Tuesday 19 March: The last thing the Conservative Party needs is another leadership circus

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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753 thoughts on “Tuesday 19 March: The last thing the Conservative Party needs is another leadership circus”

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

    ANSWERS TO THAT QUIZ, (THAT’S NOT BEEN SHEWN)
    see how many you might have got (don’t cheat).

    1. How long did the Hundred Years’ War last?
    116 years (1337 – 1453)

    2. Which country makes Panama hats?
    Ecuador (sold in Panama – better market than Ecuador)

    3. From which animal do we get cat gut?
    Made of the dried, twisted intestines of sheep or horses (but not cats).

    4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
    November. Because it was on November 7th according to the ‘New’ calendar.

    5. What is a camel’s hair brush made of?
    The bristles of camel-hair brushes are traditionally made of squirrel hair and this is still the most common material. They can also be made from goat, ox or pony, or a blend of any of these. They are never made from camel hair, either in whole or in part.

    6. The Canary Islands in the Atlantic are named after what animal?
    Dogs (Canariae Insulae – Latin, Island of Dogs)

    7. What was King George VI’s first name?
    Albert

    8. What colour is a purple finch?
    Pinky-red

    9. Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
    Peru, hence Physalis peruviana

    10. What is the colour of the black box in a commercial airplane?
    The recorders are not permitted to be black in colour, and must be bright orange, as they are intended to be spotted and recovered after any incidents.

  3. Good morning all.
    A damp and misty start with a drizzly 6°C outside.

    A trip to Stoke for this morning.

  4. ‘Multiculturalism’ is damaging our society. There is only one way to stop it. 19 March 2024.

    We must dramatically reduce immigration, institute a programme of integration for people living in the UK, require the primacy of our British culture, end the obsession with DEI, require all are treated equally and proudly teach our children the truth about our wonderful history.

    Too late I’m afraid. The dustbin of history awaits the UK.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/18/multiculturalism-is-damaging-our-society/

      1. Good morning, Elsie.

        I prefer the acronym DIE, it has a certain ring of truth to it: not just people but the culture, history etc. of this “sceptred isle”.

        From Google.

        Selling out England/Britain is not a new phenomenon, then?

        What does this sceptered isles mean?
        So Gaunt’s ‘sceptred isle’ is a portrait of England as an earthly paradise, an idyll. Ironically, however, this paean is the preamble to an elegy, as gaunt goes on to lament that Richard II, England’s king, is selling-out the English and bringing England low. He sees his ‘demi-paradise’ as an idyll soon to be lost.15 Oct 2022

          1. Diversity, Inclusion and Equality. Or, more correctly, monoculture of the non-indigenous, Exclusion if you’re pale, male and stale and Equality meaning anybody but whitey.

          4. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are three closely linked values held by many organizations that are working to be supportive of different groups of individuals, including people of different races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders, and sexual orientations.

            Sounds innocuous enough doesn’t it? However, like many of these apparently well-meaning initiatives it holds the seeds of the destruction of the white race. Hence, DIE as opposed to DEI.

          5. Thanks, Korky, for answering my question. And it was good to see you this afternoon and admire the work you have done in your garden.

    2. That might have worked in the 1970s when Enoch Powell warned us about the situation that we are facing now.

      1. That evil squirt Khan attempts to smear Susan Hall by saying she supported the views of Enoch – or as we might more accurately call him Cassandra.

    4. A journalist has finally woken up from the decades long multi-culti dream they’ve been enjoying and entered the nightmare that ordinary people have been warning about and suffering daily.

  5. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/19/church-of-england-racial-justice-enabler/
    I am speechless with incredulity and mystified by yet more new race baiting jargon.
    All this marxist guff while up to a quarter of parishes no longer have a churchwarden as hard working volunteers vote with their feet.
    Meanwhile our parishes are now in open strife by our now ex Vicar who spent his 18 months with us trying to dissolve the PCCs and remove the churchwardens and is now going around the villages telling libellous slanders to poison the wells behind him while the Diocese express ‘sadness’ over his resignation, implying it’s the congregations’ fault the narcissist they appointed resigned in a tantrum because we wouldn’t dissolve our parishes.

    1. As you know, I am with you on this one, but with one reservation.

      I do not think ‘Marxism’ adequately describes the peril we are in, and this analysis shuts out those in the Centre and the Left who are as anxious about national cultural and institutional integrity as anyone on the Right.

      1. To be honest I don’t know how else to term it.
        The article focuses on a new term suggesting that whites should not be a majority in the UK!

        1. Whether or not we should be, the sad fact is that we won’t be for very much longer.

        2. I avoid the use of the term “whites”, because it frames the issue using American terminology and cultural assumptions. I feel unashamed to consider myself indigenous, and in solidarity with indigenous people anywhere. That my skin colour is paler than most is just the accident of where I come from; it does not define me.

          As an Englishman, I was born in Middlesex, grew up in Surrey and have lived in Worcestershire for thirty years. My loyalties and my affection are primarily with these places. As for skin colour, I actually welcome going out in the sun in summer so I am not quite so maggot-like. However, this is a natural response in my race evolved in higher latitudes which needs all the Vitamin D it can get.

          Local provenance has long been considered an important consideration among environmentalists, and certainly you will find few of them prepared to suppress native life in order to favour the exotic. They appreciate full well the damage this does.

      1. When I walked out of the village CofE church choir in 2001 and became a Roman Catholic, it was over this very issue – that modern social fashions and orthodoxies were taking precedence over the liturgy and Christ’s ongoing mission.

        I had a similar hiatus in 2018 over “Safeguarding”, which I continue to believe is a violation of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. When congregations make the peace, as they must before they are fit to receive (and even become) the body and blood of Christ, it is done unconditionally. There must be no residue of suspicion or resentment at this stage, and common goodwill must prevail at this one point in our lives, even though it may be impossible otherwise.

        This is no time to labour hateful policies masquerading as “Diversity”, “Equality” or “Inclusion” when their intent is to force conformity, favouritism, and the shutting out of those deemed, often without any just cause, to be overprivileged.

    3. I must admit, when I saw the resolution about “bullying” Churchwardens and parish councils, my heart sank. Churchwardens put in hours of unpaid work, with no other agenda than to maintain their local churches. The products of vicar training schools on the other hand, appear to be mostly thinly disguised Labour party activists since the advent of Justin Welby as AOC.

      1. Indeed. We face continuous additional bureaucracy and the undermining from above. If it wasn’t my village church where I grew up, where my grand parents and many friends from my childhood and later are buried I wouldn’t do it. It eats up my time and costs me many many £000s a year.

        1. We have been accused by the Diocese of “bullying” the wrecktorette (we pointed out she should be doing the things she was appointed for). She, on the other hand, has bullied both the PCC and the wardens (so much so that one had to resign through ill health brought on by the bullying behaviour),

          1. The same is now happening here, ad the ex-wrecktor is now stirring up division in the village and congregation.

  6. Good morning, chums

    Wordle 1,004 4/6
    Who’s a silly sausage? Look what I did with the correct first letter (on line one) when I typed out line two!!!

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

    1. There were two possibilities for the second guess. We chose the wrong one of course!
      Wordle 1,004 3/6

      🟩🟨🟩🟨⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  7. Barack Obama holds ‘informal talks’ with Rishi Sunak at No 10. 19 March 2024.

    Barack Obama made a surprise appearance in Westminster on Monday as he dropped into Number 10 for “informal” talks with Rishi Sunak.

    The former US president was seen strolling along Downing Street, and briefly posed for the cameras in front of the famous black door.

    He then went inside for an hour-long meeting with the Prime Minister, during which the pair discussed artificial intelligence over cups of tea.

    Really? He just dropped in for a casual chat did he? My guess is that it was about Ukraine and NATO’s direct involvement. That is the only thing that I can think of that no one would dare send electronically. Keep your eyes open for False Flags,

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/18/barack-obama-rishi-sunak-informal-talks-downing-street/

    3. Have the US Democrats anyone qualified to run for President who can drop in for tea with the British PM?

      As for Ukraine (and Gaza whose plight is remarkably similar), where is the UN? They are making high-minded Statements about international sovereign law and order, but seem unprepared to do anything whatsoever about it, apart from foisting on gormless hosts unwelcome migrants, arranged by organised crime and their lawyer lackeys, and many of whom hostile young men of fighting age, followed by an entourage of brood mares and their extended families. Even when Yugoslavia broke up in ignomy, it was UN forces that restored order, even if they lazily subcontracted NATO to the task rather than taking the correct course and demanding the co-operation of member states.

      NATO is a defence organisation, and neither Ukraine nor Gaza are member states. NATO should not be involved, but that does not stop any of its member states getting involved if they feel it is in their national interest. Anyone with a mind to 20th century history must be haunted by what Neville Chamberlain let a powerful belligerent rogue nation get away with.

    6. It is just too coincidental to Putin’s latest election victory. I’m sure Obama wasn’t suggesting that we would be at ‘the back of the queue’ when it comes to sending troops to the Eastern Front. The stench of deja moo follows his foreign policy.

  9. Good morning.
    Storming speech by Sahra Wagenknecht to the German parliament (Twitt video, sorry). She is half German, half Iranian, and recently left the German “Left” party to go out on her own. Left-right is just a distraction these days, but she is the only anti-WEFer that they can’t label “far right.”
    She is against Germany getting involved with the conflict in Ukraine.
    https://twitter.com/Glenn_Diesen/status/1769622619014242701

    3. If she’d tried that speech in Westminster, I suspect Andrew Mitchell would have been leaping from bench to bench. Clearing the chamber much as he did when Andrew Bridgen attempted to state his ‘unwelcome’ issues over the vax (unwelcomed by those who sold out to the harmaceutical industry).

      Notice, just as she’s reaching the main point of her speech, how the ‘speaker’ attempts to interupt her flow.

  11. Good morning, all. Broken overcast and dry here.

    Below is a short summary of Tory achievements over the last 14 years. None of it is of a positive nature but a political party in power for over a decade doesn’t slump to 18% in a poll if it is doing what the electorate requires of it.

    Some cynics, and I’m one, would argue that the current Tories have, from their perspective, been successful in what they set out to do i.e. run the Country into the ground. Sheer incompetence doesn’t come close as an explanation for what Cameron, May et al. have done. Their policies have blighted the UK.

    That’s not to say that Labour wouldn’t have done the same. We will find out soon what Labour under Starmer is all about. The current palliative rhetoric from Starmer et al. is nothing but hogwash.

    Gleaned from Daily Sceptics

    stewart
    22 hours ago
    Reply to transmissionofflame
    The Conservative Party have been in power since 2010, so almost 15 years.

    Let’s see what they’ve accomplished in that time.

    They’ve held a referendum on the EU and then proceeded to sabotage the result and make a total balls up of leaving the EU. So there’s that.

    They presided over the biggest violation of individual rights in the history of the country. Never, ever in history was an entire population put under long-term house arrest, nor forced to wear certain clothing, nor aggressively coerced into medical treatment. So there’s that too.

