Tuesday 15 November: Decades of failure to grasp the problem of bureaucracy in the NHS

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.

715 thoughts on “Tuesday 15 November: Decades of failure to grasp the problem of bureaucracy in the NHS”

  2. Good morning, everyone. First! Oops! I think ogga1 beat me to it by a microsecond. If I hadn’t written “First!” I might not have turned out to be Second. Lol.

        1. Today (for a change) was a very happy day. I decided to treat myself to a meal out at a favourite Indian restaurant this evening. When I asked for the bill, the waiter told me that a couple on a nearby table (who had already left the restaurant) had decided to pay my bill for me. Why this had happened I have no idea. I left a generous tip for the staff.

          1. How lovely that there are people like that around. It may simply have been their random act of kindness for that day.

  4. Good morrow, Gentle NoTTLfolk, today’s funny with a hint of menace from our ever-loving Government.
    Good-bye

    To help save the economy, the Government will announce next month that Border Force will start deporting seniors (instead of illegals) in order to lower Social Security, NHS and Pension costs.

    Older people are easier to catch and will not remember how to get back home.

    I started to cry when I thought of you. Then it dawned on me … oh, crap…
    I’ll see you on the bus!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/290825f3674cbd405f9c7390bf91324af4a37f20f9a5247b4af930ef494c84a2.jpg

    3. ‘Morning, Nanners. Rather than go to the trouble and expense surely it is cheaper for the NHS to deprive seniors of any treatment? Nearly there now…

    4. Maybe that could be a good idea – old people should emigrate to Albania as there are plenty of vacant homes for them to occupy and the weather is far warmer than in the UK.. Added to this their pensions would go further as the cost of living in Albania is far lower.

    2. Two happy looking bunnies?

      Why are more people dying in Australia?

      The official source, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), puts it at 16.6% more deaths than expected over the course of 2022 so far, with its figures going until the end of May.

      It’s true, lack of water kills. Get building those water retaining walls!

    3. Reminds me of the idiots that stopped paying farmers a small amount to keep a snowplough and plough their local roads, as the UK “would never see snow again”. I was snarled up in the result one visit to the UK, not helped by no winter tyres.
      Where do all these idiots come from?

      1. UK roads are impassible with the smallest amount of snow, because they just don’t bother to do any clearing. That’s going to change in ten or fifteen years or so when the Maunder minimum kicks in.

    4. What an appallingly ugly pair – the gurning idiot on the left is the one with seriously fascist tendencies, if I remember correctly?

    5. Reminds me of old Cleggers 10 years ago saying there was no point building power stations as they wouldn’t be ready till oooh 2022…

    1. Morning, bb2.
      I assume no cause of death has been given; or will ever be given.
      Was he already ill or, as would appear from the photo, perfectly fit?

      1. A comment below the tweet said he died of pneumonia. Don’t know if covid related or not. But surely in 2022, there is no need for four year olds to die of pneumonia?

        1. WHO webpage:
          “Pneumonia is the single largest infectious cause of death in children
          worldwide. Pneumonia killed 740180 children under the age of 5 in 2019,
          accounting for 14% of all deaths of children under 5 years old but 22%
          of all deaths in children aged 1 to 5 years. Pneumonia affects children
          and families everywhere, but deaths are highest in southern Asia and
          sub-Saharan Africa. Children can be protected from pneumonia, it can be
          prevented with simple interventions, and it can be treated with
          low-cost, low-tech medication and care.”
          https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/pneumonia

    3. I thought I was having a bad day – caught SWMBOs turbocharged cold yesterday and feel bad.
      Nothing like this poor wee lad’s parents and siblings. I will be better in a day or two, they will never be better.

      1. It is a corker. Several of my friends and rellies have caught it.
        I am getting over it and I suspect it’s what went to MB’s chest and landed him in horsepiddle.

        1. Came on quickly, so it’ll go quickly.
          Ate our entire stock of Vit C & Colostrum pills, and that knocked it down last night. Now it’s just to get over the after-effects.

    4. Steady. The child tragically died of pneumonia, which was not diagnosed in time. Spring / summer in Argentina. Santino Godoy participated in an advertising campaign for the MMR vaccine.

      NHS website: Pneumonia can be difficult to diagnose because it shares many symptoms with other conditions, such as the common cold, bronchitis and asthma.
      …
      A doctor may also take your temperature and listen to your chest and back with a stethoscope to check for any crackling or rattling sounds.
      They may also listen to your chest by tapping it. Lungs filled with fluid produce a different sound from normal healthy lungs.”

      As I understand it (and I know nothing) the danger of pneumonia is that it is may progress very fast, because the germs multiply geometrically, ie power of 2, and the lungs fill.

      1. It’s known that one is more likely to catch all sorts of infections while the spike protein is doing its stuff in the body though.
        But it may have just been a very, very unlucky coincidence.

    5. Steady. The child tragically died of pneumonia, which was not diagnosed in time. Spring / summer in Argentina. Santino Godoy participated in an advertising campaign for the MMR vaccine.

      NHS website: Pneumonia can be difficult to diagnose because it shares many symptoms with other conditions, such as the common cold, bronchitis and asthma.
      …
      A doctor may also take your temperature and listen to your chest and back with a stethoscope to check for any crackling or rattling sounds.
      They may also listen to your chest by tapping it. Lungs filled with fluid produce a different sound from normal healthy lungs.”

      As I understand it (and I know nothing) the danger of pneumonia is that it is may progress very fast, because the germs multiply geometrically, ie power of 2, and the lungs fill.

    1. As far as I am aware there were no mobile phones in 1919. Very few people had a phone in their house. A strange cartoon.

      1. Prescient I would say.
        Many people would have memories of the field telephones used in WW1 and their regular ting ting, demanding to be answered.

        It is a logical leap of the imagination.

  8. England pin colours to LGBT mast as they head to Qatar. 15 November 2022.

    England’s World Cup squad fly out on a plane called “Rain Bow” on Tuesday as competing countries and high-profile brands intensify protest gestures against Qatar’s anti-LGBT laws.

    The Virgin Atlantic-owned Airbus is also decorated with a cartoon figure in rainbow-themed trainers and has a registration number GV-PRD, an abbreviation of “Pride”. While the Football Association did not commission it, the team is understood to be happy with the gesture for its chartered squad flight.

    The stunt came to light as England players joined up for the tournament and also posed in front of rainbow-styled swooshes from kit sponsor Nike. Gareth Southgate’s side, who will wear rainbow ‘OneLove’ armbands regardless of Fifa permission, are among a host of nations now explicitly promoting diversity.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    James Melody..

    I won’t be watching them play. I’ve no interest in the pathetic virtue signalling from these overpaid twerps.
    I’m also sick of the year round rainbows.

    Amen to that Brother.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-cup/2022/11/14/world-cup-2022-england-pin-colours-lgbt-mast-head-qatar/

    1. Same reason I won’t watch Rugby Union.

      Too much kneeling and rainbows for MINORITY groups who we just used to live and let live. Now it’s all IN YER FACE!

      1. It’s one of the reasons why I am less enamoured with movies these days (IN YER FACE). After ten years organising weekly visits to our local cinema I shall be stepping down at the end of the year after organising and watching over 500 films for the wrinklies. If no-one volunteers to take over the reins by the end of the year, the u3a Film Club will cease to exist.

    1. I’ve a lot of time for Suella B.
      She think she would be a good Prime Minister; which is why the CINOs kiboshed her early on in the leadership contest.
      Currently, she has a Cabinet of poltroons surrounding her.

      2. Morning, Anne. Continued good wishes for MB and you.

        Poltroon, a word that rolls off the tongue and describes so many of the inhabitants of the HoP. Sadly, many in the Cabinet are way past that description but are sustained in their positions by the remaining members of that debased group.

      3. Yes, I think Swellin’ has got what it takes, but our media are hungry for another scalp.

        ‘Moaning, Annie.

    2. Caught on radio: British Border Force vessels and French Navy ships heard colluding in Channel to provide ‘handover’ of traffickers’ boats that are bringing migrants to the UK
      The Mail can reveal extraordinary level of co-operation between two nations in ‘pass the parcel’ operations
      French warships and France ‘s maritime police could be heard contacting Border Force vessels on Sunday
      Conversation suggests French Navy is guiding migrant boats from French coast to mid-Channel meet-ups
      Comes as Suella Braverman met French counterparts to agree deal she hopes will stop Channel crossings

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11427263/EXCLUSIVE-Caught-radio-British-Border-Force-vessels-French-Navy-ships-collude-Channel.html

      1. Demand the return not only of the 63 Million but all the rest that the frogs have trousered and done nothing.

      2. Farage was on to this months ago, having filmed Border Farce in the act. Still, it won’t do any harm if the Fail has finally caught up with this scandal.

        ‘Morning, sos.

  12. Good morning all.
    A wet & miserable start to the day, still dark outside with 5°C and heavy rain.

  13. 367807+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    A health & safety warning repeated,

    ogga1
    9 hours ago
    367751+ up ticks,

    Musing on Christmas gifts and since it is now illegal to buy granny / granddad matching 12 bore shotguns why not a nice spray say one with a peppery/ spicy scent keep them in various rooms & even the garden area
    keep a couple of small cans of spray paint one of white to touch up black fascias & a black one to touch up white fascias.

    The political overseers are trying their upmost to eliminate you leaving you no option but to be your own safety man also protectors of your nearest & dearest ( plus peoples that owe you money)

    New rules can be adhered to , personal choice, two metre personal space

    if entered by a politico, take that as an act of aggression, wear a mask only to fool ID parades or maybe a mini skirted burka to upset & confuse the enemas.

  14. West seeking to convince G20 that Russia’s war in Ukraine is responsible for global economic suffering. 15 November 2022.

