Tuesday 31 May: France and Germany are letting Putin hold the world to ransom

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 here.

545 thoughts on “Tuesday 31 May: France and Germany are letting Putin hold the world to ransom”

  3. Morning, all Y’all.
    Bla bla from govenment re WHO take-over treaty.
    The Government has responded to the petition you signed – “Do not sign any WHO Pandemic Treaty unless it is approved via public referendum”.
    Government responded:
    To protect lives, the economy and future generations from future pandemics, the UK government supports a new legally-binding instrument to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
    COVID-19 has demonstrated that no-one is safe until we are all safe, and that effective global cooperation is needed to better protect the UK and other countries around the world from the detrimental health, social and economic impacts of pandemics and other health threats. The UK supports a new international legally-binding instrument as part of a cooperative and comprehensive approach to pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

    At a World Health Assembly Special Session in late 2021, the 194 countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed to launch a process to draft and negotiate a new instrument, through the auspices of WHO, to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The negotiating process will be led by member states, including the UK.

    The instrument aims to improve how the world prevents, better prepares for, and responds to future disease outbreaks of pandemic potential at national, regional and global level. It would complement the existing international instruments which the UK has already agreed, such as the International Health Regulations. It would promote greater collective action and accountability.

    A treaty is an international agreement concluded between States or with international organisations in written form and governed by international law. The UK is party to a large number of multilateral treaties, including many through the United Nations (UN) and its specialised agencies such as the WHO. These instruments reflect obligations states have agreed to enter into to further common goals.

    The current target date for agreeing the text of the new instrument is at the World Health Assembly in May 2024. Over the next two years the UK aims to work towards building a consensus on how the global community can better prevent, prepare for, and respond to future pandemics and will actively shape, develop and negotiate the text. The new instrument would only be adopted by the World Health Assembly if the text achieves a two-thirds vote of the Health Assembly (Article 19 of the WHO Constitution). The Health Assembly is made up of representatives of WHO Member States.

    Once adopted, the instrument would only become binding on the UK if and when the UK accepts (ratifies) it in accordance with its constitutional process. In the UK this requires the treaty to be laid before Parliament for a period of 21 sitting days before the Government can ratify it on behalf of the UK.

    The Government always carefully considers whether domestic legislation will be required to implement the UK’s international obligations when negotiating a treaty. Not every treaty requires implementing legislation and it is too early to say if that would apply here. However, in all circumstances, the UK’s ability to exercise its sovereignty would remain unchanged and the UK would remain in control of any future domestic decisions about national restrictions or other measures.
    If changes to UK law were considered necessary or appropriate to reflect obligations under the treaty, proposals for domestic legislation would go through the usual Parliamentary process and the UK would not ratify the treaty until domestic measures, agreed by Parliament, were in place.

    This process of ratification allows scrutiny by elected representatives of both the treaty and any appropriate domestic legislation in accordance with the UK’s constitutional arrangements. The Government does not consider a referendum is necessary, appropriate or in keeping with precedent for such an agreement.
    Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

    1. “No-one is safe until we are all safe” – fhe weasel words intended to herd us all into slavery. I reject ‘safety’ at that price. Animals in zoos are safe.

    2. Good morning.
      I found that email waiting for me too.
      As a character from the Catherine Tate show used to say, “What a f***ing liberty.”
      The text translates as, ‘We have every intention of ratifying this travesty, and no referendum on this major loss of sovereignty will be considered.’

    4. Once adopted, the instrument would only become binding on the UK…

      However, in all circumstances, the UK’s ability to exercise its sovereignty would remain unchanged and the UK would remain in control of any future domestic decisions about national restrictions or other measures.

      If the lower quote is correct then what will be in the treaty that will be binding on the UK? Sounds very much like the ‘treaty’ we had with the EU i.e. no loss of sovereignty. Or am I missing something?

      1. Government are so used to blatantly lying, and the public mostly (via traitorous BBC and all msm) falling for those lies, that they no longer notice when their lies contradict other statements.

    5. Once adopted, the instrument would only become binding on the UK…

      However, in all circumstances, the UK’s ability to exercise its sovereignty would remain unchanged and the UK would remain in control of any future domestic decisions about national restrictions or other measures.

      If the lower quote is correct then what will be in the treaty that will be binding on the UK? Sounds very much like the ‘treaty’ we had with the EU i.e. no loss of sovereignty. Or am I missing something?

    6. Morning all. More lies from HMG.

      “ However, in all circumstances, the UK’s ability to exercise its sovereignty would remain unchanged and the UK would remain in control of any future domestic decisions about national restrictions or other measures.”

      This sentence is completely at odds with the Treaty’s purpose. It would entirely give away everybody’s own bodily autonomy with no recourse to our own laws. They are such lying bastards. Unbelievable.

      We need someone to spearhead a massive demonstration and there isn’t a lot of time left in which to do it. Will anyone step up to save us from this!

      I had a reply from my MP about this Treaty and nowhere did he mention this world health organisation meeting this week in which, it seems, the U.K. is one of the leading proponents of this unholy treaty. And I’ll bet fewer than 20% in the U.K. are aware of it.

    8. “The Government always carefully considers whether domestic legislation will be required to implement the UK’s international obligations when negotiating a treaty. Not every treaty requires implementing legislation and it is too early to say if that would apply here. However, in all circumstances, the UK’s ability to exercise its sovereignty would remain unchanged and the UK would remain in control of any future domestic decisions about national restrictions or other measures.”

      So if the UK retains this cop-out clause, what’s the point of signing up in the first place? You don’t have to read too far between the lines to see that they have already started to back-pedal.

  4. The EU should forget about sanctions – they’re doing more harm than good. Simon Jenkins. 31 may 2022.

    Nato has been sensibly scrupulous in not escalating the war in Ukraine into a Europe-wide conflict. Sanctions know no such subtlety. Millions of innocent people across Europe and far from its shores will suffer as food and energy prices soar. Supply lines are disrupted. Trade links collapse. The victims are overwhelmingly the poor.

    The objective – to compel Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine – has patently not been achieved. Military aid has been far more effective in that respect. But the harm done to the rest of Europe and the outside world is now glaring. The EU should stick to helping Ukraine’s war effort and withdraw economic sanctions against Russia. They are self-defeating and senselessly cruel.

    Simon Jenkins and I agree! There’s something seriously amiss there!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/30/eu-forget-sanctions-russia-ukraine-food-energy-prices

  5. One thought struck me – the West were hardly reliant on Russian oil and gas during the Cold War up until the 1990s kleptocracy under Yeltsin, why are they now?

    1. Because after the Cold War, the middle European countries started to treat the Russians as neighbours rather than the big bogeyman?

    2. Just bear in mind that whilst Britain has given large amounts of goods and taxpayers’ money to Ukraine the Sunday Times has pointed

      out that the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium have actually increased trade with Russia.

      Once again the Europeans profit at Britain’s expense.

  6. UK about to deport up to 30 Kurdish asylum seekers to Iraq despite dangers. 31 may 2022.

    A Home Office spokesperson said: “We make no apology for removing foreign criminals and those with no right to remain in the UK. This is what the public rightly expects and why we regularly operate flights to different countries.

    “Individuals are only returned when the Home Office and, where applicable, the courts deem it is safe to do so. The New Plan for Immigration will fix the broken immigration system and expedite the removal of those who have no right to be here.”

    You have to wonder how anyone could say this with a straight face! Five will get you ten that these people are still here next year! Lol!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/30/uk-about-to-deport-up-to-30-kurdish-asylum-seekers-to-iraq-despite-dangers

    1. At least the Home Office spokesperson admits that the current immigration system is broken.

      1. Morning Elsie. Yes I suppose that’s something of a step forward! They can’t fix it though!

    2. 352895+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,
      May one ask who are the real felons the foreign trespasser or the bogus
      deporters.

    3. The heavy armed Albanian gangsters who run drugs and prostitution in London must be laughing up their sleeves.

      1. Making progress, Sue Mac. So far I can pull a rabbit out of a hat, but sawing a lady in half is proving difficult, There’s blood everywhere and I am running out of ladies. Furthermore, the house is over-ridden with rabbits and they are reproducing at a very rapid rate! Lol.
        On a more serious note, twelve of we wrinklies went to see TOP GUN: Maverick, yesterday and voted it a unanimous “Thumbs Up”. I would, however, recommend a re-watch of the original TOP GUN before you go to see it in order to know the “back story” of this film.

        1. Love a bit of magic first thing! Sorry about the blood, though!
          Saw an interview with Tom Cruise the other night, and he was so enthusiastic about the new Top Gun! My old man wants to go an see it but I’m not keen on the whole ‘cinematic experience’!

          1. Go with him, Sue Mac. I think you’ll both enjoy it. In the unlikely event that you don’t you can come over to my house and saw me in half!

          2. We have not experienced the “whole ‘cinematic experience'” since going to the Poole’s Synod Hall to see “Let the Good time Roll”. There was something of fracas with some hooligans who had focused on us, and I had objected.

          3. Last thing we saw was at the multiplex in Falkirk. Dreadful place – expensive, hot, noisy and smelly with everyone chomping popcorn and hot dogs! The final straw was the guy sitting next to me removing his disgusting trainers and then putting his filthy feet up on the seat back! It was so memorable I can’t even remember what we saw!

          5. It was pet! And despite the ‘mummy stare’ that so terrified my daughters and latterly the grandchildren, he was oblivious! I actually think he was smashed as he smelt very ‘weedy’!

          6. I was quite surprised how well preserved Tom Cruise was when I saw him at the Queen’s Jubilee celebration.

        2. Morning, Elsie. My son is very taken with the latest Top Gun movie. On Saturday last he was explaining to me that the flying scenes were real, the actors were in aircraft and literally experiencing the g-forces. The green screen effect was not used.

          1. Yes, Korky, but not flying the planes. How could they with cameras pointed at them? Google “How TOP GUN- Maverick was filmed” for more information.

          2. But, but, but… surely there are least two: at Allan Towers and chez Elsie, Annie.

      2. Making progress, Sue Mac. So far I can pull a rabbit out of a hat, but sawing a lady in half is proving difficult, There’s blood everywhere and I am running out of ladies. Furthermore, the house is over-ridden with rabbits and they are reproducing at a very rapid rate! Lol.
        On a more serious note, twelve of we wrinklies went to see TOP GUN: Maverick, yesterday and voted it a unanimous “Thumbs Up”. I would, however, recommend a re-watch of the original TOP GUN before you go to see it in order to know the “back story” of this film.

  8. 352895+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Tuesday 31 May: France and Germany are letting Putin hold the world to ransom

    This can be seen by many an indigenous to United Kingdom person as a deflecting
    umbrella issue covering the, in name only, tory ersatz party to continue with their reset,replace locals,resettle aliens, agenda.

    No doubt of it the war & the weather saved the political arses of johnson & co.
    What should take precedent over any other issue currently is the covid 19 inquiry before any more premature deaths via lack of diagnosis due to lockdowns organised by
    party going politico’s can take place.

    An in depth inquiry could very well reveal the fact to even the loonyist of the electorate that they are condoning the fact that they are by majority party before Country vote, keeping us in the hands of very dangerous
    treacherous political cretins.

    A Tommy Robinson ( express tracked ) covid inquiry should be the order of the day.

    1. And determined to, in due course, sign up to the WHO pandemic treaty. Dangerous, treacherous political cretins, every one of them.

  9. Hong Kong’s thuggish new leader epitomises its descent into a police state. 31 May 2022.

    Lee has signalled his rule will intensify repression even further. He has said he will fast-track legislation to implement Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, aimed at prohibiting “treason, secession, sedition or subversion”, in an effort to plug any gaps not yet covered by the National Security Law. He has also talked about action to ban “fake news” – which for authoritarian regimes is a euphemism to mean any news the government dislikes.

