Tuesday 2 April: Thames Water should suffer the consequences of its poor performance

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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785 thoughts on “Tuesday 2 April: Thames Water should suffer the consequences of its poor performance”

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

    PROUD TO FART

    A little old guy goes to the doctor and says, “Doctor I have this problem with gas, but it really doesn’t bother me too much. They never smell and are always silent. As a matter of fact, I’ve farted at least 20 times since I’ve been here in your office. You didn’t know I was farting because they didn’t smell and are silent.”

    The doctor says, “I see. Take these pills and come back to see me next week.”

    The next week the guy goes back, “Doctor,” he says, “I don’t know what the hell you gave me, but now my farts, although still silent, they stink terribly.”

    “Good”, the doctor said. “Now that we’ve cleared up your sinuses, let’s work on your hearing.”

  3. Thames Water should suffer the consequences of its poor performance

    It’s all down to Blair for removing the governments golden share that was supposed to prevent the privatised utilities from being taken over by foreign companies against out national interests.
    All of Blair’s changes appear to be coming home to roost at the same time.
    Just look at the Scottish Parliament and their insane leadership

        1. And the Blair Witch Project. The Delightful Spouse ‘s legal antics. (Good morning, btw.)

    2. Aren’t the neoblairites 20 points ahead in the polls and poised to claim absolute power in Parliament soon?

      This is in full knowledge of how bad they are.

    1. Forecast says, 6°c and Partly sunny but lookng out of my window all I see is grey skies and no relief here in The Borders.

    1. It’s a good job I awoke early, Minty. Had I slept in until the afternoon I could have reported you to Plod for spreading false rumours. Lol.

  6. Good Morning, all

    A missive from Nagsman:

    Three engineers, an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a software engineer are riding in a small car over a treacherous mountain road.

    Suddenly the electrical guy, who’s driving, shouts ‘The brakes have failed!’ The car careens down this twisty road, narrowly missing death by almost going off the cliff more than once, until the electrical engineer finally succeeds in pulling over.

    The electrical engineer says ‘As brakes are electrically operated, it might be a fuse or something. I’ll have a look’.

    The mechanical engineer says ‘No, brakes are mostly mechanical. I’ll have a look at the disks and pads and hydraulics.’

    The software engineer says ‘It could be just a glitch. I think we ought to push it back up the hill to see if it does it again!’

    1. Good morning, Citroen1. Are you in competition with Sir Jasper today? PS – It’s a very good one, btw.

  7. Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

    Good morning, chums. I hope you all slept well. Enjoy your day.

    1. Good morning, Elsie.

      Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

  8. Jeremy Vine’s April Fool reported to police. 2 April 2024.

    Jeremy Vine was forced to clarify that a video he posted of his “drone” apparently being taken out by a hawk was an April Fool’s Day prank, after social media users reported him to the police.

    The BBC presenter and cycling crusader, who frequently posts videos of his daily London commute, shared footage on Monday which appeared to show his drone being smashed into by a bird of prey while he was cycling in Hyde Park, central London.

    What exactly was “April Fool” about this? It was a deception.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/01/jeremy-vine-bird-of-prey-drone-video-april-fools-day/

  9. Good Moaning.
    I had been wondering about the effect of the SNP’s latest madness on my favourite crime novels.
    Michael Deacon has an idea.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/02/inspector-rebus-mystery-stupid-scottish-hate-crime-law/

    Inspector Rebus and the mystery of the unbelievably stupid hate crime law

    The Scottish government is cracking down on free speech – but it isn’t just the public who will suffer. So will the police…

    2 April 2024 • 7:00am

    “Critics of Humza Yousaf fear that Scotland’s unprecedentedly strict new laws against “hate crime”, which came into force yesterday, will have a chilling effect on free speech. But it isn’t just members of the public who have reason to worry. The new laws could also create problems for police officers.

    Even fictional ones…

    Detective Inspector Rebus let out a heavy sigh, and pressed the doorbell. It was only 10.30am, yet this had already been the most gruelling day of his long career. The station had been overwhelmed with calls from the public. And every single one was near identical.

    “I’d like to report an extremely serious crime, please.”

    “What’s the nature of the offence?”

    “A nasty lady on the internet said men shouldn’t be allowed to play women’s rugby.”

    “We’ll send an officer round straight away, sir.”

    “‘Sir’? How dare you make such hurtful assumptions about my gender identity. Right, that’s it. I’m reporting you for hate crime, as well.”

    Rebus shook his head, and waited. Eventually, the door of the house opened, and a silver-haired old woman peered out.

    “Good morning, madam,” said Rebus. “We have a warrant to search this property.”

    The old woman stared at him. “What? Why?”

    “We have reason to believe that you have been using social media to express unauthorised opinions. DS Clarke, please proceed.”

    Clarke strode in and began the search. But the old woman continued to stare at Rebus.

    “Is this about that crazy new law?” she asked. “For pity’s sake, I haven’t committed a hate crime.”

    “That’s not for you to decide, madam. Or even for us. According to Police Scotland, ‘the defining factor in determining whether an incident is a hate incident’ is ‘the perception of the victim’. So if some anonymous Twitter user says you’re an evil old transphobic bigot, you are, and that’s that.”

    Before the woman could protest, DS Clarke returned.

    “I’ve found some deeply concerning evidence,” she said. “A full set of the Harry Potter books.”

    After the evidence had been bagged up, and the suspect led away in handcuffs, Rebus puffed out his cheeks. His job had never been so exhausting. Down in England, people could march through the streets waving swastikas and calling for jihad, and all the police would do was shrug and mumble something about “context”.

    Here in Scotland, by contrast, officers were run off their feet. That very morning in Glasgow, DCI Taggart had had to shut down a feminist book group for claiming that all lesbians were female, while up in the Highlands, Hamish Macbeth had had to apprehend a village postmistress for denying that men had wombs. It was relentless. In fact, the police were now so busy investigating JK Rowling’s tweets, they had no time to investigate anything else.

    At that moment, Rebus’s mobile phone rang.

    “Inspector,” said the voice at the other end. “We’re getting reports of Scotland’s biggest ever bank heist.”

    “I’ll try and look into it as soon as I’ve finished my next job,” replied Rebus. “I’m on my way to the scene of a triple misgendering.” “

  10. Get rid of the Bishops first…

    Labour to throw hereditary peers out of the Lords – but not the bar

    If the Opposition win power, the 92 seats by birthright will go, but peers will still be able to enjoy Parliament’s subsidised refreshment

    Dominic Penna, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
    1 April 2024 • 7:57pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/04/01/TELEMMGLPICT000355846441_17119970366240_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqA7N2CxnJWnYI3tCbVBgu9T0aesusvN1TE7a0ddd_esI.jpeg?imwidth=680
    King Charles delivers a speech in the House of Lords in 2023 – a high-angle shot shows the chamber packed with peers in their red robes

    Hereditary peers will be allowed to enjoy Parliament’s subsidised bars and restaurants when they are expelled by Labour under plans being considered by the party.

    Sir Keir Starmer intends to abolish all hereditary peers in the first term of a Labour government if he wins the general election this year.

    But Lords cast out of the upper chamber would be able to keep their parliamentary passes, allowing them to freely come and go on the estate and meaning they could still access heavily discounted catering and retail outlets.

    Labour remains committed to the complete abolition of the House of Lords but this is not expected to take place within a single parliament and the party would instead focus on “significant reform” in its first term.

    A party insider told the Financial Times: “The crucial thing is ending the anachronism of hereditary peers enjoying a role as legislators of the realm by dint of their aristocratic birthright.

    “They can keep their passes to Parliament – we’re not bothered about that.”

    Former MPs enjoy subsidised facilities
    This would give hereditary peers the same privilege as former MPs, who are allowed to turn up at Parliament as they see fit and enjoy its subsidised facilities.

    House of Commons accounts show that taxpayers spent £6.4 million effectively subsidising the cost of food and drink for MPs, peers and other parliamentary passholders in 2022-23.

    A Labour spokesman said: “Labour will abolish the House of Lords to ensure the UK’s second chamber better reflect our regions and nations.

    “An incoming Labour government will inherit a mess and need to prioritise. The first term will take steps toward significant reform of the chamber.”

    Labour sources insisted no final decisions have been made and declined to speculate about the Lords abolition schedule.

    Out of the 91 hereditary peers, only four have the Labour whip, while 47 are Conservative and four are Liberal Democrats. Two are non-affiliated and the remaining 34 are crossbenchers.

    Sir Tony Blair abolished the majority of hereditary peers in 1999 but up to 92 seats in the upper chamber remain reserved for them as a result of a compromise reached by Sir Tony and the Lords Leader.

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

    Brian McCune
    10 HRS AGO
    The HoL worked far better when it was mostly comprised of hereditary peers. They were not generally aligned to any political party and thought for themselves rather than being told what to do. The useless political appointees that are there nowadays are a stain on our country. How can a small insignificant party like the Libdems have 80 peers?

    Roger PITFIELD
    10 HRS AGO
    It’s not hereditary peers that need to go. It’s all the former politicians and their supporters that need to go. By definition they are not and never should have been “Lords”. They are meant to be representatives and servants of the people when in truth they merely serve themselves. Blair and Cameron being the biggest examples.

    1. A Labour spokesman said: “Labour will abolish the House of Lords to ensure the UK’s second chamber better reflect our regions and nations. – so, stuffed with wogs, then.

    2. Both BTL comments are sp[ot on – get rid of the failed politicians and the virtue signalling dross and keep the hereditary peers!

  11. ‘Havana syndrome’ linked to Russian unit, media investigation suggests. 1 April 2024.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/572b34470f3697ae1ff40f27e8e364accaa8adb12fc37aa96505806988d7c505.png

    The mysterious so-called Havana syndrome symptoms experienced by US diplomats in recent years have been linked to a Russian intelligence unit, according to a joint media investigation released on Monday.

    Havana syndrome was first reported in 2016 when US diplomats in Cuba’s capital reported falling ill and hearing piercing sounds at night, prompting speculation of an attack by a foreign entity using an unspecified sonar weapon.

    I wrote a comment on this story yesterday. This is the Guardian version. As you can see from the montage it’s an organised (these are not the only versions) propaganda line. There is no truth to it at all. The question is why? What I suspect is the Russians shortly putting out some information on the West’s involvement in the Moscow attack and this is to blunt its effect. We shall have to wait and see but the problem is that things like this confirm me in my suspicions.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/01/havana-syndrome-linked-to-russian-unit-media-investigation-suggests

  13. Good morning , blue sky first thing , birds are happy, and rain overnight , and everywhere so green

    I can see for miles out of the velux window on the upstairs landing , very pretty .

    We had rain and wind overnight , blackbirds are grubbing around for worms , so there must be a nest of fledglings somewhere .

    1. Ziggy is on my lap and birdwatching but neither of them yet has shown any interest in killing things. They both got excited watching the bluetit nest-building on the bird box camera on the telly yesterday. 📺
      It’s good to have older cats who don’t decimate the local wildlife.

  14. Sherelle Jacobs: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/01/britain-is-now-terrified-of-freedom-it-should-rejoin-the-eu/

    Britain is now irrationally terrified of freedom. It should just rejoin the EU
    Even as a Brexiteer, I’m starting to think the time has come to cut our losses and embrace the security of the Brussels fold

    BTL

    The success of the remainers is a failure for democracy. Nobody with any belief in democratic government should dream of voting for either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party.

    The man responsible for the success of getting Brexit over the line was Nigel Farage.

    The man responsible for its failure was also Nigel Farage when he did not stand Brexit Party candidates in the 2019 general election in seats held by sitting Conservatives many of whom are remainers who subsequently succeeded in wrecking Brexit at every turn.

    A landslide victory for Reform might achieve something for finally getting a proper Brexit but the odds against that are insurmountable.

    1. Unfortunately for Sherelle Jacobs the EU has stated that they don’t want us.

      Which is why we find the continual vandalistic actions of Remainers so pointless.

      1. Is that because they’ve already stripped us of almost everything and managed to dump large numbers of their more vibrant residents on us?

    2. In terms of the last point I would say that it is easy to be right from the perspective of hindsight. The Tories had come perilously close to losing the GE under May and the Remainer majorities among Tory MPs and in the HoC had almost killed the progress of Leave legislation entirely. Mr Farage knew TBP wouldn’t form the next government and calculated that only a large Tory majority under Boris might be able to override Remainer Tory MPs and defeat Labour etc Remainers in the HoC to actually pass the Leave legislation. Boris, being Boris, then fluffed the final exit negotiations although May had already sold the pass but that wasn’t Mr Farage’s fault.
      The real responsibility for our sub par Exit was the Tory MPs who appointed the treacherous May when Cameron stepped down.

      1. I think that no one person was to blame for a sub par Brexit – it was virtually the whole House of Commons who never wanted us to leave and, equally, no one person has been determined enough to make sure we did leave properly – by repealing the European Communities Act 1972.

        1. Yes, but it was madness not to oppose pro EU Conservative MPs in 2019. And it was madness for Farage to accept absolutely SWA in return for his kindness to Johnson which allowed the Conservative Party to get a large majority which they have squandered..

          1. Agreed but we have to accept that’s history now. If there were to be a rerun I wouldn’t mind betting the vote would be remain. (Not on my part it wouldn’t!). What’s your opinion?

            BTW many congrats you and Caroline,hope you have a lovely day.

      2. People underestimate just how evil May is.

        She deserves to spend eternity in the deepest recesses of the place reserved for the evil.

      1. How many trans athletes are they planning to put in the GB’s women’s team?

        1. A lot I hope, otherwise they won’t win a bean against other countries’ trans teams. 🙂

    9. Is it actually the flag or the team strip?
      I hope they parade with a proper flag.

        1. Athletes spend their time on developing their physical skills, which is what one would expect. Not thinking through ways to fend off Neo-Marxism.

          But in the same way we watch and admire their expertise in a chosen field when criticised for bending the knee to divisive resentful ideology by those of us who do spend our time swimming such waters they stick their fingers in their ears and fall back on the bigotry defence. Sawing away at the branch they sit on.

          I doubt that is the case with this young lady. She is probably blissful unaware, enjoying her moment in the sun.

        2. The “march” is down the river, I hope they fly the Union Flag and not that thing.

    10. The revolutionary idea of having the Union flag to get behind. This thing looks like a psychedelic nightmare, which seems to be the Clownworld aesthetic.

    14. White (pronounced ‘huwite’) has obviously been considered too hideous to include.

    1. Congratulations to you both.
      Not many until you’ve been married half your life

      1. Caroline passed that milestone ten years ago – I shall have to wait until our 41st.

    4. Congratulations Richard and Caroline . ❤️

      As Charles Dickens said ..

      “Come, let’s be a comfortable couple and take care of each other!

      How glad we shall be, that we have somebody we are fond of always, to talk to and sit with.”

      1. But probably not like Leonard Cohen’s song …

        Ah baby, let’s get married
        We’ve been alone too long
        Let’s be alone together
        Let’s see if we’re that strong

      2. But probably not like Leonard Cohen’s song …

        Ah baby, let’s get married
        We’ve been alone too long
        Let’s be alone together
        Let’s see if we’re that strong

    5. Congratulations to you both.

      It would have been ‘our’ 54th later this month if illness hadn’t intervened. Love, liking each other, friendship and companionship are, in my experience, essential to a lasting marriage.

