Tuesday 28 January: Poor communication from the NHS is leaving patients in limbo

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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694 thoughts on “Tuesday 28 January: Poor communication from the NHS is leaving patients in limbo”

  1. Good morning Geoff and all you regular NoTTLers.
    This one is a thank-you to Stephenroi, who posted his Golf joke very early this morning on yesterday's NTTL blog.

    A woman tried to board a bus but her skirt was so tight that she couldn't make the step up. So she reached behind her, lowered her zip and tried again. Still the skirt was too tight. So again she reached behind her, lowered her zip a little more and tried to negotiate the step.
    But still the skirt was too tight. Determined to catch this bus, she once more reached behind her, lowered the zip a little and attempted to climb aboard.
    Then suddenly she felt two hands on her butt which helped her on to the bus. She turned around angrily and told the man behind her: "Sir, I don't know you well enough for you to behave in such a manner."
    The man replied: "Lady, I don't know you well enough for you to unzip my fly three times either!"

    1. "Gates first became friends with Epstein after he had been charged with soliciting prost*tution from a minor." Which "he"? Gates or Epstein was soliciting?

      1. Epstein was charged with soliciting a minor.

        Then Gates thought it would just be peachy to become friends with him.

          1. You do have to wonder just how incriminating the Epstein videos are and just how many of the 'elite' are totally compromised, so much so that they still have to follow orders from those that set up the Honey Trap. Furthermore, I suspect those currently in power (but not compromised) daren't make public this information for fear of bringing the Establishments crashing down….

          4. Most of us here have no desire to corrupt young children which is, perhaps why we are not exceptionally rich and powerful or Pakistani Muslim!

    3. Any of us could have made the same mistake, being a friend of a convicted paedophile. Could happen to anyone.

  6. Good morning, chums. And thank you, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,319 4/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie and all
      A bit plodding today!
      Wordle 1,319 6/6

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      1. That is a suggestion. However, look a the contributors to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The only person who might withdraw as a result (of the expected outcome) is Warren Buffett.

    2. It's all rather desperate, isn't it? This frenzied effort the Left have of controlling the narrative. You'd think they'd realise that this has all been done before – by Nazi Germany.

    2. Well… errr… of course they are. Labour imported that wretched demographic. It's now dependent on them. That's why there's two tier kier.

      1. The pro Muslim report written by the Home Office has been rejected by the government. There are hundreds of Muslims working in the Home Office, some in senior positions. Guess who wrote the report.

      2. 400653+up ticks,

        Morning W,

        Could that be the reason the torie (ino) party formed a united front with the labs supporting the illegal invasion?

        Truth being “if you can’t beat them, join them”

    1. Bit of a silly Q, but could you not seal up the clubhouse? Tar paint the outside, have two doors to seal the entry way?

      1. Its mostly a wooden structure on a concrete block base. Too many points of entry to try to seal. Water ingress via the floor boards. The only saving grace is all the electrical sockets are a good 3 feet above floor level.

  16. Popular burger chain announces shock closure of all UK restaurants after 13 years as fans say it's the 'end of an era'.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14330255/Popular-burger-chain-announces-shock-closure-UK-restaurants-13-years-fans-say-end-era.html

    One of their offerings all served in a bun…

    unique burger options included the Good Morning America, featuring cheese, sausage patty, streaky bacon, maple cheerios, poached egg, bacon mayonnaise, ketchup and strawberry pop tart.

    Pass the sick bucket…

      4. People who eat shit have atrophied brains.
        People with atrophied brains eat shit.

        It's the chicken-and-egg conundrum. Which came first?

    3. I appreciate some people might like it, but not for me. A shame about the job losses though.

    1. Anne, I just HAVE to post this Chihuahua joke:

      A meek little man walked into a bar and said “Does anyone own that Rottweiler outside?”

      “Yeah, I do,” said a big burly biker, rising to his feet. “What about it?”

      “Well, I think my chihuahua just killed him.”

      What are you talking about? snarled the biker. “How could your puny little chihuahua kill my mighty Rottweiler?”

      “It seems she got stuck in your dog’s throat.”

      1. Heh, reminds me of the time Mongo tried to help a stuck kitten downstairs. Inside these great gaping jaws this poor little thing dug into his jaw to get out. He had a mouthful of blood and a course of antibiotic toothpaste type lark for the scratches.

  19. Well, we knew the Bayeaux Tapestry was big, but apparently it is not the size of Wales.
    The Daily Mail at its best.

    "The Bayeux Tapestry, which is longer than an Olympic-sized swimming pool… "

  20. Interesting take on the determined Greenland grab.

    The recent buttering up of Keir Starmer by The Don may be related to the minor problemo of UK having a long standing "first refusal" should Denmark wish to cede control of Greenland!

  21. Good morning, all. In a word, wet.

    This appeared on my X feed this morning.

    https://x.com/NetZeroWatch/status/1883810597805916339
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0105362195044a6aa2c39e8e6b8f5f8b1f9126ef0f835166f58caf20176dd91.png
    Squeaky bums in the Cabinet, what joy?

    I have wondered whether all Cabinet members, MPs et al. in the Labour party are au fait with Starmer's objectives.

    E.g. Net Zero zealotry if fine when you're in opposition and not responsible for mass spending on unproven technology; obliterating prime farmland; destroying once beautiful landscapes; having policies that put gas reserves in jeopardy etc. Now, when the metaphorical chickens are coming home it doesn't look too clever a position to hold, brag about or worse, berate those who argue against the craziness.

    For the 'now not-so-sure' MPs etc. some reading and research is imperative – perhaps they could find some scientists who will explain the facts to them as if doing so to 10 year olds? – before the lights literally go out and their majorities disappear in lock-step.

    A starter for 10?
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aae3c6780df3abe08f09398a1fb0dd0f92158370c2aa831b16d8261c764f727e.png

      1. The key phrase is 'do you believe in man made climate change'. And from the Left 'you deny climate change!' as if one is Judas renouncing Jesus.

        They have made it a religion because religion cannot be refuted. It is based on faith, not evidence. However, religion has power precisely because it is based on faith. Because it doesn't rely on evidence. Because the power of denunciation is so powerful. Humans are social animals. This is just manipulation and control. The latest effort by the Left to control what you can and cannot do.

        The Church failed, the State failed a damned sight faster (there were two large wars defeating their ideology), now the demented psychopathic Left are trying a new weapon: religion. It too, will fail.

        Something I noticed is Trump's policies (the ones he has binned) are exactly the same as ours. Forced funding of unreliables, forced funding of electric vehicles. Why? Where did these globalist policies come from? They break the market, they are against consumer choice. Government must have no business doing this yet it's not just us, it's many nations, all applying the same policy. Where does this tosh come from and why are we letting our political class sign us up to it?

      3. On the topic of Liebour and BBC: 'The government has rejected internal advice to widen the definition of extremism to include potentially violent environmentalists, the far left, conspiracy theorists and men prejudiced against women.

        It comes after sections of the report were leaked to the right-leaning Policy Exchange think tank, which criticised the recommendations.

        Home Office minister Dan Jarvis said the government "rejected this advice" adding that "Islamist extremism followed by far-right extremism are the biggest threats we face".'

  22. Britain is on the brink of a full-blown fiscal crisis
    Reeves may have talked the talk in Davos – but everything back home is going to hell in a handcart
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/25/britain-is-on-the-brink-of-a-full-blown-fiscal-crisis/

    BTL

    Let us not delude ourselves.

    Communism does not gain a foothold in successful economies where people are content.

    Starmer, Miliband, Reeves and Cooper are Communists therefore it is in their interests to destroy the economy and foment unhappiness..

    1. I do not blame communism, which never really took on in Britain and was fairly comprehensively blotted out by Thatcher and Reagan. Only a fool imagines that there is anything remotely communist or even left wing about Blair or Starmer, who are both WEF stooges. There was a brief excited revival under Corbyn, but his brand of Dave Spart nostalgia was quickly snuffed by a disreputable backstabbing led by the IHRA and the Parliamentary Labour Party.

      Like any declining third world outfit, we have made ourselves reliant on aid, aka "foreign investment", which may carry terms and conditions in the small print we fail to read when we hand over ownership. Saves a lot of time and bother and hoop jumping to click "I agree".

      There was a TV documentary recently about Prince Andrew living beyond his means because he has aspirations. It is good to have aspirations so we are told by Tony Blair. Never mind if we have to max out the credit card to pay for them. We can always go onto the app advertised on TV that converts the farting boyfriend into a lovable pooch and increase our credit score, simply by clicking "I agree".

      Could we look at our domestic market first – how much of what we rely on to function could be provided locally, rather than imported and paid for using "aid"? Or is this forbidden now, under WEF rules?

      1. The Bolshevik revolution was funded by the banksters. "Workers of the world unite" has always been a lie to try and get the people to supoprt tyrannical government.
        Now being tried again on a world scale!
        We never beat communism – they just changed the slogans from "Workers unite" to "Save the Planet.". They're still trying to install it in Britain, and they're closer than ever before.

        1. I am a strong supporter of King Charles III, and firmly believe that saving the planet is a good thing. How we go about it – well, that is another matter, and all too often there is another agenda at work which does the opposite of what it says it does.

          As for global action, often it requires everyone to work together. Otherwise the conscientious are undercut by the unscrupulous.

          When Michael Mates, Margaret Thatcher's Defence Procurement Minister, attended a CND rally in Haslemere, led by Bruce Kent, he made the point that giving up our own nuclear deterrent whilst a potential enemy refused to give up theirs would make us vulnerable at the very least to being held to ransom. This was why he was refusing to countenance any unilateral disarmament.

          The same could be said for Net Zero?

          1. CO2 doesn’t change the weather, so any reductions are pure nonsense – they are just rich people telling poor people to give up luxuries like transport, heating and good food.

          2. Indeed. It is entirely a modern guilt trip based on social and not scientific factors.

    2. She talked weasel words to people who are mounting an international one-world government coup in Davos! Not unrelated to everyting in Blighty going to hell in a handcart.

  23. The Duke is back in FSB with an essay on Class and University , arguing that Uni is not seen as an attractive option to working class youth.

    Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day, the real cause of which the MSM and political pundits get very wrong, as shown in Today is Holocaust Memorial Day – But the MSM Gets it Completely Wrong , which argues that there a many disturbing similarities between modern Globalism and the National Socialist totalitarianism that caused the Holocaust.

    Energy watch 08.30. Demand: 41.159GW. Supply: Hydrocarbons 26.2%; Wind 36.4%; Imports 14.2%; Biomass 7.6% and Nuclear 11.3%. Solar: 0%.

    We are importing – very expensively – almost 15% of our demand for electric power from the continent despite drawing down on pumped storage capacity. Of the nominal demand of 41GW, Britain is only producing 33GW.

    freespeechbacklash.com

    1. And 11GW of that is wind, from an installed capacity of 70GW. On what could be considered an optimal day.

      1. Labour disputes your view of facts and suggests these are 'negative opinions'. Report to re-education for proper indoctrination.

    2. Michael Deacon is on good form so I have put up the whole article.

      Michael Deacon : 28th January 2025

      Invest in Starmer’s Britain? You’d have to be bonkers
      Rachel Reeves says we must tell the world what an ‘absolutely fantastic’ country Britain is these days. Seriously?


      Stop talking Britain down. That’s the message from Rachel Reeves, our famously cheery Chancellor, who has called on every one of us to help attract more foreign investment into our country by talking up the countless wonderful things about life in the UK today.

      “I think we do need more positivity,” Ms Reeves told a newspaper at the weekend. “I’ve challenged businesses and said no one else is going to speak up for Britain apart from us. We are absolutely fantastic as a country. We should be shouting from the rooftops.”