    Sounds like the UK!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/30/hong-kongs-thuggish-new-leader-epitomises-descent-police-state/

    1. We have always been a model of governance copied by the rest of the World.

  10. Good morning all.

    Arose at 6am to let the dogs into the garden , sky was blue and the skylarks were ascending , and the early morning sun enhanced the colours in the garden . the elder flower tree , cream and sweet smelling flowers alongside the yellow bobble flowered buddliea smelt heavenly.

    I am having a day to myself , a rare outing , lunch with a few old nursing friends , so I will have a fair old drive ahead of me . There will be four of us , one of whom has lived in Australia for years , who I haven’t seen since 1969, so we are all meeting up at a pub in Somerset.

    1. Good morning True Loveliness

      I wonder what my girlfriends from the 1960s would make of me now and what I would make of them!

      1. Strange really , because we would all be in our same in the same skin , just a bit more crumpled .

        I am sure people would recognise your voice and smile .

        As I said to my friend on the the phone , how excited but nervous I felt , and she said , yes , but so are all of us .

    2. Good morning True Belle.
      That sounds like a lovely day from the very start. Safe travels!

  11. A 15-year-old girl has been caught teaching her father how to drive, police say.

    Traffic officers pulled over the Vauxhall Meriva in the Donnington area of Telford, Shropshire, at about 11.15am on Sunday.

    The motorist had his vehicle, which was displaying L plates, seized after telling officers that he was being supervised by his teenage daughter.

    He was also reported for driving in breach of licence conditions and without third party insurance.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/30/fifteen-year-old-girl-teaching-father-drive-gets-caught-police/

    Terrific comment below…

    HW

    Hereward Woke
    53 MIN AGO
    Well Greta Thunberg spends her time teaching the world about science.

      1. Interesting that nobody is querying how a fifteen year old got a driving licence.

        Is she one of the untouchable religion?

        1. I presume she didn’t have a driving licence. In any case, a driver supervising a learner must be 21 or over, and have held a full driving licence valid for the type of vehicle the learner is driving for a minimum of three years.

    2. Another BTL Comment:-

      Pat Bowles
      11 HRS AGO
      Lots of Asian grooming gangs around there.
      Say, I wonder what community this pair of plonkers are from…

    3. That was reported in my local rag. Normal for Telford, I would have thought!

  12. The Guardian says:

    “fracking – which is electorally unpopular but appeals to a minority in parliament”.

    Not half as electorally unpopular as mass electricity outages this coming winter.

    1. It will be so dark and cold, that the corpses of the lonely will be found around Easter time in a state of perfect preservation in their freezing flats.
      No-one in the council offices will have noticed that granny or uncle’s rent was several months in arrears.

    2. Fracking – which is electorally unpopular….

      Electorally unpopular with whom? Has it ever been put to a local referendum? Or is the Guardian just referring to over-vocal activists?

      1. I suspect unpopular with the virtue signalling green lefties….who else does the Guardian talk to?

      2. Same as BBC radio four presenter saying JK Rowling’s views were deeply unpopular. They had to apologise for that one.

  15. SIR – Last week I travelled to Victoria station from Kent and I was surprised by the extent of railside graffiti on the approach to London.

    I met my cousin who had travelled by National Express from Hampshire and she commented, without any prompting from me, that she was shocked by the amount of litter and weeds in the roadside on the outskirts of London.

    What a shame these will be the first impressions some visitors will have when they travel to see the historic Jubilee celebrations in the capital this week.

    Julia Wilson
    Rainham, Kent

    I was also shocked and horrified by the filth , and graffiti when I last visited our Capital city , having said that , I could say the same about Southampton and Bournemouth .

    Different times now, and a long time ago when one actually dressed up in decent togs when visiting nice places..

      1. I’ve seen that. Absolutely no sense of occasion.
        The track suit probably cost more than a proper suit.

      2. One of my cousins wore his motorbike leathers to my father’s funeral in the mid 1980s. He was only about 20 and it was the only black clothing he had. My dear Mum was just pleased he had attended.

      3. A last minute suit trial and realisation that waist expansion had got the better of him? I used a safety pin to close my trousers at the belt when the same thing happened to me only 4 years ago!

      4. How very sad.

        The son of a very great friend of mine wore jeans and a cowboy hat at his father’s funeral.

        1. At my sisters funeral a couple of weeks ago I found that the shirt I packed was too small round the neck and I couldn’t wear my black tie. I felt quite uncomfortable in spite of it being the norm these days as all the other males were wearing them

    2. The graffiti was always there. But was never cleaned off. I remember donkey’s years ago arriving in Paddington after going past all the sorry- looking slums on the way in.

      1. Agreed, before I moved to Richmond I spent a few tiring months commuting across London via train, a long journey with tube changes. The backs of houses are very depressing!. And that was in 1973!

    3. Import the third world, become the third world. When you don’t encourage any care or respect for a country people don’t have any. When there’s no investment, no sense of ‘that’s mine’ then there is no reason to care about it.

      Thus the scum destroy everything that could be beautiful. This is what happens when the state takes over.

    4. I had this conversation over coffee after church on Sunday. Nowadays so few people dress up. I was quite surprised when the person I was talking to said, “everybody wears trainers these days, not proper shoes”. I thought I was the only one who’d noticed (and deplored the habit).

      1. 352895+ up ticks,

        Morning Anne,

        I had the wretches father in law in mind when making the comment, great minds ……

    2. The chaps suggests it’s something we have a choice in. When the state intentionally blacks out the country there’s nothing we can do.

      The state knows this. It doesn’t care. Brown outs and black outs were always it’s intention if we kept using energy.

    1. Is the chap’s sister at a prime age?

      I am 76; my wife is 60. i) When was the last time both our ages were prime numbers? ii) When will the next time be?

    2. One of the harder questions for entry into the Civil Service. The respondent was accepted for a managerial position. Possible future employment at the BBC.

  20. Good Moaning.
    Oh what a grey day.
    Attending a funeral this afternoon which really completes the gloom.

  21. Good morning all.
    A damp and dull start today. Currently dry after overnight rain but 6½°C outside.

  22. No, Stella Creasy, women don’t have penises. Spiked. 31 may 2022.

    Creasy is known for her campaign to make misogyny a hate crime and for wearing her baby in the Commons like a ‘must-have feminist accessory’. But in an interview for the Telegraph on Friday, Creasy made her contempt for women’s rights campaigners clear. She claimed to believe that ‘some women were born with penises’ and that ‘a trans woman is an adult human female’. In the interview she complained about being a victim of sexism while feigning frustration and bemusement that some women, like JK Rowling, continue to hold on to the belief that biological sex matters.

    It shows how perverted the thought processes of the Political Elites have become that they are able to deny reality in public and survive. Only twenty years ago such pronouncements would have provoked Public Ridicule and seen them deselected at best. The thing is that this is not at all uncommon. Her leader for example is unable to define what a woman is and his Party would fare no better. This simple question that would cause no difficulty to a seven year old is beyond the combined wits of the Ruling Classes! These are the same people that make decisions of Vital Importance to the Country and its People. You can see why we are inevitably screwed!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/30/no-stella-creasy-women-dont-have-penises/

      1. In a sane society, with her previous vulgar exhibitionism, she would be.

      2. Four hundred years ago she may have been burned at the stake, and rightly so.

    3. “It shows how perverted the thought processes of the Political Elites have become that they are able to deny reality in public and survive.”

      Quite, just look at Johnson and the Green Agenda.

    4. It is astonishing how quickly Stella Creasy changed from being a rather attractive young woman into being a dumpy, opinionated, frumpy old bat.

    5. Why are men with vaginas never mentioned in this bl**dy gender debate?

      1. Indeed.
        I didn’t know that being a woman was so wonderful until a whole slew of inadequate males decided they were women.

      2. Because there are so few of them? I wonder if it isn’t the result of soya produce and oestrogen in the water that causes so many men to think they are women.

  23. No, Stella Creasy, women don’t have penises. Spiked. 31 may 2022.

    Creasy is known for her campaign to make misogyny a hate crime and for wearing her baby in the Commons like a ‘must-have feminist accessory’. But in an interview for the Telegraph on Friday, Creasy made her contempt for women’s rights campaigners clear. She claimed to believe that ‘some women were born with penises’ and that ‘a trans woman is an adult human female’. In the interview she complained about being a victim of sexism while feigning frustration and bemusement that some women, like JK Rowling, continue to hold on to the belief that biological sex matters.

    It shows how perverted the thought processes of the Political Elites have become that they are able to deny reality in public and survive. Only twenty years ago such pronouncements would have provoked Public Ridicule and seen them deselected at best. The thing is that this is not at all uncommon. Her leader for example is unable to define what a woman is and his Party would fare no better. This simple question that would cause no difficulty to a seven year old is beyond the combined wits of the Ruling Classes! These are the same people that make decisions of Vital Importance to the Country and its People. You can see why we are inevitably screwed!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/30/no-stella-creasy-women-dont-have-penises/

  24. I don’t know if this has been posted already but here are the weasel words from out pseudo government who/WHO are going to sign the treaty to give the WHO/Big Pharma the right to declare pandemics at their whim.
    So much for taking control of our own legislation they now want to sign away the sovereignty of our bodies. Well, I ain’t going to play their game.

    The Government has responded to the petition you signed – “Do not sign any WHO Pandemic Treaty unless it is approved via public referendum”.

    Government responded:

    To protect lives, the economy and future generations from future pandemics, the UK government supports a new legally-binding instrument to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

    COVID-19 has demonstrated that no-one is safe until we are all safe, and that effective global cooperation is needed to better protect the UK and other countries around the world from the detrimental health, social and economic impacts of pandemics and other health threats. The UK supports a new international legally-binding instrument as part of a cooperative and comprehensive approach to pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

    At a World Health Assembly Special Session in late 2021, the 194 countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed to launch a process to draft and negotiate a new instrument, through the auspices of WHO, to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The negotiating process will be led by member states, including the UK.

    The instrument aims to improve how the world prevents, better prepares for, and responds to future disease outbreaks of pandemic potential at national, regional and global level. It would complement the existing international instruments which the UK has already agreed, such as the International Health Regulations. It would promote greater collective action and accountability.

    A treaty is an international agreement concluded between States or with international organisations in written form and governed by international law. The UK is party to a large number of multilateral treaties, including many through the United Nations (UN) and its specialised agencies such as the WHO. These instruments reflect obligations states have agreed to enter into to further common goals.

    The current target date for agreeing the text of the new instrument is at the World Health Assembly in May 2024. Over the next two years the UK aims to work towards building a consensus on how the global community can better prevent, prepare for, and respond to future pandemics and will actively shape, develop and negotiate the text. The new instrument would only be adopted by the World Health Assembly if the text achieves a two-thirds vote of the Health Assembly (Article 19 of the WHO Constitution). The Health Assembly is made up of representatives of WHO Member States.

    Once adopted, the instrument would only become binding on the UK if and when the UK accepts (ratifies) it in accordance with its constitutional process. In the UK this requires the treaty to be laid before Parliament for a period of 21 sitting days before the Government can ratify it on behalf of the UK.

    The Government always carefully considers whether domestic legislation will be required to implement the UK’s international obligations when negotiating a treaty. Not every treaty requires implementing legislation and it is too early to say if that would apply here. However, in all circumstances, the UK’s ability to exercise its sovereignty would remain unchanged and the UK would remain in control of any future domestic decisions about national restrictions or other measures.

    If changes to UK law were considered necessary or appropriate to reflect obligations under the treaty, proposals for domestic legislation would go through the usual Parliamentary process and the UK would not ratify the treaty until domestic measures, agreed by Parliament, were in place.

    This process of ratification allows scrutiny by elected representatives of both the treaty and any appropriate domestic legislation in accordance with the UK’s constitutional arrangements. The Government does not consider a referendum is necessary, appropriate or in keeping with precedent for such an agreement.

    Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

    1. “COVID-19 has demonstrated that no-one is safe until we are all safe that we are governed by fascist technocrats.
      Fixed it for them.

