Tuesday 3 May: A refreshing return to the Tory principles that won the last election

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are hehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/05/03/letters-refreshing-return-tory-principles-won-last-election/re.

574 thoughts on “Tuesday 3 May: A refreshing return to the Tory principles that won the last election”

  1. Snooker World Championship titles

    1 = Ronnie O’Sullivan – 7

    1 = Stephen Hendry – 7

    3 = Steve Davis – 6

    3 = Ray Reardon – 6

    5 = John Higgins – 4

    5 = Mark Selby – 4

    But they’ve left out Joe Davis who won 15 World Championships.

    1. When JD played, didn’t the defending champion only have to play the final match against the challenger?

      2. That is true; however, the selected challenger underwent a long and gruelling competition among his peers to win the opportunity of an attempt at the title.

    2. Not to mention Fred Davis (Joe’s brother and fellow Cestrefeldian) and the Devonian, John Pulman, who each won eight world titles.

      My uncle Joe (also from Chesterfield) was a top-notch snooker player in his youth. He once showed me a handwritten letter to his mother (my grandmother) from Joe Davis inviting Uncle Joe to accompany him on a snooker tour of South America; all expenses paid and fully chaperoned at all times. Grandmother refused to permit him to go since his weekly wage from the coal mine was needed to supplement the food bill for her tribe of seven!

      Uncle Joe was broken-hearted and never forgave his mother for such a missed once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  2. Snooker World Championship titles

    1 = Ronnie O’Sullivan – 7

    1 = Stephen Hendry – 7

    3 = Steve Davis – 6

    3 = Ray Reardon – 6

    5 = John Higgins – 4

    5 = Mark Selby – 4

    But they’ve left out Joe Davis who won 15 World Championships.

  6. Yes, TCW is being censored. 3 may 2022.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d9a48f93f0718b49b42098724841f1a2b9a0c171647f0fe03aad403f254ecf3c.png

    AFTER many reports over the weekend that the site was not working for some users, we have established that we are being blocked by the adult content filter on the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Three.

    Affected users get the message above, which does not make it clear that the site is being censored, but gives an erroneous message about the SSL certificate. This makes it look like a misconfiguration on our part, but this is not the case.

    TCW is being censored because it doesn’t toe the Government Line on Ukraine. It’s probably too politically embarrassing to proceed against it openly so they’ve gone for this more devious and nuanced approach! Nottl may get the same treatment so I’ve put his up so posters will recognise it.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/yes-tcw-is-being-censored/

    2. Could also be just a mistake. Sadly we have to bear the other possibility in mind as well.

  8. Small boat asylum seekers undeterred by Rwanda plan, survey finds. 3 May 2022.

    Deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlikely to deter those in northern France hoping to cross the Channel in small boats, according to a survey that found that three-quarters said they would still try to make the journey.

    The snapshot survey of more than 60 asylum seekers in Calais and Dunkirk was carried out by the charity Care4Calais, which provides practical support to asylum seekers in both northern France and across the UK.

    These people have figured out (rightly) that this is simply a Colossal Bluff!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/02/small-boat-asylum-seekers-rwanda-uk-france-survey

  9. Small boat asylum seekers undeterred by Rwanda plan, survey finds. 3 May 2022.

    Deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlikely to deter those in northern France hoping to cross the Channel in small boats, according to a survey that found that three-quarters said they would still try to make the journey.

    The snapshot survey of more than 60 asylum seekers in Calais and Dunkirk was carried out by the charity Care4Calais, which provides practical support to asylum seekers in both northern France and across the UK.

    These people have figured out (rightly) that this is simply a Colossal Bluff!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/02/small-boat-asylum-seekers-rwanda-uk-france-survey

    1. A comment made:-

      Bob of Bonsall • a few seconds ago
      And so as the Tories (ino) go another step to emulating Labour’s diversity box-ticking process of candidate selection, perhaps it might be worth while looking at how successful that system has proved in providing Labour with good MPs, with excellent debating and organisational skills, as well as a wealth of outside experience in jobs away from Politics or Public Service.

      Emmmm, errrr…..

          2. Cometh the hour, cometh the man – or woman.

            One such is desperately needed – otherwise, Revolution!

  11. Good Morning. Should ‘The Mother of All Parliaments” now be known as: The MILF of all Parliaments?

  13. Good morning all.
    A cold and damp start with 4½°C outside. Though the rain appears to have paused for now, the road is still wet.

    1. I’d like some more rain. The birds have used the car as a toilet and it’d be nice to have the water wash it off.

      1. After the week away in Wild Welsh Wales, my Vivaro is covered in dust so a brief downpour would be welcome!

  14. The West must ‘defeat Russia in Ukraine’ and discourage Putin from more ‘unprovoked aggression’, Tony Blair says. 3 may 2022.

    Blair later refuted a question posed by interviewer Peter Baker, who asked whether the 2003 UK-US invasion of Iraq – an operation to which Blair was inextricably linked – set a precedent for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

    ‘Didn’t we set the precedent for this? Aren’t you responsible for at least giving [your critics] a justification?’ Baker asked.

    Blair responded resolutely: ‘Even if you’re completely against what we did in Iraq or indeed in Afghanistan… Saddam Hussein started two regional wars, killed thousands of people… his people definitely want rid of him.

    ‘It’s not the same as going into a country that’s never caused any problem to its neighbours, has got a democratically elected president, and trying to topple them.

    ‘The two situations are not in any shape or form similar.’

    Of course not! Who would expect Blair to say anything differently? The truth is that the attacks on Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan were based on lies and were far more egregious actions than anything Russia is presently doing. None of these countries provided the slightest danger to the West whereas a NATO Ukraine will always pose an existential threat to Russia. It is for this reason alone that Putin will not allow Russia to be “defeated”, but will if necessary carry out his threats to go nuclear if there is no other alternative.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10775773/The-West-defeat-Russia-Ukraine-discourage-Putin-aggression-Tony-Blair-says.html

      1. Trust Sonny Boy to know where to look.
        He’s corrupting his little white haired old muvver.

  16. 352384+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Tuesday 3 May: A refreshing return to the Tory principles that won the last election

    The tory (ino) party & principles do not equate.

    And that will guarantee much more of the same with a vengeance.

    Support for these political wretches will have
    reset / replace breaking into a trot from a walk.

    One day in May could really send a message of people power used in a beneficial to the United Kingdom way.

  17. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – How refreshing to read Davis Frost’s clear reaffirmation of Conservative values (Comment, April 30). The Government would do well to remember that it was elected on these values, seemingly long forgotten, only two and a half years ago.

    Christopher Timbrell
    Kington Langley, Wiltshire

    Anything would be an improvement on the current lack of Conservative values!

    1. A couple more about Lord Frost:

      SIR – Lord Frost’s clarity of analysis and vision is one of the dwindling number of reasons to vote for any party, never mind the Tories.

      Belonging to the EU meant that a majority in Westminster no longer believed that they had any power, because it resided in Brussels. This mindset became corrosive and must be challenged forcefully.

      Linda Hughes
      Newton Abbot, Devon

      SIR – Am I alone in fervently wishing to see Lord Frost as our next prime minister, and as soon as possible?

      Paul Logan
      Gamblesby, Cumbria

      1. Frost seems to be challenging Zelenskyy as the greatest person in the World.

  18. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – How refreshing to read Davis Frost’s clear reaffirmation of Conservative values (Comment, April 30). The Government would do well to remember that it was elected on these values, seemingly long forgotten, only two and a half years ago.

    Christopher Timbrell
    Kington Langley, Wiltshire

    Anything would be an improvement on the current lack of Conservative values!

  19. SIR – My wife has her own small business that she has worked tirelessly, to the point of exhaustion, to keep afloat over the last two years.

    The taxes she pays, and those of millions of small businesses like hers, go towards the salaries of the civil servants who now think it is acceptable to carry on working from home having used Covid as an excuse for the last two years. My wife could not do that.

    Martin Baker
    Tadworth, Surrey

    Well said, Mr Baker. And when referring to Snivel Serpents please use the correct terminology: it is ‘shirking from home’.

    1. The Snivel serpents will claim for

      Wear of carpet in walking about etc

      Electicity for making cups of tea.

      Water rate relief for flushing loo.

      Travelling expenses for mum/dad taxi on school runs

      Internet connection
      etc.

    2. I’m sure there are a lot of civil servants working very hard at their jobs. What bothers me is that most of this work is unnecessary.

  20. SIR – My wife has her own small business that she has worked tirelessly, to the point of exhaustion, to keep afloat over the last two years.

    The taxes she pays, and those of millions of small businesses like hers, go towards the salaries of the civil servants who now think it is acceptable to carry on working from home having used Covid as an excuse for the last two years. My wife could not do that.

    Martin Baker
    Tadworth, Surrey

    Well said, Mr Baker. And when referring to Snivel Serpents please use the correct terminology: it is ‘shirking from home’.

  21. So yet another group of the world’s desperate people take a class action against the UK for not giving them the hospitality, protection and benefits that they were expecting, quickly enough. It seems that the HR lawyers are still able to marshall a band of Ukes to sue our government despite those people fleeing for their lives.

    1. Legal aid should have been the first thing to be removed before the Rwanda nonsense.

      In fact, the simplest solution is to tow these criminals back to France and destroy the boats. If Border Force will not enforce our borders, then there’s no point to them.

  23. A classic BTL comment on “Tractorgate”.

    “I can confirm that. Searching for ‘big boobs’ is a different matter however…. I was hoping to come up with an analysis of the invasion of Ukraine….”

    1. Yo anne

      I wanted planning permission for the “Erection” of a shed……………….

      1. Morning Triers, there is a paragraph in QRs which states “No unauthorised erections are permitted in married quarters”
        I did think of going down to SHQ and ask for the appropriate form.

  25. SIR – Disillusioned soft Tories in rural Oxfordshire switched their allegiance to the Lib Dems last May, resulting in the election of a Left-wing county council and prompting The Telegraph to ask: “Is this Britain’s daftest council?”

    The council is now embroiled in debates about vegan menus, “inclusive” lavatories and an outdoor smoking ban. Road and pavement repairs, deemed to be residents’ number one priority in a recent Ipsos survey, don’t even get a mention in the council’s list of priorities.

    Is this what the soft Tories voted for? I think not.

    Waverers at the local elections on Thursday would be best served by focusing on local issues and not getting distracted by the national shenanigans at Westminster.

    David Bartholomew
    Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

    Our district council here is controlled by 24 Independents, plus a handful of Limp Dumbs, a few Labour and a Green. All 14 Conservatives are the opposition. However, the position is reversed on East Sussex County Council : of the 50 councillors (bloated or what??) control is in the hands of 27 Conservatives, and rumour has it that their noses are out of joint due to the make-up of our District Council, hence our rotten roads and other areas where expenditure isn’t what it should be.

    1. Tories who think that voting Liberal Democrat is a valid form of rebellion get what they deserve, frankly.
      Vote Independent, any of the small conservative parties, local pressure groups or NOTA before you encourage the raving loony LibDems.

