Tuesday 23 January: Hamas’s murderous aims mean a two-state solution is wishful thinking

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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555 thoughts on “Tuesday 23 January: Hamas’s murderous aims mean a two-state solution is wishful thinking”

  3. Hamas’s murderous aims mean a two-state solution is wishful thinking

    Well it has always worked well and brought peace in Northern Ireland.

    2. Reminds me of a very old joke:

      Old Lady in railway carriage:

      Young man you are a disgrace. Your instrument is sticking out.

      Young Man (after inspection):

      Madam, I must apologise – you flatter yourself. My instrument is hanging out!

  7. Britain has become a lawless country where good people have to live in fear. 23 January 2024.

    We live in a country where politicians love to talk about “justice” – from human rights lawyer Sir Keir Starmer to Theresa May, the supposed slayer of “burning injustices”. With “liberty” the love language of the Right and “equality” the crusade of the Left, justice is just about the only unifying value left in our country. But like many, I have completely lost faith in British “justice”. Quite the contrary, ours feels more and more like a lawless country where there is no justice at all.

    We seem to be suffering a slow-burning collapse in law and order. The year has started with a spate of horrifying stabbings. A 17-year-old boy was knifed to death in broad daylight in Birmingham city centre on Saturday in what may have been a case of “mistaken identity” that chillingly echoes Sven’s murder. The country is in the grips of a machete-attack wave as A&Es warn that children are being left with “war zone” injuries. Knife crime is once again surging, after briefly falling during the pandemic.

    The police and justice system are just one aspect of the UK’s Societal Collapse. Look around. There is not a single fully functional Government Institution: NHS. Home Office. Ministry of Defence etc. they are all broken beyond repair. This is not the worst part of it. That is that literally no one in Westminster is aware of it, or if they are, they have no wish to address it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/22/britain-has-become-a-lawless-country/

    1. Talk publicly about the collapse of society that began in the 1960s with its corrosive liberal attitudes and wait for the abuse: “Ho, ho, ho! Tory moral panic! Back to the 50s!”

      Mrs Badnak could be forgiven for thinking that she and her son would have been safer in war-torn Yugoslavia than in Broken Britain.

      1. I’d be quite happy to go back to the fifties; society was pretty much homogeneous, I can’t remember any tranny (and there was only one pansy in the entire village – everyone knew and was warned about him). It was possible to leave your back door unlocked and no one was burgled (we had a police constable who lived in the police house in the village, knew everyone and patrolled the streets regularly).

  8. Good morning, chums. Switched off my alarm clock at 6 a.m. and then promptly fell asleep again.

  9. Wordle 948 5/6

    I got it in five today. Still, that’s better than six.

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

    1. Good Morning Elsie,

      Just a three here

      Wordle 948 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  10. SIR – I led the investigation into the poll tax riots in London in 1990, during which scores of Metropolitan Police officers were injured, some seriously.

    A major obstacle in bringing violent offenders to justice was the widespread use of facemasks, which undoubtedly emboldened many and transformed a legitimate protest into a bloody riot. In the aftermath of the investigation, we strongly recommended a change in the law to ban masks (report, January 22). Nothing happened.

    Since then masks, bandanas and balaclavas have become de rigueur for political protesters and common criminals, delegitimising any cause.

    The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to a democracy – but so is accountability. Masks have no place in peaceful protest.

    Roy Ramm
    Great Dunmow, Essex

    Anyone wearing a face-covering (mask, niqab, ‘hoodie’, etc) in public should be give a warning to remove it, immediately. Failure to comply should result in the miscreant being shot.

    In a public order situation no such prior warning should be given.

    Yes, I know, I’m far too soft.

    1. The Danes – not known for their authoritarian streak – have banned the pillar box look.

      2. One of these days, I’m sure I’m going to laugh at one of the even more stupid peasants who wear their muzzle below the nose. They have this notion that they ‘need’ to still wear the rag because they are ‘vulnerable’ but are oblivious to the fact that, even if they did work, it would be pointless unless both mouth and nose get covered. My friend who has cancer is one such fool; when we go out for coffee or lunch, she half wears the rag until we sit down. I have pointed out the obvious illogical stupidity, but she insists it ‘helps’ protect her.

          1. I’m not sure it is. She was a neighbour from childhood and we’ve been friends since early junior school, just coincidence that we ended up living just 10 miles apart. It may sound cruel, but for 30 years or so, she has thrived on any bit of drama and ‘theatre’ in her life; even her GP ‘had a go’ (her words) at her some years ago. Of course, it’s sad that she has cancer, but the added opportunity to (half) wear a mask is not regretted. On farcebook, she ‘shares’ dozens of ‘woe is me’ posts every single day – in spite of hardly anybody or nobody reacting. The girl who cried wolf. Very sad.

          2. I don’t know if it’s breathing their own CO2 that makes them ignore science or the experimental injections but I feel, sort of, sorry for her.

  11. The BBC must be held to the highest standards – licence fee payers expect it. 23 January 2024.

    Over its 100 year history, the BBC has proven to be one of the most adaptable, innovative and forward-thinking media organisations on the planet. Embracing the findings of the Mid-Term Review – improving its structures and processes – and practically putting impartiality at its heart, will add to that track record.

    The public expects, rightly, the BBC to be an exemplar of impartiality, accuracy and diversity of opinion. An organisation that trusts, respects and serves the entire nation. One that is held to the highest possible standards. We all rely on the BBC being the best it can be. This review will make sure that is what the British public gets.

    Good heavens. That could have been written by any sychophantic BBC apparatchik. As always much talk, no action.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/22/bbc-must-held-to-the-highest-standards-licence-fee-payers/

    1. I bow to the master/mistress/inbetweeny of corporate gobbledegook.
      Even in my most satirical moments, I could not come up with such a load of guff.

    3. Edward Lear, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose, would be amazed to know that, 136 years after he departed, some mental retard had beaten him hands-down with a serious letter to the Telegraph. The world is full of surprises!

    4. Good lord. Is that from the chairman of the BBC or just their press office?

      What bothers me is if a critical mass is reached and the BBC finds itself properly starved of funds what would a very, very Left wing government do? Obviously it would protect al Beeb from the market by forcing the tax payer to fund it.

  12. SIR – Sunday’s gale was a four-chair wind. Gusts can blow one patio chair down the garden, and for a couple to go is not unknown. Only twice in our 10 years here have three chairs taken flight. So Isha has set a record.

    Roger Fowle
    Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire

    Who the hell has chairs out on the patio in January? Mine get put inside in October and remain there until late April.

    1. We have a couple of iron and tile chairs at the bottom of the garden, plus matching table.
      They have resolutely remained in place.
      The deck chairs are safely stowed away in the summer house along with MB’s tender plants (not a euphemism).

    2. Morning Grizz, a neighbour of mine lost his shed in a severe wind several years ago – not a trace has ever been found

      2. Morning, Spikey.

        20 years back a gale ripped the roof off my outhouse and it sailed away, over three gardens, before smashing into and destroying a neighbour’s shed.

      3. Has he looked in his fridge, Alec? Lol. (I know, I know, this Dad joke is getting a bit corny now.)

    5. I have chairs on my patio all year round. They are heavy cast iron with wooden seats and back. So far they haven’t budged.

  13. Good morning all,

    A rainy start to the day here at McPhee Towers in the North West Hampshire/West Berkshire borderlands and staying wet for most of the day. Wind in the Sou’-Sou’-West, 6℃ rising to 12℃ which is quite warm for January I suppose. It almost makes you think the climate is changing; almost but not quite.

    Over in Washington DC Mann-made climate change is on trial. Of course that’s not really the point of the trial, it’s really a defamation case in which Dr Michael Mann of ‘Hockey Stick’ fame is sueing journalist Mark Steyn and writer Rand Simburg for defamation and financial damage. That’s the nub of it but, inevitably, the integrity of Michael Mann and his ‘Hockey Stick’ graph which underpins the globalists’ and Western governments’ climate change narrative will be under the microscope.

    Wonderfully, two Irish journalists, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, are producing a daily podcast following the trial. It’s on Apple podcasts and it’s a great listen. On Saturday 27th they plan to devote an entire podcast to the opening remarks of Mark Steyn who is defending himself and who has done so in court a few times before – and never lost. It promises to be highly entertaining (and embarrasssing for Michael Mann). So, for Climate Change on Trial go to Apple podcasts for Mann v Steyn and Simburg in:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5dbc84b4d3c9f943f9051c986a9aaeb03db72056b392b77e17cf55d63b2b5f53.png

    They also have a YouTube channel, The Ann and Phelim Scoop, where they’ll be posting videos about it.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/596398ef394683b50f0a06a1a7bd0879c90ed5190c2a2ac0d2dd1274a958cd72.png

  14. Israeli hostage relatives burst into parliament. 23 January 2024.

    Family members of Israeli hostages burst into a meeting in parliament, demanding MPs drop their work to focus all efforts on releasing their relatives.

    The angry protesters overwhelmed security guards who were seen trying to hold back the group, who carried placards saying “you will not sit here while they die over there”.

    “There is no more committee, no more Knesset; there’s only one issue you need to take care of,” one of the relatives shouted at the top of his voice inside a finance committee meeting.

    Is this an “insurrection”? Have they all been arrested, tried and convicted?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/22/families-hostages-burst-into-israeli-parliament/

    1. The sheer cheek of these protestors, demanding that their politicians work for them. It’s madness, madness I tell you.

    2. Oddly, I think such isn’t helpful. Of course, the situation needs to be prioritised but the work of government does carry on.

  15. Good Moaning.
    I’m confused. Once again, I slept near a window and survived. Have we had another storm or is it tonight that I will be whisked up like Dorothy and Toto?