    2. ‘High’ Points of Pandemic No 1, as CONVID will be known.

      1. Clear out of the elderly fron care homes commenced, undertakers busy, but families excluded from burials
      2. New Entrants allowed into empty Care Homes, but put into Solitary Confinement
      3. Wearing of pointless, unhygenic, useless, unprotecting, both for wearer and people near by, Masks made Compulsory
      4. Untested Vaccines forced on population
      5. Track and Trace introduced… YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.
      6. Business and services shut down,
      7. Social distancing forced on us, including who you can meet etc
      8. Ages of vaccine receivers gradually reduced from 60 down to midwives injecting it in placenta (I know that is a fib, but they would if could)
      9. Country split into ‘Believers’ and Sensible people
      10. No travel anywhere allowed
      11. Booster vaccines
      12. Working from home
      13 Some normality returns
      14 Foreign travel allowed.

      15 etc
      16. It shuld benoted, that Doveristas seem to be exempt from the above
      17. WHO, WEF, Great Reset etc will rule the world
      18. We will own nothing, not even our souls

        1. That’s the ultimate goal of the state. Control over our incomes, contorl over our choices then our bodies.

          They will not stop until totatlitarianism is imposed – all for our own good, of course.

        1. Illegal Channel crossers who are met at the half way point, by the Border Farce or RNLI luxury day boats.
          They are then fed and watered and taken by Rolls Royes to remain in 5* hotels for the rest of their lives.
          They are of course on beenefits.
          Do not learn our language
          Many aresworn enemies of our religion
          Child groom our young children for sexual purposes.
          Are fully protected from our laws by the Libore Party and a Host of legal aid paid Barristers

          Doveristas for short

    3. ‘High’ Points of Pandemic No 1, as CONVID will be known.

      1. Clear out of the elderly fron care homes commenced, undertakers busy, but families excluded from burials
      2. New Entrants allowed into empty Care Homes, but put into Solitary Confinement
      3. Wearing of pointless, unhygenic, useless, unprotecting, both for wearer and people near by, Masks made Compulsory
      4. Untested Vaccines forced on population
      5. Track and Trace introduced… YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.
      6. Business and services shut down,
      7. Social distancing forced on us, including who you can meet etc
      8. Ages of vaccine receivers gradually reduced from 60 down to midwives injecting it in placenta (I know that is a fib, but they would if could)
      9. Country split into ‘Believers’ and Sensible people
      10. No travel anywhere allowed
      11. Booster vaccines
      12. Working from home
      13 Some normality returns
      14 Foreign travel allowed.

      15 etc
      16. It shuld benoted, that Doveristas seem to be exempt from the above
      17. WHO, WEF, Great Reset etc will rule the world
      18. We will own nothing, not even our souls

    4. The people don’t want the WHO treaty, the Government do therefore it will go ahead – so that’s democracy is it? These wanquers in Parliament have forgotten they work for us – maybe it’s time to remind them!?

    5. Yes, I’ve had the same blibble. Even two large buckets of rocket fuel failed to keep my eyelids apart.

    6. And that is why these petitions are pointless. It’s a long way of laughing in your face and sticking two fingers up.

      In a democracy they would have to reply. They wouldn’t have a choice. There would be no petition, simply a slight cough from their masters – us – and obedience, no matter what the mandarins want. They’d rant and fume and rage and then we’d sack them.

  26. Good morning. While they are playing footsie with the electorate and trying to put us all into energy poverty, the creeps in government have been trying to give away our sovereignty to the globalists to allow them to lockdown, jab and poison us to their hearts content. Fortunately other countries have given them the bird.

    We need to stop talking to Johnson, Starmer and the rest, and put them in front of a court.

    https://tarableu.substack.com/p/bloody-nose-for-the-who?sd=pf

          1. Of course in the Middle Ages due process meant trial in Westminster Hall, banged up in the Tower then dragged behind a horse to the place of execution at Smithfield.

            We could leave out the horse bit but now that the enormous heap of nothing has been cleared away at Marble Arch, there’s a good size space free on Tyburn Hill.

            Or Trafalgar Square, which could also accommodate spectators. That would make the newcomers feel at home? Hell, I think I’ve just reasoned myself out of what seemed like a good idea. Drat!

        2. No, they offer none to us, they’ve destroyed the very concept of justice. The courts are perverted. The only solution is destruction. When people pop up to complain, get rid of them as well. Keep getting rid until people stop complaining.

          Hell, even I don’t believe that nonsense, but I am sick and tired of justice being so detached from law. From democracy and politics being utterly alien.

          I’m sick and tired of paying for everything and my life being made worse while other wasters profit.

          1. Wibbling, not entirely I think – hope. The courts have given the government a caning on a number of corruption and malfeasance matters in the last months – notably, among others, pursued by the Good Law Project. My feeling is that they will move to act as the wind leaves the sails of the bad guys. There are thousands of professionals around the country of all stripes who have bitten their lips during the Great Lying, but who will support the Rule of Law if they perceive any likelihood of truth coming back into fashion.

  27. ConWoman on fire……….

    This is the reason the NHS is an enemy organisation. As with all

    large-scale bureaucracies it has developed a life of its own, with goals

    and strategies ultimately focused on its own survival at the expense of

    yours.

    With mounting evidence of the scale of vaccine injury, of vaccine

    induced immunity issues, of Guillain-Barre syndrome, horrific

    branch-like blood clots, lung damage, palsy, and of course the sudden

    and otherwise inexplicable rise of heart failure and myocarditis, the

    legitimacy of the NHS as the arbiter of the nation’s health is ruined.

    It told us to follow the science – but the science was dangerous

    nonsense. None of the disastrous measures worked and the cure is worse

    than the disease. Bang a pan for that.

    It is time to do away once and for all with the cult of the NHS. It

    is a sickness from which we must all recover. Know your enemy.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-nhs-is-an-enemy-organisation/

    1. All government science is always dangerous and not remotely based on science but rather in getting what the state wants.

    2. I expect that everyone has a story to relate about the NHS and mine is, that despite the most obvious problems, front line NHS has been and still is excellent.
      But I am afraid it’s the same old story that has been festering for many years in the now rapidly dissolving culture of the once proud and reasonable UK. It’s been wrecked by self opinionated, self righteous, resolutely destructive and appalling (box tickers) management. It’s become pretty obvious that now right from the top down the management has hit it’s lowest standard ever. They always have a lot to say about everything, but their actions are drown by words. The old adage ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ is now even more meaningful than it has ever been.
      Around 3 years ago the all knowing all seeing government (AKA) the senior civil service put around 6 regional managers in place to, well, seemingly manage the demise of the NHS. These managers are and have been paid around a quarter of a million pounds each.
      If you want an appointment with a GP we all know how difficult it has been. A&E was always the best option and after a few hours the problem might be solved in one way or another. Don’t tell me this wasn’t planned a few years ago. And even now it’s still possible to arrive in the UK walk straight into a Hospital and receive this type of expert treatment and even after a few weeks of hospitalisation get out of bed get dressed and walk out with out having paid a penny or asked to contribute . That has been happening for decades. Billions of pounds of tax payers money in time and medical equipment has been squandered in this manner.
      I am afraid it’s the same old story in our same old UK for many decades, it’s been run by insincere uncaring nincompoops……and so it goes on.

      1. The NHS is not excellent. It’s appalling.

        Not because of the medical staff – they, like half the civil service – are trying to do a great job. The problem is they’re held back by the dead weight Left wing navel gazing entrenched waste.

        1. All i am saying wibbers is over the past 18 months and from a personal point of view, with front line NHS I have had the attention and treatment that I needed at the time I needed it.
          But even the front liners will agree that the management is crap.

          1. I haven’t needed any treatment for some years, but when I did, I got it. Over 2021 OH was treated quickly and efficiently at A&E, the GP surgery, and by three consultants at three local hospitals. He paid privately for the hernia op to be done at a time of his choosing.

            I agree with you, Eddy that the frontline medical staff are trying to do an excellent job in difficult circumstances – but the management, and unnecessary diversity managers…………

          2. I’m afraid I haven’t had the treatment (or, indeed, the investigations) I need. One of my neighbours, who has been struggling to get treatment, has now been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I’m sure if she had been treated earlier it could have been controlled.

          3. It seems to be the luck of the draw. I’m sorry you haven’t been well-treated, and there were failings in the care of your OH too, as well as your neighbour. I guess we’ve been lucky here.

          4. It does seem to be a postcode lottery as to whether you get good NHS service or not.

  28. Story in The Grimes about Carrion being responsible for the sacking of the housekeeper at Chequers.

    1. I am becoming more and more convinced that Carrie Symonds is working clandestinely for the Labour Party with the express purpose of seducing, having children with, by marrying Boris Johnson and completely undermining any judgement he might have had and putting the Conservative Party out of office for ever.

      When you consider that certain under-cover policemen seduced and had children with women suspected of being involved in organised crime this is a very plausible theory

      1. Labour? Green party, shirley…
        She’s not a genuine conservative, that’s for sure.

  30. Russia cuts off gas supplies to Netherlands. 31 May 2022.

    Russia’s Gazprom has stopped delivering gas to the Netherlands, after Dutch gas trader GasTerra said it had refused to comply with demands to pay the company in roubles.

    Russia has already cut supplies into Poland, Finland and Bulgaria after energy giant Gazprom introduced new requirements over gas payments. President Vladimir Putin has demanded that rouble accounts be set up in a Russian bank as part of the settlement scheme – something which companies have said risks breaching sanctions.

    Gazprom said it had fully cut off the supplies to GasTerra, which buys and trades gas on behalf of the Dutch government.

    It doesn’t say so in this article but the UK is taking up a lot of the slack here by supplying these countries ourselves. There will of course eventually be a point at which we can no longer do this and then rationing will begin!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/31/ftse-100-markets-live-news-russia-oil-prices-pound/

    1. Are they paying their prices, or ours?

      This chaos has got to end. We need energy. Lots and lots of energy. The state has got to abandon the idiocy of green and get fracking and building power stations. There’s no alternative now. Our energy bill has doubled in a year. Will it double again? The state seems determined to destroy society.

      How many dead this time? 200 million? Where will their insanity end? How many must pay the price?

      1. I have been saying this since around 2000 – if not earlier.
        It is blindingly obvious that you do not run down such a basic resource as energy and put yourself at the mercy of other states, however beneficent they may seem to be.
        The crowing over the collapse of the Soviet Union hardly helped matters.

        1. Chums keep telling me that the interconnects are a good thing as it is always bwindy somewhere, so ew can all have green energy.

          Such people are naive because if it’s blowing there, and they’ve other limited resources, then *they* need that energy. Any surplus will be negligible. Making us dependent – any country making itsef energy dependent – is simply moronic.

        2. I realised that being self dependent for energy was essential when the Yom Kippur War erupted and the Government made preparations for fuel rationing.
          A good start would have been solar water heaters on all new build housing.

    1. I just use the tumble dryer. She’ll get tired when there’s more clothes to dry.

  33. You can just tell that a Bank Holiday is in the offing. It is HAILING….

    2. I was going to take the sap soaked car to be cleaned by hoping the rain will do it for me.

    3. When I left Newmarket I was treated to a thunderstorm – the Gods are clearly angry!

    1. Everyone in the family has the wifi password and any one else we know does as well.

      This confuses a lot of visitors as they ask where the adverts have gone and why the internet is so much quicker.

      1. Crumbs. I have never given our wifi password to a visitor. They’re darn well expected to be sociable not sit there on their blasted phones the whole time!

    1. This is because they’d say things that would enrage the public that they don’t have a problem with, such as ‘rape your daughters (and sons), wives, take your homes, living on welfare, nothing you can do….

      Quite simply they shuold be here. If the home office won’t remove them then the home office shouldn’t be here either.