    GDP was 1.9 trillion in 2010 and 2.3 trillion in 2023 (if you believe those sort of statistics), so GDP has increased by 0.4 trillion, but the debt has grown by 1 trillion, to 2.3 trillion. So, the party of economic prudence has almost doubled our national debt to achieve very little economic growth. Well done them.

    And of course, the Conservatives are the party of immigration control and so you’d think they’d have stopped illegal immigration – particularly after Brexit, because that was a big part of it – and let in only the very top, high quality immigration they told us about. But no, immigration is at the highest it’s ever been and illegals continue to stream in in record numbers.

    Yes, I think we can say the last 15 years have been a resounding success for the Conservatives and all they need now is a unifying figure to properly communicate their successes to the public and to convince them that the economy is about to “turn the corner”.

    Twats.

    149
    0

    2. Stewart lets the incumbents off lightly. There is also coercive legislation to meet bogus environmental targets, soaring knife crime, soft-touch, craven policing of environmental groups, BLM and its supporters, and Muslims, incompetent defence procurement, a deeply flawed and hugely expensive HS2, poorly considered meddling in foreign conflicts, a boom in confusing sex/gender identities. I’m sure others can add yet more to the list.

      1. DW, you’re correct and it’s little wonder that Starmer, Reeves etc. are looking worried: they’ve got their work cut out to come in under that list and more.

    1. One person, almost certainly an incomer while all the other villagers wanted it to continue.
      Hopefully the locals will find out who complained and make their life intolerable.

    2. And where is the ABoC in this situation ? The Dopey Wokey has a lot to say in so many other aspects what’s he doing about this?

  13. Could easily be some white, atheist townie… Like the newbies in our village who complained about the “noise” of the cattle grazing in the fields.

    2. I think townies should go on a course of ‘sensitivity training’ in rural life before allowed to move to the country and pay an addiitional Stamp Duty if they do.

    3. I think townies should go on a course of ‘sensitivity training’ in rural life before allowed to move to the country and pay an addiitinal Stamp Duty if they do.

  14. Good morning all and 77th Brigade,

    Grey and mizzly at McPhee Towers, wind in the Sou’-Sou’-West, 9℃ to 11℃.

    Now, what do we imagine this man is up to? What pearls did he drop in Wishy-Washy’s ear?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/11b943cb5b45deefe140881a79e09b662201d0c8401b8d70d94cce6d4e00bcf6.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/18/barack-obama-rishi-sunak-informal-talks-downing-street/

    I don’t think it would be about his foundations’s charity. Do you? Why is he meeting that lame-brain, Lammy.

    1. If Barack Obama (known in some places as B.O.) is sniffing around Rishi, there is a wonderfully apposite quotation from Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor (sic) Dreamcoat where Joseph is dreaming of his future:
      “Could it be that I was born for higher things than you?
      A post in someone’s Government, a Ministry or two”
      that could fit nicely here.

      1. The two schoolboys who wrote that went to the same school that former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne went to*. Is it something in the food they serve?

        *St Paul’s Boys’

    1. One thing I like about football is that selection and promotion is on a MERITOCRATIC basis, not on token, tick-box, DEI grounds.

      2. How can you be sure of that? If there are two or more equally skilled and fit players of differing skin hues in contention for a contract, on what basis do you imagine one would get the nod over the other(s)?

          1. True, but what if there are candidates for the squad who are of equal merit? Would the home town boy be picked, assuming there is one?

        2. Sir Alex Ferguson didn’t bring in African players (those representing African international teams). Nothing to do with racialist leanings, he was just aware that the African Nations Cup clashed with the English football season. As other teams lost players to the Dark Continent for a few weeks, in the run in to the league title, his squad carried on regardless.

      2. I have just started watching ‘Boardwalk Empire’. I was amused to see in the opening sequences a lively drunken parade with the band all in blackface. This is set the night before prohibition kicks in.

        HBO produce some cracking drama series.

      1. I agree. Football governance is hardly the most pressing problem in the in-tray.

        1. How wrong you are, Stig. It is absolutely vital. The result of the next election will turn on it. That and making sure children learn to count – and stop vaping.

        2. Someone should inform Westminster/Whitehall that football already has enough dodgy ‘politicians’ in FIFA and UEFA to screw the supporters out of their income.

    1. I’ve just finished reading “A Casual Vacancy” by J.K. Rowling.
      It covers the same subject from a novel angle. I do recommend it.

        1. It did seem overkill, but possibly she was trying to show the sheer awfulness of the lives of the characters.

  18. Four and a bit years for this? Shurely shome mishtake, Moneypenny?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7e080e70b33269e2f952b2ccaa4069bed38f268ba91651709341cd7110c41d10.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/18/watch-driver-jailed-for-ramming-motorcyclist-off-bridge/

    If the charge wasn’t attempted murder, why wasn’t it? Of course, the BMW lunatic is a cultural enricher but it’s not clear who or what the unfortunate biker is.

    This man should be doing at least a 20-stretch, preferably in a penal colony in sub-Saharan Africa. If he remains in this country he should never be permitted to drive or ride anything ever again. I would even include bicycles in that.

    What on Earth have we got for judges in this land?

    1. OTOH, were they known to each other? Was a grudge involved? Was/is the biker a miscreant of some sort? Who knows? Insufficient data.

      1. Even if the biker was a miscreant of some sort, that was not the way to deal with him. Import the third world, import their practises.

      1. That name. That make of car. I think you are on to something. Anyone would think you were a Rumpole.

    3. ON

      Old Normal Life
      5 MIN AGO
      This cretin caused serious injury to two people, not one. The front passenger of the car he collided with also sustained serious injuries. Two people’s lives changed forever, equal to a measly four years in prison. This is no deterrent to foreign-born boy-drivers with access to powerful cars, who cannot control their egos and emotions.

      Comment by John Haynes.

      JH

      John Haynes
      6 MIN AGO
      Only 4 years ?

      Comment by Richard Mosley.

      RM

      Richard Mosley
      6 MIN AGO
      I see this type of stuff every single day. Typically – and disproportionately – young ‘Asian’ men, often in pimped up cars (Q: where do they get the $$?), driving way too fast, ignoring red lights, overtaking in extremely dangerous situations (and relying on other drivers to ‘let them in’), driving up one way streets etc, basically completely ignoring the laws of the land as though they don’t apply to them.

      Yes indeed , and to add to that , Asian taxi drivers are lethal road abusers , they don’t mind that we don’t matter

      1. You just need to be on the correct side of diversity to avoid a more suitable prison sentence.

  19. Good Moaning.
    Strange yellow thing in the sky.
    Is it my fault for firing up the Noddy car yesterday afternoon?

  20. This is a fantastic innovation. Niall Ferguson holding a seminar with students at the University of Austin, Texas on the existence, or not, of Cold War 2.0 and the difference between it and CW 1.0. It’ll take 1 hour and 55 minutes of your time but you won’t be disappointed. However, you’ll need to overlook his reverence for that arch bastard, Kissinger.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA7CY2YnbeA&t=4694s

    1. Hmmmm! Too long Fiscal. I have most of Ferguson’s books and find him a little facile at times.

      1. I think you have to remember that his books are written for the mass market. My daughter attended many of his lectures when she did her first BA at Oxon. She’s a D.Phil and still holds him in very high regard over 20 years later.

    2. Am I alone in thinking that the UK needs a 10-YEAR PM who is an “arch bastard”.

  21. Good morning all

    Another rainy day , 11c, and the garden stays soggy .. need to get out there and feed roses , weed , and sort out many issues in the garden .

  22. Good moaning all. Cloudy in this ere part of Surrey, sun a bit reluctant to make an appearance.

    Alf and I were shopping in Sainsburys yesterday. They have recently installed security gates to exit “smart shopping” where you have to scan your receipt (if you’re lucky you follow through behind the previous customer). Alf made a comment to an assistant about S not trusting their customers and assistant sayid you’d be surprised at the amount of stealing that goes in with thieves walking out without paying as bold as brass.

    So we’re about to scan said receipt, lady waiting behind, and a discussion follows about how much stealing goes on, and ends with us all agreeing “the nice honest guys get it in the neck while the baddies get off scot-free” and what a dire state we’re all in. With the lady behind agreeing. Interesting that 4 random people have a similar opinion.

    S also has gates at the entrance, opening inwards, I presume to stop people trying to get out that way.

    1. Once we have a digital currency and you have misbehaved those gates won’t open for you. The Chinese are way ahead of us.

    2. In Spain many supermarkets have long had turnstiles inside the entrance, and the hypermarkets often have uniformed security people on duty. (your trolley can slide under a bar alongside the turnstile.)

      1. Ditto many French ones – where you also need to scan your receipt for the turnstile to open. Doesn’t stop the determined from simply forcing them open, of course…

    3. “the amount of stealing that goes in with thieves walking out without paying as bold as brass”.

      I have observed that happen at the self-serve check-outs in a branch of M & S Food. More than once.

      We are paying for these thieves with higher prices. And the cost of the anti-theft devices/monitoring.

      1. Perhaps if we ALL did it – stores would realise that self-service tills and wide open doors and no securiddy are NOT the way forward….

        1. I drew an early conclusion that an increase in shoplifting was anticipated but that savings in numbers of check-out staff would more than pay for it. I presume the anticipated increase in shoplifting was very much underestimated.

      2. Always make sure you have a tin of beans in your basket. Next time you see someone walking out after knicking stuff lob the tin at the back of their head.

    4. It’s just the next small step in the route towards scanning your digital id to get into the supermarket, and low social credit score means no supermarket for you.
      Softly, softly etc.

      If we don’t resist the digital ID – and nobody will, of couse – that is where we are going.

  23. Not so much a deckchairs and Titanic scenario anymore. It looks more like musical chairs on the Titanic where the one who can’t find a chair has to be the captain when the ship goes down.

      1. What will happen long before that is an established party having to form a coalition with an Islamic lobby/party in order to secure a working majority in the Commons.

        1. Good morning, Stig

          You are probably right.

          It seems rather bizarre that so many who lust after power are completely impotent and powerless in office. Rather like a eunuch wanting to go to a brothel!

        2. Good morning, Stig

          You are probably right.

          It seems rather bizarre that so many who lust after power are completely impotent and powerless in office. Rather like a eunuch wanting to go to a brothel!

      2. The health and fitness lobby will be happy though, on the plus side. Sir Kneelalot will be dancing so much as his strings get pulled by all the lobbies who want control, he’ll probably lose pounds off his midriff.

    3. It’s the Tories complete lack of awareness of how this all appears. I’m sure some MPs are thinking ‘dear life, let it end’ but the utter farce of fiddling about with leaders when the stated direction of the party and it’s desperation to destroy this country remain the same. Put a baboon in place and it’d make no difference. Until the Tories accept that at every turn they have done exactly the wrong thing nothing will change. Only severe and significant – and unpleasant – changes will make any difference now and they refuse to make them.

      1. Indeed, their hides are so thick they cannot seem to register the chorus of people simply saying they’d love to be able to vote for a Conservative Party in which you can find genuinely conservative MPs.

        There are none so blind as those who refuse to see, though. The truth is that they do not want to hear that chorus, because at heart they’re purple Con Blairites, not true Blue. They gave up any beliefs they used to hold in conservatism a long while ago.