      1. The Limp Dumps infest most areas of the bureaucracy in public and private activity, they appear to be the foot soldiers of the WEF agenda swamp. The Potemkin model is thriving in their hands, the sustainability/diversity facade is just about to crumble into dust..

        1. Someone who looks to the state to solve the problems they face is usually a bit of a weirdo.

          The solution to most things is less government, not more.

        2. True! One of my forbears was an Independent councillor though – he couldn’t stand the local Tories!

      3. Indeed. I haven’t noticed my new LD MP actually doing anything to improve things, despite her regular grandstanding in the local press.

    2. But the contentious issues are not local. Enforced population growth by planning permissions is all nationally set by central government under the ‘frameworks’. Local issues are simply ignored or temporarily invoked and then over-ridden.

    1. In my case it is the lyrics of the songs of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

    2. When I see a ginger muffin sitting spread-legged on a green bench, a quite different thing springs to mind.

    3. I was thinking this morning that I’m glad I’ve got Oscar; we’ve had some teething problems – mainly his teeth in my fingers and toes – but he’s coming along now and will be a lovely dog in time.

  27. The recent multi-sig letter from the NHS bosses has gone down really, really well:

    SIR – I think the NHS executives writing in yesterday’s Letters should have gone to Specsavers. They are all wearing rose-tinted spectacles.

    Visiting the doctor about a mole, I was referred to the hospital. I received an NHS acknowledgment dated August 2021. My doctor has confirmed it is likely to be well over a year before I will be looked at. The advice to over-50s to get moles checked seems like a bad joke.

    Sylvia Smith
    Great Moulton, Norfolk

    SIR – If ever a letter showed how out of touch leaders are with their organisations, it was yesterday’s.

    Endless waiting lists, 20-hour ambulance delays, increased attendance at A&E exacerbated by inability to see a GP – the NHS is broken. Pouring more and more money into it will not fix it.

    Until there is root and branch reform we will not get the NHS we deserve. If the authors of the letter cannot see that, I suggest they make way for someone who can.

    Trevor Joyce
    Canterbury, Kent

    SIR – Some weeks ago, my dentist advised me to have a dermatologist look at a lesion she had observed on my nose. So I rang my GP, expecting her to look at it. But she told me to send a photo of the lesion to the appropriate address, which I did.

    I expected the hospital to call me in. Instead, it sent a text telling me that in three weeks a dermatologist would look at the photo I had taken and advise me accordingly. At about the stated time, a form came from the hospital telling me my photo was not good enough to allow an opinion and I should submit a “dermoscopic image as per the NCL lesion dermatology guidance”.

    Charles Lewis
    London N2

    SIR – In yesterday’s letter, Chris Hopson of NHS Providers, Professor Martin Marshall of the Royal College of GPs and Matthew Taylor of the NHS Confederation defended the hard-working NHS, citing statistics that bear little relationship to many patients’ experience. What ivory tower do these NHS leaders live in?

    If instead of defending what is clearly not a world-class service they explained strategies to improve things for waiting-list patients, as opposed to saying how hard NHS staff work, they might give greater confidence.

    Peter Williman
    Chatteris, Cambridgeshire

    1. As an exercise in attempting to wallpaper over the cracks, approaching chasms in appearance, within the NHS, the “leaders'” letter was a PR disaster. The people responsible are not only detached from reality but they appear to believe the people to be gullible, sadly, some are, but many are awake to the true state of the NHS. It’s not a pretty sight and with “leaders” such as those who put their signatures to the ‘letter’, the prospects of improvement do not seem at all healthy.

      1. I walked part of the way with a neighbour this morning; she said more or less the same thing about the NHS as was aired in one of the letters. It needs to be scrapped and started again from scratch. It’s lost its way.

    2. Why not determine what is required to clear”waiting lists” and then do it? Surely a more reasonable target than “four hour maximum wait” in A&E?
      The BBC News went all joyful couple of days ago showing an item about an new detailed model of the female anatomy. The news segment was filmed at a medical school in England, from memory, Brighton. I noted that the majority of the students were not of the white persuasion. Possibly “natives”, but also the medical schools and universities make more money from foreign students.

    3. The people who wrote the letter yesterday are politicians, not clinicians. They’re the non-jobs the NHS doesn’t need, who soak up half a million a year achieving nothing apart from going to quangos and presenting endless statistics massaged to support their view that they should be given more money because they’re doing such a good job.

      Because they’re entirely political appointments, they’ve gone to chums, not competent staff.

  28. SIR – Having served with the Royal Navy in the “Rusty B” (HMS Bulwark), I have a great respect for the Navy’s approach to public relations. However, the plea (Letters, April 30) for it to be represented in the Jubilee flypast is a case of crying before one is hurt.

    In the Armed Forces, personnel often serve with other services. An F35 squadron at RAF Marham is commanded by a naval officer.

    One year, the Battle of Britain flypast over Buckingham Palace was led by Hauptmann Dieter Knorr, a Luftwaffe officer on an exchange with the RAF.

    Wing Commander Colin Cummings
    Yelvertoft, Northamptonshire

    And long may it continue.

    1. In the Armed Forces, personnel often serve with other services. An F35 squadron at RAF Marham is commanded by a naval officer.

      I should jolly well hope so:

      809 Naval Air Squadron, equipped with F35-B aircraft operates out of Marham.

      In September 2013, it was announced that 809 NAS was to be reformed to become the first Fleet Air Arm squadron to be equipped with the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning. The squadron will operate alongside No. 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force as part of the Lightning Force, and will be stationed at RAF Marham, Norfolk, when not deployed aboard one of the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. Both squadrons will consist of both Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel.[10]

      It was however 617 that deployed on our ‘aircraft’ carrier.

      I am an ex Phantom Phixer, who was on the first ‘Toom’ sqn to embark on the ‘old’ Ark Royal

      1. My late uncle, CPO George Mawson, was on the old Ark Royal in the late ’50s/early ’60s then went to Lossiemouth.

        1. I was at Lossie 63/64, when the Ark was undergoing her refit for Phantoms
          Joined it in 68/69ish with the Sqn, as a Phantom Phixer,

          A pilot was a Phantom Phlyer

  30. I spotted this in the BTL posts this morning:

    Edwin Pugh
    7 HRS AGO
    https://www.gbnews.uk/news/wind-farms-earn-hundreds-of-millions-more-from-energy-crisis-after-delaying-government-subsidy-contract/285252
    Worth a read. Despite the Boris claims, wind farm owners are taking the government for a ride and it is we who pay the price in our energy bills.
    To quote from the article – Craig Mackinlay, the MP for South Thanet, and chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, told GB News: “The false promise of cheap renewable energy is in tatters with ineptly agreed heads they win, tails we lose contracts littering UK energy strategy. If energy prices are low, CfDs mean consumers pay out to artificially increase energy prices; when energy prices are high these companies hold back to permanently fix high prices for themselves. It’s a shameful racket that households are paying for all in the name of the Net Zero con-trick.”

    * * *

    Apologies for banging on again about net zero, but it is vitally important we spread the word that it will be the ruination of this country when our contribution to the burning of fossil fuels (if you accept that this is the approaching apocalypse) is tiny by comparison with the big boys like China.

    PS Wind is meeting just 3.47% of demand at the moment. Bearing in mind that high pressure systems will normally make them next to useless, any hard winter should finally demonstrate the futility of ‘renewables’- but not without a great deal of pain and financial damage in the process.

    1. Never apologise for campaigning against net zero.
      We’ve cruised for years, giving ground to the left; now there is no more ground left to give – it’s crunch time, they will eat us if we don’t fight back.

    3. …and the output from burning fossil-fuels makes hardly a dent in the trace gas CO2, comprising 0.04% of the atmosphere.

  31. I spotted this in the BTL posts this morning:

    Edwin Pugh
    7 HRS AGO
    https://www.gbnews.uk/news/wind-farms-earn-hundreds-of-millions-more-from-energy-crisis-after-delaying-government-subsidy-contract/285252
    Worth a read. Despite the Boris claims, wind farm owners are taking the government for a ride and it is we who pay the price in our energy bills.
    To quote from the article – Craig Mackinlay, the MP for South Thanet, and chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, told GB News: “The false promise of cheap renewable energy is in tatters with ineptly agreed heads they win, tails we lose contracts littering UK energy strategy. If energy prices are low, CfDs mean consumers pay out to artificially increase energy prices; when energy prices are high these companies hold back to permanently fix high prices for themselves. It’s a shameful racket that households are paying for all in the name of the Net Zero con-trick.”

    * * *

    Apologies for banging on again about net zero, but it is vitally important we spread the word that it will be the ruination of this country when our contribution to the burning of fossil fuels (if you accept thst this is the approaching apocalypse) is tiny by comparison with the big boys like China.

  33. The threat of sending illegal immigrants to Rwanda will only work if it is carried out immediately the immigrants arrive in Britain.

    There should be a locked, securely guarded enclosure adjoining an airstrip to which all illegals are taken as soon as they set foot in the UK. A shuttle plane should be ready and waiting on the runway and as soon as there are enough immigrants to fill it the shuttle plane should take off and go directly to Rwanda and then return to pick up the next lot of illegals.

    Of course the government has neither the courage nor the conviction to do this but, unless they adopt a similarly strict scheme, the Rwanda project simply won’t work

    2. The deterrent effect. The fact that illegal immigrants are still crossing the channel demonstrates the fact that they know they will not be sent to Rwanda, thus losing their ‘passage’ money. So it is no deterrent.

    3. Good morning Mr T and everyone.
      Why bother with Rwanda?

      Give them a choice of signing up for the Russian army or that of the Ukrainians.

  35. SIR – The loss of supplies of imported sunflower oil should be a good opportunity for Britain to use home-produced rapeseed oil and butter.

    Sarah Duncan-Brown
    Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire

    Sarah Duncan-Brown is typical of of lot of confused individuals about the healthiness of food products. On the one hand she extols the use of butter, a known nutritious, healthy and delicious foodstuff. However, on the other hand she also recommends the use of a substance (rapeseed oil) that is now proven to be deleterious and poisonous to the system.

    Go with healthy fats, including butter, lard, tallow and suet, Sarah, and ditch all the vile seed-based “vegetable” oils.

    1. Recently switched to beef dripping for my roasted spuds and Yorkshire puds. Delicious! Pastry, depending on what it will encase, is either all butter or a mix of butter and lard. Learning all the time with my new cooking hobby.

        1. Thanks, P. I used a hot water crust when making pork pies and I liked it so much I have used it sometimes for beef pies. Also, I have found on an American site a quick and easy recipe for crisp flaky pastry.

      3. Yes, my father swore by lard for roast spuds – his were crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy inside. Absolutely delicious. And in the unlikely event that any were left over they made an equally tasty snack with a little salt added.