      I agree. So, for the benefit of any foreign business leaders, tech tycoons or senior figures in the Chinese Communist Party reading this column, here’s why you should rush to invest in Britain.

      First of all, our incredible diversity. In 21st-century global Britain, there’s a place for everyone. Literally everyone. Whether you’re the leader of a grooming gang, an Albanian drug kingpin, a machete-wielding lunatic or a member of an Islamist terror group, you can be certain that our political superiors will welcome you with open arms – and that our world-beating human rights lawyers will ensure you’re never made to leave.

      A key reason why we attract so many millions of newcomers is the glorious vibrancy of our culture. Our actors, artists and authors lead the global field in vacuous sermonising about climate change, performative railing against Donald Trump and pretending to think it’s perfectly fine and healthy for gender-confused adolescent girls to have their breasts cut off. Our celebrated museums, art galleries and conservation charities are proudly dedicated to showing the world just how uniquely shameful Britain’s history is. And then of course there’s our national broadcaster, respected across the planet for the outstanding quality of the programmes it used to make. From the latest breaking news about drag queens to topical satire that fearlessly holds the Government’s critics to account, the BBC reflects the full spectrum of metropolitan liberal opinion.

      But that’s not all. If you invest in Britain, you’ll be able to benefit from public services that are the envy of the Third World. Take our beloved NHS, where, within days of calling for an ambulance, patients receive life-ending treatment in state-of-the-art hospital corridors. Then there are our prestigious universities, where the young learn about everything from the evils of whiteness to the dangers of free speech. And there’s our peerless public transport, enabling commuters whose cars have been wrecked by our world-leading potholes to wait 40 minutes for a delayed train driven by a man who recently received a 15 per cent pay rise and is now demanding another.

      Meanwhile, prospects for growth in GDP are excellent, now that our Chancellor has moved to tackle the three root causes of the nation’s economic underperformance: pensioners putting the heating on, farmers growing food, and businesses hiring staff. With each of these problems behind us, Britain will soon be booming.

      In summary: there has never been a more exciting time to invest in the UK. Whether you’re planning to open a chain of hotels for asylum seekers, a money-laundering barbershop or a car wash manned entirely by illegal immigrants, 21st-century Britain is the place to do it. And, as a business leader, you’ll always have the stability and certainty of knowing that our Government will still be enforcing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion long after every other Western country has had the sense to abandon it.

      So back Britain. Please. We’ll never be able to afford Ed Miliband’s new solar farms if you don’t.

      Sick joke
      In June 1968, Philip Larkin wrote a letter to his girlfriend Monica, deploring the misplaced priorities of the then Labour government. Defence of the realm, the Tory-voting poet believed, should come before all else – yet the government’s spending plans suggested that it disagreed.

      “Now I see someone boasting that in a few years’ time we shall be spending ‘more on education than defence’,” wrote an alarmed Larkin in disbelief. “This shocks me to the core.”

      In which case, goodness knows how he would feel if he were still around today. Last year we spent over twice as much on education as we did on defence. But he would be even more horrified to learn the following fact, reported the other day in a story about our ever-ballooning welfare bill.

      Incredibly, we now spend more on sickness benefits than we do on defence. Almost £65 billion on the former last year, versus a mere £53.9 billion on the latter.

      If that thought terrifies you, look on the bright side. Feeling all this anxiety will mean that you qualify to receive sickness benefits, too.

      Way of the World is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday

      1. Good morning, Rastus, and thank you for excellent comment. Reeves is, to quote Liddle, think as mince – or dumb as soup if you prefer. For anyone thinking of installing a heat pump in an older house (currently being promoted by government) a chap has written about his experience, today on Daily Sceptic.

        1. The problem with heat pumps isn't that they don't work, or are somehow bad technology, it is that they are inflexible, expensive to install and unsuited for Britain's climate.

          We're a wet, damp country. Not especially a continually cold one. We need heat rarely, and then on demand so we can keep our windows open to let air circulate around our homes to vent all the moisture our weather dumps on us.

          UK housing is designed to be draughty. To let air in, move it about, then get rid of it by having porous walls, windows and so on. The demented crusade for net zero completely ignores our climate. Masses of insulation is all very nice but it's wrong for the UK. We need cheap, abundant energy so we can use it on demand, at will, when we want to in a flexible fashion.

          Case in point, I'd like to throw open the windows and get fresh air in, but the heat pump operation precludes that, without massive cost.

          Milioaf is just a zealot, detached from reality. He just wants to force people to use less energy so he can ponce about and say how great he is. The damage he does is irrelevant to him. He slaps his – three times equivalent bills – on us.

          1. Yes, this guy seemed to think he got it to work, eventually, after a lot of anguish. Will stick with oil fired heating, wood log burning stove, thanks all the same. Was a good article.

      3. We don't have to listen to their daft edicts, governments are elected to do the hard work, protect their people , defend the Island , educate the people , heal illness, ensure cleanliness and productivity in the work place , the ability to travel cheaply to a work place , fair pay and working conditions , export and import of essential goods … and the ability to be self sufficient in coal, steel, and oil.

        1. I'd argue that their job is not to ensure those things but to bugger off and stop implementing legislation that prevents them, then let the market decide what is needed.

          I'd also far prefer the state didn't provide education or health care and simply said 'we also offer an insurance scheme – and so do a thousand other competitors, who we regulate. Oh, and we, the state cover life long illness so you don't have to worry about that' (as Denmark and others do, so if your body breaks down with an autoimmune, your insurance doesn't soar.

          For education I'd prefer school vouchers. Send your kid to the local comp or home school them. The only measure of success is the child's education and that's down to the parent.

          Imagine having a class of 5, with two teachers for children with exceptional special needs or who are truly excelling.

  25. Any right minded civil servants have been strongly advised to lay off X & other social media.. as two whistleblowers reveal The Office of The Permanent Secretary instructed the 'Professional Standards Unit' to go digging into accounts of suspected right of centre members of staff in order to shutdown & fire staff who could bee seen as problematic for Labour.

    1. Back in the day, civil servants making their political opinions know was an absolute no. This rule only seems to apply to right of centre views now.

    2. It's sad really. The state rooting out it's enemies. This has all been done before (and will be done again). The Left never change. Their ideology and attitudes are so fragile, so weak, so poorly put together that they cannot cope with dissent and challenge and so must ensure theirs is the only voice ever heard. Every Left wing group has done this throughout history. It's tiresome.

  26. Andrew Neil reveals £1 billion spaffed on "consultancy projects" since Labour came to power.

  27. A belated good morning to all. A bit of a restless night I'm afraid. Unable to get back to sleep after pumping bilges just after 2.

    A dull and miserable day with a light but steady rain. 6.8°C when I took the milk bottle out to the crate, a bit down from yesterday's max of 7.9°C. Minimum was 2.5°C.

  28. From GF..

    Yvette Cooper commissioned a “rapid analytical sprint” review into extremism policy, whose contents have now been leaked to think tank Policy Exchange. In the view of the Home Office:

    “Claims of ‘two-tier’ policing” are a “Right-wing extremist narrative” which is “leaking into mainstream debates.“

    Non-crime hate incident recording should be expanded to Islamophobia and antisemitism.

    Grooming gangs are an “alleged” problem “frequently exploit[ed]” by the far-right “to promote anti-Muslim sentiment as well as anti-government and anti-‘political correctness’ narratives.” ‘Alleged’…

    Extremism policy should switch focus from “ideologies of concern” to “behaviours and activity” which includes participation in “online subcultures called the manosphere.”

    The definition of extremism should be expanded to include extreme misogyny, pro-Khalistan extremism, Hindu nationalist extremism, environmental extremism, left wing, anarchist and single-issue extremism (LASI), violence fascination and conspiracy theories.

    There should be a new offence – making “harmful communications” likely to cause “psychological harm.” A rude text…

    1. Please.. no rude text in this manosphere about alleged gang grapes by those gentle people.

      1. Nottlers always speak respectfully of sub-continental rapists and their wonderful religion.

      4. They're everywhere thanks to the DIE agenda. Incompetence spreads, then that pandering flows through the pointless edifice of state to accommodate their uselessness and attitudes. The end result is an ever poorer outcomes designed to appease the effnic wasters rather than society as a whole.

    3. Funny how this idiot government are focussing on what they call “Right-wing extremist narrative”.

      I just don't get it .. Yvette Cooper commissioned a “rapid analytical sprint” review into extremism policy, whose contents have now been leaked to think tank Policy Exchange. In the view of the Home Office:

      My own rapid analytical sprint says … hang on we are an Island .. Politicians have imported the problems they are now having to confront , and we should take them to task and blame them for the psychological harm they have burdened the indigenous folk they purport to tax and bully into a left wing ideology .

      Yep , I am talking about us .. we are being coerced and bullied to our back teeth.

      2. Yes, but that 'sprint' is going to find that it's all down to evil Far Right Whitey. She, and her department can't permit any other outcome and has already made up its mind what will be found.

    4. There's really something wrong with some people, unfortunately they're also the ones in government 🤡

    5. Like most of the Dopey Wokey modernisms it only works one way.
      They can't see the danage that is effected our established culture and social structure. And they can't handle the truth on any single subject.

      1. They live in a mindscape of fantasy. What is "psychological harm", for example?

        They'll just make an offence up, put it on the statute books then convict you for causing "psychological harm". Will they in their deliberations ever examine a single person who was "caused" psychological harm while convicting you? Will they even define what a psychology is or what a harm is? Nope. They'll use chuck runes in the air and the government soothsayer will simply declare you guilty.

        Yvette Cooper is not a credible person.

    6. 'There should be a new offence – making “harmful communications” likely to cause “psychological harm.” '

      That just sounds like the current education system.

  29. From GF..

    Yvette Cooper commissioned a “rapid analytical sprint” review into extremism policy, whose contents have now been leaked to think tank Policy Exchange. In the view of the Home Office:

    “Claims of ‘two-tier’ policing” are a “Right-wing extremist narrative” which is “leaking into mainstream debates.“

    Non-crime hate incident recording should be expanded to Islamophobia and antisemitism.

    Grooming gangs are an “alleged” problem “frequently exploit[ed]” by the far-right “to promote anti-Muslim sentiment as well as anti-government and anti-‘political correctness’ narratives.” ‘Alleged’…

    Extremism policy should switch focus from “ideologies of concern” to “behaviours and activity” which includes participation in “online subcultures called the manosphere.”

    The definition of extremism should be expanded to include extreme misogyny, pro-Khalistan extremism, Hindu nationalist extremism, environmental extremism, left wing, anarchist and single-issue extremism (LASI), violence fascination and conspiracy theories.

    There should be a new offence – making “harmful communications” likely to cause “psychological harm.” A rude text…

  30. Following on from my post of yesterday about a Derbyshire Constabulary Detective Chief Superintendent (head of the forces's CID); there is an interesting obituary, in todays' DT, about a former officer — Bob Taylor —who served in the same rank and status in his force, West Yorkshire.

    Bob Taylor was not only highly successful in his role, he later moved on to become head of the National Crime Squad, such was his reputation.

    Here is a paragraph, from his obituary, on a theme that I have also warned about on numerous occasions:

    Taylor was highly critical of modern trends in policing, telling an interviewer in 2002 that the service was “all about cost-cutting, not providing a better service … We have a new age of managers trying to reinvent the wheel, instead of seeing what’s worked in the past and dealing with the basics.”

    “I wouldn’t last two minutes if I joined today,” he said, adding: “Probably wouldn’t be politically correct enough.”

    Me too, I am much too much of a dinosaur to have fitted in what passes as an excuse for the British police today.

      1. I have written, at length, to various home secretaries; chief inspectors of constabulary; and the chief constables of a number of forces giving a comprehensive overview of how policing used to be, when it was successful, and how it is now since the idiots implemented the cretinously ruinous graduate-entry scheme.