    US officials are confident that ‘G20 will make clear that Russia’s war is wreaking havoc for people everywhere’

    US officials were confident that the gathering would condemn Russia’s war of aggression in the strongest possible terms. “The G20 will make clear that Russia’s war is wreaking havoc for people everywhere and for the global economy as a whole,” the official said. Most G20 nations agreed the war in Ukraine was “the root of the economic suffering and instability that we see in many parts of the world”, the official added.

    They have to blame Russia since the alternative is to accept responsibility for their own criminal incompetence. The War is bad enough but the West with its Illegal Sanctions on top of the self-inflicted Covid Catastrophe has made it ten times worse!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/15/g20-russia-ukraine-war-global-economic-suffering

      1. Nobody saw that one coming, Tom.
        Piss of Vlad, and he stops supplying gas. Gosh! Who’d a thunk it? And Germany reliant on a country that, until recently, was their enemy pretty exclusively for gas… words fail me.

    2. They may have a nasty surprise. The BRICS countries may disagree – and they would be right. It’s the fault of the Western countries.

    1. Pity we don’t suddenly get hurricanes and tornadoes mid-channel, and we have loads of boat people capsized and drowned.

      Can we not call these up to order?

      1. RAF has a few Tornadoes, but I believe just a couple of Hurricanes that are a bit past strafing these days.

    2. Cotton-wool in your ears for the gales, and place YOH and the dogs in a kennel!

      Sorted!👍🏻😘

    3. It’s bucketing down here, but little wind so far as I can tell.
      That might change as I’ve just had a crispbread with pate and sauerkraut as part of my breakfast!

    4. ‘Morning, Belle. Our pup slept right through for the second night running, and no accidents either. Her humans were not quite so lucky, but that isn’t unusual.

    5. Gales and rain rocked the caravan here, too, but appear to have subsided. Thank goodness – I am (fingers crossed) on the move again today.

    1. No chance of reply:

      I’m trying to publish this world-wide. Please feel free to copy and paste, wherever you like and feel it may have a chance for a change in thinking.

      Climate Change and You

      The climate ‘science’ is wrong. CO2 being 0.04% of the atmosphere is a cause for good, as it is essential for plant life.

      The atmosphere is 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen. The remaining 1% are various trace elements of which CO2 is but a small part.

      The greatest cause of any change in the Earth’s climate, is due to the cyclical nature of the Sun’s phases, which may lead to vast differences between ice ages and continual heatwaves.

    2. Dimming Earth? The nutters have been advocating the release of reflective dust in the atmosphere so as to cool the Earth and now they’re blaming a natural phenomenon for doing just that. The nutters’ potential for meddling in the natural world is a calamity waiting to happen. Their hubris is off the scale and they are a menace to mankind.

  17. Rural crime

    SIR – Some years ago we had a steel roadside gate stolen from our
    farm. I reported this to the police, not because I expected them to
    investigate (report, November 8), but because I thought it might prove useful information if there were a spate of thefts from farms.

    I received a reply from Cumbria Constabulary offering me counselling.

    Oliver Barratt
    Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria

    Mind how you go…

    1. Hi Phizzee.
      The ‘counselling’ is a wheeze to offer part time employment to semi-retired public sector staff. I expect each county Constabulary has a budget and an office and a few diversity managers dedicated to explaining why they will listen to victims of property crime but generally do SFA.

  18. Decades of failure to grasp the problem of bureaucracy in the NHS

    It’s only a failure if someone tries and fails, has anyone tried?

  19. 367807+ up ticks,

    Face facts, post Thatcher we was, as a nation openly royally screwed by the political overseers and supporting cast of fools believing that the party
    first before Country was the way to go.

    The time now has surely arrived that politico / pharme incarcerations trials
    must be considered.& seriously taken up, NOT for the good of the party
    but for the health & safety of the family.

    Tuesday 15 November: Decades of failure to grasp the problem of bureaucracy in the NHS

    Tuesday 15 November: Decades of failure to grasp the problem of political treachery in the Country.

    You cannot continue to support & vote in shite and expect a rosy future,

  21. “SIR – I suppose we should welcome the deal made between Britain and France to contain illegal Channel crossings (report, November 14), but what exactly will we get for our £63 million?
    These figures are never broken down and British taxpayers almost certainly won’t get any value for money. We clearly haven’t for our previous payments, given the huge increase in crossings since 2019.
    Alasdair Ogilvy
    Stedham, West Sussex”

    Danegeld, Mr Ogilvy.

    Stedham is a mere 100 km from Burwash, so his ignorance is baffling.

    2. Of the planet’s population increase since “Feed the World”, I would guess 90%+ is African and Asian, yet of course the real problem is the white people/advanced economies, because they are the ones pouring trillions in aid into the developing world, allowing them to breed out of all control.

  23. Morning all, the weather is wet and miserable in Norf Zummerzet, much like the political outlook I suspect.
    13Deg outside, tropical.

  24. ‘Morning, Peeps.  Mild and blustery here.

    What a man, and what a life.  His guardian Angel must have been on overtime:

    Jack Swaab, Royal Artillery officer who survived numerous brushes with death and was awarded an MC for his service in Africa and Europe – obituary

    ‘As the fragments whizzed only inches overhead, hope fading, I thought: “This one is it, this time it will hit me”’

    ByTelegraph Obituaries14 November 2022 • 1:47pm

    Jack Swaab, who has died aged 104, had almost miraculous escapes from death or serious injury in the Second World War; a gunner officer, he was awarded an MC and subsequently had a successful career in the advertising industry.

    Swaab embarked for the Middle East as part of a draft of reinforcements, and in December 1942 he was posted to 127 Field Regiment Royal Artillery, part of the 51st Highland Division. In a transit camp near Alexandria in Egypt, the nights were bitterly cold with a heavy dew. For some weeks, he had no tent and had to sleep in a trench under a tarpaulin which quickly became soaked. Boots had to be shaken before they were put on because scorpions liked to nest in them.

    He took part in the long pursuit westwards to Tripoli and Tunis, the Battle of the Mareth Line, and the hard fighting in the hills around Enfidaville. On one occasion, he was held up for a few moments by the need to mend a broken cable. The soldier walking a few yards ahead of him stepped on a mine and was badly injured. On another, a large shell splinter hit his helmet. He was knocked out but otherwise unhurt.

    In July 1943, Swaab was promoted to Command Post Officer, co-ordinator of the eight 25-pounder field guns in his battery, for the allied landings in Sicily. It was a rough crossing followed by more than a month of heavy fighting. One day, he was clearing civilian looters from a house when one of them “went up on a booby trap.” Another moment, Swaab commented, “and I might have gone up too”.

    He kept a diary – which was strictly against regulations – and wrote it up every day. One entry reads: “I was with the Padre when he pattered out a few perfunctory words over the small grave with its wooden cross. The hot sun beat down, a breeze from the sea carried the thump of guns and shells to our ears and the droning of the Lord’s Prayer mingled with the stern voice of the Spitfires overhead. All around is the desolation of empty gun pits, burned trucks, paper flapping in the wind and the black scars on the hillside where the shells have fallen.”

    Swaab’s regiment returned to England in November to train for the Normandy landings and, on June 8 1944, D+2, he landed on Sword Beach. A week later, he took over the command post. There was a comfortable barn to sleep in, but he had a premonition and, to the irritation of his men, insisted that they move out and bunk down in a large hole which he had ordered to be dug by a bulldozer.

    That night, there was a big enemy bombing raid. The barn received a direct hit and collapsed. Had he and his men been inside they would all have been killed. A few days later, he was seriously ill with a bad dose of malaria which he had probably contracted in Sicily.

    He was flown back to England but, having recovered, he rejoined his unit in August in time for the break-out from Normandy. The following month, he became his battery’s Forward Observation Officer (FOO). The need to select observation posts (OPs) like church spires or tall buildings, which became prime targets for enemy aircraft or artillery, made it a most hazardous task.

    In November, near Heythuysen in the Netherlands, on the River Maas battle-front, Swaab was FOO for a night assault across a canal. In the artificial moonlight, in cold, drenching rain, he walked ahead of his carrier while a flail tank beat the track in front of him. In the first hour about 100 shells came in, most of them close, one only seven yards from his carrier.

    Trees were sawn in half by the vicious, slashing splinters, and pieces of hot steel tinkled down, mingling with the rain. The faces of the dead took on a waxen appearance in the eerie light. The stretcher bearers plodded back with the wounded through the mud.

    At the canal bank, both the tank and the carrier became bogged down. As a half-track struggled to pull them out, the men were caught in a barrage of some 50 shells, so close that they threw themselves flat on the ground. “Our bodies strained to press lower,” he wrote, “as the fragments whizzed only inches overhead … nerves shrinking … hope fading …several times in those few minutes I thought: ‘This one is it, this time it will hit me.’ ”

    In ruined and deserted villages, sparrows hopped about in rooms deep in bricks, mortar and smashed furniture. Many of the houses concealed booby traps and deadly Schü-mines.

    On leave in Antwerp, Swaab was out of his hotel when it was hit by a V-1 rocket and his bedroom was showered with broken glass. He planned to go to the cinema but got the time wrong and went shopping around the corner instead. There was a loud explosion and the shop windows collapsed. The cinema had been hit by a V-2 and there were hundreds of casualties.

    After the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes, in February 1945 he took part in Operation Veritable, the Battle of the Reichswald, one of the most violent campaigns in the war. He was wounded in the leg at Gennep, south-east of Nijmegen, but was back with his battery in time to take part in the forced crossing of the Rhine.

    In the final phase of the war, danger came in many guises. In one town, arsenic had been put in the water supply. Sometimes, seemingly friendly civilians offered soldiers a cigarette and a light. The lighter had a poisonous pellet beneath the wick. Whoever took it could be dead within the hour.