        1. I had this duck for Christmas, which took an age to cook and I was still eating it well into January. The fat that came off that duck made splendid roasties though.

      4. Can’t beat goose or duck fat for roasties. Best Beloved swears by King Edwards.

          2. Not a smoker. Tried two ciggies in my early teens, discovered how disgusting they tasted and never went back. As for cigars and pipes…

    2. Good morning, Grizzly.

      I use organically produced avocado oil.

      With reference to imported sunflower oil, surely it is the sellers, not the
      growers, who are exploiting the situation since last year’s harvest took
      place before the current conflict; this years harvest will probably come
      from F C . . . every other thing grown or made seems to, why not sun-
      flower oil?

      1. Good morning, Garlands.

        Irrespective of when it was made, sunflower oil (as well as most other seed oils) is a Frankenstein product and is not fit for human consumption.

        I would urge everyone to watch (and assimilate) the contents of this video; it shows clearly how seed oils are the tool of the global corporations to help them get fatter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQmqVVmMB3k&list=WL&index=25&t=237s

        Avocado oil (like coconut oil) are two exceptions that you may use with little fear. However, butter, lard, tallow and suet are still preferable.

        1. I prefer butter but I do add avocado oil when a high temperature is regiered

          1. You can clarify the butter for cooking at a higher temperature. Indians call it ghee which you can also buy. There are plenty of recipes available for the milk solid residues.

    3. I do remember one of these reports comparing the health effects of butter and margarine. It seems that the deaths by heart attack and stroke brought on by butter were more than outweighed by the suicides prevented by the enjoyment of butter.

      1. Deaths by heart attacks and strokes (not to mention cancers and respiratory diseases, among others) were rare historically. The consumption of butter and lard were de rigueur for centuries and people were healthy and slim. Margarine cannot be conflated with butter, since it is a vile Frankenstein food that has contributed to many modern-day diseases. Butter is a natural food: margarine is anything but.

        Linda McCartney made a fortune out of manufacturing Frankenstein pseudo-sausages and pretend-hamburgers. She died relatively young of cancer. I suggest that if she had eaten a normal diet of meat, fish, eggs, butter, cheese and lard, she would still be alive.

        1. My father always referred to margarine as axle grease. Wouldn’t allow it in the house.

        2. Linda McCartney’s husband was fed on the same diet, and while they tried to kill him off in 1969 when he was snapped crossing Abbey Road in London wearing a black carnation, he is still alive and will be 80 next month.

  36. Well, what a wasted opportunity Good Morning Britain’s interview with the PM turned out to be. Half an hour of Susannah Reid grandstanding and not listening to the answers that Johnson tried to give.

    Of all the people who could have interviewed the man, they decided to let eye candy take precedence over an analytic mind.

    What a shame.

    1. Moh and I watched that interview as well.

      She was determined to go on the Gotcha theme ..using Corbyn tactics .

      She didn’t mention once the green tax on our fuel bills , Vat , the cost of hosting migrants in hotels , MP’s expenses, food bills , the fraudulent use Covid money , NHS, hospital waiting lists , nil NHS dentists, pensioners losing the triple lock , etc etc .

      She allowed Boris to wander and pfaff on .

      Her interview was not a master class, who do you think should have interviewed him?

        1. I wanted Johnson to be interviewed by Andrew Neil before the general election about what was in his his overhyped fantastic ‘deal’. Johnson was very keen that we did not know and very successfully sidestepped the matter. It was even announced that Johnson would be interviewed by Neil but somehow he managed to wriggle out of it at the last moment.

          And look at the total hash Johnson has made of Brexit! Every time David Frost wanted to take a firm stance with the EU either Johnson or Gove undermined him.

          I would like to see how Frost would sort out Brexit if he was the PM and did not have his hands tied.

          1. The pundits are predicting that Sinn Fein will win an overall majority in the coming elections.

            I expect that Boris is hoping that this will happen and that this will lead to an independence referendum on uniting Northern Ireland with the rest of Ireland.

            With Northern Ireland as a part of the Republic of Ireland and no longer a part of the UK then the NI Protocol would no longer exist and Johnson could claim that he paid his part in getting rid of it.

        1. You are probably right. BT worked with JY and had great respect and affection for him.

        2. I remember JY interviewing Mrs.T;
          that was a master-class in good manners and
          interviewing techniques.

    2. It was an awful interview. As you say, dominated by Reid who continually interrupted BJ to the point of rudeness. No wonder he he won’t go on GMB.

  37. From today’s DT:

    COMMENT

    The full story of the Falklands war Exocets deserves to be told

    It would be good if accolades could be given to the scientists who worked to outwit the enemy and counteract our own lack of preparedness

    CHARLES MOORE
    3 May 2022 • 6:00am

    Forty years ago tomorrow, HMS Sheffield was hit by an Exocet missile in the South Atlantic. Twenty men died. She was the first Royal Navy ship lost since 1945. These were the first British losses in the Falklands war, coming hard on the heels of the sinking of the Argentine cruiser, the Belgrano. I was working in this paper’s offices when the news came through. I remember the shock, and the utter seriousness: emotions rare in a newsroom.

    The French-made Exocets were Argentina’s deadliest weapon. Fired from Super Étendard strike fighters, they would drop to the lowest possible level and skim the sea to avoid detection. It was within their power to cripple the British Task Force before it had reached the Falklands.

    Sadly, official secrecy has so far prevented the story of Britain’s response to the Exocet threat being told in full, though bits have come out. I have seen no more official documentation than anyone else, but there is clearly a good tale here. A couple of elements of the story follow.

    One is British work with Chile. Margaret Thatcher, prime minister at the time, was much criticised for her lifelong loyalty to General Augusto Pinochet, the country’s dictator. But there was reason for it: through MI6 and others, Britain established a high level of trust with the Pinochet regime, which was hostile to Argentina. Chile possessed Exocets from the same stable as those sold to Argentina. It handed us the secrets about them that it found.

    We also obtained information about Argentina’s desperate attempts to buy more of the missiles. This allowed us to block the trade.

    Another aspect was our own expert work on the Exocets. Before hostilities, Britain, too, possessed some. Given President Francois Mitterrand’s declared support for Britain in the conflict, the British authorities asked the French about devices, colloquially known as “kill switches”, customarily inserted in the missiles’ seeker-heads. These are placed by manufacturers so that if the weapons, once sold, are ever used against the seller, they can be disabled. The French indicated that they did not include kill switches in their sales lest their presence deter customers.

    At least one official, however, doubted the French account and wanted to inspect the seeker-heads of the British Exocets. Because normal defence contracts with foreign powers forbid such investigations, approval had to be sought from No 10.

    It was, I understand, forthcoming. A seeker-head was taken apart. The official’s anxieties were confirmed. From what was found, it was possible to work out electronic counter measures (ECMs) that could re-programme the missile as it approached its target. (In one case, ECMs worked to tragic effect. The measures successfully distracted an Exocet attacking HMS Ambuscade, but this meant that it flew on beyond the target and locked on to the Atlantic Conveyor which, being a merchant navy ship, lacked protection. She was hit, with 12 men killed and the helicopters intended to carry troops across the islands destroyed.)

    In addition, experts at the Admiralty Surface Weapons Establishment (ASWE) worked out how to put up “chaff” to confuse the missile, including a decoy in the shape of a perfect “box” that could fool the Exocet that it, and not a British ship, was the right target. This was attached to the helicopters. One of the helicopter pilots volunteering was the nowadays much-derided Prince Andrew. The Sheffield had carried no active decoys. This lack was remedied for other ships.

    As a result of the ASWE’s work, the Task Force gained much greater security than before. It also benefited from key information about how to face an imminent Exocet attack. In the few minutes’ notice before the missile hit, it was necessary to “roll” the ship so that it did not present itself broadside. In the case of HMS Glamorgan, hit by the only land-based Exocet fired, quick thinking by the navigator to execute such a roll prevented the destruction of the entire ship. Fourteen men died, which was bad enough, but a small proportion of the total crew of over 300.

    The courage of sailors, soldiers and airmen in the Falklands is rightly celebrated. But it would be good if comparable accolades could be given to the ingenious scientists who worked so resourcefully to outwit the enemy and counteract our own lack of preparedness. Please, tell us more.

    Russia’s remarkable complacency

    Talking to naval Falklands veterans, I find their view of the war in Ukraine interesting. To them, the successful Ukrainian attack on the heavily armoured Russian flagship Moskva is remarkable.

    First, they admire the skills of the Ukrainian navy, which used targeting provided by satellite to hit the Moskva within 16 minutes of receipt. They distracted the Russians’ attention by flying a drone near the ship. Then, they hit it with two Neptune sea-skimming missiles, not unlike the Exocet.

    Second, the veterans cannot believe the complacency of the Russians, who ignored the danger of land-based attack (like that on the Glamorgan) and failed to “close down” their ship, the system by which each part of the vessel is sealed from the other to limit fire and explosion. As a result, it seems likely that only 50 men got off the Moskva, of perhaps 500 who had been on board.

    * * *

    We all knew that the French continued to supply Exocet missiles to the Argies, but this article provides some interesting detail as to our effective counter-measures.

    A notable BTL comment on Moore’s article:

    Tony Green30 MIN AGO

    It has ever been thus for the electronic experts who live in the shadows – think of Mavis Batey who broke the Enigma codes at Bletchley Park thus helping Cunningham achieve his victory at Matapan.

    Incidentally, I was at Two Sisters on the Falklands and was witness to the precision of the Glamorgans impressive Naval Gunfire Support – awesome!

    Once atop the feature some of the chaps saw a streak of light leaving Port Stanley and had no idea what it was – sadly, we knew shortly afterwards. The Glamorgan took the hit on her port side as she was swinging round to present her stern and thus a smaller radar signature to the missile.

    Regardless, my Royal Marine colleagues and I are forever grateful to her crew for supporting us and staying on the gun line longer than anticipated. Thank you.

    1. In those days there were competent research and development establishments such as ASWE, RARDE, RSRE, AUWE, AVRE, RAE and others staffed by top class engineers and scientists. Those capabilities were lost when Thatcher privatised the defence scientific base into what is now Qinetiq and dstl. I very much doubt if the equivalent capability exists now, certainly the MoD civil service base has a very thin, if any, competent scientific or engineering base.

    2. In those days there were competent research and development establishments such as ASWE, RARDE, RSRE, AUWE, AVRE, RAE and others staffed by top class engineers and scientists. Those capabilities were lost when Thatcher privatised the defence scientific base into what is now Qinetiq and dstl. I very much doubt if the equivalent capability exists now, certainly the MoD civil service base has a very thin, if any, competent scientific or engineering base.

    1. It is a sign of the times that my first thought was “What have those labs been cooking up now?”

  40. Today the BBC interviewed someone who was completely innocuous. I think Starmer, but I’ve never heard him speak. It was a demonstration of BBC thinking that they said ‘Well, if the government needs to recoup income from covid you can either borrow or raise taxes…’

    No, you cut spending. Why is that most fundamental, basic option never provided? This is the fundamental problem with the BBC. It never admits that the right approach is less government.