        That piece of crass idiocy removed the system whereby time-served, experienced beat officers made their way up the rank ladder; and replaced it with a brainless formula which entailed recruiting a gang of utterly clueless social studies graduates and promoting them to inspector level within a year of recruitment.

        I still await a reply (or an acknowledgement of receipt) for any of my letters!

        1. If they want Graduates in the Police, then why not recruit them before they start their studies and give them 4 to 5 year day release courses to gain those qualifications?
          That way the not only gain their degrees, but also valuable experience at the job whilst they are learning.

          1. Oh, do behave, Bob.
            That would entail using lots of common sense: something those with the influence do not possess (or even know what it is)!

    3. And that comment was made in 2002, how much worse is it now. The politically correct are the worst tyrants of our era too.

    4. I certainly would not be employed as a teacher in the UK today – not that I would want to be.

    5. Yesterday we were chatting with a friend about how we kept sane on the grimmer psychiatric wards.
      A clear eyed, humane team who enjoyed trench humour was the answer.
      So neither MB nor I would be acceptable today.

    1. He is. The man is a useless, cretinous moron. As a Lefty hypocrisy defines his every action.

    3. It's true. Milliband looked as if he was having a stroke whilst attempting to get outside of that bacon buttie.

  33. Morning all 🙂😊
    Grey wet and 8 degs more rain on the way.
    Headline today almost hits the proverbial nail on the head. But now due to the terrible administration many patients have now become victim's. Six years and still waiting for a knee operation.

  34. 499653+ up ticks,

    In agreement populism isn't the answer,far from it, BUT
    Patriotism is.
    There are many a political jockey vying currently for being top dog in the political lucrative power game, with patriotism NOT among their prime concerns .

    IMHO we would fare better in seeking a leader of decency & integrity among those previously trampled on.

    https://x.com/cfdownes_/status/1883839555800825928

    1. The state has failed. It always does. It is kept on life support, continuing only through inertia, no competence. This is why it holds so much back. People are realising how utterly useless it is. Clarkson and his trying to register his cows being a case in point. He exposes a completely incompetent state machine.

  35. Green house gases..

    What happened to that hole in the atmosphere , not much spoken about that these days .

    Has air travel accelerated the confusion?

    Another Heathrow runway, wow, yummy , more French beans from Kenya , more mangoes from India , more rice and curry spices for the rice eaters , more of everything to feed the millions of foreigners who don't eat bacon and eggs .

    We will be long gone by the time acres of heat attracting concrete will be built ..

    Runways , solar farms , carparks , roads , new towns .. the UK will either end up like a huge swamp or a desert .. and no fresh water!

    3. Gatwick Stansted London City and Luton are already London runways.
      More pollution ? Not very green is it.

  36. Fun fact: Selena Gomez debuts on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $1.3 billion. At age 32, she is one of the youngest to join the ranks of billionaires.

    Surely she can set up a workshop in Mexico for the deported members of the Caborca Cartel.. & Cártel de Tláhuac or Cártel del Noreste gangs.. helping them in education, working skills, improve their well being. And of course the wonders of DEI CRT BLM and ESG.

  37. Left-wing activists who want to shut down Musk’s X handed taxpayer cash. 28 January 2025.

    The Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which aims to “kill Musk’s Twitter”, has received £300,000 from organisations partly funded by the taxpayer. The group was set up to curb online hate speech and disinformation.

    Another group, Stop Funding Hate – which targets advertisers that do business with outlets including The Daily Mail, The Sun and GB News – has received £100,000 from a foundation that receives grants from the taxpayer.

    Stop Funding Hate, run by Richard Wilson, a Remainer and supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, aims to “defund” Right-leaning media outlets by running social media campaigns against companies that advertise with them.

    CCDH not only has links to No 10 through Mr McSweeney, but also held a meeting last August with officials from the Home Office and the Department for Science Innovation and Technology to discuss the response to the riots triggered by the Southport murders.

    This is one of those articles that occasionally sneaks past the censors and reveals what you always suspected but could never prove. The whole thing is worth a look.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/27/left-wing-groups-try-shut-down-musk-x-given-taxpayer-cash/

  38. Morning all. Weird weather, it's effecting both my computers. Anyone else having the same problem?
    NHS. My response. So, what else is new?

    I did find an interesting thing this morning. An informative short video on Trumps trial in New York. Here it is. Useful to keep around.

    The Next Time Someone Says You Voted For A “34-Time Convicted Felon” Send Them This:

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

    1. When we lived round the corner in Allan Towers, we used to have trouble whenever there was serious rain.
      We don't seem to have the same problem in our new(ish) abode.

  39. Fortunately, the photo doesn't carry across.
    I doubt there's a Photoshop program that is up to the job.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-hypocrisy-of-ed-milibands-vanity-photographer/#comments-container

    "The hypocrisy of Ed Miliband’s vanity photographer

    28 January 2025, 7:22am

    Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, comes across as something of a political nerd, determined to bankrupt the country with his distinctive brand of net zero zealotry. Miliband has devised the answer to this image problem. He is looking to hire a vanity photographer – at considerable public expense – despite previously criticising politicians who did the same thing. In 2010, Miliband condemned David Cameron, then prime minister, for hiring a ‘personal photographer’ at a time when the government was asking everyone in the country to ‘tighten their belts’. Some might think it a touch hypocritical to do the same now that he’s in government – but clearly not our Ed.

    The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), headed by the former Labour leader, is advertising for a photographer to produce images that ‘grab headlines and stand out on social
    media’. Should that really be the priority for this or any government department?

    The lucky applicant will receive a salary of £41,000 and a £5,000 ‘communications allowance’ (what for, exactly?). The role allows for ‘flexible working’. It’s certainly good work if you can get it. The job description reveals other gems. The successful candidate can expect to accompany a minister on visits or attend international conferences. It says applicants must have experience with ‘high-profile’ figures and be prepared to travel at short notice. Perhaps the advert should have added that all travel is by foot to help meet Miliband’s net zero targets?

    A DESNZ spokesman tried to put a brave face on this nonsense, saying that the department was recruiting for a photographer to replace an existing role that it inherited from the Conservative government. ‘This is not a personal photographer for Ed Miliband,’ the spokesman said. Yes, but why not simply get rid of the role? Isn’t the government constantly telling the public that money is short, that there’s an enormous ‘black hole’ in the finances, and that no stone will be left unturned in the quest for savings? Vanity photographers would be a good place to start, no?

    Perhaps Miliband is seen as a special case given his well-documented problems he has had managing his public image. During his time as Labour leader, he was subject to unflattering newspaper caricatures, comparing him to lead character from the cartoon Wallace and Gromit. In 2014, he made the mistake of allowing photographers to capture him tucking into his breakfast. The now famous image of Miliband attempting to eat a bacon sandwich in a way that made him appear down to earth had precisely the opposite effect. The Sun newspaper used it on its front page before polling day in 2015 with the headline: ‘Save our bacon’. The images were so calamitous that some political commentators speculated that it lost him the election.

    Miliband is not alone in the vanity stakes. Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, hired a photographer last year on a reported salary of £68,000-a-year. It is not immediately obvious why Rayner’a photographer earns so much more than Miliband’s. Surely Miliband’s snapper has the harder job, or maybe not?

    Rayner too is no stranger to political hypocrisy. She was very critical of Boris Johnson, when, as prime minister, he used photographers in this way. She was blunt enough to decry: ‘The public will be rightly questioning why there is apparently no limit on the money that can be found to pay for a coterie of vanity photographers for the prime minister.’

    Well, indeed. Just as the public will be asking why money from the public purse is now being wasted on photographers for Labour ministers. Is there no end to this hypocrisy and vanity? Are there really no more important things to focus on?

    It is easy enough to mock Miliband and Rayner. They deserve it. But the issue highlights a broader problem. In-house vanity photographers for ministers are becoming the norm. Such employees of the state can be relied upon to produce wholesome images – political propaganda in effect – of ministers going about their daily work. Any images that do not fit the prevailing narrative of the day can be deleted, and any awkward public encounter that does not go to plan can be expunged from the official record. It is not unheard of for government departments to block independent news photographers from attending certain events, preferring to use and distribute images taken by in-house photographers. This amounts to a dangerous curtailing of press freedom. Labour, in opposition, committed itself to transparency in government. Yet another promise broken."

    1. 400653+ up ticks,

      Morning Anne,

      One worth paying for would be front ans side image, with a number underneath, long awaited for.

    2. There's their idea of transparency, and then there's our idea of transparency. I prefer ours, because we pay the piper.

    4. First advert i have watched in years. He really needs to be hired as a marketing executive. I can even remember what the product is.

  41. Feeling a bit fragile this morning after a disturbed night……. griping indigestion pains and then I was sick in the basin while sitting on the loo.
    Won't be doing a lot today.

    1. Morning Ndovu. Not sleeping well seems to be a Nottler affliction. I was up at 2:30 and back in bed at 4.00.

    3. Aaaarghhh, hope you feel better soon, if you can keep water down that might help. Possibly a bug, take your temp when you can? Take it easy xxx

        2. okaydoke, just been reading Carl H, seems like gastric flu could be a thing this winter. So….relax today, stay warm, wrapped up.

          2. Good plan. You are allowed your laptop, in order that you may communicate with the world. Dr Kate’s orders….x

          3. Back in the 80s when I worked in Selfridges there was a young woman who loved to proffer health advice and used to preface it with a grin and, "When I was a doctor, before I became a secretary…"

          10. All wind and hot air, mola – a lot of it about…:-DD Yoga does help with flexibility, and also muscle strength which has helped me – hypermobility, just fall over time to time (and no alcohol – boo!)

          12. It was telling me it didn’t feel well….. I was joined by Jessie, then OH came for his afternoon nap, and we all went to sleep.

        3. Ndovu – so sorry, it's horrid to feel like that. I'm not going to be popular for saying this, but when it happens to me, the only thing that helps is Coca Cola or some other form of pop. Perhaps ginger beer would be ideal, since ginger is the anti-emetic of choice. CC Contains total crap, I know, but it really does do the trick. I assume it's the same weird properties that enable it to strip a penny of years of grime and make it as new. Dunno.

          Get well soon! x

    4. Poor you? Something you ate? Fever?

      Remember ginger in any form is good if you are nauseous.

    5. Oh dear, poor you. I always think being sick is the worst. If ever I am sick it’s water and dry crackers if I feel like eating anything. Get well soon xxx

    1. I think that the only way to deal with this is to continue to tell the truth as you see it. How dare these people restrict my right to think and communicate. Force me to live their lie because they are to cowardly and to incompetent to face truth. Here is Gad Saad telling the truth about Islam. What he is saying is 100% true. I know it is true. Am I supposed to pretend that the truth is a lie simply to cater to people that can't deal with the truth and who refuse to face the enemy? I am supposed to put myself below their moral failure, why? I'm supposed to go along with their inability to understand because they wish to hide themselves in false fantasies that make them feel comfortable as disaster moves ever forward to surround and envelope them? Why should I participate in fiddling while Rome burns because that is what they want to do? I do not wish to be a stunted individual and I will not be. These people are loathsome.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Y3LyQekco

    2. These 'reports' are always leaked in this way to gauge a response so they have wiggle room. They can say it was only a consultation exercise and we are blah blah blah.

  44. STOP PRESS – any criticism of His Majesty's Government is to be a serious crime with a minimum prison sentence of two years.

    1. Does that mean that every Labour politician who blames "it", whatever "it" might have been, on the evil Torys is guilty of criticising HMG, and can be imprisoned for their criticism?

      No?
      Thought not.

      1. Oh dear, you are off-message. The new law only applies to a Labour government, of course.

    2. If I become a very old lady , and my dearly beloved a very old man ..

      I don't want jibber jabbering darkies attending to our personal needs .

