disorder outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley.

    How did we get here? Terms such as “invasion” have insinuated themselves into the public discourse, and these malign references have only ramped up in recent weeks. Organisations on the far right, often engaged in in-fighting, have united over the issue of asylum seekers. Their messaging is bold and simple, drawing on familiar tropes in their worldview: asylum seekers are stealing accommodation from homeless British veterans, they say, and pose a threat to white British girls.

    A “threat to white British girls” Whatever could have put that into their minds?

    N.B. The term “far right” occurs nine times in the full text.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/13/attack-migrants-knowsley-ministers-violence-asylum-seekers

  23. The outrageous charade behind Sadiq Khan’s Ulez plan

    Charging farmers’ fields and country lanes where people depend on cars for transport like inner London is madness

    GARETH BACON 13 February 2023 • 2:23pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/02/13/TELEMMGLPICT000323828669_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680

    Outer Londoners aren’t buying Sadiq Khan’s lazy and misleading attempt to justify the expansion of the ultra low emission zone (Ulez) in London. No one living in one of the capital’s outer suburbs or rural villages seriously thinks air pollution in their green patch is as bad as it is in central London, or that it needs the same solutions. The Mayor’s attempts to persuade them otherwise are embarrassing him.

    Mayor Khan fails to understand that the four boroughs leading the charge against Ulez expansion — Bromley, Bexley, Harrow and Hillingdon — are nothing like Zone 1. Take my constituency of Orpington within the London Borough of Bromley. It is a collection of Kentish towns and villages with farmers’ fields and country lanes. It’s where people rely on their cars and don’t have access to London’s Tube network. Another world to Labour’s Islington or Camden.

    Yet the Mayor is attempting to shame these boroughs into believing they face worse problems with air pollution than the capital’s centre. He points to figures of premature deaths allegedly linked to air pollution in an Imperial College London report. But he ignores the fact that Bromley tops the table because it has an older population, not because air pollution in the leafy borough is worse.

    In peddling this nonsense, the Mayor is also turning a blind eye to the findings within his own impact assessment ahead of Ulez expansion. It found that the road tax would have little or negligible impact on air quality, but drag in hundreds of thousands of new payers. Mayor Khan is eager to link his road tax to air pollution because he doesn’t want to admit the real reason for Ulez expansion: it’s a cash grab.

    Sadiq Khan’s mayoral administration is broke. He lost Transport for London at least £640 million through an unaffordable fares freeze, failed to deliver Crossrail on time, costing billions of pounds in bailouts, and nearly doubled the size of bureaucracy at City Hall. Expanding a £12.50 daily charge on boroughs with poor access to public transport, where people rely on their cars, will rake in £300 million in its first year. The coffers also stand to gain from fining unaware Londoners £180 every time they fail to pay — potentially raising millions more.

    A one-size fits all solution like Ulez expansion is a sledgehammer that will hurt working people and businesses when few can afford it. Over 80 per cent of the households within my constituency have cars. Across outer London, more than half of households earning as little as £10,000 own a car. Without access to the Tube, fewer buses, and poor orbital public transport routes, the majority of people rely on their cars to get to work and the shops, or to visit family and friends.

    Faced with such a huge driving bill when other bills are going up, it’s no surprise that Khan’s air quality excuses aren’t convincing my constituents. Sat in a rural village like Pratt’s Bottom or Biggin Hill, looking out on green fields, the idea that you should pay a road charge designed for central London is ludicrous.

    Make no mistake — the local authorities fighting against Ulez expansion are facing an uphill struggle. They don’t have the Mayor’s resources or press team. But they do have the support of many residents and should keep going regarding Labour’s mudslinging. People want cleaner air — but they’re not fools. Outer Londoners can see highway robbery for what it is, no matter how the Mayor attempts to spin it.

    Gareth Bacon is Conservative MP for Orpington and was a member of the Greater London Assembly until 2021

    2. I wish Khan would concentrate on the proper air quality in London .. Make it spliff free, the stench of cannabis or whatever people are smoking is very noticeable .

      In fact , any high street , car park or even an area where people walk dogs or visit a cashpoint .. or even walk past you, there seems to be a vape smell. hash smell.

      Don’t people wear nice perfumes/ aftershave any more ?

    3. Devolution…dontcha just love it? Probably one of the daftest moves from the Bliar era. All that duplication, all that additional cost, all that bureaucracy. Utter madness, and to have a creep like Khant running our capital city is even more ridiculous.

      1. If Khan is such a smart ass, does he as a Pakistani find it easier to boss white Brits around than he could as if he were governing a city in chaotic Pakistan .

        1. Mayor Khan is no more Pakistani than Rishi Sunak, although of course one won’t eat pork and the other won’t eat beef. But they both they enjoy their greens.

    4. I se MRD,

      aka Shirley Rodrigues, London Deputy Mayor for Transport and Energy, London E16

      has a letter printed in the DT today

      1. “ – Questions have been raised by some outer-london boroughs about the scientific evidence showing the number of premature deaths in the capital due to toxic air pollution, and the justification for expanding the ultra-low emission zone (“Khan accused of using ‘nonsense data’ to make his case for Ulez”, report, February 13).

        To be clear, these figures are from world-leading experts at Imperial College London, and to dismiss them by calling them nonsense is pure science denial. Toxic air in London is leading to around 4,000 Londoners dying prematurely every year. It’s shocking to see some suggest that because these deaths may be among older people who are more vulnerable to the impacts of air pollution, we don’t need to act. For the Mayor of London, the impacts on vulnerable communities make the need to act even more urgent.

        Some of these councils are not only denying the science, but are contradicting their own Government, as it’s data from world-leading experts from Imperial that are used as the basis for national policies to reduce air pollution in other British cities, such as Birmingham and Bristol.

        New figures from last week show that the Ulez has had a transformational impact so far, with dangerous emissions dropping by 26 per cent within the existing Ulez area compared to what
        pollution levels would have been. Everyone has a right to breathe clean air and it would be a dereliction of duty for these Conservative councils to try to deprive their residents of the benefits of being able to breathe cleaner air.”

        For the Mayor, this is a moral issue. Those in positions of power who are trying to obstruct action to reduce our toxic air are no different from those in the past who argued against legislation to save children from the dangers of tobacco smoke and to the minority today still denying the science around climate change. They will go down as being on the wrong side of history. Shirley Rodrigues
        London Deputy Mayor for Transport and Energy
        London E1

        1. So, a moral issue, y’all hear? Nothing to do with money or control.

          Edit: ok see someone posted the letter earlier. You will have to forgive me,I am still hours behind

    5. Bacon attempting to stand up for his constituents re travel restrictions and costs. I would pay more credence to his complaining if I knew his stance on WEF/Oxford/Bath etc ’15 minute cities’. Is Bacon a NIMBY but anywhere else is fine, MP?

    6. He’s got plenty of money for his friends though. 18 deputy mayors, all on free transport for them AND their families, I understand (but I hope I’m wrong)

  28. Tavistock clinic ‘ignored’ link between autism and transgender children

    Staff so determined to push pro-trans policy patients were treated as ‘collateral damage’ it is alleged

    By Gordon Rayner, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
    14 February 2023 • 12:01am

    The Tavistock clinic ignored evidence that 97.5 per cent of children seeking sex changes had autism, depression or other problems that might have explained their unhappiness, a new book claims.

    Staff at the NHS facility were so determined to push a pro-transgender policy that children who might not have been trans were treated as “collateral damage” by clinicians who labelled doubters “transphobic”, a whistleblower says.

    Seven in ten children had more than five “associated features” such as abuse, anxiety, eating disorders or bullying, and a social worker estimated that as few as 1 in 50 children treated at the clinic would have stayed transgender for life if they had not been given controversial drug therapy.

    One clinical psychologist who worked at the Tavistock was “horrified” at the possibility that highly vulnerable children were wrongly being given irreversible drug treatments following referral by the Tavistock, but discussion of the subject was shut down by colleagues, she said.

    The claims are made in Time To Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children, by Hannah Barnes, a BBC Newsnight journalist, which is published on Feb 23.

    The book, which is based on more than 100 hours of interviews with clinicians and patients, paints a picture of a clinic that became overwhelmed by demand and came under the increasing influence of transgender charities.

    Children as young as 10 were referred to specialists with a view to them being prescribed puberty-blocking drugs, and others were referred after as little as 20 minutes’ consultation, the book says.

    The NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service for children (Gids), which is based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London, will close later this year after it was criticised in an independent review by Dr Hilary Cass. It will be replaced by regional clinics after Dr Cass said that having a single provider of gender identity services was “not a safe or viable long-term option”.

    The book discloses that some staff at Gids were concerned about the levels of autism and ADHD in children referred to them, and feared that they might be unnecessarily medicating autistic children.

