Tuesday 4 March: With the special relationship faltering, Britain must rearm – and quickly

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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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.

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606 thoughts on “Tuesday 4 March: With the special relationship faltering, Britain must rearm – and quickly”

  4. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe page.

    Wordle 1,354 6/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie and all
      Wordle 1,354 4/6

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  6. SIR – Could it be that Sir Keir Starmer is the best Conservative prime minister we have had in a decade?

    Mike McKone
    Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria

    Oh, Mickey. That letter gave me such a huge chuckle that I am in grave danger of incontinence!
    Having said that, I cannot work out whether you are a champion jester … or a prize twat!

    1. Yo Mr G

      Mike is in need of urgent treatment by the NHS

      So, his views are safe

  8. With the special relationship faltering, Britain must rearm – and quickly

    Not sure why Trump is expected to have a special relationship with Starmer.

    Starmer doesn't even have a special relationship with his own country.

  9. Trump has given Putin every incentive to keep fighting. 4 March 2025.

    Mr Trump reposted a commentary on Truth Social suggesting that Mr Zelensky would eventually have to concede and sign his minerals deal, recognising it as the best – and only – US commitment coming his way.

    But then, speaking once again with his mind on the frontlines and not on the mood in the Oval Office, Mr Zelensky said that peace was “very, very far away”.

    Trump probably took these words, after the White House fiasco, as a personal affront. An absolute refusal to agree to any peace negotiations and for the war to continue, paid for by the United States. The cut off of aid was inevitable.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/03/04/trump-given-putin-every-incentive-keep-fighting/

    1. It's all easy when someone else picks up the tab. Not so, when it's you.
      How that works with young men's lives, I'm pretty sure is the same.

    2. Until the 1990s, the biggest employer in my home town was the Defence Research Agency, an organisation of military scientists to keep one technological step ahead of any prospective foe. It was privatised, disbanded and is now a housing estate.

      Never has there been a greater need for a cheaper method to deal with incoming artillery than the extraordinarily expensive patriot missiles.

    3. Let us stay focussed as you say on the fact that Trump's aim from the start is to end the war. That remains the position, and "aid" means cash for continuing hostilities. So the end of that was inevitable and almost certainly made more immediate by Zelensky's crass handling of his positiion.

      Biden's gangsters sent many billions to Ukraine and much of that is and will be unaccountable. Trump's commercial aproach on minerals is a logical response to that outrage on the US taxpayers, I consider.

    4. Was Zelenskyy expressing his own determination to prolong the war or was it an informed opinion?

    5. Having peace with Trump for Zelensky is outside the Presidential time horizon.

  10. Morning, all Y'all.
    Nearly sunny, but in any case, daylight is spreading! Didn't need the lights on when I got up this morning (06:15), first time this year! Definitely spring, the last of the snow is vanishing, but no green shoots / spring flowers yet.

  11. Morning, all Y'all.
    Nearly sunny, but in any case, daylight is spreading! Didn't need the lights on when I got up this morning (06:15), first time this year! Definitely spring, the last of the snow is vanishing, but no green shoots / spring flowers yet.

  12. Good morning, all. Sharp frost with a sunny day forecast for later.

    Listen to this braying house of fools as Starmer continues on his threatening theme re Ukraine/Russia when responding to Farage's question. We are approaching the precipice of war with Russia and in these circumstances one would expect a sombre atmosphere and a sense of reason to prevail.

    Sounding like a bunch of inebriated football fans is not what is expected. How soon will we hear the Reform MPs being on the receiving end of the "who are yer, who are yer" challenge?

    https://x.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1896600961931477312

    1. I suppose that is what happens when the HoC is filled with egoistical idiots without life experience and any good candidates have been filtered out by selection committees.

    2. I don't think any of those fools understand what being in a proper war is like.
      The Falklands was a limited adventure, far, far away, and was relatively straightforward. Shooting at Russia will be a whole other ball game, and as Ukraine is finding, consumes resources (money, arms, and people) at an appalling rate. It's not a jape, nor a football game, it's a disaster of the first water. How long would it go on for? Would it go nuclear? How much would it cost? As an example, take this from ChatGPT (my bold) about UK debt from WW2 – why would a war with Russia, even a "limited" one, be any different?

      "The United Kingdom's debt from the Second World War was officially paid off on March 31, 2006. The total sum borrowed by the United Kingdom to finance its efforts during the Second World War was approximately £25 billion (in 1945 prices), which is equivalent to about £100 billion to £120 billion when adjusted for inflation to modern values.

      This debt primarily arose from the extensive borrowing the UK undertook during the war to finance its military operations, including loans from the United States under the Lend-Lease Act and other borrowings from various nations. The war left the UK with an enormous financial burden, and it took several decades for the government to reduce and eventually settle that debt.

      The UK had been paying off this debt for many years after the war, with major repayments occurring over several stages. One of the significant milestones was the repayment of the Lend-Lease loans to the United States in 2006, which marked the end of the wartime debt obligations.

      However, it is important to note that the debt from World War II was not repaid in a single lump sum but through a series of repayments that spanned 60 years."

      1. Lend Lease left the UK permanently and seriously weakened, being the price of resisting the allure of the 1000 Year Reich.

        Civilisation does not come cheap, especially when brutality can make those without a conscience "great again".

      2. Limited wars, as the Yanks discovered in Vietnam, are not a good idea if you want to win.

    3. I don't think any of those fools understand what being in a proper war is like.
      The Falklands was a limited adventure, far, far away, and was relatively straightforward. Shooting at Russia will be a whole other ball game, and as Ukraine is finding, consumes resources (money, arms, and people) at an appalling rate. It's not a jape, nor a football game, it's a disaster of the first water. How long would it go on for? Would it go nuclear? How much would it cost? As an example, take this from ChatGPT (my bold) about UK debt from WW2 – why would a war with Russia, even a "limited" one, be any different?

      "The United Kingdom's debt from the Second World War was officially paid off on March 31, 2006. The total sum borrowed by the United Kingdom to finance its efforts during the Second World War was approximately £25 billion (in 1945 prices), which is equivalent to about £100 billion to £120 billion when adjusted for inflation to modern values.

      This debt primarily arose from the extensive borrowing the UK undertook during the war to finance its military operations, including loans from the United States under the Lend-Lease Act and other borrowings from various nations. The war left the UK with an enormous financial burden, and it took several decades for the government to reduce and eventually settle that debt.

      The UK had been paying off this debt for many years after the war, with major repayments occurring over several stages. One of the significant milestones was the repayment of the Lend-Lease loans to the United States in 2006, which marked the end of the wartime debt obligations.

      However, it is important to note that the debt from World War II was not repaid in a single lump sum but through a series of repayments that spanned 60 years."

  13. Good morning, all. Sunny. Sharp frost (the Wet Office lied again). No news.

  14. I had a long conversation with an old childhood friend I lost touch with fifty years ago, but re-emerged when ringing round for my mother's funeral.

    It turns out that he has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and does a lot of work on humanitarian work in Kyiv. We had a lot of old memories to explore, and he has read some of my writings before the Spectator put a lid on comments, so we did not discuss the situation there, but I suspect that we feel the same.

    The problem Ukraine's president has with Trump's offer "he cannot refuse" steeped with some pretty unpleasant propaganda from the Trump/Putin camp, is this:

    If the pressure is taken off the Russian invaders, then they will swiftly rearm and regroup and resume their incursion westwards with a vengeance. Any peace agreement needs to prevent this being a likelihood.

    Trump argues that a large American business investment in Ukraine, exploiting its minerals to the profit of America, would require a protective garrison to keep the Russians away.

    However, if this investment fails to meet American business aspirations, then it could be withdrawn on a phone call, and Putin given the green light to do his worst.

    Trump has form with this, having withdrawn the garrison in Northern Syria protecting Kurds, exhausted from clearing out Islamic State from the Euphrates. The result was a green light to the neo-Ottoman Erdogan, another tyrant chummy with Trump, who attacked the Kurds. Islamic State fighters interned by the Kurds were released for redistribution into sleeper cells all over Europe and Africa.

    1. Why does everyone assume that Putin wants to move westwards and not merely ensure Russia isn't being boxed in by the EU and Nato.

      1. I cannot think why Putin would even bother to acquire chunks of Europe.
        What actually does it offer him or Russia?
        Such logic may not apply if he is a genuine megalomaniac, but beyond a penchant for the old Russian empire (I suspect the one that existed well before 1917) I doubt he's wishing to take on such a decrepit can of worms. The Baltic states and Poland have good reason to be twitchy but countries further west offer no allure.

        1. The holy grail for Russia is an ice free port that does not rely on running the gauntlet in the Bosphorus bottleneck.

          A lot of it may be vanity, a sort of hairy-chestedness that a real man is capable of taking on the world and coming out on top. In Spanish cultures, it would be called machismo, and in Russia, beautiful young women feel drawn to strong men who can protect them.

      2. Because it was his tanks, his troops and his missiles that encroached neighbouring territory west. If it looks like a duck…

        Before 24th February 2022, I might well have argued fhat far from being boxed in, Putin was making considerable ground winning over the EU, weaning them off America's teat, and gaining friends in the Visegrad EU nations of central Europe, as well as substantial Russian investments in the UK. Far from being boxed in, he could have found himself as influential in European affairs as France or Germany.

        Following the career of the young English composer Alma Deutscher, it was her personal entertaining of Vladimir Putin in Vienna in 2018 (she composed a melding of a Russian folk tune with a Viennese waltz) by invitation of the Austrian Chancellor that showed me the progress he was making there. Four years later, she was busking the Ukrainian national anthem to raise money for their resistance movement against Putin's "Special Military Operation".

        Putin boxed himself in, and now chooses disreputable company.

      1. The funeral is next week, and neither of them are coming, although I have been invited to drop by my son and see my grandchildren for the first time.

        1. Makes you wonder.. will they bother for their parents?
          It's quite common these days for expats to skip funerals back home.. citing long haul flights & cost and all that.

    3. What is the attraction for Putin to move westward? Russia has some of the largest reserves of natural resources in the World and who knows what is contained under the vast tracts of the taiga and tundra?

      Clearly it isn't natural resources. If it's security i.e. a buffer zone to keep the rapacious globalist exploiters out then he had that with Ukraine. Now that Ukraine is being backed by the globalists it's not difficult to see why things are as they are.

      How many, sympathetic to the WEF, cabinet members attended Starmer's get-together over the weekend?

    4. I don't know where you get your paranoia except from the Reds under the bed hysteria of times past. There is no evidence whatever for this stuff. Since Reagan's deal with Gorbachev NATO has added 8 new members encircling Russia in direct conflict with what was agreed. The best that the neocons could say was that it was not a deal in writing. That and the murder of over 15,000 Riussian speakers in the Donbass between 2014 and 2022 by the only Nazi regime in Europe since WW2 who were responsible for the overthrow of the elected government (and who is to say that that governmenrt was more corrupt that our own present regime?) were the main casus belli.

      1. How many of those 15,000 were active combatants?

        I would have thought that piles of rubble which were once Ukrainian homes and civilian infrastructure was ample evidence.

        The overthrow of Yanukovich points to a problem shared with many nations (including our own) which have troublesome provinces out of kilter with those in the capital.

        1. A large portion of the 15,000 were women and. children whose crime was speaking Russian. Look up the Nazi Asov Brigade.

          1. They were only formed after pro-Russian insurgents shot down that airliner. I have often compared life in the Donbas then with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which also had civilian collateral damage as rogue partisan paramiltaries slugged it out.

            I would like to know the figures, rather than the rather vague “a large portion” which seems to ignore the actual combatants or those innocents caught in the crossfire, rather than targeted.

            Finally, did you know that Russian is in fact Zelenskyy’s first language? He comes from that part of the world. The problem with calling a Jew “Nazi” is obvious, especially since his talent before becoming President was not political, but musical. He was quite an accomplished piano player, it seems.