    2. 352895+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      I believe yhe village of
      :Linton -on-Ouse property prices have plummeted to such an extent being buy a whole house at half price get a whole house free.

      NOT meant to be funny this is going to be the norm.

      In many, many cases self inflicted.

  36. The rail strikes have focussed the Warqueen’s plans. We’ve done the maths on a spreadsheet, even accounted for 50% hikes in energy costs over 5 years (which would put energy at higher cost than our mortgage).

    With lots of budgeting and a very complicated spreadsheet that accounts for ‘things wearing out’ (including Mongo) she reckons she can quit in 3 years, 2 and 6 if we’re careful (which means I don’t get to spend any money).

    Thus we’re going for it. My only concern is I honestly cannot see a department running tax accountant for a multinational suddenly becoming a provincial accountant but she’s made overtures to a little local company that she likes so hey ho.

    1. I apologise for prefacing my anecdotes with ‘years ago’ but when talking about real people, it’s best to be discreet.
      Years ago, pre-excel, I visited a successful small provincial business which had a besuited accountant working in the office. The business owner explained that he had found someone who was prepared to divide (apportion?) his time between about 6 non-rival local businesses, and who didn’t wish to commute, and so a syndicate was formed to pay the man’s wages.
      One possible course of action would be for the Warqueen to take a course to be a non-executive director, always needed.

    2. You could always eat the dog, if all else fails. We are fattening up Gus and Pickles……

  37. Moronic sperm donor who fathered 15 children with lesbian mothers despite incurable genetic condition claim he did it because he’s ‘kind hearted’ and ‘would do anything for anybody’. Dreary Fail

    Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a genetic disorder characterized by mild-to-moderate intellectual disability. The average IQ in males with FXS is under 55, while about two thirds of affected females are intellectually disabled. Physical features may include a long and narrow face, large ears, flexible fingers, and large testicles (and that includes the lesbians?) and it is incurable.

    Oh how we cried for the LGBTXYZ community.

    1. The donor is a w**ker. Literally. As far as the lesbian recipients are concerned, caveat emptor.

  38. Robb Elementary and the cowardice of the elites. Spiked 31 may 2022.

    Everything about the Robb Elementary school massacre is grim. Nineteen children and two teachers shot dead. The husband of one of the teachers dying from a heart attack two days later. Then there are the bone-chilling stories of how the kids who were targeted in this barbaric assault, mostly aged 10 and 11, tried to avoid being killed. One reportedly smeared herself with some of her friend’s blood and then played dead. This was a truly hellish event.

    Incredibly, there is another layer to this terrible act – the alarming failures of the authorities. On top of the moral vacuum in which the shooter was operating, there was the bureaucratic disarray of those charged with protecting citizens from such wicked individuals. Children were stuck in the classroom with the killer, with the mass murderer of their friends, for more than an hour before police entered and shot the gunman dead. This is one of the most extraordinary facts from that dreadful day in Uvalde. It is difficult to make sense of it.

    Last Tuesday in Texas, the first 911 call about the shooter was made at 11.30am. This was around the time that the shooter was barricading himself into two connected classrooms full of fourth-grade kids. It wasn’t until 12.50pm that cops breached the barricade and shot the shooter dead. What happened between 11.30am and 12.50pm? Something nightmarish. This will go down, surely, as one of the most shameful hours of recent times in the United States.

    From around 12pm, police received numerous calls from children inside the classrooms that were being terrorised by the shooter. One, a girl, called at 12.03pm, whispering. She told the police her name. She called back at 12.10 and told the police that there were multiple dead. She called again at 12.13. And at 12.26. She told police she could see eight or nine dead students. Just try to compute the horror of being a child surrounded by dead friends whispering to a 911 operator while the murderer is close by.

    Another student, also a girl, called 911 at 12.19. A fellow student whispered to her to hang up, so she did. She called again at 12.21 and – in possibly the most chilling detail from that day – gunshots could be heard in the background to her call. There were three shots. Presumably this was the killer finishing off some of his targets. The girl called back at 12.43 and 12.47, and on both occasions she asked 911 to send the police. She begged, as one report put it, to ‘please send the police now’.

    At 12.50pm, during one of the calls, numerous shots and loud shouting could be heard in the background. This, finally, was the noise of officers breaking into the classrooms, where they killed the gunman and evacuated the surviving children. That was one hour and 20 minutes after the first 911 call about a shooter on the school premises had been received.

    What happened? Where were the cops? Incredibly, they were inside the school. They were in the hallway. Nineteen law-enforcement officers waited in the hallway in the mistaken belief that no lives were at risk. Even though 911 was receiving numerous calls that made it clear that children were dead or dying and that the gunman was still alive and still active. The 19 officers were told by the commander on the scene – the school district’s chief of police – to wait until a tactical team arrived to take care of the situation. Eventually a Border Control tactical team turned up, entered the classroom, and killed the killer.

    Grimmer still is the fact that cops outside the school prevented distressed parents and other adults from going in to find out what was going on. To find out if their kids were safe. So there was the appalling situation where, in essence, the killer was given the space to carry out his dreadful act; where officers stayed away from him and other adults were prevented from reaching him. Instead he was left alone with the children he wanted to kill for what will no doubt be recorded as one of the longest hours in recent American history. Cops ‘let our babies get slaughtered’, said the father of one of the victims.

    Clearly there will need to be some kind of inquiry into these catastrophic failures of policing. The residents of Uvalde will make sure of it. Already local police colonel Steven McGraw has said cops made the ‘wrong decision’ in failing to storm the classroom at the earliest opportunity. It remains to be seen whether it was miscommunication or misinformation that led to a situation where 19 officers waited in a hallway around the time that 19 schoolchildren were being shot to death. Or was it something else? Could it be that this appalling failure speaks to a deeper institutional and moral rot in US society, and in Western society more broadly?

    The question many people will be asking themselves is why none of the 19 officers in the hallway felt compelled to break into the classroom. Even if their orders were to stay put. Even if they had been told that no one was at risk. They knew there was an armed man in there, with children. So where was that instinct we hope we all would feel in such a situation to smash the doors down and make sure the kids were safe?

    That people whose very vocation is to protect and serve failed to protect and serve raises some serious questions about the temper of our times. It suggests that the virtues that make civilised life possible – courage, bravery, the taking of risks in the name of a greater good – are in a pretty parlous state right now. We live in a time in which teachers shirked their duty to educate the next generation because they didn’t want to catch a virus. In which vast swathes of the Western bourgeoisie are refusing to return to work because they prefer the comforts of WFH. In which the UK Foreign Office seriously messed up the evacuation of British passport-holders from Afghanistan because they weren’t in the office, doing the hard work. In which police officers in the US and here in the UK seem increasingly reluctant to take big risks to save life and limb. So not only did 19 officers stand in a hallway while a gunman terrorised kids in Texas, but also police and ambulance services took nearly an hour to arrive on the scene of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing apparently because they were not sure if it was safe.

    It is thought that two of Manchester’s 22 victims could have been saved if emergency services had arrived sooner. No one wants to ask this question, I know, but is it possible that some of the children of Robb Elementary bled to death because of the long, long wait before the intervention of the authorities? We need to know.

    The bottom line is this: a society in which adults will not risk everything to save children, to protect the most vulnerable from harm, is a society that has lost its moral bearings. We seem to be witnessing a great retreat of elites in Anglo-American society. They’re retreating from the workplace, retreating from the vocation of education, and retreating from the necessity of sometimes putting one’s own life on the line in order to protect the lives of those who are younger and weaker. The Robb Elementary horror reminded us of something we all know – that there are evil individuals in our society. It may also have revealed that some sections of our society increasingly lack the valour and selflessness required to confront such evil.

    We already know that the Political Elites are spineless jellies but their effect on the lesser members of their administrations is less well appreciated. Who wants to stick his neck out and risk his life for the possibility of prosecution or calumny afterwards? Think Northern Ireland! Better to wait until someone else decides! The truth is that those institutions that our forefathers created also have a down side. The police for example; as here, free the general population from the need to act themselves but this also leads to the atrophy of personal responsibility and institutionalised cowardice with a corresponding separation between the rulers and the ruled.

    There was a time when the police did not exist! It was not chaos! An outraged citizenry was quite capable of acting on its own! It is this aspect that frightened the elites into the creation of Law and Order since they could never be sure that they might not be next. It is also the reason for all the stories about lynch law being always in error. This is not borne out by the real history of the American West.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/31/robb-elementary-and-the-cowardice-of-the-elites/

    1. I cannot comment on this as it breaks my heart- again. Small children gunned down somewhere they should feel safe. Our grandson would be in 4th grade if he was in the US. I have taught many kids of that age.
      Same with Sandy Hook and every other occasion when innocent children are slaughtered- every officer, law enforcement person who failed to act should be held accountable.
      And it will happen again and again.

      1. 19 (officers of the law!!!??) and not one of them would step out of line. Cowardly behaviour.

        1. My feelings exactly!! As a former teacher, most teachers would do anything to protect their pupils and two teachers died there doing just that.

          1. I can’t imagine their thought process, they were obviously not Ex US Marines.
            There are times when, no matter who gives the orders: protection of the innocent and vulnerable must be paramount, regardless of the outcome for one’s self.
            It was a total dereliction of duty.

    2. Don’t worry. Never one to ignore a crisis, Trudeau is now trying to use this deplorable event make gun possession harder for us. I am sure that this will deter the users of illegal guns.

    3. This says it rather forcefully. The Yankee Marshall is a guntuber.
      Warning: No pictures, but the description of events is rather harrowing. If you are anything like me, you will get upset by it.
      https://youtu.be/NbIFTw3zlYY

    4. Even unarmed and without body armour, if one broke in to the classroom and was shot, then there’d have been one bullet less for the children.
      The police should be collectively arrested and tried for aiding and abetting a crime. Bastards. I hope they all are banned from every pub, restaurant and shop in town. I read that the Chief’s house is under 24 hour armed protection… he’d be needing it.

    5. It really comes to something when one agrees with practically everything these (ex) Marxists write. But I do.

  39. Robb Elementary and the cowardice of the elites. Spiked 31 may 2022.

    Everything about the Robb Elementary school massacre is grim. Nineteen children and two teachers shot dead. The husband of one of the teachers dying from a heart attack two days later. Then there are the bone-chilling stories of how the kids who were targeted in this barbaric assault, mostly aged 10 and 11, tried to avoid being killed. One reportedly smeared herself with some of her friend’s blood and then played dead. This was a truly hellish event.

    Incredibly, there is another layer to this terrible act – the alarming failures of the authorities. On top of the moral vacuum in which the shooter was operating, there was the bureaucratic disarray of those charged with protecting citizens from such wicked individuals. Children were stuck in the classroom with the killer, with the mass murderer of their friends, for more than an hour before police entered and shot the gunman dead. This is one of the most extraordinary facts from that dreadful day in Uvalde. It is difficult to make sense of it.

    Last Tuesday in Texas, the first 911 call about the shooter was made at 11.30am. This was around the time that the shooter was barricading himself into two connected classrooms full of fourth-grade kids. It wasn’t until 12.50pm that cops breached the barricade and shot the shooter dead. What happened between 11.30am and 12.50pm? Something nightmarish. This will go down, surely, as one of the most shameful hours of recent times in the United States.

    From around 12pm, police received numerous calls from children inside the classrooms that were being terrorised by the shooter. One, a girl, called at 12.03pm, whispering. She told the police her name. She called back at 12.10 and told the police that there were multiple dead. She called again at 12.13. And at 12.26. She told police she could see eight or nine dead students. Just try to compute the horror of being a child surrounded by dead friends whispering to a 911 operator while the murderer is close by.

    Another student, also a girl, called 911 at 12.19. A fellow student whispered to her to hang up, so she did. She called again at 12.21 and – in possibly the most chilling detail from that day – gunshots could be heard in the background to her call. There were three shots. Presumably this was the killer finishing off some of his targets. The girl called back at 12.43 and 12.47, and on both occasions she asked 911 to send the police. She begged, as one report put it, to ‘please send the police now’.