    1. Mrs T always said that we should live within our means. I suppose that is now regarded as just old-fashioned, judging by our ballooning national debt.

    1. Morning Phizzee,

      In my view , she might as well show off her assets now , because in a few years , she will be crinkly , saggy and lacking in youthful tone .

      Women , all of us , should remember how we were once , when we were young , youthful and energetic.

      1. Good morning.
        Kim Kardshian wore the $5 million Marilyn Monroe dress but Carla got many more photo’s thanks to her outrageous stunt.

      3. I expect we all do remember when we were young, however, I would never in a million years walk around like that. It’s not elegant, is it.

    2. I only glance on the DM occasionally since they banned me, and already my world view has changed. I thought all the red carpet photos from this event looked fake and tacky.
      I have never suspected this particular actress of having any class or taste though.

      1. What is so horrible about women’s nipples that the DM always puts what looks like black insulation tape over them out of respect for their readers’ sensitivities? In this case it is not necessary as the woman seems to be wearing gold painted hub caps to conceal her bosom tips.

    4. I suppose this tart is one who complains about the exploitation
      of women.

    5. A high society event. Do we need any further proof of the degeneracy of the western establishment.

  42. Funny Old World
    How is it the demonstrators frothing about “My Body My Choice” in the abortion debate are exactly the same people who were so keen on mandatory clotshots………….

    1. I take it you are referring to todays story from the US Supreme Court? The problem is that it is clearly not a right as rights are understood by the US constitution and, on those grounds, abortion should have been banned years ago. What individual states do is another matter altogether. But, to me, the US Constitution shows the superiority of a Constitution like ours which is partially written but mostly not. Written Constitutions have to use logic that would be the envy of a being born of a pretzel and an octopus, in arriving at judgements that are obviously ludicrous and in no way follow the intent of the Founding Fathers of the USA or the written word.

      1. The trouble with written constitutions is that they only tell you what you may do.

        An unwritten constitution has to be based on the fact that you may do what you will – always provided that it’s not breaking any law.

    2. I don’t think these lobbyists even attempt abstract reasoning and any evaluation of the underlying principles. They simply believe that both processes are going to improve their health and/or make their lives easier.

  44. Calls for compulsory MP training to tackle sexist culture in parliament. 3 may 2022.

    Michelle Donelan, the universities minster, told Sky News that “misogynistic dinosaurs” were in a minority and “do not represent the majority of members of parliament”.

    But others felt it was time for mandatory training to be rolled out for all their colleagues, given up to 56 MPs are accused of sexual misconduct.

    Chris Bryant told the Guardian that parliament was “no different from any other workplace” and should do more to specifically tackle sexism and harassment.

    He said: “It’s time we put in place regular training for all MPs in best practice as an employer and understanding the code of conduct and the rules of the House.”

    So the law making body that passes all these statutes to control what the population thinks is itself to be purged? This is a little like the College of Cardinals being sent for instruction in the Catholic Faith!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/02/boris-johnson-under-pressure-to-back-compulsory-workplace-training-for-mps

    2. Trust Chris Bryant to try to get in on the act – self promotion. Just ban all devices from the House.

    2. He’s very generous with our money, except where it might actually benefit the taxpayers it’s being ripped off from!

    3. Certainly not his ‘Finest Hour’!

      There will be a price to pay for those who are able to vote on Thursday. However, if they demonstrate their displeasure by not voting for the Party in government it may force the backbenchers to find their balls and initiate his removal from office.

        1. The anaesthetic seems to arrive earlier with every passing day……

  46. Why we should ban MPs from using their phones in the Commons… even if they aren’t looking at porn
    If MPs spend debates glued to their screens like bored teenagers, how can they hold ministers properly to account?
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/05/03/should-ban-mps-using-phones-commons-even-arent-looking-porn/

    I found that MCR meetings were incredibly boring and when I could I arranged extra classes with my Upper Sixth in order to have an excuse to leave early.

    To relieve the tedium and as mobile phones did not exist at the time I always did the DT crossword ostentatiously during the dreary discussions. I used to time how long it was between my finishing the crossword and the meeting ending. It was an exceptionally good meeting which ended before I had finished the puzzle.

    1. Having attended many meetings over the years I found that the length of a meeting was invariably the inverse of the length of the Agenda.

        1. Especially if they’re Swedes – talk a lot and do nothing. I put up them in SJ for two years.

        2. We have the first trustees’ meeting of Help a Hedgehog Hospital on Saturday – the first one since May 2019! I have made the agenda quite brief.

      2. Meetings – where one person takes the Minutes and all the rest take hours!

    3. Politicians ‘volunteered’ to become politicians, aware that this could involve hours in the debating chamber. The very least they can do whilst attending, as part of their day job, is maintain some discipline and concentrate on the matter at hand…however trite.

      If they find the debates so banal, as the latest kneejerk party political EDM is proffered, they could try to use their ‘influence’ to upgrade the manner and subject of debate.

      However, with the current ‘whipped’ system where suitable spads – with no experience of life outside of their protected environment – are placed in safe seats as a reward for their willingness not to rock the boat, this could only be achieved with a party-independent approach.

      Sadly, with over forty years of merely rubber stamping diktats from the Brussels/Strasbourg gravy train, the mental abilities of the political class and their snivel serpent support in Westminster have atrophied beyond salvation.

    4. What they look at on their phones is irrelevant. They should be paying attention to what they are there for.
      If I was still running a classroom or library the kids would be told to leave their phones in their lockers. Anyone bringing a phone into class would be given a label to put their name on the device. The phones would be put in a basket and returned at the end of the lesson. Do the same in the Commons.
      Of course, it wouldn’t be allowed in this day and age in schools- there would be cries of “human rights blah blah.”

      1. I remember my teachers who were probably teachers during wartime or saw service in the armed forces ..

        One would throw the black board chalk eraser at anyone who fidgetted, didn’t pay attention , chatted , and that was when I was in my primary school. Women teachers as well as male teachers would slap fingers with a ruler , they would confiscate comics , sweets , little toys etc .

        I can remember some very strict teachers , we all had to listen and sit upright at our desks , no slouching , and no turning around .. eyes to the front … and concentrate hard.

      2. Caroline bans mobile phones in her classes.

        We live in an area where the mobile phone connection is very weak – and indeed you have to go out into the garden to make a call.

        1. Good for her. As it’s your own set up you can make your own rules. I would guess it’s different in state schools.
          Used to be that a teacher could confiscate items and return them at the end of the week.

    5. I used to mark exercise books during Faculty meetings; it sent my Head of Department wild (part of the reason for doing it, frankly). When challenged I pointed out they had to be done before my next class.

    1. He’s right.

      This is more or less what I said in my post two hours ago.

      (I sometime wonder if the GB News reporters check up on what we are saying on the Nottlers’ Forum to get their ideas!)

    4. Just cut ALL the benefits for the illegals – let ’em find supportive Muslims to put them up and feed and clothe them.

  48. Morning all it’s a wet start …..

    Just in from an old friend.
    From a medical Dr.

    Whenever I teach clinical medicine to students in the fourth year of medicine, I ask the following question:

    What are the main causes of mental confusion in the elderly?

    Some offer: “Tumors in the head”.

    I answer: No

    Others suggest: “Early symptoms of Alzheimer’s”.

    I answer again: No!

    With each rejection of their answers, their responses dry up.

    And they are even more open-mouthed when I list the three most common causes:

    – uncontrolled diabetes

    – urinary infection

    – dehydration

    It may sound like a joke, but it isn’t. People over 60 generally stop feeling thirsty and consequently stop drinking fluids.
    When no one is around to remind them to drink fluids, they quickly dehydrate. Dehydration is severe and affects the entire body It may cause abrupt mental confusion, a drop in blood pressure, increased heart palpitations, angina (chest pain), coma and even death.
    This habit of forgetting to drink fluids begins at age 60, when we have just over 50% of the water we should have in our bodies. People over 60 have a lower water reserve. This is part of the natural aging process.

    But there are more complications. Although they are dehydrated, they don’t feel like drinking water, because their internal balance mechanisms don’t work very well.
    *Conclusion:*

    People over 60 years old dehydrate easily, not only because they have a smaller water supply, but also because they do not feel the lack of water in the body.

    Although people over 60 may look healthy, the performance of reactions and chemical functions can damage their entire body.
    So here are two alerts:

    1) *Get into the habit of drinking liquids*. Liquids include water, juices, teas, coconut water, milk, soups, and water-rich fruits, such as watermelon, melon, peaches and pineapple; Orange and tangerine also work.
    *The important thing is that, every two hours, you must drink some liquid. Remember this!*
    2) Alert for family members: constantly offer fluids to people over 60. At the same time, observe them. If you realize that they are rejecting liquids and, from one day to the next, they are irritable, breathless or display a lack of attention, these are almost certainly recurrent symptoms of dehydration.
    Inspired to drink more water now?
    Send this information on to others! DO IT NOW!
    Your friends and family need to know for themselves and help you to be healthier and happier.

    It’s good to share!

      2. I was told at lest two litres and that is almost impossible for me. If I was allowed to drink tea, no problem with my pint mug that I use for tea.

          1. I don’t know the technical reason but after radio therapy and TURPs, a procedure for improving urination, I had it described as the prostate being cored out like the middle of a walnut, you must avoid Tea, Coffee and alcohol for several months. So it isn’t a permanent ban. You are also told to avoid certain foods to avoid constipation which causes strain on the system down there and delays healing because of bleeding.

        1. Can you drinks six pints in a day? If so…next time you’re payin’ !

    3. “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities”

      [1 Tim 5:23].

      1. If the water supply is dodgy – as it was when and where that was written? It has even been suggested more recently that Coca Cola and such like is preferable to contaminated water.

    4. At 78, I take my liquids seriously, mostly beer and a couple of scotches with the odd cup of tea.

      I’m very serious.

      1. I’m wary of drinking water – look what it does to the bottom of boats

        1. Are you telling us that you suffer from barnacles Spikey? 😉

          Seriously, we have always thought bottled water was pretentious but we switched to it after reading about the polluted and contaminated water round here and after we both suffered nasty tummy bugs. Touch wood, since drinking bottled water, no tummy bugs.

          2. So you like drinking over priced bottled water which is contaminated by chemicals which leach from the plastic? Good luck with that :o)

      2. Same as Tom, a smallish night cap but not beer of course, you’d have to get out of bed more than once.

        I usually have two coffees each day and three cups of tea, two glasses of van rouge and sometimes a night cap. And a few medium sips of water, if i’m in need.

  49. So far – AGA man been and gone. All well – he says…

    Plumber fitted new pump in half an hour. I asked him to take a look at the cistern in the downstairs loo. The handle has been a menace for years. Yes, he could fit a new siphon. Yes, he had one in his van. Just turn off the water – to find that both valves in the roof were kaput. Yes, he had two new valves in his van – both have been plumbed in – each needed extra bits of pipe. All done. Just finishing off the siphon. Such a nice man. His only defect is that he talks to me about plumbing isshoos as though I understood them…!!