    Autism Spectrum Disorder
    Less than two per cent of children in the UK are thought to have an autism spectrum disorder, but according to Gids’s own data, around 35 per cent of its referrals “present with moderate to severe autistic traits”.

    In 2000, the only clinical audit of patients ever carried out by Gids found that more than 25 per cent of referrals had spent time in care, compared with 0.67 per cent of the general population. Children referred to Gids were ten times more likely than the national average to have a registered sex offender as a parent, while 42 per cent had lost a parent through death or separation, and 70 per cent had more than five “associated features” such as anxiety, depression, abuse, self-harm, bullying, eating disorders or suicide attempts.

    Anna Hutchinson, a former Gids clinician who was interviewed for the book, “feared she may be contributing to a medical scandal, where an NHS service was not stopping to think what else might be going on for so many of these vulnerable children”, the author notes. Only 2.5 per cent of the children seen at the clinic had no associated problems.

    The book’s title, Time to Think, refers to the reason given by clinicians for referring children for puberty blockers who identified as transgender. They claimed that by delaying the onset of puberty, the children would have more time to think about what they wanted, and discuss the cause of their unhappiness with professionals, before their bodies went through the changes brought on by puberty.

    However, in 2016 it emerged that nearly all of the children referred for assessment for puberty blockers went on to take cross-sex hormones, which would give the children some of the physical characteristics of the opposite sex.

    Dr Hutchinson told Ms Barnes that she realised the puberty blockers might have been confirming a trans identity rather than simply pausing puberty, and: “I was horrified because I just suddenly thought, ‘Oh God, Oh God’.” She became concerned that Gids was getting it wrong by referring children for assessment for puberty blockers who were traumatised, abused, autistic or simply gay, but said that the finding on puberty blockers was brushed aside by staff.

    Andrea Walker, a former social worker at a Gids satellite clinic in Leeds who spoke under an assumed name, estimated that “only 2 or 3 per cent” of the children seen by staff would have continued to identify as transgender for life if they had not been referred for medical intervention.

    Her estimate is broadly in line with the beliefs of Domenico Di Ceglie, who founded Gids in 1989, who said only 5 per cent of patients would transition and 60 to 70 per cent would be gay. Studies elsewhere had shown that for the majority of young people who experienced gender dysphoria as children, their desire to change sex would disappear during puberty.

    Some staff at Gids feared that children who would have reconciled themselves with the body they were born with were being denied that chance by the use of drugs.

    Dr Hutchinson said: “The ‘non-trans-for-life group’ are just not given a second thought.’ They are treated as ‘collateral damage’.”

    Mermaids
    Ms Barnes chronicles how the transgender charity Mermaids put huge pressure on the clinic to refer children for drugs at a younger age and to recommend surgery, with one clinician saying they would be “absolutely attacked [by Mermaids] for just trying to stop and think with [children]”.

    Ms Walker claimed that a decision by the clinic to scrap its lower age limit of 12 for sending children for assessment for puberty blockers happened because a Dutch clinic had made such a move and because “Mermaids wanted it to happen.”

    One former patient, called Harriet, who was interviewed for the book had a mastectomy and then de-transitioned to resume living as a woman. She said she had just needed someone to listen to her teenage problems but instead was quickly put on puberty blockers.

    She said: “It does feel a bit like waking up from a nightmare or regaining control of my mind after someone else took over.”

    A spokesman for Tavistock said: “Gids works on a case-by-case basis with every young person and their family, working thoughtfully and holistically with them to explore their situation, with no expectation of what the right outcome for them might be.

    “Only the minority of young people seen in the service are referred for any physical interventions. At the Tavistock and Portman, we wholeheartedly support our staff to raise concerns, and have recently strengthened our mechanisms for doing so. Concerns relating to young people’s wellbeing are taken seriously and investigated.”

    A spokesman for Mermaids said: “While we advocate for the needs of transgender young people, Mermaids’ focus is and always has been supporting our service users who are, at present, struggling with a lack of clarity from NHS England on future specialist gender services for children and young people as well as unacceptable waiting times of more than three years to access life-saving treatment.

    “We do not provide clinical advice but rather emotional support and information for those struggling with their gender identity, and do not seek to interfere with private clinical decisions made between a young person and their healthcare professionals, over which we have no influence.”

        1. Ought to have whatever ‘sex’ they altered to the other, totally, clinically and without AnnySettics

      2. Yes, but she’s winning.

        The Police appear determined to prosecute the sender of a tweet that upset her.

  29. It’s daylight now, but not a lot brighter than earlier. Light mist at ground lever but with a thick fog or rather VERY low cloud at a slightly higher level.

  30. Good morning, all. Misty, dull and damp in N Essex.

    Sue E mentioned this incident late last evening. It hasn’t attracted much attention from the MSM but social media is running with it because of the actions of the people recovering the wreckage. The train is reported to have had several, maybe 5, tanks of vinyl chloride on board. Vinyl chloride is a highly toxic liquid that evaporates at a low temperature and it appears that the recovery team decided to burn it off. The result:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9b52814216c94188b156de42ebf72714f6bb5579a0caf35951cad9784c3b3fff.png

    an equally toxic cloud possibly containing phosgene and hydrogen chloride gases, being spread in the atmosphere across Ohio and West Virginia. Concerns re the water supply are high – hydrogen chloride in the presence of water is hydrochloric acid. The Ohio river basin could be at risk from contamination.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c24749560767b9d236a691394d87d3551f28b3c3bfc790cec976a4fdcf8bb4bd.png

    Another derailment in Texas:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a1d53ebf46c3e7750f291ce8df703df083041db1e57641b52a517ba0cc91ce52.png

    And South Carolina – no picture.

    Have people got tired of setting fire to food production plants?😎

      1. One tweet I came across brought up the shareholder issue. Thanks for putting up tweets with more detail.

      2. Rik, I can’t answer for Blackstone, but Vanguard is a fund manager with literally millions of customers; the firm is owned by itself, ie it is a variant of a mutual, and it creates and operates Stock Exchange index tracking funds. For most small investors, it is a Good Thing.
        Edit: E&OE.
        My reply does not constitute investment advice, and you should always consult a qualified independent financial advisor etc.

      1. Clear along the valley floor, but thick mist/fog/low cloud from 50′ above ground level.

  33. He liked to stir things up

    Major Jonathan Titley, exuberant Gurkha officer and founder of a company providing security in world hot-spots – obituary

    At Sandhurst he was described as ‘something of a rough, tough chap but a useful character to have around if things were not going too well’

    By Telegraph Obituaries 13 February 2023 • 2:51pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2023/02/13/TELEMMGLPICT000324928038_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq4U72PvVlAMIniqBdHHa0YfBB9gV9jTnXm-qxc_-b9g0.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Jonathan Titley at an ANZAC Day Dawn Service at Wellington Arch, London on April 25 2015

    Major Jonathan Titley, who has died aged 72, was a Gurkha officer and later became the first to employ retired Gurkhas in private security in the world’s hot-spots.

    Titley was commissioned into the 6th Queen Elizabeth’s Own Gurkha Rifles (6GR) in 1972, and had far-flung postings to Hong King and Brunei that suited his rambunctious nature. While he cared deeply for his Gurkha soldiers, he was a highly-professional infantry officer and, attached to 2 Royal Green Jackets, had an operational tour in Ulster.

    Off-duty, he often crossed the line at parties and as resident DJ with the officer’s mess discotheque would sometimes set fire to his chest hair with a Zippo lighter.

    On one occasion, during a further secondment to the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Rifles, in 1978, while attending the outback races in Birdsville, Western Queensland, he met the prime minister, Malcolm Fraser in a pub. A party ensued during which Titley and some off-duty Australian soldiers lifted the 6ft 5in PM over the bar to serve the drinks.

    On his return his commanding officer wrote: “Titley is a complex character. With a ready answer to any situation, usually expressed in the vernacular of an Australian bushman, his image is not readily identifiable with an officer in the Brigade of Gurkhas.”

    Jonathan Dale Titley was born in Birmingham on January 1 1951 and spent his early childhood in The Gold Coast (now Ghana) where his father was in the Colonial Service.

    After the family returned to Britain, his father joined the Civil Service and Jonathan attended Wallingford Grammar before Sandhurst in 1971, where one of his reports described him as “something of a rough, tough chap but a useful character to have around if things were not going too well”.

    He eventually left the Army in 1983. Happy to remain in Borneo, he was in Hong Kong to watch the International Rugby Sevens when he met a former brother officer who suggested a streak before kick-off.

    As the naked pair approached the halfway line in front of a packed stadium of 25,000 cheering expatriates and suited dignitaries, out marched the pipes and drums of 6GR to play before the match. On recognising Titley, the shocked Pipe Major halted and gave him a smart salute.

    “John, are those your chaps down there streaking?” asked the brigadier sitting beside Titley’s last Commanding Officer in the Royal Box.