          2. You persist in calling the deaths in the Donbass before 2022 as involving combatants. They were the same sort of combatants as the people just killed and injured in Mannheim by a horrible Islamist looney. If there had been crossfire the SMO would have been running a lot earlier.

          3. This makes no sense at all. They had been fighting each other ever since Yanukovich was deposed.

            What has Mannheim got to do with it? There are very few Ukrainian Islamist nutters (as the OMRLP points out, loonies are benign whereas nutters are not). I thought most of the violent Islamists fighting there came from Chechnya and were recruited by Putin, because too many Russians were reluctant to kill brother Slavs.

        2. There were no active combatants. You were as alive as I was when this was all happening, so why can’t you get the facts right? You would have thought does not cut it. I recommend the 2015 lecture on Youtube by Prof John Mearsheimer as a starting point to understanding how we all arrived here.

    5. Would these Russian invaders who will soon be advancing on Nato be the same armies that have not progressed much in the last 3 years against one country. The entire concept is made up by western leaders to scare their populations and promote support for stoking the war machine.

      1. Would not the determination of the local resistance have something to do with the lack of progress with the invasion?

        History has often shown the Dnipro river an impassible obstacle once bridges are blown up and defending troops dug in and supplied.

        Considering paramilitary action simmering in Transnistria that threatens Moldova, the previous Russian attempted annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and the outclave of Kaliningrad with land access only through NATO and EU member Lithuania, here are already three places Russia may be eager to advance to, and that is before any attempted restoration of the Warsaw Pact that was only halted because they met Western allied forces going the other way.

        True, the USSR is not Russia, but Putin has made no secret of his nostalgia for the old days of Empire before Yeltsin ruined things.

        Nobody wants war, but it was a deterrent that kept the peace for a large part of the 20th century for the same reason a bobby on the beat deters petty crime. If you can’t get away with it, you don’t try it on.

        1. Your points are well made but they seem to support the notion that Russian forces are not a powerhouse that can push through the combined assets of Nato. My own belief is that Vlad has enough land and resources to be going on with and after the bruising his military and economy has received over 3 years, will not be minded to start another military campaign.

          1. He might if he felt he had the USA on his side, following a business deal. Elon Musk is richer than Portugal.

            Russia’s birth rate has been falling for some time, and they need more people. I have a suggestion – Subsaharan Africa has plenty of excess people. Why don’t they populate Russia?

  15. Sounds like the World's policeman has a lot of work to do.
    Anyhow, perhaps Trump noticed that recent China frigate type 055 & 054A plus supply ship firing off missiles off coast of Australia stopping all flights to & fro New Zealand.. and prefers to prepare for that showdown.

  17. 'Morning All
    Is it something in the water??
    Peace is the new Antivaxxer to be reviled and demonised

  18. Good morning all.
    Back up after another couple of hours fitful dozing with my nose streaming.
    I doubt if I'll be doing much outside today!

    A chilly 0.7°C start to a beautiful sunny day.

    2. Morning.
      There's been a lot of the upper respiratory infections going around Bob. We've all had it. It's been a bloody nuisance.

    1. Easy answer to that one – because we could not agree on an alternative.

    2. Easy answer to that one – because we could not agree on an alternative.

  20. 402555+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Tuesday 4 March: With the special relationship faltering, Britain must rearm – and quickly

    Tuesday 4 March: With the special relationship faltering, Britain must rethink its own odious political stance, we are a nuclear nation if, heavens forbid, it comes to war are we intending to turn the whole
    kit & caboodle,nuclear inclusive over to the muslm brotherhood, with governmental and royal consent.
    We have the right political cartel in power to do just that and allah will be most pleased

    The decent peoples of this nation are currently knee deep, heading rapidly for waist deep, in political treacherous shite and forced by past polling station actions over decades to take IMHO, a leader by proxy
    as in President Trump and follow his peace agenda.

    1. 402555+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      Tis my belief regarding the special relationship the yanks have every right currently to say "cut those thick stupid bastards loose, they are a drag anchor to multiple freedoms".

  21. Jack Buntis
    14h
    241 Jock civil servants dodging the SNP’s higher tax rate by [technically] living in Eng (at a family member’s address)
    Isn’t socialism wonderful…

  23. Good morning.

    I had the trans-oesophageal scan yesterday. The script that it isn’t a painful procedure is not true. I tried to signal to the people doing it that they were causing me pain but they weren’t interested. All I got afterwards, not mentioned before, was oh yes, it’ll give you a sore throat but that’ll resolve of its own accord in a day or two. It had better because I’m effing furious that they’ve done this to me. Thus far this morning it seems to’ve reduced from painful to very sore.

    I was given a sedative. It was Midazolam.

    My heart ejection fraction has increased. It was 34% in December, 46% in January and is now 55%. I’m told that still isn’t enough for a heart coping with a seriously leaky aortic valve. I saw the valve on their pictures. It doesn’t close completely. The hole is small but it’s there. Valve replacement is still on the cards.

    1. Hello Sue ,

      Poor you , I expect you are on your own at home or are you currently still in a hospital bed .

      These procedures are quite heavy on your pain resistance .. I suspect that the staff who put you through all these examinations don't really understand the pain and discomfort their patients suffer from .

      You might be in a very stressful state at the moment , but you know what , despite everything , they are on your case , and you are not an unknown if you see what I mean .

      Nice cold jelly , can be soothing , how about blancmange?

      Try to relax .

      1. They fed me ice cream when I had my tonsils out. It was about the only edible food in hospital.

    6. Have got a date for your operation yet Sue ?
      I hope you're being looked after properly. There's quite often an air of indifference from the experinced and well practiced staff.
      I think as we age and have to go through more, we just have to get on with it. Our neighbour is having her first cataract op this afternoon. I had my second three weeks ago. She asked me what it was like…..it's not easy to explain it when someone is digging around in your eyeballs 👀 but the end result has been wonderful. 🤗 take care.

      1. Cataract operations are probably the most efficient and painfree available.
        It's the restoration colour that is so striking.

        1. Absolutely correct AA, even the next day when you can take off the bandages the difference is noticeable.
          And the added bonus in the savings for not having to pay for vary focal specs.

    8. Blimey, Sue! They did that to our younger daughter and ignored the fact that she was distressed. I had very harsh words with them but they just didn’t give a stuff. I probably should have taken it further but I was just pleased to get her home!
      Do take it easy and thinking of you! 💕

    9. Blimey, Sue! They did that to our younger daughter and ignored the fact that she was distressed. I had very harsh words with them but they just didn’t give a stuff. I probably should have taken it further but I was just pleased to get her home!
      Do take it easy and thinking of you! 💕

    10. Oooph. 2025 is not proving to be a fun year for you.
      Sadly, if you are the staff doing these procedures on a regular basis, it is very easy to become inured to the distress they can cause.

  24. Why do they call Sir Lindsay Hoyle.. Long-Haul-Hoyle?
    Blimey 19 long haul flights in two years.
    Ah.. Labour.

  25. NietzschesDog
    10h
    Shadow Foreign Secretary @pritipatel sets the record straight. Every politician who cares about this country must be prepared to call Putin out.
    The mass immigration that your party oversaw is a far bigger threat to this country than Russia and Putin.

    1. I’ll call Putin out. He’s the Young Global Leader who laughed at his WEF masters and told them The Great Reset won’t work.

    2. JD Vance's words will be logged in history.. up there with "Ich bin ein Berliner.."

      "Europe’s Greatest Threat Comes from Within"

        1. From my one encounter with a Berliner – a bloody heavy, stodgy doughnut that hung around for what seemed to be hours after eating the darn thing.

    3. JD Vance's words will be logged in history.. up there with "Ich bin ein Berliner.."

      "Europe’s Greatest Threat Comes from Within"

    4. As they always do, it's always everyone else's fault after they have effed up everything they come into contact with. It's never-ending.
      What has Putin done to our country ?
      Please explain Miz Patel.

    5. Defence of the Realm — the prime remit of government — is lost on such charlatans.

    1. The now shocking reality, as in now. Wouldn't have happened if the tories had done as they were expected as a government of this nation. They let us all down by encouraging the illegal invaders and now it seems our own offspring will be stuck with it all for the rest of their own lives.

  27. Morning all 🙂😊
    Sunny again but frosty, still too early to cut the grass. That's my excuse. But getting closer.
    Why does Britain need to rearm ? All we really need to do is to get rid of this useless hatefilled government.

    1. Arrested.
      Then the gloves.
      Intimidation.

      X.. documentating LIVE the early stages of the civil war.

    2. This is wrong. At a fundamental level. Is it just so they can push up their crime numbers? I suspect so. We can either say wat we like and be free to debate problems or we are not, and live in a fascist state.

      A mechanism the Tories set in motion and Labour – because the Left are fundamentally evil – would only seek to abuse to destroy those they hate. That's what this comes down to: hatred, by the Left of those speaking out against their political opponents.

  29. I can’t remember any other war where there has been no television or film coverage, can you.
    Is it really taking place?

    1. The gold crested church/cathederal gets a lot of publicity as the journos stand on a nearby roof spouting off.

      1. Good morning Belle.
        We’re coming to terms with it. Everything is much smaller. The kitchen work surfaces are narrow and no good run. We’re both suffering from very heavy colds and I think it’s bronchitis. Only a shower room but it’s very small and I’m a big bloke. We’ll adjust.

    4. At first they had Jeremy Bowen lying in a bunker, but then someone found the rest of the image and there was a woman in the background holding bags of shopping. She looked a bit puzzled that he was lying there.
      But then the BBC lies all the time.

      1. I remember in the early days Johnson went to Kiev 3 times. There were a few bodies lying around but they kept moving. He didn’t wear any body protection but when he went to Liverpool he wore a stab vest. Says it all doesn’t it.

    6. Until it was mentioned yesterday, I hadn't noticed.
      It is unusual; normally suitably kitted out reporters can't get enough of it.
      Given how untrustworthy our governments are nowadays, I can understand the unease.

      1. They all have something to hide. Treat the public like mushrooms, keep them in the dark and feed them sh1t? They had a free run at the with lockdowns.

        1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/33d87ec88bb0f52eacd74063f8d02cde1f6eb6b87f6e45ef841ce0bcc7d1e5e0.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b26f634133271fbcdc06cbda3880dd9f30eb57ad70938a4eae920f98ee66436a.jpg Good morning, dear Maggie.

          It is one of a handful of enamel competition (and cloth uniform) badges given to me when I was entertained for the day by the police (and sheriff's) department in the city of Barstow, California, when I visited the place back in 1980. Telling them that my surname was the same as their city elevated me to celebrity status. One officer also presented with a police motorcycle helmet (my prize possession) and, in gratitude, I posted him back — on my return home — a Derbyshire police helmet.

          On the topic of hats, I have around 25-or-so.

          1. Wow , now how nice to be famous .. Did you ask who and how the Californian Barstow was named , because it must have been one of your relatives , say 150 years ago or more, so not many generations past?

    2. Quite simply, no, they weren't. Britain has been white for many millenia. Yes, black folk moved here and gradually changed colour and appearance as they travelled the many years needed to move from mid South Europe (where it was warm) to what was then the crossable landmass of England.

      I think if those fools pushing that lie were to be told 'continental drift' they'd think it was a playstation game.

  31. Nice frosty morning again . sunshine , blue sky .

    Years ago , frosty mornings meant spider webs looking pretty , frosted windows .. Jack Frost doing his work .. the frost is now only noticeable on the top of the hedges, house roofs and car windows , but strangely the frost on the car isn't swirly stuff , more like a frozen powder , why?

  32. Why are the media talking about Pancake day , why can't they mention Shrove Tuesday instead and the lead up to Lent ?

    Is Christianity a no no subject now ?

      1. I have noticed that on You tube. Every other advert is about forking out for Ramadan and Gaza. I think it's time to get one of those advert blockers. Anyone have suggestions for You tube? I had one but You Tube got around it after a couple of weeks.