    The award to Swaab of a Military Cross was gazetted in January 1946; the citation paid tribute to his outstanding service in every battle from the Rhine crossing to the end of the war in Europe. It stated that he never hesitated to occupy isolated and exposed OPs in order to support the infantry, and that his skill and courage had enabled the 5th Battalion The Black Watch to gain their objectives against highly trained and tenacious opposition.

    Jack Siegfried Swaab, the youngest of four children, was born in Bognor (before it became Bognor Regis), West Sussex, on March 15 1918. His father, Samuel, was of Dutch-Jewish descent. Aged 15, Samuel went to South Africa to work on the railways. Expelled by the British during the Boer War, he married in the Netherlands.

    He and his wife went to England and were naturalised as British citizens around the turn of the 20th century. Young Jack was sent to boarding school at Weymouth College in Dorset. There were cold baths every morning, and in the Easter term these were often topped by a thin layer of ice. Jack went up to Keble College, Oxford – where he and the college porter quickly took a dislike to each other.

    On Guy Fawkes Night, Swaab recruited a band of fellow rebels and, on the stroke of nine o’clock, they launched a fusillade of rockets at the porter’s lodge. The man came close to a nervous breakdown.

    Swaab did very little work: a whole term’s reading for his exams was crammed into one Benzedrine-fuelled night and he was rusticated and subsequently sent down.
    In 1938, he was taken on by the magazine, Cavalcade, which had offices just off Fleet Street. He was paid a guinea a week for reviewing films and writing sensational articles. The money went a long way at a time when lunch at Lyons Corner House might cost as little as nine old pence.

    The magazine broke the story of the clandestine affair between the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson, which gave it a boost to circulation. After taking a course in journalism at King’s College London, Swaab became a reporter for a short time before returning to Cavalcade.

    In December 1939, after the outbreak of the Second World War, he enlisted in the Royal Artillery. At Oxford, he had joined the OTC, but to his chagrin he discovered that he would not receive an immediate commission but would serve with the “other ranks” in a training regiment.

    At Dover, in the frosty early morning, amid high snowdrifts and under the eye of a ferocious ex-Indian Army NCO, Swaab and his fellow recruits did PT in their shorts and, equipped with elderly Lee-Enfield rifles, learnt the rudiments of gun drill and ballistics.

    At church parades, the sergeant-major bellowed, “RCs, Parsees, Push Baptists and Sun Worshippers, one pace forward, march!” Swaab refused to be categorised and had his identity disc stamped “AGN”, for agnostic. The penalty for missing church parade was cleaning the latrines, and he became an efficient cleaner.

    Selected for officer training, he was commissioned in 1941 and posted to 132 Field Regiment RA in Dorset. The battery clerk there, Harry Secombe, was a pale, bespectacled young Welshman with a precocious talent for mimicry.

    After the end of the war in Europe, Swaab spent a year in Germany as part of the Army of Occupation; he was the last adjutant of his regiment before it was disbanded. He was demobilised in May 1946 and joined an advertising agency in London. As manager of the overseas department, he travelled extensively.
    In 1958, he became general manager of CPV International, part of Colman, Prentis and Varley, another advertising agency, and within two years he was appointed director and, later, joint managing director. He worked for British American Tobacco from 1968 to 1979 and then in a bookshop in Esher, Surrey, for eight years. His final job, in his seventies, was as a racing tipster for an early on-line betting service where he rejoiced in the name of Professor Pink.

    For many years he devoted himself to caring for his wife, Zena, who died in 2009. In 2019, he was appointed to the Légion d’honneur in recognition of the part that he played in the liberation of France.

    Swaab enjoyed playing bridge and betting on the horses. He was also widely read and a fluent and entertaining speaker. He delighted in church music and his favourite hymns but found it difficult to accept much of the teachings of Christianity. He felt that organised religion had been responsible for many of the conflicts that afflicted the human race.

    He published an autobiography, Slouching in the Undergrowth (2012), and Field of Fire (2005), his wartime diary. A distinguished military historian wrote that the diary was one of the great personal narratives of the experience of war to come out of the British Army in the years 1939 to 1945.

    Jack Swaab married, in 1948, Zena Urquhart, at the Church of St Simon Zelotes, Chelsea, and he is survived by their two sons.

    Jack Swaab, born March 15 1918, died October 29 2022 https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1725c77c6223f16f64329613a88b6cb2eddf8b2456a0633984bb5297f557f4b2.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f163f3cf6c789535fc991a868fbfad71e1c5abed6b7a30f1235e0f3aeda2d168.jpg

    1. “Columnist Owen Jones has been accused of bullying…”

      What? And there is no one at that paper —male, female or other (like him) — who has the sufficient gonads to knock his lights out?

      3. Someone did punch him once outside a pub. He whinged that he had been queerbashed. I don’t think his being a homo was the issue. I think a great many people would like to punch the little shit for many different reasons.

        1. I question whether anyone hit him, but suggest he just fell over. His ‘Jussie Smollett’ moment, there’s not an original thought in his mind.

        2. If that had been me I would have said to him:

          “No. I haven’t ‘queerbashed’ you; I ‘c*ntbashed’ you! The fact that you are a queer means nothing to me. The fact that you are a c*nt give me an open licence to twat you!”

      1. They are funded by the Gates foundation and Open Borders too, iirc. They won’t be dying any time soon!

        1. With a circulation of the print paper less than 100,000 they are a paid mouth piece of Lefty socialism.

          2. Free of charge? No, no, no, the BBC will have paid double or more for each copy – it’s only licence/taxpayer’s money, and it’s going to their friend’s accounts.

      2. Have you ever seen Owen Jones on Vine ?
        He’s one of most arrogant repulsive people who enjoys winding people up, that ever appears on TV. And he’s not alone, Vine himself seems to be a nasty piece of work. As are the majority of his lefty guests.

          1. That’s not his age – it’s his level of maturity. Spoiled Brat, deserves a good beating.

    4. One of the most remarkable thing in that article is that another woman has married Adrian Childs.

      1. I once went in the spring……..
        Lincoln is a good place to visit.
        And the castle is interesting.

        1. I used to love visiting Lincoln. The excellent shops and cafés on Steep Hill are always worth a visit; and they have a decent “German Christmas Market” in December.

      2. No matter when you go to Skeggy, it is impossible to avoid the omnipresent smell of fish-and-chips. I never liked the place but it is necessary to visit there in order to access that wonderful corner of The Wash called Gibraltar Point with it’s marvellous wildlife.

    2. Hopefully that is because they are fitting more beds into the rooms, rather than buying everything new.
      Or have they put the hotel’s furniture into storage for the duration?
      Good thing taxpayers are there to pay for all this, isn’t it….

      1. 367807+ up ticks,

        Morning BB2,
        These issues do give a person a credible reason to work “in the hand” and have no quarms about it,

        People power could rectify a great deal
        of this, but currently the power has, via the electorate, been given to the wrong people…. AGAIN.

      2. The taxpayer will have to pay for the refurbishment of these hotels if they ever become the hotels they used to be. It will be a massive bill.
        The government are creating jobs in the future that shouldn’t be necessary.

        1. Wonderful for cleaning. We bought ten litres back from yer France. Cheap as chips there. 50p a litre

          1. Cheaper than yer chips I would hope, otherwise the chips would be sprinkled on the vinegar 😋

      2. I’ve got a large container of brown malt vinegar and another of distilled malt vinegar. The brown sort has a better flavour but the clearer version is brilliant for pickling.

    3. White wine or cider vinegar, or just acetic acid from a chemical works.
      There’s no point to the stuff unless there’s some bite to it, as one gets from Sarson’s malt vinegar.

      1. I made some delicious apple sauce, yesterday, to go with some roasted pork loin (with crackling). It is impossible to obtain proper Bramley Seedlings (the best cooking apple on the planet) here. They have a pastiche cooking apple here called Belle Boskop that is quite sour but doesn’t break down the way a Bramley does.

        Undeterred I peeled, cored and sliced up my apple, added a little sugar, lots of butter, then a splash of organic apple cider vinegar. After I’d cooked it for a while, then mashed it up with a potato masher, I tasted it and it had a really deep and refreshingly sharp and zingy apple flavour. I think I may have hit upon a decent substitute for the Bramley.

        I put some thick slices of hot roast pork inside a home-baked bread cob, with some home-made sage-and-onion stuffing, some of my apple sauce, and a dash of Colman’s English. It was superb!

          1. My next-door neighbour in Norfolk had a Bramley tree. I never needed to go scrumping since every autumn he would leave two large carrier-bags full of them on my doorstep.

            The last time I visited the UK I bought some Bramley’s from a market stall and brought them back in my checked-in luggage. I had the first decent apple pie in a decade.

        2. Like your mushy peas, I also have an aversion to any form of cooked apple. Off the tree – OK – otherwise, no thank you.

  29. SIR – It’s time the Government explained the differences between a refugee, an asylum seeker, a migrant and an illegal immigrant. They aren’t interchangeable terms, as some would have you think.

    Dr Stewart Cowley
    London SW18

    Good point, Dr Cowley. And while we are on the subject we need to know who or what is funding the ‘refugee’ charities. I can’t help thinking that they are the fifth columnists in this highly damaging situation.

    1. They’ll print this, but they won’t print a letter calling for Britain to exit the UN Migration Pact!

    2. The British taxpayers are the main funders. And then everyone else who pays for their existence, in Rip-Off Britain. But obviously not those who have previously arrived here under similar circumstances during the previous 30 years. And have lived and still do live, entirely off of the British people. AKA the benefits system and the free NHS service.
      Oh …..and of course politicians, who just top up their expenses if they are ‘a bit short’.

      1. Morning Eddy – The MPs’ expenses need to be capped at well below their salary and need to be scrutinised by an independent individual. It would be interesting to see a list of what they can claim and what they can’t claim

  30. Morning all 😊
    Lesson to be learned, don’t rely on a solar powered security light. Grey days will set you back. And its chucking it down again. ☔
    Hair cut today.