    “No, I don’t recognise them,” sighed Lt Col John Anderson.

    “Well, I think they just might be,” the Brigadier persisted. “One has just been saluted by your Pipe Major.”

    Back in Brunei, working in the oil industry services sector, Titley nearly lost his life when, at a fancy dress party at his beachfront home in Kuala Belait, he was stabbed in the chest when he answered the door to a gate crasher from the Black Scorpions, a gang of notorious hoodlums.

    Dressed in a wig and a Hawaiian skirt, he rejoined guests clutching his wound, which was spurting blood across the walls. “I’ve been stabbed. I need to get to hospital,” he told his wife, Lyn, calmly. The blade had punctured his lung, missing his aorta by millimetres. Miraculously, he survived.

    In 1985 he learnt that a rock-climbing expedition from 14th/20th King’s Hussars – 6GR’s affiliated regiment – had run out of rations during an attempt on the unclimbed 6,700ft summit of Mt Batu Lawi, deep in the jungle of neighbouring Sarawak.

    Pulling on his old jungle kit, he passed himself off as a serving officer and managed to convince the Malaysian air force to make an emergency resupply drop. Finding a seat in the cockpit of a giant Sikorsky helicopter assigned to the task, he directed the mission.

    Circling the peak, over dense primary jungle, his pilot assessed a drop too risky. But with one hand on his kukri, Titley grasped the man by the arm, gave him a hard stare and jabbed a finger at the summit. The pilot agreed to attempt one pass.

    Titley took the rope fixed to a huge swinging cold box containing the rations, which he gingerly controlled from the open door. As the helicopter almost stalled, he let go – but, slightly miss-timing his release, was almost yanked out as boxes tumbled over the rocks, shedding not only army rations, but ice cream, champagne and cheesecake from his supermarket chiller section. The expedition was saved and the climbers subsequently reached the top.

    Titley missed Army life. After two years as a contract officer with the Northern Frontier Force in Oman, he and Lyn spent the next six in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he drove a Russian military motorbike combination, kept two sheep named “Lunch” and “Dinner” and launched his Gurkha security business.

    He also played in the World Elephant Polo Championships held at Tiger Tops in the Chitwan National Park. His team – the “Haithi Satis” (“Friends of the Elephants”) – lost in the 1994 final to a team of park rangers.

    Titley’s company won major contracts with governments and the UN. In Kuwait his teams cleared mines and unexploded ordnance in the aftermath of the first Gulf War in 1992. During the Mozambique Civil War the same year, they guarded installations and cleared mines from roads during fighting between the ruling left-wing party (Frelimo) and right-wing militants (Renamo).

    Further contracts followed in Angola and Sierra Leone, but after irreconcilable differences with his co-directors, Titley left the business and returned to the UK. The strain affected his marriage he and Lyn subsequently separated and divorced.

    He spent his retirement living first in Clapham, enjoying lectures at the Royal Geographical Society, where he was a fellow. There were further spells in South Africa, Malta and Kosovo before he settled at Westbury, Wiltshire, where he watched re-runs of Zulu and drove a brightly-painted tuk-tuk.

    He never forgot the Gurkhas, and on the 175th anniversary of the founding of his old regiment, he flew to Brunei for a ceremony attended by Tul Bahadar Pun, a surviving Victoria Cross holder. Six years ago, he was back in Pokhara, West Nepal, for the 200th anniversary and was spotted outside a bar telling stories to passing tourists.

    Jonathan Titley married, in 1976, Lyn Fairbrother. Although the marriage was dissolved they remarried last December. He is survived by her and by two daughters.

    Major Jonathan Titley, born January 1 1951, died January 3 2023

    1. Most of them are absolute shysters and utter garbage.
      That is why we should write, none of the above, on our ballot papers. Unless there is an independent on parade.

    2. And the chamber was virtually empty when Bridgen spoke about the dangers of the Covid jabs programme. And remember when Sir Christopher Chope brought up the subject last year nobody paid any attention to him at all.

      I would like to see MPs put naked in a cage and the families of white girls raped by Moslem rape gangs given the necessary things with which to bombard them.

      And then put in another cage and compelled to suffer the same treatment at the hands of the families of those damaged by the Covid jabs.

      Too many of our MPs are completely sub-human.

  37. 371042+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Brexit over & out is it ? in my book there has always been a break link in the Brexitexit chain, on reflection inserted within the founder members of the UKIP party that finally paid dividends for the eu.

    Surely a sign of faith in a good man was when Gerard Batten asked the members for £100000 he received in reply £300000.
    Ogga1.

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    15h
    If this is true it wouldn’t surprise me. Farage is a Tory, that is all he’s ever been & all he ever will be. Even a £400k bung wouldn’t be enough to tempt his fellow Tories to his Tory Lite party.

    Farage always held UKIP back from becoming a genuinely populists radical party. When I took over in Feb 2018 UKIP was on the verge of financial collapse. It was only saved by the generosity of its members. Then the MSM turned on me, with Farage’s help.

    Never trust him – he’s a Tory!

    1. It should be clear to anyone with a few functioning brain cells that the government want these people here. It can’t be for economic reasons: they are costing £Billions per annum to rescue and keep and what skills do they possess that would make up for the money spent on them? Mainly young men of fighting age in the 10s of thousands located in quite large groupings around the Country. I smell a rat.

          1. He doesn’t seem to be doing much else. Korky.
            Surely he must be very concerned about what is happening to his beloved country. We now have enough illegals to overflow Wembley.

          2. Overflowing Wembley stadium is small beer if there’s sufficient to overwhelm the forces of law-and-order, such as they are.

          3. But the worrying thing is every time we see them they are always on their Mobiles. Who is paying for this and how does this happen ?

    2. It will not stop unless and until Schwab tells our politicians that they have now let enough illegal immigrants and potential criminal into the country.

      After all when Britain has enough of them to destroy entirely the whole fabric of society they can use the illegals elsewhere – in fact they are a valuable resource for wreaking havoc and disruption wherever a country needs to be destabilised and ready for the Great Reset.

  40. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with Axe and Longbow. marmalade sandwiches in handbag.

    Happy Valentines to all us ladies

    🏹💐🧆

  41. Medley Time

    https://www.toonpool.com/user/1391/files/ufos_leaving_earth_517439.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75a3c58d54baa7cd953a9e9390d4d5d936b922db4966ee4760d6d67ad047f349.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/def899a4e389a03fdfe6f94b20e6d8fc36523ddd106e2c5a2f4fea1d6e17b630.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75e4e902cd225acdda6603cdcb30cd7b48ed1ad63e7ff18602b2002ff5724ae9.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ccc40551874aaf198b0c9c61d31d52e06079c87ef03863b9c4ad2e670afc037a.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5b71365defcd30e67ab828413d651a20480c611fa8af1501366d60e9973234a4.jpg

    Wakey Wakey

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f6db766f5ea4a5f16cac629a985e7e9da67cad5cb0b08b874fe0cae454a57354.gif

  42. Morning all 😉 😊
    Quite disappointing out there today, the smiley, smiley weather experts from last week have got it all wrong. At least it’s not raining,…….yet.
    And does NATO have a viable strategy?
    We must remember that they are mainly politicians, from what we already know from our own, they don’t have the faintest idea what they are doing or trying to achieve.

  45. A new Brexit deal is expected to be announced in the next fortnight after the UK watered down its hardline resistance to European judges ruling on issues in Northern Ireland.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/13/new-brexit-deal-nears-northern-ireland-deadlock-comes-end/

    As expected he has flunked it. The prime minister has as much backbone as a jelly fish.

    BTL Comment

    Is Rishi Sunak aware that a very significant proportion of his party’s supporters regard him as a weak and treacherous leader? His betrayal of Northern Ireland is the last straw and he and his party fully deserve to be completely eliminated in the next election.

    If he is aware he doesn’t give a damn – he can very happily go somewhere else and do something else. ‘Stuff the insignificant little proles’ is what he thinks!

    2. After his rewards for commencing Britain’s re-entry into the EU he

      won’t care what people think of him.

  46. Ii don’t know if anyone else is subscribed to the American NTSB Safety Compass Blog, but this morning’s post I found particularly poignant. A followup to the Wiki page on the SS Marine Electric was particularly horrifying given the details of the corporate negligence that led up to the disaster.

    40 YEARS LATER, THE MARINE ELECTRIC SINKING REMEMBERED
    FEBRUARY 13, 2023 NTSBGOV LEAVE A COMMENT
    By James Scheffer, Strategic Advisor, NTSB Office of Marine Safety

    It’s been 40 years since the large bulk carrier SS Marine Electric tragically sank on February 12, 1983, off the Virginia coast. Nearly all aboard—31 of 34 souls—were lost. But I remember the events of that tragic day as if they happened yesterday.