  18. 385291+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Teacher banned for saying Islam would take over and Westernised girls were ‘lunatics’

    Professional misconduct panel sacked Aqib Khan for ‘undermining fundamental British values’

    May one ask, just how much double standard and two- facedness one can take

    ‘Undermining fundamental British values’ is the order of the day via westminster, old kahny only has to apply (in arabic) for a position in the cabinet.

    The kahn person is wrong in saying islam will take over, in many departments islam HAS found ongoing success as in, halal killing, FGM, honour killings, sharia courts.

    Tis only a matter of time and the continuation of the new islamic overseers on a crest of a wave incoming for kahny to be made right.

    The instruction manual ( oath taker) is already in parliament resting betwixt the dispatch boxes.

    1. How can they take an oath on a book that instructs them to lie when necessary?

      1. 385291+ up ticks,

        Morning S,

        Currently in parliament a lie is recognised as the truth, this fact is borne out by the extraordinary length of nose of the political inmates.

  21. Good morning, all. A spell of heavy rain a couple of hours ago. Light drizzle at the moment.

    Tice picking up on McVey’s statement regarding the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty/IHR plans. Any comment by a politician solely on the Pandemic Treaty should be treated with the greatest caution: the IHR appears to be where the real danger is hidden.

    I’ve trawled several pages of replies to McVey’s X comment on this subject and support is somewhat lacking in both her stance and on the Tories as a whole. No change there, then.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9f5a63b6ef24c229450302970a20278ea530aefb311d1d035178f0c96a2df307.png

    https://twitter.com/TiceRichard/status/1774883783503671759

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/80cb09a595688b7063cf35a71d79d4ca8b730196eb0d4231c5b5d772d8aca1f9.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/014b2fd6c27444b2803af594ab30f904a0c8887529baadcd3ead3c43eb585370.png

    Apologies: I attempted to enlarge the script in the letters but my browser’s screen shot facility hasn’t reflected the change. Use your browser’s screen zoom facility if it has one.

    1. The IHR is the worry. A simple majority will pass the mass of regulations and HMG appears to be all for it.

  22. 385291+ up ticks,

    Number of patients waiting four weeks to see GP soars all over England
    Lib Dems slam ‘postcode lottery’, as new analysis shows the situation in some areas is twice as bad as the national average

    It fluctuates depending on what the incoming tide carries in at say, Dover, the village idiot informed me so.

    I really am beginning to suspect that the tide of good fortune bringing in a multitude of doctors and nursing staff really should be questioned in depth.

  24. Excellent point. Who put the tacky in Taqiyya!

    Squalid Jawdrop took his oath on the Koran and he held the highest offices of state!

    How many indigenous white British chancellors have we had recently? And if Jeremy ‘Honky’ Hunt is the best whitey can come up with then God help us!

    The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP 2022 – 2024
    The Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng MP. 2022 to 2022.
    The Rt Hon Nadhim Zahawi MP. 2022 to 2022.
    The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP. 2020 to 2022.
    The Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP. 2019 to 2020.

  25. I managed 37 years with my first unfaithful wife and another 13 years with my Swedish 2nd Wife so I’ve done my 50 years. On we go. Now alone and lonely, Desperate for companionship.

    1. Sad for you, particularly having moved to an area where you knew relatively few people.

      1. Thanks, Sos, where I actually know no-one. It’s been a bugger for over a year to date.

          1. Beware ‘Dating Sites’ I spent over £1,000 without a single date. They are just scams these days.

  26. Good morning all.
    A bit of a lie in today, or then again, this close to the clocks changing, was it?
    A dry, bright, but cloudy start with a still chilly 3½° on the Yard Thermometer.

  28. A Rorke’s Drift to the left. Weaver Sheridan. TCW. 1 April 2024.

    WITH electoral disaster looming, the Conservatives need a deliverance like that of Rorke’s Drift, where a handful of British soldiers repelled 4,000 Zulus in 1879, says former Tory Attorney-General Sir Geoffrey Cox.

    So what’s likely to happen? Let’s fast-forward to October, where we find Lieutenant Sunak and his troops crouching behind a hastily-constructed barrier of boxes of unused PPE at the Whitehall entrance to Downing Street. Colour Sergeant Shapps returns from a recce.

    ‘What did you see, Colour Sergeant?’

    – ‘Hordes of Labour MPs, sir. 650 of ’em.’

    ‘What are they attacking us with? Spears?’

    – ‘No, sir. Ballots.’

    ‘Don’t you mean bullets?

    – ‘No sir, ballot papers – they’re screwing them up into balls and bombarding us with them. They’ve overrun our Commons stronghold and taken every seat.

    They’re carrying Big Chief Starmer shoulder-high and chanting that we’ve lost the Battle of Hustings.’

    ‘Right, pull everyone back to the No10 redoubt. We’ll make a last stand there.’

    Sunak calls over Quartermaster-Sergeant Gove. ‘What’s left in our ammunition locker, Gove?’

    – ‘Not much, sir. All our promises are empty, our budget has misfired, our credibility is broken and our last initiative blew up in our face. And a load of our defeated MPs are lying comatose in the lobby of No10, dead drunk.’

    ‘Right, pile them into a human shield outside the door – and make sure they’re levelled up. Put Lance Corporal Mordaunt forward of them, waving that sword of hers, and tell Field Marshal Lord Cameron to go up to the first-floor window.’

    – ‘But there’s no way out for him from there, sir!’

    ‘No, Gove. If the Labour mob breaks through, we’ll drop him on them. Meanwhile, I’m going to challenge Big Chief Starmer to single combat.’

    – ‘You mean you’ll go out and face him in a fight to death to decide the issue, as in the days of chivalry? How brave, how noble!’

    ‘Good grief, no. I mean I’ll propose an arm-wrestling contest between Suella Braverman and Emily Thornberry.’

    – ‘Too late, sir – the Labour MPs are getting restless again. They’re making some sort of mass movement.’

    ‘You mean the dreaded “horns of the bull” tactic, as used by the Zulus, where they’ll overwhelm us with a two-pronged attack?’

    – ‘I don’t think so, sir. They’ve swivelled round and are heading back down Whitehall! It’s not so much a bull run, more a U-turn. Now Big Chief Starmer is addressing them.’

    ‘You can understand Starmer-speak, Gove. What’s he saying?’

    – ‘Let’s see. He’s telling them that, in line with his policy strategy in the run-up to the election, becoming Prime Minister was only an aspiration, not a commitment. And if Jeremy Corbyn fancies the job, it’s his.’

    ‘Oh no! Sound the retreat! Every man for himself!’

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/a-rorkes-drift-to-the-left/

  29. Place your bets.

    The city of Vantaa is home to 4% of Finland’s population. 25.3% of the population has a foreign background, which is three times higher than the national average.

    Primary school shooting in Finland today

      1. It’s fairly recent and it might not have been established.
        I believe Finland isn’t as enriched as other Scandi countries, although Vantaa appears to be.

      1. The (new) wife is taking her 2 sisters to court about her share of a an inherited property in St Ives. Just back and exhausted. Just a preliminary court hearing that could have ended the whole affair, but their offer was about £100,000 short. We’ll make a counter offer and see where it goes. It’s been ongoing for 8 years but is now coming to a head. Very ugly when families turn on each other.

    3. Misgendered someone? Suggested that men can’t magically turn into women by an act of volition?

  33. In the Telegraph this morning there is an article entitled ‘Tories could abolish National Insurance in next Parliament ‘. I was struck by this as a sign that they know they’re utterly doomed. National Insurance is not going to be abolished because it brings in billions of pounds which governments need in order to be able to waste them. Making promises which are impossible to fulfil is surely a sign that the Tories know they won’t ever be held to account over it as they will be out of office, and indeed for the vast majority of them out of Parliament.

    1. The NI record is what entitles us to our pensions. Also for people who claim a contributory benefit rather than based on lack of income. Scrap NI and they might as well scrap any of these entitlements we spent our working lives paying for.

  35. If they abolish it they will raise income tax, and all those pensioners who don’t pay NI will find themselves paying more tax than they do now.
    They might even rake in more money than they get from tax and NI now.

    1. Well obviously, but I think the suggestion is more along the lines of ‘please elect us and we’ll abolish cancer’.

  36. Elect them again and cancer might be the least of our worries.
    At least a Labour government will be quick, rather than death by a thousand cuts tax rises.

  37. 385291+ up ticks,

    ‘I’m 52 with £13k of credit card debt – how can I buy a Range Rover?’
    Money Makeover: our reader wants to double her salary and pay off her debts

    Successfully stand for parliament,
    pauper to millionaire easy peasy.

    1. I saw that too! Hilarious. She has a reasonable income, but is divorcing and expects only £70,000 from the house sale. Meanwhile she has no pension and two teenage children to support! No other assets. Never mind the Range Rover, she should be looking at an elderly Nissan Micra.

      1. No, not an elderly Nissan Micra; she needs an elderly multi-millionaire with a failing heart condition.

        1. She’s 52…..unless she looks like Jerry Hall she’s not hooking a multi-millionaire!

      2. At the same time as preferring to spend on a holiday to contributing to her pension. It’s all about priorities. An old age of poverty awaits her.

    3. I’m convinced that the Telegraph just does these things for click-bait. They’re no better than gutter press these days.

  40. It’s not called insanity any more….the new term is ‘mental health’.😂

  41. Good day all and squaddies of the 77th,

    A sunny morning at McPhee Towers, wind in the West going South during the day, 7℃ with 12℃ promised. Rain again this evening.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2448f544e52bec541755aca16322cb6ec56b75d0b8af97c7492bd1ed1d01e62d.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/01/stealth-income-tax-raid-pensioners-conservative-party/

    Leaving aside the fact that it is the Liberal Demoprats who instigated the research we didn’t really need to have the research done to know this, did we? We can work it out for ourselves.

    In my own case, the state pension (and my RAF pension) will rise by 8.5%. Now, I’m well into the higher rate band, so much so that I pay almost twice as much tax at 40% than I pay at 20%. This is because there is no tax allowance whatsover for the fact that my pensions also finance SWMBO who was a stay-at-home mother. I think she worked for about 10 years all told, certainly no more. As a consequence, her own pensions (state and teacher’s) are small.

    As I’m a higher rate tax payer the pension increase also increases my tax liability at 40% so straight away you can knock 40% off the increase. What is left is the compensation for past inflation – 8.5% according to HMG. That leaves aside the fact that one’s real inflation depends on how one spends one’s dosh; never mind, let’s assume 8.5%. I can clearly see that the pension increases are, in nett terms, well below inflation (another form of tax) so, in fact, what we are getting is a ‘rise’ which represents a reduction in purchasing power.

    Johnson, Truss and Sunak did this. There’s no way back for them among pensioners.

    1. Well I’m voting against them and don’t know anyone who plans to support them.

        2. You should spoil your ballot. It’s important to exercise your franchise (and tell them what you think of them on the ballot paper!).

      1. It doesn’t apply to us. It’s only for basic rate tax-payers and then only £1050 of an allowance can be transferred. A tiny concession anyway when what should be the case is that all of an unused personal allowance and all of an unused basic-rate band should be transferrable between spouse/civil partners.

      1. She was in the government and she appoointed Hunt whether under duress to do so or not.

  42. Re the Finnish shooting, the wounded children and the suspect are reportedly all 13 years old.

    Edit
    Officials said that the shooter and the victims were all 12 years old (correcting earlier information that said all involved were 13 years old), while local news outlets quoted parents at the school as saying the shooting occurred inside a classroom.

    2. Vantaa is out by Helsinki Airport. All the wounded and the ‘gunman’ are under 13.

      Wiki:
      Vantaa is a bilingual municipality with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages. The population consists of 73% Finnish speakers, 2% Swedish speakers, and 25% speakers of other languages, which is well above the national average.

      1. My suspicion is that the shooter may have been “dissed” by the victims.
        It’s very sad that children all over the world appear to think shooting, stabbing and vicious beating is now acceptable and act accordingly.

    2. Our political police are too busy arresting Mr Robinson to keep ahead of ongoing law and order.
      Not a clue.

  44. 𝟮𝟭 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗔𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗮 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄!

    1. The Australian Alps get more snow than the Swiss Alps.
    2. 90% of Australians live on the coast.
    3. Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world.
    4. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest ecosystem in the world. It is made up of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and can be seen from space.
    5. Australia has over 60 separate wine regions.
    6. Fraser Island in QLD is the largest sand island in the world.
    7. The Indian Pacific train has the longest straight section of train track in the world.
    8. The Great Ocean Road is the world’s largest war memorial.
    9. 80% of Australian animals are unique to Australia.
    10. Australia has the world’s longest golf course measuring more than 1,350 kms long.
    11. Australia is home to 21 of the world’s 25 most venomous snakes.
    12. It would take around 29 years to visit one new Aussie beach every day – there are 10,685 of them!
    13. Australia is the 6th largest country in the world.
    14. 91% of the country is covered by native vegetation.
    15. 33% of Australians were born in another country.
    16. Australia is the only continent in the world without an active volcano.
    17. Australia is home to the longest fence in the world, the Dingo Fence. Originally built to keep dingos away from fertile land, the fence is now 5,614 km long.
    18. The Australian dollar is considered to be the most advanced currency in the world – its waterproof, made of polymer and notoriously hard to counterfeit.
    19. Australia is the only continent covered by a single country.
    20. The world’s oldest fossil was discovered in Australia – 3.4 billion years old.
    21. Australia is home to more than 1,500 species of spiders

    Not for me , and I also hate the accent , where did their accent come from?

    1. The border of Western Australia was meant to be a single line of longitude. The surveyors starting from the south marked the border with South Australia, the surveyors from the north marked the border with the Northern Territory. When they met, at the tripoint, they were 127 metres apart. With typical Ozzie good humour, they named the spot Surveyors’ Point.

    2. Good Morning TB, and everyone. I’d love to uptick the list of Australian facts, but I admire Australia and (most) Australians, and the accent is delightful.

    3. Australia (and everything about it) is a million times better in every way than any country in Africa you may care to name.

      “The Indian–Pacific train railway has the longest straight section of train railway track in the world.”

      1. “19. Australia is the only continent covered by a single country.”

        Wrong. Australia is not a continent! Australasia is the continent and it covers a number of other countries, New Zealand being only one of them.

      2. Unfortunately, it is changing, you might not recognise parts of it from what it was like 20 years ago.
        That said I can’t see any countries in Africa changing as much for the better.

        1. I remember last time we were in Melbourne seeing many people who definitely looked and sounded Chinese. And many other languages and accents were obvious.
          According my old mate Bruce, some are know trouble makers.

          2. Our middle son had just come home from his year of working holiday, a few days before the Cronulla riots in 2005. One of the guys he worked with featured on the front page of the Sydney herald. Punching a rioter in the face.
            Started by muslim men touching up local girls on the beach. Life guards were blamed because they came to the defence of young ladies.

          4. Nobody with an ounce of responsibility or any commonsense at all has taken that outstanding fact on board.

      3. I worked with some guys in QLD Who had worked on some of the bridge building on the railways.
        Middle of nowhere was the best description.