    4. They don't like talking about Lent. You never see it mentioned in advertisements, supermarkets and generally where people get information. No profits in Lent!

        3. She and her stopped her Rolls Royce and she asked me very rudely if I knew where a certain restaurant was .
          She was so dismissive that I sent them in totally the wrong direction to a different restaurant.

          I doubt they would have enjoyed a meal there.

    2. An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman were drinking in a pub and discussing their families.

      The Englishman said, "When my son was born, I wanted to name him after a memorable day so I called him George, after St George's Day.

      The Scotsman replied, "What a coincidence, I too wanted to name my son after a memorable day so I called him Andrew, after St Andrew's Day."

      The Irishman then piped up: "Bejabers, I can't believe the coincidence. Have youse met my lad, Pancake?"

  35. Prime Minister risks clash with White House after vowing to ‘keep weapons manufacturers British’

    Pity that he has not raised our Defence budget and bought equipment etc, so the companies could thrive

    All ou tax money appears to be spent on housing and 'caring' for the Boat People and their families, whilst the Old Aged Brit shivers with no Winter Fuel Allowance

    1. What British companies? He’s finished off what previous governments have started; removing our manufacturing capability.

    2. I presume all this "rearmament" will need steel? Haven't the British "government" all but destroyed our capacity to produce it??

  37. Morning everyone. Don’t faint! I’m here early because my motorhome has gone in for its annual service and MoT.
    We never had a special relationship. We should always be self reliant. The first duty of government is defence of the realm.

      1. Not a question of bothered, more 'far prefer to leave us defenceless and invaded'.

        It's not an accident, their pouring the thousands of brown pollution on this country. It's deliberate.

    2. The divide between Starmer – a big state, high tax, hard Left fascist who seeks absolute political control over the country at any cost and Trump, who is literally dismantling the thing holding government up is staggering.

      Starmer just doesn't know what he's doing. He's a tick on society. Always has been. Trump, while you could argue is a git as a person, has done more for America than most people ever will.

    3. The divide between Starmer – a big state, high tax, hard Left fascist who seeks absolute political control over the country at any cost and Trump, who is literally dismantling the thing holding government up is staggering.

      Starmer just doesn't know what he's doing. He's a tick on society. Always has been. Trump, while you could argue is a git as a person, has done more for America than most people ever will.

  38. The City of Barstow, in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave desert, started life as a large railway junction and dépôt for the Santa Fe Railroad. Its chief executive at the time was a chap called William Barstow Strong so the place was named after his second (Christian) name.

  39. Oh great. Our one and only vehicle for the FRES programme, that was supposed to deliver during the Afghan conflict is a noisy, small, under gunned, overmanned, inefficient (because they spent more on the exhaust emissions than weapons), not mine protected farce.

    Ten times over budget, useless, decades late, combat ineffective – slow, under gunned and not even designed for the last war but the Kosovan conflict.

    In contrast, Mastiff, Foxhound are readily available and mine protected from the outset. Our main battle tanks are ancient though but still one of the best – once the demento green lobby are fed into the engine. All we really need do is uprate the barrel and engine for more firepower and speed or improve the armour for the same speed.

    Where we're rubbish is with air power, as we should be able to launch a fleet of guided drones for close infantry support but we can't as Starmer is a moron.

  40. Well, that is what is putting us off.. and we have so much junk in spare bedroom and lofts and under eaves . Each year we say we will tackle things , but keep putting things off .

    The boys don't want stuff , but old computers in the loft , old phones , photos, stamps and usual family stuff .

    Do you have less bedrooms .. you could jiggle stuff around , new shower room maybe ?

    1. We’ve still got 3 bedrooms but we used to have 3 bathrooms. Also had a dining room but now we have a living room. It’s the largest bungalow we looked at but at 1250 square feet it’s about 800 square feet smaller. We got rid of lots of ‘stuff’ and the loft only had daughter’s stuff from when they moved to Dubai 13 years ago. Loads of books and other things went to charity shops. Last Tuesday our daughter and eldest granddaughter came an unloaded, must have been, 20-30 boxes for us and put everything away for us. Son and dil have been a couple of times and hung mirrors etc. Don’t know what we would have done with the family’s help.

    2. Get the boys to clear the loft for you. It’s probably been there so long you can’t remember any of it therefore you won’t miss it.

  42. We still have defence contractors. Problem is they're mostly working for foreign governments: BAE are building drones for New Zealand, for example.

    1. And remember Siegfried Sassoon who talked about those who encouraged others to go and get slaughtered while keeping clear of the action themselves. Starmer has just announced more billions to Zelensky to spend on armaments. For majors also read politicians

      Base Details

      IF I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
      I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
      And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
      You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
      Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
      Reading the Roll of Honour. “Poor young chap,”
      I’d say—‘I used to know his father well;
      Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.’
      And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
      I’d toddle safely home and die—in bed.

    2. “Forward!" he cried from the rear
      And the front rank died
      The general sat and the lines on the map
      Moved from side to side”

      Pink Floyd, from Dark Side of the Moon

  45. Have the teletubby polis dared 'arrest' a Muzzie yet for offensive Facebook or X posts?
    Because the pages are awash with anti-infidel/kafir comments.. some posts are really sinister bordering on terror-related.
    Do they have the manpower? Would they be allowed entry into a Muzzie home?

    I wager in the no-go areas of Bradford & Luton they would face a humiliating stand off.

    Best stick to intimidating old white loner pensioners criticising Labour policies.

  46. Former President of Poland Lech Walesa wrote the following letter to Trump.

    Your Excellency, Mr. President,

    We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, with fear and distaste. We find it insulting that you expect Ukraine to show respect and gratitude for the material assistance provided by the United States in its fight against russia. Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the front lines for more than 11 years in the name of these values and the independence of their homeland, which was attacked by Putin’s Russia.

    We do not understand how the leader of a country that symbolizes the free world cannot recognize this.
    Our alarm was also heightened by the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation, which reminded us of the interrogations we endured at the hands of the Security Services and the debates in Communist courts.

    Prosecutors and judges, acting on behalf of the all-powerful communist political police, would explain to us that they held all the power while we held none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffered because of us. They stripped us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government or express gratitude for our oppression. We are shocked that President Volodymyr Zelensky was treated in the same manner.

    The history of the 20th century shows that whenever the United States sought to distance itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately became a threat to itself. President Woodrow Wilson understood this when he decided in 1917 that the United States must join World War I. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he resolved that the war to defend America must be fought not only in the Pacific but also in Europe, in alliance with the nations under attack by the Third Reich.

    We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and America’s financial commitment, the collapse of the Soviet empire would not have been possible. President Reagan recognized that millions of enslaved people suffered in Soviet russia and the countries it had subjugated, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their defense of democratic values with their freedom. His greatness lay, among other things, in his unwavering decision to call the USSR an “Empire of Evil” and to fight it decisively. We won, and today, the statue of President Ronald Reagan stands in Warsaw, facing the U.S. Embassy.

    Mr. President, material aid—military and financial—can never be equated with the blood shed in the name of Ukraine’s independence and the freedom of Europe and the entire free world. Human life is priceless; its value cannot be measured in money. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and their freedom. This is self-evident to us, the people of Solidarity, former political prisoners of the communist regime under Soviet Russia.

    We call on the United States to uphold the guarantees made alongside Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which established a direct obligation to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for its relinquishment of nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional—there is no mention of treating such assistance as an economic transaction.
    Signed,
    Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Poland

    1. Leach Weltcher really doesn't get it. What Trump is trying to do is restore democracy. That is why he is clearing out the swamp and Europe or rather its leaders are part of that swamp. Its why they are trying to pretend that Trump is unstable. Well, he is unstable for them because he doesn't want their fascist tendencies strangling democracy in Europe, which is what is happening under the EU. Hence the discussion in the Oval Office with Starmer Where Starmer lies through his teeth about free speech in the UK. If Trump fails we will be back to the swamp and the extinction of Western civilization.

    1. Doesn't surprise me. Zelenskyy is a corrupt official of the most corrupt state in Europe. And if Starmer thinks he can face up to Trump. End of tariff free trade deal and the arrival of a crushed economy and a collapsed Labour government.

  48. Morning all. To start with two video's today.

    The first is a short plea about Tommy Robinson. Apparantly the governments plot to kill him has taken a new twist.

    Second a long interview with Dominic Cummings who, goes without saying, has lots of interesting things to say. Clearly disgusted with the Tories and not much hope for Reform either.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKL-5Vfxtrc&list=TLPQMDQwMzIwMjWLh0ba8PK9LQ&index=2
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-HhIfpBdoQ&t=1113s

    1. It's Amazing how our political idiots including w(s)hitehall managed to keep stomping around in their own cesspit, the leaks need plugging so they can drown in their own excrement. Sooner than later.

    2. MPs & Politicians have given up.. lost interest. They're happy not running things. The reality is the cabinet is a pretend show. The media pretends the cabinet discussions are where power is, where decisions are made. The MPs are ok with that. Everyone's in on the game.

    1. I'd like to see/hear/know a UK version of Vance. Rather like the cut of his jib.

    2. American Presidents tend to pick weak VPs who will not out-shine the President. Look at the VPs of recent years. Trump has picked a strong VP and is prepared to let him have his head.
      I think the plan is for Trump to spend his term improving sthe lot of the American people in terms of employment, remuneration, low taxes, ridding the country of woke and so on.
      At the end of his term Vance will stand for president, hopefully win and have two terms. 12 years of Trumpism will surely change the USA for the better.

      1. Vance is the protegé of a technocrat. It'll certainly change the USA, whether for the better or not remains to be seen. They'll be lucky if they aren't digital slaves unable to go outside their 15 minute zones after 12 years of technocratic rule.

        1. Trump is the very opposite of all that. He would not have picked JD Vance or Musk, for that matter, if that was the intention.

          1. Trump’s an actor and TV presenter. Who rescued him when he went bankrupt? I fear he is compromised.
            I think he and his team are competent to bring the US through the financial reset as best they can. I fear the technocracy though, as there are plenty of pointers in that direction, not least the worrying dismantling of government to be replaced by – what?
            . I do wonder to what extent there is a genuine difference of opinion among the ultra-rich about that. There seems to be a genuinely malevolent agenda that hates humans and humanity and wants to turn us all into cyborg slaves penned in battery human farms while re-wilding most of the earth, and also a rather more traditional point of view that is happy to keep us generating wealth for them, more like the past.

          2. Trump is incidentally an actor. He is a real estate developer who while starting off with a few million turned it into billions.

            I don’t know why you think he is dismantling government, he isn’t. Government as it is here in the UK resembles a ship or turtle being choked by barnacles. The barnacles of bureaucracy and neglect. It has therefore come to serve those bureaucrats in the accumulation of self serving power and not the people whom it was intended for in order to make life more efficient, not a nightmare. You mistake. because of what you perceive to be normal, that bureaucracy for government. This is what Trump is doing. He is giving back to the people what was the peoples before corruption set in. Trump is a visionary and, I’m afraid, many people do not see that because they are only to willing to see venality even when it does not exist. Trump is incorruptible. It is why no matter what they do he always defeats the swamp, his metaphor for the people who oppose him, and oppose the ordinary people of the USA. Before his present problems, i.e. before his first tenure as President, he was audited every year by the IRS in a desire to get him. They never could because he was completely straight in his dealings. Likewise in the supposed criminality he was charged with in New York, this time round. The illegality of that will cost James, the DA her job and the same with the Judge. Both perverted the law and will pay. Trump is up to what he says. Make America Great Again. And you do that by giving government back to the People.