  31. SIR – As Britain prepares for yet more tax rises and deep spending cuts, and a survey finds that a party led by Nigel Farage could attract a quarter of voters, one has to wonder: what is the point of the Conservative Party?

    After its 12 years in power, taxes are higher and NHS waiting lists longer, despite massive budget increases; we have more civil servants, yet service has never been shoddier; unions are more militant than they have been since Margaret Thatcher’s reforms; inflation is at its highest for generations; fuel security is at the mercy of eco-lunacy; immigration is out of control; the Union is being torn apart; and our independence remains subject to the whims of the EU.

    This is not the result of the pandemic, or war in Eastern Europe. It is the result of successive Conservative leaders failing to tackle fundamental problems in this country in a desperate attempt to appease the Left and cling to power. With its sneers at any effort to implement a growth agenda, the Conservative Party has fully embraced the social-democratic middle ground.

    Barry Gray
    Bournemouth, Dorset

    Yes, Blue Labour has far outlived its usefulness.

    1. Why is socialism described as middle ground? It’s Left wing economically and governmentally. It’s big state, high tax high waste, inefficiency and command economy. It doesn’t work. Never has never will.

  32. 367807+ up ticks,

    Facts, to be faced

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    10h
    Never before in the field of human affairs has so much wealth been accrued by so few by means of pure coincidence.

    The boys done good. Their parents must be very proud of them.
    PHOENIX BAZZA1
    @Bazza1
    ·
    10h
    YOU GETTING IT YET FOLKS WHY THE UNIPARTY STEAL YOUR ELECTIONS ??

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    11h
    And no one can complain they didn’t tell us. In the 1930s Churchill read Hitler’s book, believed him, was called a ‘war-monger’, & kept off the BBC, for talking about it. When it was to late to stop it we got WWII.

    The difference now is that the WEF, & its affiliate international financial institutions, own & control governments, politicians, & the MSM. To quote Klaus, they have “penetrated the cabinets”. And everything else that matters.

    BUT … they are telling us their evil plans in detail. Such is their arrogance & confidence. With the right political leadership breaking out the World can wake up.

    https://gettr.com/post/p1y6ty68e5b

    1. “they have “penetrated the cabinets””

      I’ve always wondered why our senior politicians have that fixed, rictus kind of permanent smile on their faces.

      1. 367807+ up ticks,

        Morning M,
        Good point, should be looked into as in
        two questions,
        what is operating within the cabinet and can the sound of a zip be heard above the clamour of parliament.

      1. Go for the next, not the skull. The tissues are, despite being a thick muscle; softer then the bone of the head.

        Folk have survived corpus callosum splitting before. You don’t get up from a hole in your neck.

    7. I have no idea how these cretins think where you stick your privates has anything to do with the axial tilt of the earth.

      Ah, but of course. The green agenda is about power and control over *people*. If you control how people think you control them.

    1. Kanye…..’I can say any anti-semitic thing i like and Addidas won’t drop me.

      Addidas dropped him and they were founded by Nazis. Even they were offended’.

      Dave is very very funny.

    1. I can never get further than the ‘leader’ on twitter as soon as I try to get any further into it it blocks me out unless I join. This wasn’t always the case.
      But I believe it’s time for action and time to instigate a charge of treason against this useless government.
      Where’s a modern day much needed Cromwell when we need one ?

      1. When the blocking screen comes up hit the space bar,the block will be replaced by a screen you can close and voila you can scroll down to see all the replies

    2. The state hasn’t lost the will – it’s will is to import ever more of these vermin. They’re just taking revenge for Brexit.

  37. £63M, just how many knives would you need to buy to equip willing Frenchmen to deflate the dinghies whilst still on the beach. The remaining £62.99M can be used to return them back where they came from and the rest reinvested towards the cost of new Nuremberg trials that is needed for our “glorious leaders”

    1. Why would the French wish to sink the dinghies?

      There was an old saying that if the Medway is the anus of England, then Kent is its toilet.

  38. A Thunk.
    As you know, I’ve been zapped by a bad cold. Yesterday was an improvement; dry throat going, coughing much reduced.
    Until … I walked into the hospital. Do you think the dry atmosphere from the air conditioning could be part of the problem?
    I am now wondering about the constant use of nebulisers; maybe opening a window and letting in some damp fresh air would help matters.

    1. Isn’t that what they used to do for croup to ease the cough of a child? Boil a kettle so that the steam humidified the air?

        1. I remember it in ‘Anne of Green Gables’. How I loved that book, I read it so many times that the pages almost disintegrated. I saw the film a few years ago, it was utterly charming and one of the few films I have seen that did justice to the book and my imagination.

      2. My mum would fill a large basin with boiling water, put in a dollop of Vick, then we had to put a towel over our head and shoulders as well as the basin, then breathe in the eucalyptus-scented steam.

        1. Aha! We had Friars Balsam in a spouted jug thing!
          Ceramic inhaler is the item I was looking for!

      3. Do children still get croup? I haven’t heard of it for years. I remember my younger son having it and that’s what the doc told me to do.

      1. Good morning Tom and all
        It’s only what we’ve been discussing on here for the past 5 years or more. They country is like acting like the proverbial turkey voting for Christmas.

        1. And, Alf, we are the turkeys waiting to be plucked and stuffed in so many ways.

          Still and all, it should foment a good revolution.

      3. TCW is not for the faint-hearted, and especially the comments. They scare me to death sometimes.

          4. Not going to read that. I’ll leave it to the censorship of my imagination. Not strong enough.

        3. Thoroughly depressing on TCW this morning. I’ve read the story of the poor disabled girl who now has many more problems caused by the vax.

          I’ve come back here for some light relief.

          1. This is where I come to when I need it, too. It feels as though I am back amongst the civilised despite (or perhaps because of) wildly differing points of view.

          2. Yes – civilised even when there are disagreements. The people here are mostly on my wavelength. I think we chased away most of the dissenters.

          3. The surgery actually rang me today (they clearly got tired of my ignoring their attempts to be ‘flu jabbed). I declined the jab but did manage to get a (telephone) appointment some time in an afternoon in December to discuss the ongoing problems I’m experiencing which should have been reviewed three years ago. Let’s hope this doctor (I’ve no idea who it will be) will be less dismissive of my concerns than the last one I managed to get a (face to face) consultation with.

      4. There are significant problems in this country and someone has to talk about them.

        We urgently need real changes to government and the power it has over this country to prevent the damage the state is doing.

  40. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with blooded axe, longbow and marmalade sandwich in handbag. A miserable, grey misty day with drizzly rain . I shall be spending much of today in a very old library looking at 16th / 17th books and manuscripts

    1. Give that axe a clean, blood erodes metal. While you’re cleaning it I’ll pinch your sandwich.

      For some reason today the great beast decided he needed a poo at 3am so bashed a huge foot in my face. He never wakes Junior up, always me. However, he did manage to wake Junior by hauling his door open.

      Then Ozzie joined us confused as to why we were standing outside in the rain.

  41. 367807 + up ticks,

    Am I the only one who believes it has come to a point where it will be cheaper and more beneficial to fund an
    uprising.

    Council tax to soar to help fund social care
    Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt prepare to let local authorities increase levy by 5pc without offering residents a referendum.

    “Without offering residence a referendum” which means it is an order via a dictatorship, yes ?

    1. Yes. And council tax never, ever goes on what the hike it for. It just gets slapped on to management salaries. They know it, we know it.

      1. “Social care” means fulfilling equality & diversity quotas, rainbow flags, and “Safeguarding” (barring anyone not ticking the right boxes and forcing them to make malicious gossip official unless they possess the right “protected characteristic”, in which case such reporting is a hate crime). Numerous agencies are created, which can name their budget and executive remuneration.

        Any money left over from the enhanced Council Tax might care for granny lying in A&E with terminal forgetfulness as the ambulances queue up outside, but don’t count on it.

        Do they care? Is that a silly question?

        1. No, and why should they? There are no consequences for failure.

          Councils are useless and incompetent. If they’re local government then those in there must be elected, not just the pointless councillors. Until we can remove them and control them we do not live in a democracy.

    2. It was Osborne who slapped all sorts of nationally-set statutory responsibilities onto the councils, whilst removing the Treasury’s responsibility to pay for them. The Council Support Grant to pay for these things was dropped from 60% to nothing by 2020, putting it all on the Council Tax. When bringing this up with my elected councillor, I was told that councillors have no control over Council spending, take it up with Whitehall. When I approached my MP for some sort of accountability, I was told to bring it up with my local councillor.

      This double-shuffle fraud makes a mockery of “no taxation without representation”. We may as well sack the lot and hand it over to the King.

      1. The council tax you pay represents approx. 25% of the council’s financial commitments.
        It barely voters the pension liabilities.
        The other 75% is pilfered from your other pocket – the one that pays all the national taxes.

        2. Where did you get the 75% figure?

          How then did George Osborne announce in 2014 that the contribution to local authority financial commitments from the Treasury would be cut from 60% of their budget to nothing by 2020? The extra amount needed for adult social care (which presumably covers housing economic migrants) and to get geriatric bed-blockers out of the hospitals, would be covered by a precept on the Council Tax, rather than by central taxation. Rishi Sunak, when Chancellor, did attempt to raise NI to cover this, but this was reversed by Kwasi Kwarteng.

      2. Yet when all that money flooded in to councils, the only things that really improved were management salaries. Going from a reasonable middle manager to 6 figures, up to a quarter of a million in some places. Those are obscene.

        Council tax is is force backed and guaranteed. With no risk or product. No advertising, no promotion work. The people spending that money are simply not worth the salaries they claim.

    1. We still don’t. Britain is the best country in the world. We created government globally., set up international trade routes and built the modern world.

      We’re bloody amazing. The Left, wasters, government and spiteful, bitter hypocrites are the ones ruining it through massive uncontrolled immigration, those who won’t integrate and hate us – the worst being the political class.