          2. Grizzly bears, black bears, wolverines, skunks, moose, raccoons, cougars, chipmunks, grey wolves, coyotes, wapiti, bighorn sheep, caribou …

          3. O/T

            Are these yours, by any chance?

            https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/98dd74634e22ba06f96e28f70b4d7bf3c1ff265f/0_0_2048_1408/master/2048.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=87eb26fe27fa3724a4d6ff3fff385095
            Four bear cubs enjoyed a free ride at Woburn Safari Park in Bedfordshire, UK, after heavy rain created a makeshift lake in their enclosure. The park had a spare pedalo that was awaiting new pedals, so staff floated it on the giant puddle to see if the bears would like it. Sure enough, Harvard, Maple, Colorado and Aspen climbed aboard almost immediately

    4. Number 8 TB.
      If you look at the structure of the road, it was dugout of the cliffs by thousands of hardworking ex service men. And its a wonderful achievement in memory of the people who did it. We have driven it both ways twice. And staying over each way.
      Austria would fit into Australia 60 times.
      It takes around 4 hours from crossing the coast at Port Hedland before you land
      in Melbourne.

      1. Some say that the Aussie accent comes from the East End of London – so, a variation of yer Cockney, exported with the “ten pound Poms”.

      2. Some say that the Aussie accent comes from the East End of London – so, a variation of yer Cockney, exported with the “ten pound Poms”.

    7. “6. Fraser Island in QLD is the largest sand island in the world.” – when does an island become a continent?

    8. I’ve known and worked with a few Aussies, and consider them to be top blokes/esses. A robust sense of humour, no forelock tugging, practical and well educated.

      1. Yes , they are top blokes , and despite their terrible voices , they have great bodies when they strip off and sheep shear the coats off the sheep .. have watched several demonstrations , the guys are tough , good looking , well muscled and no vanity or tattoos, but their yabba yabba chatter would have been a real turn off had I had one as a boyfriend !

    9. No mention of the snakes and other nasty things. The flys are just terrible.etc.

      1. I agree about the flies, Johnny.
        They don’t even have the politeness to buzz round your head before making a bee-line (!) for your mouth, they just whoosh straight in at speed. I guess that’s why Aussies tend to speak through gritted teeth.

    11. The accent isn’t as strong as some people believe. The whole Steve Irwin ‘Aussie turned up to 11’ warped a lot of perceptions.

  45. Morning all 🙂😊
    Back to normal outside wet and grey.
    Water companies ? It reminds me of a joke Good old Ronnie Scott🎷use to tell about staying in B&Bs. Regarding breakfast…… “How can you eff up cornflakes” ?

  46. The Lord’s Prayer was read in Urdu and Swahili during Canterbury Cathedral’s Easter Sunday services to reflect the “very international” congregation.

    At the 10am service shown on the BBC, The Very Rev Dr David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, invited each member of the congregation to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own language, while it was led in Urdu on the microphone by a member from Pakistan. The subtitles on the screen were in English.

    At an earlier service, aired on Radio 4, the prayer was led in Swahili.

    The Dean said: “We invite congregations to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own first language at most of our communion services.

    “We are aware that our congregations are very international and reflect the worldwide Anglican Communion.

    “From time to time, we invite someone to lead in their preferred language of prayer – today it’s in Congo Swahili as he was ordained in Zaire, and by a member of the Community of St Anselm from Pakistan.

    “This practice happens in many church services today along with music and songs in different languages too.”

    86
    tmg.video.placeholder.alt KcGWcbWxf_s
    The Lord’s Prayer was read in Urdu and Swahili during Canterbury Cathedral’s Easter Sunday services to reflect the “very international” congregation.

    At the 10am service shown on the BBC, The Very Rev Dr David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, invited each member of the congregation to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own language, while it was led in Urdu on the microphone by a member from Pakistan. The subtitles on the screen were in English.

    At an earlier service, aired on Radio 4, the prayer was led in Swahili.

    The Dean said: “We invite congregations to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own first language at most of our communion services.

    “We are aware that our congregations are very international and reflect the worldwide Anglican Communion.

    Advertisement

    “From time to time, we invite someone to lead in their preferred language of prayer – today it’s in Congo Swahili as he was ordained in Zaire, and by a member of the Community of St Anselm from Pakistan.

    “This practice happens in many church services today along with music and songs in different languages too.”

    The Easter Sunday service at the Canterbury Cathedral was broadcasted on the BBC
    The Easter Sunday service at the Canterbury Cathedral was broadcasted on the BBC CREDIT: ANDREW MATTHEWS/PA
    It is not known if this is the first time that the Easter Sunday service at Canterbury Cathedral read the Lord’s Prayer in a language other than English. The BBC, which has long broadcasted the service, said it was not an editorial decision made by the BBC.

    The Lord’s Prayer derives from when Jesus’s disciples asked him how they should pray and begins: “Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name”.

    Rev Wendy Dalrymple, the head of worship and events at the cathedral, said: “As a place of worship where people visit from all over the world, every Sunday we invite the congregation to pray in whichever language is their own.

    “On special occasions, we ask someone to lead this from the microphone.”

    Shortly after the Lord’s Prayer was said, the Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, used his Easter sermon at the cathedral to condemn “the evil of people smugglers” in the wake of a row over the Clapham chemical attacker being granted asylum.

    The Archbishop has been struggling to unite the Anglican Communion because of the row on same-sex blessings.

    86
    tmg.video.placeholder.alt KcGWcbWxf_s
    The Lord’s Prayer was read in Urdu and Swahili during Canterbury Cathedral’s Easter Sunday services to reflect the “very international” congregation.

    At the 10am service shown on the BBC, The Very Rev Dr David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, invited each member of the congregation to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own language, while it was led in Urdu on the microphone by a member from Pakistan. The subtitles on the screen were in English.

    At an earlier service, aired on Radio 4, the prayer was led in Swahili.

    The Dean said: “We invite congregations to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own first language at most of our communion services.

    “We are aware that our congregations are very international and reflect the worldwide Anglican Communion.

    Advertisement

    “From time to time, we invite someone to lead in their preferred language of prayer – today it’s in Congo Swahili as he was ordained in Zaire, and by a member of the Community of St Anselm from Pakistan.

    “This practice happens in many church services today along with music and songs in different languages too.”

    The Easter Sunday service at the Canterbury Cathedral was broadcasted on the BBC

    It is not known if this is the first time that the Easter Sunday service at Canterbury Cathedral read the Lord’s Prayer in a language other than English. The BBC, which has long broadcasted the service, said it was not an editorial decision made by the BBC.

    The Lord’s Prayer derives from when Jesus’s disciples asked him how they should pray and begins: “Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name”.

    Rev Wendy Dalrymple, the head of worship and events at the cathedral, said: “As a place of worship where people visit from all over the world, every Sunday we invite the congregation to pray in whichever language is their own.

    “On special occasions, we ask someone to lead this from the microphone.”

    Shortly after the Lord’s Prayer was said, the Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, used his Easter sermon at the cathedral to condemn “the evil of people smugglers” in the wake of a row over the Clapham chemical attacker being granted asylum.

    The Archbishop has been struggling to unite the Anglican Communion because of the row on same-sex blessings.

    Rev Justin Welby delivering his sermon on Easter Sunday

    The conservative Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), which represents churches on every continent and the majority of Anglicans worldwide, has previously said that it expects the organisation to “formally disassociate” from both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England.

    Their warning came after the General Synod, the Church’s lawmaking body, last year voted in favour of offering blessings to lesbian and gay couples who have already been married or had a civil partnership.

    The Archbishop of Canterbury is also struggling to bring the Church together over issues of race, as well as sexuality. Last week, he condemned the Church for advertising for a “deconstructing whiteness officer”.

    It comes after Church leaders were forced to defend the appointment of “racial justice enablers” whose mandate is to address “white fragility”. Several Church of England dioceses faced backlash after appointing individuals or teams to address racial inequality in their regions amid concerns they would alienate ordinary worshippers.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/31/easter-service-lords-prayer-urdu-and-swahili-canterbury/

    S Nl
    1 DAY AGO
    ‘Deconstructing whiteness operator’
    Does anyone understand that phrase? How does one deconstruct whiteness? This does not make any sense in English.

    Reply by Edward Keirle.

    EK

    Edward Keirle
    1 DAY AGO
    It’s communist-speak for destroying western cultures and values.

    Comment by Robert Dalton.

    RD

    Robert Dalton
    1 DAY AGO
    The continuing decent into madness. Imagine what Luther would be thinking now if he were alive.

    1. Many Africans are very devout Christians – more than can be said for ABC Welby.

    2. A huge amount of Africans are devoted Christians, many of them are being killed by Muslims due to their faith .

      1. Well then they can have the Lord’s Prayer in whichever African tongue they happen to speak, in Africa. This is England/the UK, and the Anglican Church comes from here. Does anyone expect the Pope to speak in Spanish or Portugese?

    3. The idea of different languages saying the Lords Prayer in different languages doesn’t seem a bad thing. I don’t have an issue with this, it feels like a uniting gesture. Which is contrary to the divisive Neo-Marxism the CoE appears to be gormlessly swallowing.

      1. But then you are succumbing to the multi- stuff that gets rammed down our throats. People in this country should be united in our language; it is not up to us to translate things into theirs.

    4. I never wonder why I gave up on the CofE over 30 years ago. I am reminded why every day.

      1. Even at school aged 15 I couldn’t believe 99% of what they were hammering on about.

      1. Ignorance and personal greed (not necessarily financial). He wants to be a Big Cheese.

        Sadly our already ordained (by birth) Big Cheese King Charles is also of rather limited intelligence, and being used by stinky cheeses – mostly from across the pond. We are doomed.

    6. “International” = not of the nation. So the clerics should not keep pandering to internationals – people here are either of the nation or they are not.

    7. I have no problem with that; most of those people are better Christians than the marxists that infest our church hierarchy.

    8. I have no problem with that; most of those people are better Christians than the marxists that infest our church hierarchy.

    9. Let’s bring back the Tridentine Mass – worldwide it will be said in the same language (Latin).

  47. Good moaning all.

    “ Shop inflation falls below 2pc in boost for rate cut hopes” it says in the DT. Where on earth does this figure come from because I certainly haven’t seen a drop in inflation.

      1. Each time I shop it seems that I buy less and less for more and more. I would say I spend at least £50.00 more each time for the same things than I did last year. I eat a lot of fish and fruit but it is becoming expensive. Even cat food is over the top in terms of pricing.

        1. I have two cats now and only one little oldie this time last year………but it’s not just the cat food increasing the bills.

        2. “Even cat food is over the top in terms of pricing.” Well no sir. This is the consequence of a devalued currency, which is caused by the printing of money.

          4. I like them and they’re more nutritious than fresh ones. Each to their own.

      3. A study just released over here shows that although prices have gone up, people are actually spending less on food than they did a couple of years ago. More junk food is being bought instead of healthy food.

        No doubt this will be followed by a study showing that people are not as fit as they used to be.

  48. Just managed (I think) to stop my husband going up a ladder………he’s not a happy bunny.

      1. He’s just put the kettle on to make some coffee………he walked past me muttering under his breath.

  49. Good morning, it started off sunny but now it dull .
    But good news the new washing machine arrives later this morning.
    I think I might change my avatar picture to a nice black & white ballet one instead .

          1. Behind him with her hand up his rectum. Rectum? Well didn’t do them much good.

  52. ‘Morning All

    Medley

    https://twitter.com/LeeCraddock12/status/1774173637488062870?t=FQVflaCNOBc7eOrPZPpBOQ&s=19

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b4d277ce60f2142ba65519e5711337bc697fdccf48ef5e30301410631f0f24c3.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dd082074dc465f75856846d7e1e658e6ce369d9abf44710ba1df100e2c6798f3.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bdf5861ff63ebf37d40683845b54971388615794acc2ec41ee2291d7084a3da5.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/394cd45ee27e20166bb7fbb4a82beb9ba1fcfdb0dd0d2d0d2a81443ef8c17ff1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bf8132783058ca3fdcdea508c6d19ca01e33897a339273b2ca2b0339b24dc29a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bb872fd3394544eca9dfd7711b3a023e68d7292a324789b0d295d05e558c3000.jpg

    1. So many so true.
      The last one actually happened to me in JHB 1969.
      One of the many locals who were helping building the Carlton Centre, didn’t believe me when I told him that a huge rocket was about to take off from earth. And was heading for the moon to land and men would walk around up there.
      He quite adamantly did not believe this could happen. Perhaps he was actually right after all. .

  53. Russia says its economy is off to a — mostly — roaring 2024. 2 March 2024.

    Russia’s economy is running so hot the Central Bank of Russia is holding rates at 16% to keep inflation in check.

    In a report released on Monday by the Russian central bank explaining its decision to keep rates steady in March, the authority said economic activity quickened in the first few months of the year after a slowdown in late 2023.

    The pick-up in Russia’s economy shows how the country continues to hold out against Western sanctions as its war against Ukraine stretches into its third year.

    Hmmm. I wonder what the CIA has to say to that!

    https://www.businessinsider.com/russias-economy-roaring-start-sanctions-stock-markets-putin-central-bank-2024-4

    1. Well, I’m flabbergasted! Absolutely astounded! Completely discombobulated! No…wait…I’m not!🙄

        1. Me neither, Spikey! Almost as though it’s one rule for muzzies, eh?😘

      1. Alex Phillips! She really does shriek! Pity, because she’s quite smart!

        1. Fortunately I never watch (or listen to) ANY news/current affairs/politics programmes.

    2. The SNP are sinister paranoid authoritarians.

      However, I have doubts about these two. But they are doubts and differences of opinion. Not the horror at the spectacle of the dystopian New East Germany the SNP are ushering in.

    3. I am fairly sure that in Scotland from now on, the slightest criticism of Islam will be regarded as hate speech.
      So Yousaf has his blasphemy law.
      I’m also fairly sure that should Scottish Labour get in, they won’t repeal this law.

      3. Actually, I think that is the primary reason the law was introduced. To muzzle Christians and any one else who would speak out against Islam.

        1. You may well be right, especially since both the SNP and Labour (who supported this legislation) are both led by Muslims.

    5. I find “Flower of Scotland” to be particularly threatening and hateful, can I get all those singing it in public arrested under their new laws?

      NO YOU CAN’T and in fact we will arrest YOU for suggesting it’s such.

      1. Having a look — I was not familiar with the words. It’s the usual drivel of the defeated. ‘Och man we be victims o the bloody Sassenachs.’ To which — you deserve no less what with all those gnats.

      2. I don’t know the words, but the dreadful dirge is enough to send anyone to sleep. Not at all inspiring as a National Anthem.

    6. I wonder if this counts as hate language:

      Scots Wha Hae
      BY ROBERT BURNS
      Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
      Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
      Welcome to your gory bed,
      Or to victory!

      Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;
      See the front o’ battle lour;
      See approach proud Edward’s power—
      Chains and slavery!

      Wha will be a traitor knave?
      Wha can fill a coward’s grave!
      Wha sae base as be a slave?
      Let him turn and flee!

      Wha for Scotland’s king and law
      Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
      Freeman stand, or freeman fa’,
      Let him follow me!

      By oppression’s woes and pains!
      By your sons in servile chains!
      We will drain our dearest veins,
      But they shall be free!

      Lay the proud usurpers low!
      Tyrants fall in every foe!
      Liberty’s in every blow!—
      Let us do or die!