    Michael Deacon in the DT:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/23/the-real-problem-with-gary-lineker/

    “The real problem with Gary Lineker: he’s simply too wonderful for his own good

    The BBC’s star presenter says he believes that being ‘woke’ just means ‘having a heart’. Bless his innocent soul

    23 January 2024 • 7:00am

    At the weekend, Gary Lineker granted an audience to The Guardian. And, as is now his custom, St Gary blessed the public with his thoughts on a number of crucial issues. For example: what future generations might think of horse riding.

    “Do you think in the future we’ll say, ‘We used to sit on horses, how bizarre’?” he asked his interviewer. “I do wonder. You wouldn’t sit on a dog, would you? I know they’re smaller, but…”

    The bulk of the interview, however, concerned the criticism that St Gary, as the BBC’s highest-paid presenter, has received for tweeting his opinions on more controversial subjects, such as Israel, and the weekly protest marches against its bombing of Gaza. St Gary rejected this criticism – and voiced his concern about the ongoing “culture wars”.

    “I mean, what is ‘woke’?” he asked the interviewer at one point, in clear frustration. “Having a conscience, having a heart, having empathy? How is that a bad thing?”

    Not everyone, it should be pointed out, would agree with this definition of “woke”. Indeed, quite a few people argue that it often means the opposite of “having a heart”. They believe that, to quote Ricky Gervais, it actually means “being a puritanical authoritarian bully”.

    Of course, I don’t believe for a moment that this description applies to St Gary. There is no doubt in my mind that, whenever he holds forth on controversial subjects, he is motivated solely by his conscience, his heart, his boundless capacity for empathy.

    Sadly, though, that may be the problem. St Gary, I fear, cares too much for his own good.

    If so, it would finally explain why on October 7, the day the terrorist group Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Israelis in cold blood, St Gary didn’t tweet about it. It wasn’t because he didn’t care. On the contrary, he was so utterly overwhelmed by empathy and compassion, he for once found it impossible to tweet anything at all. Well, apart from a quick post applauding his former football team (“Super Spurs are top of the league”). But other than that, nothing. His sorrow was simply too great. Indeed, it was only later, once Israel had begun to retaliate against Hamas, that he was at last able to summon the strength to start tweeting about the conflict and its wrongs.

    In my view, this is the only possible explanation.

    Double Dutch

    In Neither Here Nor There, his 1991 book about his travels through Europe, Bill Bryson confessed that something had always bemused him about the Dutch. Their language, he wrote, “sounds like nothing so much as a peculiar version of English”.

    He’d first visited the Netherlands with a friend in the 1970s, and they’d both been startled by this strange phenomenon. “We would be walking down the street when a stranger would step from the shadows and say, ‘Hello, sailors, care to grease my flanks?’ or something, and all he would want was a light for his cigarette.”

    Visiting the country again for Neither Here Nor There, Bryson had the same disorienting experience. Popping into a small hotel in Amsterdam, he asked if there was a room free. “Let me check with my wife,” replied the proprietor – before shouting what sounded uncannily like, “Marta, what stirs in your leggings? Are you most moist?”

    “No,” she seemed to shout back, “but I tingle when I squirt.”

    I think we can be reasonably sure that that wasn’t really what they were saying. Sometimes, though, the Dutch language truly does appear to be “a peculiar version of English” – as demonstrated the other day by the prominent Dutch politician Geert Wilders. To his 1.3million followers on social media, Mr Wilders posted a Dutch phrase that means, “We’re having a serious problem.”

    The phrase was: “We hebben een serieus probleem.”

    I promise: that isn’t a line from ’Allo ’Allo! It’s genuine Dutch. I’ve checked. And ever since I discovered this, I haven’t been able to stop saying it. “We hebben een serieus probleem…”

    I must get into Dutch cinema. For an English speaker, the dialogue should be simple enough to follow.

    Wife: “Darling, we need to talk. I’m afraid we hebben een probleem.”

    Husband: “Probleem? What probleem? I didn’t know we hebben een probleem. I thought our marriage was probleem-free.”

    Wife: “No, we are hebben een probleem. Een serieus probleem. The probleem is… I’m hebben een affair. And it’s getting serieus.”

    I hope the Dutch won’t think I’m making fun of their language. Far from it. I think it’s wonderful. In fact, I think every schoolchild in Britain should be made to learn it.

    After all, we’re utterly hopeless at learning languages, but this looks like one that even we could pick up.”

    3. Does Gary not realise that if the govt gets its way and gets rid of cars, the only way to get anywhere will be on horseback. I’m so glad I know how to tack up and ride as well as harness up and drive.

    4. Does Gary not realise that if the govt gets its way and gets rid of cars, the only way to get anywhere will be on horseback. I’m so glad I know how to tack up and ride as well as harness up and drive.

    1. About the same time people started saying “Can I get” when ordering something in a coffee shop. I blame American TV imports such as ‘Friends’ and ‘Frazier’.

    2. I hear the word ‘college’ has gotten outa favor. We must call them “train academies” now. Where else would they go in for training?

      1. Hey! Wazzup, Jerry?

        You want I should jump on board with these honchos? So, I mean, I gotta go train with these bozos?

      2. Talking of colleges – the American term for places to study after High School – in the 20s people called them Varsities (think of The Varsity Rag), and now they are called Unies (I’m off to Uni). When I went in the 60s we used the full terminology of Universities.

  17. 382306+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Dt,
    Treaty does not make Rwanda safe place for asylum, bishop tells Lords
    Bishop of Gloucester decries key plank in Rishi Sunak’s law to stop illegal immigration

    The right rev Treeweek seemingly in collusion with sunat is saying (in my book) the COE
    Recognizes the factual content of the indigenous of these Isles suffer murder, paedophilia, welfare in all forms abused, but NOT to the extent that the ( illegal) immigrants
    “COULD very well be”

    Politics latest news: House of Lords votes to delay Sunak’s Rwanda treaty

    The only all round satisfying solution I can see
    is send treeweek and a batch of the lord type bastards to Rwanda as an illegal immigrant safeguarding team.

  18. Good morning, all. Overcast and calm at the moment with gusty winds forecast for later. I will not be taping over my windows.

    Broken Britain? Politicians and their agents from top to bottom are failing in almost everything they touch: from erasing strategic necessities e.g. steel making and reliable power generation to overseeing transport projects e.g. HS2 down to keeping our roads and paths safe to use – Colchester “City” centre is a dangerous place to walk with raised and loose slabs everywhere and as for potholes in the roads, don’t ask.

    To top it all, at a time when there is talk in high places that car usage has to be reduced there is a plan to create a third lane on the A12 from Colchester to Chelmsford, only 30 years late. Oh, almost forgot, there’s also a plan for an additional tunnel under the Thames estuary down river from the Dartford crossing. These last two plans are a perfect example of the left (sinister) hand advocating reductions in traffic, not knowing what the right hand is doing i.e. planning grand projects that if the left hand gets its way will be a complete waste of time and taxpayers’ money.

    The foregoing is a taster for what could turn out to be another complete disaster and it’s beyond belief that those allegedly in authority could even consider the implementation of such a scheme. Here’s June Slater’s take on this impending disaster:

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1749368084039614810

    3. June: “What sort of country does that?”

      Me: “A country that is past its sell-by date. A country that used to be run by statesmen and populated by sturdy, self-reliant people who would rise up at the drop of a hat and see off any foreign hordes wishing to usurp, invade, or attack this country in any way. Those generations are now all but gone and their replacements are weak, feeble and brain-dead nonentities who neither know common sense nor care less.”

    4. The ‘lack of care’ industry needs to go bankrupt. Steer clear if at all possible.

    5. Considering the ‘regulations’ around care homes it’s surprising how many foreigners there are in it.

  19. Morning folks and a Very Happy Birthday to Rose!

    Re the minesweeper collision – its being reported that the engine control was incorrectly wired up. I have a much simpler explanation. Once as I tried to enter a lock I pushed the throttle cable forward and the boat promptly went into reverse. Pushing the throttle further forward increased the engine speed and I reversed even faster!. One of the two throttle cables had snapped. I suspect something similar happened to the minesweeper….

    1. Being incorrectly wired up suggests this was it’s first test after being worked on. Any work like that should have had an independent check so the guys who signed the work off are in deep doodoo

    2. I think this case is much more complicated; as I have said before the engine control systems in that class of ship are complex and prone to failure in certain circumstances.

    3. Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
      Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
      It is the business of the wealthy man
      To give employment to the artisan.

  20. Good morning all.
    A dull and heavily overcast start to the day with 1°C on the Yard Thermometer. Not raining when I checked the temperature, but by the time I’d put the milk in the tea and took the bottle out, it was starting.
    Forecast to last the whole day.

  21. 382305+ up ticks,

    Dt,
    Lord Cameron has said the UK’s part in new allied strikes against Houthi targets was designed to “send the clearest possible message” to the Iran-backed rebels that “we back our words and our warnings with action”.

    These “actions” would be inclusive of a video depicting your pinstripe clad arse going “over the top” along with a squad of politico’s as the whistle blows, of course.

    1. He’s simply displaying what we all ready know about him and the ruling classes. As in the Red Clown joke, Sir Are they the front end of an ass ? “No” Then you must be the back end of an ass.
      If they don’t seem to understand what the causes of these problems are. It begins with the letter I. And the ruling classes with their obstinacy and weaknesses have fueled it all.

  22. Morning all 🙂😊
    Just how many shades of grey are out there? More rain forecast but at least it’s slightly warmer.
    And hamas ? It’s just another but more violent version of the human termites so far succeeding in infiltrating by boring into the very cultures and social structure of our lives. Something must be done to stop it.
    It’s eating away and weakening the basic structures of our world.

      2. “Five, ten and twenty one (degrees Centigrade): Winter, Spring and Summer Sun”. So, BoB, a few days ago when the temperature was below Zero it was “lower” than winter temperature. For today and for the next few days, therefore, it IS “warmer”, rather than “less cold”.

    2. RE, the invasion is intentional, this government wants the invasion. If the government didn’t want the invasion it could stop it rather than facilitate it and flaunt it in our faces by harbouring these unknowns in hotels.