      Hand on my heart , I have seen how rough these people are with elderly people , and of course whities can be equally rough and cruel .. frail adults are manhandled and shouted at , and carers are impatient and crude .

      Care agencies are money making violators, and the social services are full of I-pad tattooed, pink haired nose ringed lefties ..

      Sorry , just relating my experience , my truth and the horror of what is unseen but I have seen and protested about .

      It is almost equivalent to some schools in the old days when schoolteachers were brutal and sadistic to their pupils ..

      1. I have relatives with Jamaican carers and you could not find kinder, gentler people.

        They go to great lengths to ensure their patients get everything they need to keep them clean, well fed and comfortable.
        Some of these white folk are incontinent, or gaga or need a great deal of care at all hours. I couldn't do what they do with the patience they show.

        If I ever need care, I hope I'm fortunate enough to get similar.

        1. Yes , Jamaican — different to Africans , totally different .

          My younger 51 year old son was delivered by a Jamaican midwife , Sister Jackson, wonderful woman , and eased me through my 10 days in hospital!

          Africans haven't culturally caught up yet ..think about that . They cannot give nor chat or relate to anything , because they carry a chip on their shoulders.

        2. Hear you, sos. When I had my first baby '76, I was attended (NHS) by a Jamaican nurse and a Mauritian specialist. Kind, caring, efficient, and for many hours. Specialist had been working 24 hours when he came to see me, following morning. NHS would have been and would be absolutely ****** without them.

          1. See my reply below , ditto , my younger son was delivered by a Jamaican midwife in 1973 , the kindest nicest nurse ever .

            Africans are different , totally different .

      2. I am 'grooming' my cleaner. We have discussed extra duties other than cleaning if i get enfeebled.

        I know her. I trust her. I like her.

        The State has proven it is incapable so i won't be relying on them.

      3. In the North of England (at least the bit where I am)…already happened/happening. A leftover from 'the time of Covid' perhaps when they were the only ones would work in care homes. I've made my own plans, not pretty but hopefully quickly and final.

    1. The answer's obvious – UK is running short of overseas territories big enough to accommodate all these illegal boat people so UK should acquire Greenland as first refusal from Denmark.

      https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5276173/denmarks-greenland-uk-trump

      Both US and UK (and the EU for that matter) can arrange military transport for those fleeing their economically challenged countries. UK deserves payment for providing such a facility including the runways that Trump needs there.

        1. Mark comes to same conclusion as I have.
          Trump gave the cold shoulder to Sir Kier untli the Danish PM gave the UK Government the trump card.

          Deal or no Deal?
          Chagos is still on the PM’s desk after Jo passed his hand to Donald.

    2. 400653+ up ticks,

      Morning TB,
      To achieve this there has to be an internal war every six months say,
      along the lines of the football imforustructure as in,blackburn kicked the shit out of brentford on Saturday multiple dead on both sides.

      Self inflicted culling, the state of the nation currently dictates we really should take the worldwide culling cup this year.

    2. Trump and Trump Jr have apparently just told Americans to buy gold (like the Chinese)…..almost game over, when the public latches on and starts a buying frenzy.

      1. It's a possibility, or could be Barron just testing, or even fake news – had that one before from gold bugs. Currently up .27% @ 2773.80. Bulk will still be in Fort Knox.

        1. Trump Jr tweeted it, according to maneco64. It is actually common sense given that Chinese people have been saving in gold for a couple of years. The bulk of the gold is definitely not in Fort Knox…left over paper-clip and some lease agreements with bullion banks more like…China is sitting on a gold mountain and Russia could go on a gold standard tomorrow.

          1. Good response, thanks BB2. Currently up .34%. Govt Mint says bulk still stored Ft Knox. Who am I to blow against the wind. I like Barron, chip off the old block 🙂

          2. Thank you. yes, I agree, Baron Trump is his father’s Gen Z secret weapon.
            My children are Gen Z, they really are different from the two generations that went before them. They do things differently.

            They have been lying about the gold for some time now, I think – I wonder what their plan is for when gold does return to the monetary system. Will they expect everyone else just to believe that the gold that’s not been audited for fifty years is still there? Apparently it’s all been leased out to bullion banks who sold it and bought treasuries that paid more interest than was being charged to lease the gold. (I haven’t verified this, but some quite serious commenters have told this story). So what happens if the banker-owned government ever demnands its gold back from the bankers? Does there exist gold in the world upon which the US govt or the Federal reserve has a claim? It is not clear.

          3. ' Does there exist gold in the world upon which the US govt or the Federal reserve has a claim? It is not clear'.

            Who would have thought that gold was made of recycled lavatory paper !

          4. I would be willing to bet that considering modern sophisticated methods to search with, that there is a lot more gold to find in Alaska and probably some in California.

          5. I doubt it’s still all there. Someone advised me years ago gold would go to 7k, didn’t believe it then, don’t now. American will never let go its gold reserves, have some fun CBDC meantime. Used to see an ad on tv for buying gold (jewellery etc), not seen it recently.

          6. Alasdair MacLeod would say that it’s not gold rising in price, it#s fiat currency losing its value (against real money). So the real question is, how much value do you think the pound will lose?

          7. That’s a tough one, I’d only be guessing….against the dollar? hmm…15%….what say you, Alasdair?

          8. Real money is gold! This is international trading law and has been since Roman times. The dollar is just another credit note. All fiat currencies revert to their intrinsic value, which is zero eventually. Fiat currencies depend on people’s belief in them, nothing more.

            It’s thought by some to be likely they will re-value gold so that all the fiat currencies can be gold-backed in some form. The head of the Dutch central bank was asked by a journalist a couple of years ago whether he was worried about the Dutch national debt. His reply was something like “no, because we have our gold.” That implies a revaluation of gold to cover the debt. Plus central banks seem to be buying gold, and European central banks seem to be balancing their gold relative to their GDPs.

          9. Thanks – I’ve read China (and Russia, to a lesser extent) have been buying gold for some time. Some have been betting on gold as a rising investment, whilst Covid has been bad, possibly WW3 more likely to trigger a big rise, BB2? Today 2791, slightly down from yesterday.

          10. Gold doesn’t rise. Its purchasing power has stayed surprisingly similar for thousands of years. You don’t buy gold to make a profit, you buy it to protect your wealth against the falling value of the fiat credit notes that we call money.
            Quoting from Macleod again; central banks are buying gold not because they hope to make a profit on it but because they are getting out of credit, i.e. selling US treasuries and other fiat based bonds while they can.
            Gold is the wealth protector in bad times.

          12. Yes! It’s not in our folk memory to face crises where one can lose everything, and a lot of Britons are woefully exposed to the dangers of a real financial crisis.
            Other cultures save in gold – eastern Europeans, Germans, Indians. IIRC, Indian housewives collectively are thought to own 27 000 tonnes of gold. If fiat currency assets lose their value, guess who’s going to be the richest group in Britain?

          13. Ah yes I’ve read about Indian housewives before, including those in the UK….they’ll be worth knowing, or will they? Can’t take gold coins to the supermarket to buy the weekly shop, after all – can’t eat gold. Think we’re stuck with fiat for the foreseeable, despite talk of CBDC – of which credit/debit cards are an early form. I looked at my cheque book the other day – two years since I wrote one.

          14. Gold coins are for wealth transfer, not buying groceries. Silver is for bartering in the event of a currency collapse, or small pieces of gold like rings or even links of a chain (the last was used in Argentina during the hyperinflation a few years ago).
            How long the fiat currency lasts depends on how long people carry on accepting it. If inflation passes a certain point, people lose faith in the currency.
            Yes, supermarkets would be useless in that scenario, or they would be the gateway that the government would use to try and get people to accept digital slavery aka CBDC. This is why independent food producers and retailers are so important.

          15. If WW3 happens, it will be an attempt to hide the end of the fiat dollar. That collapse is the single most important event of this era.
            In 2008, they printed a lot of money to bail the dollar system out. In August 2019, it came to a crunch again. This time they needed to print more money. By sheer coincidence (aren’t those bankers lucky!) along came covid lockdowns which enabled the creation of enormous quantities of money.
            The next wave will be even bigger.

          16. Trump must surely be aware of that. Is it possibly also one of the reasons Sunak promoted a CBDC (never took off, but will do at some point not too distant)? As for Covid, very suspicious – both virus and vaccine from Pfizer labs. (I only had the vaccine due to family pressure, regret that now.) I believe the virus started out as a bio-weapon, sounds plausible. As for robots due to population decline, possibly on the way to Hal.

    4. Already signed:-

      You're receiving this email because your email has been used to sign the petition “Abolish Non-Crime Hate Incidents”, but you have already signed this petition.

      View the petition “Abolish Non-Crime Hate Incidents” at:
      https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/701051

      Thanks,

      The Petitions Team
      House of Commons

  53. This is what you are up against..
    I am a marriage & parenting expert with a Masters degree in psychology. I specialise in providing solutions and advice for western Muslims to have successful relationships and outcomes with their spouses and children, in an Islamic context.

    And why Andrew Tate's UK political ambitions will fail, and he will come to regret his choice of religion.
     https://www.youtube.com/shorts/80rJyYTcj5A

  54. IMO Whitty's "bombshell" really isn't news. What will be news is if this man, England's CMO still, is involved with any "novel" disease. Whitty's admission places him and his opinions on any "new" infection in the null and void corner.

    Notwithstanding Whitty's statement, it does look as if the PTB are stoking the idea of an epidemic here with the controls they're putting in place re Avian flu and the report of a human case in Shropshire.

    Surely, with CV-19 remaining a running sore for many people, any to attempt to re-run the CV-19 gameplan is displaying of a lack of imagination on the part of those involved.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8d77507330da1446d9f690fef46fedb999881dd4e6ea3c791e9d42667a8758e9.png

      1. I surprised the Government hasn''t legislated for ownership restriction of tinned seafood and narwhal tusks.

  58. I see that global boiling is bringing us a colder than usual start to February. Funny that.

        1. ….and you'll get Maunder Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for a couple of decades if she's right. Also it will make Millibrain and his ilk of EcoZealots look complete and utter twats….

      2. I'll bet that when the temperature start to drop 2030's that the Greeniacs will claim the credit for their net zero efforts.

      3. "Magnetic field of sunspots forms toroidal field while solar background magnetic field forms poloidal field. Solar dynamo cyclically converts poloidal field into toroidal one reaching its maximum at a solar cycle maximum and then the toroidal field back to the poloidal one toward a solar minimum"

        That's easy enough for her to say, but where is the proof?

        1. The proof of the pudding will be in the global cooling (or not as the case may be- Not too long to wait to see if she is correct).

  59. I'm not sure I necessarily want to live to such a ripe old age, but it's another example of how we don't know definitively what is and isn't good in our diets.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14333039/Experts-studied-people-live-100-discovered-diet-changes.html

    But the expert did detail the foods you may want to incorporate more of in your diet to 'cultivate' these types of bacteria.

    For Akkermansia he said pomegranates, dried cranberries, concord grapes, either whole or juiced, chilis, black raspberries and Chinese black vinegar were good options.

    'These are achievable ways to actually cultivate this one bacteria,' he said.

    For the other three bacteria, Dr Li recommended people store cooked carbohydrates, like rice, potatoes pasta, overnight in the fridge to turn them into the resistant starch the microorganisms needed to thrive.

    He explained this cooling process causes a reaction in the food which makes slower to digest to the better of positive bacteria growth in your digestive system.

    'That temperature change changes the chemistry of the starch the next day,' he said.

    'When you have it, even if you heat it up again, it's resistant starch that grows some of these healthy four players.'