        1. The unspeakable bloke masquerading as our local Tory MP is, in truth, a far-left, ecofreak Limp Dumb.

  25. Just reposting this , and many thanks to Phizzee for posting the whole article to me

    https://twitter.com/SuffolkGazette/status/1769793503796568072

    By Hugh Dunnett, Crime Correspondent

    A
    Suffolk man with a bizarre sexual attraction to tractors has been
    banned from the countryside and forced to sign the sex offenders
    register.

    Ralph Bishop, 53, was found by police with his
    trousers around his ankles “interfering” with a tractor parked in a
    field outside Saxmundham.

    He
    was arrested on suspicion of outraging public decency and admitted to
    having had sex with around 450 tractors all over the Suffolk
    countryside.

    When officers searched his terraced home they found a collection of more than 5,000 tractor images on his laptop.

    The photos showed Bishop had a special desire for John Deere and Massey Ferguson tractors, particularly green ones. Object of desire

    A
    police insider said: “We couldn’t believe it when we found him in the
    field. He was wearing a white t-shirt and Wellington boots and very
    little else. He was clearly in a state of high excitement at the rear of
    the machine.

    “Thankfully
    nobody else was around, but the field is close to a village primary
    school so we had to arrest him and educate him about the error of his
    ways.

    “He told us he was particularly ‘into’ axle grease and the
    presence of this around the back of tractors was all too much for him.”

    Bishop,
    twice divorced, was released without charge on condition he sought
    psychological help. He was put on the sex offenders register.

    “He
    is also banned from the countryside and is now forbidden to go within
    one mile of a farm,” the police insider added. “So he has to live and
    remain in the middle of Ipswich to comply with that.

    “However, we are watching him because we are worried about the safety of several street-cleaning machines.”

    Another
    source, WPC Lorraine Fisher, 34, added: “He’ll also need to keep away
    from the town’s gardens – if he takes a fancy to a lawnmower he might
    find he loses more than just his liberty.”

    EDITOR’S NOTE:
    Three months later, things had not improved for Mr Bishop, who was
    caught out trying to get a job at an agriculture college, where he
    wanted to give the farm machinery a vigorous scrub down.

    1. I’m trying to process how a very strange man could amass 450 sexual encounters with tractors before his peculiar habit could be halted. Surely it cannot be that the authorities received 450 complaints from farmers and passers-by before they acted.

      I hope the tractors are receiving counselling.

      1. I believe he admitted his pecadildoes while being interviewed.

        Note the name of the crime correspondent… :@)

    3. And now he works in air-conditioning he’san extractor fan
      The blocker never works. 🤔

      1. You aren’t doing it right, RE. You have to write < spoiler > [without the gaps] then type what you want to hide and finish with < /spoiler > again without the gaps.

        1. That’s exactly what I do Conners, it works when I do that on my PC but not on my mobile, which is what I use most of the time.
          And is not available at all, on replies like these.

    4. And now he works in air-conditioning he’san extractor fan
      The blocker never works. 🤔

    5. 384827+ up ticks,

      Morning TB,

      He came clean when having to attend hospital with badly burnt lips due to french kissing a Massey Fergusson.

    8. Oh dear, I live about ten miles from Saxmundham as the crow flies; I’d better lock up the lawnmower!

  26. I suspect the manager would look at the team and squad make-up and see which of the two is closer to the “average”.

  28. Morning all 🙂😊
    No change in the weather.
    No change regarding government inaction.
    The mire of our political idiots festers on and on.
    I expect ‘ex’ President Obama’s visit to downing Street was appreciated by our lapdog government. No doubt passing on instructions from the WEF.
    It makes no sense when all they seem to want to do is to start ww3 with the Soviet Union. Noticeably all the people celebrating their own leader’s new term in government were waving the same flags. Expressing of course Union.
    Unlike our un ‘United’ Kingdom which is now dominated by flags of other countries and therefore other beliefs. And seemingly anyone who does wave a flag or display support for this land is severely and publicly castigated.

    1. Was he a heterosexual or a homosexual tractor meddler. If the latter, was the exhaust system interfered with? A question of manifolds?

      1. If he’d told them he had transitioned into a tractor they would have had to let him go.

    1. Thanks, just read it. Let’s hope the action succeeds. These people need their feet holding to the fire.

    2. Eh? What it ‘a blind eye’? It’s propaganda. The whole point is to ignore it. What possible right have trans nutters have to ministers? A man who thinks he’s a woman should be ignored because he is the definition of mentally ill.

    1. Well done. I had it easy this morning.

      Wordle 1,004 2/6

      🟩🟨🟩🟨⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. I chose the option that I thought sounded more American! Of course, it was the traditional word!

    2. It took me longer
      Wordle 1,004 4/6

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

  33. Ref the letter regarding NHS Net Zero (scam) – written by a doctor (maybe not even a medical one?) whose job title is ‘Clinical lead for sustainability’ – another made-up job that doesn’t enhance patient care. There are over 800 diversity managers (and their staff) and God knows how many useless parasites in management positions, then there’s the 6 managers costing £3m a year who are looking into the NHS’s green credentials. The head of the NHS should be put up against a wall…….

    1. That’s the problem though, isn’t it? There are so many of them who do absolutely nothing. The NHS is just another government department. A huge, bloated mess of waste and inefficiency doing things it just doesn’t need to do so far away from it’s remit. That’s why it’s so bad.

      When every government department is obsessing about ‘diversity’, ‘rights’, ‘DIE’, ‘green’ they have carte blanche to ensure nothing gets done.

  34. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/18/britain-faces-1979-moment-says-rachel-reeves/

    Reeves spends a lot of time waffling about things, using buzzwords and wonk speak. I appreciate she can’t announce policy – because Labour haven’t got any apart form more tax and more waste – but the whole attitude is wrong. She can’t get her head around the way to create growth is to shred the state. Close multiple departments. Make welfare time limited. Cut taxes to encourage people to work. End mass uncontrolled gimmigration. Make energy a fraction of the cost it is.

    She like all big state Lefties sees the government as the centre of the economy rather than acknowledging it has a minor part to play being, basically, a parasite.

  35. Britain’s priciest property names
    Rating
    Property name
    Number of sales counted by Savills
    Average price
    Proportion of homes selling for more than £1m
    Properties named the “Manor House” or “Old Vicarage” do not just sound grand, they also sell for the highest prices in Britain, research reveals.

    Analysis of property sales found that quintessentially English property names with historical ties were the most expensive.

    Estate agency Savills found that the Manor House commanded the highest average price of £1.4m. Historically this was often the grandest house in the area, the researchers said, belonging to the Lord of the Manor in Anglo Saxon and Norman England.

    More than two in five sales of properties named the Manor House sold for over £1m.

    Second was the Old Rectory, with an average price of £1.3m. Properties with this name usually date from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian periods, Savills said. Over the past five years, half of properties sold with this name have been valued at £1m or more. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/house-prices/revealed-the-house-names-that-come-with-the-highest-prices/

    1
    The Manor House
    56
    £1,423,128
    43pc

    2
    (The) Old Rectory
    355
    £1,301,424
    50pc

    3
    Mallards
    38
    £1,164,150
    24pc

    4
    (The) Old Vicarage
    325
    £1,086,887
    39pc

    5
    The Oast House
    31
    £1,038,774
    45pc

    6
    Lime Tree House
    33
    £981,121
    21pc

    7
    Manor House/The Manor
    204
    £967,117
    29pc

    8
    Manor Farm House
    41
    £966,235
    32pc

    9
    Grove House
    68
    £962,904
    25pc

    10
    Glebe House
    86
    £940,814
    31pc

    1. Pa sold the big house under that name. It was, after all, the name of the house!

      His only stipulation on sale was to remove the small row of cottages from the property listing so the groundskeeper and house manager (who didn’t like my 6 year old self go-karting around the hallways) would own their own homes excluded from the estate.

      Mother didn’t like it and while she usually got her way, in this she didn’t, and I still get Christmas cards from them and they gossip about the ‘foreign couple’ who bought the estate.

    2. May 16 Gasworks Alley would fetch a higher price if it was in the posh part of London?

    4. This is one of those harmless findings with back-to-front implications. A property’s name does not influence its value. I very much doubt that dubbing a dilapidated home in a high-crime neighbourhood “The Manor House” or “The Old Rectory” would add anything to its selling price. It’s just that properties with such names are typically well loved, architecturally pleasing and often set in a charming environment.

    1. It’s an overflowing sewer. The only way to clear out London now is by cutting off welfare to the invader.

    2. Wrll he is getting away with renaming some of the railway lines, just a few days of protest then off he goes on his merry way.

    1. I suspect he did, yes. I’m told his favourite line was, “I say dear, you like ploughing, I like ploughing; surely a match made in heaven…”

  42. I know this one. It used to be a regular Gallery Prommer. It’s a man. Looks like a man and sounds like a man and only recently had its bits cut off, though it’s been wearing frocks and using the ladies loos in the Royal Albert Hall for decades. I was shocked when I looked at its X thread, as I’d always thought it to be a harmless crank. Seems to have a nasty obsession with Melanie Phillips. A Jewish friend defends this creature. I don’t think she understands.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/550938826509c4e73e760c1e544e0e1e40970b9470714866530e90828abf975c.png

      1. Yes I wear jeans and trousers , because I am terrified of my legs being scratched / scraped / nettled / brambled / scratched by gorse bushes etc.

        I cannot remember the last time I wore a dress or a pretty suit , only a few years back I think!

        Once upon a time I was a real fashion follower.. but life is different here in the sticks .

        1. If you have dogs or cats, trousers are a must.
          I wear dresses when I wish to be posh.

      3. Caroline hardly ever wears trousers; she wears skirts or dresses and is keen on sewing so she makes most of her clothes herself. One of her Christmas presents a few years ago was an adjustable tailor’s dummy which she has adjusted to fit perfectly.

        And in the evening I tend wear a sarong as it is more comfortable for those who have a tendency towards adiposity.

    3. I quoted Melanie Philips in an essay once and asked if she would mind and would she like to read it. In both cases she was polite and turned down the offer to read. As it was, I agreed with her position.

    1. Politically left of centre media attacks right of centre outlet. Who knew? Meanwhile we still have to pay to support lefty outlet.

    2. The BBC describes the Nazi’s as Far Right. It claimed Mussolini was a right wing fascist. It branded … Nick Griffon’s people – as Far Right.

      The BBC uses far right as a boo word to try to force public opinion. In reality, the BBC is hard Left. Same as the Nazis. Same as all the big state, Left wing, authoritarian abusive nutters throughout history are. It can’t see why it is because it desperately wants to believe it is good and virtuous. All Lefties do.

      The Second Coming

      Turning and turning in the widening gyre
      The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
      Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
      Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
      The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
      The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
      The best lack all conviction, while the worst
      Are full of passionate intensity.

      The BBC are definitely the worst – and they cannot see why.

      2. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
        Slouches towards Gaza to be aborted?

    3. The BBC describes the Nazi’s as Far Right. It claimed Mussolini was a right wing fascist. It branded … Nick Griffon’s people – as Far Right.