      1. Yes. Plus a White Supremacist, such be the machinations and proclamations of The Wokeish.

      2. ROBERT BURNS is crap compared with the great William McGonagall.

        Mary, the Maid of the Tay

        Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Tay,
        Whaur me and my Mary oft did stray;
        But noo she is dead and gone far away,
        Sae I maun mourn for lovely Mary, the Maid o’ the Tay,

        The first time I met her ’twas in the month of May,
        And the sun was shining bricht on the Silvery Tay;
        I asked her name and she modestly did say,
        “Some fouks ca’s me lovely Mary, the Maid o’ the Tay.”

        Oh, charming Mary o’ the Tay,
        Queen o’ my soul by nicht and day;
        But noo thou’rt gane and left me here
        To weep for you, sweet Mary dear.

        Oh, bonnie Mary o’ the Tay,
        Joy o’ my heart and Queen o’ May;
        With thee I aye felt happy and gay
        While rambling with thee on the banks o’ the Tay.

        Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Tay,
        With my Mary ye seemed ever gay;
        But noo ye seem baith dark and drear,
        For my puir heart ye canna cheer.

        My Mary was handsome and fair to be seen,
        She bad bonnie fair hair and twa blue een;
        And she was, aye happy while we carelessly did stray
        Alang the banks o’ the Silvery Tay.

        Oh, Mary dear, I mourn thy loss,
        To me the world seems nought but dross;
        Sae I maun mourn baith nicht and day
        For my lovely Mary, the Maid o’ the Tay.

        1. I’ll raise you with Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci

          O, what can ail thee, knight at arms,
          Alone and palely loitering;
          The sedge has withered from the lake,
          And no birds sing.

          O, what can ail thee, knight at arms,
          So haggard and so woe-begone?
          The squirrel’s granary is full,
          And the harvest’s done.

          I see a lily on thy brow
          With anguish moist and fever-dew,
          And on thy cheeks a fading rose
          Fast withereth too.

          I met a lady in the meads,
          Full beautiful – a faery’s child,
          Her hair was long, her foot was light,
          And her eyes were wild.

          I made a garland for her head,
          And bracelets too, and fragrant zone,
          She looked at me as she did love,
          And made sweet moan.

          I set her on my pacing steed
          And nothing else saw all day long;
          For sideways would she lean, and sing
          A faery’s song.

          She found me roots of relish sweet,
          And honey wild and manna dew;
          And sure in language strange she said –
          I love thee true.

          She took me to her elfin grot,
          And there she gazed and sighed full sore:
          And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
          With kisses four.

          And there she lulled me asleep,
          And there I dreamed, ah woe betide,
          The latest dream I ever dreamed
          On the cold hill side.

          I saw pale kings and princes too,
          Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:
          They cry’d – “La belle Dame sans Merci
          Hath thee in thrall!”

          I saw their starved lips in the gloam
          With horrid warning gaped wide,
          And I awoke, and found me here
          On the cold hill side.

          And this is why I sojourn here
          Alone and palely loitering,
          Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
          And no birds sing.

          1. Crude compared with WM greatest poem of all

            The Tay Bridge Disaster

            Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
            Alas! I am very sorry to say
            That ninety lives have been taken away
            On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
            Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

            ’Twas about seven o’clock at night,
            And the wind it blew with all its might,
            And the rain came pouring down,
            And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
            And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
            “I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

            When the train left Edinburgh
            The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
            But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
            Which made their hearts for to quail,
            And many of the passengers with fear did say-
            “I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”

            But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
            Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
            And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
            On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
            Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

            So the train sped on with all its might,
            And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
            And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
            Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
            With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
            And wish them all a happy New Year.

            So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
            Until it was about midway,
            Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
            And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
            The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
            Because ninety lives had been taken away,
            On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
            Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

            As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
            The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
            And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
            Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
            And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
            Which fill’d all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
            And made them for to turn pale,
            Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale
            How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
            Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

            It must have been an awful sight,
            To witness in the dusky moonlight,
            While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
            Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
            Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
            I must now conclude my lay
            By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
            That your central girders would not have given way,
            At least many sensible men do say,
            Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
            At least many sensible men confesses,
            For the stronger we our houses do build,
            The less chance we have of being killed.

          2. But that’s about something completely different. We’re not comparing the best poem, just comparing various poems about the love for a woman-figure.

            I wasn’t replying to Richard Sk’s post, but to yours.

          7. Is the last line “and the experience left her squealing”? or “she could count all the cracks in the ceiling”? Boom boom!

        2. I’ll raise you with Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci

          O, what can ail thee, knight at arms,
          Alone and palely loitering;
          The sedge has withered from the lake,
          And no birds sing.

          O, what can ail thee, knight at arms,
          So haggard and so woe-begone?
          The squirrel’s granary is full,
          And the harvest’s done.

          I see a lily on thy brow
          With anguish moist and fever-dew,
          And on thy cheeks a fading rose
          Fast withereth too.

          I met a lady in the meads,
          Full beautiful – a faery’s child,
          Her hair was long, her foot was light,
          And her eyes were wild.

          I made a garland for her head,
          And bracelets too, and fragrant zone,
          She looked at me as she did love,
          And made sweet moan.

          I set her on my pacing steed
          And nothing else saw all day long;
          For sideways would she lean, and sing
          A faery’s song.

          She found me roots of relish sweet,
          And honey wild and manna dew;
          And sure in language strange she said –
          I love thee true.

          She took me to her elfin grot,
          And there she gazed and sighed full sore:
          And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
          With kisses four.

          And there she lulled me asleep,
          And there I dreamed, ah woe betide,
          The latest dream I ever dreamed
          On the cold hill side.

          I saw pale kings and princes too,
          Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:
          They cry’d – “La belle Dame sans Merci
          Hath thee in thrall!”

          I saw their starved lips in the gloam
          With horrid warning gaped wide,
          And I awoke, and found me here
          On the cold hill side.

          And this is why I sojourn here
          Alone and palely loitering,
          Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
          And no birds sing.

      1. Ah, you beat me to it. If the guy wants a penis AND a fake vagina, well, he CAN fuck himself!

        2. Given the mental contortions these people manage, I am sure he will manage something with mirrors.

    2. Sadly inevitable. This is a deliberately mentally destabilising aim of Queer Theory, read reality is oppression.

    3. Sadly inevitable. This is a deliberately mentally destabilising aim of Queer Theory, read reality is oppression.

    4. If that man wants to keep his c*ck then it’s cosmetic surgery (albeit internal). Arguably it is anyway, and if he feels so strongly he can pay for it – why should taxpayers pay for his proclivities? Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it.

  58. Thank GOODNESS the Scottish slammer “first monster” is OFF the hook. No prosecutions for hate pre-dating April Fool’s Day.

    It would have been hateful had he been banged up…

  59. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-will-iran-respond-to-israels-drone-assassination-in-damascus/

    How will Iran respond to Israel’s assassination of damascus

    ‘ When the War was started against Hamas In October Last Year ‘

    If I recall It was Hamas who started upon their aim to commit genocide.

    Frequent attacks aimed towards Israel from Syria by the Iranian military pass without little comment from the West but Israel responding to extreme provication from savages who wish to blow Israel to smithereens go without comment . It’s wonderful that Israel have ignored the hypocritical cowardly bleatings from the West as our leaders suffer from Stockholm syndrome, supporting a barbarian death cult who will come after the West .

    3. Absolutely. “Israel’s assassination in Damascus”? Assasination of the English language. I only took a quick look but quite apart from issues with the content, this article is not even well written. Where does the Speccie find ’em these days?

    1. DT comments.

      swedish wizard
      40 MIN AGO
      Given the size of Israel, the October 7 atrocities would equate to the slaughter of around 10,000 British citizens. What would people in Britain expect if 2,500 British kids were murdered at Glastonbury and 1,800 people were kidnapped by Islamist terrorists who declared war on the UK? I am sure David Cameron and others would be very concerned if the US, Israel would impose a ban on weapons export to Britain?

  62. Just received a selection of charming videos on Facebook from Mother’s care home, where the more mobile of the inmates were hunting Easter eggs in the home’s garden. Nice to see! Some of them are really sprightly. Unfortunately, Mother isn’t one of them and didn’t feature.

    1. Yo Ol

      Where is the home.

      My B-i-L is one in Port Talbot and they stream goings on daily!

      2. Hi, OLT.
        In Penarth. Very comfy and with a good atmosphere. We visit Mother as often as we can, but living in Norway doesn’t help.

      3. Replied once already, but it seems to have vanished… Mother’s care home is in Penarth, just a short distance from the Wetherspoons pub I posted a petition for. Nice building, lovely, kind staff, and they post still and video pictures daily of the activities the inmates get up to – quizzes, painting, making things, dancing, all kind of things (actually looks rather inviting!) Problem is, Mother isn’t just old, she has dementia, and is usually in the closed department, sooften not seen socialising and joining in – a cause of much sadness to me, I must confess. Although we never really got on, never really got to know each other properly, she is my Mum – and I miss her deeply. Because she is in Wales and we live in Norway, we don’t get to see her more than about twice a year.

        1. I sympathise Paul having been there but at least I could visit often, difficult times but at least she’s getting looked after

          1. Indeed, and quite happy, living in the moment. What more could I ask for?

  63. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d3be825397ca98d2bdde989955b3a68b7418d849/0_0_3500_2491/master/3500.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=0d9c8b2f13db0632da60944b3f4766a0
    A leopard cub and its mother play at Londolozi Private Game Reserve, on the banks of the Sand River within the Greater Kruger National Park, in South Africa

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/02381b4bc9c8f04b4973d6fc979b3e6083af7210/0_0_3329_2100/master/3329.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=a2977f2194e63fbaa29bebc0d2acef72
    One-horned rhinos graze at Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, Assam, India.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/52bc6c8b00c94eaab8e558791c554b1261a6b949/0_0_2183_1456/master/2183.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=4645f6b3cda507e84ac1a685e2c4664c
    Wild goats, which are under protection and form herds at certain times of the year, are seen feeding on the steep cliffs in the Taurus Mountains, Turkey

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a30d07fe91ca61fe5b69e08c199e2c5d9fc612eb/0_0_3600_2398/master/3600.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=554387b5fce4664931b5a66d2fdbf3f0
    A sea otter stops for a snack while hunting for mussels in Pacific Grove, California, US

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/277e2fe232f94cc0d070584c654906c1a245da8e/0_0_4596_3065/master/4596.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=be51c046f14984b1f7497305803793a4
    Wild horses on the Eynif Plateau, which covers about 90,000 in Antalya, Turkey

        1. This year, there appear to be four kids. But, as with kids today, they are fairweather kids They won’t come out if the grass is damp or it might rain. They stay in their shed and play with their goatie phones.

  65. Not bad . . .
    Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

    1. Seemed an unlikely word, but…

      Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

      1. Me too

        Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

        1. Fell nicely for me – birdie 3!

          Wordle 1,018 3/6

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

    2. Same.
      Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

    1. Hancock’s policies certainly assisted some dying during the so-called “pandemic”. Or is it only politicians who can indulge in assisted dying (of the plebs, natch) at the moment?

    2. Hancock’s policies certainly assisted some dying during the so-called “pandemic”. Or is it only politicians who can indulge in assisted dying (of the plebs, natch) at the moment?

  68. We have only to look at the UK Abortion Law which was passed with the best of intentions and has morphed into the Approval of Mass Infanticide.

    1. Give something to irresponsible young women (and men) and expect it to be abused. Give a free pass to irresponsible medics and one should be able to expect slightly better…

  69. The DT was given a lift to work by a colleague today, so a pleasant drive to Belper for a bit of shopping using her car as the van’s still buggered. A lovely bright sunny morning with a bitterly cold wind!

    1. How do we know that he isn’t? We can’t blindly accept everything that he tells us.

  71. Another triumph for BBCVerify!

    BBC taken in by Blenheim Palace’s April Fool claim to have hosted original Woodstock festival

    Corporation reported spoof story to millions on social media before realising it had been taken in

    Gwyn Wright
    1 April 2024 • 9:48pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/04/01/TELEMMGLPICT000264427920_17120038783290_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqX9BUfzDCvOjQOugpI-mZsP4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Music fans at Woodstock, held on a farm in upstate New York in 1969 CREDIT: OWEN FRANKEN/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
    The BBC has admitted it fell for an April Fool that claimed the Woodstock music festival was inspired by a gathering 200 years earlier in the Oxfordshire town of the same name.

    Local news website BBC Oxford reported a claim by archivists at Blenheim Palace, which is situated in the UK’s Woodstock, that they had discovered evidence of a festival that took place there in 1769, some 200 years before the 1960s hippy gathering.

    The story was posted to more than 55 million people via the BBC’s accounts on X, formerly Twitter, before bosses realised the error, deleted the post and replaced it with a link to an updated story.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/04/01/TELEMMGLPICT000372447438_17120040589880_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf_4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=960
    Blenheim Palace has many claims to fame, including being the birthplace of Winston Churchill, but was not the site of an early Woodstock CREDIT: OLEG ALBINSKY/ISTOCK UNRELEASED

    In the updated story, the corporation acknowledged it had been taken in, quoting a Blenheim Palace spokesman saying that while the estate had “a great history of music concerts … this one was designed for April 1”.

    The people behind the spoof at Blenheim included a clue to hint that the story might not be what it seemed, saying the 200 people at the 1769 event included “a singer by the name of Vincent Furnier”.

    Eagle-eyed readers would have noticed that this is the real name of the rock star Alice Cooper, who was born in 1948.

    Dr Alexa Frost, an archivist for Blenheim Palace, was quoted as claiming that its festival may have been the first such event in history, which the BBC reported as “doubtless inspiration” for the US festival.

    “We’re already in conversation with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC who are eager to find out more so that they can update their own archives and displays,” Dr Frost added.

    A BBC spokesperson said the article fell short of editorial standards and was updated when the mistake was picked up.

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

    Peter Thrower
    1 HR AGO
    Here’s another prank…..BBC are still paying the Welsh photograph ogler over £400,000 a year and he hasn’t done a stroke for 9 months.

    2. So Jamie Churchill got one over on BBC Verify. Is the Duke of Marlborough allowed in the House of Lords? Yes, I know about his chequered past but I’d still rather him than many of the political appointees.

      1. I very much doubt if he is included in ‘The 90+2’ hereditaries allowed to sit but he would be allowed to wear the ‘Rejects’ club tie.

    1. Yes I had some trouble this morning Phizzee. Went to Drag and Drop which worked for some reason.

    2. In the bottom strip of the comment box are two icons on their own on the LHS. Click on the one that is not GIF (it looks like a mountain range with a moon?star?sun? above it.)
      It will present you with all the icons and pictures on your screen. Click on the one you wish to post.
      Unless you have problems with that, in which case try Minty’s tip.

        1. I normally do the same, but sometimes that doesn’t work.
          No idea why – I just take evasive action.

      4. Dear Granny. I know how to suck eggs !
        Like the idea of Minty’s tip though….Sounds naughty.

    1. Ah, I thought the expression was “Cultural Christian”. My father was one of those. Dad was happy to go to church for hatches, matches and despatches and retained everything he’d learnt for his Bar Mitzvah (which he could recite in Hebrew) but still professed himself to be an atheist.