      This will not go away by merely voting in Reform, Tice declares that he will stop the boats but what then? Long term there are far too many immigrants implanted here for this to end peacefully.

      This situation has been long in the planning and execution by one government after another. Johnson’s and Sunak’s brazen importation of ‘boat people’ is a deliberate slap in the face of the British people. Sunak, especially, is goading us with his unworkable Rwanda plan etc.

  23. Good morning! The creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan alongside the modern state of Israel was the original two state solution. It didn’t work because Islam is a creed of conquest. They don’t want some. They want all.

    1. The Gaza strip was cleared of Jews by Israel.
      They were essentially autonomous and run by Palestinians.
      They responded by destroying what was there and building an infrastructure, the sole intent of which was to facilitate attacks on Israel and then proceeded to attack.
      The Palestinian civilian population, if one can actually consider them separate from the Islamist, could have told the Israelis exactly where every tunnel entrance and access point was located. They will have known. They didn’t, and have brought the suffering and destruction upon themselves.

  24. A letter and two BTL Responses. I wonder what Derek Scott would consider “proportionate”?

    SIR – The acts of Hamas on October 7 are to be condemned, but Israel’s response cannot be considered proportionate.

    It would appear the Israeli government does not understand that the continued bombing of Gaza will only harden Hamas’s resolve and nurture a new generation of terrorists.

    Derek Scott
    Fernhurst, West Sussex

    Trevor Anderson
    3 HRS AGO
    Derek Scott: Pompous, bleeding heart nonsense. Remove your head from where it is firmly embedded; and wake up to reality; Yvonne Twiss below makes valid points.
    I make no excuses for posting the following again: The perpetrators of conflict always bring the civilian population into the frontline when those being attacked respond. Look at the Allied bombing of Germany in WWII. with for example, Dresden and Hamburg raised to the ground with thousands of German civilians killed and injured. Just as well we didn’t have moronic surrender monkeys expounding unwanted snow flake comments in support of a more proportionate response – they would have been speaking German by now.
    The scale of this conflict may be less – but israel feels exactly the same as populations under assault by Germany did – fight on – or fail to survive.
    Hamas doesn’t care about the Palestinian population, they use rhem as a shield and inflate the casualty numbers (aided and abetted by the BBC) and use these as propaganda.
    How does Israel (or any nation) deal proportionately with terrorists, driven by an archaic, radical ideology, bent on world domination? I repeat again:
    To quote Hamas Commander Mahmoud al-Zahar, in December 2022: ‘Israel is only the first target . . . The entire planet will be under our law.’

    Yvonne Twiss
    4 HRS AGO
    I’d be interested to know what sort of action Derek Scott would consider “proportionate’ if a bunch of thugs invaded England, raided Glastonbury and raped, mutilated, and when they’d had enough of that, killed his own child.

    1. Nobody ever seems to remember that the Egyptians closed their border so that people couldn’t escape there, and there also seems to be no interest in evacuating people to the south of Gaza. This massacre has several architects.

    2. Dresden was a) a military target, b) undertaken at the request of the Reds and c) the result of an unfortunate combination of meteorological conditions in conjunction with a mediaeval city that had a lot of timber structures. Why did Coventry not get a mention?

      1. Correct.
        Plus Harris queried the order twice before, under threat of being relieved of post, organising the raid.

    3. Dresden was a) a military target, b) undertaken at the request of the Reds and c) the result of an unfortunate combination of meteorological conditions in conjunction with a mediaeval city that had a lot of timber structures. Why did Coventry not get a mention?

  26. Britain ‘backs warnings with action,’ says Lord Cameron. 23 January 2024.

    Lord Cameron has said the UK’s part in new allied strikes against Houthi targets was designed to “send the clearest possible message” to the Iran-backed rebels that “we back our words and our warnings with action”.

    “Since we last took action 10 days ago, there have been over 12 attacks on shipping by the Houthis in the Red Sea,” the Foreign Secretary said on Tuesday.

    “These attacks are illegal, they are unacceptable.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Basil Seal.

    It’s good to see our schizophrenic government taking a strong position against the Houtis whilst ferrying in their ethnic brethren for an all expenses paid holiday.

    Thanks Basil. That just about covers it!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/23/israel-hamas-war-latest-houthis-air-strikes-yemen/

    1. Nothing lays bare our defence policy shambles than the UK attacks being launched from HMS Akrotiri, some 4 hours away from the target area, whilst £3Bn worth of carriers are tied up at home. Its a massive effort just to put the UK on the world stage and make us a target for the usual rag head retaliation for a very small military effect.

      1. Maybe, rather than orthodox approach, “the done thing” regardless of likely outcome, we could look purely at military objective – the creation of a safe passage down the Red Sea for shipping.

        Sometimes appeasement and ceasefire agreement is impossible, and the only way to achieve this objective is through firepower. Sometimes though, simply to say “we are your friend” is sufficient to stop the pirates and the drones, or direct them elsewhere out of harm’s way. Four words said, but nothing else need be any different. I used to take this approach with dogs when I was a postman, and was hardly ever bitten, but even so I always had stout boots on to stick in the mouth just in case.

    2. We are undermanned, underarmed, and bringing a sledgehammer to crack a broken peanut. Why, WHY in the name of trousers are we so unprepared?

      We need a rapid response, heavily armed, small unit approach. Not a monolithic mass of boats just, say 100 soldiers with heavy weapons able to respond flexibly to the threat. The problem is, the civil service is fighting the last war we lost and thinking almost Napoleonic attitudes. We need to acknowledge that the modern threat is the muslim terrorist cell, not the nation state.

      Our military deserves better. If we’re going to send the into battle we should give them the best we can and stop funding the enemy within.

      2. You raise important points about national security.

        I must say though that warfare by gangs of fifth columnist zealots is nothing new, nor the military endeavours of civilisations to neutralise their threat. We have marginalised the historians and the classics scholars, but perhaps we have much to learn from them?

        As for our military – what is so precious to the morale of our fighting servicemen, women and animals, and my goodness they have a thankless and dangerous job to do protecting us all from brutality and tyranny, the least we can do is to grant them their rituals and regimental pride that comfort them in great peril and bring them courage and strength in their work.

    3. Basil Seal – an Evelyn Waugh character from Black Mischief, Vile Bodies and Put Out More Flags!

      David Cameron has no judgement whatsoever as his time as prime minister showed.

      Frankly I find his appointment as foreign secretary very sinister – I fear something dark is afoot. Am I becoming paranoid?

      1. “Just because you are paranoid, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone out to get you!”

    4. “Since we last took action 10 days ago, there have been over 12 attacks on shipping by the Houthis in the Red Sea,” the Foreign Secretary

      Therefore, was our action a deterrent or a provocation, Mr Cameron? Twelve attacks post ‘our action’ would indicate the latter. What now, you gormless individual?

      2. So it seems that they are doing something constructive and that the ensuing lack of manpower and ships is
        an excuse not to police the English Channel and thereby prevent the influx of terrorists

        Next, there will be ‘Dole Offices, Hotel Booking Centres, Addresses of Girls schools, Cash Converters I- Phone shops etc on the beach at Calais

  27. Britain ‘backs warnings with action,’ says Lord Cameron. 23 January 2024.

    Lord Cameron has said the UK’s part in new allied strikes against Houthi targets was designed to “send the clearest possible message” to the Iran-backed rebels that “we back our words and our warnings with action”.

    “Since we last took action 10 days ago, there have been over 12 attacks on shipping by the Houthis in the Red Sea,” the Foreign Secretary said on Tuesday.

    “These attacks are illegal, they are unacceptable.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Basil Seal.

    It’s good to see our schizophrenic government taking a strong position against the Houtis whilst ferrying in their ethnic brethren for an all expenses paid holiday.

    Thanks Basil. That just about covers it!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/23/israel-hamas-war-latest-houthis-air-strikes-yemen/

    3. Happy Birthday from me, too

      And of course have the usual 365 Happy Unbirthdays, ’til the next event

    4. Grattis på födelsedagen, Rose. Hope you are having a wonderful day.😘🎂👍🏻🥂😊

    1. I think the pianist was remarkably restrained. He could (and should) have told them to foxtrot oscar.

      1. I think this was a set up. I watched an exact same video with the same chap recently but the people complaining were Muslims.

    2. Why do plod not say ‘You, play the piano. You Chinese, go over there. You don’t get wave your nonsense around while demanding someone else can’t’.

    2. Time to put yet another King Charles on trial for his life and public execution at his death.

  33. 382306+ up ticks,

    breitbart,

    A repeat if missed of some importance from yesterday

    Border Farce: UK Hires Private Boats for £36 Million to Bring Channel Migrants Ashore

    There cannot now be any doubt as to who the anti Brit democracy destroying enema cartels are, saving illegal immigrant lives at sea while in criminal collusion taking lives on the British home front.

      1. The price of a ferry from Calais to Dover can vary between £65 and £252 depending on the operator, season and whether you are travelling with a vehicle. The average price of a foot passenger is £223, prices can range from £65 and £488. The average price with a car is £178. (Internet Ferry Guide)

        30,000 illegal arrived across the channel in 2023

        If Border Farce is hiring boats at a cost of £36,000,000 that amounts to £1,200 per immigrant to cross the channel. This is about five times more than the most expensive one way ferry crossing in the high season!

        TAXPAYERS ARE IDIOTS TO PUT UP WITH THIS SCAM!

        1. Totally off topic, but can anyone explain why it’s more expensive, on average, *not* to take a car on a ferry?

        2. “...TAXPAYERS ARE IDIOTS TO PUT UP WITH THIS SCAM!...”

          And how pray, may we poor idiot taxpayer, stop it?

        3. They’re costing us £17,000 a year each as it is. Far easier to buy a ferry, keep them on it.

          That way we can transport them around and then sink the thing quietly.