    At 12.50pm, during one of the calls, numerous shots and loud shouting could be heard in the background. This, finally, was the noise of officers breaking into the classrooms, where they killed the gunman and evacuated the surviving children. That was one hour and 20 minutes after the first 911 call about a shooter on the school premises had been received.

    What happened? Where were the cops? Incredibly, they were inside the school. They were in the hallway. Nineteen law-enforcement officers waited in the hallway in the mistaken belief that no lives were at risk. Even though 911 was receiving numerous calls that made it clear that children were dead or dying and that the gunman was still alive and still active. The 19 officers were told by the commander on the scene – the school district’s chief of police – to wait until a tactical team arrived to take care of the situation. Eventually a Border Control tactical team turned up, entered the classroom, and killed the killer.

    Grimmer still is the fact that cops outside the school prevented distressed parents and other adults from going in to find out what was going on. To find out if their kids were safe. So there was the appalling situation where, in essence, the killer was given the space to carry out his dreadful act; where officers stayed away from him and other adults were prevented from reaching him. Instead he was left alone with the children he wanted to kill for what will no doubt be recorded as one of the longest hours in recent American history. Cops ‘let our babies get slaughtered’, said the father of one of the victims.

    Clearly there will need to be some kind of inquiry into these catastrophic failures of policing. The residents of Uvalde will make sure of it. Already local police colonel Steven McGraw has said cops made the ‘wrong decision’ in failing to storm the classroom at the earliest opportunity. It remains to be seen whether it was miscommunication or misinformation that led to a situation where 19 officers waited in a hallway around the time that 19 schoolchildren were being shot to death. Or was it something else? Could it be that this appalling failure speaks to a deeper institutional and moral rot in US society, and in Western society more broadly?

    The question many people will be asking themselves is why none of the 19 officers in the hallway felt compelled to break into the classroom. Even if their orders were to stay put. Even if they had been told that no one was at risk. They knew there was an armed man in there, with children. So where was that instinct we hope we all would feel in such a situation to smash the doors down and make sure the kids were safe?

    That people whose very vocation is to protect and serve failed to protect and serve raises some serious questions about the temper of our times. It suggests that the virtues that make civilised life possible – courage, bravery, the taking of risks in the name of a greater good – are in a pretty parlous state right now. We live in a time in which teachers shirked their duty to educate the next generation because they didn’t want to catch a virus. In which vast swathes of the Western bourgeoisie are refusing to return to work because they prefer the comforts of WFH. In which the UK Foreign Office seriously messed up the evacuation of British passport-holders from Afghanistan because they weren’t in the office, doing the hard work. In which police officers in the US and here in the UK seem increasingly reluctant to take big risks to save life and limb. So not only did 19 officers stand in a hallway while a gunman terrorised kids in Texas, but also police and ambulance services took nearly an hour to arrive on the scene of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing apparently because they were not sure if it was safe.

    It is thought that two of Manchester’s 22 victims could have been saved if emergency services had arrived sooner. No one wants to ask this question, I know, but is it possible that some of the children of Robb Elementary bled to death because of the long, long wait before the intervention of the authorities? We need to know.

    The bottom line is this: a society in which adults will not risk everything to save children, to protect the most vulnerable from harm, is a society that has lost its moral bearings. We seem to be witnessing a great retreat of elites in Anglo-American society. They’re retreating from the workplace, retreating from the vocation of education, and retreating from the necessity of sometimes putting one’s own life on the line in order to protect the lives of those who are younger and weaker. The Robb Elementary horror reminded us of something we all know – that there are evil individuals in our society. It may also have revealed that some sections of our society increasingly lack the valour and selflessness required to confront such evil.

    We already know that the Political Elites are spineless jellies but their effect on the lesser members of their administrations is less well appreciated. Who wants to stick his neck out and risk his life for the possibility of prosecution or calumny afterwards? Think Northern Ireland! Better to wait until someone else decides! The truth is that those institutions that our forefathers created also have a down side. The police for example; as here, free the general population from the need to act themselves but this also leads to the atrophy of personal responsibility and institutionalised cowardice with a corresponding separation between the rulers and the ruled.

    There was a time when the police did not exist! It was not chaos! An outraged citizenry was quite capable of acting on its own! It is this aspect that frightened the elites into the creation of Law and Order since they could never be sure that they might not be next. It is also the reason for all the stories about lynch law being always in error. This is not borne out by the real history of the American West.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/31/robb-elementary-and-the-cowardice-of-the-elites/

  40. Monkeypox in UK – 179 so far this year…

    2018 3 cases – 2 recently travelled from Nigeria and 1 healthcare worker from contaminated sheets.
    2019 1 – recently travelling from Nigeria.
    2020 None?
    2021 3 – amongst same family; recent travel history to Nigeria.
    2022 179 – And climbing fast. (no-one knows where these cases came from)

    You should call NHS 111 or a sexual health centre immediately if you have a rash with blisters and either, you: have been in close contact with someone who has or might have monkeypox (even if they have not been tested yet) in the past 3 weeks, have been to west or central Africa in the past 3 weeks, are a man who has sex with men. Do not go to a sexual health clinic without contacting them first. Stay at home and avoid close contact with other people until you’ve been told what to do. Government advice.

    Nothing to do with the huge increase in immigration, legal or illegal, in recent times? No, of course not, couldn’t possibly be that.

    1. Nothing to do with the sex parties recently held in Antwerp and Gran Canaria? Oh no……..

  41. How Vladimir Putin turned Orwell’s 1984 into a reality. 31 may 2022.

    Putin’s own utterances, too, have recently covered much of Orwell’s sinister lexicon. His euphemism, for example, that the invasion of Ukraine is simply a “special military operation” is surely classic “Newspeak”, in which language is warped for political goals. While his denunciation of the “Nazi” rule of President Volodomyr Zelensky, its democratically-elected Jewish leader, is pure “doublethink” – believing a lie despite glaring evidence.

    Yet even in Putin’s Russia, where freedoms are now less than at any time since Communism, the power of Orwell’s novel endures for those who know they are being lied to. In early March, a TikTok video posted by a Russian emigré went viral for saying that life in Russia was now like “live footage” of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Then, in mid-April, a Russian man was arrested after buying hundreds of copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and handing them out free in his local town. Dmitri Siline told Le Monde: “I wanted to offer people the chance to read it, and to start to think about it seriously.”

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.
    Simon Long.

    It’s not just a reality in Russia. It seems to be viewed as an instruction manual by any number of people in the West as well, such as those who would try to control thought by the control of language and the banning of certain words.

    Russia is not “Airstrip One”, that soubriquet belongs, as Orwell intended, to the UK. It is here that Thought Crime is on the statute books; that you can be arrested for preaching Christianity in the streets, dismissed from your job for having the “wrong” beliefs or hounded from your position for saying something counter to Woke culture!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/vladimir-putin-turned-orwells-1984-reality/

    1. I don’t live in Putin’s Russia – I’m in Fataturk’s Britain and I know I’m being lied to! Many of my freedoms seem to have vanished as well.

      1. slave

        noun

        noun: slave; plural noun: slaves

        (especially in the past) a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.

        1. True, but not the whole story. Some of the slaves referred to in the Bible for example were people whose own land was too poor, so they travelled to more prosperous places and offered their labour for free in return for food and accommodation. That’s a practice that survived until recently in North Africa and the Middle East.
          There’s a broader use of the word “slave” in everyday English that means someone who works for no money.

          1. “……offered their labour for free in return for food and accommodation…”

            Sounds a bit like a wife….{:¬))

            (Seeks deep shelter)

  43. An Obituary

    Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

    • Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
    • Why the early bird gets the worm;
    • Life isn’t always fair; and
    • Maybe it was my fault.
    Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

    His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place.

    Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

    Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

    It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

    Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

    Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

    Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realise that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

    Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.

    He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;

    • I Know My Rights
    • I Want It Now
    • Someone Else Is To Blame
    • I’m A Victim
    Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

      1. 352895+ up ticks,

        Afternoon VW,
        Heard from the electorate department,
        Good riddance to that old fashion material of yesteryear, onwards & downwards is the order of the day.

    2. People, particularly those in government, need to recognise that with ‘Responsibility’ comes ‘Accountability’.

      It won’t be too long, if it continues on its current course, before this government will have to be accountable.

  45. BBC ‘changed rape victim’s quotes to avoid misgendering her trans attacker’: ‘Woke’ staff replaced every reference to male-born abuser as ‘he/him’ to ‘they/them’ to be ‘inclusive’ Daily Fail

    Corporation bosses replaced every reference the victim made to her male-born abuser as ‘he’ or ‘him’ to ‘they’ or ‘them’, as part of efforts to boost inclusive language.
    The decision was made following the input of members of its 14-strong central diversity team, which has had influence over the BBC’s style guide, which dictates that stories adopt an individual’s preferred pronouns, the Times reports.     W**quers!

      2. Bolloxspeak, or do the girls with a Willy not have them

        The Kray s would have sorted it out.

        Central diversity team MUST be prosecuted for hiding the Truth, which is a thing not spoken by Wokeristas

    3. Director of Nations Rhodri Talfan Davies said public trust that the BBC can approach ‘very complex areas’ with complete impartiality is ‘the absolute bedrock’ of its decision-making.

      WTF is a Director of Nations at the BBC? Fifty-one year old he/she Davies has no wife or female partner. I wonder why that could be?

        2. The ascent of the American waitress who must surely be rewarded for such linguistic excellence as are yous ready to order?

          2. So it is just the English caught in the linguistic gender bollocks?

            I wonder how French lessons go nowadays? La plume de ma tante – whoa hang on, why is that pen a a she?

    5. If they must go along with this gender neutral malarchy, then “it” is surely the more grammatically sorrect.

  46. Home Office cancels flight to deport Kurdish asylum seekers to Iraq. 31 may 2022.

    The Home Office has cancelled a chartered deportation flight to Iraq that was due to depart from the UK on Tuesday evening.

    Up to 30 Kurdish asylum seekers were facing deportation to northern Iraq in the first flight of its kind for a decade.

    Dozens of Kurdish Iraqis had been detained in preparation for the flight. Many the Guardian spoke to were in a state of acute distress because they fear for their lives if they are returned to the country of their birth.

    Right you all owe me a small fortune. Lol!

    http://disq.us/p/2p4qs4a

    Five will get you ten that these people are still here next year!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/31/home-office-cancels-flight-to-deport-kurdish-asylum-seekers-to-iraq

    2. I doubt that you would have found any takers of your original bet among Nottlers.

    3. Five will get you ten that these people are still here next year, with an increase in allowances, to cover the excessive
      stress imposed on them as we wanted to send them home

    4. Ten to one that you will be paying for lawyers to sue for compensation for stress received.

  47. Politics latest news: Boris Johnson faces no confidence vote by end of June, warns Lord Hague
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/05/31/boris-johnson-news-vote-no-confidence-partygate-immigration/

    BTL

    Since donning the baseball cap and boasting about how many pints of beer his puny frame could take in one day everything that William Hague has said and done has be completely wrong and completely asinine. He is infallibly deluded in the expression of every thought that flitters through what was once his brain.

      1. My late brother knew her and said she was the most ambitious, self important person he’d ever met. Not having met her, I couldn’t possibly comment.

        1. Could never see what she saw in Little Willy Vague – unless it was a marriage of convenience for BOTH of them…

      3. I felt sorry for her.

        She probably ffffffed offfff when Little Willy decided to bat for the other side.

    2. Hague first made the national news at the age of 16 by addressing the Conservatives at their 1977 Annual National Conference. In his speech he told the delegates: “half of you won’t be here in 30 or 40 years’ time…, but that others would have to live with consequences of a Labour Government if it stayed in power”. Peter Carrington said that “he and several other frontbench Tories were nauseated by the much-heralded speech of a sixteen-year-old schoolboy called William Hague. Peter said to Norman St John Stevas: ‘If he is as priggish and self-assured as that at sixteen, what will he be like in thirty years’ time? Norman replied: ‘Like Michael Heseltine'”.