      1. Cultural Christianity is part of what made this country great. You can recite texts and attend places of worship, but it is our Judeo-Christian heritage (together with a smattering of old Greek and Norse) that underlies our moral structure. Or did underlie it, anyway :o)

        1. Yes, the English language developed out of the melting pot of Anglo Saxon, Old Norse, Norman French and Biblical Latin and Greek and the essence of the culture is most certainly Judeo-Christian. The devil seems to resent its success.

          1. Orwell, for one, observed essentially that if you control the language you control the ability to think outside the limitations of that language – eventually.

          2. That is true and is something that I find of great interest, Hertslass. One of the bonuses of learning other languages is that you are thus exposed to different ways of seeing – different axiomatic platforms, as well. There are great novelists (Conrad springs to mind) who wrote in English but for whom it was not a first language, which led to some brilliant turns of phrase.

            Because language is dogmatic it is really important that we fight its contraction and bowdlerisation very fiercely indeed.

          3. Indeed. I find that even in my limited experience, reading books that have been translated often changes the whole “feel” of the book. I am bilingual from childhood in Danish and English and having read the original and translations I feel that a translator needs to know the mindset of the recipient as well as the author. Sometimes things should not be literally translated to get the corresponding meaning in another language. Neither should translations IMO become “modernised” eg. like the dreadful new Bible (that was published in the 1970s I believe).

          4. I used to do translations. It’s a very tricky art. You need to get over not just the words but the flavour.

      2. Cultural Christianity is part of what made this country great. You can recite texts and attend places of worship, but it is our Judeo-Christian heritage (together with a smattering of old Greek and Norse) that underlies our moral structure. Or did underlie it, anyway :o)

    2. He’s spent years spitting on Christians and Christianity, and now he thinks that we might actually have some good influence on this world? A bit late to be realising this, after all the damage he and the other militant atheists have done to the West.

      1. Dawkins will probably end up converting just as Prof Flew recanted of his atheism – he has been on this trajectory for some time and has been seen attending Evensong in Cambridge. Dawkins will be welcome into the fold and all will be forgiven.

        1. But what of the damage that he and others have done? That’s what angers me. ‘Oops! Sorry!’ It just doesn’t seem like enough.

    1. Jacinda ‘Shergar’ Ardern: “We will continue to be your single source of truth.”

    1. Certainly is so . The crazy Queers for Palestine freak show have lost the plot even more then before .

    2. As if the little twonks matter, in anyone’s life! Bunch of freaks! Come on Humza! Arrest me!

    3. As if the little twonks matter, in anyone’s life! Bunch of freaks! Come on Humza! Arrest me!

  82. Latest on Mrs D who is scheduled for surgery next Monday: the anaesthetist phoned a couple of hours ago and cancelled the surgery because she has COPD. He hasn’t examined her, observed her breathing or given her a lung test. Everything is done on the phone.
    She is now in limbo with permanent AF and a leaking heart valve. Her quality of life is near zero and she is quite distraught. She has a GP appointment tomorrow but I doubt that he can do anything to change things.
    My opinion of the NHS is unprintable.
    Sorry to be depressing.

    1. That strikes me as bull. I have had two operations and I have stage 4 COPD.

        1. Can you email a letter to the doctor asking for theirexplanation for this, given 1) the telephone non-examination, 2) the fact that you understand that someone who has stage 4 COPD (JR’s post above) has had two operations, and 3) the quality of life of your wife.

          They don’t like things in writing. Make sure you also put on the email “By post and by email” and send the letter (that you email) by registered post, to be signed for. I have come across surgeries saying they never recieved an email.

    3. That’s terrible. I have so much sympathy for you both. I’m my own humble opinion based on personal experience. The NHS has completely lost its sense of purpose and sense of responsibility.
      Its continued existence is debatable.

        1. I know it’s a long shot but have you tried PALS Patient Advice and Liason Service. You should be able to find them through a contact at your local hospital..
          You could try a private consultant.
          I’m not sure if you would need a referral from your GP, you could try putting pressure on them.
          They should help you.

        2. You don’t necessarily need a referral from your NHS GP any more – there are private GPs. I haven’t had to try one yet (and I wouldn’t like to be in the position where I have to, but I can imagine I will in the future, either for me or for D).

        3. You don’t necessarily need a referral from your NHS GP any more – there are private GPs. I haven’t had to try one yet (and I wouldn’t like to be in the position where I have to, but I can imagine I will in the future, either for me or for D).

        4. You don’t necessarily need a referral from your NHS GP any more – there are private GPs. I haven’t had to try one yet (and I wouldn’t like to be in the position where I have to, but I can imagine I will in the future, either for me or for D).

    4. https://ceoemail.com/uk-nhs-chiefs.php

      Dear Delboy
      Our, vw and me, hearts go out to you and your wife. I don’t know what else to say but that’s a really rum do. These people have no compassion or comprehension of the distress they cause to individuals who have not been seen and are really unwell.
      I don’t know if you’re able to write to the hospital’s Chief Executive but the attached link will take you to a website that gives their personal email address and contact number. We wish you good luck in exploring that avenue. In my experience it works quite well.

    5. That is so sad, and so hard for you both. Maybe the GP can refer Mrs D on to a different consultant, maybe a different hospital.

    6. Good grief, Delboy! I’m so sorry to hear that. What a shambles the the Health Service?is! Your poor wife and you too! In limbo is a ghastly place to be. My thoughts are with you and I really hope the GP can influence someone! How dare they write you off if they’ve never seen you?

    8. Oh, goodness! That’s terrible news, Delboy. Poor Mrs. D. Can you give her a big, reassuring hug from me?

    10. Infuriating for you both. Silly question – but could you go private? Perhaps the GP could make a referral.

    12. Don’t these surgeons speak to each other? The cardiologist must know about the COPD?

      1. He didn’t know that she had a stent fitted in February. It must be in her notes but did he refer to them?

    13. I am very sorry to hear this. I suggest, if possible that you (and your GP) urgently speak to and/or email the cardiology consultant and the chief of service for the anaesthetics department. Use the PALS service if needed but don’t allow them to slow matters down. Unfortunately, anaesthetists are the ultimate exponents of Health and Safetyism and a few will cancel any case they think risky. The cardiologist is probably almost as annoyed as you are. Obviously, nobody wants a patient to die under anaesthetic but this isn’t a case of an unnecessary cosmetic procedure but a potentially life saving one so the considerations are different. (This incidentally shows why the ‘first do no harm’ mantra is not helpful).
      The first thing to establish is why your wife hasn’t been given the option to have the procedure under local anaesthetic rather than general. If there is some reason that a GA is considered essential, ask who within the anaesthetics department has the requisite experience and skill to minimise the risk and put pressure on for them to get involved . I don’t know what hospital you are using but if it is just a DGH and you really aren’t getting anywhere try asking for your wife’s care to be escalated to a tertiary referral service. As a last resort -as she is seriously unwell – consider pitching up with her at A&E at a teaching hospital (with a good supply of reading material).

    1. Presumably he’ll gaol all the winners on trumped up charges. And re-run the election. Or impose martial law…

  85. Still having trouble posting pics…

    As Schwartzeneggar didn’t say….iterum revortar postea.

    1. Me too, Phizz!
      Just tried to post a pic of Shergar, who was very definitely prettier than Ardern!

          3. https://youtu.be/V18ui3Rtjz4

            Just had to put this. Another astounding horse of great beauty. Apparently his post mortem revealed that he had a huge heart, which partly explained his ability to keep accelerating. This kind of beauty reduces me to tears every time!

          4. Similarly with Phar Lap. I saw his stuffed body in Australia (apparently, his skeleton is in New Zealand).

          8. I’ve never knowingly eaten horse and don’t intend to do so. But during our sojourn in the EU it seems that loads of £meat£ coming specifically through Ireland was mislabelled. Apparently there was plenty of human DNA in there as well.

          9. That’s just the Oirish getting rid of the competition. Old story. So my Godfather tells me.

          10. A bit like the East European beefburgers a few years ago, that were found to contain horsemeat.

    2. Back in the 1980s if you went into a Building Society branch to open an account with £10,000 in notes, they would be thrilled. Nowadays they’d call the authorities.

    1. The Left and the BBC would be howling with rage at that if Sunak was a Labour PM.

  89. Team GB vows to stick with traditional Union flag on 2024 Olympic kit after merchandise backlash

    British Olympic Association says a classic red, white and blue kit will be used in Paris after outrage at flag in shades of pink and purple

    Jeremy Wilson, CHIEF SPORTS REPORTER
    2 April 2024 • 3:37pm

    The British Olympic Association has vowed to stick with tradition and not mess with the classic red, white and blue Union flag on its 2024 Olympic kit following a backlash over the sale of ‘Union Jack’ merchandise in different colour shades.

    In a shift from the plain red, white and blue colours most associated with the British Olympic team, designers have introduced options with squiggles and dots across colours that incorporate shades of pink and purple in a desire to “push the iconic red white and blue as far as we could”.

    The Telegraph, however, has learnt that a traditional Union flag will be on the arms of all Team GB athletes’ kit at the Paris Olympics this summer and that the wider kit does not use the same colour palette that has emerged following the BOA’s collaboration with the Bath-based design company Thisaway.

    Flags, bunting and water bottles were launched last June in the new colour scheme and have been on sale for fans in the official Team GB shop. The merchandise designs have provoked criticism following the outrage last week over the changed St George’s Cross flag on the collar of the England football shirt.
    *
    *
    *

    1. And there we have it “push the iconic red white and blue as far as we could”. Really? Why? What special insight to justify such actions can be afforded us simple oiks? The arrogance, ignorance and narcissism go hand in hand.

    2. And there we have it “push the iconic red white and blue as far as we could”. Really? Why? What special insight to justify such actions can be afforded us simple oiks? The arrogance, ignorance and narcissism go hand in hand.

    3. What other country would countenance messing with their national flag! What other religion would countenance service in foreign language!

  90. A pale-blooded Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,018 3/6
    ⬜⬜🟩🟨🟨
    ⬜⬜🟩🟨🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Well done

      Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

      1. Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

    2. Well done. Boring four here.

      Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

    3. Par today.

      Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

      1. And me.

        Wordle 1,018 4/6

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

  91. 385291+ up ticks,

    “The bastards” know more ways to skin a maggot,
    Nothing like a nice rib-eye when you know its host had been gorging on bluebottles.

    Millions of maggots and flies bred in London may be answer to UK’s food woes
    Industry pioneering feeding insects to farm animals could slash need to import soy, while using huge amounts of food waste

    1. “Millions of maggots and flies bred in London …”
      I’m no admirer of Khant’s voters, but that’s a little strong.

  92. Three very useful hours of hedge (and ladder) work. One hedge down; three to go. Finished with a cup of verveine tea in the garden. Cats out all the time playing, hunting, stalking each other. A joy to watch.

    Now to relax.

  93. Quelle surprise.

    But no direct admission that it was a plain bloody stupid policy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/04/02/oregon-recriminalises-hard-drugs-after-overdose-deaths/

    “Oregon recriminalises hard drugs after huge increase in overdose deaths

    State was first to legalise small amounts of such narcotics following vote in 2020, including deadly opioid fentanyl

    2 April 2024 • 3:44pm

    Oregon has recriminalised hard drugs as officials admitted their strategy was a “huge mistake” after overdose deaths increased rapidly.

    Those found in possession of substances such as heroin or methamphetamine now face up to six months in prison, after Tina Kotek, the Oregon governor, signed the measure into law.

    Oregon became the first state in the United States to legalise small amounts of hard drugs, including the deadly opioid fentanyl, which was approved by a public vote in 2020.

    However, enthusiasm quickly cooled amid a surge in rough sleeping and crime. In Portland, Oregon’s largest city, businesses have fled the downtown area, where shops are boarded up and homeless encampments are widespread.

    Drug overdose deaths increased by about 44 per cent in 2021, according to state figures. The same year, a University of Toronto study concluded that the decriminalisation measure was responsible for 182 unintentional fatal drug overdoses.

    Multnomah County, which includes Portland, declared a state of emergency earlier this year when overdose deaths from opioids, including fentanyl, almost doubled.

    Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, said that officials had made a “huge mistake” in decriminalising drugs without making sure there was a safety net for addicts.

    “There’s no question that the state botched the implementation,” he told The New York Times.

    “The timing couldn’t have been worse. In terms of the botched implementation: to decriminalise the use of drugs before you actually had the treatment services in place was obviously a huge mistake.”

    As part of the decriminalisation measure, bodies known as Behavioural Health Resource Networks received about $260 million in public money to support drug addicts.

    Oregon is the latest liberal state performing a volte-face on its drug policies. Voters in San Francisco endorsed a move that subjected welfare recipients to drug tests in February.

    Mr Wheeler claimed that voters had moved to the Right on drug policies because they “want order restored to their environment” and “are exhausted from feeling like they’re under siege”.

    He continued: “You see it particularly amongst young people. I feel it. I think other people feel it, too.

    “They have a minimum expectation that where they live is an orderly, safe, secure, prosperous place to be. And if they don’t see it, that is unsettling. They need to have that.”

    While Mr Wheeler admitted that “addiction rates and overdose rates skyrocketed” since 2020, he argued that this was not totally a result of Oregon’s liberal drug attitude, citing the Covid pandemic and a lack of investment in health services.

    Kate Lieber, a Democrat and majority leader in the state senate, insisted last month that the law needed more time to work.

    “We fundamentally haven’t figured out how to have the behavioural health system and the criminal justice system really talk to each other,” she said.”

    3. The most dangerous drug that is not regulated is Illegally Made Fentanyl (IMF) which has no taste. It is a major cause of unintentional deaths because it is about 50 times more potent than other opiates and is commonly added to other drugs as a cheap potent additive:

      https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html

      The pharmaceutical grade Fentanyl can be used as a palliative final stage cancer treatment and could no doubt be prescribed for an assisted death if this were passed in law under a future bill.

      The difference between Fentanyl symptoms and a choke hold may be difficult to recognise as in the case of George Floyd:

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/george-floyd-drugs/2021/04/13/66eefa4a-998e-11eb-b28d-bfa7bb5cb2a5_story.html

      1. St. George of Fentanyl was complaining of not being able to breather several minutes before being laid on the ground and that restraint hold applied.

        1. Difficulty in breathing is a known side effect of Fentanyl. As a habitual drug user there will have been no known formulation of any drug he may have taken. Any police restraint would have been contrary to an appropriate first medical responder treatment which anyway may have had a fatal outcome.

    1. All very amusing – but what can people actually DO to stop this madness? Short of civil war.

      1. KBO with the lampooning seems the best thing to me, Bill. And get tooled up just in case these lunatics activate their troops on a wide scale.

    1. Did MPs have a special Easter Service in St Margaret’s, Westminster? Just asking…

      1. I have no idea Bill , but it does seem to me a feast like that is a duplicitous manoeuvre to gain favours and vote , it MUST be against parliamentary standards , bit like a brown envelope job .

        Mendacious meddling, no transparency ..

    4. Bless them.
      Sainsbury’s sent me an email ‘celebrating’ Ramadan and Eid.
      Complete with recipes and ingredients.

  98. Worth a try occasionally. Family and structural breakdown serves ‘their’ purposes.

  100. Fishi’s latest fatuous comment. “I’ll call an election when people feel things are improving…” That will be sometime never, then. The man is beyond parody.