    On that day, I was the 34-year-old captain of the 661-foot, 34,700-DWT lube oil tanker Tropic Sun, the first vessel to respond to the Marine Electric’s early morning distress call.

    On February 11, a nor’easter formed off Cape Hatteras and the Virginia coast. On land, the storm was responsible for a blizzard that set snowfall records in several eastern seaboard cities and blanketed Washington, D.C., in up to 30 inches of snow. At sea, it generated 50–60 knot winds and 30–40-foot seas.

    Full post at:-
    https://safetycompass.wordpress.com/2023/02/13/40-years-later-the-marine-electric-sinking-remembered/

      1. Oh no!!!
        All hyped up by the previous landlord who was more than a bit of a 🥃⚓️.
        Bonsall is on one of the major air routes to the USA with East Midlands and Manchester airports not that far away. Very often the landing and nav lights of passing aircraft either taking off from or heading to land at either can look very strange when the aircraft is in cloud and this is what he claimed were UFOs..

      1. This song of Bob Dylan’s is very evocative.

        By analogy is sums up what has happened to our once lovely country – our politicians have thrown it all away.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iruzIEQsL4

        I once held her in my arms
        She said she would always stay
        But I was cruel
        I treated her like a fool
        I threw it all away
        Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand
        And rivers that ran through every day
        I must have been mad
        I never knew what I had
        Until I threw it all away
        Love is all there is, it makes the world go ’round
        Love and only love, it can’t be denied
        No matter what you think about it
        You just won’t be able to do without it
        Take a tip from one who’s tried
        So if you find someone that gives you all of her love
        Take it to your heart, don’t let it stray
        For one thing that’s certain
        You will surely be a-hurtin’
        If you throw it all away
        If you throw it all away

      2. Do you recognise the start of this novel, Minty?

        “Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth,—a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self. If anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he really believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism, a subject upon which he was by way of being an authority.

        For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.

        “Suppose,” he cried with feeble violence, “that all the debts in the world were called up simultaneously, and immediate payment insisted upon,—what under our present conditions would happen then?”

        I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic meeting.

        At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come! All that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal which will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse alternating in his mind.

        She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against the red curtain. How beautiful she was! And yet how aloof! We had been friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same comradeship which I might have established with one of my fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,—perfectly frank, perfectly kindly, and perfectly unsexual. My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure—these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much as that—or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.

        Gladys was full of every womanly quality. Some judged her to be cold and hard; but such a thought was treason. That delicately bronzed skin, almost oriental in its coloring, that raven hair, the large liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips,—all the stigmata of passion were there. But I was sadly conscious that up to now I had never found the secret of drawing it forth. However, come what might, I should have done with suspense and bring matters to a head to-night. She could but refuse me, and better be a repulsed lover than an accepted brother.

        So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the long and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked round at me, and the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof. “I have a presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned. I do wish you wouldn’t; for things are so much nicer as they are.”

        I drew my chair a little nearer. “Now, how did you know that I was going to propose?” I asked in genuine wonder.“

  51. Good Moaning.
    Drinking tea and listening to removal men doing their thing.
    Grand daughter’s car and the Noddy car loaded but it makes sense to wait until furniture is in so we can arrange boxes on a and around it.
    Thank goodness we have the house tomorrow for a clean up and a final clearance,

    1. When we cleared Mother’s house, the final stage was the cleaning firm came in to sort out the cobwebs.
      Even though there was planned a deal of renovation, I still wanted to leave the place looking it’s best after 45 years of our family occupying it.
      There was quite a bit of carpet that hadn’t been changed during that period – quite 1970s historic.

      2. Abigail’s Party style. My mother liked the big floral wallpaper to clash with the big floral carpets. I hated it.

    2. Twatter is simply not-fit-for-purpose. The poster, Tracy O’Hanlon, might have had good intentions but she bastardised an excellent address by placing only a poor-quality, abridged version of that speech on the idiot platform.

      Here is the speech in full, crystal clarity on YouTube, replete with provided text. Now it all makes sense.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xMZ-SiX1So

      1. Senator Sharon Keogan (Independent) speaking in the Seanad Éireann (5 Oct, 2022). [Seanad Éireann is the upper house of the Oireachtas, which also comprises the President of Ireland and Dáil Éireann. It is commonly called the Seanad or Senate and its members senators. Unlike Dáil Éireann, it is not directly elected but consists of a mixture of members chosen by various methods.]

        “Leader, amid last week’s budget business, I found myself some time to d some thinking. I thought about how important labels are — not on food or on fragile boxes, but on people. I remember a time — a brief time, around eight years ago, where Western society’s attitude towards labels were that they were not for people and that the fullness of human expression and complexity could not be placed into neat boxes and that swathes of people could not be tarred with the same brush.

        That lasted up until about 2016, when the one-two punch of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump upset the ruling progressive elite to such an extent that they changed tactics — the message of individual empowerment and self-determination had yielded dissatisfying results: people were deciding to think the wrong thoughts. And so, the powers-that-be arranged for a return to cultural tribalism — no longer would there be individuals, varied and unique, there would only be the labels placed on them — based on what they supported, or choose not to support — unquestioningly and unreservedly.

        Someone who had concerns about Black Lives Matter? Easy, they’re just a racist.

        Someone who asked questions about uncontrolled migration? Xenophobe.

        Someone who thought that life in the womb is vulnerable and worthy of protection? Obviously, they just hate women.

        And 2016 gave us the worn-to-death, catch-all phrase for when you knew you didn’t like something and had to slap a label on it to de-platform, discredit, cancel and silence — ‘far-Right’.

        Wanting houses for your own citizens? — ‘far-Right’.

        Wanting Irish girls and Irish women to be safe, and to have their identity as women respected and protected? — ‘far-Right’.

        Asking for robust mental health assessments by professionals prior to subjecting children to irreversible medical intervention? — ‘far-Right’.

        Wanting to protect your communities from crime? — ‘far-Right’.

        Supporting women in politics, not just those with the “right ideas”? — ‘far-Right’.

        Not supporting gender quotas, and believing that the right woman or man should get the job based on merit? — ‘far-Right’.

        Opposing the commodification, buying or selling of children via contract? — ‘far-Right’.

        Allowing each man and woman to have their own national and religious identity, and to be proud of it? — ‘far-Right’.

        It’s a cheap trick, it’s political and intellectual laziness. And it’s a crying shame that this low level of discourse has infiltrated Irish politics through social media. But at the end of the day, when you’re sitting on the far-Left and you’ve zero perspective, everything looks ‘far-Right’.

  53. Architect of ‘Putin’s palace’ says Russian elite are leaving the West behind. 14 February 2023.

    The designer who claims to have worked for dozens of oligarchs says they are moving their wealth to Dubai and the Far East.

    He said the Ukraine conflict had hardly changed life in Moscow. “If you don’t turn on the TV or read the newspapers you wouldn’t notice. I don’t see any difference to before — 93 per cent of Italian companies [in Russia] are still here. There is no shortage of anything. If you want the latest iPhone, Barilla pasta or an Armani suit, nothing has changed,” he said.

    Though it is obviously in Cirillo’s interests to be on board one is inclined to believe that most of what he says is true! We know that Dubai for example has received vast Russian deposits in the last year, so much so that the Americans have threatened them!

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-palace-architect-interview-lanfranco-cirillo-32kmsntct

    1. It’s something the American journalist Peter Lavelle who lives in Moscow and presents the CrossTalk programme for RT has been saying since the sanctions began. Life in Moscow goes on as normal and if ordinary people comment at all it’s usually to ask why their government waited so long and didn’t take action back in 2014.

  54. OT – for those NoTTLers who are rose enthusiasts – and, like me, are astounded and dismayed at the current price of Toprose – the best price around (after much smurfing of the interwebby) is – of all improbable places; Toolstation. Late Sunday we ordered 6 4 kg boxes. Collected this morning. £10.48 a box.

    There is no charge for this useful information!!

        1. And they also have a modest section covering motoring accessories. They compete with Screwfix, which is linked to B&Q.

      1. It’s quite interesting to see on Twitter threads how the other half think!

        I’ve never read any of JK Rowling’s books or seen the films (apart from the crappy serial on BBC some years ago which was filmed locally) but she has every right to her views, some of which I agree with.

        1. I disagree with a lot of Rowling’s views but find myself in agreement in this case. How anyone can call the woman “far right” given her political views is beyond me, but then logic isn’t a strong point of that sort of moron!

        2. I’m not sure “thinking” comes into it. They are just brainwashed cultists repeating words they probably don’t even understand the meaning or consequence of.

        3. I’m not sure “thinking” comes into it. They are just brainwashed cultists repeating words they probably don’t even understand the meaning or consequence of.

      2. It’s quite interesting to see on Twitter threads how the other half think!

        I’ve never read any of JK Rowling’s books or seen the films (apart from the crappy serial on BBC some years ago which was filmed locally) but she has every right to her views, some of which I agree with.