      The BBC uses far right as a boo word to try to force public opinion. In reality, the BBC is hard Left. Same as the Nazis. Same as all the big state, Left wing, authoritarian abusive nutters throughout history are. It can’t see why it is because it desperately wants to believe it is good and virtuous. All Lefties do.

      The Second Coming

      Turning and turning in the widening gyre
      The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
      Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
      Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
      The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
      The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
      The best lack all conviction, while the worst
      Are full of passionate intensity.

      The BBC are definitely the worst – and they cannot see why.

  46. SIR – In Europe’s heatwave of 2022, there were more than 70,000 excess
    deaths due to heat-related causes. This shows the need to tackle
    the climate crisis as it spirals into a health crisis.

    The NHS is responsible for 5 per cent of the UK’s total carbon emissions.
    Achieving net zero requires the largest change that the NHS has ever had
    to implement, with almost every activity related to carbon emissions.

    So, while it’s essential to address concerns about consequences for patient
    care, it’s equally right to stress the need for sustainability in the
    NHS.

    Dr Pete Ford

    Clinical lead for sustainability

    Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital

    Do you actually see any patients, Dr Pete? Doing away with you and your job would reduce emissions.

    1. A heatwave will normally see off some of the aged and vulnerable, just like cold weather does. Those old people lose the ability to regulate their body temperature according to the environment.

      1. I must be old enough now to be body heat control challenged.
        That’s why I chose an EV that has options for both cooling and heating of the driver’s seat. Now I’ve eliminated dying from overheating and freezing to death all I have to worry about is getting out of the car when the battery explodes.

          1. However, ICE vehicles can draw typically 80 to 100 amps at 14v from the alternator which effectively comes from the combustion engine via a V-belt. The big problem arising from the move from ICE cars to EVs is that the 14v car utilies now come directly from the traction battery and to make things worse designers are putting so many electrically operated gizmos to try and make them more attractive to buyers that it compromises their range.

            Saturday’s DT had a reader’s problem of being accused by a dealer of misfuelling a petrol car. At least EVs can’t suffer from contaminated electricity.

          3. Before unleaded, petrol tank inlets were same size as diesel and I unwittingly filled up my 110 County Landrover with diesel because the nozzle was red which in this case departed from normal all black diesel pump nozzles.

            Fortunately the garage I filled up at still had mechanics in the service area and I was able to have the whole tank drained.

        2. The only issue being that those heated seats use power from the big battery.

          Whenever we read about Canadian EV experiences, it is always regarding a trip in winter when the battery was getting close to empty and the driver turned off all heat options in the car just for that additional mile or two.

          EVs are in our future though, Trudeau blew 20 billion dollars on EV battery plant subsidies. As they never admit to being wrong, we will have thise machines shoved down our throats.

          1. I did a EV test this morning with the all the non essential drive mode options disabled by using UTILITY ( dog mode) whilst parked in the drive for three hours. The EV showed a constant 200 watts being drawn from the traction battery with the starting range shown as 206 miles at 71% traction battery charge.

            After three hours whilst parked the new range showed 203 miles and 70% traction battery charge. Some of the energy goes to the 12v battery supplying a 13.5v float charge but there may be activity on other utility services depending on user selected options from the software.

            The level of computing power needed by the ECU in an EV is much greater than an ICE car and in Teslas it is worth using a heat exchanger to heat the cabin whilst cooling the electronics.
            My Hyundai EV would be supplied with a heat exchanger in the Canadian version.

      2. I must be old enough now to be body heat control challenged.
        That’s why I chose an EV that has options for both cooling and heating of the driver’s seat. Now I’ve eliminated dying from overheating and freezing to death all I have to worry about is getting out of the car when the battery explodes.

    2. A heatwave will normally see off some of the aged and vulnerable, just like cold weather does. Those old people lose the ability to regulate their body temperature according to the environment.

    3. If I could be bothered to scream I would. People dying from heat and his first whinging, wheedling drivel is about ‘climate change’ – the hoax preventing the technology advancements in air conditioning, heating by making energy unaffordable for people who most need it.

      Life, I hate these useless wasters.

    4. If you just scanned the headline of this rather dishonest article, you’d think that people were dying of global warming
      https://www.monash.edu/medicine/news/latest/2021-articles/worlds-largest-study-of-global-climate-related-mortality-links-5-million-deaths-a-year-to-abnormal-temperatures
      Read down the page to some actual numbers, and it’s clear that deaths from heat are small compared to deaths from cold:
      ANNUAL DEATHS DUE TO COLD TEMPS BY REGION:

      Africa – 1.18 million
      Asia – 2.4 million
      Europe – 657,000
      South America – 116,000
      UK – 44,600
      US – 154,800
      China – 967,000
      India – 655,400
      Australia – 14,200
      ANNUAL DEATHS DUE TO HIGH TEMPS BY REGION

      Africa – 25,550
      Asia – 224,000
      Europe – 178,700
      South America – 25,250
      UK – 8000
      US – 18,750
      China – 71,300
      India – 83,700
      Australia – 2300

    5. Perhaps Dr Ford should consider this…..more dead bodies (which it seems you are aiming for) means even more carbon emissions.
      Sustainability in this case doesn’t actually mean anything. As we’ve all noticed over the past four years Complications that arrive in the medical business are not controllable.

    6. How does Dr Pete know the excess deaths were from the “heatwave” [incidentally we were in a variety of places in Europe during that time period and the temperatures were almost always noticeably lower than the MSM would have you believe]? How many might have been due to the effects of the vaccines we were conned, or sometimes pressured, into taking??

  47. Last time I wore a ‘dress’ (blue, bought in Malaysia in 1998) was probably last summer when we went out for dinner on my birthday.

    Today I’m wearing my favourite, comfortable, warm red cords.

  49. Hooray, the first cuckoo has arrived.
    Making a lot of noise but no responses so far.

  51. Excellent article. I like the way he faces unflinchingly up to reality at every turn.
    “non violent extremism” eh? Never heard a better definition of “dissent from authoritarian government policy.” Who cares if people are extremist if they are non violent? Come to think of it, non-violence is a pretty extreme viewpoint, considering that violence has been used to resolve 99.9% of problems in history. See you in the camps.

    1. The problem with having that facility is the likelihood of having a premature ejection!

          2. They’re not wearing white stilettos.
            Probably invaders from north of the Stour.

  54. Neil Oliver bemoans the treatment of children in the world today. He starts by referring to Gaza (he has several times been very critical of the Israeli response) and the deaths of thousands of children there (whatever the number might be). He then goes on to Covid:

    “They look on the adults, those who wielded power over them and find no reason to trust those so-called grown-ups ever again. It’s no exaggeration whatever to say that on the altar of save Granny, children’s well-being was knowingly sacrificed, and many of them know it. I remember saying at the time that a society standing behind a shield made of its own children, that forces children to risk their lives by being injected with products that were demonstrably neither safe nor effective, and that, most important of all, they never needed, is no society at all.”

    Children (and adults) are used as a shield in Gaza, Mr O…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTPr1Q_RVsw

          1. How would you know?

            Actually, i sound like Kenneth Williams.

            “I can’t stand innuendo. If i see one in a script i whip it out immediately”. Ooh.

          2. I sometimes wonder how the Round The Horne team got away with this one in the mid-1960s with Kenneth Williams as Sandy and Hugh Paddick as Julian. The BBC’s censors probably had no idea.

            In the fourth series, Sandy tells Horne that Julian is a brilliant pianist: “a miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright”.

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_the_Horne

          4. Lols.

            I think it is the case that traditionally entertainment was a safe refuge for gay men. So it wasn’t unusual to have very camp people performing. Most folks probably thought it a bit naughty and louche if they understood it at all, but harmless. Which it was.

          5. My favourite is when Horne calls in Bona Law.
            Horne: “so you have a legal practice?”
            Julian (or Sandy – I forget which): “No we have an illegal practice”

            This all passed over my head at the time – I grew up to a constant background of the wireless as my father carried a portable, tied up with string, everywhere he went. I suspect the double entendre may have passed over my mother’s head too.

          6. I was so young and naive in those days that I just thought that the programs were funny.
            So clueless in fact that I could have qualified as a BBC censor.

          8. True. I had no idea at the time. I lived such a sheltered life with only one gay in the village (and we kept well away from him).

          9. I have imagination. I think your suggestion is very close to the truth…{:¬))

          10. Not quite Julian Clary but close. Poncy Southerner remember.
            I have a Hampshire/Portsmouth twang. When i first moved to Birmingham people thought i was posh. I kid you not.

    2. I’m sure lots of children have died.
      I’m equally certain that if Hamas did not exist most would still be alive.

  55. I despair at what is happening to the CofE. The Diocese of York is advertising for a Racial Justice Enabler – ” https://www.cofepathways.org/members/modules/job/detail.php?record=6837

    Charles Moore in the DT describes it, I won’t paste it all but here are a couple of excerpts:

    The post will not be offered to a white person. The ad cannot state as much (such racial discrimination is against the law), but I think that is what the “person specification” means when it says that the successful candidate will have “a passion for racial justice and radical hospitality borne out of lived experience”.

    There are targets. “By mid-2025,” the enabler must “plan, curate and roll out an appropriate unconscious bias and diversity training programme”. By 2027, he must have produced a “resource” for social justice and to have this “used by one third of the ministry Units”.

    Of the 13 qualities the enabler will need to exhibit, only two refer explicitly to Christianity.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/19/church-of-england-racial-justice-enabler/

    1. Oh well, I suppose in past times Christians were thrown to the lions, or threatened with burning at the stake for blasphemy. Having one’s pockets picked by the Archbishop of Canterbury to fund satanic die-versity programmes seems trivial in comparison.

  56. Yawn..very Belated Morning All

    Medley

    Worth 2 years chokey

    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/160/166/126/original/643bc577c10eff3f.jpeg

    Rest

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2c70f2f4fff1e559f930669bd01f89ee46e005d470316dfc08e9e1fb986b5ae9.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/221594d6816c6e0d35e7da36c025b1d1028072e77600e0fd8722cf2239e6ce6b.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0a1658f23a21fe6d2485027438c0205af3c443c942051232aad038771932df9d.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a0b4292a97fadd9d3c1000a994c2f7745ea93c3f85885724cb56c03d6cb9d12f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/10e4bbbac66306941d265d95bb8057cb90d9efb4ce8de956345134154db1348c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9db5ea9d9c350b0d2dce92adea504cd315f25454a28b8fc6782e55a60bddd028.png

    1. Throw eggs at it, tomatoes, anything. Why are the British public so supine, so indifferent to antagonism?

      1. Best to avoid bacon though, or any hurtie “stickers” unless you fancy a couple years in clink!?

    2. Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society, said: “At best it’s a well-meaning yet misguided and counterproductive attempt at inclusivity. Such gestures suggest favouritism, generating resentment and the inevitable demands from other religious or identity groups for equal recognition.

      “Religious messages like this undermine the principle of neutrality. Maintaining such neutrality in public spaces and services is the best way of nurturing a fair and inclusive society that respects all individuals, regardless of their beliefs or backgrounds.”