    He said something similar on a local radio station – accompanied by his pathetic, cringe- making giggly larf – and, to her credit, the interviewer asked, “What is funny about that?”…

      1. Well, you know what Methodists are like. Be glad he left his bomb vest at home.

    4. Has this idiot thought through what would happen to the Jews in Israel if it wasn’t for weapons factories such as this?

    5. I’ll bet he hasn’t been on a HSE “Working at Heights” course.. and won’t have a sustificate. Prosecute him….

    1. Outrage? From whom? It is what these jungle bunnies need – to encourage them to return whence they came.

  106. That’s me for today. Very satisfactory – apart from the Times crossword which was tricky today.

    Have a spiffing evening. We will continue watching a French made “Maigret” play – VERY good indeed. Talking Pictures is the place…

    A demain.

        1. It actually looks as if he has several rows of teats a la sow or bitch. He could do with at least one more brassiere

    4. This really is getting like a very bad dream. One of those ones where you dream you’re awake and things are just as awful as they were in the nightmare. And you can’t run, and you can’t scream. And you try and try but you can’t wake up.

    5. Let’s hopetthat does for KC what that c*ck in a fro*ck did for Bud (happily I don’t recall his name).

      1. No. She just moaned a lot and screamed a lot and was generally selfish and useless.

      1. People like that shout loudly because they don’t say much. They are stupid enough to think that volume compensates for content.

      1. Too lazy T, it’s an ongoing fault of being British. Complacency. It’s deadly.

  112. Ave atque vale, amici. I am currently on the mini laptop because the large one is updating my Garmin (they can’t touch you for it). It shows me the X pics with no option to hide them, so I’m signing off until I can get back to normal! Hideous sights, some of those X posts!

    1. Erdogan said that there isn’t any such thing as moderate Islam, there’s just Islam. People choose not to hear.

      1. Islam is a political movement of which hides behind the cloak of – a religion ‘. It’s an intolerant and irrational medieval death cult that has never had any place in the civilised West. Politicians trying to ‘ westernise ‘ Muslims have destroyed our way of life etc . There are the Muslims who do the terrorists attacks ( savages doing the dirty work ) and there are well educated more civilised Muslims who live amongst us as doctors etc. It’s the doctors who protest in London with their faces covered- they’re all the same .

        1. Islam means submission. It’s time we started anglicanising it so that people realise its true nature.

    3. In all that time the West hasn’t learned a thing.
      It took over 300 years to get them out of Spain.

    4. An old proverb regarding Islam:
      When in minority, as quiet as a mouse
      When in equality, as cunning as a fox
      When in majority, as raging as a lion.

      1. Give it time.

        These people will be looking for every opportunity to do to her what the Democrats do to Trump.

        “Right comment, right court, right jury right judge” and you can be damned sure they will get the right court and the right jury and the right judge, and she’ll be toast.

      2. I am pleased … but …
        Isn’t it appalling that only people who are rich and famous can produce such a result.
        So much for socialism and equality.

    2. So if something is going to “stir up hatred” how can a complaint by someone who thinks that hatred has/will be stirred up prove any particular comment caused this? A complainant isn’t doing the hating. Unless they can link the perceived hatred with the comment – which they can’t.

      Anyway, IMO ol’ |Humza is trying to get in a Get out of Jail Free card for Islamists under this, under the guise of it relating to trans twits.

    3. “Stirring up hatred based on race, colour, nationality or ethnicity was already illegal in Great Britain under the Public Order Act 1986 but is now included in the new law.”

      Was it in the original act or is it a Blair era amendment?

      1. I’m not aware of the differences between stirring up hatred law as currently enacted between Scotland and UK.

        I understand however that making an observation about a trans woman having a willy does not necessarily constitute a hate crime.

        Some trans women feel discussing their gender gives them the willies whilst others are prepared to be more overt:

        1. Trans women already have the willies, so discussing that fact actually makes no difference!

  118. Is it a hate crime to admit that one hates something?

    I’m stating my position and/or opinion, I’m not forcing you to agree with me, nor am I stopping you from hating what I am and what I believe in.

      1. Stabbing someone merely because they are: choose your minority, is a hate crime and should get a heavy sentence.

        Verbal or thought hate crimes I am very wary of, because of where that leads.

  119. 385291+ up ticks,

    UK demands ‘full explanation’ from Israel over killing of British aid workers

    Rishi Sunak expresses ‘shock and sadness’ as Lord Cameron cuts short Easter break to summon ambassador for meeting over deadly IDF strike

    Will this chap sunak and the wretch cameron demand full explanations into the excess deaths in regards to the hideous
    jab ?

    1. Did he demand a full explanation from Hamas for all the British Jews killed on October 7th?

    2. They knew they were entering a war zone, they knew the risks.
      How is what happened to them any different from what happened to the so-called traitors, who decided to volunteer for the Russians in Ukraine and were killed?

        1. Similar to those women who work in Calais and then wonder why the savages raped them?

      2. Picture in our paper of “before” and “after”… after isn’t pretty. I won’t post the picture.

        1. I have enormous respect for the courage of the aid workers, but they knew the risks.

    3. How about “Israel demands full explanation of presence of British Aid Workers in a war zone”?

    1. I think it started with a complacent attitude and slowly and surely became what it is now.

  121. The Bears Head pub in Penarth, South Wales, is threatened with closure. Can I ask NoTTlers to sign (electronically) the petition to save the place?
    Petition: https://www.change.org/p/prevent-the-closure-of-wetherspoons-the-bears-head-pub-in-penarth?recruiter=79111328&recruited_by_id=84fc5e2b-0c63-44bd-b369-c7a4563af8df&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=uk_web_gs_ret_sap_20230123_generic-rlsa_conversions-sap&utm_medium=copylink&utm_content=cl_sharecopy_37955435_en-GB%3A10
    News article: https://www.penarthtimes.co.uk/news/24224776.petition-set-save-wetherspoons-pub-bears-head/

    1. Signed because I have read briefly what it is about, and because it obviously means something to you, Oberst.

    2. I really wouldn’t bother with change.org, Obers. it makes no difference AFAICS. I think the official gov. ones have slightly more chance of working.

      1. That’s where the petition is, not mine, BTW. Set up by the Penarth Times AFAIK.

    5. I’m sorry but if Wetherspoons cannot make it work the site is almost certainly unviable. People should have used it more when Wetherspoon’s open.

      1. Whenever we were there, the place was heaving. Don’t understand why they want to close.

    6. Had some Rugby battles down that way in days of yore, signed it nonetheless!!

  122. The Bears Head pub in Penarth, South Wales, is threatened with closure. Can I ask NoTTlers to sign (electronically) the petition to save the place?
    Petition: https://www.change.org/p/prevent-the-closure-of-wetherspoons-the-bears-head-pub-in-penarth?recruiter=79111328&recruited_by_id=84fc5e2b-0c63-44bd-b369-c7a4563af8df&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=uk_web_gs_ret_sap_20230123_generic-rlsa_conversions-sap&utm_medium=copylink&utm_content=cl_sharecopy_37955435_en-GB%3A10
    News article: https://www.penarthtimes.co.uk/news/24224776.petition-set-save-wetherspoons-pub-bears-head/

  125. Who’d have thunk it?

    Oregon has recriminalised hard drugs as officials admitted their strategy was a “huge mistake” after overdose deaths increased rapidly.

    Those found in possession of substances such as heroin or methamphetamine now face up to six months in prison, after Tina Kotek, the Oregon governor, signed the measure into law.

    Oregon became the first state in the United States to legalise small amounts of hard drugs, including the deadly opioid fentanyl, which was approved by a public vote in 2020.

    However, enthusiasm quickly cooled amid a surge in rough sleeping and crime. In Portland, Oregon’s largest city, businesses have fled the downtown area, where shops are boarded up and homeless encampments are widespread.

    A user smoking fentanyl in Portland, Oregon
    Overdose deaths from opioids, including fentanyl, have almost doubled in some areas since drugs were decriminalised CREDIT: PATRICK T FALLON/AFP
    Drug overdose deaths increased by about 44 per cent in 2021, according to state figures. The same year, a University of Toronto study concluded that the decriminalisation measure was responsible for 182 unintentional fatal drug overdoses.

  126. Israeli embassodor has been summoned. I do find all this so very scary, so we now side with Islamic despotic terrorists and they know it, this sends out a terrible message. Anyway I’m reading Watership Down atm, quietly to myself .
    Be nice to 🐇. I’ve even put my chocolate rabbits aside .

    1. When I was young, I read Watership Down many times. Lovely story, if a bit sad here and there.

        1. I’ve just started to re-read The Wind in the Willows. I need something from another country (ie.both the past and my childhood).

          2. So much of the prose is beautiful. I must have appreciated it when young, without really recognising why, but now I find it beautiful.

    3. I’m reading The Innocents Abroad. Haven’t yet got to the part where in 1867 they find the Holy Land mostly unoccupied.

    4. Watership Down (original) is one of the few things that can make me cry. THAT ENDING.

    8. I am reading “Life Below Stairs” by Alison Maloney. Once a sociologist, always a sociologist (me, not necessarily Alison). Edit, I am not, and never have been, a socialist!

    9. I am reading “Life Below Stairs” by Alison Maloney. Once a sociologist, always a sociologist (me, not necessarily Alison). Edit, I am not, and never have been, a socialist!

    1. Bee-eaters, a most wonderful family of birds. First saw one rare visitor in Richmond Park and then several times in Africa.

    2. Bee-eaters, a most wonderful family of birds. First saw one rare visitor in Richmond Park and then several times in Africa.

  129. Delightful. Mole, Badger and Rat help Mr Toad, such a wonderful story, do enjoy.

        1. They also gouge the hearts out of new born lambs. They just leave the rest. Horrible creatures rife with TB.

        2. They also gouge the hearts out of new born lambs. They just leave the rest. Horrible creatures rife with TB.

      3. Like Black Beauty, the Jungle Book and many other tales? It’s not the books that cause the damage, it’s the fact that sometimes humans don’t draw the logical line between animals in stories, and real life. In the case of Black Beauty I believe it helped the position of horses to an extent.

          1. I know Anna Sewell was very against that horrible “fashion”. I believe that docking tails had already been largely stopped by the time she wrote, but I can imagine that some people did in fact view horses in the same light as steam trains – just there to pull them. from A to B.

      4. Like Black Beauty, the Jungle Book and many other tales? It’s not the books that cause the damage, it’s the fact that sometimes humans don’t draw the logical line between animals in stories, and real life. In the case of Black Beauty I believe it helped the position of horses to an extent.

    2. Thank you, I am. It takes me into another world and the sweetness of the prose is like a mental massage.

      2. I have the vinyl single. Bought by my eldest brother to play on a record player he made himself.

          1. I have no idea – but it worked! He left home to go and study at Imperial College when I was all of three years old. I remember what the record player looked like and I have the records but that’s all!

  131. Love them!
    And here, woodpeckers (green, at Firstborn’s place) and the B&W ones too.

  133. We had a badger here one year. Bastard tore our wooden dusbin sack holder to pieces.

  134. Some years ago, a badger broke into a pen in our garden and that was the result. Two dead hogs that were ready for release.

  135. Night All

    I see Scotland Plod have chickened out of JK Rowlings dare…

    But that was never the real issue Islam blasphemy is where they’re at

    1. Blasphemy law via the rear door! Humza and the equally horrible Sarwar are nasty 5th columnists. The Scots seem so unaware of what will happen. I dread the future for my grandchildren.

        2. And to think, when you first appeared on Nottle you were so gentile and demure.

  136. Right chums, I’ve decided on an early night tonight. Good night, sleep well, and see you all tomorrow.

    PS – Slight change of plan, I decided to watch TOO MANY CROOKS (1959) on YouTube. A fun comedy in the days when comedy was relatively clean.

  138. In Chad there was a native hunter who used to drop animals off in our fenced compound. One time he left us with a fully grown ground hornbill. It was enormous and scared us the first time it strolled up to our alfresco dinner table. 3 of the Yanks leapt onto the table (the largest bill I’ve ever seen at dinner). I’ve got an old photo of it somewhere in the loft.

    1. Goodness me , they are huge ..
      Can you remember the giant insects .. enormous bumble bees and beetles and caterpillars that looked like snakes , centipedes and millipedes .. terrifying things, and of course GIANT cockroaches ..

      Don’t want to be vulgar but everything in Africa was so much larger .. evolution I guess.. but I shudder when I remember rainy days when the walls and lights and shower room would attract lizards , frogs , scorpions and beetles and other shuddery things. FRUIT bats as well!

        1. The spider situation is often the downside of all these places (qv the earlier conversation on Australia, where they are not only deadly but also aggressive). When I was little (about 5) a girl moved onto our street who had come from Africa and claimed that the spiders there were the size of spaniels. A horrible thought.

    1. Zelensky acquired the mansion Highgrove House, previously owned by King Charles III, for 20 million pounds.

      Highgrove House has been used by Prince Charles since 1980 as a country residence, where he, along with Princess Diana, raised their children – Prince William and Harry. According to the British newspaper London Crier, after 44 years of being owned by the crown, the house, along with its surrounding park, was sold to the President of Ukraine.

      Grant Harrold, a former royal butler, stated that, according to his information, the deal was completed on February 29, 2024, during the visit of Zelensky’s spouse to the United Kingdom. The deal amounted to 20 million pounds sterling. The sale of Highgrove House was also confirmed by the staff responsible for the maintenance of the former royal residence. A large part of them were laid off on March 21, 2024.

      According to Grant Harrold, the secrecy of Buckingham Palace, especially intensified in recent months due to the illness of King Charles III and Kate Middleton, suggests that official confirmation of the sale might take several weeks or months. It remains unclear how exactly Zelensky managed to persuade the British monarch to sell his residence and with what funds the purchase was made.

      On January 12, 2024, the British government announced additional funding for Ukraine in the amount of 2.5 billion pounds sterling for the years 2024/2025.

      1. I find this quite exceptionally hard to believe, Belle. But i suppose these days anything could be true.

          4. Take care here.
            My virus checker has rejected the connection.
            It’s “black (can I say that?) listed”
            Possibly because it goes to a real Pravda site, who knows.

      4. A waste of money. Ukraine no longer exists as a supposed country. If true this “sale” would depose the Idiot King for the WEF dolt that he is.

  143. I’m off up the wooden hill now as well now.
    A few hour’s relief from this crazy world.
    Goodnight all. 😴

    1. Is that in addition to free housing, health care, education etc etc.?
      If so, Hells teeth, I’d be better off as a gimmegrant

    2. Oh, thanks a bunch WAG. Our council tax has been doubled and the pot holes not fixed. Country lanes are now canyons and even the main roads have what can only be described as ditches on the carriageways. TF is going on?

        1. Actually, that is such an obvious answer. A trained team of swordfish out popping the buggers.

    5. £19200 pa! I’m surprised they are still using rubber boats with that sort of incentive they could charter a cruise ship and sail straight into one of the Welsh ports…

  146. The Scots used to be canny – what happened? Same as to the English and Welsh I guess.

    1. Canny? They hate the English. I would say they’ve been encouraged to hate by a combination of people like Salmond and Sturgeon, and their own sense of ‘poor me’. They certainly don’t make the most of themselves, nor their country. Which is very beautiful.