      1. Would that be Father Grizzly, patriarch of the church of carnivores and the latter day steaks?

  60. Sometimes they can ask such dumb questions on the TV. Just saw the intro to 'Good Afternoon Britain' on GB News and they asked "why is there such a marked decline in traditional pie and mash shops in London?".

    2. Is it the increase in vegetarianism and veganism? Or is it that Cockneys in large numbers have relocated out of the capital?

    3. Guardian headline of March 2024:

      ‘There’s a lot of nostalgia’: how cockney cuisine emigrated from the East End to Essex

      Londoners leaving the city have taken their food with them, keeping the pie and mash scene alive

      It goes on to say:

      Moulsham Street in Chelmsford is a typical English high street, with barbers, salons, pubs and no shortage of culinary options: a Chinese, Indian, chippy and Italian, kebab shops and greasy spoons. But there’s one spot you wouldn’t find in most of the country – the pie and mash shop.

      F Cooke has all the trappings of a traditional pie and mash shop: white -tiled walls, pictures of celebrities, marble tables and wooden benches. It opened in 2020, becoming the first in the city, according to director Jordan Lassman. There are now two. Robins, which has six shops across east London and Essex, soon joined it in 2021. They are part of a burgeoning scene in Essex, which according to Lassman, is “the new home of pie and mash”.

      https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/mar/09/how-cockney-cuisine-pie-mash-emigrated-from-london-east-end-to-essex

      1. I've had traditional pie, mash and liquor in a Ramsgate eatery which features the cockney favourite on its menu, and very good, it was, too. The proprietors are not Londoners, though.

    4. I've never seen a pie and mash shop. If it was a tradition then the decline set in before 1960. (I can't claim to have noticed anything outside my home neighbourhood prior to 1960.)

    3. Meanwhile, Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum poked fun at Trump's renaming decision and even initially sarcastically suggested renaming North America as "América Mexicana" or "Mexican America".

      "He says that he will call it the Gulf of America on its continental shelf," Sheinbaum said last week. "For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico, and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico."

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8634nwxd46o

      2. She is being coy. I'm sure she is quite aware of La Raza in California. It is a movement that believes that Mexico reclaim all the land all the way from California, Orogen, through Washington, Texas and New Mexico, Utah,Colorado etc as Greater Mexico. The Mexican Americans believe this land is theirs.

    4. English Channel, obvs. Klumzy Tongue on YouTube 'Course I'm English'…includes swearing tho….

    1. It's alarming to think that whilst it not illegal to say something offensive, even a perception that it may be based on a personal hatred of a certain group of people may go on an invisible record accessible only by employers and insurance companies.

  63. One chainsaw sharpened, a couple of the larger logs I picked up yesterday cut up and chopped.
    Hopefully, I hope Graduate Son will get round to stacking the chopped logs.

  65. Remember the small colony of bats on my balcony? (Of course you do; Nottlers have memories that are the envy of elephants everywhere…). Well I slithered into a little plant shop yesterday and the bloke asked me how my citronella was getting on. (I'd bought it there months ago and hadn't visited since – Argentine shopkeepers continue to astound me.)

    I said it was thriving, and joked that it was probably because it was fertilised daily by batshit.

    He just nodded. Apparently batshit is legitimately an excellent plant fertiliser. 🤣🤣 He showed me a bag of the same for sale at a not inconsiderable price.

    I have my dustpan and brush at the ready – riches here I come!

      1. Wu chan? What, they’re bloody Chinese bats?? 😉

        Thanks – the smell means I instinctively try not to inhale the dust.

    2. Will the expression "batshit crazy" be adopted by devotees of the droppings of the flying mammals?

      2. That was what made me laugh when my landlady told me what the droppings were (I’d said how irritating it was to have to keep.sweeping them up).

        I then had to explain why I was laughing, in Spanish… 🤣🤣

          1. Laughter, as *you* know very well, transcends language. Explaining why one is laughing, however, can be tricky… 🤣🤣

            Luckily, Argentina is one of the only countries I’ve come across which shares the English sense of humour. 😎

    3. It is. If you can find/see where they're exiting/entering you should find a pile. They move on time to time, presumably when their current place has filled up. Used to have a small colony pipistrelle here, watched them going out hunting most evenings – one time, just sitting on the wall watching, sparrow hawk swooped down just above my head and took one..wow….

      1. We had the same experience in our back garden siting out side by the small wild life pond at dusk. But new neighbour's who 'were afraid of the dark' insisted on having lights on in their gardens and it also scared off the owls that use to perch in the surrounding trees.

        1. I never understand why people want to live 'in the country' but want to sanitise it. Wildlife pushed to the edges more than sufficiently imo. Used to see road kill, badgers, foxes, various birds …not so much now.

          1. Most of them have moved from towns and don't really understand village and country side life.
            Several people including the same house some newish neighbours have moved into still burn logs on their fires and the afore mentioned used a large log burning strove to heat their new and huge extension. The new owners don't use it and have even complained about the smell of the other neighbours wood fires. They came from south London.

          2. Sounds like the townies who moved to this village and complained about the noise from cattle in the fields…

          3. For others, church bells. Knew someone who had a dog rescue place, up in the hills but miles away from most houses, apart from a row of three…you guessed it, someone moved there and complained about the dog barks.

          6. We had one villager complain about the chimes of the church clock. When the clock stopped working we had far more complaints about that.

          7. I don’t attend church, but I like the building and its contents, and especially the bells. The graveyard gets overgrown, but I think it’s probably not alone in that.

          8. We had some idiots complain about a guy who on the lowest plot of the allotments from the road next to a boundary hedge put a growth tunnel about the size of a green house on his allotment. He moved home soon after the stupid council told him to take it down.

          11. Poor little buggers! In any case, it’s out of season.
            After killing the pig a few years ago, I’m in no hurry to kill anything else.

          13. Great to see Obs.
            We have had Muntjac in our garden there are larger deer nearby and even had a female peahen in the front garden. Pheasants trying to nest but we get a lot of foxes, squirrels, magpies and the occasional red kits flying over.

          15. Yes I know originally I wrote Peacock but it wasn’t I was distracted in both directions with phone calls and people leaving messages. I didn’t get back to it. But well spotted. 🦚🦆

      1. It's strong stuff, Grizz. Husband made a splendid three shelf bat house – my advice was not to bother, 'they won't use it, it's new wood'….want to guess who was right?…….

    5. Watch out for the Vampire bats (you can easily tell them by the amount of eye makeup they're wearing….!)

      1. Will be Hoary or Free Tailed in BA…they carry quite a few viruses including corona, prob best not to get too close investigating eye make up….😆🦇🦇🦇

    7. Hi ashes! I have just started to clean out the pond, which I haven’t done for 3 years! The smelly sludge of leaves and other organic stuff (including a couple of crisp packets and a plastic bag) is apparently a great garden compost! I’m going to set up a little stall at the gate selling it!

      1. Hi Sue

        We had a couple of ponds in our old place , lovely garden , we built the ponds from scratch .. great fun using a mini digger .. Moh got rather daring and dug another large hole .. I miss our old garden, we have been here 25 years , but are surrounded by hedge , trees in other boundaries and chalky soil and not too much going on sadly.

        When we used to clean them out ( the ponds) , we found all sorts of wildlife hidden under the dead sludge and leaves , newts , dragon fly larva, water boatmen , beetles , baby fish , water snails toads, frogs , and now is the time for spawning , sorry to interfere , but please examine your sludgy stuff for signs of unusual wild life .

        I suspect you do that anyway, but hope you don't mind me reminding you .

        1. Thanks Belle! I’ve actually been very careful as the gunk is inches thick and I’ve not had the pump running for 3 years! It’s a 3 pool running fall which was lovely when we had the fish, but the ‘herring’ ate them all, and all we’ve had since are a mass of frogs! I wanted it cleaned before the frogs spawned and I’ve left the gungy stuff on the garden round the pond! But there were so many small branches in the water from the tree men!

  66. And so it goes on………
    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/furious-rachel-reeves-row-explodes-on-lbc-as-labour-mp-skewered-for-putting-head-in-sand/ar-AA1xYWqL?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=45621fc7fc334f939842164050b9c91f&ei=14

    And on and on …….
    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/sky-news-kay-burley-leaves-treasury-minister-stuttering-as-she-insists-i-won-t-comment/ar-AA1xZ28s?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=45621fc7fc334f939842164050b9c91f&ei=38

    1. Naughty….no, I just throw logs and they settle neatly. Would be good advice not to get in my way…..

  70. There was a fashion some years ago for wood burners in cities – looked good, I suppose. Guessing they were truly ripped one by suppliers. As PetaJ would say 'some people are really stupid'.

      2. I know next to nothing about him, other than that he's a Reform MP, or at least I think he is. I'm not too sure.

        2. He is fabulous, David, whether you agree with him or not. Fearless, articulate and not to be bullied. Wonderful man.

  73. But, the foreign office and department for wasting money will say, if we don't send them your money then even more would get here.

    2. Indeed.
      Oh wait let's check out what Donald would do.. there may be a clue.. a snipet of a plan-Stan.

      Trump suspends DOZENS of rebellious woke US government officials for blocking his $60b freeze on foreign aid

    3. Indeed.
      Oh wait let's check out what Donald would do.. there may be a clue.. a snipet of a plan-Stan.

      Trump suspends DOZENS of rebellious woke US government officials for blocking his $60b freeze on foreign aid

  74. Ref the population increase mentioned below. Fakenham is in the throes of having 800 new houses built. That'll mean – roughly – 2,000 more people.

    The existing GP surgery is swamped. There are no plans to have more doctors. No new schools will be built.

    Sounds just great, doesn't it?

    2. And of course it doesn't end there Bill, all waste disposal, energy, water supplies traffic, it never ends.

    3. That Rayner woman wants us to build 1,000 in our village , rural , River Frome running through, sheep territory , and a very busy tourist hub for Lulworth and Durdle Door ..

      We have to type a request to see the doctor , and we have a railway crossing where the queue can be a mile long if the gates fail .. The Golden hour is a joke now, might as well summon the air ambulance !

    4. Sadly the Numpties in government don't do anything that even faintly resembles joined up thinking/planning!

    5. Same here around our little village, Bill. Planning permission for 250 just up the road, quarter of a mile away in the disused cement works. the 250 is just the first phase….. and no infrastructure being built to support it.

  75. Ben Marlow
    Don’t mourn the passing of WH Smith – it’s been a soulless rip-off for years
    High street giants have been vanishing for a good reason – most people stopped shopping there long ago

    “The end of WH Smith on the high street”; Retail “bombshell”; “The fall of WH Smith”. The news that one of the UK’s best-known chains is planning to jettison its town centre stores was barely hours old and already the dewy-eyed obituaries were being penned.

    GB News was so alarmed by the prospect of this once-great shopping institution vanishing from towns up and down the country that it felt compelled to run a snap survey.

    “Would you miss WH Smith on Britain’s high streets?” it asked viewers. The assumption is that the nation was plunged into a period of prolonged mourning as yet another stalwart of the country’s dwindling retail scene prepared to meet its maker.

    We have social media to thank for providing a more rounded response. “Popped into @WHSmith at London’s Waterloo Station yesterday. They were trialling a revolutionary new system – a real shop assistant serving customers at a till,” joked one X user.

    Another bemoaned the “s—-y self-service checkout with no elbow room and some miserable b—-r who doesn’t even acknowledge my existence while I do their bloody job”. A third predicted that there would not be a chain that “people would miss less than WH Smith”.

    Of course, it is sad every time another company turns its back on traditional bricks and mortar. Every exit is another nail in the coffin of the UK high street. Town centres are being rapidly hollowed out as, one after another, struggling retailers that have been a mainstay of shopping precincts pull out, leaving behind empty, boarded-up premises.