      Just as some shiny-eyed optimists believe all cultures and races can rub along together in one place without friction, so Stephen Evans believes that ideas can be made purely personal and private. He’ll have to take sides sooner or later because Islam is anything but personal and private. It’s public, aggressive and in-your-face – with a weapon if necessary.

      When the blood flows, Mr Evans might well discover nostalgic feelings for the wishy-washy Christianity of the UK of the recent past.

      1. A two edged sword
        “….the best of the sinners are those who repent often”
        Would that include jihadists repenting killing infidels, or doesn’t that count as sin?

        I wonder who authorised the messages and will they be daily throughout Ramadan or merely until the first atrocity celebrating it occurs

    3. The council said: “You may have seen several headlines over the weekend about a business in Greenwich.

      “Whilst it’s not always appropriate to comment on individual cases, contrary to reports this has nothing to do with the Union Flag or any of the painting’s contents.

      “The advert has been painted, without any permission, in a conservation area, close to a World Heritage Site.

      “The council is acting according to Government planning laws, as it would with any unauthorised advert.

      “Any suggestions this is because of the Union Flag are disingenuous and untrue.

      “The business owner is welcome to apply for advert consent in line with the conservation area he is in.”

      https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-best-fish-chip-shop-union-flag-mural-petition-greenwich-council-b1146110.html

      In other words, the mural is too brash for the genteel sensibilities of some in Greenwich. More to the point, the proprietor had not sought permission. We all know how councils love to grant or withhold permission.

  58. This morning the Warqueen broke the no talk before 10 rule and said ‘We need to talk about Oscar.’

    Then flounced off to work.

    The last time this came up was when Wiggy had his barking period. No matter what, he’d bark. You’d speak, bark, move, bark, sit, stop, close a door – bark. And not the little whuffs, but the ear splitting window shattering sonic hammers of a big dog who’s fed up.

    Speaking of, Mongo is due to do his therapy dog thing at the hospice and I need to wake him up. It doesn’t help that he and Junior have a routine where while Junior gets ready for school Mongo lies in his bed and before leaving pulls the blanket over him.

  60. Repost from two years ago. Remember this when they next demand your contribution.

    Comic relief – £11 million wages… It’s no laughing matter – Thieving b*****ds.
    Comic Relief (or Charity Projects, Company no. 01806414) – 2021 accounts showed an annual wage bill of £11 million, 21 employees earned between £60,000 and £150,000, the post of Chief Executive earned £229,000 and they held £96 million in the bank.
    Many past and present directors of the charity are top BBC executives – Fancy that! Remember this when they next stage a night-long begging programme.

    1. Appalling facts – however I would suggest that earn/earned is the wrong verb, most of the scum didn’t “earn” that money!

    2. The pressure is on lowly behind the scenes types such as make-up artists to give their time freely to this and other telethons. When you are a free-lancer needing to keep in with the ‘talent’ and the top producers, you can hardly say `’but I’ll have to find a babysitter” can you?

    3. Stopped donating to that con decades ago for those very reasons. Apart from the fact that woke comedy isn’t.

  61. HMRC to close phone lines every summer

    Department goes ahead with annual closure despite self-assessment chaos

    HMRC is introducing an annual summer break on its phone lines in a bid to push customers online.

    From April 8, taxpayers will be unable to call the tax office for help with their tax return until September 30. These measures, the tax office
    said, will be repeated every year to allow “helpline advisers to focus support where it is most needed”.

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/hmrc-permanently-close-tax-return-phone-lines-summer/

      1. They will stop interrupting the music to tell you that your call is important to them!

        Maybe the music will change, they will put the full Wagner ring cycle on a loop.

    3. 98 % of those calls could be handled by AI, but then what would happen to all those Bames?

      1. He lives on the next street …. Bobble is a Purr Box …. never refuses Dreamies etc. He never settles here. I fancy he is kept in at night.

    3. He’s saying, “Late up again I see, you lazy b***ard”. A cat could starve for want of decent servants.”

    4. He’s saying, “Late up again I see, you lazy b***ard”. A cat could starve for want of decent servants.”

    6. You would have thought kindness and hospitality to be normal behaviour by religious people, so why is the ABC so surprised to be welcomed by slammers. Spose it’s a relief when a party with them doesn’t go with a bang.

  64. Gosh it’s so hard to decide who I’d like to first see hanging from a lamp-post…. Welby or Sunak or Johnson … or Cameron or Osborne … or Tristram Hunt

    1. Tristram Hunt may be a far-left luvvie….but someone has to run museums.

      (I think you prolly mean Jeremy Rhyming…)

      1. Careful with the gallows humour. I knew someone who was forced to hang a fellow prisoner. The Germans were keen on delegation.

  66. “Unfortunately, when I opened my pack lunch and started eating my bacon sandwich to break the fast it resulted in calls for me to be beheaded”

  67. Shame on canada (again).

    The loonier than the liberal (yes its possible) ndp party introduced a bill in parliament calling for recognition of Paestine, Israeli withdrawal from gaza and more money to the corrupt unwra. The bill was debated yesterday and after major amendments something completely different was passed. The revised bill actually mentions hamas and calls for them to stop fighting and reference to Palestinian state have been dropped.

    The shame? A number of MPs in the house for the vote wore a black and white keffiyeh for the debate and votes. Hamas is a prohibited organization in canada, how can MPs be allowed to wear this symbol of a terrorist cult in what should be the centre of Canadian democracy.

    South carolina is looking mighty good nowadays, now if only I could get heath care insurance.

  68. Gambia could lift ban on female genital mutilation
    Bill debated in parliament introduced by lawmaker Almameh Gibba ‘seeks to uphold religious loyalty and safeguard cultural norms and values’

    Our Foreign Staff
    18 March 2024 • 7:47pm

    Gambians protest against a law aimed at decriminalizing female genital mutilation outside the national assembly
    Gambian lawmakers voted on Monday to advance to press on with a highly controversial Bill that seeks to lift a ban on female genital mutilation (FGM).

    The issue has divided the tiny West African nation for months, with hundreds gathering to protest outside parliament.

    Pro-FGM campaigners outnumbered those calling for the ban, in place since 2015, to remain, according to AFP journalists.

    “The Bill seeks to uphold religious loyalty and safeguard cultural norms and values,” Almameh Gibba, the lawmaker who introduced the Bill, said during the debate.

    “The use of a ban on female circumcision is direct violation of the citizens’ rights to practise their culture and religion,” he added.

    ‘Rollback of other rights’
    But activists and rights organisations say the suggested legislation reverses years of progress and risks damaging the country’s human rights record.

    “There’s the inherent risk that this is just the first step and it could lead to the rollback of other rights such as the law on child marriage… and not just in The Gambia but in the region as a whole,” Divya Srinivasan, from women’s rights NGO Equality Now, told AFP.

    Lawmakers voted 42 in favour and four against to send the Bill to a parliamentary committee for at least three months for further scrutiny before it returns for a third reading.

    “To hear mainly men speak on behalf of women and speak about what should happen to the bodies of women is just the most disheartening thing,” said Jaha Dukureh, an anti-FGM activist who herself underwent the practice and who watched her sister bleed to death following the procedure.

    “As a woman who has lived with this practice, that was just one of the most heart-wrenching things to watch,” she told AFP after the debate.

    Safia Ibrahim demonstrates the tools used to perform female genital mutilation (FGM)
    Female genital mutilation can lead to many serious health problems including infections, bleeding and infertility to name a few CREDIT: Brian Inganga
    Seventy-six per cent of Gambian women aged between 15 and 49 have undergone FGM, according to a 2021 report by the UN children’s agency Unicef.

    Unicef defines the practice as “the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”.

    It can lead to serious health problems, including infections, bleeding, infertility and complications in childbirth, and impairs sexual pleasure.

    “Girls’ bodies are their own. FGM robs them of autonomy over their bodies and causes irreversible harm,” the UN’s Gambia office posted on Twitter, ahead of the debate.

    ‘Dangerous precedent’
    The UN rights office had called for the Bill to be withdrawn, while Amnesty International said it would set a “dangerous precedent” for women’s rights.

    Yahya Jammeh, the former Gambian dictator, banned FGM in the Muslim majority country in 2015, branding it outdated and not a requirement of Islam.

    Parliament later adopted the first Gambian law specifically banning the practice, which is now punishable by up to three years in prison.

    But since 2015, only two cases have been prosecuted, with the first conviction made in August 2023, according to Amnesty International.

    The issue flared up last year, when three women received fines or prison sentences for performing FGM.

    The Islamic Council, the country’s main Muslim organisation, said the practice was “not just a merely inherited custom” but “one of the virtues of Islam”.

    It called on the government to reconsider the ban.

    2. They have a parliament? Gosh. Do they leave their spears at the door? Asking for a friend.

  69. Signing off until late afternoon. A lecture to attend on Isambard K Brunel. A very little known fact is that one of my godfathers was Brunel’s grandson.

    Play nicely.

  70. Of course this just happens. It’s very sad but really there’s nothing unusual in this. Nothing to see here. Move along, now.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/224c1f32832408ec2a63788850c3d69639d53536eb3f862685df157d33c10c04.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/19/eton-college-schoolboy-died-collapsing-playing-fields/

    Our thoughts must be with his devastated parents.

    Lots of blah about Eton’s own version of football but not one question asking what can the cause be of the very recent phenomenon of young people suddenly collapsing and dying.

    2. Surprisingly medics are not taught much about the phenomenon of sudden cardiac death (SCD) which is more common than one might think.

      One of the problems is identifying how a normally healthy person could suddenly drop dead because the symtoms of SCD can only be observed on an ECG whilst the victim is trying to be resucitated during an SCA.

      This video explains:

      https://youtu.be/Lm1HAmCnr9A?si=wI-DdEGi8l2Lijcg

  71. Whilst it doesn’t change the refusal, I do wonder how long it’s been there. It replaced a sign put up in 2016 and taken down in 2017.

    1. The chap is a Cypriot immigrant done good. He showed the original advertisements on the building from many years ago. The signage stood out far more then than now. The sign above the door covered two floors. When all is said and done it is a mural. The council do fuck all about gang graffiti but go after a successful businessman. Tells us all we need to know about small minded petty little shits.

  72. We may never know who made the complaint, who ordered the removal of the advert, and how many other signs that break the rules have been allowed.

    We can also be forgiven for thinking that if he had applied for permission, it would have been refused.

  73. We may never know who made the complaint, who ordered the removal of the advert, and how many other signs that break the rules have been allowed.

    We can also be forgiven for thinking that if he had applied for permission, it would have been refused.

    1. I find this hilarious. It is long past time the state were simply told to do it’s job. If it doesn’t want to, sack the people there.

      A better option is a far simpler tax code. The 20,000 pages of ours is a complete joke. We could get it down to a single page, but the more complexity the more tax is soaked. Another option is to re-open the local tax offices and have folk go to them directly. At every turn, the state makes our lives more complicated, more difficult, more expensive and less efficient.

      The state must be brought to heel.

    1. Before I married and after I stopped training I was heading that way. I remember when I didn’t get out of bed and just watched TV and ate all day.

      1. Forgive me for the impertinence but exactly why did the Warqueen Power Woman marry you? Film star looks? Massive cock? Pity?