    3. Boris Johnson faces no confidence vote by end of June, promises Lord Hague

      There, fixed it.

    4. Boris Johnson faces no confidence vote by end of June, promises Lord Hague

      There, fixed it.

  48. Tony Blair’s new centrist project shows he and his acolytes have learned nothing. 31 may 2022.

    Even at the height of his popularity, Blair insisted voters had to be schooled in the need to adjust to unstoppable globalisation. The Corbynites took a similar line on immigration: a borderless world was the only acceptable future, and there could be no question of pandering to atavistic attitudes. If voters differed, such questions should be fudged until the party was in power. Labour’s backing for a second Brexit referendum joined the centrist disdain for the nation state with the left’s contempt for millions of patriotic Labour supporters. It was an electorally deadly combination, and a Tory landslide duly followed in 2019.

    How I loathe these people; though probably not as much as they hate the White Working Class whom they are careful not to tell. I am at least free of the hypocrisy of pretence. They took something that, while not perfect; was in its way something wonderful and destroyed it in the cause of worthless slogans. It nurtured warriors without hate and patriots without arrogance. It created the very idea of Freedom and it was here that Democracy was reborn. Its passing is something the whole world should mourn since we shall not see its like again.

    https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/05/tony-blairs-new-centrist-project-shows-he-and-his-acolytes-have-learned-nothing

    1. That, unfortunately, could be our reality in the next few years.
      The Western world is truly FUBAR.

  53. Well I just watched the BBC News Headlines. If No News is Good News then Vlad is winning!

    1. The BBC should be discussing the run up to the war. What happened prior to the invasion – in short, the real reason – the divisions in Ukraine, the Donbass history. While this never excepts Russia’s actions it might give people a balanced view.

  54. There seems to be the start of weariness over the “heroic” Ukraine and its war.

    1. Afternoon Bill. I have read two articles today. One in the Guardian and the other in the Spectator saying that Sanctions are not going to work!

  56. I’ve been re-reading Edward Gibbon. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
    A Folio Society edition that I got in the late 90’s, beautifully produced books.
    It is depressing how their decline almost mirrors what we now see in many parts of the western world.

      1. There are now two cases here in Scotchland. I’m guessing nothing to do with Grassic?

      2. I am self identifying as a Japanese macaque, for two reasons:
        1) I don’t think they have that pox in Japan.
        2) These monkeys are well adapted to cold weather, I should be ok, come the big freeze this coming winter.

        2. I identify as a penguin because I doubt these so called bugs are around the south pole;-)

          6. I think I’d give it away.
            It must be from one of those genetically modified foods.

          8. I am supposed to be eating them for the potassium but i am not keen on them.

            So i slice them in half long ways.
            One scoop choc ice-cream.
            Pile on the whipped cream. A handful of maraschino cherries. Choco nibs. Hundreds and thousands. and a big squirt of maple syrup. I am a martyr me.

          9. Bananas come in many different varieties, unfortunately in UK (as usual) everyone seems to sell flavourless ones.
            A bit like dates and figs: dates I’ve seen here would not get fed to goats and as for figs at £1.00 each!!! robbery.

          10. The small, sweet ones you get in Africa and India are much nicer. I don’t like the flavourless things we get here.

          11. I agree.
            When I was in Oman I could pick them straight off the plant, give them a day or so and they were perfect flavoursome esting.

    3. Steve Bannon was cancelled for making that observation around 4 years ago. Political corruption, sexual promiscuity, debauchery, infanticide, persecution of christianity, the enemy inside the gates, bread and circuses…mind, they’re trying to take away the bread?

  57. Students now wish to control what lecturers say. The students also get support from the MSM. Is it not about time that this, casual, case by case, ad hoc criticism of the content of courses, of the examples used, the remarks and expressed views of lecturers and tutors, had proper ongoing oversight? A supervision that would review in advance all course content, lecture notes, and course hand-outs and reading lists? It might be appropriate to have trained Academic Commissars who would be able to diligently carry out this work and comprehensively rewrite or ban unsuitable material?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-61597405

  58. Students now wish to control what lecturers say. The students also get support from the MSM. Is it not about time that this, casual, case by case, ad hoc criticism of the content of courses, of the examples used, the remarks and expressed views of lecturers and tutors, had proper ongoing oversight? A supervision that would review in advance all course content, lecture notes, and course hand-outs and reading lists? It might be appropriate to have trained Academic Commissars who would be able to diligently carry out this work and comprehensively rewrite or ban unsuitable material?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-61597405

    1. You mean like the ‘Great leap forward’ or even the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ because that is where we are heading if this stupidity is not stopped.

    2. One of our school boards has just removed Agatha Christie from the reading list.

      Apparently And then there were none used to have an alternate name that might upset one of the little darlings.

      1. Ten Little Somethings! I had an old copy of that with the original title. I am no Agatha Christie fan but all this is beyond a joke now.
        Any day now I expect Great Expectations to be banned because it might offend a) pregnant women, b) women who can’t get pregnant, c) transgender people who claim they’re pregnant and d) anyone else who likes being offended.
        Sod this for a lark.

        1. Has the great unwashed renamed anywhere in UK ‘Friedrichsplatz’ yet?
          We are getting there.

          Ps.
          Centre of the city of Kassel, where, on May 19, 1933, the Nazis burned some 2,000 books as part of their “Campaign against the Un-German Spirit”.

        2. Dick Ins and Great Expectorations gave me the pip!

          Mind you, much as I enjoy the novels of Charles Dickens the fate of poor Tony Last in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust was pretty dire – he was imprisoned hundreds of miles up the Amazon Valley where he had to read all Dickens’s novels aloud to his captor without any hope of escape.

      2. Hmmm… “Ten Little Dogs Owned By a Famous Royal Air Force Pilot”. would be a bit clumsy, right enough.

  59. REVEALED: Trans activist who heckled Nadhim Zahawi off Warwick University campus is the son of Ed Balls and Labour Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper

    One of the students who led a trans protest that hounded Nadhim Zahawi off a Russell Group campus is the son of Labour politicians Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, it has emerged. Joel Cooper interrupted the Education Secretary’s Q&A during his speech to the Conservative Association to heckle Mr Zahawi over his stance on trans rights, in video posted by the Warwick Labour society. He sat down after his monologue to cheers from fellow Labour activists and then shared the clip to his Instagram story, Guido Fawkes reported. Taking to Twitter, Mr Cooper claimed that he and other activists were ‘blacklisted’ from the event ‘purely because they were LGBT+’ and accused the Conservative Association of ‘censorship’.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10870697/Trans-activist-heckled-Nadhim-Zahawi-Warwick-University-campus-son-Yvette-Cooper.html

    Interesting that he is so transgenderally active that he has dropped his father’s name of Balls for his mother’s maiden name Cooper.

    But has he gone far enough? He should have gone wholer hog and called himself Joanna Ovaries!

    1. But I wonder if the Daily Mail has got it right. According to Wikipedia the couple do not have a birthed person called Joel. I think I may have mentioned before that I had a schoolfriend whose girlfriend had the same surname and Ed and Yvette and whose parents had rather insensitively Christened her Ophelia.

      1. Mr Tastey, I’ve just looked at Pixies wiki page, which directed me to a DT report of her giving birth to her son -named Joel.

        2. Joe and Joel are doubtless the same person/thing. He/she/it originally took the surname Balls.

    2. He was probably blacklisted from the event because they know he is a trouble maker.

      1. cf Jack Straw, when he was a student. Rabid trouble-maker then – and after that his career was down hill all the way.

    3. He should add the penis bit, will the nickname that starts pr..k,as he is one

      Yo rastus

    4. No wonder Yvette (his? Mum??) was reluctant to go down the “rabbit-hole” of defining a woman …

    5. No wonder Yvette (his? Mum??) was reluctant to go down the “rabbit-hole” of defining a woman …

    6. If he and other activists were “blacklisted” from the event how come they were there and managed to disrupt the whole thing!

  62. The weather has been strange today, sun, rain, thunder and hail.
    Decided on a lazy day and soon time for a glass or two of Shiraz.
    Looking at YouTube music posts, found this and it instantly transported me back to sitting with my grandmother in the late 1950’s; it was one of her favourite songs.
    https://youtu.be/zBrwaCjJIFU

    1. Anything by the ‘Inkspots’ ranks highly amongst my most hated musical offerings.’Trad Jazz’ is only slightly less offensive.

      1. I would agree about Trad Jazz, but not the Inkspots, quite tuneful and reminiscent of the 1940’s.

    2. Good sign? I hope so!
      Having said that, if I lived near a large estate of empty buildings somewhere else in the UK, I’d be considering asking Vlad to nuke them first.

      1. The local residents could, ahem, set fire to them…. in seems to work for the migrants.

    3. Isn’t there an ex RAF Bradford or Dewsbury, where they could be housed in order to feed off their own uncultured brethren, without interfering with us?

      At least if we put them altogether, it’ll become easier when the great clear-out begins.

        1. Masirah Island in Oman, with no access to the ferry.
          An ex-RAF base and Princess Flying boat port of call.

      1. Rescuing Tether could potentially be a huge, money-draining operation. Why should the UK do it? We’re broke! We need oil and food, not pouring billions into a scam (Tether is widely rumoured to have lied about their backing capital).

        1. As is usual the government are backing the wrong horse. Faith and trust has been lost on a Massive scale with all crypto. Some of the biggest cheerleaders got burnt the worst.

          Musk can afford it but one British Rapper lost £7 million overnight on Luna.

          Their are many others. They were all doing the same thing and buying on the dips which inflated the currencies and the news stories which brought more people in to what is effectively a ponzi scheme.

          I did the opposite and creamed off a couple of hundred each time it went up.

          1. “Don’t put your eggs in one basket” is advice that never goes out of date…

          2. Indeed. My money is well spread but once it’s devalued to tuppence even spreading it out won’t be of help.

    2. HMG should keep their noses out. It will be the poor old taxpayer that, once again,has to pick up the pieces when it all goes hideously wrong.

      1. These proposals look that way. The old “if it moves, it needs government intervention” attitude again!

  65. Hope for conservatism?

    With the drip-feed of Conservative MP’s coming out against Johnson carrying on as party leader and PM, the BoJo exit date betting has taken a turn. 2022 is now favourite for his departure from Number 10.

    There’s increasingly a view that Johnson will have to face a confidence ballot at some stage – something that’s triggered when 15% of CON MPs or more write calling for such a vote.

    Even if this doesn’t happen immediately what could act as the trigger is if the Tories lose both seats that they are defending in the June 23rd by-elections. It is being said that the most nervous Tory MPs have seats where the LDs are the challengers and if Honiton & Tiverton is lost to Davey’s party that could be decisive.

    His supporters argue that Johnson’s great strength is that he is seen as an election winner. My response is that his victories over the discredited LAB figures of Livingstone and Corbyn are really no big deal.

    Mike Smithson

    https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2022/05/31/2022-is-now-betting-favourite-for-johnsons-exit/

    1. Lose them both? They should face the kind of drubbing they’ve never seen before. If a Conservative voters bothers to turn out I’d be surprised.

    2. William Hague is not being helpful to BoJo:##

      Another Tory MP has announced they have submitted a letter of no confidence in Boris Johnson’s leadership as the Prime Minister continues to lose support following the publication of the Sue Gray partygate report last week.

      John Stevenson, the Conservative MP for Carlisle, said he had previously urged Mr Johnson to “put himself forward for a vote of confidence”.

      “Sadly, the Prime Minister appears unwilling to bring matters to a head and submit himself to such a vote,” he said in a statement posted on social media.

      “Therefore, the only option is for the Conservative MPs to facilitate a vote of confidence. I have already taken the appropriate action.”