    There’s a negative knock-on effect too, whereby each new business failure makes it more likely that others will throw in the towel too. As the big banks shamelessly close branches as fast as they can get away with and pubs continue to struggle with spiralling costs, your typical high street will soon be a thoroughly depressing mix of vape kiosks, Turkish barbers, charity shops, and forgettable pound stores selling cheap biscuits, bleach, bird food and plastic tat.

    But there is really no need to mourn the fate of WH Smith’s high street arm for more than a few seconds. There is always a tendency to bring out the black armbands when a big high street name is in trouble. It was the same with Woolworths, BHS, Mothercare, Topshop/Topman, Wilko and many others. We allow sentimentality and nostalgia to cloud our memory and fool us into pining for a version of something that ceased to exist years ago.

    In reality, every one of these once-illustrious names were missed for about five minutes and no one has given them another thought since. What tends to get overlooked is that there is a very good reason why these names vanish in the first place and that is because most people stopped shopping there a long time ago.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/27/dont-mourn-passing-wh-smith-been-soulless-ripoff-years/

    Caradog ap Bran
    3 hrs ago
    First they came for Woolworths, but WH Smiths did nothing. Then they came for BHS, Mothercare and Topshop/Topman but by the time they came for WH Smith, there was no one left to save them.

    Clive Dudley
    3 hrs ago
    What is killing our High Street shops? Councils. They hate motorists so you can't drive there easily. You can't park cheaply or easily. They keep pedestrianizing the City Centres till they look look soulless Russian Gulags. Councils, and governments, inflict exorbitant Rate bills on these shops. If you look at photos of High Streets back in the 70s they are booming. Loads of different shops. Plenty of people. Plenty of buses and plenty of parking. Yeah, politicians and councillors are to blame!

    1. After our town centre post office closed that was the only time i had been in WH Smiths in years. The PO rented the upstairs.
      That was the last time i sent a parcel from there (to Grizz as it happens) the cost of sending the parcel massively exceeded the value of the books.
      I had already walked one mile to my 'local PO' and they said they couldn't send a parcel of that weight from their and i needed to go to town.
      At least Dolly enjoyed the walk even if my legs were giving me hell !

      I now use online ParcelToGo. At a fraction of the price. Some of the online companies will allow you to download a label and they will pick it up from your home.

      The only reason now for going to town is to report to the police station. ONLY JOKING !

      They are about to close too……………….. :@)

      1. I'm very fortunate that our local (250 yards away) Spar Shop has a sub post office that also does take very large parcels. I've just written a few paragraphs for the local Parish newsletter encouraging folk to make regular use of the local spar shop (even if they do their main grocery shop in town) as I've lost the will to live on more than one occasion queuing in Main Post offices….

    2. Its only the begining. The internet has changed everything. I buy most things on line. The High Street just went down M&S, never shop there or JohnLewis, We used to shop there most of the time, but the are not a patch on what they used to be. They have shown no loyalty to its customers and I have shown no loyalty to them.

      1. Ditto, Johnny. Unless someone is a fan of shopping in actual shops (m-i-l is one), it's a no-brainer.

    3. Our WHS is friendly. The people chat to the customers (who mainly buy newspapers, to be honest).

        1. Very tall and very stupid and completely lacking in charm. He was stabbed by a Muslim extremist but learnt nothing from the event!

    3. Got a bridge to sell us, Eddy. There may not be a change to official policy, but unofficially – who can say….

  77. Why Putin is feeling more confident. The Spectator. 28 January 2025.

    Russian troops are advancing faster than they did in 2022. Last year, they captured more than 1,600 square miles in the Donetsk region, including four towns – Avdiivka, Selydove, Vuhledar and Kurakhove. This month, 20 Ukrainian settlements have fallen, with Russian forces now just three miles from entering the Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine’s defence continues to crumble amid a critical infantry shortage and chaotic coordination between units. Some 250,000 Ukrainian soldiers are facing almost twice as many Russians on the front line, and the gap is widening. Talks of Trump’s potential peace deal have further eroded morale, triggering a fresh wave of desertions both on the frontline and at training centres, as soldiers do not want to die just before a ceasefire is reached. More than six million men have not updated their military data to avoid conscription.

    This must have snuck through. It would never have appeared in the Telegraph. One of the oddities of this war is that those who support Ukraine have consistently urged its expansion and those like myself who think Russia is not solely to blame have sought to bring it an end through negotiation. A strange dichotomy that can only be explained by hidden external forces acting on opinion.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-putin-is-feeling-more-confident/

    1. I think Trump will do a deal with Putin, enabling Putin to save face – otherwise Putin replacement likely to be much worse. Be amazed if contact not already made.

      1. I agree. I see that little skunk Zelensky (in his faux military sweatshirt) – was annoying people at Auschwitz yesterday.

          4. You’ll know if you see her, Kathie…likely have bag carriers:-) hope you’re doing ok, and singing beautifully, as per 🎼…I liked your recent video x

          5. Thank you, Kate. (It is Kate, isn’t it? I get confuzzled.)

            Luckily I don’t have the money to haunt the posh shops here so I should be OK.

            And all is pretty damn good here, thanks. Wishing you the aame!

            K.x

          6. Yes, it is, most refer to me as that..(beats ‘old bag’ :-D) You looked pretty damn good to me, posh shops or no. And so good to hear your voice, don’t ever stop xx

      2. Putin does not need to save face. Russia has won in Ukraine. In fact Putin has exercised extreme caution in the face of western aggression towards it.

        1. Could be, corrimobile. I think it’s going to end soon. West needs the gas, stop the German Greens.

    2. Had Trump been president at the time the war would never have started. The blame lies with the hubris, incompetence and lack of judgement of Biden, Johnson and Zelensky

  78. As you all know everything for me resonates where food is concerned. Most the food progs i watch now are on Iplayer.

    Iplayer is the BBC. Masterchef, just like Strictly, has been damaged by accusations of 'toxic masculinity'.

    Which is why to my surprise The Great British Menu is celebrating Britons and the banquet will be held at Blenheim.

    Possibly an attempt at avoiding bias.

        1. I know how to cook it, Phiz….never made it but s-i-l had a pasta machine one time, mostly noodles! Is that what you make?

          4. I can't be bothered any more. Even the Italians mostly buy shop bought and tinned tomatoes.

          3. His father had four wives. Susan Mary Hornby ​(m. 1951; div. 1961)​, Tina Onassis ​(m. 1961; div. 1971)​, Countess Rosita Douglas ​(m. 1972; div. 2008)​, Lily Sahni ​(m. 2008).

          7. I once worked with a young chap called Jamie. He told me he hated the name as it made him sound like a toddler. I hate it too so I started to call him Jim.

          3. Oddly enough, Alec, my latest next door neighbour is called Jamie Leigh, because her parents liked the actress Jamie Leigh Curtis. Though I doubt any of them realised that her parents were Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.

  79. Why do we (Nottlers) think that the woman driver, who killed those children at the school in Wimbledon, has been re arrested? She had a medical episode, and the police said they were dropping charges. Apparently, some of the parents are unhappy with that decision. Whilst I understand that these people must be absolutely devastated, does it not seem like a desire for revenge?

    2. What does 'medical episode' mean – she blacked out or similar? if she had a history of that shouldn't have been driving especially if her insurers not aware. Guessing it will all come out at some point.

        1. Thanks, Sue. Sounds slightly odd to me, but I’m not a medic. Maybe there were eye witnesses, possibly a scan done, more seizures since etc…

        2. Out of curiosity, I searched for the most likely age group to experience a first seizure. The NHS says childhood is the most common age, as I expected, but I was surprised to discover that the over-sixties are the next most likely, the risk increasing with advancing years

          https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/epilepsy/

          An Australian website makes a similar observation.

          https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/epilepsy-and-aging

          This particular driver was 48, not an age particularly associated with first seizures.

          https://www.itv.com/news/london/2025-01-28/driver-arrested-in-investigation-of-fatal-school-crash-that-killed-two-children

    3. Perhaps the police have discovered some unacceptable tweets or opinions which warrant swift retribution

    4. Sue Mac, people have a tendency to demand ever more punishment of convicted criminals. First "It's too lenient a fine/sentence", then "It should be a life sentence", then "He/she should be hanged", and so on to what should happen to the judge in the case, from debarred, jailed, life sentence, then a hanging. I agree with you, Sue Mac, that the complainants must be absolutely devastated, but their ever-increasing demands are exactly as you say: a desire for revenge.

    1. Oh dear, there seems to be a lot of it about. Take care and hope you're soon better. I was back in the hospital yesterday morning but the doctor was very helpful and keeping to the regime he advised, I'm seeing improvement already. Woke up to a lot of blood on Monday and I don't think it would occur to my nice dentist to recommend a week of cold food, cold shower, no mouth rinse, interdental brushes only and sleep propped up – which means cat-napping and snoring but hey, whatever works!

        1. It'll heal in time. The blood tests taken yesterday show that I don't have any conditions that would prevent that but the blood thinners etc slow the process. Hot stuff is off the menu just as aspirin is, as it further encourages bleeding. Paracetamol is the acceptable painkiller if needed but I've not used it thus far toady.

    2. "Dial one if you want ten or more tickets, dial two if you need to amend a current booking, dial three etc, etc."
      "Dear God, PLEASE just let me talk to a Human with good command of English!!"

      1. The Probate Office have got this down to a fine art. Telephone the helpline and you get to hear a recorded message to the effect that if you have submitted the requisite Inheritance Tax forms after 12 weeks you can log into your account and then seek help. At which point the call is ended abruptly. And I thought Purgatory didn't exist. I was wrong it is alive and well and being 'managed' by the Probate Office.

        1. Im sure you have discovered that it is HMRC that are the slow coaches and dont meet their service standard. I received probate in 10 days last summer!

        2. Im sure you have discovered that it is HMRC that are the slow coaches and dont meet their service standard. I received probate in 10 days last summer!

      2. We’re moving later next month and you wouldn’t believe the hoops you have to jump through to organise change of address. He was on the phone for over 2 hours earlier to talk talk. Unbelievable. I thought this in-line stuff was supposed to make things easier 😟

        1. Aagghh!! Talk Talk! I'm with them. They keep telling me I owe them money despite having paid the bill nearly a fortnight before.

          1. We were with them for a few years – their customer service was abysmal. We went back to BT. Better the devil….

          2. I’ve ended up with them through various mergers and take-overs. I was with the Post Office, then Shell Energy took them over, then it was Ovo, I think (I’ve lost count!) and finally Talk Talk. It was not from choice; we were with Talk Talk years ago and gave them up as a bad job.

      3. At least that means that you have had some level of response. It’s better than “your call is important to us and you are number 232 in a queue”.

    4. Very good – but he left out the bit about a fine for not using the parking app…..

      KBO, matey.

    1. He is working very hard writing many letters to the government as well as making speeches in HoC. A good man. Where is Farage?

        1. I wonder how Nigel Farage feels about the fact that Rupert Lowe seems to be by far the most sensible and coherent MP in the HoC?

          I don't think that Rupert Lowe has any personal ambition to lead the Reform Party he just wants to do his job as an MP as well as he can.

  84. The reports on the news today that our population is estimated to grow by 5 million in the next ten years, seems a bit on the low side to me, are they just talking about London?
    I wonder if they will be increasing public services, hospitals, schools and our infrastructure to cope with that massive rise.
    Will they have to start rationing energy?
    I dare say the sewage going into rivers can only increase.
    It doesn't look like we will have any money any of that, in any case.
    What will it do for our net zero targets?
    We know what the rise in population will bring, more crime on the streets, more grooming gangs, more terrorist attacks.
    Have the powers that be done a risk assessment and method statement for how they are going to keep us safe?
    Or will they just ignore it all and blame it all on the far right, as they do now?