          1. Something i regaled some Nottlers at lunch recently. I said that i had been asked how i knew something would be funny. I said when you are laughing like Mutley as you type… it will be funny.

        2. Flip if I know. When we first started dating I had no idea what on earth she was doing with me and expected to wake up from a dream.

          One day she said ‘You’ll never take me for granted’ and it sort of clicked then. We married later in life – 36 for me, 34 for her. We were both far more aware of who we were and placed fewer demands to ‘change’ on one another.

          That and I suppose I’m sincere and genuine. She’s known some utter pretty boy swine in her time and I’m not. I think the real clincher was when she said ‘It’s her or the dog’ and I said – without really thinking it through – off you go then.

          1. Reminds me of the old adage about marriage:
            She expects him to change and is disappointed when he doesn’t’
            He doesn’t expect her to change and is disappointed when she does…..

          2. How she looks will change – it has. We all do. Bu the wit, the brain, the mind, she sly sense of humour, the flat stares… those won’t, and she will always be the woman I love when we’re both on a Zimmer frame.

            There was a moment when we went hiking in the lakes before Junior and it started to rain. I dug out one of those waterproof overalls and a big brolly and we sat there, dog bustling about under this umbrella and I think – for the first time in a long time that we were both happy. Mindlessly. Stupidly unthinkingly happy because the world, at that point, for us two had stopped.

          8. Mostly, there are things we argue about which are her insecurities. She made her money from her body. She is, unquestioningly, bloody gorgeous. As inn ‘oh my goodness I’ve driven into a hedge’ type beautiful. She wants to reduce her boobs from the 34H they are to less. I have said do it if you want to. She thinks I’ll leave her if she does. She has this daft idea that I’ve married her body.

            Thing is, the more you say no, the more she’ll dig in and convince herself otherwise. Heck, the girl is used to men err… ummm…. err… over her, so she has hangups on how she looks.

            It is the one thing I can’t get ‘through’ to her because it’s a very rooted issue.

          10. She asked me to get her some underwear for Christmas and I went to Marks and Spencer with the information: 32H 28 32.

            She’d expected me to go to some other place but I was too embarrassed.

          12. It’s just as well Mr T is focused on Isambard K B otherwise his keyboard would be saturated by now!

          14. My husband used to have an important job in women’s retail fashion, in a very trendy High Street company providing expensive but nice fashion clothes for women aged 20-35. He liked the fact that I was the only one of his girlfriends who reacted with total and utter indifference to this news.

          15. I remember reading that most women would rather have people saying ‘I wonder what she sees in him’ than ‘I wonder what he sees in her’.

  79. I would be delighted if Rashid Sanook were deposed in a further bout of Tory civil wars, particularly if they then foisted the LibDem Mordaunt on their members. More votes to Reform.

  80. I see the BBC have had to apologise for calling reform a far right party.
    Isn’t it time we were able to stop paying for state sponsored leftist propaganda as the only way of legally watching T.V?
    I know you can sign up to or go in any number of sights and I rarely watch it nowadays.
    However, I’d just like to be able to watch the odd programme that makes it into mainstream tv about twice a year, without funding an ideology I don’t agree with.

  81. Cyber-flasher jailed for 66 weeks in legal first. 19 March 2024.

    The first person to be convicted of a cyber-flashing offence has been jailed for 66 weeks.

    Nicholas Hawkes was sentenced at Southend Crown Court after sending unsolicited explicit photos to a 15-year-old and a woman.

    The 39-year-old, from Basildon, Essex, sent the pair pictures of his genitals on February 9, the court heard.

    The wonders of technology!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/19/nicholas-hawkes-photos-first-convicted-cyber-flashing/

    3. And yet the net is full of serious porn for all to see, and nobody says a word. I hasten to add that I’m not one for sharing my wares online but a year in clink seems a bit over the top. Perhaps we should resurrect the town stocks where those who wish to display the family jewels could be put up for a hour and the public could make their feelings known..

      1. When staying over with friends after a party many many years ago, a guy opened the bedroom door, stuck his head in and said, “Do you mind if I take my clothes off”? I looked up and answered, “Do you mind if we laugh”? He went away without another word.

        1. An old friend use to lead a ukulele band in and around Buckinghamshire. He told me of a private Gig they did some years ago for people of the legal profession and most of them ended up naked. Not the band.

    4. It is unpleasant, yes. In fact, it’s disgusting, but is it a crime? Surely the message can be deleted, the caller blocked and that’s the end of it?

      I did hear that the bird off the telly, Emily Attack was getting sent hundreds of these pictures and I’d just think that a sad state of affairs from silly men and a lack of privacy practices. I’m not advocating or suggesting it’s acceptable, just wondering if it’s a crime when there are so many genuinely violent crimes out there.

      I feel the same way about the poor kid locked up for wanting to kill MPs. He didn’t *do* anything. It was pure thoughtcrime.

      1. The one in Liverpool?
        He was as much a terrorist as our cat. He was just a spotty fantasist having nasty thoughts in his bedroom, and he got thirteen years?!

        1. I don’t remember where he was from, but yes. It seemed the state just wanted to send a message – we’ll crush you. It was utterly disproportionate out of sheer spite.

          That alone demonstrates how terrified the state is of the public.

          1. Also the Scousers who have been jailed for demonstrating outside a migrant hostel. Our justice system is anything but just.

        2. Lucky he wasn’t in Canada, they want to hand out life in prison for thinking like that. Or to be more precise for being accused that you might be thinking like that.

    1. I won;t pretend there aren’t days I want to put her over my knee and slap her bottom, but that’s between us two!

  83. 2023/24 Council tax bill arrived. £3,425 of which the Borough Council receives only £417.

    1. Nearly £10 a day? Good God! What do you get for that – streets paved with gold?

      1. A bankrupt borough could to the tune of £1.2 billion expected to rise to £2.4 billion by next year because of ‘commitments’. The most indebted council in the country. The previous CE ran the council and retired a couple of years ago. Wr could see this coming but the councillors had their heads firmly buried in the sand whilst being shafted from behind.
        We now have a LimpDum council and ee can only expect things to get worse.

    2. So you’re in Band F, John. My ever so humble single bedroom retirement bungalow is Band C (presumably Band A would apply to a garden shed, or perhaps a shoe box?) and the corresponding figures are £2127.04 and £176.14.

      Band C here is slightly more than Woking, and Guildford isn’t bankrupt. Yet… 🙄

  85. Reminds me of the time our friends had quite a few guests so farmed us out to a neighbour…… There were several doors on the landing and I opened the wrong one…….

  86. Reminds me of the time our friends had quite a few guests so farmed us out to a neighbour…… There were several doors on the landing and I opened the wrong one…….

  87. Ann Summers is a coming in,
    Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
    Groweth seed and bloweth mead,
    And springeth wood anew,
    Sing, Cuckoo!

  88. Opportunity knocked !

    I remember reading Pru Leith. She said she had been invited to a party and when she turned up they were all naked. So what did she do? She took her clothes off of course !

  89. The last thing the Conservative Party needs is another leadership circus

    Have they got anyone that is leadership material?
    Mogg should have stepped in after Boris.

    1. It isn’t just about the leader. It’s a completely moronic attitude from the entire party. They seem determined to do the exact opposite of what needs to be done.

    2. If Jacob Rees-Mogg defected to the Reform Party along with David Frost and if Nigel Farage took an active role in it then the Conservative Party’ s support would fall from 17% (which was in one poll yesterday) to single figures.

      The sooner the Conservative Party is completely annihilated the better.

    2. I saw the program, it was a bit odd.
      In his Telegraph article Ade Adepitan says that it’s strange that Suella Braverman says that multiculturalism has failed. but she’s hardly the only one.
      Sarkozy has said it, Cameron has said it and Merkel said it.
      What none of them did was to offer any solution.

      Orania isn’t just all white, it’s a sub-sect of white; Afrikaaners.
      To me if that’s the way they want to live, OK. They are certainly safer there than anywhere else in South Africa.

      How Adepitan can conclude from this example that the Far Right is a global menace, I don’t know.

      1. He found what he wanted. Notably he didn’t pootle off to Amish land. I wonder how he’s get on there.

        1. It was a bit like that old bat Marjoram Gargoyles poking her nose into small towns in Australia.

      2. My first reaction was, who set him up for it and what did he and they actually hope to gain or prove.
        I doubt if he asked how many white farmers and their families had been murdered in the area.
        No interest in all that.

      2. You can bet your house that he’ll never back there again. Or be allowed in if he tries.

    2. No darkies either.

      Yorkshire as it was , and how I remember it .. all through the 3 Ridings .. now ruined .

      Politicians should be strung up and thrashed for what they have done to prosperous hard working towns , villages .. which have now lost their identity .

      That coalition government didn’t try to correct the wrongs that Tony Blair thrust on the country .

      Labour party are rubbish , marxist and socialists of the worst order , they are similar to a seething pile of red wood ants , they sting and hurt as they parade their lies jealousy and greed . The Liberals are useless, and the Conservatives are traitors to the hard work of an efficient work force who have kept the country ticking over by paying their taxes .

      My late grandparents, aunts and uncles, and my parents , who were part of a previous proud hard working era , would be disgusted that this country has cavilled to the ruddy Urdu/ Arabic speaking heathen .

  94. Macron backs restrictions on £1bn Ukrainian imports to EU. 19 March 2024.

    France has backed a proposal to impose restrictions on duty-free imports of Ukrainian agricultural goods to the EU – which are worth more than an estimated one billion euros a year.

    Paris swung behind Poland ahead of crunch negotiations to roll over the duty-free trade regime brought in to help the Ukrainian economy after Putin’s illegal invasion.

    It supported calls for limits on Ukrainian poultry, eggs, sugar and wheat, which Polish farmers argue is undercutting them in their domestic market.

    Sanctions on Ukraine. You couldn’t make it up!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/russia-ukraine-war/

    1. That’s easy to sort out. Ukraine is not in the EU, but Poland is. Simply slap on a tariff on any Ukrainian agricultural produce to match prices in Poland.

      Also allow a transit for sealed containers overland between Ukraine and Gdansk, offering Ukraine access to markets around the North Sea, such as the UK, Iceland and Norway, and an alternative route to the Mediterranean and Africa if the Black Sea route gets tricky. This leaves EU customers such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland and Denmark with the problem of importing produce from Ukraine without antagonising the Poles and the French.

  95. Talking about Council tax bills (arrived today, see Alf, below). Why on earth do we have (note I don’t say need!) a Police and Crime Commissioner!

    1. There’s a website on the letter somewhere to comment. I asked just that question, oddly no reply yet.

      1. Buck passing is correct – over £2 million to run the office of our local PCC…..

  96. Eton College schoolboy dies after collapsing on playing fields
    Raphaël Pryor was playing the Field Game, a form of football devised and played only at Eton, when he became unwell
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/19/eton-college-schoolboy-died-collapsing-playing-fields/

    No BTL comments allowed – so mine is here:

    A couple of years ago we had a boy from Harrow – a keen sportsman – on a course with us who was Covid jabbed who had had to go to hospital with myocarditis along with two schoolmates who had been jabbed at the same time. And last year we had a boy from Radley, also fully jabbed, who had pericarditis – he was a leading sportsman playing Rugby, and rowing for his school team. Another boy, from King’s Wimbledon, who came to us had had 3 Covid jabs and he had had Covid three times.