      2. The illegals themselves are reportedly paying thousands of pounds for their passage (money doubtless provided by Open Society and the like) when a rail ticket to St Pancras would also be very much cheaper. The difference is that those arriving via a legitimate route are expected to show a passport and possibly a visa. If these goons have any identification papers at all, they’re advised to ditch them in the channel. The honest way would be to put them on a train or regular ferry boat and simply waive them through on arrival.

      3. Yes it would. However, our government would pay the ferry company £9 billion per year to ship them in.

    2. Good morning, ogga

      Please would you post a link?

      This needs to be widely publicised.

      1. I know, but we cannot be defeatist (sometimes I do feel that way) – we never know what may intervene to help the cause. It is belief that is important, it is the glue that holds us all together.

    3. I signed it only to discover I had signed it before.

      How long ago did it go up? The public seem unaware of the dangers the WHO could cause us all.

    5. I’m sorry, but this is how it’ll go:

      The government acknowledges the petition and will debate it…

      The debate: “Up yours. All in favour? 630 ayes, the ayes have it.”

        1. My new car has a rattle , probably a steering rattle .. We were using an underground car park whilst shopping at Waitrose after my dental appointment yesterday, sharp chicanes in the carpark coming down to the exit .. I now feel sick with worry ..

          Moh says I worry too much .

          1. You have my sympathies.
            If the Noddy car does anything other than get me from A – B with nothing untoward in the way of noises, I get paranoid as hell.
            The slightest cough, spit or fart from her and I go into a deep decline.

    2. When I was a student I had a Triumph Roadster.

      The boot opened to reveal a second windscreen and two dickie seats.

      The car looked dramatic but was too slow for my taste. I sold her and spent part of my summer vac working on an oil rig in the North Sea to pay for the 1958 MGA I bought instead instead.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6b843f968929a0e23b2d95ec3ad635cc0c0d4906bdb4707c6ab23e6c26792c86.png

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff47532fd776cd78480223981553332ef510ad902c1d4f7c209e54d5223bde0f.jpg

          3. It looks like something Delboy (the OFAH one) might try to persuade one that it is the height of luxury.

          5. No Bob, I couldn’t find it either so I guess it might have been far to bad – I know the 4″ tubular steel chassis had rotted through

        1. Cost me £120 in 1965 when I was working in advertising in London. I sold it a couple of years later for £100 and bought the MGA for £200 when I was a student.

      3. I still regret selling the 1980’s Vantage. It was a beautiful car but taking it, and all the bits here was silly.

        And now we’re… [rant, whinge, whine, rant, cold, rant].

      5. Too slow – what? isn’t 0 – 60 in 34 secs good enough? It doesn’t have a speedo – it has a calendar

      1. I wouldn’t mind that. She’s usually drunk.

        As it is, Mongo almost always cries ‘shotgun!’ first.

    1. It’s their “get out of Jail card”
      They can get away with so much more as a tranny than they can without the cover.
      They like being the centre of attention and they get preferential treatments in many ways.

        1. It would be interesting to discover how many Muslims openly claim to be transexual; very, very few would be my guess.

    3. Transgender people are either faking it, in which case they shouldn’t be trusted, or genuinely believe they have been ‘born in the wrong body’, in which case they are mentally ill and shouldn’t be trusted.

    4. I don’t think they are. I think mental illness is the underlying problem in both circumstances.

      Obviously there are some who are just abusing the situation to rape women. This is obvious, yet government insists on giving them the opportunity.

  40. 382306+ up ticks.

    More evidence of fallout what the political super cottaging park toilet a-sehole PM unleashed on these Isles decades ago, and still has a cross party following via the polling stations currently.

    Dt,

    Rochdale grooming gang leader still lives alongside victims despite deportation order
    Qari Abdul Rauf remains in the city nine years after the sex offender was stripped of British citizenship.

    Your lab/lib/con vote can assure him of another nine plus years.

    1. 9 Years? He’ll be there forever. Why the hell we jailed the pakistani muslim paedophile rapists is beyond me. Dig a home, fill it with lye, kick them in, concrete over it, forget about them.

  42. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story
    Child Care Advice from A Pilot

    Most people nowadays think it improper to discipline children, so I have tried other methods to control my kids when they have had one of ‘those’ moments. As I’m a pilot, one that I have found very effective is for me to just take the child for a flight on the plane during which I say nothing and give the child the opportunity to reflect on his or her behaviour.

    I don’t know whether it’s the steady vibration from the engines, or just the time away from any distractions such as TV, video games, computer, iPod, etc. Either way, my kids usually calm down and stop misbehaving after our flight together.
    I believe that eye to eye contact during these sessions is an important element in achieving the desired results.

    I’ve included a photo (below) of one of my sessions with my son, in case you would like to use the technique. It also works well in cars and with grandchildren!
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bb33519611ae13a7302d9c64383a32d4a91ac48d8831f4d364d635d5efdbf8f1.jpg

  44. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzY_KZTSXJk&list=WL&index=36 This is simply enchanting.

    Philip Achille channels his inner Larry Adler in this wonderful rendition of Genevieve at the 2007 Proms. Adler would have been delighted to watch and listen to this.

    The tune takes me back to the halcyon days of my childhood; a more relaxed and innocent time which I was very fortunate to have grown up in.

    2. Reminds me of schooldays c.1950; a pal and I were invited to play chromatic harmonicas on National Radio (Raidió Éireann).

      We played contrapuntal versions of ‘Blue Moon’ (Rodgers and Hart) and ‘Sentimental Journey’ (Les Brown and Ben Homer).

  45. Good (late) morning one and all.

    Alf and I wish you a Very Happy Birthday, damask rose, 🌹 have a lovely relaxing day. Sorry to be so behind everyone else but ether late than never! 🎂🎂🎂

  46. Just like here, Austria seems to not care about public safety, with ridiculously lenient prison sentences for the worst crimes. The monster Fritzel, who was only jailed in 2009 for prolonged and unspeakable crimes against his own daughter, could be up for parole. His lawyer even supports his release, saying, “‘He is polite and very charming. Josef Fritzl is only human, not a beast. He is a man who has not mastered his inner demons.”
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12995561/Josef-Fritzl-spotted-having-coffee-local-cafe-prepares-released-prison-serving-life-sentence-incest.html

      1. Just like a former colleague’s ex-husband, who could appear to be perfectly decent – unless he didn’t get his own way. He even refused to have his children, one of whom had quite marked learning difficulties, at his house.
        Her solicitor said the ex was undoubtedly a psychopath.

    2. Well if he has not mastered his inner demons, he’d better stay in prison until he has!
      Surely public opinion in Austria would not let him be released.

    2. “The upcoming competition between Sunak and Starmer holds all the allure of watching two accountants fighting over a stapler.”

      Worth reading for the above line alone!
      But he’s still living in the 80s. He doesn’t seem remotely aware that there’s a meta-party agenda to which both Sunak and Starmer subcribe, and it won’t just be five years of Labour messing up the economy, it’ll be CBDCs, attacks on farming, no more cars and the great taking – with no prospect of rescue by a Conservative party that’s fully signed up to all of this.

  48. Robert Wilkinson
    @robertwlk
    Nearly finished my sandwich making course.
    Tomorrow it’s my final eggs ham.

  49. 382306+ up ticks,

    Dt,

    Facemasks provide cover for violence and extremism
    They intimidate people and prevent identification by police – and are intended to do so

    So the burka wearer in reality is now seen as an overall threat but in fact, is not seen at all in many of societies conflicting nasty issues, by the governing kapos.

  51. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/23/uk-general-election-poll-tracker-conservative-labour/

    All the polls are pointless. It just does not matter who wins. It is irrelevant who forms a government. The same problems persist. The same tax and waste. The same opposition. The same agenda. The same group pulling the strings. The only direction of travel is Leftward and down.

    Jon Close
    NOVEMBER 13, 2023

    It really is a pretty dire situation when a party with no policies, no ideas, very low calibre MPs, and an absolute joke of a front bench, is going to win a landslide at the next election by default.

    I’ve no idea how it has come to this, but I’m actually partly looking forward to the slow motion car crash this will be. Many millions in this country need a massive reality check

    .

    1. It should be quite entertaining watching the likes of Rayner and Lammy having to answer awkward questions, although I suspect they will be given an easy ride from certain MSM representatives.

      1. They don’t. They never answer any questions. Both are thick, but possessed of that low cunning that easily offends middle class fellows in the media.

        The days of informed, incisive questioning as Andrew Neil or Jeremy Paxman would provide are long gone.

        1. I can remember listening to Any Questions back in the late 60’s when the Minister of Labour, Ray Gunter, was asked why politicians never answer the question. His was an honest reply, “When a politician goes to a meeting he goes armed with the answers he’s going to give. The questions are quire irrelevant.”

    2. So, how do we vote to do away with this Uniparty shower and put in a Govt that will listen to the people?

      1. Civil war, if not global war. That way, there will not be quite so many people who need a sympathetic government.

        1. I agree that Civil (global) war is the answer. It’s all they’ll understand when their head’s on the block.

  52. After reading this, please DO NOT check your blood pressure.

    “A former Post Office investigator “erroneously” submitted a CV including his wife’s educational achievements when applying to become a Post Office investigator in 2008, following a restructuring of the security team.

    Robert Daily said he had not realised this was the case at the time and that the false information being included on his application had only come to light as he prepared his second statement for the inquiry.

    Mr Daily was involved in an investigation into Peter Holmes, a former police officer turned sub-postmaster, who was sacked after he was falsely accused of stealing £46,000 from his branch in Jesmond, Newcastle.

    Mr Holmes pleaded guilty to four counts of false accounting in 2010 and was sentenced to a community order with a three-month 7pm to 7am curfew. He died from a brain tumour in October 2015 before his conviction was posthumously quashed.

    His widow Marion told the Telegraph that watching evidence from other former Post Office investigators at the hearings had “given her more insight” into the stress her late husband was under leading up to his conviction.”