    2. Whilst it’s easy to laugh, you have to wonder why this guy posted such a thing in the first place. He obviously believes the nonsense the alphabet people have been putting about about JK and doesn’t have the wit to question it. What’s with these people?
      Edit: oh my goodness I didn’t see Bob’s post below.

  56. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/01882081793d354a4eff8336106d27b4c59c861692bb7f9d9912d6ed21143d2c.png Would someone please be kind enough to explain something to me, a bear of little brain, about how these devices are permitted to be manufactured, marketed, sold and used?

    In a world screaming out for “Net Zero” and forever banging on about “Climate Change” and the need to find cheaper and “more efficient” sources of energy and power; how can these toys, that keep water at boiling point, ad infinitum, be a sensible idea? Surely having one installed would be the energy-wasting equivalent of having a massive kettle boiling away all the time, not to mention the requisite sky-high energy bills that would bring.

    Am I missing something here?

      1. Yes Paul they only heat the water when required, like the gas boiler we had which only heated the water being used – it didn’t store any hot water – in fact we didn’t have a hot water cylinder or header tank

      2. But how does that provide instant boiling water (100ºC at sea level). No technology I know can raise water, in quantity, from room temperature to boiling … instantly (as advertised).

        1. I doubt if it is at 100 C as it would be steam. But the water passes through a heated element and the temperature of the output depends on the rate of flow. I doubt if the output could be 100C

          1. That would be no good for me, Spikey, since to mash tea properly you need the water at 100ºC, The most disgusting tea I ever drank was at the café on Cairn Gorm, Water boils at 95ºC at that elevation but that is not hot enough to infuse the tea leaves. It was undrinkable.

        2. We have one at work. Useless for tea. I have 12 hours during the day when I can’t get a decent cuppa.

          1. Likewise. I refuse to drink from those taps. The water has a very odd taste. I buy cans of spring water in the canteen, which is extravagant but much safer.

        3. Unicorns tear ducts? There might be a recycle that heats the water in a loop until it’s boiling, then releases it. Who knows?

    3. I was told recently that a Fridge / Freezer is usually the biggest consumer of electricity in a normal household (running 24/7). That having been said we have the entry Quooker tap that only produces boiling water and filtered cold water. The tank under the sink is well insulated so the unit doesn’t consume much more electricity than a standard electric kettle (which in many households is usually overfilled even when only one cup of boiling water is required). Instant hot water for cooking veggies in a saucepan is an added bonus.

  57. Hells bells, my fingers are a bit cold! Even with gloves on!

    Fog has lifted and it’s slowly warming up, but I’ve come in to warm my hands up with a mug of tea.
    Also waiting for the Rington’s man arriving.

    4. When I lived in Notts I used to enjoy Ashby’s teas, but no one locally supplied them. I rang Ashby’s and they put me in touch with their rep for my area. When I contacted him he told me that he normally just sold his stock to shops, hotels and restaurants but he would pop in to see me the next time he was in the area. From then on he called once a month and I bought his superb teas from him at cost price.

    1. Environmental damage perpetrated by an establishment committed to the “green lobby”. In the native Seneca language, Ohio means “the great river”. Half a mile wide and 981 miles long and huge stretches of the river valley are really very beautiful. The destruction is unforgiveable.

    1. Those top two shareholders are fund managers, which in turn are ultimately owned by individuals.
      People should understand that unless they are managing all their own funds themselves the probability is that at some point they have a connection with one of the big fund managers who is acting on their behalf.

      I very much doubt that B or V were involved with the lobbying to change the brake rules.

      1. That seems feasible, that’s why they buy stock or companies that do the actual engineering.
        My thoughts are that they are leaning on the media – through political pressure, perhaps – to mute reporting on this incident.
        There are huge implications for farming in the area concerned, that will impact severely on the food chain if the toxic spill is not controlled and cleaned.
        The bad orange man would have put FEMA on the job, the current administration seems to be dragging it’s feet on the issue.
        Certainly, without some form of communication on the subject it is hard to tell.

        1. I agree that this should be getting far more coverage, but trying to implicate the fund managers for what happened is unwarranted.

      1. TVM, but it’s a 10 day old article. The problem appears to be that since the initial incident there have been; controlled explosions in an attempt to preempt chemicals polluting the ground, reports of wildlife/fish dying, yet the local populace being advised that their drinking water is safe and no clear indication of the spread of the effects from the crash site.

        We’ve just been through three years of minute by minute accounts of Project Fear over a flu and now that there’s something that will impact on the food chain things seem comparatively muted. If not muted, only reported at the same low level as the farming crisis in Brazil and the Netherlands.

  60. Just heard from one of the ladies in my lunch group of old colleagues…….. she’s got covid! My first thoughts were “How do you know it’s covid, not a cold?” “surely you’re not still testing?” “How many jabs have you had?” I didn’t say any of that – just hoped she’d soon feel better. I know she’s had all the jabs going – so that’s five, I think. Was still wearing a mask until quite recently, too.

    I fail to see how an intelligent person can still be taken in by this tripe.

    1. She will tell you that had she not had the jabs she would have had it much worse.
      Almost certainly rubbish, but there is no convincing some people.

      1. My wife and I are both unjabbed. We had Covid once – very mildly. We take Vitamins C and D and zinc daily.

        Many of our friends and family members had Covid at the same time as we did . Without exception each of them had it far worse than we did.

        But pay no attention to us. We are not a representative sample. Ignore your own evidence if it goes against what you are told to believe.

        1. We got it mildly. After being jabbed.

          We’ve only had the jabs because not having the necessary certificate made life very inconvenient here, one had to show the certificate to go to a restaurant or bar or even a marché nocturne and we could not travel without them. I’m surprised you were able to carry on regardless, or did you never go out?

          We feel bound to return to the UK fairly regularly to visit elderly relatives.

          We stopped getting jabbed as soon it changed and unless travel is again prevented we won’t do so again.

    2. At one point while I was in hospital the whole ward caught Covid. I could not tell that I even had it. Like everyone else I tested positive but it was only the test that claimed I had it. I felt no different while I had it than I did before or after. Frankly, I thought it was some sort of scam.

      1. There are many claims that if you run the test under the tap or shove it in a piece of fruit, the ratio of positives and negatives remains the same. Perhaps it’s pre-set.

        1. The late President of Tanzania got positive results from a goat and a papaya, so he knew the tests were rubbish. His untimely death remains a mystery.

        2. Thank goodness we don’t still have to do travel testing before we can go anywhere. Last year before my trip to Kenya we had to have a negative “Fit to fly” test certificate – very cursory swipe of the throat and that’ll be £70 please.

        3. My suspicion is rather the same. With emphysema and not had any covid jabs I should have been a total wreck and in serious trouble.

    3. My three brothers have had five each. For the one in Pennsylvania it might be the fluoride in the water that’s dulling his brain. (He lives very close to the Ohio river so I wonder if the water supply has been affected by the chemical spill.) The two in York have no excuse.

      1. Do you find yourself suspecting that such people use it as an excuse for a few days of quiet with only their nearest and dearest and the servants?

          1. It made me laugh when Mr King (while still Mr Wales) was said to have contracted covid and be “isolating” at Balmoral. Yeah, right.

      2. What is interesting about this story is that yesterday it was reported that “the Queen has a seasonal illness”. A cold or ‘flu, I thought. Now it is “DANGER” COVID…..

        Project Fear is alive and well.

    5. 372042+up ticks,

      Morning N,

      I do think that for many peoples there is a need to believe in something, for instance, current lab/lib/con coalition members after decades of treacherous dangerous failure many realise their continuing support is making things worse, but the need to believe is stronger.

    7. She will convince herself that Jab No 6 is the one that will work this time…. and so they keep on going…. after all, haven’t they said that it is ‘safe and effective’?!

      I really do wonder at all these so-called intelligent people – I think they are simply good at processing and regurgitating the received information, they don’t have to think about it. Therefore they are good at passing exams.

      1. And so the madness builds up:-https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/35227eaf46a54ff183f78f6779dde590df28b49e55cec2c28594b3068eb6cf6c.jpg

  61. For lunch I’m cooking roast duck with a port and orange gravy couldn’t find seville oranges so I am using ordinary bog standard oranges – I thought adding a squeeze of lemon might make the oranges seem more like seville oranges .

    2. We usually just have a sandwich or a bit of leftovers for lunch – are you celebrating Valentine’s Day?

      1. We’re having roast lamb, spuds, broc and carrots this evening. Even remembered to defrost the lamb last night!

        1. We prefer to eat in the evening and just have a snack for lunch. I’ll do braising steak for tonight.

      1. Not that near, I’m in a villiage. There is a small M&S in the local town. I’ll just improvise .

  62. For lunch I’m cooking roast duck with a port and orange gravy couldn’t find seville oranges so I am using ordinary bog standard oranges – I thought adding a squeeze of lemon might make the oranges seem more like seville oranges .