  43. UK unemployment rises to 3.6 per cent as recession looms. 15 November 2022.

    The rate of UK unemployment rose to 3.6 per cent in the three months to September, up from 3.5 per cent in the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics said.

    The unemployment rate has been fiddled since I started work sixty years ago. It is used to conceal all manner of Government failures. It was in fact one of the very first things that led me to question the entire Political Narrative.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/work-uk-unemployment-recession-rise-b2225259.html

    1. If the actual number of unemployed (and only those claiming benefits) is x and y is the number of working age people in the population, then as y grows, then even if x grows, the percentage is smaller. They don’t seem to tell us the actual numbers any more. We used to do a claimant count years ago, but they probably don’t even do that any more. Even then, the numbers were massaged by getting people onto the ‘sick’ or ‘training programmes’.

  44. Picture from the G20 summit in Indonesia. Note that the servants are covering their faces, while the masters don’t, and remember that the next time they tell you masks are about saving lives.
    Also, those who like dressing up appear to be doing so (Castreau was also photographed in a Mao jacket in another pic).
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d8e1353099b163dde276f44c8109e0c8631576ffef521b7b5ec312b5ef5d4733.jpg
    .
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/88d9a5d1487433e53d9bbba3520474d91df1d6c4b258aad69cb822365fe16cd6.jpg
    .
    The latest from the FTX collapse story…Sam Bankman-Fried’s fortune evaporated overnight from $$$$billions to a mere 995 million, over half of which was said to be his shares in the online stock trading platform RobinHood. Surprise, surprise….
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d2d78ada80ac52d38107c324424a2f8fdcdec25ad89242b21e0f51f2596be7c7.jpg
    I expect when SBF gets back from Argentina, they can ask him about it.

    2. Morning! Masking shirley originates from the early Arab slave traders. It was forced on slaves and women to dehumanise them. Used in the transatlantic trade too. Never did have anything to do with disease. Mind, I don’t think germ/contagion theory goes back very far anyway?

    4. Snappy dressers one and all. Who is the horse-faced woman on the LEFT (not the horse-faced one on the right!!)

          1. Certainly plenty of booty about. Seems like all the ladies are washing their briefs on a hot wash, resulting in shrinkage.

    2. Not one will be deported.

      Although it’s not difficult. Jam a shipping container over every entrance and force them into it. Load on a lorry, pack on a boat and send it where our other waste goes.

    2. More publicity please. Stop hiding it, shout about the rapist paedophile criminals the state is letting in in droves.

      This farce should be on the BBC, but of course, it won’t be.

  48. Gosh, the rain is really belting down now in Bournville after a few hours of steady rain. It might abate bu mid-afternoon.

    PS I wonder why they have a hosepipe ban throughout the winter in Yorkshire.

      2. It must be a prerequisite to look really weird! What a very peculiar looking bunch they are!

        2. It has actually been proven that lefties tend to be uglier than conservatives.
          Lefties say that this is because beautiful people are smug and don’t care about those less fortunate than themselves. Whereas of course the likes of Bankman-Fraud and Ellison are just one big bleeding heart for the poor.

          7. Strangely it doesn’t appear to have had much effect.

            Perhaps the in-crowd had already been informed, and had taken precautions.

            Perhaps?

          8. In the crypto world it has. Down about 30% across the board.
            I got out with a few grand more than i invested and just left

            £100 across five currencies.
            The good news is that gold has recovered. Up £30 per ounce on the week.
            The mistake people make with investments of this type is they get greedy and then they get burnt.
            I was happy with my lolly and it funded a holiday to Malta.

          10. I think my Mum would have said that it’s all the nastiness inside them! But she would also say ‘you can’t tell a sausage by its skin’! So you can take your pick….

  51. The Tories cannot blame Labour this time – we’re in this mess because of Brexit
    The public are being asked again to tighten our belts – but this is not the same public of 10 years ago who will merrily go along with it
     Suzanne Moore : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/11/15/last-time-tories-told-us-austerity-fault-blame-now/

    Yet another absurd DT journalist trying to blame Brexit for Britain’s woes.

    If Britain had had a proper Brexit and exploited the possibilities of its freedom we would certainly be in a far better position.

    But why did we not get a better Brexit? Because Remainers have done, and still do, their very best to undermine Britain and thwart its chances of success. And of course the Conservatives administration’s response to Covid with lockdowns and furlough payments coupled with the total incompetence of the Conservative administration has meant that Britain has fared as badly as most European countries apart from Sweden which has escaped most of the economic damage because it did not have any lockdowns and has also emerged as the country with the lowest Covid death rate.

    BTL

    The only argument I can see in favour of the European Economic Community (as it then was) is the one put forward by the late great Auberon Waugh: that British politicians are so spectacularly incompetent that European ones could only be better.

    Indeed the last 12 years of Conservative rule have certainly added credibility to Mr Waugh’s contention but in the final analysis the EU (as it is now called) – even before Brexit – was always vehemently anti-Britain and its politicians are so completely and venomously foul that there really is no option for Britain other than to be, and stay, well outside this monstrous organisation however useless, corrupt and futile our own politicians happen to be.

    1. I get the impression that the DT have hired the execrable Suzanne Moore as an antidote to the impeccable Allison Pearson.

      Moore is Common Purpose; Pearson is Common Sense. Not so much yin and yang; more like Ying Tong v Ylang Ylang.

    2. How is Brexit anything to do with borrowing, tax and waste going back to 2004?

      Brexit is not the problem. it is the solution. The failure to take advantage of everything it offered is the reason we’re in the mess we are.

    3. Her problem is she turned right instead of left and ended up in the DT offices when she really was trying to get to the Guardian’s offices.

  54. Um….

    A human fart can be louder than a trombone.
    …just another thing I learned at tonight’s end-of-year school concert.

      1. There are quite a few Nottlers, including myself, who are in this year’s Trombone Club. But which one of us should lead the Big Parade? Might I nominate the ever fresh and fashionable Minty who hides Goodness Knows What behind the pseudonym?

    2. A woman diner let out a loud and resounding fart so to cover her embarrassment she ordered peremptorily, “stop that, waiter!!

      The waiter replied, “I’m afraid I can’t, madam, it went too quick.”

    1. Jim Cramer is a bit of a joke on wallstreetsilver – everything he predicts doesn’t come true, so when he says Buy a particular company, the writing’s on the wall!

  58. A few weeks ago, I posted a tweet from a finance commentator GoldTelegraph that referred to the Treasury bailing out the Bank of England after Kwasi Kwarteng’s budget.
    This was disputed by one of you, who pointed out that the B o E had printed a load of money to bail out the Government.
    GoldTelegraph is pretty clued up, so I have been looking for the source of the tweet since.
    I think it’s in this talk from Alisdair MacLeod, at about 20 minutes in.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHOElzpO3-g
    MacLeod says that the BoE have a deal with the Treasury that the Treasury will underwrite the value of Government bonds held by the Bank of England. This means that the bonds always have the same value, and the Bank is never technically insolvent.
    So as I understand it, that’s what happened – the value of the bonds dipped, so the Bank’s holding was supported by the Treasury.
    Would be glad to hear from anyone who understands it better than I do.

    PS MacLeod says he thinks the Euro will be the first currency to collapse…

    2. Pass – honestly don’t know. The machination is idiotic.

      I do know that the Warqueen has gone from tax accounting to ‘things selling’ – she was telling me she bought metals the other day and found the whole process boring and that a child could do it.

  59. Boy, two, died from a cardiac arrest caused by mould-infested flat ‘unfit for human habitation’
    Awaab Ishak’s death was caused by mould in the one-bedroom housing association flat in Rochdale
    where he lived with his father Faisal Abdullah, and mother Aisha Aminin.     Dreary Fail

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/11/15/12/64564305-11430095-image-a-3_1668515518891.jpg

    Killed by mould – nothing to do with the idleness of the parents who couldn’t be arsed to clean the rooms for more than a year. BBC is demanding compensation and personal cleaners for all social housing residents (unless they are whities, who should know better).

    1. The father said he was told to paint over it.
      Liberal application of bleach would have got rid of it. Then repaint/ with an anti fungal paint

      3. Exactly. The insulation on our bathroom is fairly poor, so that’s what I have to do LONG before it gets to that stage.

      4. Ah, but that’s because you are pale, male and stale – you know how to make things happen. 🙂

        1. I can attest to his being pale and male – but his generous attitude to alcohol means he’ll never be stale 😉

    2. I saw that on the news a few days ago.
      As far as I was concerned those people have more or less sacrificed their son to draw attention to themselves, just to better their own circumstances. A daily open window and a weekly cleanup would have sorted the problem.
      Or a ticket back to where they came from.

    3. Yes, one rather thinks – get some mold killing spray and sort out the problem. Open windows to let the room breathe.

      In addition, if this were a licenced, commercial landlord they wouldn’t be able to have such appalling conditions, so chances are they were living on welfare someone else took from them illegally subletting this hole. I have no patience.

    4. Presumably it was clean when they moved in? I get some mould in the grouting between the tiles in my shower cubicle but most comes off with a sponge and diluted bleach will remove anything more stubborn. There isn’t an extractor fan so I leave a window open.

      1. I’ve just heard a screechy woman on the radio telling Rochdale cooncil not to discriminate and that this may be a ‘race’ crime! I’m sorry about the child but does no one consider taking responsibility for their own lives instead of waiting for others to do stuff? Compo anyone?

        1. The parents are responsible for their child’s welfare, not the state.
          It does sound to me as though they are frantically scrabbling around trying to blame anyone else, so that they themselves won’t be blamed.
          At least you get down and scrub the mould, even if you can’t afford paint. Many of us would be living in those conditions if we didn’t clean where we live!

          1. I had a leak (since fixed) and that led to some mould forming on a wall . Guess what? I got rid of it and dried the area out.