    1. Interesting how much or little some people understand our position in the universe. Our galaxy consists of between 100,000,000,000 and 400,000,000,000 stars. There are 100,000,000,000 to 200,000,000,000 galaxies in the (known) universe. That’s as close a guess that can be made with our current knowledge. Makes one think.

  57. Navalny taunted with pro-Putin pop on blast in ‘Polar Wolf’ Arctic prison. 23 January 2024.

    Alexei Navalny is being blasted with pro-Putin pop music at 5am every morning during his incarceration in a Siberian penal colony.

    The Kremlin critic, who was secretly transferred to the Arctic prison known as the Polar Wolf last month, said he was being forced to listen to Shaman, a singer-songwriter who has become one of the most recognisable faces of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.

    “Every day at 5 o’clock in the morning, we hear the command: ‘Get up!’ followed by the Russian national anthem and then immediately afterwards, the country’s second most important song is played – ‘I am Russian’ by Shaman,” Mr Navalny said.

    Things must be slack on the propaganda front! I don’t think that they play “God Save the Queen” in UK prisons. More likely it’s the Adhan; the Call to Prayer.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/23/navalny-taunted-pro-putin-pop-polar-wolf-arctic-prison/

        1. I’m not so idiotic as to think that would be sung, but alas Her late Majesty has shuffled off this moral coil and we’re stuck with Charlie.

    1. They are certainly ratcheting up the anti-Russian propaganda though I think that this is mostly to boost the falling support for Ukraine.

    1. Side stepping justice by Pleading ‘mental health issues’ FFS
      I hope he gets life and gets what the POS deserves in prison.

    3. There was no mental capacity there to diminish of course. This is where that inconvenient science of evolutionary biology comes into play. These people have such a low IQ that they’re incapable of empathy.

    4. It is shameful that the CPS couldn’t build a case for murder. Multiple stab wounds demonstrate intent, whereas manslaughter is for accidental killing, eg by pushing someone to the ground. And for the families of the victims, much worse, knowing that the creature will be forever nourished and fed via their taxes.

    2. I have vague memories of crossing these when travelling to Cornwall and Devon for family holidays in the 1960s where narrow bridges were being replaced.

      1. There was a Bailey Bridge on the A6111 (Later renumbered to a B road) at Doddington just a few miles out of Wooler from the floods in the late ’40s, (’48???) that replaced the half washed away stone arch bridge until well into the ’70s.

    4. Booked long before the floods, we went to stay near there in Braithwaite, just after the floods. I remember the bridge I think a local police man was drowned when that happened.
      The Jennings Brewery I think has since closed.

  62. I know a lady who left Hong Kong years ago .. She tearfully told me that the Chinese are cruel autocrats and have ruined a wonderful thriving free speaking country when they took over Hong Kong over 25 years ago .

    https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-china-hong-kong-932009be8d2a91ef2f84e6e406d290b4.

    She is a retired professional , and is very interested in politics .

    Her observation of current chaos here in the UK re the woke authoritarian stance and the denial of our culture re books ,theatre and our Christianity has accelerated our drop to the bottom of the pit .

    1. Afternoon Belle. China has absolutely no history of Democracy or Personal Freedom. It is we who invented these things and are now seeing them vanish!

      1. I found it hard to believe what China did to lot of people who were self sufficient with their own small holdings.
        They sent the bulldozers in, ploughed up the land and forced them into blocks of flats.
        As mentioned similar to what’s happening in our own country.

          1. They were a dry run. I’m sure the results exceeded even their expectations. They were certainly an eye-opener to me.

  63. 382306+ up ticks,

    This latest kick has made the can a mere dot on the horizon.

    Dt,

    Politics latest news: Rwanda flights can go ahead in spring despite Lords’ vote to delay, says No 10

  64. Afernoon all! Wet and blustery here. This morning I met a group of old friends for coffee at the local garden centre, and I’ve spent the last couple of hours catching up with today’s TCW.

    1. Equally miserable weather here but you, Ndovu, always sound so very sensible like a wise and respected matriarchal Head of the Herd…

      https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2821446.main_image.jpg?strip=all&w=1500&h=1125&crop=1

      Meanwhile, I have been doing my utmost to squander my children’s pitifully meagre inheritance via unwise investments with my turf accountant at Down Royal, Newbury, and Leicester.

      Clearly I’m destined to go to Hell whereas you are not.

      2. I’m squandering my children’s inheritance with another trip to Kenya next month to see more elephants……..

          2. I’m sure you will have a great time. I might look for you on facebook to see your pics if that’s okay.

          6. I am now. After finding in the Dorset Echo my grandfather having a statue at Portland Bill i found it irresistible to tell relatives who were unaware.
            I will message.

      4. Can’t speak for Down Royal, but Leicester and Newbury weren’t entirely devoid of favourites going in.

  65. Afternoon, all. Having a lazy day here after a late night. I intended to write a note to an old school friend (proper paper and a fountain pen), but I’ve put the latest letter somewhere so safe I can’t find it. Without reference to the last communication, I shall probably repeat myself and won’t be able to personalise it to my correspondent. I’m debating whether to wing it or leave it until I can track down the missing missive. Procrastination will probably win the day.

    At least the headline is hopeful inasmuch as some semblance of recognition that islam (alright they are calling it hamas) is the problem is surfacing.

    1. Similar problem to that of German farmers and contractors; the globalists have decided to increase fuel tax on agricultural derv, (gasoleo B in Spain IIRC), as part of their mission to destroy the free world on behalf of their ideology. Presumably commercial fishermen are in the same boat.

      1. They have already had a go at Mediterranean Fishermen. They paid them to destroy their boats. What a bloody waste. They could have been used for sightseers or something. But by destroying them it meant they could never again be used for fishing.

          1. It’s so wasteful. Some of those trawlers are big enough to turn into homes. Not the prettiest looking boats but you could make them nice.

          2. When I was a boy in St Mawes one of my friends, Charles, lived on Irene of Boston – an old Brixham Trawler – with his mother, sister and father. In the winter she was laid up at Sinky Sands near Place Manor while they rented a house in St Mawes until they moved back on board for the summer.

            I fear Irene of Boston is no more but my father painted a very good water colour of her which is hanging in my library. I have found a couple if photos on the internet – one of her sailing and the other in her final resting place
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/76ed6e6541a9fd89ea8210eb9fbfa46464944e430b5fed0402ca3f3d4de01696.png

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e21fd70b8b43937d27d30a7838193ff13dfb5ec387900dd9ddfe3e6d979a6113.png

          4. And what happened to the Brexit red line on fishing and Northern Ireland?

            David Forst was trying to hold the line but then Boris Johnson and Michael Gove arrived in Brussels about 48 hours before the deal was to be agreed and :

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/787dd6f09047a64fe21fb33b0aae6569f6051f3b22244a4e44bae56775815547.png

            Well most of us here did guess it – the UK caved in and sacrificed Northern Irelands and our fishing industry to the EU and to make sure that Northern Ireland is lost forever and beyond reclamation weak lily-livered Sunak made the Great Windsor Sell Out to the EU.

  66. The French farmers have had enough too and protests are spreading.
    Taken from a subscription news site:
    By Richard Henshell
    A woman was killed and her daughter and husband seriously injured after a car hit a roadblock in the south-west as the farmers’ protests against government regulations spread across the country.
    Farmers have been barricading an increasing number of roads and motorways for the past four days. Negotiations have so far proved fruitless, and the death of a protestor is likely to spur further tensions.
    The accident happened just after 8:00 on January 23 as a car attempted to force its way through a farmers’ roadblock near Pamiers (Ariège).
    The woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Her 14-year-old daughter and husband were transported by helicopter to Toulouse.
    Police arrested the driver and, although the crash is being treated as an accident, have passed the affair to the procurer in Foix to investigate on the grounds of ‘manslaughter and accidental injury’.
    The procurer, Olivier Mouysset, initially stated that the daughter had also died, but has since clarified that both the girl and her father are alive albeit in critical condition.
    Mr Mouysset has since revealed that the driver was an asylum seeker of Armenian origin under orders to leave France, announcing to a press conference that “even if he is freed on these charges, he will be put into administrative detention.”
    Read more: Farmers block several French motorways as protests spread
    Which roads are currently affected by the farmers’ protest?
    There are currently ongoing protests on the:
    A16 near Beauvais (Oise)
    A62 near Agen (Lot-et-Garonne)
    Nationale 21 near Bergerac (Dordogne)
    Nationale 20 near Pamiers (Ariège)
    Access roads to Poitiers (Vienne)
    Access roads to Niort (Deux-Sèvres)
    A63 near Bordeaux (Gironde)
    A64 near Carbonne (Haute-Garonne)
    A68 near Albi (Tarn)
    A7 near Saint-Rambert-d’Albon (Drôme)
    A61 between Toulouse and Narbonne (Haute-Garonne)
    A4 near Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin) – expected on January 24
    More roadblocks and rolling blockades are expected in the coming days. The president of the FNSEA farmers’ union told RMC that the rapid spread of the movement is proof that “this is not just a moment of frenzy, but a deep-seated feeling”.
    “We are hearing more roadblocks being announced every minute,” he said.
    What do farmers want?
    Many demands relate to the growing weight of French and European regulations, however the tipping point for protestors is the new tax on agricultural diesel or gasoil non routier (GNR).
    Agricultural diesel was previously subject to an exemption from a fuel tax called the Taxe intérieure de consommation sur les produits énergétiques (TICPE) at a rate of 18.82 €c/L instead of the standard rate 59.4 €c/L.
    The tax was reintroduced on January 1, 2024, and is set to rise progressively until 2030. The objective of the tax is to decarbonise agriculture.
    While the FNSEA union made a deal with the government in the summer of 2023 concerning the planned increases in the tax, many farmers still find themselves under increasing strain as it comes into effect.
    How are French authorities managing the protests?
    The reaction to the protest – and to the car accident – from the French authorities has so far been extremely restrained.
    “There is no plan to clear the protesters,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced on January 22, even adding that he “would like to support them politically, while encouraging them to respect the common good.”
    “But we will not send the CRS [riot police] against people who are suffering”.
    Politicians from across the political spectrum have been keen to show their support for the protesters, with both Marine Le Pen (Rassemblement Nationale, far-right) and André Chassaigne (Communist Party) blaming the government for putting too much pressure on farmers.
    Prime Minister Gabriel Attal met with Mr Rousseau in the evening of January 22.
    However, the meeting was apparently fruitless, with Mr Rousseau announcing “no end to the present actions” without “concrete solutions”. The union boss conceded on RMC that Mr Attal “showed an understanding of the problems French farmers face”.