          3. This is a carefully crafted image, imo.
            At the moment he’s giving government data to Elon Musk, who owns companies that have government contracts. That’s a conflict of interest. Reducing bureaucratic waste is good, but it’s not a given that’s what they’re doing – it’s only what they’ve told us.
            Nobody is “incidentally” an actor. To become as successful as Trump was, you need dedicated hard work, ambition, and probably selling out. He has a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

          4. The President is not ‘giving government data to Musk’ That is a complete misrepresentation of what Musk is tasked to do. He is able to look through the books, find out where the money goes and then report. That is all. In other words Musk is doing an audit of the books. Besides that, if Musk was allowed to do more, though he is not, he has the highest possible clearing for secrets. What do you think he would have when he now makes the rockets etc for the American space programme. And he has said that if he finds, or anyone else finds, a conflict of interest in any particular task he is doing with DODGE he will retire from any activity with that particular matter.

            I’m 76. I’m quite aware of Trumps career, I was living in America throughout the advent of Trumps public career and through the 10 + years of his TV stage. He is first and foremost a businessman. It was because of his personality that he was asked to host ‘The Apprentice’ which he did for a decade. Because of the success of that programme he was asked to do bit parts in movies. He was, in fact, a highly popular figure in the USA until he dared to announce his candidacy for President and the smear campaigns then began by the Democrats. Who, hypocrites that they are, were his friend up until that moment because he dared to run as a Republican despite the fact that he was known as a Democrat.

          5. He didn’t go “bankrupt” he filed Chapter 11. that is a reorganization of assets etc. Look it up because the process does not exist in the UK and is lazily referred to as bankruptcy. I filed Chapter 11 at one point and I wasn’t broke at all but needed to reorganize. And as I already pointed out. He is not getting rid of government. He is clearing it out and returning it to its original function for the people for who it is supposed to be run by. Not by corrupt people like Nany Pelosi who used it to enrich herself via insider trading and other dishonest behaviours.

      2. I think that is the intent. In effect JD Vance is already being prepared for being the next President. Hence the active role you point out that he is playing. I don't remember an active VP like this.

  51. Paul Weston
    The idea that Starmer will put "British boots on the ground and planes in the air" into Ukraine is not going to happen because the mere idea of it is utterly insane on multiple levels. But if we take this crazed buffoon at his word, he needs to answer the following question: War zones are very dangerous places. If dozens of British soldiers are killed, or a British fighter-jet is downed, what would you do next? Declare war on Russia? Stay put and accept further futile losses of men and machinery? Bring them all home amidst angry accusations of needlessly exposing Britain to international shame and dishonour?

    Also, when there are billions of "lost" dollars slooshing around the corrupt citadel of Zelensky's Kiev, it is very important to believe a sitting British Prime Minister would never be intent on taking a percentage of this, for services rendered. But Starmer's track record of accepting clothes, spectacles and VIP tickets for Girl-Boss popular music jamborees from rich backers suggests he is neither honest nor honourable.

    A personal message to @Keir_Starmer
    – In light of your recent crackdown on Englishmen and women who dare to criticise you, I would like to point out that I converted to Islam just before writing this post, so am now officially off-limits to your para-military thugs in blue.
    Image
    7:54 AM · Mar 4, 2025
    · https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GlLjAr2X0AAEU0z?format=png&name=small

    1. I particularly like the 'personal message' at the end. But he is right about Starmer. It is all bombast and hot air and will lead to absolutely nothing. I'm happily willing to bet that not one soldier will set foot in Ukraine due to Starmers posturing. Although I would not be surprised to learn that there are some special forces types already there giving advice to the Ukrainian army etc. The best advice would be, give up, you've lost.

      Found today letter amusing too. We can't trust the American anymore. Why not? Because they wont pay for our defence anymore and expect us to shift for ourselves. Surely it's the other way round. The Americans have no reason to trust us or Europe. A bunch of empty vessels, do nothings, making a lot of noise.

    2. Would British soldiers actually fight for this shower of shit or indeed the last lot. I know I wouldn't have signed up for them, and I would never encourage any young person today. I was in Belfast in '71 and '72, to think they are prosecuting the guys from then, and leaving the scum from the ira alone makes me a little annoyed.

  52. Considering one of them shot Malaysia Airlines 17 on 17th July 2014, would you not be suggesting that it would have been negligent in the extreme for the authorities in Kyiv not to deal forcibly with those that did this? Or should terrorists not be considered combatants if they bore the ‘Z’ symbol?

    You can recommend any propaganda broadcast you like, would you please though answer my question properly rather than insult me?

    1. Asking you to get the facts right is not insulting you – it's asking you not to insult your reader, just as making assertions about the airliner are when it is just as possible ( indeed in my view more so) from the photographic evidence that it was shot down by the airborne machine-gun bullets of a warplane flying from Ukraine.
      Professor Mearsheimer is a distinguished professor of Chicago University and his lecture was given 7 years before the SMO. I think he will survive your propaganda label, which says more about you than any insult or indeed comment from me could.

      1. Actually, independent news reports from the time said that the airliner was downed by a ground-to-air missile, and that all Ukrainian heavy artillery lacked the range then.

        I do not recall any contemporary report from Kremlin news sources suggesting that a Ukrainian fighter mistook an airliner flying at 30,000 feet for a Russian warplane.

        A NATO spy satellite did pick up a fully-laden missile carrier trundling over from Russia towards the likely firing spot. The next image showed the same missile carrier, this time unladen, trundling back just after the aeroplane came down. Consequential evidence maybe, but perhaps more reliable than anything the good professor could cobble up.

        Photographic evidence is easily photoshopped, and this is true also of the NATO images, but the latter were corroborated on the ground who also reported an unmarked Russian missile carrier in the vicinity of pro-Russian partisans at the time.

  53. Time to get "French Farmers" on their arse
    "TTKs starmertroopers say they will arrest any farmer driving a tractor into London today. If the tractor is taxed and insured surely they don’t have a leg to stand on. I hope the tractors arrive en masse."
    I want to see shit-sprayers painting Downing St and Parliament with excrement to match the shit inside

    1. Yet more two tier policing. Two tier standards. It's utterly hypocritical and a complete farce.

  55. Now we have another problem in the fact that there are now thousands who dont consider themselves as British and never will and if even asked politely, they would never step forward. And this would assist the current government's plans to get rid of the opposition to their version of an Islamic state. Oh what a tangled web…….

  57. A good explanation of the Ukrainian conflict. By the way. He gets it wrong at the end because 2 years ago there was no way he could factor in the radical events of a Trump Presidency. But historically it's a good exposition of the real Ukraine not the cartoon of the MSM.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loVtI_7xRHw

  58. Uhoh There may be trouble ahead
    Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin officially warned the West what a war with Russia would look like:

    "Dear colleagues, media, journalists, and guests.

    Good afternoon!

    Today, again, in the European Union and NATO member states, there are calls for a "war against Russia.".

    Today, unfortunately or not, we can say again that history always repeats itself. Always!

    The views of our colleagues from Europe and NATO on Russia never change; they are always ready to destroy Russia, everything Russian, and ready to occupy Russia; their goal never changes.

    Hatred against Russia has always remained in the veins of some of our colleagues and countries ruling the EU and NATO.

    Dear colleagues, Today we hear again that Russia is an aggressor, and the truth is that Russia has never been an aggressor and has always defended itself throughout history.

    That's a fact!

    Dear colleagues from Europe and NATO, Russia never starts a war; Russia always stops wars. You start wars, and the goal is always to destroy Russia.

    Russia has never threatened countries, has never threatened the security of the world, but we like to say, "The snake bites the most when it dies."

    You created fascism, always everywhere, and in Ukraine, wars are your work, and Russia will always defend its country and its people. No matter what it costs, no matter how many losses we suffer, we have always defended our country and its people; we will always continue to do so.

    As you know, we have proven ourselves many times in our history as a country with spirit.

    And today you are shouting again, "Victory over Russia."

    Dear colleagues, I assure you that Russia will not fall; it may be torn apart, but never destroyed.

    If a NATO EU country declares war on Russia, everyone must know that our reaction will be lightning fast, and if we feel a threat to us, our reaction will be destructive.

    Today, Russia has all kinds of weapons in the current history of the world, I emphasise. (I add: you have no idea.)

    You have not seen anything from Russia and its possibilities in Ukraine because Ukraine is our historical country, and there are Russians in Ukraine, and we are saving them, and this is not a war but a military operation. (True)

    On the other hand, it will not be like in Ukraine; that is what you need to know.

    As for whether we are ready to negotiate for peace, we have always been ready to negotiate, but no one wanted to negotiate with us.

    Of course, Russia has no friends among NATO and European leaders, because Russia is a strong, huge country, which is exactly what your NATO and European colleagues do not want.

    But accept it!

    No matter how much you repeat that one day Russia will be defeated… I believe in God, and God is with us. The world may end earlier, but Russia will not fall.

    We do not need a world without Russia.

    Unlike you, I know very well what a country and people are, and therefore I will always fight for my country and people.

    Are you ready to accept this, as you wish? Are you ready to start a war against Russia again? But we are also ready.

    And today's war against Russia would be an absolute apocalypse.

    I advise our colleagues from Europe and NATO to work for the good of the world, not for the destruction of the world.

    Thank you! "
    https://x.com/SlavFreeSpirit/status/1896806706274775379?t=hPcjWVhcl6uw9wZ1Hhndrg&s=19

    1. With glasnost and perestroika we should have made friends with the Russian Federation. An opportunity wasted.

      1. Putin has in the past extended the hand of friendship to the west but this was slapped down – Russia was too useful as the eternal bogeyman with which to control western populations from time to time.

    2. Meanwhile the biggest and real enemies of our country have been welcomed and allowed to settle.

    3. "We do not need a world without Russia.
      Unlike you, I know very well what a country and people are, and therefore I will always fight for my country and people."

      I hope the delusional mob in Westminster and Brussels understand that Putin means what he says. Though I don't hold out much hope of our lot understanding anything more complicated than filling in their expense forms.

    4. The UK deep establishment retains its hatred of Russia because the same people, families and descendants occupying the Foreign Office and security agencies, remain the principal influences as they did back in Palmerston’s day and before.

      Russia is closer to a democracy than the UK will ever be. Contrast the clean streets of Moscow and Leningrad with the comparative filth and disorder of London and Birmingham.

    5. We need someone in authority who can build a long, big, tall, marvellous wall with whatever's left in Fort Knox.

    1. We do indeed. I quite like the cut of Gyngell, definitely more of a second Thatcher than Badenoch.

  60. Like the non-naming of slashy people and drivers of cars with dodgy steering.

  61. British peace plan will not be ‘derailed’ by Trump. 4 March 2025.

    Britain’s peace plans for Ukraine will not be “derailed” by Donald Trump’s decision to suspend all military aid, the Deputy Prime Minister has insisted.

    The White House announced the decision late on Monday evening after Mr Trump criticised Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, for saying the end of the war was “very, very far away”.

    This woman has no comprehension of political realities. There is no British Peace Plan and Donald Trump, who, like it or not, is the one who decides, has his own.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/03/04/russia-ukraine-war-zelensky-trump-pauses-aid-latest-news/

    3. Strange that stoma's peace plan hasn't been run past Vlad, I would have thought that would be a good place to start. The Don's idea hadn't been run past the clown either but when you have control of the weapons supply, there really is no need.

  62. How about this, regarding the state of the NHS.
    S for service?
    After exhaustive blind (getting nowhere) alley enquiries regarding my position on the waiting list for my knee surgery. I wrote to my GP practice yesterday to seek assistance. To tyy to get them to chivy things up. The reply was the same day and they told me that they don't have contact (really) with the hospital department involved. And that I should contact the secretary of the surgeon directly. That's how it all started more than 12 months ago.
    Square one again. Then on their website I read that if a patient is on the waiting list (as I have been told i am) it could take as long as 40 weeks before the 'deadline' (FOAD)? arrives. Scuz the pun. But how many weeks are there in the two years since I had my first pre operation assessment ? Or since I had my second pre operation assessment last September?
    And how many weeks are there in the six years since I was told that I needed the operation ?

    1. Did you try contacting surgeon secretary, Eddy? worked in our case, but a while ago. Now we are part of a Gen&Med plan with similar age etc as others, it's a private one but has stood us in good stead a few times (husband hip replacement being one). Many complaints about NHS/waiting lists/GP appointments etc seems like a broken model. It seems to be trying to serve a larger population without growing larger itself.