    5. Of course they are going to start rationing energy; renewables won't provide enough, particularly when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow (or blows too hard). A prolonged Dunkelflaute and a Maunder minimum and we'll be in the dark, freezing to death.

  85. Ruled by idiots. My bold.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/france-warns-donald-trump-trade-war-eu-b1207520.html?lid=w2v0z2fi8d97&utm_medium=email&utm_source=braze&utm_campaign=News_email_2025-01-28&utm_term=ES_News_Daily_CDP&empar=a5a4791040899364e61ef9f1d5449150a9c0012b4e500bdb121b158033542c2a

    France warned Donald Trump that America has “everything to lose” from a trade war with the European Union.

    Foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot stressed that thousands of US companies based in Europe would be the “first victims” if the new president imposes tariffs.

    The European Union would retaliate to such a step by Trump, he added.

    But Mr Barrot stressed that Trump had not threatened to hit the EU with tariffs since his return to the White House.

    Mr Barrot also signalled that France would be ready to send troops to Greenland if requested by Denmark to defend it against a bid by Trump to seize it militarily, but doubted this would happen.

  86. Wordle No.1,319 4/6

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

    Wordle 28 Jan 2025

    A sweaty Par Four!

    1. Eventually stumbled over the line

      Wordle 1,319 5/6

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

    2. Me too.

      Wordle 1,319 4/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜
      ⬜⬜🟨🟩🟩
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    3. Disappointing bogey here, looked a bit grim after 3!!

      Wordle 1,319 5/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟩
      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
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      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      2. #metoo.
        Wordle 1,319 5/6

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

    4. Nasty 5 here.

      Wordle 1,319 5/6

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

  87. Have just had the following disallowed (why?) by the Speccie:

    Pfft. Negligible, Sue. Just the chavvy Far Right thugs stirring up division to even mention the foreign rape Gangs and demand justice for all those little girls' lives either lost or ruined completely. If these white thugs were shut up (and imprisoned very quickly indeed without a fair trial) then this wouldn't be a problem. No, sir. It is the Hwhite far-right thugs that are trying to stir division by even drawing attention to the "alleged" Pakistani Muslim Grooming Gangs and their allies in government and their very light sentences for heinous crimes.

    Some would argue, though, that the Islamist agenda embodies Misogyny, the "Mansphere", the Patriarchy, Hate Speech and, of course, the Extreme Far Right.

    1. Aim for London. Use plenty of nukes. Start off with bunker busters to really make sure.

      Addendum: as two tier is often flying about, shoot down the plane. Still use nuclear weapons though. I don't want that roach getting away.

    1. What do pirates call their Mothers
      Motharrgh!

      What do pirates call the Fathers?
      No Dad!…..!

  92. 400653+ up ticks,

    The gates chap and associates / followers, nasty vicious, bastards, not that I believe in it BUT in this case exceptions can be made as in " born to swing."

    How a set of temporary gallows, a final warning to politicals and pharmaceuticals alike, has not made its way onto parliament green as of yet is beyond me.

    https://x.com/tpvsean/status/1868083622525403505

    1. I think Bill Gates facing justice is likely to be on the agenda. I don't believe they will roll out the next pandemic until the next sunspot minimum.

  93. That's me for this wet Tuesday. Supposed to be sunny tomorrow…on verra. Fed up with this miserable weather.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

      1. Quick people, report Guardian's Quitter to Prevent, it's the only thing that will ensure he stays out of prison and is ignored by the state.

        You know it makes sense.

      2. I thought it was fake, but apparently not. It's Conservative legislation.

        Viewers of Online Terrorist Material Face 15 Years In Jail

        Plans have been announced by the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to introduce a new maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment for people who repeatedly view terrorist content online.

        The proposals are designed to tackle radicalisation and will also apply to people who publish information about members of the armed forces, police and intelligence services for the purpose of preparing acts of terrorism.

        “I want to make sure those who view despicable terrorist content online, including jihadi websites, far-right propaganda and bomb-making instructions, face the full force of the law.” Amber Rudd said.

        This updated offence will apply only to people who access such material repeatedly, allowing a safeguard for people who find such material accidentally or access it once our of curiosity rather than criminal intent. A defence of ‘reasonable excuse’ will remain, allowing academics and others who have a legitimate reason to view such material to do so.

        This was published under the 2016 to 2019 May Conservative government
        https://www.gov.uk/government/news/law-tightened-to-target-terrorists-use-of-the-internet#:~:text=Counter%2Dterrorism%20laws%20are%20to,to%2015%20years%20in%20jail.&text=Counter%2Dterrorism%20laws%20are%20to%20be%20updated%20to%20keep%20pace,Amber%20Rudd%20has%20announced%20today.

        1. The 15 years is apparently for repeatedly viewing online terrorist content. The American woman claims that it applies to anyone who just stumbles across it.

          1. True, but I thought she was posing a “what if” rather suggesting actually it was the case. Such things could pop up if one was searching different subjects.
            Unlikely I know.

          2. No, she says “The UK is now saying that they are going to imprison any citizen that views what the government deems to be far right propaganda online for up to 15 years”.

            Very different from what the law says, which is about repeatedly viewing online terrorist content.

          5. Great, so now all they have to do is re-define NOTTL as terrorist content. See you in the clink!

          2. Well I do sort of have the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff and print the chaff (for the chaff nots!)

  100. US and Silicon Valley are having a meltdown because China released DeepSeek that is hundred times more efficient, at a fraction of the cost than the best American Al models such as ChatGPT Pro ($200pm) and open source, ruining the Al market.

    Garbage in Garbage out.. Taiwan, a potential flashpoint for future world wars, is 'an inalienable part of China'. FACT.

    Or try real garbage the French AI chatbot called Lucie that tells people to eat cow's eggs.

    1. It's a blip – the only thing the Chinese are good at is copying what other people have already done, and doing it cheaper.

      Silicon Valley will recover very quickly from this….

        1. Definitely KJ – I mean the Chinese have had a highly developed society for hundreds and hundreds of years but what have they ever invented?? Apart from bloody fireworks of course!
          They view the concept of ‘intellectual capital’ with a mixture of amusement and scorn, I spent all my working life in the IT industry and I can assure you that this is the case……

          1. Totally believe you G….I remember many years ago seeing TV footage of a group of manufacturing Germans going round a Chinese factory, remarking how at home they would struggle to get 2 shifts, but here in China they could get 3 and the workload was not only larger but better. Easy to see it would eventually encompass other areas. Wasn’t it Kissinger/Nixon who promoted opening up China?

          2. During my time in IT, the industry started to ‘offshore’ large software development and support projects to India – a highly qualified and relatively much cheaper workforce.
            Interestingly, over time that cost advantage narrowed as the rule of supply and demand kicked in, and the cost of Indian graduates rose massively, leading ultimately to India off-shoring to China!

          3. Case of what goes round, comes round. When I was young, the markets selling fish, meat, fruit & vegetables…were all very good, where I used to do bulk of my shopping. Then tat took over, think many have gone now. There were Asians there selling cloths with a gold thread pattern, very good quality at that time. My parents/other family all worked in fine worsted cloth industry. Outsourcing will come to be a cause for regret, I reckon…

          4. Outsourcing makes sense in a lot of situations, and it can still be done in the UK – Offshoring however is a much more concerning development – it also suits the Globalist agenda…..

          5. Hear you…all the little gals like me can do is wait it out, see what happens. Voting makes no sense any more, we no longer have a democracy. Starmer will sell us down the river first.

          6. At times like this, KJ, I remember a couple of Aussie mates I had at University and a little song they always sang:

            No risk, No worry, No sweat
            No problem
            She'll be right….

            You had to be there……

    2. The Microsoft one is rubbish. You ask it a coding question, it gives you the wrong answer sometimes, you tell it "that cannot be true because xyz" then it says immediately "You're quite right!"

    1. Those trains are surely pretend trains? they look like the 50s idea of futuristic engines. Please tell, O King!

  103. Evening, all. Just back from the races (again). This one finished fourth. Still, prize money down to fifth and he ran well, not beaten far.

    It isn't just poor communication (although that leaves a lot to be desired), it's poor organisation as well, not to mention the waste of resources (and money on die- versity hires).

    1. Bit of a curate's egg of a day, then, Conway…at least weather held up, I hope?….been waiting for you to appear, have you heard of a horse named Moscow Flyer, please?

      1. Yes, trained by Jessica Harrington and ridden by Barry Gerraghty it won the Queen Mother Champion Chase despite trying to walk through the last fence. Colours black and white chevrons. The weather was vile; drizzle of the wetting variety. Didn't suit the horse because wet weather makes the all weather surface sloppy.

        1. Thanks – I thought you'd know! :-)) Great reply, Conway, thanks very much. I corresponded a few years ago with (I think) a Speccie subscriber with that handle, she had a sketch of the rider black/white chevrons. Not seen her for a long time, post-Covid, hope she's OK if by chance she sees this. From memory, she worked in psychiatry, was interested in silverpoint.

          1. Yes, I remember her KJ and I liked her a lot – she had a very good sense of humour and was quite robust in the bearpit that was the Speccie! I'm pretty sure she now posts as Essdee – either here or at FSB??

          2. Ah thanks so much, G4! What a good memory you have 🙂 I’ll look out for Essdee both sites 🤞😊

          3. If you track her down send her my regards, we had a combative but great fun relationship!

          5. I had a fantastic relationship with PetaJ – I absolutely adored her, and her serious and, apparently, terminal illness affected me far more than I would have ever thought possible. I cant ever come on these pages without thinking of her….

          2. Grief! I've got new contact lenses and for a moment I thought you wrote "it's not as if she's tucking into her knickers"!

          2. Sounds yummy. PetaJ used to like the lemon one, I think it was available in France at that time…not seen it UK, but could order it online, Amazon.

  111. More rubbish from Julie Bindel
    From Coffee House, the Spectator

    I love Italian food, and I love food writing and TV programmes, so you might think I’d love Stanley Tucci. And yet I find him creepy and his recipes are rubbish. I can’t be the only one. The actor, who I first saw in the brilliant film Big Night, about a Jersey Shore Italian-American restaurant, is probably best known for The Devil Wears Prada, a film I adore. His character in that film did wind me up, but it took a while before Tucci himself got on my nerves. I suppose it began with him coming over all cheffy, like he’s the new Anthony Bourdain.

    Who cares what Colin Firth eats when he’s round at the Tucci gaff?

    I kept being told to watch his TV series where he travels around Italy, but the sight of his smug face on my screen turned out to be more than I could bear. Tucci has a new book out, What I Ate in One Year, and he is basically all over everywhere. Yet in that book, according to one reviewer, he name-drops all over the shop about famous friends of his that come to his home for dinner. Who cares what Colin Firth eats when he’s round at the Tucci gaff? I really don’t want to know about Harry Styles’s favourite risotto.

    The fact that he’s a massive show-off doesn’t surprise me at all, given that he has posted a video of himself hoovering after a New Year’s Eve party at his swanky London home – thus ensuring we saw loads of his immaculate home, including a booze stash to rival the Savoy Hotel’s American Bar. Which presumably was the point.

    And what on earth was the big deal about him mixing a Negroni during lockdown? He made it in a cocktail shaker and served it straight up in a martini glass… unforgivable. His measures were all wrong and he even suggested replacing the gin with vodka. Plus, he looked so pleased with himself. Another thing I find difficult to stomach is the way he parades around in a tight, short-sleeved T-shirt, advertising the fact that he’s a gym-goer. He probably bores people to death with his recipes while on the treadmill.

    Tucci has, however, successfully positioned himself as an expert on all things Italian cuisine. He has an award-winning CNN food and travel show, Searching for Italy, a bestselling memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food, and a cookware line supposedly based on the pots and pans his mother used when he was growing up.