  67. Some of you may have missed this late last night.

    This week’s Countryfile included a report on test-drilling for oil in Lincolnshire in a sensitive area (was an AONB, now a ‘National Landscape’). Both sides were represented but in that oh-so-subtle way that the BBC has, you knew which side the programme was on. However, also included was this quote from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero [sic]:

    “…the UK is a global leader on climate action…but we need oil and gas as we reach net zero in 2050…it makes sense to use home-grown [sic] British resources…in a way that reduces our vulnerability to hostile states.”

    ‘Home-grown’ steel, anyone?

    The great irony was that although the ‘serious’ feature was from Lincs, the edition featured the Newport (South Wales) nature reserve, fashioned out of a huge power station ash tip and just 35 miles from Port Talbot.

    It should also be pointed out that the amount of oil extracted is trifling.

  68. A sticky Double Bogey!

    Wordle 948 6/6
    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
    🟩⬜⬜⬜🟨
    🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. I was amazed when guess number four turned out to be correct. It wasn’t looking promising.

      Wordle 948 4/6

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

    4. Ot bad for me, just OK

      Wordle 948 4/6

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

    5. Ooh. A not quite so dicey 4.

      Wordle 948 4/6

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

    6. 5 for me.

      Wordle 948 5/6

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

  70. 382306+ up ticks,

    Just musing,
    Why not form a new party under say, Daisy the cow, not to be confused with treasa the cow, now Daisy has a major part to play,or not to play in all our futures, that remains to be seen.

    A controlling cabinet of 7/9 members, the uncorrupted,with long term integrity pedigrees, all issues pass / fail via member referendum.

    In this case it would not be the quality of Daisy’s character ( Daisy’s a good girl, is Daisy) but the quantity of the mass vote, as in millions.

  71. ‘Night All

    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/157/628/458/original/e61f082e95b897ec.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a11e64a59a3160bd3f548cbd7cf3e0e052c1fdab37a7708bf2306cb873573d30.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e207a98649e8f57d7c6bc610499c02e19dbcb547915b4582c48e898336025ce2.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a9d9e295af510f80df96a4d4a5a8529426a7c4d8c84a8736f9f2f25365eb9436.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5539b539aff15ca4ad64dfebbd6bf93e647ca4bc4ce85c880f9e221683bd5336.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a6640f4fc130ba479d7e5e018bc9db7eaf1ce9aa27b2c360a4b2a4f44794b1df.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/291cac05e5d021f0c807d204e3b7836feaa91fdf149c835044a170cf71ec271d.jpg

    1. I like the 2nd one best. The Left always manage to tie themselves in knots. It’s why they schism so often.

      Just been watching Life of Brian and the Pythons have nailed the politics.

    2. Essential viewing. How any responsible Local authority can permit EVs in underground car parks is beyond me. I don’t think I want to use the Euro Shuttle anymore!

  73. Oh my.

    Famous children’s book Anne of Green Gables has come to the attention of the wokerati. Parks Canada the government organisation that looks after the Green Gables site are proposing to rework the story and the visitors site to be more inclusive.

    Maybe when no one goes to see tranny Alan of Multicoloured Gables and their partner, someone might reconsider.

    2. Is there a golf course nearby?
      I used to caddy for my father and recall the course having some sort of connection.
      I also recall a bear wandering across the fairway, oblivious to the golfers. That would have been in the mid/late 1950’s

      1. Did the bear say “Nothing to see ‘ere, move along now please”? If so, it might have been Grizzly. Lol.

  74. Orangeat and citronat are currently boiling away on the stove, wafting a wonderful scent into my office.

      1. No – just the peel of sweet oranges and lemons for cakes and puddings.
        A woman at our local car boot sales makes a wonderful marmelade out of apples, sweet oranges and lemons, and I buy it from her.

        1. I am unlikely to make any this year as OH has gone off marmalade – his medications seem to have affected his tastebuds.

          1. Have started to make first batch, of 2, but nightmare working out how our juicer worked. Finally did it and half made with pressure cooker. Will finish off this afternoon.

          3. The pressure cooker does in 10 or so minutes softening the peel as opposed to 2 hours on the hob. Otherwise no difference.

      1. You have to boil up the citron four times with fresh water to wash away the bitterness, and then a fifth time with sugar to sweeten it. .

          2. I’m sure there are many…some…er …odd …er things you could teach me. :@)
            You haven’t searched me out on Tripadvisor have you? That’s stalking that is !

          8. Ooh ow…it stings !

            Hopefully we can do a repeat this year. Possibly with a few others too if other Nottlers would like to add themselves to the list.

          10. Though Nottlers are spread out across the country it ain’t the Northerners arranging these meets. Typical really as Northerners like Grizz and others not to be named are like cave dwellers. :@)

            When and until The Boss decides if there is a meet i will do my usual and arrange the Red Lion at Horsell at some point. They do very nice food and if i can manage to stop VW knocking over my Passionfruit Martini all will be well !

    2. It’s a tidal lock.

      “There is a tide in the affairs of men
      Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
      Omitted, all the voyage of their life
      Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
      On such a full sea are we now afloat;
      And we must take the current when it serves,
      Or lose our insurance.”

    3. I saw him do it. He’s been on one of these faddy new diets and is so delusional that he doesn’t realise he’s even wider than he used to be. Knowing him, he’ll try to blame it all on his wife. Just watch!

    4. “Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
      A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
      That frequently happens in tropical climes,
      When a vessel is, so to speak, “snarked.”

      (The Hunting of the Snark Lewis Carroll)

      He’s well and truly snarked if you ask me!

    5. My brother has a barge. That will be him. He recently went through a long tunnel and the light he saw wasn’t the light at the end of the tunnel but another barge ! Bang !

    11. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment Bob. It looks like it is a narrow lock which are customarily 7 feet wide and in theory a narrowboat traditionally has a beam of just 6 feet 10 and a half inches. There are a couple of possibilities:
      1) A side of the lock may have collapsed slightly – effectively narrowing the lock.
      2) The boat is a tad wider than 6′ 10 1/2″or
      3) The skipper has left fenders dangling over the side.

      As to resolving the issue. The answer is to close the bottom gate and refill the lock in the hope that the water will refloat the boat – If that fails it’s going to be a job for a crane with a capacity for 50 -70 ton vertical lift….

      As it happens it happened to a Widebeam boat on a return journey attempting to pass through a lock which in the meantime had been reinstated. The boat owner had to hire a 200ton lift crane to take the boat out of the water at Devizes and have it transported back to Bristol at a cost of £5K….

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/19f9ca7fba4b500a4c47a8f03f911a044c17573a976b358c891a1f9a3c72268f.jpg

    1. Sadly we haven’t seen Kifaru here for ages, and when I looked for him a while ago, he’d deleted his account.

      2. If you pop in here at some time in the future, Kifaru, I hope you have / had a happy birthday.

    2. Marvellous, marvellous. marvellous. That is now winging its way to the USA East Coast, Midwest, Rockies, and West Coast.

  79. I wonder if the Left’s hatred of Thatcher is as venomous as the Right’s hatred of Blair?

    I thought the celebrations around Thatcher’s death were dreadful, but the more I see of the results of Blair’s actions the more I know I will be delighted to outlive him so that I can raise a glass to his descent into Hell.

    1. You might disagree with Thatcher but she was essentially a Briton working for Britain in the way that she thought was best. Most of our senior politicans since Major are working for foreign interests. Braverman was a notable exception so they thwarted and then got rid of her. I think that’s an important difference. One is allowed to cheer the death of a traitor that threatens everyone’s future.

    2. Talking of the Blairs, I had to walk away from a conversation in the office today. “So and so works at Matrix Chambers. Matrix Chambers are THE BEST”!

    3. He won’t descend into Hell. He will have ensured his place in Heaven. That’s why he has amassed a fortune: to afford his acceptance.

  81. England’s history is being bulldozed in pursuit of identikit luxury

    Anyone with enough money to build a house from scratch seems to end up doing the exact same thing

    JEMIMA LEWIS • 17 January 2024 • 8:40pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fd275f1580d857048b54ea2984b7e99e7bc3eea05c5877941edaa177be924475.jpg
    Typical modern Sandbanks, Poole
    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    The weird thing about “dream homes” is how determinedly undreamlike they tend to be. An actual dream home would be unique, nonsensical and completely personal. Yet anyone with enough money to build a house from scratch seems to end up doing the exact same thing.

    You can see their identikit creations all over the UK now, in the places rich people go for the summer. They look like small-scale lairs for small-scale villains: glass walls, cantilevered balconies, bits of timber cladding or stacked stones to give a flavour of Frank Lloyd Wright. Inside, too, all is expensive conformity. You can pretty much guarantee polished concrete floors, crumpled linen sofas, Berber rugs and rattan lampshades.

    The fact that architectural tastes are subject to fashion is hardly news. What’s troubling is when fashion is allowed, literally, to bulldoze history. In the Devon village where my husband grew up, I have seen an entire street of Edwardian houses – full of historical flavour, with steeply-pitched silvery roofs and occasional fanciful turrets – replaced, one bad planning decision at a time, by sub-Californian luxury.