    And if anything should condemn Sunak to eternal Hell it is that he says UNEQUIVOCALLY* that the Covid jabs are safe. And he will be joined there by all those MPs who walked out of Parliament when Andrew Bridgen presented his case about Covid jab damage.

    * Reminds me of the lines from the Scottish play:

    I pull in resolution, and begin
    To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
    That lies like truth:

    1. A spokesperson for the Envy of the World says: “Pure coincidence; young people are always dropping dead.”

    2. I have still yet to hear why the young were “offered” the jab, to protect themselves from a virus they weren’t getting seriously ill from.

  97. Mr Sunak avoided using the word ‘effective’ when answering the pertinent question duting PMQs.

  99. There will be a reckoning. People are not blind. Vaccine harms debate and the house is empty. Debating their pay increase standing room only. The slaughter is going to be bloody.

    God rest his soul.

    1. We live on a narrow country lane, on a fairly steep hill. A couple days ago I was driving up that hill, luckily at slow speed, when two cyclists came downhill, around a corner, one on the wrong side of the road – doubtless had he crashed into me it would have been my fault!

      2. Of course.
        Apparently Vine is suing someone for describing him in a way he didn’t care for.

          1. So do I.
            He pulls faces when people phone in and say something he disagrees with.

          3. Good old Joey – he’s a seriously nasty piece of work, from the same area of Liverpool as I was born! (and Steve Gerrard, for balance) who once stubbed a cigar out in an apprentice’s face (he was taking the p!ss, apparently).
            Nonetheless, his description of Vine is absolutely on the money!!!

          4. I heard him o a podcast. He was very good. I just remember him (vaguely- I don’t care much for soccer but we have some Toon Army supporters chez nous) being in trouble (jail?) 20 years ago for something. But he seems pretty sound now. He’s not a fan of women being parachuted straight into the top commentating jobs, rather than working their way up through the ranks, so that has made him yet another public enemy number one.

  103. A mean and compliant Par Four!

    Wordle 1,004 4/6
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
    🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨
    🟩🟨⬜⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. I’m expecting 6/6 tomorrow.

      Wordle 1,004 2/6

      🟩🟨🟩🟨⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      3. Well done, Sue! I’m guessing your first word is Adieu, mine is Taser – it used to be Stare but the only (two) times I have failed on Wordle it has been -o-er (so I wanted to get the —er out there!) – the absolute nightmare as just about every letter goes in there apart from Q and the other vowels (foyer and cower btw)……

        1. Ooops, forgot to post my own feeble effort! Boring, boring Arsenal!

          Wordle 1,004 4/6

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

    2. I had a good starting word for it.

      Wordle 1,004 3/6

      🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. Another draw

      Wordle 1,004 4/6

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

  106. An excellent talk about a fascinating engineer. Terrible that he died so young – only 53. I told a lie earlier. My late godfather was Brunel’s great-nephew – NOT grandson.

    Signing off now. I heartily commend “Lunana – a Yak in the Classroom” – (BBC4) for a film to take your mind far away from the horrors of the present day.

    A demain.

    2. I’m getting college wokish begging letters on the hour every hour today.

      I no longer donate.

        1. I did, it didn’t go down well.
          I’m surprised they still send these, but I don’t want to withdraw totally because I like the annual gazette.

    3. All musical roads lead to drum circle. Did the racist Race Marxists trot out “Dead white men”?.

  110. Just in🔥

    Police officers in Scotland are being given training to target social media posts, including re-tweets, of material deemed “threatening and abusive.”

    Under Humza Yousaf’s new hate crime law, actors and comedians could also face arrest and prosecution for telling risqué jokes.

    The new training provided to officers, which was leaked to The Herald, requires police officers to go after anyone who produces material deemed “threatening and abusive,” which can also be communicated through “public performance of a play.”

    Under the new hate crime law, people who make fun of or ‘misgender trans people’, make racial jokes or criticisms of certain religions, or criticize migrants can be prosecuted.
    10:34 AM · Mar 19, 2024
    ·
    81.1K
    Views
    https://twitter.com/RaymorePark/status/1770097530379854217

      1. As a Democrat he should know.
        His party is going down that path so fast that even he must be turning in his grave.

    2. If the police concentrated on real crime perhaps there would be a lot less so-called hate crime because people would not see so much shop-lifting, knife crime, intimidation on the streets, vandalism etc etc?

      Face facts, the diverse perpetrate significantly more than their fair share of such crimes.

    4. Why doesn’t that ghastly man go back up his Hindu Kush or wherever it was that he came from?

  111. This is beyond mere sacrilege. For many years St John’s College choir has been thought to be better than Kings

    Cambridge college scraps church choir to make way for more diverse musical genres

    St John’s College tells singers it ‘appreciates that this is a very sad moment’

    Craig Simpson
    19 March 2024 • 4:44pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/03/19/TELEMMGLPICT000371108833_17108642949230_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqJsTrm9RqUrNjQFAGPLmb04WXU4whdoT0_nVcmF4qyGo.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Members of St John’s Voices performing in 2020 CREDIT: St John’s Voices

    A Cambridge college is embroiled in a row over plans to scrap an Anglican choir to make way for more diverse musical genres.

    St John’s College announced that it would strip funding from church choir St John’s Voices as it planned to fund a “broader” range of music instead.

    The mixed male and female choir will disband at the end of the current term.

    The college will also cut down on the number of chapel services held at St John’s to use the space for “civic engagement”.

    Members of the choir, which has made several recordings of sacred music, are understood to be dismayed by the news and are set to launch a petition to demand it is spared.

    One student told The Telegraph: “St John’s College has a near 400-year history of choral music, only 10 of which have included women.

    “The British choral tradition is something St John’s should be leading, not diminishing.”

    Choristers have not been informed which styles of music will be promoted instead and told The Telegraph that the process of the choir’s disbandment had not been transparent.

    ‘Very sad moment’
    The decision emerged following a 2023 review of college activities by the St John’s leadership, which the choristers themselves have not seen.

    The move to cut down on chapel services was also informed by the same review.

    Messages seen by The Telegraph state: “Keeping Mondays free of regular services will allow other uses of the space and allow the Dean and Chaplain to progress student programmes for civic engagement and faith.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/03/19/TELEMMGLPICT000371109188_17108650605550_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqLFvFcbCCSSPOPEZoCZQZEmScts_MJCIICfhGZ0ARPWw.jpeg?imwidth=960
    St John’s College has a long history of choral music CREDIT: Alexander Jung/iStock Editorial
    St John’s Voices was founded in 2013 as a choir that female students could join, complementing the long-standing St John’s College Choir, which has itself now begun to admit women and girls.

    The director of the choir is a paid role currently held by Graham Walker, whose position is understood to be in doubt.

    In a message to choristers, the college said: “Council appreciates that this is a very sad moment for the St John’s Voices.

    “Your recording over the last three days will no doubt be a fitting tribute to the high standard the choir has achieved under Graham’s excellent and dedicated leadership.

    “I am sorry to send such an unwelcome message, and it comes with sincere appreciation of your contribution to our College and Chapel.”

    2. The woke are determined to destroy everything that had a history and a worth and replace it with garbage that won’t be around in 50 years, if not fewer.

      Let’s just get it over with: give Labour a majority that allows them to complete the destruction and put us out our misery.

    3. That is disgusting! I wonder if any other faith would consider defunding its ancient rituals and traditions in order to be more diverse?
      The committee should be sacked without pension rights.

      1. I lived in the centre of Cambridge but commuted to London for ten years and left 30 years ago.

        I watched any number of truly ghastly developments particularly by the colleges. They seemed to believe that commissioning some named London Architect would bring prestige to their colleges. Of course this prejudice brought any number of rebarbative piles and the further degradation of a formerly cohesive and beautiful city.

        The loss of Petty Cury and the Red Lion Inn and its replacement by the Lion Yard development was a crushing defeat for us conservationists.

        One of the ugliest modern buildings is the University Centre but there are many others.

        1. It has happened to so many beautiful places, leaving the original lovely buildings functioning as a sort of DisneyLand

  113. I see Penny Mordaunt is trying to become head girl again.
    For the life of me, I can’t see why anyone would think this is a good idea.
    Except of course that it would be the final nail in the conservative coffin.
    There is something inherently plastic and vacuous about her.

    1. She is horrible, apart from her WEF inclinations. The way she spitefully tries to shut down Andrew Bridgen’s questions disgusts me.

      2. Why is it a lot of the WEF stooges are childless. Does it suit those pulling their strings that they have no stake in the future!!!?

      3. Um, I have no children either. It doesn’t make me AC/DC. We just decided we didn’t want any.

        1. I have no children either. I always find the notion that I don’t care about the future profoundly insulting.

        2. That’s fine, but you (probably) are not the leader of any government. Nowt wrong with AC/DC, but possibly not an ideal situatio for many potential voters.

      4. Her twin brother is an “LGBT” transactivist (look him up, if you’re feeling robust)

    3. You have to remember that Johnson became PM essentially as a rescue mission, to recover democratic control of the party from the Grieve/Soubry/Clark/Gauke/Greening/Letwin/Nokes/Rudd axis. He won the leadership, and the election, against the sitting Conservative MPs.

    4. The final nail in the Conservative coffin went in a long time ago as far as I’m concerned.

  114. I see Penny Mordaunt is trying to become head girl again.
    For the life of me, I can’t see why anyone would think this is a good idea.
    Except of course that it would be the final nail in the conservative coffin.
    There is something inherently plastic and vacuous about her.

  115. Last comment of the day from me. Just been reading about the fiasco that was the Gemini algorithm on google. It seems it was programmed so strictly to see everything through a diversity and inclusion that it manufactured a Thai female pope!
    They are going to correct it. For that read make the brain washing more subtle and not so easily recognised.
    As just about all information nowadays goes through some sort of monitoring and packaging before it reaches the average person; it makes you wonder what you are missing and also what you will never know about because you cannot get access to it.
    I long for the days when we had proper libraries that just gathered knowledge in its original format and made it available when asked for.
    Where do you go to find this now?

  116. SWMBO is away on a trip, so the gin came out… and Youtube has assembled a playlist that’s quite matching my tastes in music, so playing that. It’s quite good… not so sure of the Dolly Parton, though. And the box isn’t on, either. Result!

    2. And now Grimethorpe Colliery Band. That’s good. Appeals to my Yorkshire background.

  117. The BBC’s anti-Israel bias is becoming dangerous

    Instead of fixing the serious problems with its coverage, the corporation has hit out at legitimate criticism

    DANNY COHEN • 19 March 2024 • 6:19pm

    BBC News is plunging new depths when it comes to its reporting of the Israel-Hamas war. In doing so, it is bringing shame on a publicly-funded organisation.

    Earlier this month, BBC News CEO Deborah Turness was asked in Parliament about a column I had written for this newspaper about the anti-Israel bias of journalists working for its heavily promoted BBC Verify brand. An investigation had found that a source used by the BBC for its Gaza coverage was a journalist who apparently worked for a news agency associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which is committed to Israel’s destruction. The journalist’s social-media timeline also contained anti-Semitic material.