      The Telegraph estimates that 19 Tory MPs have now publicly confirmed submitting a letter to Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, while 30 have publicly called for Mr Johnson to quit.

      It comes after Lord Hague, the former Tory leader, predicted Mr Johnson is likely to face a vote on his leadership by the end of June. Lord Hague said the PM is in “very serious trouble”.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/05/31/boris-johnson-news-vote-no-confidence-partygate-immigration/

  66. With regard to the Linton-on-Ouse backdown, it seems to me to be obvious that location decisions should be focused on Labour and LibDem held constituencies where voters have, on balance, voted for parties who favour open-borders and ‘uman rights. Indeed, if I were were Patel, I’d try to put them on the doorsteps of Starmer, Sturgeon, and Davey ….

    1. 352895+ up ticks.
      Afternoon LD,
      ALL as guilty as sin, a very successful nation destructive coalition.

      The wretch cameron pledge to reduce numbers then promptly raised them.

      1. Yes, pop a few thousand each into the constituencies of Cameron and May …

  67. Ndovu asked me a few days ago: “No smoke without fire” – have you proved the old adage wrong?

    Well I responded by saying yes – the science is back to front because there no fire without smoke and pyrolysis is at the heart of the matter.

    Here’s an explanation:

    https://youtu.be/V3sV8t_HUdc

    I’ve been trying to get a sustainable pyrolytic process using my MkIi setup:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/341c80e165f804cb51daa671ae890f4dbec043c9fa68114a4b322b05959cf37f.jpg

    The MkII went out through lack of air but the MkII carried on smoking but didn’t reach a high enough trmperature for pyrolysis to occur:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee3500d59fc7aaf61e5ba14024094b8c4dfcc64554cd24fc9bce22bdcb118f44.gif

      1. Yes.
        I’ve found that a microscope I bought at Lidl is powerful enough to be able to observe the live coagulation of red blood cells as they stack together during the coagulation process.
        I reckon I should be able use the video capture eyepiece to record short term changes in my blood’s response to changes in my anticoagulant dose.

        1. Not only an intelligent woman but a funny one. I hope your husband/hersband appreciates you.

    5. For all they like to pretend otherwise, the Irish and the Brits are very similar in many ways.

      This scene repeated a thousand times when I lived in Germany and the Netherlands

    1. Me too.
      Wordle 346 4/6

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

    2. #MeToo – par Four today …
      Wordle 346 4/6

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

  70. That’s me for this odd day – three seasons in 12 hours – sun – hail – heavy rain – sun – now rain again. Thank goodness for the stove.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    1. When it gets hot in the Summer i recommend beetroot sorbet.
      Have a nice evening.

  71. That’s me for this odd day – three seasons in 12 hours – sun – hail – heavy rain – sun – now rain again. Thank goodness for the stove.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    1. Well, he’s just theorising so I expect it will be “settled science” any moment, attract billions of research money and anyone who challenges his ideas will be banned from the BBC.

      1. Besides nuclear which can kill us all and of course man made viruses Brian Cox wants us to go back to horse and cart. Not him of course.

          2. Reference to the group D:Ream, which played Blair’s bloody campaign tune.
            Cox was a member of that group.

          3. Oh good grief! I knew that – used to leap about to it at the gym! My pore brain was definitely not engaged! Hope no one noticed…

          1. When he does his cosmos stuff he does it well but it still feels like i am being spoken to as if i was 5 years old.

  73. To park the car oldies you need an APP….!

    The march of technology alienates a whole generation.
    Do we need a Minister for the elderly…….?

    Esther Rantzen says ……”Yes we do…”

    1. I refuse on principle to park anywhere that requires an app. Next thing, they will want you to wave your tattooed QR code at the machine!

        1. Got our next door neighbour here at the moment trying to show my husband how to get the French Open tennis on the telly. He bought a smart Tv a few months ago.

          2. Smart TV’s are only such when a 12 to 15 year old gets hold of the remote control. For the rest of us it’s ‘where is the bloody handbook’ and then most of it is gobbledygook and in 50 languages.

          5. Our TV doesn’t even bloody work so we watch what we want on the internet.

    2. I don’t use my phone for parking and I don’t like apps that track my movements. I leave my phone at home.

          2. When online services began you needed a landline. You don’t anymore. How much are you paying for a barely used landline phone in your house each month?

            Plus, what emergency services? The Police don’t turn up. The Ambulances don’t turn up.

          3. We are looking at prices for when we move.
            Landlines $85 a month, only calls included.
            Mobile, $35 a month with all to anywhere in Canada or the US.

            Dearly beloved luddite(ette) I’d still trying to defend getting a land line.

          5. We are looking at prices for when we move.
            Landlines $85 a month, only calls included.
            Mobile, $35 a month with all to anywhere in Canada or the US.

            Dearly beloved luddite(ette) I’d still trying to defend getting a land line.

          3. I do give out my mobile number, but that’s because when MOH (who was deaf) was alive it was difficult to receive calls on the landline. My mobile is definitely NOT a smart phone, though.

        3. Hopefully longe4 than you’ll be getting printed bank statements from HSBC (being stopped in June).

  74. I spoke to Elvis earlier about Tesco, Morrison’s, Asda and Sainsbury’s.
    It was a Lidl-less conversation.

    1. Sounds like eugenics to me.
      Compare and contrast the elites responses to this and the virtue signalling at the school massacre/s.

    2. No more anybody should be coerced into any jabs that they don’t want.

    3. Older generations were fully aware of Thalidomide. I couldn’t believe it when I saw that a partly tested medicament was being offered to pregnant women as safe.
      Naomi Wolf’s revelations are still shocking though.
      Especially, that the number of men in the trials was lower than women, which masked the true impact of the heart problems, which are more likely to be experienced by men.

        1. I pointed that out to the chap supervising the Munnings Exhibition. He thought we would have been better off following the Swedish model.

          1. Although it might have been interesting to follow the Swedish model, we’d have been done for stalking.

      2. Heart, you say? Late brother-in-law would agree with you about that.

    1. Used to know a powerfully beautiful Romanian lass… massive… hands.
      ;-D

      2. Ah, yes, Paul, reminds me of a father’s advice to his son, “Don’t drink a claret under 10 years old; don’t hunt South of the Thames – the bastards use wire – and; don’t marry a woman with big hands – it’ll make you feel inadequate.”

    1. Happy hunting! We will need a trip to the dreaded Asda tomorrow to replenish the “cellar.” Not sure what the opening hours will be here over the long weekend.

        1. I fink it starts on Thursday and is 4 days long. Pubs to be open until 1 in the mornings- so it is said. I won’t be there then but we will make sure we have enough grape juice to toast HM.

          1. No holiday for the bar staff, then.
            Hope all Y’all have a great long weekend.

          2. There’s a bun fight at the community hall which we will avoid. Some little flags out and about here and a new flagpole with a big Union Jack.
            We will quietly join the celebrations but are not planning on any gatherings.

          3. Was hoping for An Event organised by the Embassy here, but nowt.
            SWMBO was invited to Her Majesty’s birthday celebrations here, by the Embassy, but this time – nowt. Cheapskates.

          4. Thats the one thing I miss being back in UK from Oman: black tie gatherings for Queens Birthday, Trafalgar, Battle of Britain and any other excuse the military (Brit & Omani) could find for a good night out.

        2. The Late May Bank Holiday, which would have been last Monday (the 30th) has been transferred to the Thursday, then we have the Platinum Jubilee Holiday on Friday, with celebrations on Saturday and Sunday. There’s a Thanksgiving Service on Friday at church, followed by a tree planting ceremony and Prosecco to toast HM. Any excuse and the church wardens break out the Prosecco! 🙂

  78. News snippet. The UK government has issued 115,000 visas to Ukrainians.

      1. Apparently Nigerians are volunteering for the Ukrainian international brigades, with the intention of scarpering for the border asap, or so the rumour has it.

        1. Nigerians hate Christians and murder them in thousands every day. I suppose we might expect the same hatred and division in the UK when they establish a foothold.

          Has the penny dropped yet? Our government are deliberately encouraging illegal immigration in order to sow the seeds of division and hatred. Our government are pure evil and this much must be obvious to any sentient being.

          1. About half of Nigerians are Christians, so that’s not right, Corim. Northern Nigerians tend towards Islam, but not so much in the South.

          2. Nigeria is split between a Muslim area and a Christian area, remember. The theology of some Nigerian churches is sometimes a bit dodgy, in my experience. But there are plenty of sincere Nigerian Christians.

  79. Evening, all. I trust you managed to survive without my input while I nipped down to Newmarket to see the Munnings Exhibition in the National Horse Racing Museum and the Lucy Kemp Welch exhibition in Palace House. I couldn’t manage to log in to get internet while I was away, so I gave up, read a book and went to bed early. Oscar shared my bed and eventually realised that trying to bite me every time I moved was NOT a good move! It seems I missed an earthquake inn Shrewsbury while I was absent.

      1. He really loved to paint the start – all that action and tension in the muscles. I love his side saddle portraits – so elegant. He himself regretted that he didn’t paint more before it went out of fashion.

          1. Very skilled and clever, but doesn’t give me any emotional contact.

          1. Indeed. Before Stubbs, horses looked like rocking horses. When I did my fine art degree, Stubbs was on the list of painters to choose from to do transformations. No contest! I did a copy of Bay Malton (I must chase that up, because I put it in to be framed ages ago) and exhibited some of the transformations.

      2. Mine is an ariel view of Mileham Castle as i used to live next dooro.

    2. We were relying on you giving us an eyewitness account of the earthquake!
      But I envy you the Munnings exhibition!

      1. Sadly, I missed this one (quite large and centred on Wem, apparently), but I have lived through two more in the Marches. One, in the early hours of the morning, I was in bed (and leapt out and cowered on the landing – as if that would do any good!) and the other when I was at work. I leant against a radiator and felt the vibration. The Munnings exhibition was good (I indulged in a catalogue at £25). It included things I hadn’t seen before, especially a portrait of Laura Knight’s husband, which had been hidden behind one of Laura’s paintings and only discovered in 2005, I think. I went to see Munnings’ War Artist Exhibition at the Chelsea Barracks before Covid. That was excellent, too. When I lived in Colchester I used to go up to Dedham to visit the Munnings Museum at Castle House.

        1. The exhibition of Munnings’ WWI paintings pre-pandemic at the Munnings Museum in Dedham was unforgettable for me, Conners.

          1. Were they the ones on loan from the Canadian government that had previously been shown at Chelsea, Elsie?

          2. Yes, indeed, Conners, and I bought a glossy programme showing most of them.

          3. I have that programme, too. I also have one of his biographies “What A Go!” His autobiography is in three volumes, I think.

  80. Daniel Hannan sounds almost like an old-fashioned Tory.

    The Tories have almost wholly given up on conservative principles. What a tragic waste

    Covid has turned a centre-right government statist, even though Brexit and an 80-seat majority gave it a better shot at the cost of living

    DANIEL HANNAN

    I can put up with a certain amount of inconsistency, muddle-headedness and even hypocrisy in politics. As the American poet Walt Whitman wrote: “Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself,/ (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
    But I draw the line when pundits self-righteously demand more action on net zero while at the same time complaining of “fuel poverty”. I bridle when lobbyists rage against the Australia and New Zealand trade deals because they will “flood” us with “cheap food”, and then have the nerve to moan about “food poverty”.

    The absolute worst, though, are those who spent two years demanding a longer and stricter lockdown, and who now shamelessly protest about the cost of living crisis, as though it were a random act of cruelty inflicted on the country out of sadism. They include Keir Starmer, the BBC, Sky News and, I’m afraid, a chunk of the general public.

    Do I sound insensitive? Too bad. Insensitive or not, someone has to point out that we can’t run the country on the basis of a series of contradictory feel-good opinions, and then exculpate ourselves from their consequences on grounds that we meant well.