      1. I think that we have to accept that if you want medical treatment done quickly you are going to have to pay for it. I realise that not everyone has the resources but that is reality. The NHS is overwhelmed by the population, in a nutshell.

        1. Look at it like this KP, you have a private pension fund you draw out 13 plus thousand to cover the costs and this scum bag government will steal around 800 pounds of it in so called tax.

        2. Exactly so. I think more people will pay to go in a plan, as we have. This may get us, and others, bumped up the list which seems unfair but nevertheless that’s what people will do. It doesn’t help that as soon as a doctor is qualified (tax payers having coughed up for training costs) they can then straightaway emigrate to eg AUS/NZ where conditions are better as population numbers lower, plus a better working environment/climate. I’d put a moratorium on that, eg three or five years, or so.

          1. Which means that the native population is having to pay to get treated privately, whilst paying into a health service which is free for everyone and anyone who turns up in this country, who've not paid in a single penny.

            We're about to prove that you can either have a welfare state, or an open border, but you can't have both.

        3. To save our NHS we should stop increasing the population with unlimited imports then.

      2. I did Kate J that’s how it all started.
        And nothing happened.
        This morning i had a reply from someone else who i had not been in contact with previously and in my reply i have included paragraph’s saying they would keep me informed and i would hear by the middle of last month.
        As happened before a phone call is not to be trusted, I want the information in writing this time.
        We will see, i suppose i can always arrive on the ward and glue myself to the floor. 😊😉

        1. In the meantime, Eddy…had a (repeat) prescription delivered, very nice chap…telling me how the staff are daily bombarded with complaints, morale is very low. I think your experience is very typical, and I am sorry to read it. I have no suggestion other than to try to admit yourself as an emergency, but I suspect A&Es countrywide similar experience. Population numbers much higher recent years, NHS capacity not increased, so problems to be expected. Very dismal, and people beyond keeping their tempers in check. Good luck x (look forward to update btw:-)

          1. It's actually worse than that. Bed numbers have dropped over the last 25 years just as the population has ballooned thanks to the Uniparty in government.

      3. Emailing the surgeon's secretary seemed to work for my OH last year. He'd had the triple by pass op but was left with AF and was not allowed to do the cardiac rehab course. After a a lot of pushing by me he eventually contacted the surgeon's secretary on a Saturday and we got an immediate response (the following Monday) from our local hospital and an appointment with their ESDEC on the Wednesday. They ran through all the tests again and said try these Amiodarone tablets and if they don't work we can do a cardioversion. The tablets made him ill and eventually he did get the cardioversion, which seems to have worked.

        1. Good news, Ndovu – hope he goes from strength to strength. In an ideal world, we shouldn’t have to do these things – I suspect situation will only worsen.

    2. I had a similar problem when MOH was ill with a kidney stone-blocked kidney, and a concurrent heart problem. The surgeon who MOH had been referred to had refused to take on his case.

      I ended up somewhat bullying my GP into writing to the hospital to push the cardiology department. The GP said it wasn't what they normally did because it's a hospital matter, but he did it anyway.
      It worked, and MOH ended up with the head of department taking the case.

    1. That was precisely why the first Trump administration separated children from adults when they were trying to cross the southern border. At least 30% were completely unrelated to the adults. They were not their parents or even family.

      The Democrats and Western media freaked out, saying he was putting children in cages (photos of that were from the Obama administration), and separating children from their parents. It was a lie, as usual.
      And how responsible would it have been to allow small children in a detention facility with lots of unidentified adults? The Left didn't care. They hated Trump more than they really cared about the children.

      The movie Sound of Freedom is now available on Amazon Prime. It's based on a true story of a border agent called Tim Ballard.

      Yes. The Biden administration was evil. Someone called him the biggest child trafficker in history. Thousands and thousands of children have crossed into the US in the 4 years of his administration…and gone missing. Many will have ended up in the child sex trade. Many will be dead.

      1. "The Democrats and Western media freaked out, saying he was putting children in cages (photos of that were from the Obama administration), and separating children from their parents. It was a lie, as usual."

        And there are still a lot who believe that.

        1. They're called Democrats. And useful idiots.
          Surprisingly, the Democrats are currently polling around 36% approval.
          I'm surprised it's so high.

  67. From Coffee House the Spectator

    Why should Zelensky be grateful to Trump?
    Robin Ashenden4 March 2025, 5:30am
    A consensus seems to be forming, in certain quarters, that the debacle at the White House meeting on Friday – which played out before an incredulous world – was in large part Volodymyr Zelensky’s fault. Ukraine’s president is certainly paying a heavy price: overnight, Donald Trump has halted military aid to Ukraine. “We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution,” a White House official has said.

    Aside from the Republican politicians racing to side with Trump following the White House row, there have been voices nearer home. Presenter of the Triggernometry podcast Konstantin Kisin, who initially sided with the Ukrainian leader, tweeted out after watching the entire meeting that ‘Zelensky decided to attack [American Vice President J.D.] Vance unnecessarily. He totally messed this up… I hope he can see sense, apologise and get a deal for his country. This was not smart.’

    Jawad Iqbal, in these very pages, has declared that ‘Ukraine’s leader put his vanity and pride before the wider interests of his country in reacting the way he did to Trump’s remarks and behaviour’. The Sun, chipping in on Zelensky’s ‘misstep’, opined that he ‘should have done a Keir and wooed Trump’, while Dr. Raj Persaud, media psychologist, has written of ‘the FIVE mistakes Zelensky made’ at the Oval Office last week.

    The future for Ukraine under the Trump administration looks bleak

    Many will question this take on things. They may even feel that even watching the full, fifty-minute version of the meeting, there were simply too many elephants in the room – a whole herd of them – for Zelensky to have been at his most cooperative. Elephant number one was Trump’s reaction to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine back in 2022: ‘I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country – really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.’

    Elephant number two was Trump’s fabled love-in with the Russian President, Zelensky’s enemy – ‘a friend of mine… I got along great with him’ – and to whom, publicly, he has already suggested official visits to each other’s countries.

    Elephant three was the way Trump has spoken of Ukraine and its president – a ‘dictator’ – in the last few months. ‘I love Ukraine,’ Trump has said, meaninglessly, ‘but Zelensky has done a terrible job. His country is shattered and MILLIONS have died.’ (It’s important, Trump is quoted as saying, to make your opponents seem as though they have ‘a disgusting smell.’)

    Of the Ukrainian people he has remarked, ‘They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday,’ and of the occupied Donbass territories, that the Russians ‘took a lot of land, and they fought for that land and they lost a lot of soldiers’. He’s separately added admiringly that Russia ‘beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon – that’s what they do, they fight.’

    Leaving aside the usual guff about the folly of taking Trump seriously, how he rarely means what he says, or the instinctive ‘genius’ of his negotiating skills, it was clear by the end of Friday that those who make these claims for Trump – none of them visibly true – are simply lost in wishful thinking. Trump’s sincerest feelings were arguably set out by his refusal – the umpteenth elephant galumphing round the Oval Office – to invite Ukraine to the Riyadh conference a fortnight ago. If Zelensky, on Friday, felt he was surrounded by enemies and going into a lion’s den, you can scarcely blame him.

    Even before the famous blow-up of the last ten minutes, the talks had a queasy, off-kilter feeling. Amidst Trump’s blandishments there was disagreement on whether the ceasefire should come before or after guarantees of security were made (Trump favours the first option, Zelensky, naturally enough, the second). While Zelensky spoke about protecting ‘our values, our freedom, our democracy’, Trump seemed more concerned with getting the minerals deal done: ‘We have a lot of oil, we have a lot of gas, but we don’t have raw earth.’

    Zelensky brought out photos of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, and Trump cast his eyes opaquely over them, as though forced to stare at snapshots of someone’s (tedious) extended family. When Trump’s idee fixes aired themselves about Europe’s lesser contributions or that there were ‘a lot of cities [where] there’s not a building standing’ Zelensky attempted, rather less smoothly than Macron (for obvious reasons), to correct him. This was another tricky moment: ‘You could tell [Trump] whatever you wanted,’ his former press officer Sean Spicer is reported to have said of working for him, ‘but he knew what he knew, and if what you said contradicted what he knew, he simply didn’t believe you.’

    Finally, there was Zelensky’s face throughout, at times staring up at the ceiling, at times slightly wincing, like a man trying to endure a torture session by sheer disassociation. To say that Trump and Zelensky are chalk and cheese is to understate things. The two presidents looked like repelling magnetic poles jammed together, making supreme efforts not to let their feelings show.

    But those feelings were obvious. A strange proxy war seemed to be taking place in the Oval Office, as each man sniped about absent parties the other considered friend or ally. Trump dismissed Biden, whose support for Zelensky could not be in greater contrast, as ‘a man who didn’t know much’, ‘incompetent, very incompetent’, a ‘stupid president’ who was ‘not a smart person’. Zelensky in turn called Putin a ‘killer and terrorist… He hates us, he hates Ukrainians, he thinks we are not a nation. He wants [to] destroy us.’ You sensed, underneath the threadbare attempts at goodwill, an immense discord in the room that would break cover before the meeting’s end.

    The real touch paper, though, was lit not by Trump but Vance. Vance, who appeared such an easy, affable fellow before the 2024 election, on Friday seemed to swell with the authority of the head prefect, dressed identically to his master in dark suit, red tie and Stars and Stripes lapel badge. The Vice President, quoted in 2022 as saying ‘I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another’, lectured Zelensky on the right route for his country: ‘What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That’s what President Trump is doing.’ Zelensky’s calm (under the circumstances) explanation to Vance of the number of times Putin had broken his word following such ‘diplomacy’ only made Vance more irate. Zelensky was ‘disrespectful,’ he said, adding that ‘You should be thanking the President for trying to bring [an end] to this conflict… Have you said thank you once?’

    The exchange left you wondering, like ex-ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, what exactly Ukraine should be thanking the Trump administration for: being forced to give up territory, not being allowed into Nato, the US refusal to supply peacekeepers or, as McFaul reminded us, the fact that Republicans had delayed ‘the last package of assistance… for six months while Ukrainians were being slaughtered on the battlefield – and Senator Vance voted against that package’?

    Has the new White House, setting these rules of courtesy, thanked Zelensky in turn for holding the line in Europe for three years, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians wounded or dead? You suspect not – Trump has already said that ‘this war is far more important to Europe than it is to us. We have a big, beautiful ocean as separation’.

    Zelensky might have pointed out – and didn’t – that peace bought at a catastrophic cost is no peace at all and deserves little gratitude. As it was, Vance’s demand for a ‘thank you’ felt like the handshake schoolboys were once expected to offer the teacher after a caning: a final touch to make the humiliation complete. ‘We are striving for democracy,’ said a Ukrainian citizen interviewed by Reuters afterwards, ‘and we are met with total disrespect toward our warriors, our soldiers, and the people of our country.’ Trump, he added, ‘doesn’t understand that people are dying, that cities are being destroyed, people are suffering, mothers, children, soldiers.’

    His words rang true. Are Trump and his cohorts aware, except as the most fleeting and most inconvenient background noise, of events like the Russian bombing of the Mariupol theatre? It was there that the warning ‘Children’ was painted outside, but where an estimated 600 people – including many children – died? Do they recall the mass graves of Izyum and Bucha, the alleged gang-rapes, the torture chambers? The reports of Ukrainian women paraded naked through the snow and forced to sing the Russian national anthem or run the gauntlet? The kidnapped children (estimates as high as 20,000) taken to Russia and given, with changed names, to Russian families or sent to indoctrination camps?

    ‘You see, the hatred he’s [Zelensky’s] got for Putin… It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate,’ Trump said airily, before returning to his obsessive rants about Biden and his family. Finally, wagging his finger, Trump shouted to Zelensky he was ‘gambling with World War III’. They are words which may well seem, in future years, better addressed to himself.