      2. Lots of cocktails made with Armagnac.

        Corpse Reviver

        30 ml (1 Oz) Armagnac

        30 ml (1 Oz) Calvados

        15 ml (½ Oz) Sweet Vermouth

        Orange Peel

  64. A return to Russia would only empower Putin’s monstrous gangster state. 14 February 2023.

    Russia is a major market, and not one that any global company feels it can ignore forever. It is painful to have to sell valuable assets at a knock-down price.

    Even so, it would require not just a ceasefire, but a complete change of regime for Western businesses to operate in the country again. And any talk of returning one day simply waters down the impact of the sanctions that have already been imposed.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Ivor Stuart.

    And what is Ukraine if it isn’t a monstrous gangster state?

    Just an indication that the elites narrative is not universal.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/02/14/return-russia-would-empower-putins-monstrous-gangster-state/

  65. What am I supposed to do ? Today I have an appointment with the cardiology department at 11:30 am…ermmm

    But in the mean time I’ve fix up our property and contents insurance. Dumped the previous and their 155% increase and settled for a modest 60 pound increase.
    And more down to earth matters, also emailed my objection to Welwyn and Hatfield council re corporate greed wrecking a long established green belt and wildlife habitat site locally known as Symondshyde.
    The landowners want to build a few hundred luxury homes on the acres of woodland. It’s not as if they can use the logs any more.

    http://www.save-symondshyde.co.uk

    1. Phone call just happened, good news is, I’m in line for another catheter ablation, bad news is, not sure when.

        1. Wouldn’t have a clue Obs.
          They poke wires into your arteries one in each groin, while your not looking 😏
          Up into each side of the heart and then electrically zap the nerve ends that cause the problems random.
          Then you wake up.
          And go home.

    2. Oh the ‘THEY’ think they have perfected another way to try and spread diseases around the globe and try to bump everybody off.

      1. And just for sake of argument, the Chinese have been testing these balloons to see just what a likely drop radius might be before they are intercepted and testing how spraying biological warfare ingredients might backfire on them from those heights.

    3. The operative statement here is:

      As they cluster together to breed, the virus spreads rapidly and is then carried to other parts of the globe.

      It is clear that we must stop clusterng together to breed and refrain from global travel – it’s as simple as that!

      Life as we know it has turned out to be a breeding nuisance!

  67. Mass stabbing at Walthamstow pub leaves four men injured with one fighting for his life. 14 February 2023.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/13ec14b90f7655a620f7af0c825aa2ecf026ec7f1a5b1608af5a46a81968f075.png

    Scotland Yard detectives want to hear from anyone who was in The Duke pub on Monday evening

    Nearby business owner Vik Kanani, 39, told MyLondon the area had “the odd skirmish now and then.”

    He added: “There was open drug selling at the start, people getting shot around the corner. It has quietened a bit. It used to be quite a rough area, now it’s come down a long long way.”

    Just the sort of place you would go to for a quiet drink! Lol. The wonders of Multiculturalism.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/stabbing-walthamstow-the-duke-pub-london-crime-b1060153.html

        1. The last house i rented in London before i gave up and came home. I found nothing to recommend the place.

        1. There is the older part of it where people are polite and say good morning. The Market is crap. The takeaways are worse. I could go on.

        1. Machete wielding nutter says to his companion at the bar, “I’m going outside for a quick slash.”

  68. That’s me in for a cuppa and to get this afternoon’s tea started.
    Just breaking off from chopping an onion & red pepper to type this.
    Doing a mix of 2 packs of pre-cooked chicken, stir fry veggies with mushrooms, a plum & hoisin sauce all served with a pack of noodles.
    Nearly all of it bought at reduced price!

          1. My turn to cook, but got to fix the vacuum cleaner first. Polish cleaner yanked the power cable clean out!

    2. Try the “to good to go” app. £10 of produce about to hit the sell/BB date for around £3. Various stores are subscribed. Just downloaded today, so not sure how good it is. Got the prod from Aldi.

  70. Been swimming this morning. Trying to get back into the groove having missed it for a couple of months. Off in a mo to our lovely Italian Deli/Cafe in the village for some grub.
    Slayders.

    1. “The Met Police’s Flying Squad captured two of the robbers, Kaijuan Henry, 19, and Roshan Clark, 18, thanks to celebratory pictures of them posing with the stolen watches.”

      A bright bunch too!

    2. Yep, out and doing the same thing in 3 years. Then it’ll escalate. Why, why are we forced to tolerate these vermin? Flog them, beat them, throw them in a cell and feed them salted porridge once a day and forget about them for the remainder of their lives.

  72. It’s been a while since I last posted, 4 months or more I think and that was to mention my bad back pain had been diagnosed as a T5/6 compression fracture. Since then the condition worsened to the point where I was admitted to Bristol Southmead Hospital To cut a long story of gross incompetence of our local gp surgery and unbelievable lack of communications between the various doctors and departments of Southmead Hospital I now find myself in a nursing home with a limited time left on this Earth.

    For some reason they originally diagnosed my problem as a stroke so I was admitted to the stroke clinic and went a full mri and was declared to be absolutely fine, I was then bumped to neurology who faffed around with cat and mri scans for a couple of weeks, during this time I became less mobile and weak. Throughout this period regular blood tests were performed and eventually somebody thought to check the
    PSA levels which proved to be sky high, further tests identified an aggressive prostate cancer which had happily been sending out secondaries as bone cancer one of which created a nice little boney spur at t5/6 which was pressing against my spinal cord , ho hum. at no point did I display any of the prostate symptoms. If anything has come out of this rotten business it’s that my brother and two cousins had themselves tested and required assorted interventions which had they remained unchecked could have had. dire results ,
    You must excuse these rambling but I’m awash with a bucket load of meds which makes it difficult to remain coherent and awake.

    1. Awful to hear of your condition, something to reenforce the message re prostrate cancer for us chaps.

    2. Am so very sorry to hear that- the incompetence and dithering of the NHS is criminal. We have both been going through it here but not nearly to your extent. My sincere good wishes to you and your family.

    5. That is dreadful news Datz.
      Thank you for letting us know the situation and that at least some good has come out of it.

    7. So sorry to hear this, Datz. I am shocked at your plight, and at the incompetence of the nhs of which we hear more and more. All the best.

      1. Thanks Bill, the unstated and oft unspoken thought is why didn’t I keep an annual check on my prostate, well typical of a lot of chaps , there were no symptoms and that was all I I wanted to know. Clearly ,in retrospect, ill advised bordering on stupid.

        1. One hears so much about symptoms… and who wants some doctor shoving things up one’s fundament (don’t answer that!)

        3. Datz, very sorry to hear about your situation.
          Bother, I am overdue for PSA test.
          I hope you have all your paperwork sorted out.
          Also, it is important to be registered with your local Hospice people; saves time, because they can supply the powerful painkillers without having to bother your local Doctor.

      2. Thanks Bill, the unstated and oft unspoken thought is why didn’t I keep an annual check on my prostate, well typical of a lot of chaps , there were no symptoms and that was all I I wanted to know. Clearly ,in retrospect, ill advised bordering on stupid.

    9. Hello Datz, I’m sorry to learn of your diagnoses and prognosis. I hope the staff are doing all they can with suitable pain relief.
      With very best wishes.

      Stephen

    10. Datz it’s good to hear from you. While you’ve been through the mill you have helped other people which is really positive.

      When I broke my back (a cracked vertebrae) it was agony, so I can imagine what you’re going through. I hope we hear from you as often as we can. Best wishes.

      1. Hi , oddly enough pain is the least of my problems, I’m just left with coming to terms with the sudden termination of a full and varied lifestyle but most of all the effect on my family. There is much to be thankful for, the nursing home is just a mile from home and is funded by St Peter’s. The staff are exemplary and there is much humour in spite of the situation. I hope to pop in a bit more now as various tedious situations have been resolved and I’m feeling a bit more upbeat about my immediate condition. From being a very private shy sort of person I find myself daily having areas of my bod buffed, wiped and probed by an assortment very attractive young girls, tough but I manage

    12. Greetings, Datz.

      When I fell hard on an icy pavement, back in 1979, and displaced two vertebrae (L5/S1) causing a spondylolisthesis, the sciatic pain that ensued was cruel. Having said that, my pain was nothing more than a bit of soreness in comparison with what you are suffering. Best wishes, and hope there will be an end to your awful tribulations.

    14. Such sadness. The NHS has become the epitome of third world bureaucracy, hasn’t it. Going through processes to no good effect. Here’s hoping that the nursing home provides quality time for you from here on in at least.

    15. Oh my goodness! I had wondered where you were…….. I’m so sorry to hear this dreadful news.

      My OH has prostate cancer but it’s held in check with hormone injections every three months.