    6. You want to read some of the bleeding hearts on the DT! It’s your child who is ill – who wouldn’t get advice and do something about it? The fathers name is a giveaway!

    7. If you come from a hot dry country – (a mud hut, perhaps) – you’ll be bound to find cold wet indoor England a bit, er, different. And to require a bit of thought….

    8. Should have stayed back in their own, dry country instead of coming to this cold, damp maritime climate. It’s their own fault.

  60. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/08c8b3ba0a1d954dac2b50817fc06b52d266ec5da757978f541601143a54146a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2d140064f13e7530b15a69edf042b1fa3dd273eb74ada658863655387936ecf5.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5664a2eef998e8d3821b87ceaae8b404f9d360636fb5a3e7392fea49080c9b39.jpg Just enjoyed a pleasant interlude down at a nearby private lake that I have permission from the landowner to enter whenever I wish to photograph birds. I have seen many good birds there, the most noteworthy last winter being a superb White-tailed Eagle. Today was another good day since a splendid Great Egret Egretta alba [formerly known as Great White Egret] in non-breeding plumage (yellow bill) was displaying well enough for me to snap off a good number of record shots.

    1. They don’t half get about, those egrets! I’ve seen a lot of them in Cuba and the Dominican Rep, and the Firth of Forth!

          7. It’s the only picture from the Magic Roundabout that I have – Dougal is looking for Dylan.

      4. I think the ones on the Firth of Forth may be the slightly smaller but similar Little Egret E. garzetta which have spread out more and more over the UK this past 30 years. Great Egret is still a rarity in the UK.

        I saw a Little Egret from my back garden in Briston, Norfolk, just over a decade ago. It was feeding in the upper reaches of the River Bure.

        1. We get little egrets here in south Somerset but I don’t think they have gone far north. I think there were snowy egrets sighted in Scotland a few years ago so that may have been what SueM saw.

          1. Really? That’s interesting and I’ve just checked out the Montrose basin! These egrets I saw were near Bo’ness on the Forth estuary mudflats.

          3. I know Phil Palmer, one of the joint writers of that piece. I birded with him on the Scillies in the early 1990s and he also helped out occasionally with the Birklands Ringing Group (Sherwood Forest) of which I was a member and licensed ringer at that time.

          5. Snowy Egret Egretta thula is a nearctic [New World] species that has only been seen a handful of times (as a vagrant) in Europe. Yes, one of those instances was in Scotland, in 2002, but that was one solitary individual that didn’t venture near the Firth of Forth.

            https://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/twitchers-flock-see-uks-first-snowy-egret-2466910
            https://www.birdguides.com/news/snowy-egret-added-to-category-a-of-the-british-list/

            Little Egrets, on the other hand, have been recorded as winter visitors to the Firth of Forth.

            https://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/twitchers-flock-see-uks-first-snowy-egret-2466910

  61. Look at this bloody thing.
    Wordle 514 X/6

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

    2. ‘Lost Ball’ for me too!
      Six bad choices …
      Wordle 514 X/6
      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜

    3. Different pattern but I also used up half the alphabet getting nowhere today.
      Wordle 514 5/6

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

    4. Different pattern but I also used up half the alphabet getting nowhere today.
      Wordle 514 5/6

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

  62. Dear heaven’s above

    Jihadists slaughter at least 26 women by slitting their throats after Boko Haram commander accused them of being WITCHES who caused the sudden death of his children in Nigeria
    Around 40 women were held in a village in northern Nigeria by the jihadists
    Boko Haram commander Ali Guyile ordered for women to be killed after he accused them of being witches who caused the sudden death of his children
    On Thursday last week, 14 women were slaughtered in Gwoza town and a few days later, another 12 were killed by the Boko Haram jihadists
    By RACHAEL BUNYAN FOR MAILONLINE and AFP

    PUBLISHED: 11:17, 15 November 2022 | UPDATED: 11:17, 15 November 2022 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11429885/Jihadists-slaughter-26-women-Boko-Haram-commander-accused-WITCHES.html?ito=windows-widget-push-notification&ci=550380

  63. We had about three hours of a clean weather window , so gave the dogs a walk , then went to Swanage .. the sea wasn’t fierce , sheltered but lots of white peaks to the waves .

    A lunchtime visit to Durlston Castle .. lovely views , easy parking .. £1 for 2 hours .. Tea for two and a slice each of Dorset apple cake .. delicious .. there is a lovely menu to browse through .. .. reasonable prices ..

    We have had meals there before . generous dishes of delicious mussels , venison , sardines , soup , etc.. real warm dishes for chill days , and equally delicious on warm sunny days.

    Lots of serious twitchers ,( because there are so many feathered surprises).. with loads of kit !

    https://www.durlston.co.uk/

    2. Ah, lovely Swanage and even lovlier Durlston Castle (since it was reopened of course) – and the adjoining country park too, with its magnificent views, and the Globe as well. Many happy memories of that area. We have photos of grandparents and parents in front of it. Interesting also to see the old place names on the Globe that no longer apply.

    4. Excellent post T_B, you have given me inspiration for my next trip down that way. I have visited Poole and Swanage many times, sailed off of Studland out to Old Harry numerous times as well but have never visited Durlston Castle. I must visit, the link shows the visit would be well worthwhile.

    3. I’m not in anyway trying to appease his actions. But what ever he was doing, it was his job. And he was obeying his master. Fat arse don’t give a S h one t Johnson. And backing up the ‘expert’s’.
      Who have now convinenently vanished.

      1. It was also his job to THINK and question what he was being told. But, as we have seen, those are not among his limited, puerile skills.

        1. Of course but…..he might have had a nasty accident.
          And…….You’ve been watching it 🤭🤣😎

      2. Yes, so very promptly have the “experts” disappeared that the cynical would think that they know something we don’t.

        2. It all seems to be seeping out very slowly.
          We might find out why not one person in the senior civil service the house of Lords and 650 plus Westminsterits did not kick the bucket as so many others have, after the series of covid jabs. Disguised as a ‘vaccine’.
          There has never been any mention of this occurring.
          If it had, it would have been Headline.

  65. The desecration of war memorials marks a society in utter decline. 15 november 2022.

    It is quite possible that the desecration of the Edinburgh war memorial was simply the latest example of an age-old problem: vandals’ eternal obsession with causing damage for its own sake. Every era has witnessed it. People defying authority to disrupt the system and sticking it to The Man. It was always pointless and destructive, but in most cases it was a phase that would pass.

    BELOW THE LINE.

    Dr Moss.

    I wear a poppy to honour those who fought and died including members of my family, however this does not change the fact that Churchill was a warmongering criminal. He initiated a devastating bombing campaign, willfully targeting civilians against the Geneva convention, that led to a return blitz, and refused to countenance many attempts by the Germans to initiate a peace.

    Beyond all help!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/15/desecration-war-memorials-marks-society-utter-decline/

    1. When caught, public birching on the bare backside, would humiliate them and be an example others wouldn’t want to follow.

    2. I think the Germans made a fundamental error when dealing with the British.
      They thought that we are like them, and would go for a negotiated compromise. They didn’t take into account that when the British go to war, they want to win.
      The Germans think that if you come out of talks with a compromise, that’s a win.

      2. They certainly thought they’d take us out by the end of September 1940. To be fair they could have if they hadn’t made several tactical errors (one of which was bombing London).

      1. And egregious crimes against grammar by using surplus commas (and no, I don’t mean the Oxford comma – I have no axe to grind with them).

      2. And egregious crimes against grammar by using surplus commas (and no, I don’t mean the Oxford comma – I have no axe to grind with them).

    4. I liked this comment

      MG

      Mike Giles
      26 MIN AGO
      If a nation cannot preserve itself and protect its inhabitants then all bets are off. It is seen as a soft touch to be treated with contempt.
      The UK has no longer any National integrity as it continuously fails to control its borders on a daily basis. If it cannot perform this basic function of self preservation then the flood gates open and everything is fair game to be disrespected and replaced.

      1. That’s precisely why the people who have wrecked our culture, social structure and now economy should be arrested and stand trial for treason. No human rights BS or financial assistance available.

    5. Return blitz? London was bombed on 7th September 1940 when we were still doing nickel (leafleting) raids! There is a clue in the name; Blitz is the German word for lightning. Then, of course, there was Coventry, Liverpool and the Baedeker Raids. It wasn’t until ’43 that we really had the capability to really hit back. Mind you, I suppose we should be grateful that Dr Moss didn’t blame Arthur Harris. Sow the tempest, reap the whirlwind.

  67. Putin brings darkness to Ukraine: New blitz of a HUNDRED missiles leaves Kyiv and other cities without power D Fail

    Wait a minute – Yesterday the BBC and MSM told us that Kherson had been retaken and the Russians were in full retreat. Putin was in disgrace and the people clamouring for his removal. Perhaps he is putting out the lights in Ukraine so that they can’t read the crap coming from the Western media.

  68. Of course I’ve tasted some of it previously, but I’ve just had a large glass of my home made zyder.
    Because it was made from cooking apples I’ve had to add some sugar. But I can already feel the effect. Its probably around 10%. Only ten gallons to go…….😏
    Now I have to get dinner ready for my library volunteer. Mrs Erin. Hic…….

    1. I bought a cheap bottle of gin yesterday (after the PCC meeting!) to make sloe gin. I have several bags of frozen sloes waiting to be used up

      1. Same as, there were not many sloes on our local bushes this year.
        It’s better when they been in the freezer just bash them with a rolling pin before they join the gin. So much easier than pricking the all with a pin. Phew…..

  69. 100 missiles cause massive damage in the Ukraine.