    Sweep due in an hour.

    Busy, busy..

  50. Just a reminder … this is what we gave Europe before we Brexited …
    https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7886/
    We might just as well have not bothered, we are in finacial dwang.

    https://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/the-ukraine-eu-relationship/
    Has Ukraine applied for EU membership?

    On 28 February 2022 the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally signed an application for EU membership. Days earlier he said the Russian invasion was ‘a crucial moment to close the long-standing discussion once and for all and decide on Ukraine’s membership’.

    Prior to the Russian invasion in February 2022, Zelenskyy had explicitly expressed a desire for Ukraine to join the EU, but an application was not imminent. Last August, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba argued that – rather than developing a new Eastern Partnership – the EU should commit to Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia eventually joining, albeit without a definite deadline, to ‘maintain dynamics’ in a ‘global struggle’.

    I read the whole article …
    I am very confused … aren’t you..?

    Boris has just committed us to GIVING Ukraine £300, Million.

    1. I can’t over emphasise this enough…Everything our political classes come into contact with the Eff it up. With out fear of failure.

    2. I can’t over emphasise this enough…Everything our political classes come into contact with the Eff it up. With out fear of failure.

  52. Draft comment for Conservative press secretary for Friday morning:
    “Mid term election results are not a true indicator of the electorates’ views.”

  53. Russia captures Commander of Canadian Army at Azovstal. 3 May 2022.

    General Trevor Cadieu (Trevor John Cadieu), captured by Russian troops while trying to escape from the cellars of Azovstal, was the commander of the Canadian Ground Forces, APA reports citing Mailbd.

    Seated in the catacombs under the Mariupol steel plant “Azovstal” nationalists staged a provocation, trying to hide the Canadian general’s attempt to escape. After the capture of a high-ranking foreign soldier by units of the RF Armed Forces, it became clear why so many efforts were made to save him.

    This hasn’t made it to the MSM yet. They are probably deciding how to spin it!

    https://apa.az/en/america/russia-captures-commander-of-canadian-army-at-azovstal-375055

      1. Ah, so that’s how they’re going to spin it!
        Yeah sure he’s retired!

      2. No one thought anything of the allegations, just about every senior officer has fallen foul of trudeaus attacks. Even if the whole sexual misconduct case was invented as a cover for him going to Ukraine, he cannot look for much help from the Canadian government, Trudeau appears to hate the army.

        Damned stupid if he went to Mariupol just a few weeks ago.

      1. 352384+ up ticks.

        Afternoon LOTL,
        In the main four things,
        Support for lab/lib/con.

    4. Is there a similar notice in the Ladies’ warning against friggin’ in the riggin’?

  56. Welcome to the Free Speech Union’s monthly newsletter in which we tell you about all the things we’ve achieved in the previous month.

    The launch of our Scottish office on 21st April attracted favourable attention in the Times (here and here), the Scottish Daily Express, Reclaim the Net, the Epoch Times and the Daily Sceptic. It was particularly encouraging to see the enthusiasm on display below the line after the Times ran our Scotland launch as its top Scotland story – posters welcomed the move and were keen to know where they could sign-up.

    The FSU opened its Edinburgh branch due to overwhelming demand from its Scottish members who are concerned that free speech is in peril north of the border. Those concerns are well-founded. As the Epoch Times pointed out in its coverage of our launch night, over the past few years we’ve seen the authorities convict a Scottish comedian for telling a bad joke, the University of Edinburgh rename a tower honouring David Hume due to his “racist” views, and a successful children’s author (who the FSU is currently supporting) forced to retrain as a truck driver for publicly backing JK Rowling’s gender critical views. Many are also concerned by the “chilling effect” of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act; an Act which, more than a year after receiving Royal assent, has thankfully yet to be activated. But as one of the members of our newly formed Scottish Advisory Council pointed out while throwing his support behind FSU Scotland in a barnstorming Times Thunderer, as and when that legislation is finally activated it will undoubtedly “shut down discussion of vital public importance such as the conflict between sex-based women’s rights and trans rights”.

    Nor are these concerns the exclusive preserve of opponents of the present SNP Government. FSU Scotland has attracted widespread, cross-party support: SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, education policy professor Lindsay Paterson, former Scottish Conservative deputy leader Murdo Fraser MSP and award-winning poet Jenny Lindsay have all recently joined our Advisory Board, where they will sit alongside former University of Edinburgh rector Iain Macwhirter, director of the Catholic Media Office Peter Kearney and former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars.

    I hosted the launch event and it included a keynote address from Jacob Mchangama, the internationally renowned free speech advocate and author of the highly acclaimed new book Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media. We were joined by a distinguished panel and, together, we debated the importance of free speech and fielded questions from the audience. We had a great turnout, and the FSU team met with many passionate people who care deeply about protecting free speech in Scotland. There was real enthusiasm in the room for what we’re trying to do, and the overwhelming impression we came away with was that there’s a vital need for the FSU in Scotland. You can see a short YouTube video in which various members of our Scottish Advisory Council talk about why free speech is important here.

    Our response to the University of Aberdeen’s no-platforming of Alex Salmond

    As though to illustrate the need for FSU Scotland, the day after our launch Alex Salmond was no-platformed by the University of Aberdeen. Mr Salmond had been due to speak at the Aberdeen University Student Union Golf Club on the evening of 22nd April, but at the last minute the booking was cancelled, forcing him to give his talk in a car park outside the venue. Mr Salmond said that the reason he was no-platformed was because transrights activists at the University who disagree with his position on proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act had petitioned the Golf Club to cancel the event. This no-platforming was, he said, a “sinister attack on freedom of speech”. Mr Salmond’s analysis was subsequently confirmed when Alisa Koester, the student President of the Aberdeen University Students Association, told a newspaper: “AUSA stands in full solidarity with the trans community who raised concerns about the event. Our campus should be a safe place where all our students feel welcome.”

    I wrote to the University of Aberdeen’s Principal and Vice-Chancellor, Professor George Boyne, to point out that the no-platforming of Mr Salmond was contrary to Scottish law, contrary to the University of Aberdeen’s own free speech policy and a breach of his right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights. The letter concluded with two requests: first, that Professor Boyne ask the golf club to apologise to Mr Salmond and reschedule his talk as soon as practically possible; and second, that the university issue a statement affirming its commitment to free speech and pointing out to the student activists who no-platformed Mr Salmond that attempting to silence those with whom one disagrees is an action that has no place at any university. You can read that letter here and see the coverage it got in the Times here.

    Rt Hon Lord David Frost to join the FSU’s Advisory Council

    The FSU is delighted to announce that the Rt Hon Lord David Frost is joining our advisory panel. Lord Frost has been a member of the House of Lords since August 2020. From March 2021 until December 2021, he was also Minister of State at the Cabinet Office. Before that, Lord Frost was the United Kingdom’s Chief Negotiator for Exiting the European Union, led the UK’s Brexit talks with the European Union and was instrumental in negotiating a free trade agreement during the Brexit transition period. Lord Frost has also recently accepted a Senior Fellowship with the think tank Policy Exchange and has repeatedly stood up for free speech, most recently in his Telegraph column where he expressed reservations about the Online Safety Bill.

    Non-crime hate incidents: an update on our recent legal success story

    Two years ago, one of our members, Kevin Mills, was recorded as having committed a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI) by the police after he refused to work with a customer who threw a scalding mug of tea at him. In last month’s newsletter we reported our success in getting that NCHI permanently deleted from Kevin’s police records. But as we pointed out on Twitter at the time, it was definitely a case of one down, many more to go. That’s because police forces in England and Wales aren’t required to notify someone if an NCHI is recorded against their name. Given that close to a quarter of a million NCHIs have been recorded since 2014, it’s likely that tens of thousands of people are still unwittingly carrying one around on their records (and they can show up if an employer carries out an Enhanced Disclosure and Barring check). The FSU’s success in the case of Kevin Mills helped push the issue back into the media spotlight in April: the Spectator, Spiked, the Sun and the Express all ran pieces about NCHIs that cited the FSU’s casework and research. The good news is that off the back of that exposure we’ve recently seen an uptick in the number of people reaching out to us via our various social media channels – i.e., Twitter, Facebook and Instagram – for support and advice.

    Nottingham holds out on Sewell degree

    Nottingham University is still resisting calls to reverse its decision not to award an honorary degree to former government race tsar Dr Tony Sewell, claiming Sewell’s presence would “overshadow” graduation ceremonies and upset students. We wrote to the EHRC asking them to investigate whether Nottingham’s decision was motivated by racial prejudice; 50 Tory MPs also wrote to the University, highlighting the “absurdity” of granting honorary degrees to disgraced former Malaysian PM Najib Razak and Uighur re-education camp denying ex-Chinese ambassador Liu Xiaoming while rescinding its offer of the same to Dr Sewell “simply because he earned the ire of a few frustrated ideologues for his widely welcomed work” on the Government’s race report.

    Gillian Philip fundraiser

    We’ve launched a CrowdJustice fundraiser on behalf of our member Gillian Philip, a writer of young-adult fiction whose contract was terminated after she expressed the heretical belief that biological sex is real. Her sin was adding the hashtag #IStandwithJKRowling to her Twitter account, which immediately led to demands that her publisher dump her and, needless to say, it did just that. Gillian’s contract was ended, and her agent abandoned her, just one month after the death of her husband. The effect on her was shattering. Today she works as a courier and an HGV driver to make ends meet. Please help Gillian fight for her freedom of speech by giving what you can to the crowdfunder.

    FSU calls for an inquiry into Cardiff University

    The FSU has been signal-boosting a petition to the Welsh Senedd, asking for an inquiry into Cardiff University’s failure to protect members of its academic staff who received death threats after they publicly queried the University’s membership of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme. We have written again to the Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff about this, querying why the University is refusing to properly investigate the bullying and harassment of these academics. We also wrote to Welsh Minister of Education Jeremy Miles MS. Please sign the petition. If it gets 10,000 signatures, it will be considered for a debate in the Senedd.

    U-Turn on U-Turn on ‘conversion therapy’

    In a double U-turn – a 360° U-turn? – the Government said it planned to drop its pledge to ban conversion therapy, and then announced hours later that the ban would in fact proceed but with a carve-out for gender dysphoria. We welcomed the initial announcement and were relieved when the Government made it clear that the ban wouldn’t extend to referring adolescents with gender dysphoria to therapists. You can read our response to the Government’s consultation about banning conversion therapy here. In our submission we said: “Our concern is that ‘conversion therapy’, as currently under discussion, is too vaguely defined to form the basis of a new law and such a law would inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech.”