    16. Just caught this update – what a rotten time you have been having. Sorry to hear this news.

    18. Datz, I’m so sorry to hear about your plight! What a ghastly time you’ve been having! It’s astonishing that so much pain and grief can come from one source, and cause so much suffering. Thinking of you and take a day at a time. Nottlers rule, OK!

  73. Apologies if mentioned earlier, but report on GB News states Bonsall is a ‘UFO sighting hotspot’. Wonder though if it may have something to do with sunlight reflecting off of Bob’s chainsaw – not a euphemism I should add!

    1. Perhaps simply ‘how many far right’ have ever raped anyone. How about slowing traffic out of an ecomentalist cause ? What about destroying property because of anti capitalist marches? Spraying government buildings with paint? Demanding Oxford scholars be torn down? Defacing statues ? Throwing them into rivers?

      No. The answers none. Because they’re at home, raising their children not to behave like rats in a sack. Teaching them morals and values. They’re busy during the day working, too. Earning the taxes you’ll spaff on the scum causing the real problems.

      Oh, and while I’m at it, the Left are the fascists. The Nazis – who you love to scream are right wing – are national socialists. The cue is in the [beepinng] name. They’re you, and all your sort.

      1. Being called “far-Right” is simply an absurdity.

        Being labelled ‘far-Right’ is preposterously idiotic. If you are on the Right of the political spectrum it means you shower, work, know the words to the national anthem, belong to a family, voted Brexit, eat meat, and prefer single-sex lavatories. Have I missed anything?

        Oh yes, you’ve missed a lot. It also means you are a self-sufficient individualist who is innovative, entrepreneurial, enterprising, hard-working, and enjoys low taxation and small government. Moreover, your preference is a free-market economy (and you do not go in for mob-handedness, rioting and civil disorder). You expect these positive attributes to be encouraged and rewarded. Your self-esteem, your family, your locality and your country come first, and you are prepared to kill (and die) to defend them.

        In a nutshell, you are NORMAL.

        Therefore it logically follows that to be ridiculously labelled as being ‘far-Right’ means that you must be an extremely self-sufficient individualist who is extremely innovative, extremely entrepreneurial, extremely enterprising, extremely hard-working, and enjoys extremely low taxation and extremely small government, etc.

        If that is the case, then you may call me extremely ‘far-Right’ until the cows come home.

      2. It’s also in the history of the Fascist movement.
        Formulated largely by Giovanni Gentile during the late 19th/early 20th centuries, when Italy was still finding its feet as a united nation, it was intended to be an alternative form of Socialism to that of Marxism where Marx’s “Class Conflict/Class Struggle” was replaced by National Co-operation.

    2. From the Hopkins video – I’s also notable that the intentional smear of ‘far Right’ is to pre-emptively punish and label anyone who opposes the state narrative. It’s all about controlling people.

    3. Fact check this, Katie: The UK government is still sending millions of pounds, annually, in ‘foreign aid’, to … CHINA!

    1. An equivalent protest to stop the boat people would last as long as it took for the police to arrive and the police would remove them forcibly.

      1. That tedious child should really try to grow up. She “parrots” the same line endlessly. I had hoped that once she was potty-trained, she would concentrate on her GCSEs – rather than pontificate…

        1. But she is right about our disastrous new king who has sold his soul and will do Schwab’s and Gates’s bidding and to hell with his country.

          He also tried to sell his brain but could not find any buyers!

  79. Just been watching on iplayer a series of food festivals and markets in Northern Ireland. The pig farmer producing dry cure bacon was an eye opener.

    Most bacon in British supermarkets have nitrates and nitrites which are known to be bad for us and is injected with lots of water. He doesn’t use those.

    Though the bacon is more expensive it didn’t shrink by 50% like the supermarket stuff.

    This one is my nearest that makes the same product and i will be stocking up on some proper bacon. https://www.thedorsetmeatcompany.co.uk/product/black-bacon-250g/

    Edited for pour spolling

    1. Firstborn’s home-grown bacon was magic, just too thick. Hopefully, he’ll get a bacon slicer soon.

    2. I always buy the one without nitrates. Don’t know if it makes a difference, just on principle.

  80. Tragically a teenager was violently killed in a knife attack in a municipal park in Culcheth a few days ago.
    The press reported that the victim was a girl, but then later had to change its tune.
    When the trial begins, it will be interesting to watch how the defence team will act. Witnesses and defendants who appear in Court will be under oath, so will they be obliged to use female pronouns knowing full well that the deceased was male?

  81. How to bankrupt the US just send large balloons….

    “Gen. Milley Confirms 1st Missile Fired At UFO “Missed… Landed Harmlessly” In Lake Huron

    $800,000 in munitions at taxpayer expense to take out a small ‘balloon’…”

  82. The words ‘male’ and ‘female’ should be banned in science as they enforce the idea sex is binary, says study
    Experts say other terms that should be outlawed include man, woman, mother, father, primitive, invasive and ‘survival of the fittest’
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/14/words-male-female-should-banned-science-enforce-idea-sex-binary/

    The words “male” and “female” should be phased out in science because they reinforce ideas that sex is binary, scientists have suggested.

    Researchers studying ecology and evolutionary biology should be encouraged to use terms such as “sperm-producing” or “egg producing” or “XY/XX individual” to avoid “emphasising hetero-normative views”, experts say.

    Other words and terms deemed problematic include man, woman, mother, father, primitive, advanced, alien, invasive, exotic, non-native and race.

    The terms were gathered as part of the EEB (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Language Project, founded by a collaboration of scientists in the US and Canada who claim some terminology is not inclusive, and could be harmful.

    Even one of the most famous scientific concepts of all time, Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” should no longer be used because it discriminates against people with disabilities and is linked to eugenics, they advise.

    These ‘experts’ have too much time on their hands.

      2. Professor of Intersectional Idiocy, funded by the Gates Foundation. (I was going to say Advanced but I note that’s on the banned word list. Idiocy doesn’t seem to be though.)

    3. They are not experts. They are activists. Sex is binary. A man can pretend he’s a woman, but it doesn’t change reality.

  83. Time for me to go. A day of two halves. This morning fog and decidely cold. Afternoon sunny and mild (22º in greenhouse).

    Must open a bottle of Morrisons excellent and inexpensive wine….(that’s for Sig!!)

    Have a jolly evening

    A demain.

      1. It is far too early for crocuses over here. Our snowdrops and winter aconites are only just starting to open.

        1. It’s been quite mild here this month, January was fairly chilly but this month we’ve had warm sunny days and a bit of overnight frost. It’s been so dry I had to water my hanging baskets today – pansies were all hanging over the sides.

      2. Other than one small clump of half a dozen flowers, our crocuses (croci??) are still coming up.
        is it the stamens of the crocus that are used for saffron?

    1. Just a thought. The world as we know is estimated to be about 4 billion years old and matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore everything has been through everything in that time and will continue to do so.

  85. As a BT customer who wanted to upgrade my iPhone I tried to take advantage of their offer of a “good deal” with EE. I duly filled in a very long and intrusive online form, including telling them how long I had lived here an d when I joined my current bank. In reply they asked me to call them – over 35 minutes later, having repeated most of what I told them online 3 separate times they told me that their system had declined my address check as it seemingly wasn’t the same as the bank details? This is absurd – I have lived here for years!! If that’s an example of EE efficiency then I’m happy to go to another supplier!! I’ve mailed the CEO to tell him how unimpressed I am!

    Meanwhile we await a delivery from the increasingly unreliable DPD – due between 1600 and 1700. Using the tracker we could see he was within 2 miles of us, near Tansley, in the right timescale. Since then he has been heading in the wrong direction and was last spotted in Stoke on Trent which is 54 miles away!

    2. My wife took advantage of BT friends and family rates – but never got them. She hates EE with a vengeance.

      2. I hate BT with a passion, and will never use them again. That said, they own Plusnet, which I was verry happy with for many years. I terminated my Plusnet contract early in 2020, and moved to 4G internet with Vodafone,

        Late 2020, I moved. No Vodafone signal, so back to broadand..0 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000which was cheaper and faster.

    3. My wife took advantage of BT friends and family rates – but never got them. She hates EE with a vengeance.

    4. Buy a cheap phone sim free. They all do the same stuff. Lebara (Vodaphone network) do great sim deals. DPD had a parcel of mine, out for delivery. Next update was, returned to depot due no time to deliver. It eventually was returned to us! Shocking..

      1. We got SIM only deal from Lebara via Money Saving Expert. We have 3 Gb Data, unlimited calls and texts and pay 5p a month for 1st 6 months and then something like £6.95 for next 6 months works out a £4.27 per month over the year. 30 day rolling contract. Kept our previous number, transferred on the same day. Very good customer service, real people that you do not have to hang in for 45 minutes to be answered.