    So the global ticking off (posturing) in Bali worked a treat…

  72. That’s me for this dreary, wet day. Hope it is better tomorrow.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

  73. Yorkshireman who had the world’s longest nose at 19CM and was a member of a travelling circus goes viral after an image of his waxwork resurfaces online
    Thomas Wedders, from Yorkshire, gained fame in the 18th century for his nose
    His record still remains to this day, according to the Guinness World Records
    Although only waxworks remain to showcase circus performer’s 19cm nose
    Read more: Teenage contortionist, 14, sets Guinness World Record for walking 20-metres in 22 seconds with her head BEHIND her body
    By JESSICA GREEN FOR MAILONLINE

    PUBLISHED: 09:16, 15 November 2022 | UPDATED: 16:35, 15 November 2022 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11429351/Yorkshireman-worlds-longest-nose-19CM.html

    1. That was Grizz’s great great grandfather. Northerners always have huge proboscis. Us dainty Southerners always have cute button noses.

    3. That’s not to be sniffed at, I bet he didn’t go out in a high wind.
      I bet he was popular with the ladies

  74. Two recommends which can be found on Iplayer. The Woman in Gold. The painting sold for $135 million and My old lady. Both the women’s performances are spellbinding. Helen Mirren…played Maria Altmann, an octogenarian Jewish refugee, takes on the Austrian
    government to recover artwork she believes rightfully belongs to her
    family.
    and in My old lady, Maggie Smith….does her usual magic.
    I would so like to meet both women.

    1. The Woman in Gold is fantastic (watched it as a friend had a bit part). Love Maggie Smith; thanks for the recommendation.

  76. Evening, all. Yesterday the bottom fell off one of my wooden garage doors (quiet in the cheap seats!) so today, once the downpour stopped I have been out and made what I think they call a “temporary repair” – i.e. a lash up that works but doesn’t look brilliant.

  78. I wonder if this is a bit of naval oneupmanship…..ours didn’t break down like yours did?
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f81c27bd8916648013cd297413260e0d4c7f033dbb71ffc262f22bd936679f62.jpg

    US Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford anchors in the Solent. The newly designed ship is almost 300m long and can carry up to 72 aircraft.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/14/pictured-us-navy-aircraft-carrier-uss-gerald-r-ford-anchors/

    HMS Prince of Wales breaks down shortly after leaving Portsmouth. The £3 billion Royal Navy aircraft carrier anchors off the Isle of Wight after encountering ‘mechanical issue’.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/28/hms-prince-wales-breaks-shortly-leaving-portsmouth/

    1. Over here they are still saying it is undecided but likely to be republican

      If they are waiting on Californian votes, who can tell what the nutters will decide.

    2. Jump on the racism bandwagon by all means, just don’t complain when you get run over by it when you jump off

  81. Well, t’Lad, the one who was knocked off his BMW t’other week, was expecting the remains to be delivered to a local scrappies today so that tomorrow he could remove any salvageable bit, or rather get me to remove them whilst her supervised from his zimmer frame.
    However, it seems the remains have gone bloody missing!

      1. He’s still healing.
        He went to QMC Nottingham today to be allowed a full 90° of bending in his right knee, but he still can’t put any weight on it. Last week he had the snapped ligaments in his right thumb stitched together.

        1. Poor chap, how terrible for him .

          You are a good thoughtful dad .

          Things take time to heal , my son had similar torn ligaments in his right hand .. he needed plastic surgery .

          He rides his M/bike , copes with his job, etc but his laceration was frightening , terrible .

  82. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11430989/Kenyas-plains-dead-Animal-corpses-cover-land-brutal-three-year-drought.html#newcomment

    This is so tragic . words fail me .

    Can’t they drill deep down for water surely to goodness?

    DIGGING WELLS IN AFRICA:
    HOW IT WORKS
    Learn how The Water Project often provides safe water https://thewaterproject.org/digging-wells-in-africa-how-it-works#:~:text=These%20simple%20machines%20can%20dig,keep%20the%20hole%20from%20collapsing.

    1. Gaddafi managed to drill into the aquifers and pipe water to all his towns set out towards the Med. And NATO bomb the puming Stations. And he was murdered. Another African country in ruins.
      More social housing and benefits in the UK.

    2. Yes – the drought is terrible – but it’s part of the normal cycle. The last severe drought was in 2009. The article is littered with errors – the headline says there’s been no rain for three years – that is simply untrue. Last years rains were disappointing but there was plenty of green vegetation when I was there last February. Amboseli is never short of water but the greenery is scarce now.

      Further down, a photo of a dead zebra – and the caption says 40 Grevy’s zebras have died in the drought, but the photo is of a plains zebra.

      The Sheldrick Trust and Big Life are providing food and water for many animals in Tsavo and Amboseli areas.

      1. I also don’t think we should be importing green beans, other vegetables and flowers from Kenya..

        Flower growing must use up precious water supplies .

        1. I’m sure it does, but it’s the livelihood for those farmers. I haven’t seen any green beans from Kenya this year in Morrisons but there was Tenderstem broccoli last week.

    3. Every time we dig them a well we remove the incentive for them to do it themselves. We remove the need for the machinery so there’s no local demand for that. That means no demand for transportation such as a road network. No need for educated engineers and the salaries those pay, so no need for the universities, no spending of those salaries, no manufacture of the well materials.

      While we do it for them we make sure to keep them down.

      Oh, the Left complain, they’ll die. If they won’t ever do it themselves they deserve to.

      1. Keep ’em higgorant, then they cannot organise an uprising.

        Happy to fornicate in the dust and let whitey do the work.

    1. If you haven’t yet, take a trip on the King Harry ferry and admire the huge boats moored on a relatively small river.

        1. Yep, but the new one is vast compared with the one from when my family holidays were in that area.

      2. Thanks! Only rolled up this afternoon, so all I’ve visited St Just; the rest is still to come. I didn’t know about this, and it looks wonderful; added to my List. 🙂

  84. You can’t Buck the markets!

    Buckfast sales soar in Scotland as Nicola Sturgeon’s alcohol unit pricing backfires

    Sharp rise in purchase of caffeinated tonic wine, as Tories claim flagship SNP policy ‘may be doing more harm than good’

    By Simon Johnson, SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR • 15 November 2022 • 6:00am

    Buckfast sales in Scotland surged 40 per cent after Nicola Sturgeon introduced alcohol minimum pricing, according to an official analysis that prompted more warnings her flagship public health policy had backfired.

    The Public Health Scotland (PHS) report found that in the year following the introduction of the minimum price of 50p per unit, sales of fortified wines surged by nearly a fifth – 18 per cent. But the volume of Buckfast sold increased by the highest amount, with the analysis finding a “a considerably greater relative increase” in sales than recorded in the previous two years. In contrast, sales of the caffeinated tonic wine, which has previously been linked to anti-social behaviour, fell in both England and Wales and “were a fraction of those in Scotland”.

    The Tories said that minimum unit pricing (Mup) had prompted drinkers to switch from cheap drinks such as cider – the cost of which rose substantially – to stronger beverages like Buckfast. The price of the tonic wine was unaffected by Mup’s introduction in May 2018 as it costs around £8 per bottle, more than 50p per unit of alcohol. The PHS analysis also reported a marked increase in the volume sales of MD 20/20, another fortified wine popular with youths, and the alcopops Dragon Soop and WKD.

    However cider sales fell, with “substantial declines” recorded particularly for high-strength brands. Cider was one of the drinks with the “most pronounced” price rises following the introduction of Mup, along with own-brand spirits.

    Ms Sturgeon’s government introduced the policy in an effort to raise the cost of cheap alcohol and force problem drinkers to cut their consumption. But the sharp increase in Buckfast sales came after a final evaluation of Mup, published in June, found it had failed to change the habits of the heaviest drinkers – and led to some spending less money on food and bills to pay for alcohol.

    Tess White, the Scottish Tories’ shadow public health minister, said: “This report shows that far from discouraging drinking, Mup may just be encouraging people to buy stronger alcohol. This is just the latest evidence that minimum pricing may be doing more harm than good.”

    But Maree Todd, the SNP’s public health minister, said: “This report shows that the introduction of a minimum unit pricing has driven down consumption of cheap high-strength alcohol which is often drunk by people drinking at harmful levels.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/11/15/buckfast-sales-soar-scotland-nicola-sturgeons-alcohol-unit-pricing/

    1. A chimp could have told her price fixing doesn’t work. I really don’t understand politicians. It’s as if they are morons first, try to do everything to stop the machine turning then complain when it doesn’t.

      Want to reduce alcohol dependency? Don’t hike taxes, add incentives to do other things. Have leisure centres open later, run open days. set up park runs. Open areas for picnics. Have a carpark further out of town be free to use so folk walk in.

      But Sturgeon is a socialist and thinks only to take. She is incompetent

      1. Just one example – a 1 litre bottle of Whyte & MacKay costs £20 in Moffat Co-op.

        Amazon sell the same for £16.00. You may guess from whom I buy my blended Scotch.

  85. To the title:

    A couple of years ago I would have agreed that bureaucracy in the NHS was a serious problem.

    Now I suggest collusion with mass murder trumps this as the main probem. Anything that slows them down is a blessing.
    We need more inefficient bureacracy.

    1. No, we need a vastly more efficient bureaucracy that costs far less and does a better job of stopping the murder of innocents – including those waiting for healthcare due to… goodness nows what.

      Seriously, I don’t understand why the NHS does exploratory tests and then calls you back in six months later to resolve them. Get on with it.

  86. To the title:

    A couple of years ago I would have agreed that bureaucracy in the NHS was a serious problem.

    Now I suggest collusion with mass murder trumps this as the main probem. Anything that slows them down is a blessing.
    We need more inefficient bureacracy.

    1. Pregnant again; for ?????? th time.
      It’s taken 16 years for this case to reach court? Has the daughter reported her mother?

      1. How many sprogs has she had since then , and how much money is the taxpayer footing the bill.

        These people breed hordes of kids , and then complain because their houses are damp and they don’t have enough beds for the kids to sleep on

    2. They don’t work, they don’t contribute, they commit all recent terrorist activity, they rape children, they’re violent, abusive, oppressive – and the state supports encourages and protects their putrid behaviour. For the good of everyone, can we not just move them on?