    The Online Safety Bill returns to Parliament for its second reading

    The origins of the Online Safety Bill (OSB) lie in the troubling death of Molly Russell, a teenager who took her own life after viewing images of suicide and self-harm on Instagram. Theresa May’s government felt something should be done, and now, after five years, a White Paper, a consultation, a draft Bill, a joint committee of Parliamentarians, a report by that committee and a separate inquiry by the DCMS Select Committee, we’ve finally arrived at the Bill’s Second Reading in the House of Commons.

    The FSU has been tracking the legislation’s progress through Parliament. You can find our briefings about the Bill here.

    To coincide with the OSB’s second reading on 19th April, the FSU issued a press release which you can read in full here. It sets out the FSU’s current view, which is that although the latest iteration of the Bill makes welcome provision to protect children from illegal content on the internet, it doesn’t afford online freedom of speech and expression the robust, meaningful protections it needs.

    Last month, I was invited to discuss the risks posed by the Bill for Christians in an interview with Christian Today, saying that its requirement that social media companies should remove ‘legal but harmful’ speech would “almost certainly include some posts expressing orthodox Christian beliefs, although the big social media companies need no encouragement when it comes to removing them”.

    April also saw the publication of a personal essay by Dr Frederick Attenborough, the FSU’s new Communications Officer. The paper set out his concerns regarding the Bill’s proposed regulatory architecture and suggests a series of focused and limited amendments that would effectively require both Ofcom, and the online service providers it will soon be regulating, to more robustly protect and preserve online freedom of speech.

    Over the next few months, we’ll be engaging with our allies in both chambers of Parliament to ensure that the final version of the Bill more adequately balances the need to protect people from harm with protecting freedom of speech.

    Slap down SLAPPs

    Baroness Tina Stowell, Chair of House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, said the committee had heard “concerning evidence” about the chilling effect that SLAPPs are having on free speech. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation and SLAPPs are heavy-handed legal actions used by wealthy individuals or companies to intimidate and deter journalists from reporting on their wrongdoing. Stowell described both costs and case numbers as “out of control” and said the committee would be “writing to the Government to encourage urgent action on this issue”. The FSU is responding to the Government’s consultation on SLAPPs, which you can find here.

    The FSU’s response to a Home Office email asking staff to state their pronouns

    Last month the FSU wrote to Matthew Rycroft (above), the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, to complain about a directive issued to Home Office staff. Guido Fawkes and the Times have the details of the FSU’s involvement, but the gist of the story is that staff in the Visa, Status and Information Services Department were sent a standardised format for their email signatures with the suggestion that they include their preferred gender pronouns. This ‘suggestion’ was followed by an email from a manager that stated: “In case anybody wasn’t sure, this change does affect us and so we need to alter our signatures to match the template on the email.” In the template the manager was alluding to, he had included his own name followed by “(he, him, his)”. So was this directive just a clumsily worded ‘suggestion’, or an attempt to compel employees to engage in a certain type of expression? This isn’t semantic nit-picking. It matters legally. Any attempt at compulsion would not only have breached the Equality Act 2010, but would have violated those employees’ rights to freedom of thought, conscience and free speech as stipulated in Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In our letter to Mr Rycroft we pointed out the various laws this demand breached. The letter continued: “We trust that this directive was based on a misunderstanding by an overzealous manager and is not official Home Office policy. Indeed, we think it cannot be as you have not included your pronouns in your biography on the UK government website. However, we would ask you to affirm that no Home Office employee has been penalised for refusing to include their pronouns in their email signatures.” The Home Office responded by clarifying that it was only a ‘suggestion’ and not mandatory. You can read the FSU’s letter in full here.

    Sharing the newsletter

    As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below to help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

    Kind regards,

    2. Thank you, George but all the links ascribed as ‘here’ are non existant.

      No access to the documents or the petition.

      1. Good afternoon Tom
        I think you have to subscribe to get the links.

        1. OK, maybe, Alf, I’m subscribed to many and it sometimes becomes too over-whelming.

      2. For some reason, Tom, they become ineffective after copying-and-pasting. I’ve just been back onto the original and copied all the links for you:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKyVKKvgpNw
        https://freespeechunion.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Letter-to-Professor-George-Boyne-–-Final.pdf
        https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/salmonds-university-snub-breached-human-rights-b72dbpkgp
        https://freespeechunion.org/free-speech-unions-response-to-the-governments-consultation-about-banning-conversion-therapy/
        https://freespeechunion.org/briefings/
        https://freespeechunion.org/press-releases/
        https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/strategic-lawsuits-against-public-participation/
        https://freespeechunion.org

    1. My iPad says “page not found” but I have been able to read DNA Alteration Confirmed again.

  58. Listening to Boris on R4 news – the man’s an idiot. He thinks he is Churchill – an insult to a true defender of Britain and true freedom.

    1. My thought too. I wonder if there are some local elections coming up…?

    2. Would Churchill have ever allowed the ECHR to trump British Law or the NI Protocol to trump our sovereignty? Why doesn’t a journalist put this to him?.

    1. Does that mean you had a clean sweep or did you have to give him/her/it the brush off?

    2. Were G&P playing outside while all this was going on or do they sleep throught it? You didn’t sent them up the chimney?

      1. Pickles was a bit alarmed when Martin the Plumber arrived. Gus obviously told him to pull his head in and go back to sleep. Where they have both been since 8.45 am!

  60. Slow on the uptake today – not that that’s unusual.
    Wordle 318 5/6

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    1. #MeToo! Six Shots
      Wordle 318 6/6

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      2. Wordle 318 4/6

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  61. 352384+ up ticks,

    Does the electorate realise that in voting for the lab/lib/con government controlled illegal immigration via Dover coalition the NHS will NEVER EVER catch up with demand.
    The current indigenous voter every time
    he / she / it kisses X a lab/lib/con candidate
    in the polling booth the voter he / she / or it
    takes a step back within the waiting lists.

  62. I’ve just received an email about “Mental Health Diversity”. It isn’t defined. All forms of madness?

    2. I expect they mean that if you are schizophrenic, at least one of your personalities must identify as a black woman.

  64. ‘Good versus evil’: Ukraine will win war and ‘be free’, Boris Johnson tells Kyiv parliament. 3 May 2022.

    He also said the war had exposed Putin’s “historic folly” – the “gigantic error that only an autocrat can make”.

    “When a leader rules by fear, rigs elections, jails critics, gags the media, and listens just to sycophants –

    when there is no limit on his power – that is when he makes catastrophic mistakes,” the PM said.

    O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us; To see oursels as ithers see us! Rabbie Burns

    https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-will-win-war-and-be-free-boris-johnson-tells-kyiv-parliament-12604656

    2. Daily Betrayal

      The Times meanwhile has a sob story about the terrible two months those civilians endured in the bunkers under the Azovstal steel works (link, paywalled).

      I’m sure it was terrible – but two months is a bit shorter than eight

      years if my maths are correct. Of course neither the Times nor the BBC

      reporters who spoke to those civilians ever ask why it is that the Azov

      brigade soldiers didn’t let them go when Russia opened humanitarian

      corridors day after day.

      Isn’t it odd that our MSM who can

      publish videos from the Ukrainian MoD, who publish the latest pearls

      dropping from the lips of Mr ‘e, are incapable of finding the repeated

      exhortations by that person, to ‘keep fighting, ‘no surrender,’ which he

      gave to those Azov brigade people bunkered up!

      Unsurprisingly, our MSM diligently omit to check out the list published by the Russian MoD (link),

      detailing the latest Ukrainian losses. While our intrepid MSM reporters

      gleefully publish any Ukrainian video, they don’t publish those showing

      the Ukrainian POWS who are surrendering all along the Donbas front.

      That would be inhumane propaganda and would disturb the picture of yon

      victorious Ukraine which ‘we’, the USA, EU and NATO are supplying with

      all that military hardware – hardware which is either destroyed in

      warehouses or left behind by those Ukrainian soldiers.

      Rest is well worth a read too

      https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-ongoing-betrayal-tuesday-3rd-may-2022/

      1. The Times meanwhile has a sob story about the terrible two months those civilians endured in the bunkers under the Azovstal steel works.

        Afternoon Rik. I took careful note of these “survivors”. None of them looked as if they had lost any weight or endured anything more traumatic than a week in Skegness!

    3. So it seems we can add a total lack of self awareness to the catalogue of Fataturk’s faults!

    4. “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”

      [Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest]

    5. The man is so foolish to compare Russi’s might to ‘poor litle Ukraine’ and trying to run the conflict as the Battle of Britain.

      Absolute BF and can never measure up to Churchill.

  65. For the avoidance of doubt: When I wrote earlier: “Is Harry bringing Sooty?” that was not a reference to the Prince.

      1. TBH, I hadn’t noticed it was P Charlotte’s birthday either…an event of significance only to the little girl herself and her family?
        Think the DM royal groupies go a bit over the top about Harry and Meghan sometimes. They’ve gone away, that’s the main thing.

        1. But James Corden is returning to UK (seeking better education for his children?), so every silver lining has its cloud. : )

          1. “… so every silver lining has its cloud clod.”

            There, fixed it for you.

        2. But James Corden is returning to UK (seeking better education for his children?), so every silver lining has its cloud. : )

      2. Charlotte will grow to be a beautiful woman. This will cause Migraine much bitter jealousy, resentment and unhappiness.

        2. Loads of personality, but then girls are often emotionally more developed than boys of the same age.

      3. Kate does well to be in charge of the photos of her children as she takes them herself and releases the ones she wants to. That avoids all the press photographers queuing up to make their fortune with them. She does take a nice, natural photo.

  67. https://summit.news/2022/05/03/major-slave-owner-vibes-regal-hillarys-gown-attended-to-by-black-masked-servant/
    I think the dress is lovely, and I’ve never seen Hillary Clinton look so good, certainly not in her endless pantsuits.
    But as PJW points out YET AGAIN, the servants are all masked while the masters are mask free! THIS HAS GOT TO STOP. It’s the clearest possible message that they don’t want to see our faces because we’re not human to them.

      1. Exactly, and this is a very important principle. It’s like some hideous ancient court of aristocrats and slaves who aren’t allowed to show their faces. In a Christian country, there are basic rights that everyone should have.

        1. Come, come. Shirley you know that only “little people” go down with Covid….

    2. She looks like a Book end. Meow………… 🙀😼
      That’ll be a security guard, I would imagine there are a number of people out there who don’t like her very much, if at all.

    3. I suppose that, at least she didn’t do her usual thumbs up and point at the poor (black) clapping and cheering slave.

      Democrats – Pah!

    1. Happened to me at Charing X Hosp and I kicked up over not being informed so they rescheduled from Friday to the following Monday. Have you been offered a new slot?

        1. No …. I also had my flight to Poland booked for 4 May:

          This is part of the problem we have had family holidays booked for a long time and i am worried that the NHS might set an appointment when we are away and then claim it’s my fault and cancel any other appts.