    It’s not, you might feel, that Zelensky played his cards badly – it’s a wonder this supremely stubborn, bloody-minded man made it through the event at all. ‘I would never want Ukraine to be a piece on the map, on the chessboard of big global players,’ he remarked some time ago, ‘so that someone could toss us around, use us as cover, as part of some bargain.’ Now his worst fears seem to be realised and the future for Ukraine, under the Trump administration, looks bleak.

    It’s something that may yet touch us all. ‘The more people see the reality, the more they will sense that this war is not somewhere far away,’ Zelensky once said to author Simon Shuster. ‘If they devour us, the sun in your sky will get dimmer.’ Barring miracles – and there seem few on the horizon – we may soon find out if he’s right.

      1. Simon Shuster has reported from Russia and Ukraine for 17 years, most of that time as a staff writer for Time Magazine.
        Simon&Schuster is a publishing house.
        Sometimes letters all seem to merge together and everything looks the same.

    2. One wonders if it would have been over sooner with fewer casualties if Biden hadn’t bankrolled the war.

      1. —— if it would have been over sooner with fewer casualties if Biden hadn’t bankrolled the war.

        Or if they had had proper talks before the war started.

        Johnson, Biden and Zelensky were all is favour of war – and all three of them still are.

      2. It would’ve been over quickly if they hadn’t put up a fight. That would’ve emboldened Putin to carry on with his imperialist dreams.

        1. I am not sure Putin has imperialist dreams. He wanted a buffer against an unfriendly West. What’s your experience of Russia?

          1. My experience of Russia?
            Any Western European of my age has spent half a lfetime under the shadow of the Iron Curtain, the invasion of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, I think it was in the late 70s that it was explained to me that the threat was not Communism but Russian imperialism.
            Putin is an extension of what we have always had and Zelenskyy is quite right to urge caution.

          5. I’ve known many Russians and Ukrainians over the years. Also known people who spent time in Russia. I shared a flat with a guy who spent a year in the USSR as part of his degree course in Russian language. He lived in Kiev which he considered in 1975 to be part of Russia.
            I’ve also had friends from other countries from behind the Iron Curtain, I used to go drinking in the late 70s with a Polish guy who had escaped from Poland, not able to return to his country although years later he could.
            I knew someone who had been in a Russian prison.
            Certainly most people of my age have formed opinions based on similar experiences.

      3. It wouldn't have started if the US/CIA hadn't helped topple a democratically elected president back in 2014. Or had CIA stations right along the Ukraine/Russian border. If Victoria Nuland hadn't interfered in Ukraine politics and the Maiden uprising, probably paid for by USAID.
        Or if Ukraine and Zelensky, the former porn actor who played the piano with his dick, hadn't asked to join NATO, against the express demand from Russia, aka Cuban misdile crisis.

    3. Officially and legally, having declared martial law and cancelled elections, and having exceeded his official term in office, Zelenskyy is currently a dictator.
      It's not a judgement.

      Putin invading eastern Ukraine probably was smart. Whether it was moral or legal is another matter.

      Trump is trying to separate Putin and Russia from the Chinese Communist Party. He sees them as the greater threat. He doesn't want to get bogged down wasting money, lives, and weapons on behalf of a deeply corrupt country in Europe. America cannot fight a war on two fronts and win. It doesn't want to get into a direct fight with a nuclear power. No one wins that fight.

      A direct conflict between China and the USA has been wargamed out. The USA will lose. Trump is working to make sure he's not hemmed in geographically in the event anything kicks off with Russia China, hence his talk about Greenland, etc.

  68. Late on parade!
    Wordle 1,354 4/6 Not easy today:
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    1. Well done.
      Hard I thought!Wordle 1,354 6/6

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  69. Do you think mind control beams are the stuff of science fiction? Well, John Hamer says you should think again, and presents science based evidence to back up his claim. Please let us know by commenting under the article and voting in the poll if you agree, or if you think he’s lost in a conspiracy theory too far, in part four of his Chemtrail or Contrail series, Chemtrails, Aural Beams & Mind Control .

    Nanumaga is writing a comedy, a satire, about the Brexit referendum to time with its tenth (yes) anniversary next year and we’ve agreed to help trial sections here. In my opinion it’s very good, but he’s looking for advice and suggestions, so please do read this short section and leave a comment. Life in The Bunker (Incorporating extracts from Jeremy Corbyn's Secret Diary – Age 96¾). Please support him.

    Energy watch 06.30: Demand: 31.6 GW. Total UK Production: 29.45 GW from: Hydrocarbons 42.3%; Wind 23.3%; Imports 7%; Biomass 9%; Nuclear 12.3%. Solar: 0%.

    1. I would say that mind-control beams — although technologically whizz-bang — are not really needed. The most powerful and demonstrably effective mind-control agencies have existed for millennia and they are still going strong.

      They are called: Religion and Politics.

      Some say those are one and the same. Who am I to argue?

      1. The religions do change though Grizz, and now th epolitics has a longer reach, aka as the BBC and the MSM.

        1. Religions indeed do change, Tom, and Politics — like every other human-made concept — will invariably morph.

          However, the basic tenet of both remains a concept to train minds into a certain way of thinking, a.k.a. mind control.

    2. Trudeau can promise all he wants, the Canadian forces are broken with no manpower, no equipment and a command structure that emphasizes DEI concerns above fighting efficiency.

      But to give him his due, he did command that all men's toilets be equipped with tampon dispensers.

  71. Putting on the radio / tv chat shows is getting very boring now, with every day everyone is suddenly an expert on who Trump and Musk are and what their intentions are.
    Likewise with Putin's intentions.
    While saying it louder and with more anger and hatred with every day that passes.
    While Zelenski, who they know nothing about either has been raised to sainthood, feted everywhere he goes, like Obama was back in the day.
    But they don't want to go and fight or put any money in themselves, they expect Trump and Musk to send their boys to go and die and pay the bills.
    It's all going the same way as the pandemic panic, no room for common sense, cool heads are not allowed.
    It's follow the loony left totalitarian crowd frenzy and shut up or you are evil.
    Well that worked out well in the pandemic, didn't it.

    1. Why I switched off Talk Radio at 10am before JHB's latest uninformed rant, on to Radio Caroline, then out into the garden.

    1. 402555+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      In regards to English troops doing the political S(TOOLS) bidding they would have to be ultra simple minded.

      Best get themselves along to a 5* hotel with an adjacent viaduct, look under to glimpse their future when the dust settles

      LEST WE FORGET,
      TOMMY THIS AND TOMMY THAT.

  73. The old ones are the best………

    While stitching a cut on the hand of a 75 year old farmer, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to politicians and their role as our leaders.

    The old rancher said "Well, as I see it, most politicians are 'Post Turtles'.''

    Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.

    The old rancher said "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

    The old farmer saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain.

    "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, he's elevated beyond his ability to function and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put him up there to begin with."

    Best description of a politician I've ever seen.

  77. Operations on the Ancre, 11th January – 13th March 1917.
    Staff of a RAMC dressing station outside ruins of Contalmaison Chateau, January 1917.

    Operations on the Ancre took place from 11th January – 13th March 1917, between the British Fifth Army and the German 1st Army, on the Somme front during the First World War. After the Battle of the Ancre (13th – 18th November 1916), British attacks on the Somme front stopped for the winter. Until early January 1917, both sides were reduced to surviving the rain, snow, fog, mud fields, waterlogged trenches and shell-holes. British preparations for the Battle of Arras, due in the spring of 1917, continued.
    The Fifth Army was instructed by the commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, to make systematic attacks to capture portions of the German defences to pin down German troops. Short advances could progressively uncover the remaining German positions in the Ancre valley to ground observation, threaten the German hold on the village of Serre to the north and bring German positions beyond into view. Artillery-fire could be directed with greater accuracy by ground observers and make German defences untenable.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/111c8ca35291b4fdfb1ee8bb6ca1ae23ab8c122a625d27486f27111dcd325832.jpg?w=600&h=490

  78. O/T Food.

    Just had delivered a beautiful piece of Welsh Lamb shoulder. I read the cooking instructions on the Sainsbury's site and thought that can't be right.
    I checked the box and it said the same thing. Here it is…

    Season lamb with a sprinkle of salt and cracked black pepper. During cooking: Seal the lamb in the pan for approximately 1 minute on each side (6 minutes in total).

    Transfer to a shallow roasting tin and cover with foil.

    Place on middle shelf of oven and cook for 40 minutes.

    Reduce temperature of oven down to 190°C/170°C Fan, Gas 5 and cook for a further 80 minutes.

    After cooking: Remove from oven. Allow to rest for 10 minutes loosely covered with foil before carving.

    I know shoulder is a harder working muscle but cooking it like that would completely dry it out and destroy it.

    It only weighs 450 grams.

    I will sear it to seal it then put in a hot oven for 20 minutes and then switch the oven off and serve it half an hour later.

    Does anyone else cook lamb shoulder the way the supermarket describes?

    1. Never, its when they tell you to cook steak in a white hot pan. you end up with shoe leather. L.Lower heat for a short time is the way. Then just turn the heat off and leave for a while.

    2. I scored a honking great shoulder of lamb on special from waitrose
      2KG
      I'll slow cook it for about 3 hours until tender enough to pull apart with forks
      Wont be dry

      1. That's how i would cook a shoulder or leg but this has almost no fat and no bone and is only 450 grams.

        I think i will do one like yours for the Summer party as a centrepiece. Serve it with some flat breads or Naans.

          2. Oh Yes you'd have to break my legs to stop me
            Tell Steve to start distilling extra brandy {:^))

          3. You were the only one to drink any spirits last time so i'm sure there will be plenty.

          8. Sometimes people need convincing. I'm thinking of crowdfunding on Nottle for an airline ticket. Buenos Aires/Heathrow return for you know who. About £800 which is cheap for a Diva.

            Economy i'm afraid but with her charm an upgrade is guaranteed….

    3. I'm still waiting for you to comment on my proposed porchetta (from t'other day).

        1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6b126613eae22c9ec54b74c3d106ddc375b170ad57412f90998e44aa919197a7.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e233230fb4a365649f6fcbc3e6130841341d263acb7426d7c03e34e4e25eca76.png Where's Philip? Just been to the butcher's to collect an order of pork.

          One large piece of belly pork, 500mm x 260mm [19¾" x 10¼"] weighing 5,174g [11lb–6½oz]. Price: SEK667·40 [£49·27].

          Also three large sheets of pork rind (for crackling), weighing 2,991g [6lb–9½oz]. Price: SEK149·20 [£11·02].

          I didn't have a proper birthday celebration, with guests, last week so it has been postponed for 1 month. I have cut up the lion's share of that pork belly as I intend to roast a porchetta for the party. That piece weighs 3,467g [7lb–10¼oz]. The rest has been cut into two decent sized portions for other meals, anon.

          The pork rind has been cut into 13 portions for making crackling, as and when required. It is now all in the freezer (except for one sheet of rind which will dry out in the fridge for a couple of days before roasting into crackling).

          3. Firstborn just has delivered a side of beef, a gråfe (traditional Norwegian hill beef). Looking forward to the tasting!

    4. I only get a whole shoulder of lamb on the bone. I place it on a bed of root veg and roast it, uncovered, at 130ºC for five hours.

      The meat melts in your mouth and the delicious skin is like crackling.

    5. If it's cooked low and slow it falls apart. You can cook it with onions and some red wine and redcurrant jelly in the bottom of the pan. Makes a lovely gravy to go with it, and helps stop the lamb from drying out.

  79. Hideously anglo-saxon, of course. Where are all out brave immigrants, taking risk and working the land 24/7, 365 days a year?

    Edit. shout out to the Ulster farmers, just in front of no 10.