  89. Let’s escalate.

    Russian missiles kill two in POLAND: Two blasts hit rural village FIVE MILES over the Ukraine border – officials blame Putin’s rockets as Polish PM calls emergency meeting and NATO allies vow to defend ‘every inch’ of the bloc’s territory
    Twin explosions rang out this afternoon in Przewodów, a rural village located five miles from Ukrainian border
    A US intelligence official claimed the fatal explosions were caused by a pair of wayward Russian missiles
    Polish radio reports also said that two missile strikes had occurred close to the border, killing two people
    The blasts came as Moscow launched a barrage of fresh missile attacks across the whole of Ukraine today
    Poland is a member of NATO, whose member states agree to maintain a policy of ‘collective defence’
    Article 5 of the Washington treaty – NATO’s founding agreement – stipulates that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, ‘each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11431591/Russian-bombs-kill-two-POLAND.html

    1. Are you suggesting that black thieves are useless even at stealing other people’s property?

      I suppose there is one difference: the crypto one you had to buy into – unless you were a democrat, but they’re politicians and intrinsically corrupt, especially the Lefty ones.

  91. Universities are ordered to go woke: Courses from computing to classics are told to ‘decolonise’ by degrees watchdog and teach about impact of colonialism and ‘white supremacy’
    EXCLUSIVE: Universities are being told to ‘go woke’ and ‘decolonise’ courses
    Quality Assurance Agency added critical race theory to its recommendations
    It wants a range of courses to teach colonialism including ‘white supremacy’

    We are screwed beyond redemption;
    Imagine if a “Quality Assurance Agency” insisted on teaching cannibalism as “black supremacy”

    3. It’s about time Cultural Marxism was decolonised from our institutions…..(Rectal Lavage should do the trick!)

        1. Don’t know – I was thinking more of a forceful jet of cold water up the jacksies of the institutions!

      3. Where do these hate groups come from? They’re getting public money. Why is the useless department for education giving them a penny?

        Instead of wasting money on this tripe, it should just be given directly to schools and the department for education shut down, along with any council troughers as well.

        1. It seems to me it is a self perpetuating system the two main parties when they are in power establish quangos, commissions and authorites and given their particular flavour they are populated with like minded folk (often rewarded handsomely for executing the political parties policies) which in turn fosters the political vote. The system becomes engorged and self perpetuating…

    4. It’s about time Cultural Marxism was decolonised from our institutions…..(Rectal Lavage should do the trick!)

    6. Not sure how you can teach classics without using white authors. Blacks have contributed almost nothing to the world.

      Colonialism has brought the world government, security, trade, language, wealth. It is only the spite, stupidity and malice of the Left that sees the falsehood they so invest in.

      1. Have to admit, keeping better eye on that winning lottery ticket would be pretty high on my list.

    2. I wish my lovely wife and I had stayed in Australia.
      I think our grandchildren would have a better future.

        1. We spoke about that Ellie.
          The Aussies are better at getting rid of their useless politicians.

          2. I’ll ask Bruce tmz, he phoned this morning but we were both out.
            But whatever, I don’t think they have problems with thieving scum bag invaders in rubber boats. 🤗

          3. Instead of paying the French maybe the British Government should pay the traffikers to point the rubber boats in the direction of Australia?

          5. I suspect that if the Government paid the traffickers enough ALL the gimmegrants would drown in the channel

      2. we’re giving serious thought to moving to Switzerland. It’d mean my finding a proper job, relocating Junior, lots of checks for the dogs but it is a infinitely better quality of life over there.

        2. My younger son has lived in Basel for over 20 years. He’s single though and lives in a small flat. Property is very expensive in Switzerland and the cost of living high as well. He doesn’t run a car but he’s a keen cyclist.

        3. I don’t know what it’s like these days, but in 1974 I had to marry my Swiss girlfriend before I could get a job there.

        4. Good luck if you do.
          I just can’t believe what these idiots in Westminster and Whitehall have done to this country.
          Our next door neighbours daughter runs a hotel and ski school in Switzerland.

    3. Immensely powerful intelligent but benign advanced alien beings to arrive and frighten the shit out of all the turds currently in power….

      1. Good thinking but…..
        We have the power to do that, but nobody has will to do it.
        I expect all the guns at the remembrance parade last Sunday would have been empty.

        1. I was thinking not just the UK but Worldwide where there are many nasty pieces of work in power…

        1. You are Og1 Ken Og and I claim my £5…..

          Revolutions tend to get very messy and usually end up with dictatorships….

          1. 367807+ up ticks,

            S,

            By the same token dictatorships tend to get very messy and usually end up in revolutions.

          2. When the statists destroy us and ram us back into the hated EU, the remoaners will never, ever shut up. The country will be obliterated. It will be the end times.

            Then I think I’ll find all those remoaners addresses and visit them, and beat the living crap out of them.

          1. “…we’re British’ – Was tempted to write with a stiff up ‘er lips but thought perhaps not….

    5. I thought briefly of instant, painless annihilation of the human race, but then thought, ‘what about all the nice dogs who rely on us?’.

  93. Update(1500ET): Russia has issued its first statements in the wake of conflicting reporting concerning the suspected missile attack on Polish territory, just across the border with Ukraine. Russia is calling the reports a “deliberate provocation” and is denying that its forces have aimed any missiles near the Ukraine-Poland border, per Interfax news.

    The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying it has not taken part in “strikes against targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border” using “Russian weapons” – as is being alleged by Polish sources. The Russian statement further said it’s Warsaw’s attempt to escalate the situation. The Pentagon has meanwhile said it can’t corroborate the reports at this early stage but is gathering more information. A Pentagon spokesman vowed the US stands ready to “defend every inch of NATO territory.”

    According to Polish radio broadcaster Radio Zet, local reports have said what hit Przewowo is most likely the remains of a rocket shot down by Ukraine’s armed forces. But there are conflicting and many unconfirmed claims still circulating. The US State Dept. said, “We are working with the Polish government to collect information and assess what happened.” It also called the reports “incredibly concerning.”

  94. One for BT: Fakenham’s first race today was entitled “Gresham’s Prep Racing to School Today Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Chase”. Only two of the six finished!

    1. Evening Conway. Is there an English translation for those of us not born to the sod I mean turf…..?

      1. What would you like translated? The name of the race? Conditional jockeys are the jumping equivalent of apprentices on the flat. They are young and inexperienced. It was a Handicap (horses were given weights according to their ability; the greater the ability, the more the weight). It was a Steeplechase over fences rather than a hurdle. Some horses did not finish because they pulled up and failed to complete the course.

    2. Evening Conway. Is there an English translation for those of us not born to the sod I mean turf…..?

    1. “Edinburgh war memorial fire: Investigation launched after Edinburgh’s war memorial set on fire by vandals
      Police are investigating after an Edinburgh war memorial was set on fire in an act of vandalism that Nicola Sturgeon has described as “sickening and disgraceful”.

      By Stephen Mcilkenny
      22 hours ago.”
      11
      Comments

      Organisers are “devastated” after Remembrance Sunday memorial wreaths were deliberately set on fire in Edinburgh. Police confirmed they were investigating after the memorial poppy wreaths, which were laid at the Stone of Remembrance on Sunday as a mark of respect to the fallen, were found torched around 5am on Monday morning on the memorial at City Chambers.

      Police are urging anyone with information to come forward. Chief Inspector Murray Tait, local area commander, said: “Our enquiries are ongoing after poppy wreaths were set on fire at the war memorial in High Street, Edinburgh around 5am on Monday, November 14.”

      1. Poppy wreaths cannot be torched without malice of forethought – dousing with petrol – or another inflammable agent.

      2. “…an act of vandalism that Nicola Sturgeon has described as “sickening and disgraceful”.

        IMHO, the likely perpetrators are Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP followers – those fanatics that portray and exude extreme hatred of everything English.

      3. When they find out it was muslims they will quietly close the investigation. If they are prepared to turn a blind eye to grooming and rape of young girls they can turn a blind eye to anything.

      4. …poppy wreaths were set on fire at the war memorial in High Street, Edinburgh around 5am on Monday, November 14.”

        No CCTV surveillance in and around High Street, Edinburgh?

        Disgusting act of vandalism.

          1. Nothing I can put my finger (those I’ve managed to keep away from his teeth!) on. He doesn’t want his collar put on to go for a walk. He doesn’t want his muzzle on so I can towel him and generally maintain his coat. He doesn’t want to be woken up and disturbed. I get the impression he’s testing me to see what he can get away with avoiding. He’s chosen the wrong person! So far he’s had to submit and do as he’s told. I’m hoping that eventually the penny drops.

          2. How odd! He seemed so settled. You do wonder what goes through their little heads! Just like teenagers!

          3. I keep telling him, “somewhere under that grumpy exterior, there is a nice dog trying to get out!” :).
            I’ve had him just coming up to a year and a half – perhaps he’s suffering from the eighteen month itch?

          4. It’s the darker nights and change of season! My mother used to say our animals got a ‘gale in their tail’!

  98. It’s a tad early but I think I’m going to turn in.
    Into what I have no idea.
    So it’s good night from me 😴

  99. Just back from a Save the Parish event in the Palace of Westminster. We were in Committee Room 14, House of Commons, where the 1922 Committee meet. Lots to say but need an early night as I’m working in Bristol tomorrow. 8 am train.

    2. You need to unwind and relax Sue .

      Sleep well , have a good day tomorrow.

      Another storm for us tonight .. and I need an open top window when I sleep , Moh closes everything .

      2. Another storm! Lucky you, Belle – the air is hanging turgid and heavy in our little corner of eastern England. Lots of rain today but no movement of air.

Comments are closed.