    2. I have had several similar letters one told me that i had cancelled an appointment.
      I have by accident managed to get hold of the email address of my GP practice I sent them a rocket, i have just had a reply telling me they are going to pass it on to my GP. Let’s hope he takes notice his time instead of fobbing me off. I’ve had enough of it.
      I also contacted a cardiologist i have seen before, this time through a private format but was told i can have a consultation but it’s 250 quid.
      It wont be worth the cost i already know what is wrong with me, i just want some one to fix it.

      1. Sounds like you might do better, Eddy, to consider paying for some treatment in Eastern Europe.

      2. I’ve seen so many medical professionals as part of normal NHS health treatment that I’ve been able to select the five drugs that I am happy to live with from amongst the many that have been prescibed for me over the years.

        I monitor three vital signs on my smart watch: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a0c5b12ea756b6895a02ce807da18748d4d1de5546e8bde5380955f26aa437d3.jpg which are recorded and analysed with the supplied app: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/af29ab69e494503e70290aa1ba17bafff68385771493f06eaebf97e02f543335.jpg

        The only thing my smart watch doesn’t do is display the bleeding time which I only measure when I accidently cut myself. That is a measure I use to regulate my anticoagulation dosage.

        As a matter of interest I took the opportunity to have a look at my red blood cells under the microscope today: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f5256619c1e3057f31a966aa2d490014e75384d1110e233d1574893a2fce08cb.jpg as the nurse doesn’t give me any after a blood test. Nothing to see really for diagnostic purposes but one might spot a few sickle cells in the round if one were unlucky.

      3. That’s the situation I’m in; I saw the physio who identified the problem several months ago. Now, after a lot of faffing around with “mindfulness” [spit!], she’s telephoning me again. I’m afraid I’ll be direct and say, you’ve already identified the problem, now how about fixing it?

    1. Absolute BS Half-cock. we won’t be voting for your shite party anymore. You’ve destroyed it.

    2. Only Conservative Councils keep your taxes low, deliver high-quality local services & ensure better value for money.

      Surreal! Innit?

      1. It is surreal because in my experience Labour controlled councils tend to be even more profligate with the use of local taxes….

    3. He’s got no chance in Brent, most of the population are now from migrant background.

    4. Tory councils do none of those things. They’re the same as any other council – awash with waste, inefficiency, incompetence with h a greedy, spiteful and abusive management team who are disgustingly overpaid for the appalling things they ‘do’.

      Our council tax has more than doubled – not low taxes at all. Liar, liar, liar.

    1. I’m delighted to see that 14 cooks have already downloaded it – I can only hope that you find it useful.

    2. Well, I think the cat would be expecting admiration and a round of applause for a catch like that! I do hope the family didn’t disappoint!

    3. I can’t read Norwegian, did the Cat hint how the fish should be cooked for its supper?

      1. He’s multi-lingual isn’t he? I am too – sort of English and fluent gibberish for me.

    3. Addressing the Parliament of one of the most corrupt nations on the planet doesn’t come near to Churchill’s addresses in the US Congress during WWII. Johnson grandstanding yet again to try and look like a statesman. Epic fail and definitely no cigar!

  74. First flights taking Channel migrants to Rwanda could be delayed for months. 3 May 2022.

    The first flights taking Channel migrants to Rwanda on a one-way ticket may not take place for months ever, with Downing Street admitting legal challenges could delay the controversial policy.

    Boris Johnson had wanted the first flights taking migrants to claim asylum in Rwanda by the end of May, but the Government has been challenged by legal actions from three different groups claiming the policy is potentially unlawful and inhumane.

    No one with an ounce of common sense and who knows anything about the UK government would ever believe this twaddle! There is more chance of Elon Musk taking them to Mars!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/03/first-flights-taking-channel-migrants-rwanda-could-delayed-months/

    2. Nigel Farage interviewed Alexander Downer, the former Aussie high commissioner about it and Downer said that it can work if done properly as in Oz. Farage shares our scepticism. It won’t even be tried.

    4. Look, it was a con from the outset. They’ve no intention of stopping the flood, let alone removing the criminals.

      The entire point is spite for not getting their own way over Brexit and intentional race replacement.

    5. If Boris Johnson had really wanted to avoid being fined for his lockdown parties he should have organised the p*ss ups in a brewery because his lack of organisational ability would have ensured that they never happened and the police would have found evidence of a shambles but no evidence of anything else.

    2. Same par 4.
      Wordle 318 4/6

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    3. 3 for me. Down to 2 choices, one of which fortunately was decidedly non-PC, so that left the other.

    4. A lame 5.

      Wordle 318 5/6

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      1. Better than 6….!

        I was hoping NOTTLERS would attract more WORDLERS to play.

        What is everyone doing?

        Don’t answer that!

        3. I’m busy collapsing the ‘Wordle’ results as a waste of space on a forum like this.

      2. A Silly Six for me …
        Wordle 318 6/6

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    2. From memory I read that Lineker left a previous wife because she wanted kids (God knows why shackled to the Lineker prat) and he did not want more children.

      The silly little man seems to have an opinion on every sporting event. He recently commented on snooker for goodness sake, a sport with which he would normally have neither qualification nor interest. He has told his fellow footballers to stick to football after they have made comments on world affairs on Twitter. He should heed his own advice. Silly little shit!

  78. The Man with a Penis on his Arm….

    Channel 4 10.05pm – tonight

    Of course NoTTlers will all be tucked up in bed…..

    2. “What happened to my country?”

      I could ask the same question……. What happened to mine?

      2. 352384+ up ticks,
        Evening P,

        The peoples mainlining on
        lab/lib/con is what happened.

  80. Evening, all. Have the Cons actually DONE anything to show they’ve discovered their missing conservatism or is it all wind, bluster and lies to make people vote for them? Frankly, I’ll believe we’re returning to conservative principles when I see it.

    1. Lord Frost sounds promising, Boris thinks he is oven-ready!

      Hope he isn’t chicken livered like some PMs I won’t mention….

    2. In my humble opinion, that fool Boris should be sectioned. He is mad.

      1. I would add, vane, delusional and stupid. He is a fraud.

        The man is a designer deliberate scruffy fraud in need of a haircut and a Savile Row suit (even a suit by M & S would be an improvement on his current sack of potato’s image which is all deliberate on his part I am sure).

        Has Eton and more particularly Oxford, provided any person of worth since C S Lewis?

      2. I am astonished by his perception of ‘Ukraine’ vis-a-vis Russia/ NATO and the EU

    3. No, Conners!

      I reckon the only hope is for Lord Frost to shed his ermine and challenge Boris for the Tory leadership …

      Otherwise, we are F**ked for a generation; I won’t be around.

      1. I frequently mutter, “I’m glad I’m old” when I witness what’s happening to this country.

        1. My hairdresser says that every time I see her. She’s only 61 but we bitch about the state of the world and agree that it’s been a good life and we wouldn’t want to be young now.

          1. Read my book, Sue, on Kindle – Not A Bad Life and the future children may understand how our normal life was Utopia compared with that which they face.

      2. #NorMe, Lacoste, but I’m sad for my children, Grand-children and Great-grand-children, who will have to grow up and live through this dyasphoria.

        God help them – I cannot be around to do it. Someone needs to lead the revolutionary charge, even at the cost of their own life. They will be the next millenia’s hero/feroine.

      3. I reckon the only hope is for Lord Frost to shed his ermine

        or

        I reckon the only hope is for Johnson to shed his ermine in doors

  81. Bring back grammar schools, MPs tell Johnson.

    MPs are calling for the prime minister to lift the ‘absurd’ ban on setting up selective schools.

    What is the point of bringing back grammar schools if there are no teachers of skill, experience, knowledge and intelligence to staff them? The general standard of teaching, in 2022, is execrable.

    1. Unfair, teachers are qualified and trained, and many are enthusiastic and able.

      Challenges certainly exist with the contents of the national curriculum, and certain groups of pupils, and admin tasks.

    2. I do remember, George that most of our teachers at Bungay Grammar School in the 1950s, were mainly ex-servicemen who’d fought around the world in WWII and knew something of what life (and death) was about. They imbued us (or at least me) in that service for Queen and Country was probably the highest honour man could achieve

      1. In those days, the High Hiedyins reciprocated. Now they take it for granted, as their right, as they is important.
        Bastards.

        1. You are probably aware, Paul, that I left that school at 15½ and joined the RAF as a Boy Entrant. Best thing I ever did.

          1. Indeed.
            Imagine anybody doing that now…
            The problem with modern “leaders” is they seee it as their right. Those who had experience of harder times do it differently.
            Contrast Johnson and Her Majesty.
            His rules locked everyone away, yet he partied. She demonstrated leadership by example, on the event of burying her husband of many decades, by FOLLOWING THE RULES! That shitbag Johnson couldn’t even remember them!
            A clearer demonstration of what I mean couldn’t be made.
            Who out of the two has enormous respect, and who should drink acid?

          3. Indeed.
            One tough Lady, who knows what to do and how to do it. For her, I’d take a bullet. For Johnson, I’m not sure I’d take a dump.

          1. I ony said it once, to a guy who’d caused endless trouble over nothing when I was working a job for BP Angola… imagine an email to “All_in_BP.com”, the fallout (including him & his mate being driven to the airport and sent away on the first available flight), and him coming whining to me for support: “Mate, I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire!”.
            That’s my attitude to these shits. Let them burn. Hell, I might even help by providing the Swan Vestas.

          2. #MeToo, Paul. Fear not, there are many of a like mind, if only on here.

  83. Now children; listen carefully to what I say.
    Always, but always, clearly label the contents of your freezer.
    Tonight, I thought I would poach the frozen plums I discovered at the back of the fruit drawer; very nice with Greek yogurt, I thought.
    Ummmmm …. slight change of plan. The bag contained lambs’ kidneys.

          2. I’d like to think offaly naice. But that’s for the victim MB to judge.

          1. Rearranged the week’s menus.
            I don’t mind experimenting, but poaching lamb kidneys in elderflower syrup might be a step too far.

      1. Yup.
        There are rather a lot of fridge soup variations in the freezer.
        Many are “Turkey and …”
        How is your cheek (part of your face!) coming on?

        1. OK, thank gawd. No painkillers besides Pinot needed. Was very shaky and odd yesterday but much better today. Dressing comes off and will be replaced on Friday courtesy of a practice nurse.

          1. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor nor medically qualified.

            When the dressing is removed, take a few photos of the wound. The NHS likes to leave dressings on for several days in the name of economy, rather than the outcome. If the scab looks or smells dodgy, ask for advice from the nurse practitioner; there is always the remote possibility of an infection in which case you may need to take some antibiotics. If it appears to be healing fast, you might consider not replacing the dressing immediately, but only in the evening. The dressing will contain some sort of anti-bacterial substance, but five undisturbed days in warmth and darkness is a luxury for germs.

          3. I took mine off the next morning as soon as I woke up, LotL. And that was that. About 8 stitches. For something the dear chap thought might be an enlarged pore. It turned out not to be. I felt a bit wonky the following day but improved rapidly thereafter.