    If you pay people for the better part of two years to stay home, and cover the cost by printing more money, there is bound to be inflation. The current price rises are not an unforeseeable consequence of the war in Ukraine, at least not in the main. Switzerland is as affected by global energy prices as other European countries, but currently has an overall inflation rate of just 2.4 per cent. Why? Because it did not go in for money-printing. As the Nobel prizewinning economist Milton Friedman put it: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is, and can be, produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”

    I realise that few want to hear that right now. The lockdown, as this column kept mournfully forecasting at the time, has created a more statist electorate. Many “one-off” spending increases have, entirely predictably, become permanent. Spinning the taps open is easier than screwing them shut again, because supposedly temporary subsidies come to be seen by their recipients as part of our immemorial constitution.

    After two years of lockdown, a lot of voters evidently want to be paid to stay at home. They like the idea – propagated throughout the pandemic – that the Government can solve almost every problem by spending more money. Why should they see inflation any differently?

    MPs are sensitive to public opinion. Hence the sudden consensus among all parties that the way to tackle of living crisis is to raise taxes even higher and distribute the proceeds to selected groups. Never mind that taxes are the single biggest part of most household budgets and that hiking them worsens the underlying problem. Such thinking went out in 2020.

    Democracies, as the old saying goes, get the leaders they deserve. The pandemic has left us feeling grumpier, warier, lazier and more collectivist. Our politicians, naturally, respond to our mood. Hence this week’s budget statement, in which a Conservative Chancellor positioned himself to the Left of Labour on big government.

    That is the kind of sentence that columnists sometimes write for effect but, on this occasion, it is literally true. When Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor, crowed “after today’s announcement, let there be no doubt about who is winning the battle of ideas in Britain – it is the Labour Party,” Rishi Sunak responded by boasting that “our proposals are in fact more generous than those offered by the Labour Party.”

    The Tories have almost wholly given up on conservative principles. They used to argue that lower taxes stimulate growth and so lead, in the long run, to higher revenue; that countries, like families, should live within their means; that individuals spend their money more wisely than state bureaucrats; that arbitrary and complicated taxes are as much a deterrent to investment as high taxes. Not any more.

    Boris Johnson, like Sunak, calls himself a low-tax Tory. In fact, the epithet is archaic – like one of those ancient offices that have now come to be attached to various government Whips: Comptroller of the Household, Captain of the Queen’s Bodyguard and so on. Low-tax Toryism recalls an earlier age, a pre-lockdown era when it was still possible for politicians to argue uncomplicatedly for personal freedom.

    The idea that we are run by instinctive small-staters who are constrained by circumstance might just about have held up during the lockdown; but not any more. Psychologists teach us to infer motive from behaviour rather than the other way around, and it is impossible to see this administration as anything other than enthusiastically étatiste, however much individual Cabinet Ministers let it be known that they are personally unhappy with this or that spending hike.

    It is not that our leaders failed to learn basic economics. In the run-up to the 2019 election, asked on Sky News how his spending pledges squared with his promised tax cuts, Boris Johnson replied that lower rates can lead to higher revenue, impressively attributing this insight not, as is common, to the twentieth-century American economist Arthur Laffer, but to the fourteenth-century Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun.

    Khaldun’s wisdom has been demonstrated in practice again and again. But it is counterintuitive, and therefore polls badly. Most people approve of taxes as long as they believe that someone else is paying them. Any announcement of higher taxes on business – especially on Big Energy – therefore tends to play well.

    In fact, corporations no more pay corporation tax than your TV set pays the licence fee or your house the council tax. All taxes are paid by human beings, and firms must pass each levy on to employees, suppliers, shareholders and customers. As Ronald Reagan used to put it, “businesses don’t pay tax, they collect it”.

    When George Osborne imposed a one-off tax on energy firms in 2011, the Treasury Red Book predicted that it would bring in £2 billion. Instead, oil companies cut their North Sea investments and tax revenues fell.

    Again, Johnson and Sunak know this. As recently as three months ago, the Chancellor was telling us that the “obvious impact of a windfall tax would be to deter investment”. Both men understand that the only way out of our present predicament is through growth. Both understand that the way to achieve higher growth is to cut spending, scrap regulations, remove trade barriers, and ensure sound money. But these things are usually unpopular in the short term, and that seems to be their chief consideration.

    We are thus in a negative feedback loop. When voters see the Conservatives, supposedly the party of fiscal responsibility, spraying cash around, they conclude that there must be plenty of depth left in the Government’s reservoir. When they see a Tory Chancellor promising to bring in extra revenue by hiking corporation tax – despite the experience of cutting corporation tax rates from 2011 and seeing revenues surge – they naturally believe him. All this then heaps pressure on ministers to spend even more.

    In the short-term, politicians can buy a measure of popularity. They might even be able to keep the plates spinning until the next election. Harold Macmillan managed something similar, shying away from unpopular reforms and pouring the whole stinking mess into the laps of his successors. Mac left office with high approval ratings and his reputation has, bizarrely, held up since. But the crisis that followed his administration could not be avoided, and we are heading for a similar crisis today – a combination of low growth, high prices and high taxes.

    It was all so unnecessary. Outside the EU, Britain could have become freer and more competitive. We had a Conservative Government with an 80-seat majority, for Heaven’s sake. We could have scrapped Brussels regulations, flattened and simplified taxes, embraced global markets, slimmed the civil service, decentralised powers and broken cartels. We could, in short, have made this the most attractive place in the world to do business.

    Yes, the pandemic was an unforeseeable distraction – though, even then, some reforms could have been pursued. But nearly a year has passed since the end of the restrictions in Britain, and it is now depressingly clear that there is no plan to make use of our opportunities. After all their talk of buccaneering Britain, our leaders have shied away from almost every difficult economic decision. What a waste. What a tragic, needless waste.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/28/tories-have-almost-wholly-given-conservative-principles-tragic/

    1. I don’t fwording agree with high taxes as long as someone else pays them because that means they can’t spend their money somewhere else. It is a basic removal of freedom. Take away choice and you remove the premise of being human.

      I posted a comment on the Wail that high taxes were the cause of inflation and that taxation was wrong. It is consistently down voted. Why? Because people are (another fword) dumb. Truly, they are spiteful, thick, gormless morons who should not be allowed to vote.

      The short termist, arrogant, spiteful, petty attitude of far too many people (the lot demanding furlough be paid back, the ones demanding a windfall tax, the green tyranny, the remoaners) who ardently refuse to acknowledge basic economic factdoesn’t make me wary, it makes me furious. As much as my ego would love me to be, I am not very bright. I’ve made more mistakes than successes but even I can see if you set out to take what someone has earned, after a while they stop bothering. When they stop, you have to feed them. You can’t complain and force them to work.

      Same as you can’t rig the market and expect ti to work. You can’t keep hiking job taxes and expect companies to hire. Then those same fools complain that it is not fair companies don’t pay a high wage – why would they?! The person’s job isn’t worth 700 a month of which 300 is tax! Companies don’t exist to give people a sofa, they’re there to make money from a risk. Make the return too low and they go away. You cannot tax a business so heavily then complain that government, itself taxing the employee; is subsidising the company to hire that person. That’s breaking the market.

      I just despair. If people are truly that dumb, if they are so damned thick they can’t understand the basics of economics that you get far more dipping an open palm into an ocean than a clenched fist in a puddle then they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. They really shouldn’t.

      1. Just consider how many people blindly obeyed all the “rules” re covid without questioning anything. Look at the pablum that is consistently dished out on the TV- that’s all they think most people are capable of or what they want. Ye gods; it appalls me.
        My husband (MH) has to go for a blood test tomorrow- they are still telling him he must wear a mask. No, I am exempt, he said. No questions. It would be laughable if it wasn’t all so bloody daft!!

        1. People were scared. They were made to be frightened because the state wanted obedience.

          What bothered me was how few people thought about it rationally. Heck, you still see people wearing a mask now thinking it protects them from others. It’s ignorance and fear.

          1. I have to say that very few in the shops here are masked and none of the cabbies. We got the bus up to the pub yesterday and to see our mate Ashish, who is from Gujurat and whose team won the IPL. He is one great bloke. MH wanted to congratulate him;-)
            Anyway, quite a few on the bus were masked but not us and not the driver.

          2. Blessed Trudeau has just extended mask mandates for another month.

            No train or plane travel in Canada sans mask and so it goes on.

          3. Holy cow, Richard! Has all protest fizzled out? It’s bad enough here with all the lies etc but your maniac seem 100 X worse than ours.
            A little power and none of them want to relinquish it. Gawd help us all.

          4. Trudeau like his supposed father is Mafia. He is engaged in racketeering like his supposed father. In Trudeau’s case he is working in concord with his WEF placement cabinet and the Pfizer, Moderna and big Pharma cartel.

            Trudeau is about the most despicable of the current crop of ‘Heads of State’ and makes our own Johnson look like an amateur by comparison.

            Suggestions: Boris, black up, don a pinkish Nazi officer uniform, criminalise our truckers and show your fat arse to your masters.

          6. Unfortunately most governments rely on the fact that a great percentage of their population are incapable of individual thought.
            China & Germany have been classic examples.
            We in UK now have an education system that no longer seems to encourage original thought.
            Group think is expected and woe betide those who don’t adhere.

          7. Then society is doomed, as without people able to think and say no there is no progress, no disruption. You just get – well, you get the dystopia of 1984.

          8. Unfortunately it shows how easy it is for civil unrest to become a war against the establishment (government) the antecedents are rapidly developing.

          9. Although I may advocate such civil unrest – maybe blood-letting – I do realise that out-and-out revolution can have very nasty outcomes, depending on who is the most revolting in the new ‘;government’. The French Revolution didn’t produce wholesome change but rather ‘Le Terror’.

    2. I sincerely hope that Hanan is prepared to put his money where his mouth is and is even now, posting his letter of ‘No confidence’ to the 1922 Committee.

      1. Hannan is not an MP. However, he does sit in the other place. Perhaps he can do a bit of leaning on the plebs.

        1. Oh, I thought he still was – pity. Yes, pleb leaning is a good, but maybe ineffctual, pass-time.

  81. Deluded Putin wants you to believe seizing Severodonetsk is a big win for Russia. 31 May 2022.

    After nearly 100 days of war, Russia seems on the brink of being able to claim victory over a medium-sized city in a pocket of eastern Ukraine. That qualifies only marginally as a military success.

    Let them post their videos. Let them plant their flag on the rubble. They’ve paid for that small chunk of blasted moonscape with blood and treasure. But make no mistake, that it has taken the might of what’s left of the Russian military to pull off this small feat is an international embarrassment.

    Translation: FURKING HELL!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/31/russia-vladimir-putin-severodonetsk-ukraine-invasion-attack/

    1. Why is it clucking bell? Because it is such an insignificant win or because the article is trying to do down Russia’s gain?

          3. I have no intention of being buried – I’ve willed my body to medical science on the understanding that what’s left after three years, will be cremated and the ashes returned to – whosoever wants them.

      1. I do like his Sketches of Spain, Around midnight & Kind of blue. albums.

  84. “To those who appreciate Wisteria and sunshine..” The advert in the paper in The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim….small medieval castle to let; oh beam me away to there and away from all this BS.
    The full movie is still up on You Tube.

  86. Here is a little rhyme for Elsie and all of you who like a long nap….courtesy pf Dr. Seuss.

    Please let me be
    Please go away,
    I am not going to get up today!
    The alarm can ring,
    The birds can peep,
    My bed is warm and my pillow’s deep.
    Today’s the day I’m going to sleep. (& etc)

  87. And I am following my own advice and going for a long snooze- well, I hope so.
    Be well Y’all.
    God Save the Queen.

  89. Just leave you with this from Robert Frost.

    I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.
    I have looked down the saddest city lane.
    I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry came over houses from another street, but not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, one luminary clock against the sky proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.

Comments are closed.