    He’s supposed to be the best-dressed man on TV, but what on earth was with those tight, white, high-waisted jeans he was wearing in Italy? And in the baking heat, a button-down shirt? Why would you do that when you’re eating a load of pasta? He must have been carting replacement shirts around with him. And he doesn’t really eat on his programme, going no further than nibbling a tiny amount, then immediately setting his facial expression to ‘this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted’.

    His recipes, as I say, are awful. Courgette spaghetti? An oily, congealed mess. His pronunciation of the word mozzarella is more Italian than the way actual Italians pronounce it, even though… isn’t he third generation?

    When he talks about food, he is pompous, pretentious and on the verge of arrogance. The Italians I know see him as an unbearable American who is trying to out-Italy them. He is not a professional chef – so why does he come across so authoritatively? According to Buzzfeed, someone who worked at a restaurant where Tucci dined claimed he tipped less than 10 per cent on a $500 bill – and that this was not the first time. Get over your crush on Tucci, and look behind his self-promotion. This is a man who should stick to acting.

    WRITTEN BY
    Julie Bindel
    Julie Bindel is a feminist campaigner against sexual violence. She is the host of The Lesbian Project podcast, with Kathleen Stock.

    1. I first saw Stanley Tucci in the TV series Wiseguy many years ago. A very successful actor he played the husband of Julia Child in a wonderful film about …food.
      What is wrong with Bindel? She thinks she has some kind of monopoly on Italian cuisine?

  113. I'm off too now, chums. I slept very badly last night, with excruciating stomach pains as if I were going down with a cold and the 'flu. In the end, I came down and poured myself a cup of milk, poured it into a pan and heated it to boiling point before pouring it back into the cup, and adding a slug of whisky and two soup spoons-full of honey. It did help a little, but first thing in the morning I had to gargle a cup of warm salted water. It virtually wiped me out for most of today. So I wish you all a Good Night, chums. Sleep well (as I hope I do tonight), and hope to see you all tomorrow morning.

  114. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    Imagine talking about the transatlantic slave trade and not saying the word African. Or discussing the genocidal slaughter in Rwanda without saying ‘the Tutsis;. It would be unthinkable, right? Impossible, in fact. How could you talk about such grave crimes without mentioning the victims, without making at least a passing reference to those whose liberty and lives were ravaged in the barbarism?

    I worry that we are only half-remembering the Holocaust

    Well, quite a few people managed it yesterday. They talked about the Holocaust without naming its victims. They talked about this ‘sacrifice by fire’ – to give Holocaust its literal translation – without saying who it was that was burnt to death. They lamented the greatest crime in history but neglected to name the ethnic group that was almost destroyed by it.

    At times I could hardly believe my ears. Good Morning Britain got the ball rolling on this vile new fashion for omitting the Jews from the Holocaust. In a segment on King Charles’ visit to Auschwitz, host Ranvir Singh said: ‘Six million people were killed in concentration camps during the Second World War, as well as millions of others because they were Polish, disabled, gay or belong to another ethnic group.’

    Six million people? The word you’re looking for is Jews. Six million Jews were killed. By gun, death march and gassing. Their ‘crime’? They were Jews. To fail to say the word ‘Jew’ when discussing the most barbarous act of anti-Jewish slaughter in history is bizarre. It is historical erasure of the most egregious kind.

    GMB’s Jew omission was compounded by its naming of other social groups that suffered under the Nazis. Poles, homosexuals, the disabled. Every Jewish viewer will have wondered why those victims were acknowledged but Jews were not. Why those who were persecuted, jailed and executed by the Nazis got a name-check, but those who were targeted for annihilation, for complete eradication from humanity and history, did not.

    GMB was not alone. All day yesterday – Holocaust Memorial Day – there were people gabbing about the Holocaust without mentioning the Jews. ‘Tonight I’m lighting a candle to remember all those who were murdered just for being who they were’, tweeted Angela Rayner. Eh? Who was murdered for being who they were? Say it, Angela. It begins with J and ends with W. It’s not hard.

    Her fellow Labour MP Sarah Champion likewise lamented the barbarism of Auschwitz without saying who it was inflicted on. ‘We must never forget’, she said. Forget what? I’ll say it if Ms Champion won’t: the industrial-scale slaughter and burning of Jews by the deranged anti-Semites of the Nazi regime.

    Justin Trudeau expressed sadness over the ‘systematic murder’ at Auschwitz but forgot to say who was murdered. Humanists UK tweeted its sorrow for ‘all the victims of genocide’. Cambridge City Council informed us that it had lit up the Guildhall building ‘to remember those persecuted by the Nazis’. Anyone in particular? Any ethnic group you might want to give a shout-out to for what their forebears endured under the Nazis?

    How did we end up with Jew-less commemorations of the Holocaust? It’s actually not a new phenomenon. Way back in 2008, the Socialist Workers Party picketed a festival organised by the far-right British National Party. Leaflets were handed out reminding people of the horrors of the Holocaust, in which ‘thousands of LGBT people, trade unionists and disabled people were slaughtered’.

    That’s right: they forgot the Jews. I say ‘forgot’…. As the SWP’s rivals in the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty said, ‘For such a slip to pass unnoticed through writer, typesetter, printer, organisers and distributors, without anyone at any stage picking it up, must say something’.

    I feel the same way about GMB. It has now apologised for omitting the Jews from the intro to its Auschwitz report. But we need to know how it happened. We need to know how this Jew-less blurb came to be written, edited, approved, put on the autocue and broadcast without anyone at ITV asking WTF? This was such an appalling oversight that surely some kind of internal inquiry is needed, to find out why one of our largest TV networks said ‘six million people’ instead of ‘six million Jews’ on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of that hell for Jews: Auschwitz.

    I think there’s more to all this than slips, than dumb omissions. Rather, we seem to be witnessing the ‘dejudification’ of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is increasingly remembered as a very bad outburst of prejudice. One in which all sorts of people suffered – not only Jews but also gays, trans people, disabled people, Communists. It is of course true that the Nazis persecuted and even killed members of various social groups. But we forget at our peril the racist and frenzied determination with which they sought to destroy for all eternity one group in particular. Say it with me: the Jews.

    I worry that we are only half-remembering the Holocaust. It was not just bigotry. It was not just persecution. It was not just bad people doing bad things. It was a conscious, deliberate and industrialised effort to lay waste to an entire people. As the great Elie Wiesel said 20 years ago, the Holocaust was not ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ – it was ‘man’s inhumanity to Jews’.

    Brendan O’Neill
    WRITTEN BY
    Brendan O’Neill
    Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.

    1. And, lest we forget, those who slaughtered the JEWS were EXTREME LEFT national Socialists.

    2. Glad that's been raised. Salami technique – slice by slice, the Jews disappear. First from history, where next?

  118. Oh Bless you, Elsie, next time have a couple more slugs of whiskey, it might knock you out. Hope you feel better soon…..

  120. From Coffee House, the Spectator

    You can tell a government report has gone down badly when ministers are distancing themselves before it has been officially published. Today, it’s the Home Office’s ‘Rapid Analytical Sprint,’ commissioned in the aftermath of the Southport riots last August to determine future counter-extremism policy, that is causing trouble for ministers. The leaked document claims that fears over two-tier policing are an ‘extreme right wing narrative’. It also says that grooming gangs – referred to as ‘alleged group-based sexual abuse’ – are an issue exploited by the far-right to stir hatred against Muslims.

    Dramatically widening the definition of extremism in this way means significantly de-prioritising Islamism

    Recommendations include the police increasing the use of controversial ‘non-crime hate incidents’ and the introduction of a new crime of ‘harmful communications’ to tackle online abuse of MPs. Both suggestions seem somewhat tin-eared, to say the least. The first recommendation appears to contradict a government promise, made after the row over the police investigation into Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, to strengthen protections for freedom of expression. The latter suggestion was ridiculed when it was first suggested as a response to the murder of the Conservative MP David Amess by an Islamist extremist in 2021.

    The review’s censorious conclusions are supplemented by a dizzying array of what constitutes ‘behaviours and activity of concern.’ The ‘damaging extremist beliefs’ listed in the ‘Sprint’ include a vast range of attitudes and acts – among them misogyny, violence against women and girls, having ‘a fixture on gore and violence without adherence to an extremist ideology,’ ‘spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories’, ‘influencing racism and intolerance,’ ‘preventing integration’ or involvement in ‘an online subculture called the manosphere.’

    Yet dramatically widening the definition of extremism in this way means significantly de-prioritising Islamism, which, as Policy Exchange notes, made up 80 per cent of police counter-terror workload last year.

    It’s no surprise then that after the details of the review were leaked by the think tank Policy Exchange, Dan Jarvis, the Security Minister, said he and the Home Secretary had rejected the report’s recommendations, despite having commissioned the review. The complicating factor for ministers is that the report mirrors much of Keir Starmer’s earlier rhetoric on grooming gangs.

    When the grooming gang scandal erupted again three weeks ago, the Prime Minister claimed that ‘far right’ talking points had leaked into the mainstream; this report does the same. That could make it more difficult for the government to distance itself from a report whose recommendations are clearly politically toxic.

    James Heale
    WRITTEN BY
    James Heale
    James Heale is The Spectator’s political correspondent.

  121. Over the Pond Life:

    "Meanwhile, DOJ employees are feeling like they're on the wrong end of a shock-and-awe campaign. “It feels like a non-violent war. It’s just wild," one career DOJ employee told Politico. “People are just in a state of shock and devastated. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen … Nothing that happened during the first Trump administration came anywhere close to this.”

    Looking at the wreckage, one former DOJ official summed up the picture like this:

    “It’s got to be among the most demoralizing moments in the history of the Department of Justice. It is a flat-out purge of individuals who this administration must view either of suspect loyalty or have worked on matters they just did not like. We are in the early phases of what to me is just looking like a wholesale, politically-inspired demolition of the Department of Justice in key places.”

    The former official surely didn't intend for it to sound so wonderful.

  122. Phew! Trump can certainly pick 'em!
    Two highly intelligent and VERY attractive women as former and current Press Secretaries.
    After the insipid disaster's of the Biden years, watching Press Briefings from the White House is going to get interesting again!
    https://youtu.be/ZIB5xlsX26Q?si=LcmDXI83ZBKJw1AV
    And with that I'm off to bed.
    Goodnight all.

    2. She is good, but it's reasonable speculation that Trump might not last a full term in such a physically demanding job, especially after the clearly fake assassination attempts. Trump is an actor and a TV presenter, so he might be able to carry on making convincing appearances while delegating a lot of work to other people though. But by picking a young Vice President, he's opening the way to two terms of President Vance.
      I believe Vance is dangerous – he is too close to technocrats. There has been speculation from the right that Vance will push a supposedly Christian social conservative program, for example persecuting trans people, that will lead to an anti-Christian backlash and further weakening of Christianity in the US. As we know, the media, which now includes the controlled alternative media, can whip up any story they want, and genuine Christian voices protesting would be drowned out.

        1. Oh come on Bob, he just turned his head – the bullet nicked his ear which miraculously healed quickly – the bullet was photographed in mid air, just in case you thought it didn’t exist! – secret services somehow managed to miss a young man using a ladder to climb on a roof overlooking the podium – and we were given an explanation for that too – the secret service woman was so incompetent she couldn’t get her gun out of its holster.
          There are companies that specialise in faking incidents for the training of emergency responders – look up “crisis actors” A crisis can be faked whenever one is needed.
          Watch Richard D Hall’s film about the Boston bombing, it has a lot of information on this subject.

          I now automatically disbelieve any story where they over-egg the pudding (provide unnecessary details to convince you) or where the main protagonist is an actor/has been on TV or where someone in the military or other government service has witnessed something unbelievable like aliens.

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