  81. Well, went up the "garden" and put a load of stuff into the still hot oil-drum incinerator whereupon it began to smoke without any visible flame.
    Had a mug of tea and decided I needed to get back to bed leaving Grad.Son to carry on making a panful of tomato and red pepper soup.
    2½h later, got back out of bed and went up to check the incinerator to find it had all burnt up.
    So loaded more into it and came back down for a small bowl of soup and a mug of tea.

    Still feeling rough so I'm now contemplating another couple of hours in bed!

    1. Take them Bill. You do more in an hour than I do in a week. Rest up, get well.

    2. Started weeding earlier, then nearby neighbour set fire to a massive bonfire, sending smoke billowing into my garden. Gave up the weeding. 😡

    3. I have cut back my vines before it’s too late. Then I made pancakes. Well, that was the plan, but they ended up scrambled.

  82. Nigel Gibson, Aslef’s lead organiser with MTR, said: “Taking action is always a last resort, because we do not want to inconvenience passengers and our members do not want to lose money. I hope that the company, seeing the strength of feeling amongst our members, their drivers, will do the right thing and return to the negotiating table.”

    Yet… it's the very first thing they do when they don't get the money they don't deserve, don't earn and are not valued at.

    They're just greedy. Sack them all. Find other people to do the job for 50K. The Tories could have changed the law to impoverish unions. They didn't. They didn't do anything.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/13/elizabeth-line-workers-strike-pay-dates-dispute/

    1. Taking action is always a last resort.

      So why are different Unions related to train travel always on strike or threatening to do so?

    2. This particular strike was called off after an improved offer Obviously still too much money for the job…

  83. Venue for future EU and UK meetings to discuss Ukraine support:
    https://scontent-cdg4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/469056234_10162680060189954_8918709205554234133_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s720x720_tt6&_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=GgRT3xhyFLAQ7kNvgFblp7J&_nc_oc=AdhaKZLHcisKcOyA0qclacg9qIf-bhbZOqqimbz_ILYFfN-7TF55a_FV87gLG5lnw4KeJ_QIe_9oy2A82XVpoNBE&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-cdg4-1.xx&_nc_gid=AEsvgOASVFaf9hz5U6uADDr&oh=00_AYAGhOkEY0uyczI2BpxM_DVr5Mwb6Ag4QrJtizO541gnsw&oe=67CCEFA5

      1. and Ooop Norf, you have Shilbottle, whiich has been amended on most signposts, use of a black magic marker, to

        ShiTbottle

        1. Penny Hill, in the Lincolnshire fens (on the A17), is also frequently black-penned.

          1. and Wet Wang

            Wetwang is a Yorkshire Wolds village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, 6 miles west of Driffield on the

            A166 road.

            At the 2011 census, it had a population of 761, an increase on the 2001 census figure of 672. Wikipedia

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetwang

          2. I’ve driven through Wetwang on a number of occasions, when visiting the Yorkshire Wolds and Flamborough Head for a spot of birdwatching.

    1. Except the majority didn't fall for it. He's in No.10 by default, because the Tories were so utterly useless, and duplicitous liars. Indistinguishable from Labour, now I think of it.

    2. And lying in the Oval Office, in front of the world, about how you intend to "support" the UK's "proud history of Free Speech", when you meant the exact opposite!

    1. I would have left the pub much earlier of the only 'beer' they sold was that cat's piss!🤮

  88. Back from the Troy day. Fascinating.

    To show what dark, dreary months Dec, Jan and Feb were – on 28 Feb I read my solar panel meter for the quarter.

    In 90 days they produced 73 Kw. In the first THREE days of March = 18 Kw.

    Time for a cup of tea.

  89. If you had been so unproductive as a solicitor would you have fired yourself, or merely gone broke.

    1. It is such a relief to see reality smacking into the fucking bastards that have pretended to represent us. When they have been following alien agendas that not only have no benefit for the indigenous Brits but actively discriminates against us while stealing our money.

    2. Doesn't it say more about them that they should assume Vance was talking about the UK rather than another country such as Spain, Serbia, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Finland, etc, etc.

    1. As the Elephant's Child remarked when he was being held by the proboscis by the crocodile and needed support from the Bi-Coloured Python Rock-Snake:

      LEGGO – YOU'RE HURTING BE

      1. And commanded by Feldmarschallin Fond of Lying – who was so bad as German Defence Minister that even Frau Doktor Merkel (Soviet sleeper) had to sack her.

  93. Just had a thought about what is going on in the USA:

    “A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing”

    1. But they are sucking all the gold out of London, so their quarrel is going to come crashing down around our heads first!

      1. Gold? I thought the fragrant Godnor Brown had given it all away at $25 an ounce!!

        1. It is the gold (and silver) out of the London Bullion Market Association I think. It all seems to be kept elsewhere and leased and re-leased out a million times…very confusing for us poor mortals to understand. One is not supposed to demand delivery from this market…the contracts seem to exist only for the purpose of making a profit and manipulating the price, but someone is demanding delivery now.

      4. That's from that utterly dreadful film 'Staircase'…..

        The only funny thing about it was that it had two of the biggest swordsmen in Hollywood – Burton and Rex Harrison – playing a pair of old queens……nonetheless avoid!

    2. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/29b2597875089cb6c33f62612bc110a3f4f19da0e1b8bfb6f23d3ae428cef57b.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2a34b555c71cff3ee700610eb23f71171a7fd62d58748fc046da575cadba344b.jpg As you are aware, I cannot do that since I am child-free.

      Having said that I have some taken with my sibling brothers.

      The Top one, 1980. [L to R: me (age 29), Philip (age 22), Roger (age 12)].
      Bottom one, 2006. [L to R: Roger (age 38), Philip (age 48), Me (age 55)].

        1. It was quite embarrassing for me at the time. I had left school and was at work when my mother announced that she was pregnant … again!

          1. Oh yes, I can understand that!

            Your brothers look like really nice lads, I hope you’re still close!

  95. There are those who think TTK should forget about the Ukraine and do more to defend this country.
    They should ask themselves this, when was the last time they defended something they despise?

    1. I left the UK 13½ years ago but I don't despise it.

      I pity it. Whether it wants my pity or not!

  96. Wordle No. 1,354 4/6

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    Wordle 4 Mar 2025

    Draft for Par Four!

    1. I was surprised that, after three guesses and a lot of consideration I could only come up with one valid answer, which was correct.

      Slightly relieved par!

      Wordle 1,354 4/6

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      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. My third line sought to eliminate ‘CH’ but for once found it.

      Wordle 1,354 4/6

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

    3. Surprise three today.

      Wordle 1,354 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
      🟩🟩⬜⬜🟨
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. Oh you are all good

      Wordle 1,354 5/6

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

    5. Oh you are all good

      Wordle 1,354 5/6

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

  97. A birdie today, mate.

    Wordle 1,354 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜🟨⬜🟩🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Money Talks

        The UK, France, Germany and the rest of the European nations have run out of money. Zelensky knows that. So does Trump, Starmer probably knows it too but what's one more lie to him?

        Zelensky didn't get to where is is today by not following the money.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o0rAvZtM7w

        1. Well get on with it then buddy and you'll save many lives and us brits bankruptcy.

      1. Didn't the head of NATO tell Z to grovel and apologise?
        At the end of the day, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

        1. Rutte? Yes, that surprised me, in view of the fact that he is WEF and chaos is the name of their game. And I am surprised that Z took heed regardless, but I suppose after surveying the scene and lack of gung-ho in some European quarters he didn’t have much choice, but still…. I see that Trump has said today he is lifting sanctions on Russia.

    5. However Vance's comments about "random countries" have provoked yet another outbreak of TDS on the BBC – the comments are depressing – so many really stupid people believing the MSM!

    6. Yes, after Trump ordered the suspension of all military assistance to Ukraine.

    7. You bet 'mum…money flow paused….Dylan 'money doesn't talk, it swears'…certainly opens doors, hearts and minds……

      1. Yes, Z wants his money flow returned… hopefully the peace deal will be signed first and the $$$s supervised and tracked.

        1. There’s wanting, and then there’s getting…Trump is all about deals, what does Z have to offer…..

          1. Trump is ten steps ahead of everyone else. No doubt he and Putin have got everything sewn up between them. At least I will sleep better tonight, I was worrying about Starmer’s conscription most of last night and the night before (not for me, of course, but you never know…!). I could do with a good night’s sleep, I really could.

            I also wonder just how much of this is scripted, too.

          2. It’s a relief, hope the sewn up stays in place. I think Starmer’s no statesman, but he’s a lawyer who can argue his brief (although I don’t agree with him). Whoever is next is likely to also be Labour, and could be even worse. The only opposition I see right now is possibly his own back benchers, and he’ll know about any plotting thanks to the CS. Put it in a box in your mind for now ‘mum, the one labelled tomorrow’s another day, and sleep well x

    1. That young man looks like he would be accepted as an unaccompanied minor if he arrived on a dinghy in the UK.

  100. Buttoned-up Britons are finally embracing the nudist beach
    As a local council cracks down on the practice, we delve into the growing appeal of stripping off on the sand
     https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/britain-nudist-beaches/

    BTL
    Never let your dangler dingle,
    Never let your dingler dangle
    One old sport
    He got caught
    Standing by the kitchen mangle
    Through the rollers oh what fun
    Flat as a piece of linoleum
    Now he sings in Kingdom Come
    "Never let your dangler dangle!"

    1. Never let your ding dong dangle in the dirt
      Always tie it to the tail of your shirt

    2. There was an old feller from Gotham,
      Who took out his bollocks to wash 'em.
      His missus said, "Jack!,
      If you don't put 'em back,
      I'll shove 'em through t'mangle and squash 'em."

    1. When I bought my motorhome I had a budget. It was more than that so I asked for a discount which brought it under my limit. The seller said no, so I said sorry and walked away. I hadn’t even got home when he rang and said he’d accept the price.

      1. When I bought my motorhome it was only six months old and had been reduced to within my budget.
        I gave it a detailed inspection and made a list of the items that still needed work done to render the vehicle to my satisfaction. The dealer agreed that I could arrange for the required work after purchase and they would pay the bill which they did. Some engine deficiences discovered by my local chassis dealer at a service were fixed under warranty.

        1. It ticked all the boxes apart from price and I’d sold my previous motorhome so I was without one. There was no way, however, that I was going to borrow money to pay for it (one of the suggestions the seller put forward). If I couldn’t afford it, I would go without.

        1. I wasn’t! She’s sometimes a bit of a twit, and doesn’t like to be challenged! Same as Ian Collins! He can be very patronising about ‘conspiracy theorists’ and WEF.

  103. That's me for today. Sunny but still chilly. The village Hall at Cley here we had our study day on Troy was freezing….

    Another cold night forecast though tomorrow will be sunny again. Thank God. I feel better already!

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

  104. So it looks like Trump has won again.
    Do I hear the collective sound of EU and Western leaders giving a loud sigh of relief that they can now go back to persecuting their own people again without all the worry of actually supporting their country.
    That is, unless, Trump has a plan for that.

      1. That’s not what I think he needs! Or the whole government. Wonder how TT FG NH Starmer feels now.

  105. From everything I have seen and heard I have come to the conclusion that after decades of pathetic, inefficient government, the greed and troublemakers of the union bosses and all types of management, the laziness and greed of the leaders of the cnivel serpents, we are finally entering George Orwells darkest nightmare. The worse thing is we didn't see it coming until it is too late, and left an almighty, horrible mess to our children and grandchildren.
    May they forgive us.

    1. Entering? We've been in it for years. Listen to what DODGE is uncovering and its implications.

      1. The slow erosion of a once reasonably civilised country. God damn the political classes.

  107. It's kind of weird, but,
    In over 5000 years, nobody before has worried about the skin colour of the builders of Stonehenge.
    All except the anti racists.

    2. There is no way that people who built Stonehenge were of colour. We would have been paying billions in compensation for slavery.
      But of course the way it's all going, It could all be turned on its head and we find that brits were actually the slaves.

  108. "Securing Our Future" [nasal whine].