      1. Well I meant canny in terms of not allowing a little tw*t like Humza spearhead a “you can’t say anything about anyone that we don’t want you to say” kind of law. As for hatred of the English, Sturgeon and Salmond certainly whipped that up – but then they had to blame someone for their own mismanagement of funds. While the English were, and no doubt still are, by and large fed up with having to pay for this perpetual moaning through the Barnett formula, I don’t think it ever was whipped here up into the kind of hatred towards the Scots, that some Scots showed towards the English.

        But do they ever consider what is the basis of the hatred? How many Scottish people know about Darien? Or about King James VI bringing his acolytes down south and giving them English titles and land on his accession to the English throne? Or the fact that the border raids historically were largely carried out by Scottish clans into English territory? Or that the Scottish King James (IV?) tried to attack and conquer England while Henry VIII was in France?. I am not sure that similar border attacks were made by the English, nor that a concerted attack was made to try and conquer Scotland (rather than subdue that country after the Act of Union), but I may be mistaken.

        Scotland is lovely country and the Scots a lovely people. I am married to one. I can understand unscrupulous politicians like Sturgeon and Salmond whipping up hatred for their own political ends, and to a certain extent the lesser-thinking of the Scottish people being carried along with that, as a target for their frustration, but I can’t understand how they can let themselves be muzzled like this. Except to the extent that Scots, like the rest of the UK, have to a great extent been deliberately and successfully dumbed down over the last five decades or so. I just thought that, hatred of English apart, they might still realise that they are being played. The Scottish aren’t stupid.

        1. There was the “rough wooing”. I seem to recall Catherine of Aragon was regent when the Scots King attacked. Northumberland, I think, saw him off and killed the monarch, leaving Mary Queen of Scots the infant ruler.

          1. Yes, I believe that is right, but King James IV of Scotland wanted to go far further south – it wasn’t a border raid.

            His death left James V as Scottish monarch. Mary Queen of Scots was the daughter of James V.

          2. I never was very good at time lines. Who killed James V because Mary was left an infant ruler, n’est-ce pas? I’m currently about to start Philippa Gregory’s “The Other Queen”, but that deals with her captivity by Bess of Hardwick.

          3. James V, legend has it, died of shock after hearing of the defeat of his armies at Solway Moss (1542).

          4. He didn’t die in battle. I think he died in his bed of a fever or some such.

      2. Goodness. Jesus if I die before I awake , I pray for my soul for you to take. * sign of the cross * .

  149. Marlin might be more amenable to the task, with a few great whites to clean up the remains. I’ll spark up the fish finder.

        1. Their teeth are sharp and a belly flop over the dinghy would consign it to three weeks last Thursday.

  150. Put out a bounty, £500 a pop, (ho ho) and I suspect spear fishermen would be patrolling day and night.
    Just put a tag on the harpoon and they can identify the winners.

  151. You’ll be alright in France. I believe they saved all the white flags from the last bash!

  152. You didn’t know her at the Speccie. She’s clearly been on an anger management course before coming here. 🙂

    1. Wales is a tad closer – we don’t want lots of sea sickness en route!

      PS Does anyone know how one goes about chartering an entire cruise ship? Asking for a friend!

      1. PS Does anyone know how one goes about sinking an entire cruise ship? Asking for a friend!

    2. UKWORLDPOLITICSROYALUSWEATHERSCIENCEHISTORYWEIRDNATURESUNDAYInYourArea
      HomeNewsPolitics
      Wales pays huge sum to illegal migrants in ‘nonsensical’ Labour scheme
      Tories warn the handout will act as a “pull factor” encouraging people to make the perilous journey across the English Channel in small boats.
      By SAM LISTER, Political Editor based in the Westminster lobby
      16:13, Tue, Apr 2, 2024 | UPDATED: 16:47, Tue, Apr 2, 2024
      1.1kBOOKMARK
      Migrants in small boats

      The policy has been described as a “pull” on migrants contemplating the cross-Channel journey (Image: Getty)
      Illegal migrants are eligible for £1,600 a month under a “nonsensical” system in Labour-run Wales. Ministers confirmed the payments will be made under a £28 million basic income pilot.

    3. It’s further to Scotland. Anyway, they would all cross the border and come into England – that’s why Sturgeon welcomed them. She could get all the credit for taking them while England had to pay for them.

  158. And that’s me off to bed.
    Looks like I may be sans van for a month and a half as it’s looking like the turbo is knackered.

      2. My Mercedes had a turbot hat whistled when her engine turne dover. Otherwise she was a reliable old sole.

      3. My Mercedes had a turbot hat whistled when her engine turne dover. Otherwise she was a reliable old sole.

  159. Angela Rayner is electoral gold – for the Tories

    If the Tories have any fight left in them at all, we shall be hearing more about this

    CHARLES MOORE • 2 April 2024 • 6:00am

    Margaret Thatcher’s decision, long ago, to allow tenants to buy their council houses at a discount was not without its problems. Since, on Treasury insistence, the money from the sales was not redeployed to assist with a new generation of cheap housing, the net effect, except for the direct beneficiaries, was to make the property ladder a steeper climb.

    But the council house sales policy was, politically, a work of genius. It broke open Labour’s monopoly on housing for the working classes, liberating roughly two million households. By opposing the policy, Labour put itself in the impossible position of trying to block the aspirations of ordinary people. This hamstrung the party until the era of Tony Blair, who slipped elegantly out of it.

    A related problem was hypocrisy. Human nature being what it is, there were some council-house tenants who, though opposing the Right to Buy in principle, were not averse to collecting the personal benefits it offered. Labour’s present deputy leader, Angela Rayner, is too young to have been part of the original controversy, but she did buy – and sell at a profit – her council house. The question does now arise whether she has been frank about what happened.

    Michael Ashcroft’s new biography of Ms Rayner, Red Queen? asks why it was that Ms Rayner, while registered on the electoral roll as living in Vicarage Road in Stockport, seems to have been living with her eventual husband and two children in Lowndes Lane, Stockport. She had bought the house from the council at a 25 per cent discount.

    It also notes that she sold Vicarage Road in 2015 for £127,500, making a profit in the region of £48,500. If Vicarage Road was not, in fact, her principal residence at that time, she could have been liable for Capital Gains Tax (CGT). Ms Rayner did not pay any CGT.

    Lord Ashcroft’s book also points out that various conditions of residence attach to anyone using the Right to Buy – for example, the council’s right to claw back some of the profit if it is sold when the owner has resided there for fewer than five years. He questions whether Ms Rayner fulfilled these conditions.

    We do not know the full facts, but I notice that Ms Rayner appears to be behaving as people do when they feel uncomfortable about something they have done or not done, which is to attack the questioner and not answer the questions.

    When the Ashcroft accusations were first put to her, Labour responded on her behalf by attacking “Belize-based Tory billionaire Michael Ashcroft” and how the Tories had “shattered the dream of home ownership”. It said that “she and her husband maintained their existing residences before moving into their shared marital home” but did not say when. It did not answer the book’s other points.

    In ensuing interviews, Ms Rayner has dug in, apparently on grounds of privacy, giving little further information.

    My sense is that Ms Rayner is a latter-day victim of the curse which Right to Buy put upon Labour and will not easily escape it. The link between the words “Angela Rayner” and words like “Capital Gains Tax” are very embarrassing for a firebrand of the Left and potential electoral gold for the Conservatives. So if the Tories have any fight left in them at all, we shall be hearing more of this.
    ________________________________________________________________________________

    Anger on the streets

    I watched with fascination the clip of some pro-Israel demonstrators arraigning a uniformed police officer (whom I shall call Officer 1) at a pro-Gaza march.

    They had told another officer (Officer 2) that they had seen marchers displaying swastikas on banners and that he (Officer 2) had said “that a swastika was not necessarily anti-Semitic or a disruption of public order”. They wanted to know from Officer 1 how this could be so. Officer 1 replied, “I haven’t said anything about it – that it is or it isn’t – everything needs to be taken in context, doesn’t it?”

    This caused outrage. I felt sympathy for both sides. Having seen swastikas displayed on the march, the supporters were naturally incensed.

    On the other hand, Officer 1 had not himself seen the swastikas and he was being asked to comment on the reported reaction of a colleague: he did not want to drop Officer 2 in it. So it was understandable that he took refuge in what the Public Order Act says and declined to get into the argument. He was certainly not saying that swastikas were OK by the police. Rather, he was sticking to training – don’t comment on something about which you have no independent knowledge; stick to the law. He remained calm and polite, though it would have been more impressive if he had not been holding a plastic coffee cup throughout.

    To me at least, the clip was a reminder of something else: the dreadful effect that these weekly marches are having on public confidence and the peace of the streets of London. They give cover to extremists and the police let this happen. If these anti-Semitic marchers were officially designated “far Right”, the police would move in with no hesitation about “context”.
    ________________________________________________________________________________

    The wokery continues

    The phrase “Global Majority” is gaining ground – the Church of England being the latest to use it in official documents. It means all those in the world who are not white, allegedly 85 per cent.

    It is a cant term. No racial group constitutes a global majority, and it is important for the peace of humanity that this be acknowledged.
    ________________________________________________________________________________

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/02/angela-rayner-is-electoral-gold-for-the-tories/

    1. Won’t make a blind bit of difference. Nothing will now. No-one believes the Tories, no-one trusts them, no-one is listening. Labour will win by default, even if they don’t really get any more votes than last time.

        1. We really do need to have a proper discussion about our system of voting and the alternatives. It may be that the one we already have is the least worst option, but we’ll never know unless the discussion is had.

    2. I always misread his name as leylandii – pretty apt really: all fir and trunk and no knickers…

  161. Yousaf’s ‘hate crime’ laws have turned Scotland into a nation of snitches – Stalin would be proud

    It’s only a matter of time before the SNP’s sinister new act will be used against Police Scotland and Edinburgh’s own government

    ALLISON PEARSON • 2 April 2024 • 8:20pm

    Did you have a laugh with your husband, wife or other family members home for the Easter weekend? We did at Pearson Towers. Himself is a brilliant mimic and often entertains us with his repertoire of accents, including the six counties of Northern Ireland and assorted movie stars, from Jimmy Stewart and his drawl (“Waaaarhhl”) onwards. His Frenchman-eating-a-piece-of-bread routine (no words, just gorgeous Gallic sounds) is legendary.

    On Sunday night, when we were still clearing up after our seven-hour lamb (delicious), I pointed out that, from tomorrow in Scotland, any banter like ours, taking place in our own kitchen, if overheard by a passing busybody, could be reported as a hate crime. Naturally, he thought I was joking.

    Monday was April 1, but, from now on, every day is April Fool’s Day north of the border. The ridiculous yet deeply sinister Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act has criminalised any speech which could be construed as “stirring up hatred”. It introduces offences for threatening or abusive behaviour which previously only applied to race, but is now extended to any “protected characteristic” including age, disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity. But not the female sex, funnily enough.

    No less than 411 Third Party Reporting Centres for Hate Crime have been set up across the country where Scots can dob their fellow citizens in for alleged offences against liberal groupthink.

    “Crimes motivated by prejudice will be treated more seriously and will not be tolerated by society,” the finger-wagging overview of the Bill declares. And who, you might ask, gets to decide when prejudice curdles into “hate”? Will it be someone like that Metropolitan Police officer who explained to an incredulous young Jewish woman during Saturday’s pro-Palestine march that the waving of a swastika was not necessarily illegal because everything “needs to be taken in context”? The internationally acknowledged symbol of the Third Reich which murdered six million Jews – not hateful enough for you, officer?

    We never thought we’d live to see a Western government imposing subjective political preferences that criminalise the wider, law-abiding population as the Scottish Parliament has done.

    First Minister and SNP leader Humza Yousaf, a one-man protected characteristic, has simultaneously turned Scotland into a nation of snitches and effectively made any criticism of him or his religion illegal. Joseph Stalin would be proud of you, Humza! Hope the construction of the Hebridean gulag is proceeding apace; you’re going to need a lot of camps to house all those prisoners guilty of wrongthink.

    On Monday, JK Rowling pointed out that she could well be one of the first inmates in Humza’s hate prison. In a masterstroke for free speech, the Harry Potter author posted a series of “offensive” tweets (i.e. uncontroversial to any sensible person) and challenged police to arrest her when she returns to Scotland, the home, as she caustically observed, of the Enlightenment.

    Campaigners like Rowling, who dare to point out that rapists who self-identify as women (while still in possession of a penis) are clearly men, may now be breaking the law simply for stating biological fact (although, rather bizarrely, police announced today they would not be taking any action against the author).

    And, no, you don’t have to be “anti-trans” to “misgender” a person calling himself Isla Bryson when his sex was clearly visible through his Lycra leggings. You just have to be someone with a working knowledge of DNA who doesn’t want to call a rogue “he” a “she”.

    The term Orwellian is overused, but I can’t think of any other that better fits this draconian scenario.

    “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly and the true had got to be defended… Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

    Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was supposed to be a warning, not a kit for legislation in 2024. Yet, that is precisely what the woke zealots have imposed on poor Scotland, and what a Labour government may soon do to the rest of the United Kingdom if we don’t look out.

    As enlightenment gives way to authoritarian darkness, JK Rowling is using her vast wealth as a shield to fight on behalf of all those who would like to object but can’t afford the legal fees. A heroine as valiant as Hermione Granger using her wand to defeat Draco Malfoy, Rowling has offered herself up as a symbol of non-violent resistance to a crazy, unjust law. Covid-19 legislation apart, it is, I think, the greatest threat to freedom in these isles in modern history.

    Another ray of hope has come from our old friend: the law of unintended consequences. In its guidance to the new Hate Crime Act, Police Scotland said, quite despicably, that the so-called “Hate Monster” which features in the Government’s infantile advertising campaign, “is most likely to lurk in young men with deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged combined with ideas about white-male entitlement”.

    The great broadcaster Andrew Neil, who hails from a Scots working-class background, responded scathingly on X (Twitter): “This sounds to me quite hateful/insulting/abusive about a section of society which doesn’t have much going for it. Can I report Police Scotland to Police Scotland under the new Hate Crime Act?”

    The Indian Council of Scotland did just that. Within 24 hours, it announced triumphantly: “Police Scotland have taken down the negative text about white working-class men”.

    Hang on, not so fast. Surely, we can still look forward to the delicious spectacle of Police Scotland being prosecuted by Police Scotland under Section 4 of the new Act for stirring up hatred between different ethnic groups? Or maybe Scotland’s First Minister and all those righteous Labour, Lib Dem and Green creeps who voted for it, don’t think that singling out young, white working-class men as racist villains is prejudiced?

    Supporters of the Hate Act insist that “offensive speech” is not criminalised, only speech which a “reasonable person” would consider to be threatening or abusive and intended to stir up hatred. Just a wild guess, but I doubt that Humza Yousaf’s idea of a reasonable person would ring any bells with a reader of The Daily Telegraph; and, as we know, there is no known human type more reasonable.

    In a final twist worthy of the creator of Hogwarts herself, the police have been inundated by defiant Scots reporting a certain Humza Yousaf for stirring up hatred. Against white people. In an unpleasant speech dripping with dislike, made three years ago when he was Justice Secretary, Yousaf said Scotland had “a problem of structural racism”.

    He named several senior positions in the Scottish government and civil society which he said were “all filled by white people”. (Not particularly surprising when 95.4 per cent of the Scottish population report their ethnicity as “White”.) The clip was retweeted by Elon Musk who said Yousaf “openly despises white people”.