    When challenged on this at a House of Lords committee, Ms Turness’s response was very revealing. First, she dismissed the reporting because it was “positioned in a hostile media outlet” – The Telegraph. This is a remarkable thing to say. It suggests that the BBC’s approach is to ignore legitimate criticism if it does not like where it comes from.

    The idea that you can dismiss evidence of journalistic malpractice because it is in a newspaper you don’t like reveals institutional arrogance and political bias. It enables the BBC to remain immune to criticism rather than act to remedy the problems with its reporting of the war.

    Even worse were the BBC News CEO’s claims of transparency. Ms Turness told the Committee that the BBC is “very clear about where it sources” its reporting from and that the BBC had been “transparent in our account and in our journalism”.

    To say that this was economical with the truth would be generous. The BBC Verify report that Ms Turness was referring to certainly did not disclose that one of its key sources appeared to be a man who celebrates the deaths of Jews and receives payments from Iran. This amounts to gaslighting of a parliamentary committee as well as Britain’s Jewish community.

    To be fair to the corporation, the BBC did say that it would look into the issues raised. But those who hoped that something would change will feel very disappointed. Over the weekend, the researcher David Collier disclosed that another high-profile BBC exclusive was based on the reporting of a number of sources for whom impartiality does not appear to be part of the job description.

    The report in question accused Israel of abusing Palestinian medics and was given great prominence by the BBC as the lead story on its News website. But Collier’s investigation suggested that the story relied on a group of reporters and sources who have worn their anti-Israel bias as a badge of pride.

    First, there’s BBC employee Soha Ibrahim, who is reported to have liked a social-media post that said Hamas are “freedom fighters”. Then there’s BBC reporter Marie-Jose Al Azzi, who once called for the boycotting of Israel. Alongside them were “eye-witnesses” such as Dr Atef Hout, who had previously appeared to celebrate a rocket attack on Israeli civilians.

    Once again – and just days after Ms Turness’s appearance in Parliament – BBC News was relying on the reporting and accounts of people who seem to have expressed egregious bias against Israel. The fact that this all came under the banner of BBC Verify – which the corporation has claimed to be a new gold standard in journalistic verification and forensic quality – would be the stuff of parody if it were not so serious.

    The BBC has been on notice for many months that it has a serious problem with anti-Israel bias in its newsroom. This means that it has also had months to address it. And yet nothing seems to have changed. How can this happen and keep happening? The answer can only be one of two things: either senior BBC managers don’t care about this ongoing bias and are happy to let it continue, or they can’t control it. Either is a gross dereliction of their duty.

    It is also a terrible failure of responsibility by the BBC in an environment in which anti-Semitism is exponentially on the rise and Britain’s Jewish community feels under a level of threat that many have not experienced in their lifetimes. The BBC is contributing to this poisonous atmosphere with reporting that is biased and highly emotive.

    It is now more than five months since the October 7 attacks. The BBC’s errors, missteps and bias against Israel is being repeated again and again. At some point, someone in BBC management needs to take responsibility for these continuing and dangerous failures. I believe that time has now come and the CEO of BBC News, Deborah Turness, should consider her position.

    Danny Cohen is the former director of BBC Television

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/19/bbc-news-verify-israel-gaza-palestine-anti-semitism/

    1. There is no doubt in my mind that the BBC has blood on its hands. It is a cheerleader for Hamas and related Islamic terrorists and is institutionally anti-Israel. It has disseminated inflammatory lies in this very combustible part of the world knowing that these lies will also stoke terrorist movements closer to home – and, indeed, at home in the UK.

      The BBC needs to be quietly taken out the back and shot.

      1. The hospital missile strike was quite one of the worst examples of the BBC’s unconscious bias but this is an organisation that set up its own Department of Truth to investigate ‘conspiracy theories, alternative news sources and their links to the Far Right’.

        1. My point is that it goes beyond the pernicious “unconscious bias” realm into the realm of legitimising and fuelling terrorism. The BBC has a unique position throughout the world in that it is regarded as a truthful state broadcaster, so when it abuses this, as it has systematically not least in the Middle East and now does so egregiously, it is actively stoking terrorism. Anti-semitic terrorism at that.

    1. Whilst unlikely, it isn’t impossible that he had a blood clot that caused him to fall.

    2. Hamas builds underground tunnels and chambers and then sites its hospitals over the tunnel entrances.

      The Israelis have known this for decades.

      1. One reason I have relatively little sympathy for the Palestinians of Gaza is they must know the positions of virtually every tunnel, bunker, entrance and exit throughout Gaza.

        They could show the IDF all of them but choose not to.

  120. Never seen this before, but if you are a bit fragile, I’d not watch it. It’s about the First World War military cemetaries in Belgium.
    So many dead young men, of many nationalities, it’s utterly horrific to see.
    So many dead.
    I visited the war cemetary in Siracusa, Sicily, some years ago. It’s by the main road into town, yet as you walk through the gate, the traffic goes muffled and the birdsong and birds vanish. So upsetting; no words. All those young men.
    https://youtu.be/aJ3UJhmli8k?si=H5zmiTMj0zTHCOYu

      2. Extract the civilian deaths and the genocidal deaths and the very big numbers for Germany, Eastern Europe, Russia, China and Japan etc come down very substantially. Anywhere the Germans and Japanese invaded suffered dreadful civilian casualties That doesn’t diminish the death tolls but I suspect that armed forces numbers per capita may be fairly similar.

          1. Nevertheless
            Ultra-repressive regimes don’t care two hoots for human death tolls.
            Islam is probably the next up, given half a chance.

          2. Quite. The various despots leading China have oft stressed this. There are plenty more to come and to feed the machine.

    2. Thank you for posting this.

      One truly horrifying thing is the number of unknown soldiers.

      Like Bill Thomas, I have been a frequent visitor to battlefields and cemeteries and memorials all over the region, as well as in other parts of France and Belgium. It often brought me to tears, so she isn’t faking the emotion. I have visited the majority of sites that she shows.
      Even the German graves are very moving.

      I suspect modern politicians, who seem so keen to get involved with wars everywhere, might change their minds.
      But then again probably not.

      Ypres is a very interesting to tour and to attend the 8 pm service is very emotional.

      The whole of Ypres was essentially destroyed. The museum has superb displays.

      I took M-i-L and she was staggered. We found one of her relative’s names on the wall, no known grave. I knew it was there from a previous visit.

      It’s good to see a youngster doing this.
      Good for her.

      1. My Grandpa the same. Thank goodness he’s not around to see what he fought for come to fruition.

          3. I used to find it quite extraordinary that Grandpa was born in the c19th. It’s odd to think that my grandchildren feel the same about the c20th.

          4. I have those thoughts too – my grandparents were born 1870, 1871 and 1872 (two of them). My parents were born 1905 and 1908.

          5. Comparatively old when you were born.

            As a very, very rough rule of thumb a generation in those days was 25 years.
            I’m not a lot younger than you yet my grandfather was born in 1890

  121. Evening, all. Had quite a successful day, for a change. It’s amazing the difference some sunshine can make. Got some weeding done, planted some primroses. clipped Kadi’s dew claws and, with some assistance, clipped him and bathed him. He is now half the size and considerably sweeter smelling.

    I don’t think anything can save the faux cons, but it would help if they got rid of all the CINOs and replaced them with vrai cons.

        1. The only problem with the ‘faux cons’ description is that it makes them sound like birds of prey when they are only scavengers.

  122. We were discussing the motive behind Barack Obama’s meeting with Sunak in Downing Street a day or so ago. I imagine representatives of our security agencies were present.

    The discussions will have been about any ways and means by which the UK can contribute to the elimination of President Trump before the 2024 Presidential election.

    1. I hadn’t actually thought of that. I do hope not, but also fear that you are correct.

    3. Good suggestion, one, amongst a quite a few, that I haven’t seen before.

      What could the British government, or certain members of said government past and present, possibly have to fear from a Trump presidency such that they would involve themselves in the USA’s ‘Deep State’ shenanigans?

      1. You will remember the determined efforts of the British ambassador to the USA in 2016 to prevent Mr Trump from being elected.

        Strangely no disciplinary action was taken by the British government for interfering in the democratic process.

          4. I think it maybe also is a comment on the existential consequences of discovering America. Maybe I’m overthinking.

        3. I like Larsen, so I’m fairly biased.
          It’s certainly the ship running aground.

          The way he draws this one from the perspective of watching from the rear of the ship over the rudder, where the wheel is approximately placed, with everyone falling towards the front is clever.

        4. I considered that but thought it was a bit weak so was trying to find some other side that I hadn’t seen.

    2. Why is the Santa Maria’s helm situated at the stern? This is probably why he didn’t see “America” until he collided with it. [Although it was not named “America” until 1507 after the Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci.]

    1. From my pensions advisor:

      Automatic Exchange of Information – Common Reporting Standards (CRS)
      The global ‘Automatic Exchange of Information’ initiative involves governments obtaining information from financial
      institutions within their respective jurisdictions, and exchanging such data automatically with other participating nations.
      Under the Automatic Exchange of Information rules, ABCD Ltd has an obligation to submit reports to
      the Commissioner for Revenue in Malta by the end of April 2024 for clients who had a Trust or Pension during the year
      2023.
      The obligation also applies to Trusts and Pensions wound up in 2023.
      Please find enclosed the following for your information and reference:
      a) A summary of the Automatic Exchange of Information rules;
      b) A statement confirming the data being reported; and
      c) Notes to the statement.
      If you have any queries or comments kindly contact us

      And when you read the summary of the rules you can guess where this is heading

  128. Another day is done so, Gentlefolk,I wish you goodnight and may God bless you all,. Bis morgen früh.

          2. Copy and paste is useful. Or a plug-in central European keyboard that gives you French accents without contortions too.

        6. I have a Norwegian keyboard. It has these diacritical (?) marks on it, si you press the umlaut key then the dësired letter to be umlauted.
          We have fixed keys for Æ.Ø and Å.
          Otherwise, you can use alt+ a 3 character code, but what code I don’t remember.

    1. Whereas ‘Defender of the Faith’ is a phrase that has been used as part of the full style of many English, Scottish, and later British monarchs since the early 16th …

      1. That was bestowed by the Pope on Henry VIII for his treatise defending the RC faith. Oh, the irony.

  132. The heir to Blair, which might explain a lot, the long march through the institutions accelerates.

    2. He should have said, “These are expensive pork sausages, and I’m eating them now!”

      1. Please don’t fool yourself, David. My son’s class of 17 year olds in Oxford were bullied by two muslim pupils who went round the entire class asking them if they celebrated Christmas, and if they said yes, verbally attacking them and forcing them to justify it. This was about five years ago. Most kids in the class said they didn’t celebrate Christmas.

        In middle class media la-la land, and in quiet white areas this isn’t happening yet, but in multi-kulti settings it’s already the norm and has been for years.

    2. Missed both the Sibelius and any AI art debate (went out dancing), but that’s extraordinary! Thank you.

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