    Aint it funny how..
    product adverts are 70% blacks, gay or trans.. 0% white men, however, latest recruitment ads for cannon fodder are all white.

    1. I've developed arthritis in one of my fingers from having to keep changing TV channels. Can I claim compensation?

  109. Just had a lovely hot bath and am off for an early night.
    Hope I feel better tomorrow.

    Goodnight all.

  110. It's been such a difficult evening for the BBC. It can't decide whether to hate Trump more than it now despises Zelensky.

    1. BBCCD. The CD is cognitive dissonance. The Lefties always tear themselves apart this way.

  111. It pains one to say it but the last time the UK looked (and functioned) anything like the one we grew up in was when Johnny Underpants was PM and Ken Clarke the Chancellor.

    Where did it go?

      1. The economy was in a good state. It was Clarke who repaired it after the ERM disaster. MIgration was down to very low levels.

        1. But the Tory Party was already being taken over by those better suited to the Liberal Democrat Party.
          A trend that was accelerated when Cameron took charge.

  112. Stage II Civil War comin up.. The martyr.
    21st March Tommy R in Westminster court to answer Terrorism charges.
    Supa chance for Yvette Cooper to finish him off by making him a CAT A prisoner.

  113. Stage II Civil War comin up.. The martyr.
    21st March Tommy R in Westminster court to answer Terrorism charges.
    Supa chance for Yvette Cooper to finish him off by making him a CAT A prisoner.

  115. "Boy, 16, dies after being shot in south London
    Officers are working to identify the teenager and contact his next of kin, Metropolitan Police says"

    Thank goodness it wasn't another stabbing….

    1. Well, since only state employees and criminals have access to decent fire power …..

  116. Just finished a roast beef dinner, with yorkshire puddings, gravy, veg – and good, strong Polish horseradish.
    Superb! All honour to SWMBO! Best home meal in quite a while, and I'm so full I can barely move!

    1. Talk about taking chances!

      "Best home meal in quite a while"

      Are you implying that many weren't up to scratch for quite a while?

      RIP, it was nice knowing you…

      1. I do most of the every-day cooking, and as I have little talent, the meals turn out edible – but that's the best that can be said about my food. Except when I get over-excited with the dried chilli flakes.

        2. Remember KISS. Simple things done well pleases everyone. Don't let the plate get busy with too many ingredients.

    3. Well for me, Herr Oberst it was just pancakes to celebrate Shrove Tuesday. Some with lemon juice and a sprinkling of sugar, others with syrup.

    4. Excellent !

      So many people overcook the roast beef. I want it very rare but also well brown crusted on the outside.

      Tell me more about Polish horseradish. Can i make some myself?

      1. I would think so. We buy it in jars from the local immigrant shop where they have all kinds of good stuff from Poland, also every pasta shape you never knew existed, the freshest and most lovely vegetables and fruit, even Idris ginger beer! Opens Sundays.
        Best shop in the county, even including gunshops. I tell them so, too.

  117. Those with TDS (The vast majority of uniformed plebs) won't appreciate this…

    "A very unexpected and unlikely development and plan is being widely reported Tuesday: Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to help the Trump White House broker talks with Iran on curtailing the country's nuclear program.

    Trump reportedly relayed the request for Putin to play a direct role in new negotiations with Iran during their February phone call. The topic was further broached and more details were discussed during the US-Russia Riyadh talks which followed, reports Bloomberg on Tuesday
    via NY Times
    Neither the Iranian nor US governments have publicly commented on the Bloomberg report specifically, which was based on anonymous sourcing. But Russian state media did quickly acknowledge that Moscow stands ready to help the US and Iran resolve their issues through talks."

    …

    1. Even Putin knows that Iran, as a nuclear weapon owning country, is potentially an appalling loose cannon on the world stage.

      There is a Russian Orthodox Christian Church at home in Moscow but mosques are not welcome you say?

      Well fuck you, here's a nuke…

    2. I think Trump is doing a very clever manoeuvre to break up the highly problematic Russia/China/Iran/North Korea axis that has been developing.
      Once he has Russia on-side, and has broadly neutralised Iran and North Korea, he can and will go after China. And I do think we will all have cause to be seriously thankful for that, in due course……
      PS At least uniformed plebs are smart! ;-))

    3. I read a wonderful comment on Guido today so I’ll see if I can upload it!

      Orange Man Bad. Beard Yank Man Bad. Curvy Spokesdolly Bad. Orange Man Wife Bad. Autistic Rocket Man Bad. Grizzly Border Man Bad.
      This just about sums up our media and politicians.

  120. I know the drill, so i'm boring and having an early night.
    Good night all 😴
    I had an email from someone at NHS saying they are arranging an appointment with a consultant. But… we have already done all this before.

      1. Brilliant, I love it! Always reminds me of the hilarious scene in ‘Wayne’s World’ (if you can dig that one out I’d be delighted!)…..

          3. Keeping in the Waynes World theme… 'Waynes World, Waynes World, Party Time, Excellent!!!!'……..

      2. When we lived in Canada the YMCA was brilliant for young boys to play sport and games.

        I swam, played baseball, played ice-hockey and in winter played card and board games and had a lot of fun there, but I suspect that 60+ years ago it was a different entity entirely.

        1. The message was clean.

          In the Village people out of all those original guys only one of them was actually gay.

          Even weirder is in the film the guy that played the straight guy was the Olympian gold medal decathlete Bruce Jenner who fully Transed to become Caitlyn Jenner.

          Even weirder than that Caitlyn Jenner is totally supportive of JK Rowlings position on Trans issues. IE no Trans in sports or in girls changing rooms.

          And if it couldn't get even more weird SHE is the head of the TV reality family… The Kardashians.

  123. Thought for the day:

    Zelensky signs a peace deal with mineral agreements, and as a result the EU offers Russia membership to stop further war, which is accepted.
    Suddenly there is a trading block that really can challenge the USA.

    Which way would cursed harmer jump?
    EU?
    USA?

    wrong, he'd jump up his own arse!

      1. Cameron would finally get his wish – an EU that stretched from the Atlantic to the Urals.

      3. I think the USA and all the other players made a terrible mistake.
        When the Warsaw pact unwrapped they should have invited Russia to join NATO and the EU.
        Might it have created 1984?
        Possibly, but I doubt it would have been worse than today.

        1. Trouble is the EU is totaly protectionist, they do not know how to free trade.

          2. "Trouble is the EU is totaly protectionist, they do not know how to"

            do anything?

    1. Ooh goody! More TDS moron and Lefty heads exploding! What a laugh! All those cretins who plodged in with both feet…

      1. From the Telegraph

        Trump and Vance aren’t clever, they’re clueless
        The US administration seems wilfully naive to the existential threat we face from Putin and his murderous regime

        Ben Wallace04 March 2025 4:52pm GMT
        Let me paint you a vision of a new era.

        Donald Trump and JD Vance mean everything they say. They mean it when they say Russia isn’t a threat. They genuinely believe that the US should leave Nato and they want one way or another to take Greenland. That only China, Russia and the US count. Britain is treated as a quaint exception to Europe. Sovereignty of others doesn’t matter. Might is right. Oppressing opponents, judges and the free press is acceptable in the cause of America First. Facts are fiction and fiction are facts. Putin and Trump sign mineral extraction deals in the occupied Donetsk region. Five Eyes intelligence is shared not with Britain’s friends but our enemies. The US withdraws from European bases and pulls the drawbridge up.

        America First means “payback”. Maga believes every piece of fake news from Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and multiple social media platforms. If America turns insular, ask yourself: who benefits? Who will be cheering a fractured Nato alliance?

        I assure you the US blue collar worker won’t benefit, nor will anyone else in the West. The real beneficiaries of such outcomes are Russia, China and extremists around the world who have seen the US as their number one target for decades. It isn’t Europe they are after, it’s Uncle Sam. Putin, a man who has spent his whole life fighting the West, hasn’t suddenly decided Donald Trump is his new best buddy. Nor has he and his inner circle forgotten their thirst for revenge for 30 years of humiliation after the defeat of the Soviet Union.

        For over a decade now Russia has been stoking the divisions we see being played out today. During the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, Russian troll factories deliberately magnified both extremes of the debate on social media. Division was what they encouraged and division is what they got.

        Across another Ocean, China will be gleeful at the potential dismantling of the old world order. All the things that really made America great and rich since the end of the Second World War are potentially on the bonfire. There’s not much now standing in the way of a clear run across the Taiwan Strait.

        Now I don’t know if this worst case scenario will come to pass. We must all hope it doesn’t. Maybe Donald Trump realises that everybody loses if America First is just another phrase for isolationism. That branding all your friends “free riders” and demanding “payback” creates wedges between allies that will be hard to mend.

        I also hope that we on this side of the Atlantic don’t forget that America is more than one single President and that hurtful as it is to hear such ill informed attacks from JD Vance, it is not what the majority of Americans think. But these are worrying times.

        We seem such a long way away from the days of Reagan and Maggie. The danger for us all is that the new occupants of the Oval Office are not very well travelled. JD Vance’s statements are wildly inaccurate and seem to suggest he believes everything he reads on social media.

        I was recently told by a US tech billionaire that the UK and US won’t have a Special Relationship because we are trying to regulate social media. I pointed out that it was the refusal of US social media platforms such as Twitter to help the UK authorities when I was Security Minister that led to so many being recruited to ISIS and Al Qaeda.

        The irony is that the very social media platforms that Maga seeks to use to make America great are actually the platforms that make it weaker and divided. Instead of undermining his own Government’s policy perhaps Peter Mandelson could help enlighten Maga and some of the office holders in the new administration of the facts. This is vital work to be done behind the scenes, not on the TV screens of America.

        I believe that – while many of us have the freedom to express our anger at what is being done by Donald Trump to our friendships – Sir Keir Starmer is right to take a softer approach. Trump 2.0 needs to be gently educated not berated.

        Let us now judge Trump on his actions, not the bold and sweeping statements that always mark the beginning of any Government. We must hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

    2. Ooh goody! More TDS moron and Lefty heads exploding! What a laugh! All those cretins who plodged in with both feet…

    3. TT/FG/NH Keir – out of his depth in a paddling pool! Never had a real job, no actual experience and look at the list of who those he didn't prosecute!!

    1. Nah, it was never a pen!! Curiously, my younger son is a Gooner – probably because they were the number one team when he first started following football!

  126. Our resident Historian Bill T will probably correct me if I'm wrong but I understand the Romans managed their populace through 'Bread & Circuses'. It seems to me that the current crop of leaders in the UK and throughout most of Europe understand the Hovis bit but haven't quite got the hang of the fact that they aren't supposed to be the clowns in the circus….

    1. I bet that upsets the Applephobes.

      I don't want the UK government prosecuted. I want them hanged!

    2. I bet that upsets the Applephobes.

      I don't want the UK government prosecuted. I want them hanged!

          1. The throat pain seems to have eased this morning. Too early to say that it’s gone. A colleague who’s been through this tells me it will all be gone by the weekend. She too is being monitored for a leaky aortic valve and has refused to have the throat scan done again, having had the same experience. Good to know it’s not just me!

  132. Well, chums, I'm off to bed now so Good Night, sleep well, and see you all tomorrow.

      1. Hey Phiz.

        Your comment reminds me of my old man, who after finishing his career at A.V. Roe, retired to be a sub post master in a small village branch in Cheshire. A small village close to where the author Alan Garner lived.

        One day the said author asked my dad for “A first class book of stamps.”

        My old man, being a wag, told Alan “My books of stamps are always first class.” Then asked if he would like a first class book of first class stamps, or a first class book of second class stamps. 🙂

        1. You have left me wondering the look on Alan Garner's face… Confounded? Dumbfounded? or just a wry smile…

          1. heh heh. I wasn’t there at the time, but I’d say it was a wry smile and a ‘ok you got me’.

        2. You have left me wondering the look on Alan Garner's face… Confounded? Dumbfounded? or just a wry smile…

Comments are closed.