    Police Scotland says the First Minister has “no case to answer”. Millions of people who care about free speech, and who wish to be able to banter in their own kitchens without a chilling knock on the door, may beg to differ.

    How about as many Scots as possible report Yousaf for a hate crime and gum up the system? It would serve him and his fellow zealots right. The obvious, the silly and the true have to be defended. Two plus two makes four. We will not obey the party, we will not reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.

    I stand with JK Rowling. That rapist is not a woman.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2024/04/02/allison-pearson-farce-is-hot-on-the-heels-of-tragedy/

    1. Is upkilting yet to be criminalised in Scotland?
      It could be vital gender evidence albeit a bit of a trial.

    2. I was born in the fifties and became politically aware in the late sixties. I thought then that our politicians were mature and put this down to their probable involvement in and experience of WWII.

      When I compare the present lot infesting the Palace of Westminster with their forbears I see only the spoilt brats of those former generations. They seem to me both uneducated and unaware of their responsibilities to serve our country.

      All I see are entitled morons with neither discernment not integrity feeding at a money trough funded by us, the unfortunate British taxpayers.

      It is as though the great wealth accruing to us from a previous generation is being pissed against the wall by unruly successors caring nothing for the great inheritance bequeathed to them and us.

      1. That is worth posting again on Wednesday, Corim. It deserves to reach a larger audience.

    3. I was born in the fifties and became politically aware in the late sixties. I thought then that our politicians were mature and put this down to their probable involvement in and experience of WWII.

      When I compare the present lot infesting the Palace of Westminster with their forbears I see only the spoilt brats of those former generations. They seem to me both uneducated and unaware of their responsibilities to serve our country.

      All I see are entitled morons with neither discernment not integrity feeding at a money trough funded by us, the unfortunate British taxpayers.

      It is as though the great wealth accruing to us from a previous generation is being pissed against the wall by unruly successors caring nothing for the great inheritance bequeathed to them and us.

    4. The Met. are increasingly coming out as appearing not just ridiculous, but pig-ignorant.

  162. Yousaf’s ‘hate crime’ laws have turned Scotland into a nation of snitches – Stalin would be proud

    It’s only a matter of time before the SNP’s sinister new act will be used against Police Scotland and Edinburgh’s own government

    ALLISON PEARSON • 2 April 2024 • 8:20pm

    Did you have a laugh with your husband, wife or other family members home for the Easter weekend? We did at Pearson Towers. Himself is a brilliant mimic and often entertains us with his repertoire of accents, including the six counties of Northern Ireland and assorted movie stars, from Jimmy Stewart and his drawl (“Waaaarhhl”) onwards. His Frenchman-eating-a-piece-of-bread routine (no words, just gorgeous Gallic sounds) is legendary.

    On Sunday night, when we were still clearing up after our seven-hour lamb (delicious), I pointed out that, from tomorrow in Scotland, any banter like ours, taking place in our own kitchen, if overheard by a passing busybody, could be reported as a hate crime. Naturally, he thought I was joking.

    Monday was April 1, but, from now on, every day is April Fool’s Day north of the border. The ridiculous yet deeply sinister Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act has criminalised any speech which could be construed as “stirring up hatred”. It introduces offences for threatening or abusive behaviour which previously only applied to race, but is now extended to any “protected characteristic” including age, disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity. But not the female sex, funnily enough.

    No less than 411 Third Party Reporting Centres for Hate Crime have been set up across the country where Scots can dob their fellow citizens in for alleged offences against liberal groupthink.

    “Crimes motivated by prejudice will be treated more seriously and will not be tolerated by society,” the finger-wagging overview of the Bill declares. And who, you might ask, gets to decide when prejudice curdles into “hate”? Will it be someone like that Metropolitan Police officer who explained to an incredulous young Jewish woman during Saturday’s pro-Palestine march that the waving of a swastika was not necessarily illegal because everything “needs to be taken in context”? The internationally acknowledged symbol of the Third Reich which murdered six million Jews – not hateful enough for you, officer?

    We never thought we’d live to see a Western government imposing subjective political preferences that criminalise the wider, law-abiding population as the Scottish Parliament has done.

    First Minister and SNP leader Humza Yousaf, a one-man protected characteristic, has simultaneously turned Scotland into a nation of snitches and effectively made any criticism of him or his religion illegal. Joseph Stalin would be proud of you, Humza! Hope the construction of the Hebridean gulag is proceeding apace; you’re going to need a lot of camps to house all those prisoners guilty of wrongthink.

    On Monday, JK Rowling pointed out that she could well be one of the first inmates in Humza’s hate prison. In a masterstroke for free speech, the Harry Potter author posted a series of “offensive” tweets (i.e. uncontroversial to any sensible person) and challenged police to arrest her when she returns to Scotland, the home, as she caustically observed, of the Enlightenment.

    Campaigners like Rowling, who dare to point out that rapists who self-identify as women (while still in possession of a penis) are clearly men, may now be breaking the law simply for stating biological fact (although, rather bizarrely, police announced today they would not be taking any action against the author).

    And, no, you don’t have to be “anti-trans” to “misgender” a person calling himself Isla Bryson when his sex was clearly visible through his Lycra leggings. You just have to be someone with a working knowledge of DNA who doesn’t want to call a rogue “he” a “she”.

    The term Orwellian is overused, but I can’t think of any other that better fits this draconian scenario.

    “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly and the true had got to be defended… Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

    Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was supposed to be a warning, not a kit for legislation in 2024. Yet, that is precisely what the woke zealots have imposed on poor Scotland, and what a Labour government may soon do to the rest of the United Kingdom if we don’t look out.

    As enlightenment gives way to authoritarian darkness, JK Rowling is using her vast wealth as a shield to fight on behalf of all those who would like to object but can’t afford the legal fees. A heroine as valiant as Hermione Granger using her wand to defeat Draco Malfoy, Rowling has offered herself up as a symbol of non-violent resistance to a crazy, unjust law. Covid-19 legislation apart, it is, I think, the greatest threat to freedom in these isles in modern history.

    Another ray of hope has come from our old friend: the law of unintended consequences. In its guidance to the new Hate Crime Act, Police Scotland said, quite despicably, that the so-called “Hate Monster” which features in the Government’s infantile advertising campaign, “is most likely to lurk in young men with deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged combined with ideas about white-male entitlement”.

    The great broadcaster Andrew Neil, who hails from a Scots working-class background, responded scathingly on X (Twitter): “This sounds to me quite hateful/insulting/abusive about a section of society which doesn’t have much going for it. Can I report Police Scotland to Police Scotland under the new Hate Crime Act?”

    The Indian Council of Scotland did just that. Within 24 hours, it announced triumphantly: “Police Scotland have taken down the negative text about white working-class men”.

    Hang on, not so fast. Surely, we can still look forward to the delicious spectacle of Police Scotland being prosecuted by Police Scotland under Section 4 of the new Act for stirring up hatred between different ethnic groups? Or maybe Scotland’s First Minister and all those righteous Labour, Lib Dem and Green creeps who voted for it, don’t think that singling out young, white working-class men as racist villains is prejudiced?

    Supporters of the Hate Act insist that “offensive speech” is not criminalised, only speech which a “reasonable person” would consider to be threatening or abusive and intended to stir up hatred. Just a wild guess, but I doubt that Humza Yousaf’s idea of a reasonable person would ring any bells with a reader of The Daily Telegraph; and, as we know, there is no known human type more reasonable.

    In a final twist worthy of the creator of Hogwarts herself, the police have been inundated by defiant Scots reporting a certain Humza Yousaf for stirring up hatred. Against white people. In an unpleasant speech dripping with dislike, made three years ago when he was Justice Secretary, Yousaf said Scotland had “a problem of structural racism”.

    He named several senior positions in the Scottish government and civil society which he said were “all filled by white people”. (Not particularly surprising when 95.4 per cent of the Scottish population report their ethnicity as “White”.) The clip was retweeted by Elon Musk who said Yousaf “openly despises white people”.

    Police Scotland says the First Minister has “no case to answer”. Millions of people who care about free speech, and who wish to be able to banter in their own kitchens without a chilling knock on the door, may beg to differ.

    How about as many Scots as possible report Yousaf for a hate crime and gum up the system? It would serve him and his fellow zealots right. The obvious, the silly and the true have to be defended. Two plus two makes four. We will not obey the party, we will not reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.

    I stand with JK Rowling. That rapist is not a woman.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2024/04/02/allison-pearson-farce-is-hot-on-the-heels-of-tragedy/

  163. Yousaf’s ‘hate crime’ laws have turned Scotland into a nation of snitches – Stalin would be proud

    It’s only a matter of time before the SNP’s sinister new act will be used against Police Scotland and Edinburgh’s own government

    ALLISON PEARSON • 2 April 2024 • 8:20pm

    Did you have a laugh with your husband, wife or other family members home for the Easter weekend? We did at Pearson Towers. Himself is a brilliant mimic and often entertains us with his repertoire of accents, including the six counties of Northern Ireland and assorted movie stars, from Jimmy Stewart and his drawl (“Waaaarhhl”) onwards. His Frenchman-eating-a-piece-of-bread routine (no words, just gorgeous Gallic sounds) is legendary.

    On Sunday night, when we were still clearing up after our seven-hour lamb (delicious), I pointed out that, from tomorrow in Scotland, any banter like ours, taking place in our own kitchen, if overheard by a passing busybody, could be reported as a hate crime. Naturally, he thought I was joking.

    Monday was April 1, but, from now on, every day is April Fool’s Day north of the border. The ridiculous yet deeply sinister Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act has criminalised any speech which could be construed as “stirring up hatred”. It introduces offences for threatening or abusive behaviour which previously only applied to race, but is now extended to any “protected characteristic” including age, disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity. But not the female sex, funnily enough.

    No less than 411 Third Party Reporting Centres for Hate Crime have been set up across the country where Scots can dob their fellow citizens in for alleged offences against liberal groupthink.

    “Crimes motivated by prejudice will be treated more seriously and will not be tolerated by society,” the finger-wagging overview of the Bill declares. And who, you might ask, gets to decide when prejudice curdles into “hate”? Will it be someone like that Metropolitan Police officer who explained to an incredulous young Jewish woman during Saturday’s pro-Palestine march that the waving of a swastika was not necessarily illegal because everything “needs to be taken in context”? The internationally acknowledged symbol of the Third Reich which murdered six million Jews – not hateful enough for you, officer?

    We never thought we’d live to see a Western government imposing subjective political preferences that criminalise the wider, law-abiding population as the Scottish Parliament has done.

    First Minister and SNP leader Humza Yousaf, a one-man protected characteristic, has simultaneously turned Scotland into a nation of snitches and effectively made any criticism of him or his religion illegal. Joseph Stalin would be proud of you, Humza! Hope the construction of the Hebridean gulag is proceeding apace; you’re going to need a lot of camps to house all those prisoners guilty of wrongthink.

    On Monday, JK Rowling pointed out that she could well be one of the first inmates in Humza’s hate prison. In a masterstroke for free speech, the Harry Potter author posted a series of “offensive” tweets (i.e. uncontroversial to any sensible person) and challenged police to arrest her when she returns to Scotland, the home, as she caustically observed, of the Enlightenment.

    Campaigners like Rowling, who dare to point out that rapists who self-identify as women (while still in possession of a penis) are clearly men, may now be breaking the law simply for stating biological fact (although, rather bizarrely, police announced today they would not be taking any action against the author).

    And, no, you don’t have to be “anti-trans” to “misgender” a person calling himself Isla Bryson when his sex was clearly visible through his Lycra leggings. You just have to be someone with a working knowledge of DNA who doesn’t want to call a rogue “he” a “she”.

    The term Orwellian is overused, but I can’t think of any other that better fits this draconian scenario.

    “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly and the true had got to be defended… Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

    Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was supposed to be a warning, not a kit for legislation in 2024. Yet, that is precisely what the woke zealots have imposed on poor Scotland, and what a Labour government may soon do to the rest of the United Kingdom if we don’t look out.

    As enlightenment gives way to authoritarian darkness, JK Rowling is using her vast wealth as a shield to fight on behalf of all those who would like to object but can’t afford the legal fees. A heroine as valiant as Hermione Granger using her wand to defeat Draco Malfoy, Rowling has offered herself up as a symbol of non-violent resistance to a crazy, unjust law. Covid-19 legislation apart, it is, I think, the greatest threat to freedom in these isles in modern history.

    Another ray of hope has come from our old friend: the law of unintended consequences. In its guidance to the new Hate Crime Act, Police Scotland said, quite despicably, that the so-called “Hate Monster” which features in the Government’s infantile advertising campaign, “is most likely to lurk in young men with deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged combined with ideas about white-male entitlement”.

    The great broadcaster Andrew Neil, who hails from a Scots working-class background, responded scathingly on X (Twitter): “This sounds to me quite hateful/insulting/abusive about a section of society which doesn’t have much going for it. Can I report Police Scotland to Police Scotland under the new Hate Crime Act?”

    The Indian Council of Scotland did just that. Within 24 hours, it announced triumphantly: “Police Scotland have taken down the negative text about white working-class men”.

    Hang on, not so fast. Surely, we can still look forward to the delicious spectacle of Police Scotland being prosecuted by Police Scotland under Section 4 of the new Act for stirring up hatred between different ethnic groups? Or maybe Scotland’s First Minister and all those righteous Labour, Lib Dem and Green creeps who voted for it, don’t think that singling out young, white working-class men as racist villains is prejudiced?

    Supporters of the Hate Act insist that “offensive speech” is not criminalised, only speech which a “reasonable person” would consider to be threatening or abusive and intended to stir up hatred. Just a wild guess, but I doubt that Humza Yousaf’s idea of a reasonable person would ring any bells with a reader of The Daily Telegraph; and, as we know, there is no known human type more reasonable.

    In a final twist worthy of the creator of Hogwarts herself, the police have been inundated by defiant Scots reporting a certain Humza Yousaf for stirring up hatred. Against white people. In an unpleasant speech dripping with dislike, made three years ago when he was Justice Secretary, Yousaf said Scotland had “a problem of structural racism”.

    He named several senior positions in the Scottish government and civil society which he said were “all filled by white people”. (Not particularly surprising when 95.4 per cent of the Scottish population report their ethnicity as “White”.) The clip was retweeted by Elon Musk who said Yousaf “openly despises white people”.

    Police Scotland says the First Minister has “no case to answer”. Millions of people who care about free speech, and who wish to be able to banter in their own kitchens without a chilling knock on the door, may beg to differ.

    How about as many Scots as possible report Yousaf for a hate crime and gum up the system? It would serve him and his fellow zealots right. The obvious, the silly and the true have to be defended. Two plus two makes four. We will not obey the party, we will not reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.

    I stand with JK Rowling. That rapist is not a woman.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2024/04/02/allison-pearson-farce-is-hot-on-the-heels-of-tragedy/

      1. I remember the potter’s wheel – and windmills (the proper kind) I seem to recall.

    1. In his ‘Armageddon’ Tour he tells all the jokes other comedians are terrified of saying. At one point i had to pause it because i was laughing so hard i was missing the jokes.

  167. Good morning fellow insomniacs.
    Woke to pump bilges, couldn’t settle, so came downstairs to check premium bonds.
    I’ve got £100 and the DT has a couple of £25s.

Comments are closed.