    The richer the area, the more blandly villainous the buildings become. Sandbanks, the part of Dorset known as Britain’s Palm Beach, is now stuffed with blank-eyed glass rectangles. These houses are designed to be enjoyed from the inside, gazing out over the view. But buildings are most often seen from the outside, by passers-by. And these are rudely boring to look at: first, because there is so little detail and variety in their façades; and second, because they could be anywhere. There is no hint of local vernacular, of anything distinctively English, let alone Dorset, about them.

    So three cheers for Kalina Kuteva – council conservation officer for the Sandbanks area and, in her own modest way, a leader of the architectural resistance. Kuteva and her fellow officials have refused to allow the demolition of a decrepit but characterful Edwardian villa, on a prime coastal plot, to make way for a modernist eco-home.

    The owner, entrepreneur Tom Glanfield, bought the place for £13.5 million, making it one of the most expensive properties in the world per square metre. “It’s nothing fancy,” he declared, ominously, but “the potential is huge”. He then put in for planning permission for what Kuteva, with unusual bluntness, describes as a “boxy” house of “a rather generic contemporary design”. The council has refused the application, and nominated the existing house for inclusion on the local heritage list.

    What baffles me is why rich people no longer seem to like old and interesting houses. Granted, they often need costly restorations – but that is surely a much more eco-friendly way to spend your millions than knocking a house down and starting again.

    The house, called North Haven Point, is a period piece. Strictly-speaking a bungalow, but the kind with bedrooms tucked into the eaves, it has a deep-brimmed roof like a sun hat, walls covered with creepers, windows with glazing bars and French doors on to a lawn that runs down to the sea. It’s the kind of house John Betjeman might have taken for a summer holiday, a place redolent of cocktail shakers and cloche hats and the distant thwack of Joan Hunter Dunn tearing up the tennis courts. This, to me, is what dream houses are made of: age and atmosphere, idiosyncrasies of time and place, the footprints of long dead people overlapping with our own.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/17/england-history-is-being-bulldozed-in-pursuit-of-identikit/

    The vindictive me hopes that Mr Glanfield loses out here, if only for wasting his money on his arrogant presumptions.

    Here is North Haven Point:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/72a561fe2c53a1a5f9d7421f1d61ddd3fc3e692512c0c4888d82356bf01bb473.png

    View it here: https://issuu.com/fineandcountrypl/docs/sandbanks_poole_dorset_pt_ede63b49448172

    The Sun has a view on it, almost sympathetically so: https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/property/25389193/uks-most-expensive-bungalow-sandbanks-death-trap/

        2. You’re back! I missed you. Sos has been very nasty to me…sobs.
          How was your ….er … time on remand?

        1. It’s Chiswick House, built by Lord Burlington in 1729 and based on the Villa Rotonda by Palladio in Vicenza.

          1. I know others on here have been better educated and have a better understanding of (fill in any blank) but to me it looks hideous. Is it the back door?

          2. Granny flat entrance because granny couldn’t climb all of those stairs to get to the front door.

    4. That’s beautiful. I wish. I’d cut down some of the trees, though, they look a bit close.

  82. England’s history is being bulldozed in pursuit of identikit luxury

    Anyone with enough money to build a house from scratch seems to end up doing the exact same thing

    JEMIMA LEWIS • 17 January 2024 • 8:40pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fd275f1580d857048b54ea2984b7e99e7bc3eea05c5877941edaa177be924475.jpg
    Typical modern Sandbanks, Poole
    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    The weird thing about “dream homes” is how determinedly undreamlike they tend to be. An actual dream home would be unique, nonsensical and completely personal. Yet anyone with enough money to build a house from scratch seems to end up doing the exact same thing.

    You can see their identikit creations all over the UK now, in the places rich people go for the summer. They look like small-scale lairs for small-scale villains: glass walls, cantilevered balconies, bits of timber cladding or stacked stones to give a flavour of Frank Lloyd Wright. Inside, too, all is expensive conformity. You can pretty much guarantee polished concrete floors, crumpled linen sofas, Berber rugs and rattan lampshades.

    The fact that architectural tastes are subject to fashion is hardly news. What’s troubling is when fashion is allowed, literally, to bulldoze history. In the Devon village where my husband grew up, I have seen an entire street of Edwardian houses – full of historical flavour, with steeply-pitched silvery roofs and occasional fanciful turrets – replaced, one bad planning decision at a time, by sub-Californian luxury.

    The richer the area, the more blandly villainous the buildings become. Sandbanks, the part of Dorset known as Britain’s Palm Beach, is now stuffed with blank-eyed glass rectangles. These houses are designed to be enjoyed from the inside, gazing out over the view. But buildings are most often seen from the outside, by passers-by. And these are rudely boring to look at: first, because there is so little detail and variety in their façades; and second, because they could be anywhere. There is no hint of local vernacular, of anything distinctively English, let alone Dorset, about them.

    So three cheers for Kalina Kuteva – council conservation officer for the Sandbanks area and, in her own modest way, a leader of the architectural resistance. Kuteva and her fellow officials have refused to allow the demolition of a decrepit but characterful Edwardian villa, on a prime coastal plot, to make way for a modernist eco-home.

    The owner, entrepreneur Tom Glanfield, bought the place for £13.5 million, making it one of the most expensive properties in the world per square metre. “It’s nothing fancy,” he declared, ominously, but “the potential is huge”. He then put in for planning permission for what Kuteva, with unusual bluntness, describes as a “boxy” house of “a rather generic contemporary design”. The council has refused the application, and nominated the existing house for inclusion on the local heritage list.

    What baffles me is why rich people no longer seem to like old and interesting houses. Granted, they often need costly restorations – but that is surely a much more eco-friendly way to spend your millions than knocking a house down and starting again.

    The house, called North Haven Point, is a period piece. Strictly-speaking a bungalow, but the kind with bedrooms tucked into the eaves, it has a deep-brimmed roof like a sun hat, walls covered with creepers, windows with glazing bars and French doors on to a lawn that runs down to the sea. It’s the kind of house John Betjeman might have taken for a summer holiday, a place redolent of cocktail shakers and cloche hats and the distant thwack of Joan Hunter Dunn tearing up the tennis courts. This, to me, is what dream houses are made of: age and atmosphere, idiosyncrasies of time and place, the footprints of long dead people overlapping with our own.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/17/england-history-is-being-bulldozed-in-pursuit-of-identikit/

    The vindictive me hopes that Mr Glanfield loses out here, if only for wasting his money on his arrogant presumptions.

    Here is North Haven Point:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/72a561fe2c53a1a5f9d7421f1d61ddd3fc3e692512c0c4888d82356bf01bb473.png

    View it here: https://issuu.com/fineandcountrypl/docs/sandbanks_poole_dorset_pt_ede63b49448172

    The Sun has a view on it, almost sympathetically so: https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/property/25389193/uks-most-expensive-bungalow-sandbanks-death-trap/

  83. Well, my eyelids are getting heavier and heavier by the minute, so I’ll sign off now chums and wish you all a good night. Sleep well and I’ll see you all tomorrow.

  85. S.S. Bisp.
    Complement:
    14 (14 dead – no survivors).
    Coal

    At 07.01 hours on 23rd January 1940, U-18 (Ernst Mengersen) fired a G7e torpedo at a small steamer and observed a hit on the starboard side near the bridge and the sinking of the vessel within 40 seconds about 100 miles southeast of Shetland Islands. The U-boat had spotted the ship at 00.50 hours and missed her with a first torpedo at 06.49 hours. Its victim was very likely the unescorted and neutral Bisp (Master Rolf Kvilhaug) which was reported missing en route from the UK to Norway.

    Type IIB U-Boat U-18 was scuttled on 25th August 1944 in the Black Sea off Constanza after being badly damaged during a Soviet air raid (VVS VMF) on 20th August 1944.
    The wreck was raised by the Soviets in late 1944 and declared a total loss. Sunk on 26th May 1947 by a torpedo from the Soviet submarine M-120 off Sevastopol.

    https://uboat.net/media/allies/merchants/nw/bisp.jpg

  86. Grizz is 100% right!

    “Three in five UK voters are worried about Donald Trump winning a second term in the White House, a new poll shows.

    The research by Savanta Comres found that 59 per cent of the British public thinks a Trump victory in November’s election would be a “negative” outcome, with just eight per cent reporting that they think a Trump win would be “very positive”.

    Three quarters of the public said Mr Trump was “irresponsible”, while more than two thirds think he is “dishonest”.

    British voters also reserved some scepticism for Joe Biden, with just 20 per cent describing him as “inspiring”.

    1. If anyone is seriously dishonest it’s surely Biden! I wonder how the polling team phrased their questions?

      1. Look how rich politicians became after reaching high office even though their salaries were modest. Trump is the only one that hasn’t enriched himself. Really…take a look.

    2. Three in five British voters are actually correct.
      The problem is that the current alternatives to Trump are infinitely worse.
      “Would you prefer Hemlock, Cyanide or death’s cap mushrooms in your soup, sir?”

    3. I dispute every aspect of your grandiose assertion.

      (1) It is a known fact that Grizz has never been 100% right or anywhere close.

      (2) Everybody knows that nowhere near 59% of the British public thinks.

      (3) A statically irrelevant miniscule proportion of the British public know that the bid of ‘Eight no-Trumps’ was first dreamed up and employed by my dear late friend and certifiable mad-man, Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, a Professor of Pure Mathematics at Cambridge. The Governing body for Contract Bridge subsequently outlawed the practice but that didn’t stop Sir Peter. Thus Trumps cannot be deemed to be irresponsible, let alone dishonest.

      Lots of love Horace Rumpole

    4. More Canadian voters approve of Trump than they do Trudeau.

      Not that it is hard nowadays with Trudeaus record low standing in polls.

      1. What are the odds that the person who replaces him is exactly like the person that replaced Ardern?

    5. Our population has been dumbed down by corrupt media such as the BBC and the nonsense promulgated for doctrinaire socialist purposes in our schools and universities.