          4. The last one came off after two days but this is deeper and also cauterised. Seeing the nurse on Friday and we’ll see. I shall take care.

      1. Just looked it up; it looks like devilled kidneys except I’d need a jug of water beside my plate!
        I’m a total wimp when to comes to chilli or curry.

    7. I couldn’t agree more, Anne, not only label them but add the date of freezing.

      I find masking tape is very good for this plus a permanent black ink maker.

      1. #ustoo. We have a wee vacuum packer & permanent marker for the job.

  84. That’s me for this eventful day. I spoke too soon about the AGA – it is being “difficult” – as only AGAs can. But the chap is coming back tomorrow.

    The MR smiled several times….the cats help her greatly.

    Have a smashing evening preparing your speech to the Kevin “parliament”.

    A demain.

    1. Cats always change the mood – either by being daft, or placing sick/animal remains for you to tread in with socked feet…
      ;-))

    2. Cats always change the mood – either by being daft, or placing sick/animal remains for you to tread in with socked feet…
      ;-))

  85. Britain’s new Censor’s Charter will make whoever owns Twitter an irrelevance

    The fightback for freedom of speech will be meaningless if Government plans for online censorship come into force

    SILKIE CARLO

    In a speech on the future of the internet this week, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries proudly asserted that “we’re at a turning point in the digital age” – and she is right. It is a turning point between internet freedom and internet censorship.

    The Government wants to make Britain the “safest” place in the world to go online – a superlative that is more chilling than reassuring when it comes to speech control. The two forces of free market liberalism and overbearing state regulation are about to collide – but I don’t think many people expected a Conservative government to be at the helm of this collision.

    Billionaire Elon Musk’s attempt to wrestle back the digital public square from Silicon Valley’s culture of brand-driven censoriousness and reinvigorate free expression could be a serious investment in freedom online and should be celebrated by all of us who still value the right to free speech. This side project to manufacturing environmentally-friendly cars, reigniting space exploration and possibly terraforming Mars should make Musk an entrepreneurial icon for Thatcherites and Johnsonians alike. But he’s about to meet head on with the Conservatives’ Online Safety Bill, better described as a Censor’s Charter, which could seriously hamper his $44bn investment in Twitter.

    From the little that Musk has said about his free speech mission for the platform, it seems that he more or less wants to pursue a rule of law approach consistent with human rights standards. “By ‘free speech'”, he tweeted this week, “I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.” This sounds like a sensible and democratic approach, and if the Online Safety Bill simply made sure the rule of law was upheld online, it would be uncontroversial.

    Instead, Nadine Dorries’ Bill poses one of the most serious threats to free expression of any law in living memory. That is because it invokes a two-tier speech system, where completely legal speech that is lawful to say in parliament or the pub cannot be posted online without being regulated or censored under a new bureaucratic system overseen by Ofcom if it “risks” causing “psychological harm”.

    Whether Musk will be able to realise his mission for a free speech platform in the UK looks to be in serious doubt. For him to protect Twitter users from “harm” requires deference not to primary legislation or objective legal standards, but to the whims of ministers. There is no statutory definition of “harm” in the new Bill. The Secretary of State of the day can decide what categories of lawful speech qualify as “harmful” without limitation.

    One need not spend long thinking about how such a power would have been wielded over the past two years. Online censorship, often under pressure from governments, rocketed during the pandemic. In a recent example, Twitter deleted the account of Oxford Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, Carl Heneghan, for sharing an article about a study he was involved in on Covid deaths. It is worth reading that sentence twice.

    His account was reinstated after a public backlash, but the removal may well have been consistent with Twitter’s policies on censoring posts that contradict the views of public health authorities such as WHO. It’s not clear that Musk’s own tweets on Covid would survive that ridiculous test. No doubt his public standing has given him some insulation against the forces of censorship so far, but not for long.

    Under the Online Safety Bill, tech companies will have a legal obligation to robustly uphold their censorship policies in every corner of their platforms – despite the fact that they result in censorship that goes far beyond UK law. It is a remarkable contradiction.

    Indeed, Johnson’s government is full of contradictions when it comes to freedom of expression. They have harnessed the culture war over free speech, tapping into widespread concerns over our declining culture of free speech and even legislated to promote free expression in academia. But the censoriousness reserved for the internet gives one the sense that this is weather-vane policy-making without an intellectual basis.

    Accordingly, Conservative ministers have publicly described anything from Jimmy Carr’s controversial jokes to videos of migrant journeys as “harmful” content that should be banished from the internet. Labour leaders are guilty of much the same – in the Second Reading of the Bill last week, Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell name-checked “climate change denial”, poor body image and “incels” among legal harms requiring online suppression. Online censorship untethered to the law is a very open-ended project.

    Musk’s Twitter takeover led to an outpouring of neuroticism about the prospects of reduced censorship from many in the commentary class and the privileged, pro-censorship left. But it’s the Online Safety Bill that should provoke outrage – not Musk’s general support for free speech, which on any sensible reading is a starting point for platform management rather than a conclusion. Once in force, and yet more academics are being censored for wrongthink, the new law will certainly cause controversy and outrage. But those to blame will no longer be only Silicon Valley’s tech execs – it will be our own government.

    Silkie Carlo is the Director of Big Brother Watch

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/30/britains-new-censors-charter-will-make-whoever-owns-twitter/

    Could there be a more confused piece of legislation? A quango will censor the internet but the internet companies can still censor themselves yet most of them are beyond the reach of government anyway – unless it intends simply denying the public access.

    3. She is famous for starring in an advert about drinking Campari at Luton Airport a few years ago.

        2. As Churchill remarked vis-a-vis De Gaulle, “The only cross I bear is the cross of Lorraine.”

      2. Is it still quiche lorraine without the pastry and with sausage and cranberry sauce as well?

  87. Goodnight, all. No, I’m not off to bed, but I am going off to do other things than Nottling 🙂

    1. Drive down the street with an extremely noisy and busted exhaust belching fumes, left, right and centre.

      Nick Allah!

    1. I would think that its absence would enhance the price. Would you buy a property with this lump of shit installed? Not I.

      1. Who is going to fit all these heat pumps in all these houses? It is surely going to take years and years. And years.

        2. And where will all the ‘leccy come from?
          From t’Web: “According to Ofgem, the average British household has 2.4 people living in it and uses 2,900 kWh of electricity and 12,000 kWh of gas. This works out at 242 kWh of electricity and 1,000 kWh of gas per month. ”
          So, to replace the gas, you will need to add 4x the current demand on electricity.
          1. Is there generating capacity? No
          2. Is there transmission capacity? No
          3. Is the wire from the pole in the road to the house capable of taking 5x the current load? No.
          So, the entire generating and transmission system in the UK needs replaced. Hell, you roosters can’t even build a new power station in 30 years, let alone renew the whole system.
          Forget it.

          1. Our MPs are numpties;
            our Civil Servants are numpties;

            We must change the system – or die …

          2. Politicians are morons, but the intent is not to meet demand, but to force the price up. Once energy is unaffordable government meets it’s farcical agenda.

            It’s yet another attempt at socialism. The solution is that government be forced to live as they would have us. Put them in a stockade and fill it with manure.

          1. Worse. by poisonous, spiteful fools who don’t care a whit for the damage they will do.

        4. Do you remember about 20 years ago the North Sea gas
          conversions…That didn’t seem to take too long.

    5. Those of us who are in their homes for the long haul and vow only to come out in a box will be pleased to know that a costly downgrade will be reflected in a lower probate valuation and thus increase the inheritance that can be passed on to ones beneficiaries.

    6. Government are scum. The state has absolutely no business forcing people what to buy, nor devaluing property.

      Of course, the whole farce falls apart when big government continues to import hundreds of thousands of immigrants. That pushes the price of property up endlessly. Their demented, idiotic stupidity has already failed.

  90. Sorry, chums, I’m away for the night and might glance in later but for now, Goodnight and may God bless you and yours.

  91. Thanks for the kind comments again. No pain to speak of and, as I said, going to get dressing changed on Friday. However, MH’s phone has been working overtime. He has to go for a an assessment appointment on Thursday this week, then another pointless swab on Monday- he’s only tested negative three times.
    Then Thursday next week he goes in for the shunt replacement and will be in overnight; I am not allowed to be with him.
    Then we have two further appointments the week after.
    So I guess the NHS is really trying to catch up but the exclusion of loved ones continues.
    Who needs a quiet life anyway….
    Sorry to rattle on about this but I know most of you understand as you’ve had issues of your own.

    1. Absolutely no reason for the next-of-kin refusal but I see the NHS is clinging to masks and distancing as if to justify their existence.

      A totally defunct organisation – let me get at them and teach them how to run a business.

      Good luck, Ann, good to know that you make progress while the rest of the medieval monster just lurtches in the background with YOH.

      2. Masks are demonstrably damaging to health. The studies are out there. It is not healthy to inhale airborne virus via the gaps in the masks, combined with the size of virus particles, then to trap the shit in a mask and keep on inhaling it.

        Pretty bloody basic I would have thought. However ‘THE SCIENCE’, as postulated by the transparently odious crook Fauci, would argue differently.

      3. Masks are demonstrably damaging to health. The studies are out there. It is not healthy to inhale airborne virus via the gaps in the masks, combined with the size of virus particles, then to trap the shit in a mask and keep on inhaling it.

        Pretty bloody basic I would have thought. However ‘THE SCIENCE’, as postulated by the transparently odious crook Fauci, would argue differently.

    2. PS- I also think it’s a good idea to share our varying experiences- spread the word and make sure others know what’s going on- or not.

    3. Hay fever season here, everyone has runny nose and red eyes.
      Timing will be critical if they try to poke a swab up my nose, sneezes are frequent and furious.

      1. Pollen everywhere here in our area of south coast; just had a sneezing fit myself. Don’t have allergies as such but pollen makes me sneeze.

  92. Why was my comment removed (about the ghastly Kelly woman)?

    Just asking

    3. No idea.
      However, I am a specialist in supplying unhelpful suggestions. Would it have been feasible for your MR to have booked an airport taxi from your part of Norfolk to Stansted Aerodrome using a firm such as Airports Direct which is based in North Walsham? No stress, no parking .

      1. We had a taxi to Heathrow for our trip to Kenya in February. It certainly saved some stress.

    1. Do like the idea of silk knickers but maybe I’m just an old-fashioned romantic.

  95. Oh goody, we are set for a provincial election in June.

    Do we vote for the pretendy conservative, the unprincipled lefty, the way out lefty or the loonie greenie? Where is the raving loonies party, they would win hands down.

    Unfortunately the ballot papers are normally black with just enough white space for the appropriate X, definitely not enough room to vent any feelings.

    3. Take your own gold or silver pen?
      I agree, that is not an encouraging choice.

  96. Goodnight Y’all- am cream crackered so sleep beckons.
    See you tomorrow…

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