  86. Bugger. Vacuum not fixable. Cable retract mechanism is broken. Deal on similar models locally, so we’ll get a new one. Pity, the old one has done about 23 years good service… 🙁

    2. Make your cleaner work for the next two years for free. Don’t forget to whip her with the cable !

      1. This would have been fine if the cleaner hadn’t hauled the cable out so hard she broke the retract and tore the cable off it’s connections.

        1. I’m reminded of a day in the late 70’s / early 80’s. I was based on a new Littlewoods Store site in Dumfries. On the way home, the General Foreman unfortunately hit a deer. Did quite a lot of damage to the site van. Killed the deer.

          A few minutes later, the Site Manager, very much of Cumbrian farming stock, arrived on the scene. Within an hour, the unfortunate animal was butchered, and in his freezer. The van took rather longer to fix…

    2. Talking to a local prison officrr at the weekend, they have a prisoner who insists on being treated as cat.

      Lucky its not me in charge or it would be tins of cheap cat food, a litter box and I would use a nice wire brush to comb their hair.

      1. Hello Alec,
        Poppie is doing fine, she’s eating well (this has been a problem, like everyone who as a health problem she has a requirement to be tempted!) and wants to walk much further than she did – before Christmas she would walk only as far as the village pump, about 250 yds, at a plod. But now its “come on! I want to go down to the pond!” – about a mile there and back – or “I’m not budging an inch unless we go through the wood!” (about the same distance as the pond) and she lollops and bobs alongside us. Unfortunately, however, the lymphoma in her neck gland is increasing in size so we don’t really know how long she’s got, the vet says these can get quite chunky. Her heart condition and treatment precludes any treatment for the lymphoma. If it were just the heart problem she is doing so well on her medication she could have had another couple of years. I am grateful for the extra months we have been given as it has enabled us to come to terms with things to some extent and take those photographs one always says one will take but during the course of daily events one forgets to take them. xx https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fe9ba558e1c20e590007a9c32eb64389bb55f176cea266fe0037c44149ef6e7b.jpg

        1. That sounds great Poppie and an improvement in her health from before Xmas, here’s hoping it continues. xx

    3. Let us not forget that Bojo was a true believer in the ‘Russian Collusion’ that hounded D Trump whilst in office

  90. Very much as we might be mourning of the passing of the interrnal combustion engine (ICE) the Government’s drive to Net Zero with Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) supposedly forming the vanguard with zero emissions has led Ford to announce thousands of redundancies at its Dagenham plant:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/beginning-end-ford-europe/

    This was unforeseen by the Government which failed to recognise that the success of ICE vehicles was due to being able to churn out small cheap passennger cars in volume.

    All we can look forward to now in Europe are expensive American BEV cars like the Ford Mustang Mach E that can outpace a Tesla with a 0 to 60 mph of under four seconds.

    https://www.caranddriver.com/ford/mustang-mach-e

        1. I wonder if there would even be any more interest if the MPs’ own daughters were raped? These odious people don’t giver a damn about anything other than themselves.

    2. Wonder if anyone can help (i may have to post tomorrow).

      I thought i’d send my
      MP, the fragrant horse, an email to see if she was at Monday’s HoC thing where this happened. But all i got was that the HoC is in recess and there was no business on the day. Sadly the screenshot i took to this avail is too big to upload ah but i can provide a link:

      https://whatson.parliament.uk/commons/2023-02-13/

      Anyone cleverer than me who can get to the bottom of this?

  93. Straight from the horse’s mouth ass:

    “Edward Snowden called it (and so did we)… just a day ago, as we reported: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says the hysteria over UFOs being shot down over America and Canada is a distraction from Seymour Hersh’s story about the U.S. being responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.

    Less than 24 hours later, on Tuesday, Bloomberg reports that “The US government has assessed that three unidentified objects downed since last Friday were likely for commercial use and not foreign intelligence gathering.”

    1. And Most cyclists should be presented with the no bell prize. 🔕

      An audible warning device as the copper mentioned to me and my mates out side the chip shop in Hendon when we were 12 years old.
      It seems it still hasn’t caught on.

  96. Anybody do Wordle today?

    Birdie for me.
    Wordle 605 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
    🟩⬜🟨🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Yes! Par 4 today.

      Wordle 605 4/6

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

      1. A Double Bogey – but could have been worse!

        Wordle 605 5/6
        ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
        ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
        ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
        ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  97. More than 2,300 migrants have crossed the Channel by small boat so far this year with 1,000 reaching the UK in the first two weeks of February alone amid calm weather
    2,313 migrants have crossed English Channel on just 52 small boats this year
    More than 1,000 arrived in February alone as 105 arrived on 2 boats yesterday

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11750377/Over-2-300-migrants-crossed-English-Channel-small-boat-year-1-000-reach-UK-February.html

    1. Meanwhile a few hundred Ford workers lose their jobs. Will they get free clothing food and lodgings ?
      No of course not.
      These politicians we are forced to endure are insane.

          1. Race replacement. The average IQ of the incomers is much lower than the indigenous. An easily managed population is what they want.

    2. They haven’t crossed. They’ve been picked up by a compliant, vicious, spiteful Home Office determined to spit in the face of the reason people voted for Brexit. It is deliberate, malicious and utterly intentional.

      Same as inflation as policy, as crippling taxes, as net zero, as the Left wing green twaddle, of th refusal to leave the ECHR, of farming subsidy policy, of the refusal to build reservoirs, to dredge rivers, to banning boilers and forcing electric cars to do absolutely anything they can do to remain chained and damage the nation, economy and people solely for their demented, desperate, ferverish assault on democracy.

      They hate us, and worse, they’re getting away with it.

    3. They haven’t crossed. They’ve been picked up by a compliant, vicious, spiteful Home Office determined to spit in the face of the reason people voted for Brexit. It is deliberate, malicious and utterly intentional.

      Same as inflation as policy, as crippling taxes, as net zero, as the Left wing green twaddle, of th refusal to leave the ECHR, of farming subsidy policy, of the refusal to build reservoirs, to dredge rivers, to banning boilers and forcing electric cars to do absolutely anything they can do to remain chained and damage the nation, economy and people solely for their demented, desperate, ferverish assault on democracy.

      They hate us, and worse, they’re getting away with it.

  98. The European Commission is being sued over its refusal to release text messages between its president and the boss of Pfizer, which manufactured a coronavirus vaccine.

    Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla exchanged the personal messages, which the commission suggests may have been deleted, at the height of the pandemic.

    Lawyers for the New York Times will argue in the EU’s top court that the failure to disclose the smartphone communications, dubbed “Deletegate”, breaks European transparency laws.

    Quelle sur feckin’ prise. They were probably a discussion on how much of a kick back she’d get, what they could skim off the top. Of course, nothing will happen. It never does. It certainly won’t be publicised in the main stream press.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/02/14/ursula-von-der-leyen-sued-new-york-times-refusal-disclose-pfizer/

    1. BS if they were sending text messages they will be stored on the network.
      If third party software was involved, then how is that allowed?
      In any case, I bet their own spooks record everything on her phone.

  99. The European Commission is being sued over its refusal to release text messages between its president and the boss of Pfizer, which manufactured a coronavirus vaccine.

    Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla exchanged the personal messages, which the commission suggests may have been deleted, at the height of the pandemic.

    Lawyers for the New York Times will argue in the EU’s top court that the failure to disclose the smartphone communications, dubbed “Deletegate”, breaks European transparency laws.

    Quelle sur feckin’ prise. They were probably a discussion on how much of a kick back she’d get, what they could skim off the top. Of course, nothing will happen. It never does. It certainly won’t be publicised in the main stream press.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/02/14/ursula-von-der-leyen-sued-new-york-times-refusal-disclose-pfizer/

  101. The lamb etc was very nice and my husband cleared his plate. Enough left, after I get some spuds tomorrow, to make Hotpot for dinner tomorrow- yum.
    A very sunny day after the mist cleared and I actually got some jobs done.
    I am going to have to hide my Valentine toffees….

    1. Wiki has details. I CBA at this time of night to read in detail. Brougham Castle is in Cumbria, near Penrith. My Grandmother was ‘in service’ there in her early years.

  107. Wales v England in doubt after Warren Gatland’s players consider strike action
    Wales players reportedly using anti-depressants, have missed mortgage repayments and are considering taking strike action mid-tournament
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2023/02/14/england-v-wales-doubt-warren-gatlands-players-consider-strike/

    BTL

    I told you! Didn’t I tell you? You must remember I told you that when Rugby Union went professional that it would lead to the end.

  109. Goodnight, am a sleepy head now.
    Been a pretty good day.
    Good luck and best wishes to Datz and his family and also to Eddy.
    KBO all of us.

  110. Goodnight and God bless, Gentlefolk. Does anyone know a gentle dating site where I might meet an older lady in the Scottish Borders?

Comments are closed.