      I hope many more are watching and waking up to the falsehoods. That any sane person could prefer Joe Biden to Donald Trump is risible and showing profound ignorance.

    6. Our population has been dumbed down by corrupt media such as the BBC and the nonsense promulgated for doctrinaire socialist purposes in our schools and universities.

      I hope many more are watching and waking up to the falsehoods. That any sane person could prefer Joe Biden to Donald Trump is risible and showing profound ignorance.

    7. It’s none of my business nor that of any other British citizen. We have no say in the outcome nor any influence over it. We might just as well be asked about the prospects for elections in Switzerland, Paraguay, Ghana or Tajikistan.

      1. Dignitas now has competition. Another organisation has set up and you can book in on your own and tell nobody. I did book a a place for Starmer but i think he is ignoring their emails.

    2. You don’t kneel down in a decent suit (unless the tax payer is paying for it).
      And you don’t wear hobnail boots on carpets that cost (yet again the tax payer) £1500 per per linear foot !

  88. Forgive me Mr Neil, but the danger doesn’t come from outside, the other countries’ dictators, but rather from our own elected dictators who are ruling and ruining our lives.
    If there are outside dictators to fear they are the UN, the EU, NATO, the WHO and last but very much the worst the WEF.
    Your entire article underlines that the problem is from within.
    If an external threat really did go for our throats, forget limited response, glass car parks will be the outcome.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12996751/ANDREW-NEIL-Nuclear-war-Doomsday-Clock.html

      3. Sorry the Ethics Commissioner cannot take this case, he is already busy dealing with Trudeaus Christmas holiday ethics violation!

    2. You beat me to posting this.

      They have already announced that they will appeal the courts decision – it’s only taxpayers money and Trudeau hates anyone daring to contradict him.

  91. I’m not surprised comments aren’t allowed on this DT article:

    “More than 39,000 people under 75 died from cardiovascular disease in 2022, which includes heart attacks, strokes, and coronary heart disease. It equates to 107 people dying each day, or almost five people per hour.

    Highest number since 2008
    It was the highest number of premature deaths from heart disease since 2008 when almost 40,000 people died, and has risen every year since a low of 33,700 in 2014. When adjusted to account for the changing population size and age, the 73 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019 was the lowest rate.

    Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, associate medical director at the BHF and a consultant cardiologist, said Britain was “in the grip of the worst heart care crisis in living memory”.

    1. “in the grip of the worst heart care crisis in living memory”.

      A powerful statement from Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, associate medical director at the BHF.

      1. So do i just keep smoking 40 a day and drink whatever i want? Seems to me the odds are even.

    2. Enough to raise your blood pressure, certainly. Mind you, wasn’t 2008 and the financial crisis an influence?

    3. I look at the premier league deaths. They’re nearly triple what they were prior to the pandemic – in one year.

      The reason I choose footballers is obvious: wealthy enough for the best healthcare, professional athletes, managed diets and what not. They also had to be vaccinated to be able to play.

  92. Giving fangs
    SIR – When a much-loved Dutch auntie passed away, my cousins asked me what I would like from her estate (Letters, January 22).

    I requested something personal, which would remind me of her. They sent me two pairs of false teeth.

    Patricia Banton
    Burton on Trent, Staffordshire

    A dear friend died decades ago , and I was given something personal .. The china potty that all guests used which was placed under the spare bed , and used when nature called during the night .

    I still have it , and in summer a geranium takes pride of place in the potty

      1. The previous owners of our house left 2 urns of ashes in the garage! We contacted them to see if they wanted them but no reply. They turned up a few weeks later but were too late. We’d had work done in the garage and they’d been taken away.

    2. When my aunt died, her daughter in law asked if there was anything I’d like and I asked her for the oval dish my mother had given her years before. So I have two now às Mum gave me one as well. They are oven proof dishes she got from the Royal Worcester factory on a visit there. I use them both.

    1. Why when globalists say ‘lies and conspiracy theories’ do they really mean ‘annoying facts I don’t like’? Why can’t he just be honest about his intentions?

      1. ‘Annoying facts I don’t like’ would really give the game away. They have to keep on board the majority who haven’t yet awoken to their predicament.

    2. ‘‘Global pandemic agreement at risk of falling apart, WHO warns’
      “Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said the momentum had been slowed down by entrenched positions and “a torrent of fake news, lies, and conspiracy theories”.
      He warned that if nobody was prepared to seize the initiative or give ground, the whole project risked going nowhere.      ‘

      Ah, what a bloody shame.

    3. The torrent of lies seems to come from the WHO itself; let’s remember that Tedros is wanted in his own country, IIRC, to face charges relating to alleged genocide?

    4. Where is this “torrent of fake news, lies and conspiracy theories” being published? AFAI can see it’s being kept well hidden from/by the MSM.

      It’s like the “plandemic”. So dreadful were the consequences going to be that the whole western world had to be threatened, cajoled, punished and terrified out of its wits, with lockdowns and all the other disgraceful curtailing of our freedoms. Not forgetting, of course, the mandatory experimental jabs. Jab or no job.

  94. It’s got a bit lively outside.
    Continual roar of the wind in the trees at the higher level and rather gusty at the valley bottom. Broken cloud showing a not quite full moon with Jupiter over towards the West with a whole 8°C on the Yard Thermometer.
    And I’ve got the chainsaw fueled & oiled up in the van just in case!

        1. Why not? I just happen to like snakes and the adder is my favourite British species. Snakes are an essential part of a balanced ecosystem.

      1. I will have one soon .

        They are a good idea , but time getting to a vet is essential , especially galling when you have to carry a bitten dog who has collapsed in shock a few hundred yards or more back to the car .

        When Jack was bitten 12 years ago on his cheek , I was struggling with him to carrying him back to the car, he put on a drip for two days .. he was bitten whilst on a walk on a warm November afternoon .

        20 years ago , my female w/cocker was bitten on her arachafuzalem as she squatted to wee , she was very badly ill , and again treated for 4 days . The adder was laying in the grass near a furzey bush .

        1. Some dogs are more likely to get bitten I think, Belle. Cockers and sniffy dogs, like my Staffie-Springer cross Oscar are more likely to be victims. A dog too large to carry is a lot less likely to suffer severe symptoms. I would rather see a an advice notice telling you what to do if you think your dog has been bitten than selling dog owners a pack of everything except an antivenin for adders which you couldn’t buy anyway.
          I’m not saying the lady is scamming dog owners. I just don’t think that the pack, whatever the price, is very useful.
          Like you, we live in an area where adders are common, rarely seen, but common.

    3. I’m not sure that that ‘adderpack’ would do much good. If my memory serves, snakes don’t hear airborne sounds like us, they sense vibrations from movements, so a bell would be useless. You and all other dog owners must know what an adder looks like, plus, if it bites your dog you know it’s an adder. My Oscar has come across a few adders and been lucky. What’s really needed is a mobile phone and your vet’s phone number. As you say, it’s where on the body that they’re bitten that is important.
      Call me a sceptical swine but I see this as a money making gimmick.

      1. I have given that some thought , MM, and yes , I think it probably is a well meaning money making gimmick .

        As if an adder could hear a bell, then pigs could fly.

        There are so many adders in these parts, not just confined to heathland , my neighbour found one amongst her plant pots on her porch .

        I saw many varieties in Nigeria … and elsewhere on the black continent .. Shudder factor 1000%

        1. Oddly enough I didn’t see a snake in Nigeria, but I wasn’t exactly out in the bush. I’m a bit of a herpetologist and love ’em. Maybe that’s why I can’t stand seeing someone killing, almost any snake, just because it’s a snake.

  100. Grenfell Tower survivor accused of £140k fraud after ‘he claimed children lived there during fire’

    Hamid Wahbi and his son Walid have been charged with multiple counts of fraud by false representation about claims made after the tragic fire which took 72 lives in 2017…

    Court documents show Hamid is charged with five counts of fraud by false representation, the most serious of which alleges he told RBKC that Walid lived with him at the time of the tragedy, resulting in payments of £114,025.52. A separate charge also alleges Hamid told RBKC his daughter Yasmin Wahbi lived there, resulting in further payments of £25,419.

    Hamid is also facing charges for defrauding charities Turn2US, Clement St James Family Action, and Campden Charities to the tune of around £4,300. His son Walid also faces multiple counts of fraud by false representation, for his alleged role in defrauding RBKC of £114,000, and charities National Zakat Foundation and Clement St James Family Action for around £3,700.

    https://twitter.com/Llanigirl2023/status/1749864115110076777

    3. We shouldn’t be surprised, it’s what these immigrants do or rather what they are allowed to do by incompetent civil serpents – where were the checks? Perhaps these CS’s were immigrants themselves?

    4. Isn’t it amazing how they can’t speak our language but understand how to defraud us. Will probably have an interpreter supplied at taxpayer expense. Should be told no interpreter if you want one pay for it yourself.

    1. And they are saying they are going to have to call up (presumably) young white males in the event of a war against Russia.

      There’s no way I’ll let my son go. Let all the “black and brown” people do it, the Muslims and the Alphabet/Pronoun people. After all, we all know they are superior to us. We’ve had years of being told so.

      1. And they are saying they are going to have to call up (presumably) young white males in the event of a war against Russia.

        Morning MIR. These will be the white males that they despise. That the military hierarchy have discrimnated against in favour of the Wokies. That have stood aside and said nothing as the country was invaded by stealth. The photograph above speaks volumes!

    2. I find that picture vulgar and unbecoming – never mind the gay message, just senior officers clutching a political flag like some kind of kindergarten class.
      Bah!

    3. As we said, way back in 1967, when (quite rightly) homosexual acts stopped being illegal.

      “How long will it be, before it becomes Compulsory.”

      nearly 60 years later it has, for the Services

    4. I see from the Telegaffe this morning that CGS [Chief of the General Staff] is warning that if we do go to war, we will have to have conscription as the Army is so small!! Very reassuring – sabre rattling without a blade on the sword.

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